Feb 20, 2018
31st Academy Awards Best Actor winner, David Niven, Separate Tables, and nominees, Paul Newman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, The Defiant Ones, and Spencer Tracy, The Old Man and the Sea.
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31st Academy Awards Best Actor winner, David Niven, Separate Tables, and nominees, Paul Newman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, The Defiant Ones, and Spencer Tracy, The Old Man and the Sea.
31st Academy Awards Best Picture winner, Gigi, and nominees, The Defiant Ones, Auntie Mame, Separate Tables and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
The Big Country (1958). A New Englander arrives in the Old West, where he becomes embroiled in a feud between two families over a valuable patch of land.
Westerns aren’t really my thing, but this is certainly one of the more compelling ones. The cast does a terrific job of portraying two families on the brink, and the narrative builds the tension effectively. If you enjoy a western, this is one to watch. 7.5/10.
Separate Tables (1958). The stories of several people are told as they stay at a seaside hotel in Bournemouth which features dining at "Separate Tables."
This is a sweetly made film, tender with it’s cast and it’s characters, and featuring a compelling, overlapping structure that really sets it apart from a lot of the films being made at the time. It helps that it’s wonderfully shot, acted and unravelled. It’s a really solid movie. 7.5/10.
Auntie Mame (1958). An orphan goes to live with his free-spirited aunt. Conflict ensues when the executor of his father's estate objects to the aunt's lifestyle.
This is genuinely a really fun, jubilant film that revels in the character part of Auntie Mame (played wonderfully and complexly by Rosalind Russell). It helps that the costumes are straight up wonderful, and that the supporting cast similarly has fun in fleshing out their own characters. It’s a really fun movie, that’s more complicated than it lets on. 7.5/10.
Teacher’s Pet (1958). A hard-nosed newspaper editor poses as a night school student in order to woo a journalism teacher who cannot stand him.
This is a pretty delightful romantic comedy, with great pacing and wonderful chemistry between Clark Gable, Doris Day and Gig Young. It also poses some interesting questions about education, class and late-fifties womanhood that elevates it above a lot of the romantic comedies released at the time. It’s, all in all, a lot of fun. 7.5/10
Some Came Running (1958). Dave Hirsch, a writer and army veteran winds up in his small Indiana hometown, to the dismay of his respectable older brother. He meets and befriends various different characters and tries to figure out what to do with his life.
This is a compelling couple of hours, but it never quite knows the character of Dave Hirsch well enough to drive the story. Everything that pulls you in is in the supporting cast, which is a little odd, given Frank Sinatra usually has a really commanding presence on screen. It’s a pretty good movie, but ultimately a forgettable one. 7/10.
The Old Man and the Sea (1958). An old Cuban fisherman's dry spell is broken when he hooks a gigantic fish that drags him out to sea. Based on Ernest Hemingway's story.
I’m not really into stories about old guys feeling introspective out at sea, which seems to be an oddly enormous subgenre of both literature and film. That said, this movie is okay, and Spencer Tracy proves, as usual, to be remarkably watchable. There’s some lovely cinematography too, which is quite visually compelling. 7/10.