Coco Avent Chanel

Chanel’s life interesting, film boring

AUDREY TAUTOU in "Coco avant Chanel."

OK, I like autobiographical films.
The one on Harry Truman, portrayed by Gary Sinise, was shown on HBO years ago and I bought the video and can watch it any time.
But there’s been a few recent efforts that left me, well, pretty unmoved.
I caught “Amelia” the other day, about the famous aviator Amelia Earhart. She was a renowned pilot, had many lovers and disappeared mysteriously. Yet the filmmakers were still able to make her life a bore.
But it towers over “Coco Avant Chanel,” the biography of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, the famous fashion designer.
It starts promising enough, with Gabrielle living in an orphanage. Now films that start in orphanages are usually pretty good. That coupled with it being a biography should make it a real winner.
But somehow despite opulent mansions, nightclubs filled with prostitutes and lots of singing and dancing, this thing is dull, dead in the water.
Coco is played by the usually perky Audrey Tatou. Everybody liked her in “Amelie,” she was so darned precocious and fun.
But somehow, director Anne Fontaine makes Tatou seem plain and uninspiring, right from the start.
Early in the film, we see Coco and sister, Adrienne, played by Marie Gillain, signing novelty numbers in a cabaret, where they must keep pointing out that “the hookers are over there.”
She meets up with rich playboy Etienne Balsan, played by Benoit Poelvoorde. You can sense she doesn’t care for him, but when they lose their jobs and sister decides to marry a rich nobleman, she really has nowhere to go.
So she ends up at the door of Etienne’s sprawling mansion, providing sex for a roof over her head and something to eat.
But after awhile Etienne tells Coco she needs to leave. Coco agrees to go but remembers, oh yeah, she has nowhere to go, so she stays.
Ah, so you can see how she became a famous fashion designer. Right? Well, no.
Did I mention she rode horses even though she didn’t know how to ride a horse? No, that doesn’t really qualify someone as a fashion designer.
She is so bland and the movie offers little insight into this woman. Despite being so plain and lifeless in this film, rich and lazy Etienne wants to marry her. But she won’t marry any man. In fact, she likes girls, too.
But you know what, even that touch fails to make her interesting.
She creates clothes that free women from their corsets and create comfort. Heck, they look like guys’ clothing.
She is credited with getting women out of 19th-century garb.
Fine, but it takes more than two hours for us to learn this.
So we see more of her life. She has friends. Some die.
Eventually we hit 1971 and we learn she died.
Good. Movie over.
Maybe the next biographical film will be better.
If I hadn’t let someone borrow my copy of “Amelie,” I’d watch that again.

COCO AVENT CHANEL • Directed by Anne Fontaine • Written by Fontaine and Edmone Charles-Roux • Rated PG-13 for sexual content and smoking • Runtime: 105 minutes • French with English subtitles • 2 stars out of 5

Bigger Than Life

Dad goes berserk in ‘Bigger Than Life’

JAMES MASON (far right) wants the best for his wife, played by Barbara Rush, in "Bigger Than Life."

Ed Avery was a junior high teacher in the 1950s.
He had a good rapport with the kids. He obviously enjoyed his job. But this is the 1950s. He didn’t make much money.
He certainly could not expect his wife to work, so he gets a second job at a taxi cab company.
But Avery’s world goes into more disarray when he suddenly has blackouts.
“Bigger Than Life” stars the great James Mason as Avery in this story of 50s family bliss that turns ugly.
That nonworking wife, Lou, is beautiful and wears a dress and earrings while working about the house. She is played by Barbara Rush.
Christopher Olsen plays their son, Richie.
Mason goes to a physician to find out why he is having the blackouts. The doctor discovers a rare disease and prescribes a steroid, cortisone, to treat him.
He becomes dependent on the drug and makes excuses to obtain extra prescriptions.
It quickly causes changes in his personality. At a parent-teacher conference, he lectures the shocked parents about what is wrong with their children, while lighting up a cigarette. Apparently even in the 1950s, you don’t light up in school.
At home his manic-depressive personality shows.
He wants his son to be more competitive in football and announces if he misses another catch, he won’t get lunch.
His actions and personality become more bizarre. His best friend and fellow teacher, Walter Matthau, is concerned as well.
The film has been compared with the more recent “The Shining,” in which Jack Nicholson and his family live in an isolated resort alone for the winter to handle routine maintenance. But Nicholson slowly descends into insanity.
In “Bigger Than Life,” Mason’s character gets more and more irrational. He demands to know why a glass of milk is missing from the pitcher.
When son decides to find the offending pills and dump them, Dad really gets angry. He quotes the Bible and comes to the shocking conclusion he must kill his son.
The movie was filmed in Cinemascope, a process requiring a larger screen and was designed to fight competition from the small screen, that being television.
The movie is decidedly 50s. Even when her husband acted bizarre, wife was respectful and agreeable because that’s what wives did. It was only when he got to the point maybe the child should die she decided he was a bit too unreasonable.
Today, a father who sits around the house wearing a bowtie would seem strange enough. In Mason’s world, it was perfectly permissible.
Special kudos goes to Christopher Olsen, playing the young boy who sees his father descend into madness. Olsen made several films but stopped acting in 1959 after a couple of episodes of “Lassie.”
As an aside, Marilyn Monroe was making “Bus Stop” on an adjoining stage at 20th Century Fox and appeared in a cameo as a nurse. But the scene was cut because the studio worried Monroe would use it as the second film she was required to do under her contract.
This is a gripping film worth watching, not just for the story and actors, but the overall tone and great 50s atmosphere.


BIGGER THAN LIFE • Directed by Nicholas Ray, written by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum • Not rated, too intense for young children • Runtime: 95 minutes • 3 1/2 stars out of 4

Obsessed

It’s not quite ‘Fatal Attraction’

IDRIS BELBA and Beyonce Knowles in “Obsessed.”

It’s not the most original concept for a movie.
And the ending leaves a LOT to be desired.
But come on, “Obsessed” isn’t that bad of a film.
This is almost a remake of “Fatal Attraction,” except no family pet gets cooked on the stove and the husband stays true to his wife. It’s just nobody believes him.
Idris Elba plays Derek, a likable vice president of a high-classed company who loves his wife, played in lackluster fashion by Beyonce Knowles.
He seems to have a great life. He has a beautiful wife, a 2-year-old son. He’s just moved into a cavernous house.
Among initial conflict in the film is, should they leave the mirror over the bed in the master bedroom?
On his way to his office one day, he finds himself alone in the elevator with a temporary employee, Lisa, played by the luscious Ali Larter.
They make small talk. She drops papers. He helps her pick them up. She flashes her eyes and her skirt.
After a day as a secretary, she becomes his aide for a week while the regular guy is out with a cold.
All seems fine except she seems too good to be true. She knows just what to do. She knows his routine. And was she listening in on his private conversation?
Now Derek’s wife had the aide position before the guy Lisa is filling in for.
Lisa smiles, she stops in the office. She gets the boss a bootleg of his favorite band.
The company Christmas party is coming up and it apparently is open to temp workers, but not spouses, even if they are former employees.
Derek uses the bathroom before going home, but is suddenly pushed into a stall by Lisa, who tries to seduce him. He runs out.
The next day, clad only in sexy underwear, she jumps into his car. He screams at her to get out.
Derek decides he better tell wifie about the events, but she feels down because her sister found out her husband was cheating. Derek decides that isn’t the best time to talk to her about Lisa.
Like in any cliché movie, Derek thinks Lisa is out of his life, but she never is.
When he goes on a retreat with his boss and fellow workers, there she is and this time she slips into his room and takes an overdose of drugs.
Wife learns about it and shows up at the hospital with Derek and a police detective, who takes an unusual interest in the case. Are there places police investigate for days suicide attempts?
Larter and Elba are pretty decent actors. They keep the suspense up and the drama flowing. Beyonce needs a little work in the believability factor.
But there are big problems. If Elba’s character acted smart like he is portrayed and reported her actions, the problems would have ended.
And the ending is not only stupid but it builds to a climax and then doesn’t really deliver.
All of the characters act like they are supposed to in order to advance the plot of a Grade B movie.
It isn’t terrible but another revision or two would have helped with “Obsessed.”

OBSESSED
• Directed by Steve Shill
• Written by David Loughery
• Runtime: 108 minutes
• Rated PG-13 for sexual material including some suggestive dialogue, violence and thematic content
• 3 stars out of 5

Dead Ringer

Film has twice as much Bette Davis

BETTE DAVIS with, well, Bette Davis in "Dead Ringer."

Bette Davis wasn’t what you would call a great beauty.
Sure she had her glamor roles, but what made her a star was she would take on any meaty role, even ones other actresses refused to take, because the roles didn’t fit their images.
And as Davis got older, she started to take the so-called ‘hag’ roles.
She did horror films like “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” and “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte.”
Lesser known but a typical mid-60s romp was “Dead Ringer.”
This film was double the fun, because Davis plays twin sisters, Margaret DeLorca and Edith Phillips.
Nearly two decades before, Edith dated a wealthy man, Frank DeLorca. They planned to marry.
But at the last minute, Margaret announces she was pregnant with Frank’s baby. So Margaret marries the rich dude and Edith moves away.
But Edith eventually returns to Los Angeles and a few years later, attends Frank’s funeral. After 18 years, she reunites with her rich sister.
For the technology of the 60s, the scenes with the two Bettes work pretty well. Edith looks older, more wrinkly, more warn. She also smokes, while Margaret says she quit because of what it does to the skin.
Edith runs a money-losing, cramped nightclub where she employs young talent, even though she can’t afford to.
Edith learns from the chauffeur on the way out of the massive grounds of her sister that the couple never had a child. Uh-oh! Now Edith really hates her sister!
And gosh, if the two are twins, why don’t their names rhythm.? Margaret and Edith?
Anyway, so Edith is going to lose the bar because she hasn’t paid the rent. She dates a cop, played by Karl Maldin, who is in love with her.
So she gets a nifty idea. Lure her rich sister to the apartment above her nightclub, shoot her and make it look like a suicide. To be sure, leave a suicide note.
Then make authorities think Edith is dead, then Edith takes over Margaret’s identity.
You would think that would be a stretch for her to get away with it. But this was a 60s suspense film and there’s no DNA. She gets away with it.
There are some delicious twists and turns in this treat of a movie.
Malden finds himself drawn to Margaret, who is really Edith. Peter Lawford plays the young lover of Margaret, who becomes suspicious of this new Margaret.
So how did rich husband really die?
This was a worthy vehicle for Davis, who stayed a star until her final film, “The Whales of August.” She is also the star of the TV film “The Dark Secret of Harvest Home,” filmed in Kingsville and Conneaut.
It is filmed in crisp black and white and has that early 1960s feel to it.
The story is difficult to buy, but it’s still worth the ride.


DEAD RINGER • Directed by Paul Henried • Written by Albert Beich and Rian James • Runtime: 115 minutes • Too violence for young children, lots of period smoking • 3 stars out of 4

Dad's in Heaven with Nixon

‘Dad’s in Heaven’ great family documentary

TOM (left) and Christopher Murray from "My Dad's in Heaven with Nixon."

“Dad’s in Heaven with Nixon” is a documentary of a typical American family that is, well, not that typical.

Of course, you could argue any documentary about any family can’t be too typical.

First-time director Tom Murray chronicles his family in his first movie.

As you settle down to watch this movie, which includes a lot of grainy old family films from the 1920s to the 60s, you realize the narrative feels disjointed and uneven. Perhaps because it is the work of a novice filmmaker.

But by the time the movie is over, you discover his approach works pretty well.

Tom Murray comes from a big, somewhat well-to-do family that spent its summers on the beach at Long Island in the 1960s. Every day the kids tackled the waves, played on the beach, had a great summer.

They lived in their own beach house. And if you had checked 40 years before that, the Murray family then enjoyed the beach and beachouse, with Tom’s father as the youngest member of his family.

Hence all of the footage of children frolicking on the beach.

And we do get the obligatory family photographs of the so-called typical American family.

Ah, but wait, youngest brother Christopher, born in spring 1960, was deprived of oxygen as a child and developed more slowly than the rest.

He couldn’t walk until he was 16 months. He couldn’t speak until he was 4. He went to a parade of child psychologists and developmental specialists before he was diagnosed as autistic.

While there are other siblings, Christopher is on camera more as he stammers to get his point across. He’s friendly, he has a sense of humor. He doesn’t have an inferiority complex.

Their aging mother, Janice, spends her life working to make sure Christopher is independent and can live on his own when she dies.

So there we have it. The story of a unique family in which one sibling has autism. But brother, that isn’t the whole story.

Suddenly the perspective changes from to their father, Thomas E. Murray II, and then his father.

His father had dozens of patents dealing with electricity. He worked with Thomas Edison to get electricity into peoples’ homes. He was good friends with mayors and governors and other politicians. The family had money.

But Grandpa Murray also ignored Thomas E., the filmmaker’s father. When their father got home from a trip, the children lined up on the steps for a gift. But he told Thomas E. he was undeserving of a gift.

Grandpa Murray also drank from morning to night, dying of cirrhosis of the liver at a young age.

He left a mark on Thomas E. he could never lose. He was a failure at real estate. He was a failure on Wall Street. The family possessions disappeared to satisfy the debt.

And as the story of the family patriarch plays out, we suddenly find ourselves back to the story of Christopher.

Christopher has a measure of independence. He no longer lives in a group home. He can cook for himself. He knows how to take buses where he wants to go. He has jobs at a hospital and a grocery store.

But then we discover yet another talent of Christopher’s, as well as the origin of the title of the movie.

Suddenly it dawns: this young autistic boy who was given little change to succeed in the 1960s is more of a success than his bright father, more secure, happier.

And during it all, the filmmaker, Tom, the eldest brother, learns more about himself.

This is a monumental film anyone who has brothers and sisters can relate to. It is a story about a real American family
DAD’S IN HEAVEN WITH NIXON • Directed, produced and written by Tom Murray • 4 stars out of 5

Abraham Lincoln and The Struggle

Griffith sound films historically interesting

WALTER HUSTON is Lincoln in "D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln."

D.W. Griffith invented what we see today as the modern movie.
Before Griffith, movies were short, as little as 10 minutes.
Mostly, film crews would go to busy areas or scenes of festivals or other events and figure out a story line from there.
But Griffith took the Thomas F. Dixon Jr. novel “The Klansman” and turned it into a 3-hour plus movie, complete with the first close-up (that of Lillian Gish), sprawling Civil War battle scenes and other epic events. A tremendous enterprise for 1915.
People literally fainted from the excitement of the film and movie history was made.
Griffith was born in 1875, a decade after the Civil War ended. A southerner, he listened to his father and uncles talk about fighting.
“Birth of a Nation” was controversial in the way it depicted African-Americans, even then and the way the Ku Klux Klan “rescued” the white women from the clutches of black people, who were actually whites in blackface, since blacks could not play major roles in movies.
By 1930, Griffith made two sound movies, one of which took him back to his Civil War roots, “Abraham Lincoln,” also known as “D.W. Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln.” The opening credits tell us it was “personally directed” by Griffith.
Walter Huston played Lincoln in this stagey picture. We see what appears to be vignettes of the man throughout his life, from his birth to his early days to becoming a lawyer and finally making it to the White House.
While hailed at the time, Huston portrays the 16th president as more of a country bumpkin who talks in folksy analogies that aren’t particularly witty.
As a young man, he falls for Ann Rutledge, played by Una Merkel.
Ann unfortunately dies, with Abe at her side, as the movie tells us. He must settle for zany Mary Todd Lincoln.
This is not a riveting look at Lincoln and blame it on early sound or my hearing, but I couldn’t always understand what was going on with the southern-drawl characters.
The most suspenseful part involved Lincoln’s assassination, which is meticulously done. But the DVD compares this assassination portrayal with the one Griffith did 15 years earlier in “Birth of a Nation.” Frankly, I thought the earlier, silent version was more realistic and better executed.
Besides the film on “Lincoln,” the same DVD has another film, “The Struggle.”
Griffith was 56 when he made this film and lived another 17 years, but this was his last movie. It bombed.
But “The Struggle” isn’t bad, better than the Lincoln film.
Hal Skelly plays Jimmie Wilson, a man in love who gets drunk and vows to his wife-to-be that he will never drink again. For a long time, he doesn’t.
But eventually he is prodded to imbibe. His wife and young daughter wonder where Daddy is. When he comes home, his daughter, played by Edna Hagan, says he looks sick and his breath smells funny. Hagan, by the way, is still alive, according to the Internet Movie Data Base.
Daddy keeps drinking, makes a fool of himself at an engagement party for his sister-in-law and pretty much ruins the family.
Eventually, they are kicked out of their apartment, with all of their belongings out on the sidewalk.
These are early talkies but Griffith brings a realism to them. For instance, as in real life, people talk over each other, interrupt each other. Before this, in early sound movies, the rule was to make sure the other actor was finished with what he was saying before you said your part.
“The Struggle” was panned as old-fashioned and seeing a movie about misery certainly wasn’t something people were jumping for during the Great Depression.
It was pulled from theaters in many instances in less than a week.
Griffith worked on other people’s films on and off until his death in 1948.
“Abraham Lincoln” and “The Struggle” aren’t compelling cinema but historically interesting. These were the father of modern cinema’s only sound movies and they are conveniently on one DVD.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
• Directed by D.W. Griffith
• Written by John W. Considine Jr., adapted by Stephen Vincent Benet
• Runtime: 96 minutes
• Not rated, OK for all audiences but kids will be bored
• 2 stars out of 4

THE STRUGGLE
• Directed by D.W. Griffith
• Written by John Emerson and Anita Loos
• Runtime: 87 minutes
• Not rated, intense for some children
• 2 1/2 stars out of 4

Best of Youth

‘Best of Youth’ long but worth watching

JASMINE TRINCA, Lugi Lo Cascio and Allessio Boni in "The Best of Youth."

“La meglio gioventu” is a sprawling saga of two brothers in Italy and how their lives take different paths.
Known in English as “The Best of Youth,” it is a lengthy 360 minutes divided over two DVDs.
The story starts in 1966 and focuses on brothers Nicola and Matteo Carati (played by Lugi Lo Cascio and Allessio Boni.)
Nicola is finishing medical school while Matteo is still taking classes.
Nicola gets a part-time job taking a pretty mental patient for walks. She’s played by Jasmine Trinca.
When they see signs Jasmine has been the victim of electric shock therapy, Nicola goes to the mental hospital, wakes her up and convinces her to come with him.
The brothers decide to take her to her father.
Her father can’t take her in and decides to take her back to the mental hospital but Nicola intercedes. Unfortunately, all does not work out well with the young mental patient and she ends up in the institution again.
It is the beginning of the six-hour saga that celebrates friends and family via the backdrop of the world from the 60s to the new millennium.
Along the way, Nicola meets Giulia, who loves music and the piano, but is also a rebel who ends up on the run. The two have a daughter, who Nicola has the responsibility of rearing.
Matteo eventually becomes a police officer who starts a relationship with a photographer.
Nicola becomes a psychiatrist.
Nicola does his best to raise the daughter while her mother is on the lam.
The tumultuous lives of all of the friends and family, coupled with the beautiful scenery in Italy and the backdrop of the various eras makes for compelling viewing.
It almost reminds you of a sprawling John Jakes novel transplanted from 18th or 19th century America to 20th century Italy.
The plot actually takes a backseat to the sheer power of the personalities of the main character as generation produces generation.
Both brothers try to find and define themselves. One at least is moderately successful. The other sees his life end tragically.
The film ends on a positive note with great reconciliation and a wedding. Life goes on, even when the camera stops
It is a film of great beauty that celebrates the arts at times and denotes tremendous brutality at others.
But “The Best of Youth” is worth the investment. The film is available for rent on two discs through, among other outlets, Netflix.

LA MEGLIO GIOVENTU
• Directed by Marco Tullio Giordana
• Written by Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulii
• In Italian with English subtitles
• Rated R for language and nudity
• Runtime: 360 minutes
• 3 1/2 stars out of 4