Blu-ray Review: All Is Lost (2013)

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If there’s one thing you can say about writer/director J.C. Chandor it’s that he doesn’t believe in repeating himself. Whereas the Academy Award nominated screenwriter’s feature filmmaking debut Margin Call was entirely fueled by dialogue and brought to life with the same verve and speed of a David Mamet play by its large enviable ensemble cast, his sophomore film All is Lost showcases his impressive range as a cinematic storyteller with an ambitiously minimalist approach.

To this end, he brings us a bare-bones survival story that doubles as a one-man show for his film’s nameless everyman played by the man who’d championed his first feature at Sundance – Robert Redford.

In what producer Neal Dodson refers to as an “existential action movie” that pays as much homage to Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea as it does to Sydney Pollack’s ’72 feature Jeremiah Johnson (which just so happened to star the man he’d written Lost for in Robert Redford), Chandor serves up a sophisticated dramatic thriller that’s as silent as Call was conversational but one that’s equally powerful.

Managing to convey as much meaning as his debut feature with Lost’s roughly thirty-page written screenplay that – aside from a few sparse lines of exclamations, cries for help and well-earned profanity – only offers one traditional voice-over monologue which opens the film, Lost takes us along for our unnamed everyman’s perilous eight day struggle for survival in the Indian Ocean.

Interrupting what we believe had been a smooth voyage so far – as the picture begins our man awakens to discover that he’s struck an abandoned shipping container which has forged a hole in the side of his thirty-nine foot yacht.

Whittling a wooden handle to pump out the water after he patches the breached hull the best he can, the man finds his luck changing from bad to worse when – having fried his radio and navigational equipment from the flood of water that had poured into his yacht in the bravura opening sequence, the man finds himself sailing in the direction of a massive storm.

Relying on the books aboard his vessel to attempt to navigate by the stars as well as his own seaman’s intuition, when his yacht takes a violent hit that fills the sinking ship with water and knocks him out temporarily, he’s left with no choice but to trade the yacht for a life raft in the hopes of hailing a passing boast when the water takes him into a busier shipping lane.

Fighting against the elements in a brave battle of man against nature, Redford’s everyman must come face-to-face with his own mortality and ask himself how far he’s able to go to survive in this deeply affecting drama that’s as thrilling as a cinematic spectacle as it is emotionally moving, taking you along with him from one frame to the next.

And by its lack of details about the man including what he’s doing in the middle of nowhere in the first place, the film acts like a piece of great literature, allowing you to bring to it what you will. This idea is perhaps best exemplified by the picture’s ambiguous ending, which has divided audiences into accepting its one of two conclusions, based on logic, belief system, and personal philosophy (where that all-too-important existentialism comes into play).

However the closure-minded can cite some of the context clues that Chandor has provided from the title of the film which calls to mind “Amazing Grace” as well as the closing credit music from first time composer and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros band leader Alex Ebert, who earned a Golden Globe for his arresting score, which tends to lean towards one concrete conclusion versus another.

Anchored by what is easily the most challenging role of Robert Redford’s career that was extremely well-deserving of an Oscar nomination, the (now) seventy-seven year old actor puts himself through a physical, emotional and psychological gauntlet which is evidenced from start to finish.

A gorgeously executed, thought-provoking 2013 opus, which Chandor had been kicking around in his mind before he even made Margin Call and took him six years to construct before he first yelled “Action” is – like another recent against-all-odds tale of survival via Alfonso Cuaron’s masterful Gravity – a must-see example of purity in storytelling executed at its most visceral, filmic level.

Highly recommended, All is Lost is well-worth tracking down in high definition Blu-ray, for the sharpest image and sound imaginable on the largest screen you’re privy to in order to feel the full transformative effect of the journey that puts you right in the ocean with Redford and inspires you to ask yourself what you would do if faced with a similar endeavor. 

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Indecent Proposal (1993)

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Much like Adrian Lyne's previous films Fatal Attraction, Jacob's Ladder, 9 1/2 Weeks and Flashdance-- Indecent Proposal was one of those movies that provided endless conversational fodder for viewers.

And without a strong visual shocker like Michael Douglas and Glenn Close's nearly violent sex scene over the kitchen sink or the boiling of the bunny rabbit in Fatal Attraction to bring it all back into my mind--when I began the Blu-ray for Proposal, I realized that although I'd seen it before roughly fifteen or sixteen years earlier, the only thing I remembered about it was just how much audiences couldn't stop talking about the "indecent proposal" posed by billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford) in the film.

In a conversation that one initially assumes is hypothetical-- like one of those casual "what would you take on a desert island" or "if you had to sleep with person a or b who would it be," games people play, Gage turns serious. In doing so, he shifts his attention from shooting pool to his real joy of playing with people instead by offering the financially desperate yet desperately in love couple Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson's Diana and David Murphy a million dollar opportunity.

Of course, instead of betting them a corner pocket shot on the billiard table-- Gage decides to use money as the pool cue to fire a ball straight at the heart of their very relationship.

You see, after Diana caught Gage's eye in Las Vegas while stuffing chocolates in her knapsack in a couture boutique in the hotel lobby, Gage became instantly smitten. And although it's hard to blame his interest in Moore's natural loveliness when she slips the hanger of a gorgeous dress over her head to explore the difference from her blue collar attire in the mirror, Gage seems especially hooked because of the events that follow. For unlike the dress-- he wasn't able to manage to discover Diana's invisible price-tag with a tired form of gold card seduction.

Making a predictably cocky and grand gesture to try and buy her the dress (a la Pretty Woman or Shopgirl), Diana sees through the gesture immediately, confidently noting that yes-- although the dress is for sale-- the woman in the dress would never be.

Of course, Gage refuses to accept defeat and won't let a small thing like a wedding ring, vows, or basic human decency get in his way by adhering to his strict belief that-- since the world has never proven this cynical belief wrong before-- every single thing on this planet and especially its inhabitants are for sale.

Therefore, he lays his plans out casually over pool before getting into specifics, offering to give the Murphy couple-- who'd foolishly journeyed to Sin City in the hopes of turning David's five thousand dollar loan into the fifty thousand dollars they need to save their home and credit rating-- one million dollars if they agree to prostitute Mrs. Murphy out for one night of "just sex." Of course, Redford being smoldering Redford-- he never says sex or even prostitute but it's all implied when he aims his checkbook at the Murphys via the line, "a million dollars for one night with your wife."

The most revealing thing about the film so far and Redford's utter conviction in his performance is in the way the three participants in the conversation react. Obviously Diana is the one who quickly raises to anger, Harrelson's David is curiously stunned but intriguingly silent, and Redford continues to ask them to seriously consider it, despite his sexist posing of the question to David's use of "his wife" and Diana's assertion that David would tell him to go to hell.

Still, having been hit hard by the recession-- the two young lovers who've been together since high school spend a sleepless night tossing and turning as they try to psychologically guess what the other one is thinking-- neither one wanting to come right out and make the proposition as coolly as Gage had. At long last, ultimately Diana--perhaps in response to her husband's quiet reply to the offer-- tells him that she would go through with it to solve their financial mess.

Although some critics once again charged this film like some of Lyne's others with anti-feminism or ill treatment of female characters (and given the fetishistic Flashdance-- to just name one-- they have a point)-- with Demi Moore's brilliant bravery and restraint against playing Diana as a victim or a temptress, unexpectedly she becomes the only logical individual in the film.

I found it utterly fascinating that she had to be the one to put the men's true thoughts and wishes into action since they were too gutless to do it themselves. For we sense right from the start that Diana is much stronger than her husband and moreover far more intelligent and clear-headed than both men put together despite some early over-the-top scenes of temper tantrums in her marriage to David the slob.

Additionally and aside from sadly putting his needs ahead of hers by taking a real estate position to support him while he finished architectural school, taking out an enormous loan so that he can build his dream place, and in fact going along with him on the mindless scheme to win back the money in Vegas-- she knows right away instinctively and intuitively that David is afraid to ask her to agree to Gage's offer but it's what he is precisely hoping she'd do.

And Moore plays these levels beautifully-- balancing the disappointment in her spineless husband with her love for him-- in one of her earliest and strongest roles. Furthermore, her performance-- along with a surprisingly poignant portrayal by Woody Harrelson who must go through the entire spectrum of emotions opposite a woman who (as we saw in Ghost) can seemingly cry in two seconds flat, keeps us engrossed even when we disagree with the characters or the contrived plot-line.

Likewise although we may have a hard time accepting the melodramatic and only-in-the-movies proposal seriously-- nonetheless, the screenplay from Mystic Pizza's Amy Holden Jones (based on Jack Engelhard's novel) ensures you're able to empathize with every main character throughout even when inevitably we realize that despite the fact the Diana and David vow never to discuss in-depth the "solution" to their financial crisis, their money problems have been replaced with far more serious ones concerning their relationship with each other.

While Lyne imbues it with a classic Douglas Sirk-like '50s style romanticism-- there's no mistaking Indecent Proposal for anything but a contemporary tale and one that makes its Blu-ray release stir conversation once again given our current economic recession, despite a few clunks in logic and an over-reliance on cutesy "Did I Ever Tell You I Love You?" dialogue repetitions among the husband and wife who keep calling each other "D."

For, in its way, Indecent Proposal is a much more honest yet deeply unsettling and cynical re-imagining of Pretty Woman blended of course with its most obvious comparison via the Nicolas Cage and Sarah Jessica Parker comedy Honeymoon in Vegas.

Obviously, Pretty Woman is definitely the more entertaining and enjoyable romantic comedy since Proposal's flaws can't be hidden and it's not exactly the ideal set-up for a romance despite a few breathtakingly gorgeous shots like the cliched auction in the rain near-finale.

However, unlike Woman which I've always found far more anti-feminist than Lyne's films despite my appreciation for its humor, Proposal actually gets bonus points for a much needed reality check in the development of a budding romantic relationship between Diana and John.

For, since it never lets you forget that although Diana and John Gage may spark just like Richard Gere's "Prince Charming" and Julia Roberts' "Cinderella," it's smart and noble enough to know that in the real world any relationship that began with the exchange of money for sex is doomed from the start and you can't hide prostitution for what it is, no matter how much you try and distract the senses with shots of Rodeo Drive and a pop music soundtrack.



The Blu-ray transfer of the film is above average with only a few slightly grainy close-ups most notably in scenes with low lighting as in the aforementioned auction in the rain and final reunion of the lovers in the fog it appears to look as beautiful as it did back in its '93 theatrical release.

Yet in the same turn, my sole technical complaint for the presentation is the sound which seems to be a continual challenge for Paramount in finding a good balance between dialogue, music, and background noise as my remote climbed anywhere from forty to seventy in numerous sequences.

With the bonus of Adrian Lyne's quiet and contemplative commentary serving as the sole extra doesn't make the expense of the Blu-ray an enticing enough proposal for buyers-- for those who haven't seen it in years or at least back since it was a hot water cooler topic of discussion, it's well worth the rental as I was surprised to discover that it was much better than I remembered.

Blu-ray Review: 3 Days of the Condor (1975)

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A.K.A. Three Days of the Condor

After hitting the street on 5/19, three new paranoid thriller Blu-ray releases from Paramount Home Entertainment have definitely found this reviewer looking over her shoulder over the course of a week and a half.

Gripping and diverse, the titles have arrived in tandem with the angry, morally thought-provoking twenty-first century Falling Down inspired Changing Lanes and the underrated war film Enemy at the Gates. And to top off that slate of movies, Warner Brothers managed to tie right into the theme with a Deluxe Edition DVD and Blu-ray of Falling Down hitting shelves this week as well.

However, for the most part it's been an in-depth, two week long look at cinematic onscreen paranoia lately at Film Intuition via three very different Hitchcockian influenced works. Juggling unreliable narrators with unbelievable situations and undeniable tension, we've explored 'em all in the form of Sydney Pollack's fresh-after-Watergate classic 3 Days of the Condor, John Woo's North By Northwest inspired action laced update of a Philip K. Dick story in Paycheck, and a haunting turn by Christian Bale as an emaciated insomniac in Brad Anderson's cult favorite The Machinist.

Although before we settle into the rest, we'll go back in time to the cold war era for 3 Days of the Condor which-- going completely against the grain-- opted not to use Russia as a backdrop but instead set the action right here in the United States.

While some people say that they're saving up for a rainy day, it's precisely a rainy day that ends up saving Robert Redford from getting massacred along with the rest of his coworkers in a lunchtime raid at their office after only a few minutes into The Way We Were and Jeremiah Johnson director Sydney Pollack's fast-moving thriller.

Working as a reader in the purposely dully named American Literary Historical Society-- Redford's Joseph Turner breaks protocol at what is in reality a governmental agency "front" by sneaking out the back to cut a few rain soaked blocks off his trip to bring back lunch. Missing from the raid that's foreshadowed in an eerie sequence as we watch our villain flip through photographs of the workers (including Redford's which conspicuously looks like a dreamy headshot), Turner we soon ascertain is both the last and only man from his tiny group left standing once the bullets fly.

So in a cross between saving his life for a rainy day and/or being literally "out to lunch" in the type of odd coincidence his character would've looked for by scouring texts of all types as a "code-breaker" of sorts-- reading everything he can for patterns or dangerous information-- suddenly the nerdy Dick Tracy loving avid comic book enthusiast Joseph Turner realizes he needs to abandon the librarian pretense and go into spy mode.



The only thing is, the admittedly clumsy and awkward Turner has never really gone into spy mode before and now, armed only with a tiny pistol he secured from the desk of the receptionist, Joseph Turner is easily outnumbered and outgunned. Obviously, we assume (as does Turner) that the government must have all kinds of "contingency plans" that will fall into place and he dutifully phones in, revealing his code name of Condor.

However, and much to the late great Sydney Pollack's credit in not revealing the link to the CIA by name until almost thirty minutes into the movie, the tension and uncertainty mounts as Turner grows increasingly suspicious. And when additional gunplay ensues, he realizes he has no idea where to turn since as the movie's dynamite tagline promises, "in the next seventy-two hours almost everyone he trusts will try to kill him."

Logically, he decides the next best move would be to steer clear of old surroundings and associates so he randomly abducts the next woman with whom he comes into contact-- Faye Dunaway's game Kathy Hale-- and the two hide out at her apartment to sort things out.



Obviously since he's the man wielding the gun, Kathy tries to play along but Turner-- relieved to have someone to speak with earnestly confesses everything in an attempt to persuade her that he is who he says he is and not a cold-blooded criminal.

Fortunately Dunaway's character is penned as anything but a damsel in distress and, right in line with her string of memorable work of this era in films including Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and Network-- she manages to get more mileage than we'd expect out of her role as unwitting and underwritten romantic sidekick and lonely girl photographer.

Although, of course the two do end up predictably becoming romantically involved (it's Dunaway and Redford in 1975-- what are they not going to hook up onscreen?!), the immediacy in which the two hit the sack that very night still feels like an intensely false note amidst the otherwise rhythmic pacing of arty and uncharacteristically roughly five-second long "shots" between cuts and the intelligent screenplay.

In fact, the dubious nature of their coupling was one of the plot points debated in the second sexiest scene (the first being the intercut hotel bar and room sequence) in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight in which Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney-- finding themselves in a similar situation-- chat about old movies while he holds her hostage in the trunk of a car.

Yet, most likely the reason for this largely unsuccessful leap to try and make us suspend our disbelief is one that-- similar to some of the clunky plot points of Turner's less-than-bright decisions and his near instantaneous transformation from a klutz to well, Dick Tracy-- can easily be attributed to the fact that Pollack's Condor was an adaptation of a novel set over the course of six instead of three days.

By speeding up the action to fit the running time and doing away with the exposition to make the film more of an action movie with a clearer through-line that will fall just under one hundred and twenty minutes, the film gets away with a lot of things that on the whole it probably wouldn't have by presenting them to us so quickly.

Despite some of the confusion and the sort of vague idea of a CIA within a CIA (which as Ebert noted, following Watergate was entirely plausible and it's indeed one that remains so in our Bourne Identity era) all tangled up in a paranoid plot that at times feels like a Hitchcockian MacGuffin that we can't quite understand until the film's final segment-- it works best as a cat and mouse thriller as Redford fights to stay alive.

With an incredible turn by Max von Sydow as one of the many dangerous "company" types and/or hired guns out to get Turner, Condor is filled with more than few scenes sure to get your heart rate going that are elevated by a great antihero '70s air about the film that fills it with just the right amount of doom lurking ahead long after the credits roll.

Thus, it's easy to just go ahead and forget some of the warning bells sounding in your brain like the ludicrous decision the main characters make to drive the same vehicle throughout even though the government knows it well and just join the chase in another excellent and exciting effort by frequent collaborators Pollack and Redford. Additionally, it's one that reminds you that it's always a good idea to go for a walk in the rain... just make sure you bring an umbrella and always remember your code name.

DVD Review: Natalie Wood Collection (Bombers B-52; Cash McCall; Gypsy; Inside Daisy Clover; Sex and the Single Girl; Splendor in the Grass) 6 Discs

An Introduction

There's an old Hollywood adage that goes, "you make one picture for the studio and one for yourself," and it's one that still resonates today as we see some horrific films starring brilliant actors or helmed by superior directors so that they can eventually see their pet project come to life.

A pro since she was in kindergarten-- perhaps nobody knew this better than Ms. Natalie Wood, especially when she signed an extensive contract with Warner Brothers. Wood was often called Warner royalty and perhaps one of the studio's best loved actresses of that era along with Elizabeth Taylor-- as Wood aged into an even more stunning woman but also an increasingly impressive actress following her great performance opposite James Dean for director Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause.

And soon the wildly mature yet still very young Wood became far more business savvy, renegotiating her contract, declining scripts that pigeonholed her into the same "youth" she'd played for years, and giving her more freedom to make one film off the Warner lot each year if she wanted.

Yet, Warner Brothers knew exactly how to play hardball and in the '50s and '60s one of the best coaches in the business was Jack Warner and the company entered into a "one for us, one for you" arrangement by dangling projects she loved like Splendor in the Grass, Inside Daisy Clover, and Gypsy in front of her and in exchange requiring she take part in some fluffy forgettable studio work.

In Warner Brothers' brand new Natalie Wood Collection, which released on February 3rd in a lovely feminine package (despite going for the old fashioned thick DVD cases in lieu of space saving slim disc covers), the company serves up six of Wood's films including the aforementioned three she believed in and three she did to earn them-- Bombers B-52, Cash McCall, and Sex and the Single Girl. However, that's not to say that they're horrific-- in fact there's something to like in each film and I think most viewers would probably want to watch Sex and the Single Girl instead of Inside Daisy Clover any day of the week.

While Natalie fans will be disheartened that West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, Love With the Proper Stranger, This Property is Condemned, Miracle on 34th Street, and a few others haven't been included, those who've always been interested in the wondrously gifted brunette's career won't want to miss checking out some of the titles that have rarely been shown or released such as Cash or Bombers.

As they did with their triumphant Warner Brothers Romance Classics boxed set which came out at the end of January as well as WB's Sidney Poitier Collection-- the studio presents the films in DVDs that include the original cinematic poster artwork and also contains a few that have been remastered (Splendor and Gypsy) but one of the bonuses of the Wood collection is for those who love Warner's Looney Tunes as each DVD contains a memorable award-winning and/or beloved cartoon classic.

Bombers B-52
(1957)

Although Wood received top billing for Bombers B-52-- Warner's official celebration of the United States Air Force and the B-52 bomber (as a step up from the B-47)--Wood's role as the daughter of a military career man, Master Sergeant Charles Brennan (Karl Malden) is essentially pushed off to the side. Instead, the plot centers on the rivalry between her father and his much younger boss Colonel Jim Herlihy (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) which escalates when he begins dating Wood's Lois.

Still angered by what he sensed was a reckless decision made in the Korean War which found one of Brennan's colleagues killed, Brennan-- now set on retiring to finally give his wife and daughter a semblance of a real home away from the base-- finds his position as a airplane technician invaluable when the mighty B-52 arrives.

Using Lois as leverage, he promises to stay on long enough to help with the launch of the Air Force's newest acquisition and invention as long as Herlihy stops dating his daughter but soon enough, predictably, Brennan realizes there may be more to the man he's loathed than he initially assumed.

Although the entire film could run as though it were one of those expensive new "Go Army" of Kid Rock "National Guard" ads so popular today and you can predict every single plot point coming a mile away such as "life threatening situation finds the men having to work together" etc. and again Wood is decidedly short-changed-- an important relationship was forged on the set between Wood and Karl Malden who would again work together in Gypsy.

Feeling paternal to the young star whom he joked was instantly popular as "there must have been five or six boys around [her] all the time," Malden nonetheless "glimpsed the loneliness underneath Natalie's surface gaiety when he discovered she had never been on a family picnic, and arranged to take her on one." When she latter admitted that the picnic was "one of the happiest days of her life," Malden noted he found the entire situation of the childhood star raised in the limelight "desperately sad" as she was unable to be alone as Suzanne Finstad wrote in Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood (204).

Fitting to the masculine tone of Bombers, the classic animated short featured as a special bonus on the disc is the cute Boyhood Daze which finds a precocious boy longing to be a hero by saving his family instead of always being grounded.

Cash McCall
(1960)

A film that constituted as Gavin Lambert argued in Natalie Wood: A Life, "the first of the studio's 'important plans'" for the star in finding her "something modern" for her new jump in salary and stature resulted in the "168-page first-draft script of Cash McCall" which Wood reportedly loathed so much that she vowed only to read the scenes in which she would appear (148).

While the film was a commercial success made to "exploit James Garner's television popularity as Maverick," (Finstad, 216) which found Wood "gritting her teeth through" the film's production-- I was surprised just how good the film actually is-- feeling much more modern and urgent today than perhaps it did in 1960.

Centering on the world of high finance which finds unscrupulous and self-dubbed "vulgar" Cash McCall (Garner) wheeling and dealing by sometimes contributing to the collapse of a business, buying it up and selling it for profit-- the highly complicated plot line filled with double-crosses, back-stabs, and deals made under the table again (like Bomber) just keeps Wood's Lory blending in near the woodwork as a love interest but on its own is far superior to Bombers B-52.

In it, Garner is at his fast talking best as he takes over the business run by Lory's father in an increasingly crazy and slightly dubious plan to win over the girl in another adaptation of Cameron Hawley's book Executive Suite. And while the two share little onscreen chemistry which is evident at first touch as we watch Garner manhandle the lovely Wood by taking her arm and maneuvering her into what's supposed to be seen as romantic airplane kidnap in the vein of Written on the Wind-- when you ignore the slightly hard to believe romance (despite some witty banter and great facial expressions by Wood as she protests to give him a ride in her car etc.), it may as well be a one-man show for James Garner as he steals the entire picture in a way that makes it seem as though it would've been a natural for a stage adaptation.

Also featuring one of the absolute best Warner Brothers cartoons-- the Oscar nominated High Note which finds musical notes trying to correctly fill in the sheet music for "The Blue Danube"-- although it may not have been one of Wood's favorites nor a great showcase for her talent, it's one of my favorite pictures in this set and definitely worth a look for those Wood devotees (including myself) who hadn't seen it.

Gypsy(1962)

Although she'd be dubbed in West Side Story and was the first to admit that she wasn't a dancer or a singer, when the time came to make a play for the part of famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, Wood went after it with all she had, reuniting with her Bomber co-star Karl Malden who was equally nervous about turning the successful Broadway musical (starring Ethel Merman in what would become Rosalind Russell's part) into a Warner Brothers film.

Empathizing with her struggle, Malden said, "It was challenging for both of us. I'm not a singer and a dancer, she wasn't a singer and a dancer, and we both went at it. She wanted to do it badly, and so did I. It was something we never would have gotten a test for if we hadn't been under contract with Warners, so we said, 'Let's do it,' as Finstad wrote (242).

It turns out that their camaraderie and gamble paid off as they built on the easygoing relationship they had in Bombers B-52 in a film which finds Malden playing a near surrogate father to Wood's Louise in his excellent supporting role as Herbie, the candy salesman turned artistic director who travels around with Louise, her beautiful sister Baby June, and their monstrous Norma Desmond meets Mommie Dearest meets Auntie Mame stage mother Rose (Rosalind Russell-- Auntie Mame herself).

Although it's an overly long musical clocking in at 143 minutes and a good majority of critics have panned it in favor of the stage version and/or Bette Midler's television reinterpretation awhile back-- honestly, it's still a highly effective work. This is thanks largely to Jules Styne and Stephen Sondheim's instantly recognizable score and sing-along classics like "Everything's Coming Up Roses," "Small World," "Some People," and "Let Me Entertain You," as well as a great portrayal by Wood as a child who'd been treated literally as though she was one of the boys, taking a backseat to her adorably blonde Shirley Temple-esque sister Baby June by playing one of the male chorus boys who's never allowed to outshine the star.

When vaudeville begins to go bust in the wake of talking pictures and bookings are few and far between-- performers who've been treated like child slaves by Rose jump ship along with June, forcing Mama Rose to pay attention to the daughter she's always felt was "untalented." Perpetually ignoring Louise and Herbie's pleas to give up on the act and settle down where the two adults can marry and live like a family, Rose pushes on until finally she shoves Louise out into the spotlight as a burlesque stripper.

Essentially playing Mama Rose in the same full-force, hyper-real, mile-a-minute style Russell attacked each and every one of her roles from her most famous as Hildy in Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (in a part originally written for a man), The Women, and Auntie Mame-- while her attack dog character made director Delmer Daves (3:10 to Yuma, Parrish, A Summer Place) decline the film since he noted he couldn't "pull for the selfish mother in this story to continually exploit her two daughters," as author Lambert quoted from his memo to the studio, ultimately they found a director fully ready and willing to embrace her abrasive nature.

As Warner's studio assigned screenwriter Leonard Spigelgass shared with the film's eventual director and producer Mervyn LeRoy, also in a memo, "Keep Rose the bitch she is... a funny bitch, occasionally a warm and touching bitch-- but a bitch." Although some critics maintain that Merman would've been the ideal choice-- we'll never quite know how that would've played out-- and while Russell is a whirlwind of energy and seems to take over in numerous scenes, sometimes it was to the detriment of the film's more emotional moments.

For as Malden and Wood privately felt that her over-the-top bravado made it seem as though "she just pushed-- but you never understood why," ultimately a majority of the blame on the film's hit-and-miss product was assigned to the director Mervyn LeRoy who's static approach to the scenes of master shot, two shot, master shot adds little life to the film (and in Malden's big key scene when he finally walks out on Mama Rose, you'll notice that something bumped into the camera so that it jumps up for a moment and then returns to the static mode, it does indeed call attention to not just the error but also the inattention of the director. Although possibly it was the only good take they had to print, something tells me that LeRoy was a bit nervous about asking Russell for a second take as according to Paul Mavis of DVD Talk, Russell's "husband owned the film rights to Gypsy, and his wife came with the package," and by Malden's own admission to Lambert, "LeRoy seemed to spend more time on the phone than directing the picture," (184).

While some of the facts about Mama Rose have been changed as Lambert noted in that Baby June ultimately walked out on the mother at age thirteen instead of the film's sixteen and they did try to soften her at times (182-183), the film nonetheless resonates with Wood fans who know about her own stage mother as even the actress had joked that Russell was essentially playing her very own mother.

As Natalie's sister Lana Wood recalled, "I think she had to come to grips that she was a used child star who missed out on a childhood," in discussing Natalie's affinity for Gypsy and the way it cut so close to home, elaborating, it echoed, "the resentment toward my mom for all the pushing and long hours and this and that" (243). Similar to Inside Daisy Clover-- one of perhaps the most personally relatable and slightly autobiographical Wood films ever made-- despite it's flaws, it's a much better film than you may recall and now that it's been newly remastered from Warner's original elements featuring two outtake musical numbers and a Speedy Gonzalez Oscar nominated animated short The Pied Piper of Guadalupe, it's quite a stunning disc to take in, especially on widescreen televisions.

Inside Daisy Clover(1965)

Although he would later write an excellent biography on Natalie Wood, much earlier Gavin Lambert wrote the novel Inside Daisy Clover which struck such a chord with Wood that she phoned Lambert to inform him she'd "kill for that part."

"Don't bother," was Lambert's reply, adding that she was "the first choice of everyone concerned," (219) and Wood set about doing her studio obligated picture-- Blake Edwards' ultra expensive and zany The Great Race with her Sex and the Single Girl co-star Tony Curtis-- in order to make Daisy Clover, which Finstad noted she believed "would bring her recognition," (254).

Like Gypsy, it finds her playing another child star who goes from rags to riches living with her screw-loose mother (Harold and Maude's Ruth Gordon) in depression era Angel Beach to become "America's Little Valentine" singing and dancing on the silver screen before she's nearly killed by the carnivorous industry of show business. And in doing so, Wood poured everything she had into the highly personal bleak film in a great performance that's matched by that of her costars including the amazing Christopher Plummer and Robert Redford (with whom she would re-team for This Property is Condemned).

Absolutely convinced that Clover and Condemned-- her "two dream projects" of 1965 "would move her away from frothy romantic comedies back to the 'golden world' of [Elia] Kazan and [Nicholas] Ray," (Finstad, 257), ultimately the character of Clover who she hadn't responded to in such a strong way since Rebel Without a Cause [259] was bogged down by poor cuts and decisions with which she and Redford were both disappointed.

With a few key scenes left on the cutting room floor in the twenty-six minute slice that also eliminated some of Wood's ironic voice-overs she cherished, later she explained to the American Film Institute in a seminar referenced by Lambert that watching the studio's Clover, "was like cutting out half my performance-- the other side of Daisy," (224). Although it's commentary on the manufacturing of stars whose names are changed, families are hidden, new biographies invented, and orientations shoved back in the closet still seems vital today and Wood is tremendous in it-- it's a tough film to watch.

And moreover, one where despite the instant charm of Robert Redford, we feel as though we're missing out on learning more about his character and while viewing it again for the first time in roughly a decade in preparation for this review, I wondered how intriguing it would've been if instead of Clover, we'd followed his character around for two hours to see the male exploitation by Hollywood that's usually hidden, especially considering his receipt of a Golden Globe for his brave characterization in the film.

Adding life to the downer ending that hits a little too close for comfort as Wood's character contemplates suicide similar to the real life star's numerous "attempts," or suicidal gestures, the Warner release of the DVD also serves up a classic Road Runner cartoon War and Pieces to help bring a much needed smile to your face.

Sex and the Single Girl(1964)

Fans of the misunderstood satire of '60s rom-coms-- Down With Love-- will want to be sure to track down this hilarious gem that finds Wood starring alongside Tony Curtis (for a second time following Kings Go Forth and prior to The Great Race) in the vein of Doris Day/Rock Hudson pictures of misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and a sensual subtext that flirted with the idea of sex without making its stars seem anything less than chaste.

Having invested $200,000 in purchasing the rights to Cosmopolitan magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown's plot-less bestseller, master author Catch-22 scribe Joseph Heller was brought in for a script rewrite (Finstad, 249) to spice things up with a zany and unexpected car chase near the end of the film as Lambert noted (202), in this tale of a virginal Dr. Ruth who is targeted by a sleazy journalist in order to expose her as a phony fraud.

Curtis stars as the chauvinistic player who is praised by his editor to "keep up the bad work" and complete "lack of ideals" to continue running a successfully "vile," "monstrous" and "depraved" magazine . In doing so, he borrows the marital woes of his neighbors-- Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall-- as he poses as Fonda and visits Wood's Dr. Helen Gurley Brown for love advice, only to try and woo her in the process. Joking that as a virgin, it's like "she's been giving flying lessons and hasn't been off the ground"-- of course, Wood's charms being to melt his cold Grinch heart.

And while we all know exactly where the film is headed and Wood considered it one of the contractual obligation pictures she owed the studio (Finstad, 249), it nonetheless revealed as Heller stated Natalie's "natural flair for comedy, something she dismissed" in the hopes to become a more serious dramatic star (Finstad, 252). While Lambert discusses the disagreeable experience of working alongside Curtis-- a man whom she'd felt was "aggressively self important" (202)-- ironically, "later in life, Tony Curtis would say he had better chemistry with Natalie than any other costar, citing his psychotherapy scenes with her in Sex as 'about the funniest things I've ever seen. It was a wonderful dance. You can't get it better. We never stepped on each other. She always gave me my moments and vice versa," (Finstad, 252). Although from then he goes on to-- perhaps live up to Lambert's assessment by Wood, in revealing his belief that "Natalie and I had to be careful, because we found each other quite attractive...[but] Natlie's boom-booms weren't big enough," (Finstad, 252).

Yet despite the fact that it's impossible to discover Wood's own feelings for Curtis as she'd perished tragically at a young age in a mysterious drowning (that still baffles today), one joke that really works throughout the lively and upbeat picture is Wood's constant comparison of Curtis with his Some Like It Hot co-star Jack Lemmon, as the three would end up working together in The Great Race.

Splendor in the Grass(1961)

Contrary to the popular belief that later on real-life couple Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood began a passionate romantic affair (misleading both their significant others') during the filming of Elia Kazan's sensuous coming-of-age film Splendor in the Grass (which earned its title from a Wordsworth poem in William Inge's script) in reality, the two couldn't stand one another during filming. Moreover, Wood even went as far as to give Beatty "the secret nickname 'Mental Anguish'" as in "Here comes 'Mental Anguish'," until eventually to keep it going, she resorted to changing it to "'M.A'" (Finstad, 223).

While even the film's assistant director went as far to acknowledge that at the time with an "emotional maturity [that was] about thirteen," and that "he was a real pain in the ass," (222) revealing a far more offensive nickname the crew had given Beatty as well-- despite the unhappy feelings the two shared on-set when Wood tried to demand he be kept out of their shared dressing room when she was using it-- one can't deny (just like Wood working with Curtis three times), that she was a consummate professional who made you believe they were red-hot lovers.

From an opening scene by a Kansas waterfall which finds them deep in lip-lock (and the film would become famous for showing the first French kiss in film history on-screen), the sexual awakening and struggle to come of age beneath the shadow of overbearing parents, class clashes (as Beatty's Bud is rich and Wood's Deenie is poor), and misinformation when it comes to sex-- the film is still a startlingly emotional tour de force that warns how important it is for parents and teenagers to have an open and true dialogue about sex and growing older.

While the feminist in me is a bit appalled by Wood's mental breakdown because she was determined to stay a "good girl" when Bud dumps her because he doesn't want to keep pressuring her into sex and Splendor becomes the quintessential female hysterical melodrama, it still features one of Wood's most naturalistic and effective portrayals most notably in the bathtub breakdown scene that was extremely nerve-wracking for an actress who was deathly afraid of water and putting her head underneath it.

With a three tissue finale and ending that seems to have been recycled in just as an effective manner years later in her friend Robert Redford's smash hit, The Way We Were, Splendor in the Grass is still one of Wood's best-loved and most critically acclaimed works and sadly, one of the very few in which she was able to fully show off her incredible range and the woman inside the girl instead of the girl or "silly ingenue" the studio wanted to keep her playing for far too long.

Again, adding the Oscar nominated Road Runner classic Beep Prepared onto the disc as a much needed source of laughter following the devastating drama-- the film itself has never looked quite so beautiful, newly remastered from the original Warner Brothers elements.

While film fanatics will probably want to either purchase this one alone (as this and Sex will be available as single discs), for true Wood devotees, it's of great interest to take a look at all of the films-- including the ones she hoped would be better like the flawed but promise filled Gypsy and Daisy Clover or two of her "obligation pictures" that are actually quite a treat-- Cash McCall and Sex and the Single Girl.