MY MAN GODFREY (1936)

[Update 02/07/2021: really need to update and fix this review.]

Two spoiled socialite sisters are out on a scavenger hunt. To win they need a "forgotten man" a.k.a. homeless person. They go to a dump down by the river and see scruffy William Powell sitting outside his shack. They offer him $5 to play along, but he doesn't like the idea of being used like a piece of meat so he causes the one sister the fall into an ash pile. The other sister thinks that was grand and tells Powell so. He takes a liking to her and she even more so to him. He comes along with her, she wins and offers him a job as their new butler.

The next morning he shows up and soon realizes the entire family is spoiled as fook and totally crazy. He stays on as the butler anyway.  The family starts to take a liking to him they realize he's not quite who he seems to be...

The majority of professional critics love this movie, probably because he has a deep social commentary going on beneath the surface, but I'm not a professional critic, just a suicidal idiot who likes his screwballs comedies to actually be funny. I enjoyed MY MAN GODFREY, but I didn't laugh at all. It just wasn't funny. Other Powell screwball comedies of the time like LIBELED LADY or LOVE CRAZY are funny, light-hearted and delightful, but MY MAN GODFREY is kinda a downer with all the homeless people and nonstop talk about money and poverty.  It's still worth a watch (Carole Lombard is worth the piece of admission alone), but it not nearly as knee-slappingly funny as you've been lead to believe.

An odd bit of trivia you might not know: Powell and Lombard had been married in real life, but got divorced in 1933 and from what I've read Powell actually recommended Lombard for the role.

That is not William Powell. Must be a stunt double.

NATURAL CITY (2003)

Well, somebody's a big fan of BLADE RUNNER, GHOST IN THE SHELL and THE MATRIX. Set in the 2079, there's a cop who's job is to hunt down renegade cyborgs. Cyborgs are suppose to only live three years, but shit happens and it's this guy's duty to kill the ones that got too smart for their own good. Problem is the cop is in love with his own private female cyborg and she's due to be shutdown in a few days. He finds some mad scientist guy on the black market that claims to be able to take the memory chip from the cyborg and implant it into a real life human if her DNA is a match. Blah, blah, blah. Stuff happens and there's romance and fighting and running in air and spinning in circles while shooting a gun and a heated conversation in the rain with steaming coming off a guy's head. It's all too over stylized for me.

Worth a watch if you're into this kind of futuristic action/love stuff, but I thought the story was undercooked and didn't show me anything new. I have nothing wrong with somebody borrowing from another story if (and that's a big "if" there) you can improve on the story. NATURAL CITY's heart is in the right place, but there's nothing here we haven't already seen before better. My biggest problem is the female cyborg had zero personality, so why is he even in love with her? If the filmmakers had made her a strong female character the entire movie would have been different. Instead, she had the personality of an microwave, so what's the big deal about her getting turned off?

I would say skip it, but after reading a few other reviews online it actually seems like a fairly popular movie. Maybe I missed something. In my opinion I say watch CYBORG GIRL instead. It might not be an action movie, more of a sci-fi/romance, but it creates something entirely new and original in the futuristic cyborg/human relationship genre and it's just a all around great movie. I love it!

Strip clubs in the future are fucking scary!

DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE (1961)

[Update 01/03/2022: Need to add some more to the end of this review. Just don't have the time to fix it right meow.]

Impoverished Italian aristocrat Marcello Mastroianni lives an idle life with his extended family in a rundown mansion. He passes his days working on crossword puzzles, sipping coffee and most importantly: trying to avoid his overbearing, annoying wife. She has more facial hair than Magnum P.I. and pesters him 25 hours a day by talking nonstop and wanting to cuddle. His life is Hell, but then things take a turn for the better when his attractive, 16-year-old cousin moves in. They make goo-goo eyes at each other and when they finally get a chance to speak and let their love for each other known, he makes it his #1 goal in life to get rid of his wife and marry his cousin!

Problem is divorce is illegal, so he has to figure out another way. He's got it! There's a law that if you find your wife in the arms of another man you can kill her in the heat of passion and only serve 3 years in prison...but how's he ever going to find somebody desperate and believable enough to want to seduce his wife?!

THE RACERS (1955)

Watchable, but overall forgettable melodrama starring Kirk Douglas as a young hotshot race car driver who falls in love with a dancer. The rest of the movie is just their trials and tribulations (car wrecks, drinking, fighting, etc.). A few of the racing scenes are exciting, but for the most part they're kinda lame cause they look very fake.  I really wish I had this on DVD so I could take screenshots.

An even bigger problem was the acting by Douglas' love interest Bella Darvi. She's terrible! So terrible I couldn't believe she was an legitimate actress, so I wasn't surprised when I read that at the time she was Darryl F. Zanuck's mistress! That explains it. The supporting cast composing of Lee J. Cobb, Cesar Romero, Katy Jurado and Gilbert Roland do a great job and somewhat ease the pain caused by Darvi.

Worth a rent or a watch on cable if you're a Douglas fan, but it's not worth buying.