In Brief Episode 1

This new "In Brief" segment will contain short reviews of movies that I've watched recently. This weekend, I picked up a couple of old movies. Netflix shipped me Bringing Up Baby and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Between the two of them, I had an enjoyable evening.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)
In this madcap comedy directed by Howard Hawkes, a paleontoligist (Cary Grant) set to be married to a rather uptight colleague has a handful of run-ins with a truly psychotic woman (Katherine Hepburn) who talks ceaselessly and won't listen to reason, much less anything else. Craziness breaks out, circulating a tame leopard delivered to the wrong address and a dog who has stolen the final, precious bone to Grant's brontosaurus skeletal construction.

I guess this movie was alright. It was certainly funny, though it took some work for me to get into it, and it caused a great deal of exasperation on my part for about half an hour in the middle. It's just that the plot is almost too unbelievable even for a screwball comedy. I know that disbelief is a huge part of what's supposed to make these movies funny, but I had a lot of trouble buying into this one.

Also, Katherine Hepburn is truly annoying. And by truly annoying, I mean that there has never been a more annoying performance in cinema history. Not even the cameraman character from Cloverfield was this obnoxious. Still, it's probably worth watching, but only if you're the kind of person who really likes old movies.

Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf? (1966)
In this example of fine writing adapted from stage to screen, Elizabeth Taylor plays the daughter of the headmaster of a respectable private college who is married to a history professor (Richard Burton). The new biology professor and his hysterical (in both the crazy and funny way) wife have been invited over to the Taylor/Burton house after the welcoming party, where they continue to drink and drink and drink. By the time the night's over, betrayals and confessions have been drawn into the light.

This is a one-time movie for me. It's a very good movie, but not a very enjoyable one. It stars the most despairing, self-loathing, despicable cast of characters I've ever witnessed. A viewer cannot root for any of these characters because the viewer must hate every last one of them. They gripe, complain, argue, scream, and commit acts of adultery in plain view and knowledge of one another.

Like I said, the film is worth watching. I'd go so far as to say that it's mandatory viewing material... But just once. Seriously. I don't ever want to spend another two hours with this group of drunken miscreants. The worst thing is that they keep passing it all off as games. It's all a game to everybody, whether they'll admit it or not, and the end effect is an enormous level of depression on the movie's audience.