Marilyn does her best with the crazy eyes

Don't Bother to Knock, 1952; directed by Roy Ward Baker

I am a big supporter of the "Marilyn Monroe was a good and potentially great actress" notion that has circled around her myth and legacy in the nearly 50 years since her death. Too often people like to think of her in merely an iconic sense, as a beautiful face to be plastered on people's shirts and walls, quoted on their facebook profiles even if they have never seen a single one of her films. Or they see her as a lightweight actress, who starred in only one or two artistically accomplished pictures (Some Like it Hot and The Misfits) and appeared in a handful of iconic moments in lesser B and C-movies (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, How to Marry a Millionaire).

But after seeing most of her major films and knowing much about her life and how she struggled so long to be taken seriously as an actress, I've found that despite her sex appeal and the camera's love affair with her curves, she possessed more talent and range than many A-list actresses today. In Some Like it Hot she proved that she could have deft comedic timing on screen, even when her personal life was a shambles, and in The Misfits she used her extreme fragility to the best of her abilities, foreshadowing what could have been in the rest of her career had she not passed away so soon after.

All of that being said, Don't Bother to Knock is probably one of her worst performances, and I don't know if she can be entirely to blame for it. The film itself is pretty lackluster and predictable; it all takes place in a hotel, where Monroe's character Nell is hired by her uncle Eddie, the elevator operator,to babysit for a little girl whose parents are heading to a banquet downstairs. Jed (Richard Widmark) has just been dumped by his girlfriend, hotel lounge singer Lyn (Anne Bancroft) and is trying to win her back. He sees Nell across the courtyard from his room window and, in a move that can only be considered "sexy" in the movies, calls her asking to come over. A lot of the events scream to the audience viewer bad news bears (inviting a stranger over to your room while a child is in your care; said stranger staying in the room to attempt to woo her even after he discovers that a child is right next door; Nell trying on the mother's clothing and jewlery), yet they're all in the script with no clear logic to be found.

What he doesn't realize right off the bat--and I don't really understand how he doesn't--is that Nell is CA-RAZY. The screenplay drops hints about this, but the dead giveaway is that Nell has crazy eyes. It's as if the director told her to interpret what someone who has gone insane would do, and in Monroe's mind, widening her eyes and speaking in a monotone, breathy voice was it. The script is poor, and what is supposed to be a thriller is rather tame and boring. When it is "revealed" that Nell was in a mental institution because her fiance was killed and they released her because they thought she was cured, you saw it coming from a mile away. To sum it up simply, Monroe was playing at "crazy" instead of playing the emotions and fully understanding what her character has gone through. She was obvious and none too good at it.

The only interesting aspect was seeing Bancroft (aka, Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate) in an early film role. I've yet to see The Miracle Worker, so this was a surprising little fact, even if she didn't really have much to do in the film.

Despite this being a horrible performance from Monroe, I will still be a member of the aforementioned support group. Every actor has (at least) that one great dud. This one is definitely hers.

They're all right? You sure?

The Kids Are All Right, directed by Lisa Cholodenko; 2010

I didn't fully understand the scope of what director Cholodenko was going for until about 15 minutes from the end of the film. As I watched this cast of characters, a family of four which includes parents Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) and brother and sister Laser and Joni (Josh Hutcherson and Mia Wasikowska, respectively) share loving, bonding moments over dinner and points of contention like everyone else, there were moments where I felt like I was watching my own family. I loved how middle-class suburban the family was, and the parents just happened to be lesbians. Funny, humanistic moments concerning gay porn and having a talk with Laser about it were interesting and enjoyable to watch, while Bening's performance as the mother who feels threatened when Laser and Joni begin to bond with their sperm donor Paul (Mark Ruffalo) was heart-breaking and dynamic.

But throughout it all, I was never fully engrossed with the rest of the characters besides Jules, and sometimes Nic. Perhaps it's a personal thing, but I found Paul to be, as Jules describes him, "self-satisfied," and I found no redeeming qualities about him whatsoever, even though it appears his character is supposed to be somewhat likable despite his flaws. In reality he becomes this pathetic man whose actions prove that he is not mature enough to understand what it means to make a full connection with someone without sex and without superficial meaning.

It clicked for me when Joni expresses to him, "I just wish you could've been...better." Joni wants Jules to be more accepting of her impending adulthood before she leaves for college; Nic wants Jules to stop using wine as her cushion and be more supportive of her professional endeavors; Nic and Jules want Laser to find better friends. They all want each other to be better without fully realizing their own problems.

And while this wouldn't be among my favorites, I can honestly say that in retrospect, the film does a good job of linking together all of these strings of character flaws and strengths in an emotionally fulfilling manner.

The stuff that dreams are made of

Inception; directed by Christopher Nolan, 2010

Yes, I am quite late in assessing my opinion on Inception, but you can't see everything right away. As I figured would be necessary, I watched it twice within a span of 24 hours, and my bottom line: brilliantly shot, mind-numbingly complex, and worth repeat viewings.

Nolan's concept of dreams and memories--and the differences between and intersections of the two--manages to be incredibly, humanly real despite the wonderment and fantasticalness of it all. The layers and lairs that lie within the mind and in the subconscious are vivid and peeled away in fragments that connect in a more direct lineage than Nolan's masterful Memento, and yet once it has all been revealed there is still much to be deciphered.

As Leonardo DiCaprio's character struggles with the death of his wife and the loss of his children, we see a man who has to come face to face with his memories within dreams, and realize that giving over completely to these images and worlds he has (re)created is holding him back from living in reality. Yet, as has been explored and analyzed throughout cinema and literature and culture, reality and our dreams and the physical state of our being can often blur and meld together, to the point where you know not where you truly are in that moment.

To make the dreams within dreams within dreams and the subconscious so real to the viewer, the director has to construct a world and story with many rules: how dying with a dream connects to your awakened state, the importance of the totem, "kick"-ing one's self out of the dream. And then, like DiCaprio's character, who rarely obeys his own rules, Nolan bends those structures within the story, proving that nothing is truly certain or concrete.

What I was left with was a film that I enjoyed thoroughly, and was emotionally moved and perplexed by. A few things still don't really add up for me, and I may have missed them even after the second viewing--if a totem is only meant for the person who chooses or creates it, why does Mal's work (or does it?) for Cobb?; does Cobb have his own totem?; etc. I also wasn't all that interested in Ellen Page's character, even though she was supposed to be the lighthouse leading us to the complexities of Mal and Cobb's relationship; she just seemed rather bland to me. While it is not my favorite film of last year (it would have to be a tie between Toy Story 3 and The Social Network), I do believe all the hype was not hype, but indeed well-deserved praise for such a fascinatingly executed work.

Rumors, rumors, and more rumors

Gossip, 2000; directed by Davis Guggenheim

Let's get this out of the way now: James Marsden is a beautiful man. It's not all too difficult to watch him even when he's not really doing anything spectacular, like acting.

That being said, I stumbled upon this movie by chance while browsing my instant Netflix cue looking for something not too serious to watch. And boy, did I find it. I had never even heard of it before today, but the plot sounded interesting, and quite frankly, I was not expecting much anyway with a cast that also included Kate Hudson and Joshua Jackson, who was then still in the middle of his Dawson's Creek days.

The plot is set on an ambiguous New York City college campus where three roommates--Jones (Lena Heady), Travis (Norman Reedus), and Derrick (Marsden)--decide to start a rumor about a rich-girl transfer known for being chaste having sex with her boyfriend at a party and seeing where it goes for a "class project." Naturally, the rumor gets out of hand, and it ultimately leads to Naomi (Hudson) pressing charges against Bo (Jackson) when she catches wind of the rumor and believes that he raped her after she passed out. Derrick witnessed the entire encounter and knows that Bo did not do such a thing, but refuses to admit to the police that it was all made up even though Jones freaks out and wants to do the right thing.

What transpires from there is only vaguely intriguing, and the performances on all fronts are quite embarrassing. Each main character has at least one scene in the film where they are supposed to become extremely angry and throw things and yell, but I believe each of these moments about as much as I believe that Elvis is still alive. In the grand scheme of things, Gossip falls a step below the 1999 flick Jawbreaker; it takes itself incredibly too seriously, whereas in the latter, there is a campiness and awareness that the performances are exaggerated and the story ridiculous. Gossip wants to make bold statements about society's obsession with each other's lives and how the media can easily manipulate our perceptions, but it only ends with a bizarre "twist" that doesn't reveal anything particularly profound regarding the fine line between truth and lies.

"And for my next impression, Jesse Owens!"

Blazing Saddles, 1974; directed by Mel Brooks

Not too long ago, Entertainment Weekly posted a slide show article regarding Hollywood movies that could never be made in today's political climate due to their crude and/or offensive nature. Up until now, I had never seen Blazing Saddles, one such film listed among the most politically incorrect. Do I agree that this movie would not be well-received by critics and would possibly never see the light of day if made now? Yes and no.

Brooks' film manages to incorporate nearly every style of comedy imaginable into one film without being overbearing or seeming to try to hard; there's slapstick a la the Three Stooges, zany one-liners reminiscent of Jack Benny, vaudeville references, jokes about and fun poked at the KKK, Nazis, Jews, blacks, prostitutes, whites, Indians, movie directors...the list can go on and on.

Could a little old white woman telling a well-meaning newly-appointed sheriff (Cleavon Little), "Up yours, nigger!" be written into a movie and accepted as humorous by an audience today? Not likely. Nigger is used many times within the movie, especially memorably in a scene in which the drunken town crier first lays eyes on Bart as he comes riding in the town, but somewhere in the last 37 years or so, that word has pretty much been removed from the Hollywood lexicon unless it's a black person saying it, or it is used for dramatic effect. Even a few years later, when Eddie Murphy did basically the same thing that Little did only in an urban setting in Beverly Hills Cop and Trading Places, (and then what Chris Tucker did in Rush Hour, etc.), only the black character used the word, and it was only implied that the white characters around him were thinking it.

At the same time, stand-up comedians, (older ones like Joan Rivers and Don Rickles and the newer breed Chris Rock and Dane Cook) still know no boundaries when it comes to content and political correctness. If you've seen Rivers' documentary A Piece of Work, you know that there is no such thing as censorship. And that's a good thing.

Part of Blazing Saddles' appeal to me is that the humor can still be shocking even generations later. I was amazed by how much Brooks was able to get away with, and how well-executed the story was. Can the humor be considered offensive? Certainly. But let it be known that no race creed, gender, or color leaves unscathed from this picture. And if something is just plain funny, well...it's just plain funny. Simple as that.