Movie review - "Teenage Rebel" (1956) **1/2

 The team of Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch take on this family melodrama, directed by Edmund Goulding, from a Broadway play. It's black and white CinemaScope and some old timey stars like Ginger Rogers and Michael Rennie with new names like Warren Berlinger.

Rogers left her first husband for Rennie, losing custody of her daughter who is now a teenager. She turns up and causes trouble. The bias of the film is in favour of the mother though it doesnt' demonise the teen, even if she is a bit grumpy.

The film is very reasonable. Perhaps too reasonable. Everyone is basically decent - Rogers, new husband Michael Rennie, old husband, old husband's new fiance, the girls at school, neighbour Berlinger, the girl. This film needed villains! For the girl to be a real bitch, or the other girls at school to be bitches, or the father to be a prick, or Rennie.

It's done with warmth, class and understanding -well made just a little dull. Brackett's Fox films lacked the acid of Billy Wilder. They all were intelligent and sensitive. Just didn't have the same oomph.

Some lovely moments like Rennie and Rogers dancing outside as the kids next door have a party. Berlinger's drag racer is quite a funny creation and I was nicely surprised he dumped the girl at an end.

The heart of this is in the 1930s more than the 1950s but it has charm. One of Rogers' better later roles. But too civilised.

Movie review - "Spider Man: No Way Home" (2021) ****1/2 (warning: spoilers)

 Wonderful movie - thrilling action, cleverness, heart, all that. Splendid acknowledgement of history - though part of me was disappointed Nicholas Hammond didn't appear. Hard not to cheer when Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire appear. A lot of second tier villains but Albert Molina and Willem Dafoe are solid (Jamie Foxx, Thomas Haden Church and Rhy Ifans are wet). Zendaya has a captivating screen presence, they Obi Wan Marissa Tomei. Benedict Cumberbatch is entertaining though the fake hairlines of him, and Tom Holland and all the Marvel leading men is beginning to be annoying.

I don't get why making everyone forget Peter Parker helped at the end but provided great stakes and emotion. Grand entertainment.

Movie review - "The Interceptor" (2022) **

 Plenty of cheese and high spirits in this cheerful Die Hard in on a se platform with Elsa Pataky having a high old time as a soldier who winds up as America's last hope when a secret American base containing missiles to intercept nukes is taken over by baddies led by Luke Bracey.

Familiar Oz actors like Rhys Muldoon, Colin Friels and Zoe Carides flesh out the support cast.

Movie review - "The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing" (1955) ***

 I think Fox liked Joan Collins as a sort of imitation Elizabeth Taylor - dark hair, dark eyes, saucy minx - yet this film saw her step in for Marilyn Monroe, who turned it down. It's a decent retelling of the Stanford White murder - producer-writer Charles Brackett enjoyed tales of high society, as befitting someone of his background.

This has second tier stars, though everyone is comfortably cast: Ray Milland, ageing as the dashing White, young Joan, and Farley Granger as the spoilt psycho Thaw. Pleasing colour and locations and it's competently put together. Interesting story.

The biggest problem of this film for me was that it didn't pick a lane. There's three interesting characters at the centre but none at the forefront. Punches felt withdrawn. Things felt censored. Like the Milland-Collins relationship. So it happened? It was sexual? He sent her to school? Is that a place where she could have a baby? Going to school feels weird and controlling. There is a controlling aspect to the relationship that's not really explored. Ditto the relationship between White and his wife - or Shaw and his mother. Or Collins/Nesbitt and her mother.

The script goes through events but I feel it would've been better if it had fixed on Shaw or White more.

Effective moments like Granger and Collins arguing in the snow causing words to echo, Shaw's creepy mother, the oddness of the swing.

Movie review - "The Model and the Marriage Broker" (1951) **1/2

 The Mating Season was enough of a hit for Charles Brackett to devise another Thelma Ritter starring vehicle. Here she is a marriage broker who tries to set up various people.

Ritter is charming but a little of her goes a long way, and there's probably too much of her here. For me, Jeanne Crain was the true revelation - I've never liked her much in everything but here she was terrific, as a department store model who keeps dating married men, and winds up kind of adopted by Ritter. She has a romance with Scott Brady who's commitment phobic-  although instead of exploring that he's really the standard unpleasant alpha from 50s Hollywood movies (I guess being an x ray technician is a little different), who tries to paw Crain, and only agrees to marry her when she won't put out. It's still the best work I've seen from Crain.

The main issue of this film for me was all the subplots - they're all over the place. Ritter has all these customers, but Crain isn't one, and his sister she's estranged from, and an old guy who's keen on her, and Michael O'Shea as a friend (who delivers this awful Capra-style speech to Crain about Ritter) who's hot for Ritter too (Ritter would've loved this film two blokes want to marry her). It is unique in celebrating romance amongst the less attractive including Miss Hathaway from Beverly Hillbillies and Zero Mostel. One of her clients, this Swedish guy at the beginning played by Frank Fontaine, seems mentally disabled. He's meant to be Swedish, I know, but he does not seem all there.

George Cukor directed.

Movie review - "Stalag 17" (1953) *****

 Superb POW film, based on a Broadway hit. William Holden is never better in a role that Wilder apparently had earmarked for Charlton Heston - as drafting went on however he realised Holden would be better casting and this was the film that kicked Holden up to the top rank. I've seen this too many times to be objective. The last fifteen minutes are thrilling, the structure devine, Holden plays one of the all time great heels.

Script review - "The Devil and Miss Jones" by Norman Krasna

 An original draft, slightly different from the film but only a little. It's wonderful, beautifully structured work. Every character is well rounded and pays off - the billionaire, his love interest, Mary the nice girl from the shoe store, Hooper the nasty manager, Joe the unionist. Krasna divides the action into set pieces - first day at work, the union meeting, the trip to Coney Island and police arrest. It's really pro union, quite remarkably so. A super comic screenplay - laughs, heart, romance, satirical point.