#43 The Fourth Wise Man

 The Fourth Wise Man (1985)

directed by Michael Ray Rhodes

written by Tom Fontana

Based on an 1896 story by Henry Van Dyke, the film presents the life of a fourth magi who, after saving the life of a stranger, is unable to meet up with his three fellows on their trip to Bethlehem. Instead, he finds himself caught up in the Slaughter of the Innocents and eventually attached to a community of lepers. Every time he picks up his search for the messiah, he misses Jesus, sometimes by days, sometimes by months. Even in the end, an aging, sickly man, he cannot find Christ - until he does.

Martin Sheen plays the magi, Artaban, and Alan Arkin plays his slave, Orontes. Their relationship is well done and these two extremely talented actors bring more life to the material than seems possible. The film is the product of Fr. Ellwood Kieser's Paulist Productions, the same operation that created the tv show Insight.

The movie was surprisingly alright. Despite a certain cheapness to the production and obviousness of some of the screenplay, it hit its targets pretty well.

The thing is, we're not going to keep it. There's not a lot of chance we'll throw it on again and it's available for cheap on the production company's website.

verdict - not a keeper, but it's worth checking out if you can

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Martin Sheen and Alan Arkin

#42 Lady Be Good

Lady Be Good (1941)

directed by Norman Z. McLeod

written by Jack McGowan

Kay Van Riper

John McClain

I don't know how we ended up with this, maybe my mother-in-law gave it to Hallie. It's about a couple who fall in love while writing hit songs together. As much as I'm fine with Robert Young and Ann Sothern, they really don't have much chemistry together. It's also not a typical musical. There aren't many songs and most of them are the product of the couple's work and are part of a musical number. That said, we're keeping the movie.

There are two reasons; the lesser reason is the montage of the song "Lady Be Good" being shopped around to different singers. The major reason is Eleanor Powell who actually gets top billing. She was a tap dancer and her routine set to "Fascinating Rhythm" is unbelievable. She dances with a dog, too, but it's the FR number that will blow your mind. I've seen it several times and it's never failed.

There are a few other fun bits in the movie. The Berry Brothers, a soft-shoe dance trio are amazing, and Red Skelton and Lionel Barrymore are good fun.

verdict: eh as a movie overall, but we're keeping it

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#41 All About Eve

All About Eve (1950)

directed & written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

"Fasten your seat belt. It's going to be a bumpy night"

So says All About Eve is a tour de force about an aging stage actress, Margo Channing (Bette Davis), and a fan, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), who insinuates herself into Channing's life. On the surface, it's a backstage tale of actresses, playwrights, and critics. It's also about how we sabotage ourselves - Margo is a talented actress, but she's convinced she's aging out of the great roles and it helps make her susceptible to the blandishments of Eve. It's also one of the bitchiest movies ever, filled with sharp-tongued retorts, witticisms, and sarcastic quips.

Bette Davis is someone who could be great and could be terrible. She turned into a pitiful caricature eventually, reduced to starring in campy trash (and I say this as someone who loves Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte). In this she's great, balancing between a self-assured star and an insecure mess.

Anne Baxter is good, too. I'm really only aware of her from The Ten Commandments and her spot on Columbo. Her deft turn from sycophant to master manipulator is excellent.

At the pinnacle of his most suavely evil, George Sanders (one of my favorite actors) as the critic Addison DeWitt is perfection. His interaction with Marilyn Monroe (in one of her earlier performances) as a ditzy actress is hilarious. His demolition of Exe is practically Satanic.

Among the rest of the cast standouts are Thelma Ritter, who's always good, and Celeste Holm.

I'm not the biggest Bette Davis fan, but she's so good here and gets to deliver some plummy lines. The script and dialogue in this movie are so good they really make me despair at the crappiness of so much of what Hollywood spews out these days.

verdict: a keeper

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#40 Baby Boom

Baby Boom (1987)

directed by Charles Shyer

written by Nancy Meyers

Charles Shyer

We almost didn't finish watching this. The score by Bill Conti and the first half of the movie, written by Nancy Myers, is not really good. It was only when we started talking about how much we disliked what we watched that we both remembered sort of liking the second half. So we went back and found it adequate.

It's a nice snapshot of a certain period in time as women were moving up in the corporate world and seemingly faced the choice of career or motherhood, but not both. The great solution of the movie is the answer it posits; why not both, and what would that look like?

For those who can't recall the film, Diane Keaton is a sharp, successful executive who, right after she's put up for a partnership with a warning it'll mean not having a family, finds herself saddled with a baby. Suddenly she turns into a scatterbrained, harried mess and quickly finds herself outmaneuvered by her younger, male assistant (James Spader) and pushed out of the firm.

That leads to the main problem with Baby Boom. There's some good, serious stuff about women and men in business, and Keaton, someone I don't particularly find convincing as anything often, is totally on target here. Then the movie shifts to moments of cheesy low comedy - the interviews with nannies, baby shenanigans - and they don't work alongside the more serious moments. There's a dissonance in the movie that keeps it from ever achieving a coherent tone.

Once pushed out of the corporation, Keaton and baby move to a dilapidated farm in Vermont where she finds empowerment, success, and love. It's not as cheesy as that sounds, and its mix of fish-out-water and Hallmark-style love story with Sam Shepard as the local veterinarian, it's pleasantly charming. It's a minor movie, but it's got adequate heart, overall fun performances from Keaton and Shepard, and, even though it never feels like more than a decent tv movie, it's a fine snapshot of a certain time and place that's already fading into the past.

verdict: keeping it for now, but I'm not sure we'll actually ever go back to it, but it's in a slim case, so it doesn't take up much shelf space

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#39 Assault on Precinct 13

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

directed & written by John Carpenter

Carpenter's second movie is a trashy homage to one of the greatest Westerns, Rio Bravo (1959, dir Howard Hawks). A curiously multi-ethnic gang in LA is put out when some of the members are gunned down by the police. Retaliating, they go on a murder spree that culminates in the siege and titular assault on an isolated police station that's closing down and is only protected by a skeleton crew.

Carpenter, especially when his budget's tight, knows how to get the most out of the situation. The action scenes are tense and it always looks like there's a big horde attacking the station than I suspect there really was. He also knows how to really jolt the audience with creepy, disturbing scenes that don't rely on gore or cheap jump scares. The ice cream truck sequence is famous for a reason - 46 years later, it's still a heavier jolt than anything in a dozen torture-porn horror movies because it gets the idea of real fear, not just cheap Grand Guignol carnage.

The movie benefits greatly from its solid b-movie cast, particularly Austin Stoker as Lieutenant Ethan Bishop, Darwin Joston as Napoleon Wilson, and Laurie Zimmer as Leigh. The villains, as befits a movie partially inspired by Night of the Living Dead (1968, dir George Romero), are largely faceless and personality-less. Instead, they're largely a sadistic murderous horde.

Assault on Precinct 13 is exactly what I want in a pulp thriller; a cool setup, snappy, quotable dialogue, and great action and mayhem. I don't like a lot of Carpenter's later films, but the run from Dark Star (1974) through They Live (1988), is fantastic.

Verdict: keeping it

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#38 Apollo 13

Apollo 13 (1995)

directed by Ron Howard

written by William Broyles Jr.

Al Reinert

This is another movie I avoided for years. Except for Splash, he hadn't made a movie I really liked. Looking over what he made after Apollo 13, he hasn't made anything else I really like either (save, sort of, The Missing). I find his movies generally middling affairs at best. So, when Hallie bought it for me I was reluctant to watch it. I'm glad I did.

Apollo 13 is a good, old-fashioned adventure movie about real heroes. The crew of Apollo 13 faces near-certain death when their spaceship experiences a catastrophic system failure. The movie does a good job introducing the astronauts (Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton), their families (Kathleen Quinlan in particular), and the mission control team Ed Harris and Clint Howard). It switches back and forth between them and the tension as disaster nears is intense. Even knowing the basic history and having seen the movie before, it's still a hell of a ride.

I'm not the biggest Tom Hanks fan and I definitely reject any of the stuff that went around about him being the new Jimmy Stewart. I think he's a good light comedian (Joe vs. the Volcano, 1990, dir/written John Patrick Shanley is one of my favorites) and that he's done some solid dramatic work (Castaway), but I find a lot of his work as meh as some of the movies he's done. He's starred in a lot of prestige Oscar-bait movies that don't bear up. I don't even like Saving Private Ryan (watch Band of Brothers, instead, and see a true story that isn't filled with cheap moments - Look! The same Nazi we let go is trying to kill us now). Here, he's good, very good. He's terrific playing the commander who has to keep a level head and hide his own fear to keep his two crewmen steady.

What I really love about Apollo 13 is it's about real, true-to-life, American heroes. Hanks, Paxton, and Bacon all do good work bringing to life men who had already risked their lives thousands of times as military pilots for years before launching into space. It's not as concerned with the personalities of the astronauts as The Right Stuff (1983, dir. Philip Kaufman), but it does a better job showing in great detail the technical aspects of what they did and went through.

verdict: a keeper

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#37 Ant-Man and the Wasp

 Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

directed by Peyton Reed

Written by Chris McKenna

Erik Sommers

Paul Rudd

Andrew Barrer

Gabriel Ferrari

I liked the first one and I like this one. It's just as funny, the action's as exciting, and the visual gags are clever. Again, this is ephemeral fluff, but there should always be a place for that sort of movie.

verdict: keeper

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