Steve’s Selections #9 – The Train (1964)

We have come to the ninth of twelve movie selections Steve Honeywell at 1001plus has made for me.  This one is The Train, a World War II-set action film about an attempted art heist.  I’ll be honest: despite the fact that this movie stars Burt Lancaster and Paul Scofield I had never heard of it before Steve picked it for me to watch and review.  After I got done watching I was surprised by this because it is a damn entertaining film.  Everything that was missing from The Monuments Men (2014) is gotten right in The Train.

Movie – Yojimbo (1961)

Yojimbo from writer/director Akira Kurosawa has been remade twice – the first time as a spaghetti western starring Clint Eastwood (1964’s A Fistful of Dollars) and the second time as a Prohibition era action film starring Bruce Willis (1996’s Last Man Standing).  Those two films show the universal nature of the story by seamlessly shifting the setting from feudal Japan to the old American West to 1930s small town America.  The fact that one version was an out and out western shows once again how Kurosawa’s films were often influenced by American westerns, especially the films of John Ford.  I consider Yojimbo to be the best version of the three movies, although Eastwood’s is certainly the best known.

Movie – The Sundowners (1960)

The Sundowners is based on the 1952 Jon Cleary novel of the same name.  There is also a 1950 American film of the same title, but it has nothing to do with either the novel or the 1960 film.  The story is set in the Australian outback in the 1920s.  The Carmody family are sheep drovers and they live in what is, for all intents and purposes, a covered wagon.  Change the sheep to cattle, and the setting to the American west in the 1800s and you’d have an instantly recognizable western.  Director Fred Zinneman had previously done High Noon (1953) and Oklahoma! (1955), so he knew his way around the look and feel of the old west.

Movie – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner features three screen legends – Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier.  As a result, the fourth main member of the cast – Katherine Houghton – ends up getting overshadowed.  This film earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and won for Best Actress (Hepburn) and Best Original Screenplay.  This was Spencer Tracy’s very last movie and he received a nomination for Best Actor.  He died just 17 days after filming was complete.  He does a great job in the movie of playing a man who has just come face to face with his own hypocrisy.

Movie – Mary Poppins (1964)

Mary Poppins is the well known live action Disney film that stars Julie Andrews.  It was not only the biggest box office hit of the year when it was released, but it was nominated for an astounding 13 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.  Only the films All About Eve (1950) and Titanic (1997) ever received more – both with 14.  Mary Poppins won five Oscars, including Best Actress for Julie Andrews in her big screen debut.  She was only the second woman to achieve this (after Shirley Booth for 1952’s Come Back, Little Sheba.)  So what made this film so popular with both audiences and filmmakers?  For the former it was simple: this is a heartwarming family film that presents a happy message for kids.  For the latter it can be summed up in two words: Julie Andrews.

Movie – The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Writer/director Luis Bunuel’s film The Exterminating Angel (not to be confused with the 2006 film The Exterminating Angels which actually has angels in it) has a title that really doesn’t have much to do with the movie.  That has not stopped people from generating wild theories on what it really means.  The simple answer is that Bunuel had a colleague who was going to write a play with that name and Bunuel liked the title because he felt people would see “The Exterminating Angel” on a sign and buy a ticket.  It was all about commercial success, not artistic pretensions.  That’s not to say that this film doesn’t contain any number of patented Bunuel surreal moments, like a bear and some sheep being kept inside the house in which the film takes place.  I liked this film, but it will not be for everybody.  I will explain.

Movie – Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the best westerns ever made.  And to think that director Sergio Leone didn’t even want to make it because he was tired of doing westerns.  He couldn’t find any interest in a film he wanted to make titled Once Upon a Time in America, so he resorted to doing what he was best known for in the U.S.  It wouldn’t be until the 1980s before he would finally get to make that other film.  Despite the fact that this wasn’t his first choice he put together a great cast and story.  It includes not two antagonists, but four or even five – all with their own agendas that cause them to sometimes join with one another and sometimes to oppose one another.  That complexity is rare in westerns, whose stock in trade is easily identifiable good guys and bad guys.  Perhaps this complexity came from the fact that the film was co-written by Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento.  The latter two would go on to become successful directors in their own right.

Movie – Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

What praise can be given to Lawrence of Arabia that has not already been spoken many times over?  What words can be written about both a movie and a man whose histories are both inextricably linked and also clouded in questions of reality vs. fiction?  To be clear, the film Lawrence of Arabia is epic, and even that’s a bit of an understatement.  While I know of at least one person for whom “epic” is a four letter word, I am using it in the most positive way.  I could joke, “Look up ‘epic’ in the dictionary and they will have a picture of Peter O’Toole as Lawrence.”  Instead, I will be completely serious when I write the following sentences.  I have seen all 85 films that have won the Academy Award for Best Picture – from Wings (1927) to Casablanca (1943) to The Godfather (1972) to Schindler’s List (1993) to Argo (2012).  If I were ever to be put in the “gun to your head, gotta pick only one as the best of the best” situation, then my choice would be Lawrence of Arabia as the greatest of all 85 Best Picture Oscar winners.

Book and Movie – Fantastic Voyage (1966)

How can you have a submarine movie when there is no body of water for the sub to travel in?  When the medium the sub navigates in is an actual body, of course.  Fantastic Voyage features the concept of miniaturizing a small submarine and injecting it into a man’s body so that the crew can perform a life-saving surgery.  You may be thinking, “Hold on, are you talking about that Martin Short comedy with Dennis Quaid?”  The answer is no, not yet.  That is the 1987 movie Innerspace, which was a comedic take on the idea.  You can read my review of that film here.  No, Fantastic Voyage is a serious adventure film, full of Cold War intrigue, thrills, death-defying adventures, and enough real biological knowledge that parts of it were used for years afterwards to demonstrate to students some concepts of human biology.

Movie – The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966)

The movie The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (hereinafter known as TRAC²) was released in the 1960s not too many years after the Cuban Missile Crisis when tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were very high.  That therefore makes this film very notable for the fact that the Soviets (or “Russians” as Americans commonly mislabeled them) are shown to be regular people just like Americans.  The impact of this was wide-ranging.  The film was very popular in the U.S.  It garnered four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.  It won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy.  It was discussed in Congress.  And it was even shown in the Kremlin, where some of the Soviet leaders were visibly moved according to director Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, A Soldier's Story.)

Movie – Rachel, Rachel (1968)

The movie Rachel, Rachel was Paul Newman’s directorial debut.  It starred Joanne Woodward, who had been his wife for ten years at that point.  (They ultimately were married for 50 years until his death in 2008.)  Not only did Newman direct his wife to an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (her second of four), the film itself was also nominated for Best Picture.  It received two other Oscar nominations for Estelle Parsons as Best Supporting Actress and for Stewart Stern’s adapted screenplay.  Newman did not receive a Best Director nod, though.

Movie – Z (1969)

Question: what film holds the record for the shortest titled movie to ever be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar?  If you answered “Z” then, well, you probably read the title of this post.  While it didn’t win the big prize, it did win Best Foreign Language Film, as well as Best Editing.  Z is based on the Vasilis Vasilikos novel of the same name.  (There is a 2012 film from India also based on the same novel.  Its title is Shanghai.)  The film Z is a political thriller based on real events in Greece in the 1960s.  In fact, the opening of the film has the following statement: “Any resemblance to actual events, to persons living or dead, is not the result of chance. It is DELIBERATE.”

Movie – To Sir, with Love (1967)

First things first: all together now – “To Sir,ir,ir with lo-o-o-o-ove”.  Okay, now that I’ve got that out of my system, I can start.  How do you write a review about someone who has taken people from crayons to perfume?  It isn’t easy, but I’ll try.  Okay, maybe it wasn’t completely out of my system.  (I’ll be serious now.)

I was home from college one weekend and flipped the TV on.  I heard the opening lines from the song To Sir, with Love.  It triggered a memory with me.  The song was played on the radio when I was very little.  I remember thinking from the lyrics it was about a child who gets cared for by an older person, maybe even adopted.  I decided to watch the movie.  It turned out to be quite a bit different from what I expected.  I also really enjoyed it. 

Movie – To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

You would think that a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that was also beloved by millions would easily be made into a movie.  Not so with To Kill a Mockingbird.  Studio execs asked, “Where’s the action?  Where’s the love story?”  When a decision was finally made to do a movie both Rock Hudson and Jimmy Stewart were considered for the lead role of Atticus Finch and both turned it down.  When Gregory Peck found out about the role he sat down and read the book in a single evening and then called the next day to say he would do it.  What Peck, and movie audiences, would understand is that this is one of the finest examples of a story that speaks to everyone.  And at its lead is the character of Atticus Finch.  If I ever was forced give a single example of what it means to be “a good man” then I would offer up Atticus Finch as my choice.

Movie – Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a big budget disaster flick written, directed, and produced by Irwin Allen.  Allen specialized in these kinds of movies (The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, etc.)  He was sort of the Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, 2012, etc.) of his day.  At first I had some fun being amused at the outdated machinery and some bad science, but after a while I found myself caught up in the story.  I ended up liking the film and it made me curious about the TV show that spun off from it.

Movie – The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

More people have probably seen the 1999 version of The Thomas Crown Affair that starred Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo.  That was a remake of the 1968 film of the same name that starred Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway.  I like both equally, but for different reasons.  For this post I will concentrate on the 1968 version, which includes a very sexy….chess game.