VIVA MARIA! 1965

The parts of the movie that work, do so brilliantly, like nuggets stuck in dough. Two French women named Marie (Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau) meet up in South America and become revolutionaries while also working in a traveling circus. The magician’s bird can appear and disappear in wondrous ways, and later delivers bombs, flying in through one window, out the next, followed by the boom! But, for me, Bardot stole the show. Daughter of an Irish revolutionary, she starts out life as his accomplice, and is most accomplished with all manner of weaponry, such as blowing up bridges. Later, in South America, she is also completely sexually unabashed, and chalks up the names of lovers till she runs out of wall space. George Hamilton is a revolutionary peasant leader, who wins Moreau. Changing their names to Maria, the two women create a popular circus act that incorporates the striptease they invent. Although Moreau won a foreign actress award for the film over Bardot, this was for me Bardot’s film. She runs around in men’s clothes and a cap like a little elf. She walks off as if transfixed into a carriage with three waiting men, and returns the next morning with her gown all tore up, with bruises on her arm, declaring to the effect that no experience was ever more glorious. There is virtually no nudity despite the striptease theme, but there is the proposition that women can be extremely sexy and “feminine” while being superior in warfare, and can lead a revolution to boot. I’d recommend it for that and for Bardot’s performance. Louis Malle directs.

CABIN IN THE SKY, 1943

Cabin in the Sky is a musical film that had its genesis as a Broadway play starring some of the same actors—Ethel Waters as Petunia, for example. The play was choreographed by George Balanchine, which helps to explain the high class of the movie directed by Vincent Minnelli in his directorial debut. Up to this time, there had been no other mainstream Hollywood movie featuring black characters. Minnelli broke new ground. Black life is accorded its recognition as autonomous and independent of mere servitude to whites. There are no white actors. Not totally unlike black communities of today, people, though relatively poor, are in touch with wealth and glamour, since they are not geographically segregated by income level. The main characters—Petunia and husband Little Joe—live in a simple cottage, but they might be seen dressed to the gill at the local nightclub, and there the drapery and valances are immensely elaborate, and gamblers (like “Shine”) earn great sums of money, and are almost worshipped. Black people know how to party, and like to look good. Lena Horne as Georgia Brown, a temptress out to snag Little Joe (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson), never looked lovelier, with her white floral midriff tied under her breasts, her black slinky skirt, and a white flower in her hair. There were two musical performances that I, idiosyncratically, take away from among the jam packed great musical numbers. One is where Horne is lying beguilingly in a hammock singing a duet—“Life is Full of Consequences”—with Little Joe. Her voice is as silky and kittenish as his is gravelly and like a drill sergeant’s—a perfect contrast. The other piece that had me swooning was Duke Ellington’s “Going Up,” performed by his band, where people dance in a Busby Berkeley-choreographed amalgam of a realistic nightclub dance grafted onto a staged performance. Miraculous. The Faustian plot—Joe gets a reprieve from death and Hell in order to prove himself worthy for heaven--was too gooey for my taste, but the screenplay, performances and magnificent visual style more than made up for that. Highly recommended.

KARATE KID, 2010

This is a feel-good movie, but it’s the best feel-good movie I’ve seen in years. It is well crafted, and kept my attention riveted. Jackie Chan plays an aging janitor with a personal tragedy and a kung fu past. He reluctantly takes on the task of preparing Jaden Smith (Will Smith’s son) to fight in a kung fu tournament as a way to prove himself and earn the respect of bullies at his school in China, where his mom’s job transfer lands him. The film presents the combative China, as well as the merciful one, represented by Chan and a girl schoolmate who likes Jaden. It gets past the romantic, distant, foreign China, to one where we see the ordinary grungy facts of daily life in working-class neighborhoods. Settings include gorgeous brick architecture gone seedy, great perspectives of the Great Wall, throngs of uniform kung fu players. Jaden is the type of snarky, self-indulgent kid I’d want to avoid at all costs, but even he could not destroy the uplifting timbre of the narrative. Despite some hard to believe passages, some too-quick learning by Javed, the movie is kept convincing, largely through Chan’s stellar and unusual performance, as well as the natural way the Chinese kids behave. The access to China is remarkable, and makes the inhabitants seem a lot like us. You may frequently need to wipe away the tears. I did.