The Movie Journal

  A Hard Day's Night (1964) A Hard Day’s Night is an interesting film. It is an often-entertaining look at a 12-hour span of the lives of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr in a Fab 4 group otherwise known as the Beatles. When the film was released in 1964, The Beatles have already achieved stardom thanks to their famous appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show . However, they were not the cultural icons they were soon to be as the musical group has yet to lose their innocence. The Beatles were not terrible actors and actually have some zingy one-liners. That said, their schtick fell out quickly. I am glad the film was rather short because the energy was clearly on its way out by the time the film ended. But there is enough juice to prop up the film and make it a respectable docu-comedy. As for the music, how can you go wrong with Can’t Buy Me Love or A Hard Day’s Night on the soundtrack? United Artists essentially made the film to make money from soundtrack ...

  Le Duolos (1964) Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Duolos is the French auteur’s take on the noir genre. In a sense, he introduced neo-noir films to French audiences. It is very clear where Melville got his influences from (American cinema, hello!). But he combined the traditional noir filmmaking with the evolving and more modern French New Wave movement. The final result was a stylistic gangster picture with some excellent performances, rapid scene movement/editing, and interesting lighting/shadow techniques. That said, I could not help but have a cold feeling upon completion of the movie. Melville’s film comes across as a more modern or “cool” noir movie, but I did feel a little off about the story itself. Is it the talkative nature of the film? Is it just the story itself that is cold, as there is hardly any sequences of joy, laughter, or happiness? Is it the dark theme of betrayal? Regardless, I did find the French version of noir to be interesting. It is plainly obvious that Jean-...

My Fair Lady (1964) 1964’s My Fair Lady is one joyful musical and that may be too negative of a description. It certainly deserves all the accolades it received in 1964-1965 and even today. It’s a magical, romantic movie about how opposites attract. It’s very weird to call this movie a romance because of the actions that take place in the film. There are no kisses, no wooing, none of that fancy stuff…..but undeniably, love is in the air. The songs are enchanting and the performances from Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn are nothing short of fantastic. Sure, modernists may raise some issues about Harrison’s treatment of Hepburn’s character, but this is how it was back during these times. Even so, there are some creative lines of dialogue that makes Harrison’s character a bit more sympathetic. Many of you may not know this, but this film has some Greek story behind these words and songs. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe adapted this story from the 1912 film, Pygmalion. T...

Father Goose When scrolling through the reviews of 1964’s Father Goose , I was somewhat shocked at the relatively poor reviews of the movie. Could it be that these reviews ended Cary Grant’s career prematurely? Although contemporary reviews are kinder towards the movie, I was still surprised at the initial reaction. Admittedly this movie is far from Grant’s best role, but he still remains charming as ever. This movie is a pleasant romantic comedy that achieves on being funny, heartwarming, charming, and just a general crowdpleaser. The movie also earns points for casting Grant against type, but more on that later. Although the film did not garnish major attention come awards season, screenwriters Peter Stone and Frank Tarloff received an Oscar for their screenplay. The screenplay leans towards the sentimental and heart-warming side while playing up to the talents of Cary Grant. Directed by Ralph Nelson, Cary Grant plays Walter Eckland-a loner with the appetite for plenty of...

Dr. Strangelove (1964) Dr. Strangelove is my second review of a Stanley Kubrick movie. Earlier I posted a review of his 1960 film, Spartacus which I generally liked, but did not love. Spartacus was a mainstream, straightforward film that he adapted from a novel. For this movie, it is an entirely different story. I loved every single bit of the black comedy which was written by Kubrick himself (which he adapted from the Peter George novel). This is actually one of the best films to come out in the last fifty years. It was a timely movie (for 1964’s audience), and it remains hilarious for the duration of the film even though Kubrick told his actors to play it straight. It was the talent of Kubrick that turned this film into a film he wanted, a quirky black comedy. Kubrick is known to be a perfectionist in all of his films. He is involved with every detail including sound, editing, etc. He even has his own sound equipment and his own cameras. Because he wanted to be so perfect...