I was very happy to listen to the southern accents in this movie. Usually southern accents are quite overdone and everyone sounds like Scarlett O’Hara. The screenplay or dialect coach really understood that it is much more about the contractions and cadence than just adding syllables.

Despite its lovely interludes of Murray exploring New York City, I didn’t feel as if this movie successfully transferred itself from a play into a film. The parts from the play and the parts added for the movie seemed glaringly obvious and the editing was a bit of a disaster for me – highlighting the changes rather than blending them in. However, I still really enjoyed the film – the script is funny, clever and engaging. The performances are all solidly good, Robards and the kid playing Nick especially. In the end, however, the film left me wishing I could have seen them perform it on stage rather than the movie.

One of the best portraits of wartime leadership ever. Unfortunately, it is a bit slow.

The film got off to a slow start for me. Gregory Peck plays Schuyler Green, a writer recently invited to New York to work on a piece about anti-semitism. He struggles to come up with an angle for the piece and meanwhile falls in love with a divorced upper-class woman, Kathy. He decides to pretend to be Jewish to get an insider look at how anti-Semitism feels. The film has its flaws. Peck is incredibly good, as always, but the relationship with Kathy seems forced and I never felt involved in the issues between them (possibly because I was rooting for Peck to hook up with Celeste Holm the entire time).

Taking into account the injustices other minorities were living in during the time, the film at times feels like misguided preachiness – or even racist really if you think about them arguing for the rights of all white people to be treated the same regardless of religion, yet they never really tackle the color issue. However, the film wonderfully examines the hypocritical prejudice many “nice” people have. Growing up in the south, I was constantly amazed at how many white people say racist things to other white people that they would never say in front of an African American or Hispanic person. They know it is wrong, but have the idea that all white people secretly think the same way they do. The film clearly lays the blame of continued prejudice on so called “nice” people who allow these rude comments and actions to go unchecked because of a feeling that it would be impolite to cause a scene. Sometimes there are times when you simply have to stand up against such injustices. Unfortunately, this movie was made 60 years ago and much of the same hypocritical prejudice still exists.

“Since You Went Away” features many well-known actors in good performances, but as a film it is more interesting now as a historical piece of what life was like on the homefront, than as a film. Although I’m sure that it was a huge tearjerker when it was released, much of the plot was very predictable. Claudette Colbert is a wife whose husband has left for training, and she is left alone to raise her two daughters (Jennifer Jones and a teenage Shirley Temple). Faced with money difficulties, she has to let go of her maid (Hattie McDaniel) and take in a border. A repeat visit to the house is her former boyfriend, played by Joseph Cotten, whom the oldest daughter has a crush on (which adds an edge of creepiness to the vibe of the film). It reminded me a lot of a WWII-based “Little Women.” However, the story simply doesn’t induce a second watching.

I enjoyed how Hitchcock tried to make the film into one continuous shot. So many times when plays such as this (where all of the action takes place in one room) are adapted into films, they feel awkward and claustophobic. The fluid camerawork explored the set as you would if you were watching the play, echoing the movements of your eyes as you followed characters around the room. It made the film seem as if being set in one room was a bonus, not an enforced limitation. I think the continuity upped the suspension, as you feel as if you are watching everything unfold in real time. Not one of Hitchcock’s best, but one of his most interesting to look at from a directorial perspective.

I know this will seem sacreligious to any Steisand fans, but I felt that this movie was held down a bit by the music. Although I appreciated how the lyrics pulled the plot along and gave insight into Yentl’s character, they all sounded a bit too much like the one right before it. I’m one of those musical fans who likes start humming as soon as the credits roll and none of the songs were particularly catchy. In the end I felt it might have been a more successful film without the music, as it dragged the story in many places. Mandy Patinkin was incredibly charming.

Brilliant.

This movie is so sweet, yet manages never to be saccharine. It’s a very simple story of a 34-year-old butcher who lives at home with his mom and is daily faced with the question of when he is going to get married. Similar to the concept of “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” Marty has tried to find love but has been so unsuccessful he is on the verge of giving up completely. Then he meets a Chemistry teacher at a local dance hall whose date has dumped her midway through because she’s such a “dog.” Ernest Borgnine is so loveable as Marty it is no wonder that he won the Oscar for Best Actor. A great film.

I really wanted to like this film, which led to a continuing sense of disappointment as I watched it. The idea of updating the Shakespeare play into a musical set in the ‘30s was wonderful. They added music from that era which managed to fit into the storyline quite well. The production was gorgeous. But eveything was just a mess. Switching between the Shakespeare, the newsreels and the songs created definite tempo problems for the audience. I felt it would have been better if they had taken out the Shakespearian verse and simply updated the entire play. It seemed as if the casting was done because this one was good at the Shakespeare, this one was good at the singing, this one at the dancing, etc., and hardly anyone was good at all of it. Especially Alicia Silverstone. I loved her in Clueless as well, but is that a good enough reason to keep casting her in roles she can’t handle? A real struggle to get through.