HOT SPELL (1958)

Wow!  What a powder keg this movie was!  I came by it completely by mistake and within the first two minutes I was hooked and I didn't turn away for the rest of the movie. Set during a sweltering New Orleans summer, housewife Shirley Booth is living in a delusional dream world.  Her husband, Anthony Quinn, still loves her as a person and a mother to their three children, but he's tired of her and goes off all the time boozing and sleeping with younger women.  Her children are another matter.  Both of the boys are old enough to move out on their own, but she still smothers them.  And her daughter, Shirley MacLaine, is in love with a shallow guy, but mother only worsens things by giving her well-intentioned advise that doesn't turn out too well.

If you're used to Shirley Booth as the spunky maid from "Hazel" you're gonna be shocked when you see her here cause she turns in a heartbreaking performance.  Her whole life since she was just a teenager she's dedicated to her husband and children, but now that they've outgrown her, she's lost.  She never developed a personality of her own.  Her family was her personality.

Lots and lots of screaming and arguing, blistering fast pace, excellent script with some brutal as fuck lines, award level acting by the entire cast, thought provoking story and an ending that actually caught me off guard.  Highly recommended.

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (2010)

Werner Herzog visits the Chauvet Cave in France where in 1994 scientists discovered prehistoric art and fossils dating back over 30,000 years.

If this film had only been 45 minutes long it would have been just fine, but at 90 it outlasted it's subject matter.  I enjoyed Werner's previous documentary feature ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (about scientists in Antarctica) because there was just so much to say and so many interesting characters and sights to see, but here all we have is a cave and some drawings on the wall.  Yes, it's very interesting and very important to document and preserve the cave, but as far as this film goes I just found myself bored after the initial shock of seeing the drawings.  Werner himself had only a few seconds of screen time and none of the people he interviewed were interesting.  It's all stuff we've see before.  Do I really need to see a guy giving a demonstration of how a spear works?  No.  Or a guy noodling on a ancient flute?  Not really.  Or a guy walking around sniffing the ground looking for maybe another cave?  Hell no.

Worth watching if you're into this sort of thing, but don't blame me if your mind starts to wander during the last half.

SHENANDOAH (1965)

Farmer Jimmy Stewart along with his six sons (including Patrick Wayne), one daughter and one daughter-in-law run a 500 acre farm in Virginia.  The Civil War is happening all around them, but pigheaded Stewart refuses to get involved and tries to ignore it.  Finally some events happen and he doesn't have any choice but to get involved.

I was kinda torn with SHENANDOAH.  The acting is very good, but the story is off.  In one of the opening scenes, Jimmy's teenage son finds a Rebel hat and starts wearing it.  Right then and there the viewer knows that no good can come of this, but even with the war raging all around them, Stewart allows the boy to wear the hat.  Naturally something really horrible happens because of the stupid hat.  Another thing that irked me and it's irked me with a number of films from this period is the blind happiness in going to church.  I know that if my entire life and the lives of my family were destroyed and turned upside down because of my foolishness I damn sure wouldn't be sittin' around in church praisin' the Lord and crying.

Quick pace, lots of action, tons of familiar faces, unwise life choices, great acting, clips of battle scenes from RAINTREE COUNTY, bending bayonets, multiple actors from "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "Little House on the Prairie".  Enjoyable beginning and middle that's tarnished by a weak ending.  Too bad that Stewart and Anthony Mann had already had their falling out in real life because this film could have used Mann in charge.

 

 I'll never look at Dr. Baker the same ever again.