Delayed Reaction: My Fair Lady

The Pitch: That play that was turned into a musical really needs to made into a movie.

A phonetics professors accepts a challenge to turn a Cockney flower seller into a high society woman.

I've read Pygmalion and I like George Bernard Shaw's work in general. I've never seen the stage show for My Fair Lady. I have seen countless takes on the Pygmalion story before in TV and movies. So, my big question going into this was "how good is the music?". I kind of had my answer before I even started though. I don't recognize any of the songs from this play. I'm by no means a musical aficionado, but I know enough that I should at least recognize a song or two. Especially from a 50 year old classic that won Best Picture. The music in this is fine. "With a Little Bit of Luck" is catchy. "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" were lovely songs. I'm in no hurry to get the soundtrack though. What actually disappointed me the most was that most of the song and dance numbers were pretty tame. I feel like director George Cukor left some inspiration on the table when he put this together. Or perhaps I'm too accustomed to seeing musicals that go big from beginning to end.

Audrey Hepburn is really good (even though it's disappointing that she had to have her singing dubbed). Her cockney accent is charmingly grating. I got more than a few chuckles from that early on. I also liked later on when her street vernacular would sneak out of her high society facade. I don't know that I bought Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins' (Rex Harrison) romantic chemistry, but they have fine comedic chemistry.

I've been itching to see more musicals soon. I was a little underwhelmed by this (although it was perfectly amiable). Perhaps I'll need to look further back, to Astaire and Rogers or more Gene Kelly. Still, the Shaw by way of Alan Jay Lener source material has enough wit and charm to sustain it.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Krisha

The Pitch: A super-cheap, super-personal, small movie about trying to make amends and battle your personal demons.

A woman with a history of addictions joins her estranged extended family for Thanksgiving, hoping to get forgiveness and reestablish connections with them.

I saw this because I've been listening to a lot of the Filmspotting podcast for the last year. There's certain movies that the hosts won't shut up about. I've learned by now that, while I appreciate their analysis and desire to sample a variety of films, my tastes don't really overlap with theirs very much. Still, I've seen some interesting movies because of them. Krisha is one of the films with the most effusive praise from them. And, I enjoyed director Trey Edward Shults' follow-up film, It Comes At Night well enough. I figured it was worth seeing Krisha.

This is a very small film. The cast is almost entirely Shults' friends and family. His aunt plays the titular role. It's a well made film, but you can tell that it was made cheap. That's part of its charm. Krisha Fairchild is quite good for someone with limited acting experience. I like how well Shults builds the tension throughout the film. So many scenes are layered with sound - obnoxious amounts of sound. You feel as overwhelmed as Krisha. I also appreciate how he leaves some room for you to put things together yourself. It's not immediately clear what the situation is and it's not until the very end that you understand exactly why Krisha has been shunned by the whole family.

That said, this was a thoroughly unenjoyable viewing experience. I feel like I experienced all of Krisha's irritation without any empathy. I got annoyed by the movie itself, not her experience of what was happening. Everyone, especially Krisha, irritated me. A lot of this was intentional. For some reason, I couldn't make that last step to absorb what the movie was doing though. I just wanted out.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Strictly Ballroom

The Pitch: There's this fun play about ballroom dancing. With the right director, this could work as a movie.

A gifted ballroom dancer tries to win the Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship using non-traditional steps and finds the perfect partner to help him do this.

Baz Luhrmann couldn't deny this movie if he tried. Not that he would. It's his first film, made it to the Cannes Film Festival, and set him up for his career. Despite it being so early in his career, a point when many directors are still trying to find their voice, this is easily identifiable as a Baz Luhrmann movie. It's colorful. It's lively. It's over the top. The only thing that's really changed between then and now is the level of actors Luhrmann gets and the ambition of the production. I can tell the budget for this wasn't great, and if you told me the whole cast was comprised of Luhrmann's friends from film school, I'd believe you. This movie works though, and it takes no leap of imagination to see how this led to Moulin Rouge! 8 years later.

The story is familiar, but it's a malleable premise. The lead is a renegade with unlimited potential. His dancing partner is a clumsy girl who is really quite beautiful when she loses her glasses*. Really, the plot is the same as about a dozen different Disney Channel Original movies.

*I don't remember if she actually does have glasses, but you get my point.

I like the use of a mocumentary style. It gives the movie some easy humor. I do wish I had more of a sense of if Lurhmann likes these characters or not. He's definitely having some fun with how seriously they take all this, but I had trouble deciphering between whether I was laughing at the people or laughing at the event. At some point, it feels a little mean. It's the same drawback I have with Christopher Guest's movies.

It's also clear that Lurhmann's budget hadn't caught up with her excitement. He shoots this movie like it's the most exciting thing ever. The dance scenes feel big and significant. The actual dancing...is fine. It's not otherworldly, which is Lurhamann's specialty these days. He isn't able to over saturate the frame with movement. This is still a director yearning for excess and not being able to give it. I know a lot of people actually like this the most of his movies for the same reasons. They like that it's more restrained and simple. That's not what I'm signing up for with a Baz Lurhmann movie though. Half the budge should go into the costumes and production design or else, what's the point?

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The French Connection

The Pitch: It's time that someone made a "respectable" cops and crooks movie.

Two cops try to take down a French heroin operation.

Gene Hackman hasn't worked in 14 years, since he made 2004's Welcome to Mooseport. You know, that comedy classic with Ray Ramano. It doesn't feel like it's been that long. I've seen so much of his filmography, especially from the 90s on, that he still feels vital. He's good in just about everything and picked an eclectic assortment of movies tp be in. I even love him in Heartbreakers (a movie I have an unearned affection for). While going back through the highlights of his filmography, I of course loved him in Hoosiers. The Conversation is sneakily one of my favorite films from the 70s. The French Connection was the big hole in his filmography for me. Hackman is so inescapably himself, that everything he's in could be described as "the perfect role for him". All his roles are made in his image. Jimmy Doyle is perhaps "peak Hackman". He's gruff. He's dogged. He's not concerned about looking good. He has a job to do and he isn't going to let anyone or anything stop him. This isn't his most nuanced work (I'd point back to The Conversation for that), but I'm not sure he's commanded the screen better. I mean, Gene Hackman is an action movie star - driving the action. I haven't associated him with that before. Maybe the adversary or the commanding officer, but not the star.

At times, I really loved The French Connection. At other points, I was distracted by how sloppy it is. The famous chase scene (Hackman in a car chasing a train) is famous for a reason. It's tense and fast and exciting. The ending is iconic. That alone made the movie worth it. I also love the game-like nature of Doyle tailing Charnier, concluding with the dance, getting on and off the subway. I'm a big fan of seeing the process behind things, so something like the scenes taking apart and searching the car for the heroin really worked for me.

Watching this nearly 50 years later, some bad things jump out at me too. I mean, the iconic shot of the movie is a cop shooting a guy in the back. That's a bad look. It kind of fits Doyle's character though. I'm perplexed by how the bad guys get away in the end. The cops have the car with the heroin, give it back, but don't have a plan to get it back. How the hell does that happen? I mostly enjoyed the hell out of this movie, but there was a distracting amount of sloppy police work. My Law & Order-saturated mind can't deal with it. Still, that car chase was pretty cool.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend