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Reviews
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
I Think It's Suppertime!
Just saw this on TCM. Gotta convince my local downtown theatre to play this for midnight movie sometime after they reopen.
The Awful Truth (1937)
He didn't go to CA
Others have mentioned that because the oranges were stamped with California it was implied that the husband went to CA instead of FL. No, it was implied that he never left town at all because he was getting a tan under the lamp at the spa. I imagine the fruit basket was bought locally before he went back home.
It bothered me that it was never revealed what he was doing instead of traveling to FL, and that his wife wasn't very interested in questioning him. Her lack of interest seemed to hint that she was up to shenanigans of her own. But maybe that's what was intended, just to have the audience guessing.
Dunne's performance was pretty good but sometimes her giggling and vocalisations were annoying. I did enjoy the scene where she pretends to be Cary's sister. Cary's comedy is funny as always even if his camera hamming is a little too much at times.
For the most part the plot is good. I liked the way it was split into two halves, one having the husband meddling in the wife's affairs and the other with the roles reversed.
I wasn't a fan of the last part of the story; the abrupt departure from the fiancée's house with no explanation to his fiancée, the zany drive out to the woods and the cabin scene with the malfunctioning door. The movie was really dragging for me at that point.
JFK (1991)
Magic Bollocks: This movie needs a warning sticker attached
I first saw this when I was 18 and more gullible. I guess at that age I probably thought it was fun to believe in the fantasy of it and didn't particularly care if it was remotely close to being historically accurate. Plus, It was highly entertaining and had an interesting narrative structure. I liked how it was edited; the flashbacks with it's mixture of real and fake stock footage was slick. Stone knows how to package a compelling movie. It's still entertaining today. I esp. Love the John Candy scene.
However, in light of the crazy conspiracies that seem to easily take hold in politics these days, I can't help feel that this movie and others like it can do real harm. They should be held to a higher standard beyond just being entertaining. If someone wants to produce a movie about a politically sensitive historical event or subject, then it's their duty to portray the relevant facts accurately. I don't expect every detail to be true. I realize even a historical movie's gotta have some entertainment value, but this movie goes way over the limit.
There are a lot of bogus "documentaries" on the JFK assassination out there that this movie lends credence to. Most of the producers of these already have their mind made up about this or that version and ignore any evidence to the contrary. Or like Hollywood, they're just trying to make money off of the people's appetite for conspiracies.
By all means, if you haven't seen the movie, watch it for the sheer entertainment of it, but then do your brain a favor and watch a well-researched unbiased documentary before making up your mind about whether Oswald acted alone or not.
There was one episode that Nova put out a while back that explained and demonstrated experimentally how Oswald alone could make those shots and how two bullets could cause all the wounds. It shouldn't be too hard to find online somewhere.
Vacation from Love (1938)
I liked it better...
Since at this time there's only one previous review of this movie, I thought I'd write one myself (my first btw).
First of all, I wasn't aware of the leading lady until, TCM spotlighted several of her movies recently. She may not be Barbara Stanwyk or Myrna Loy, but I don't see where she's much below their level in ability, esp. In these types of late 30's rom-coms.
As far as the movie goes, it's funny enough and the plot moves along briskly without being too silly or maudlin. I've seen a lot of comedies from this era where the characters act so stupid that I couldn't bear to watch or just got plain bored with the story, e.g., "Married Before Breakfast", another Florence Rice movie that TCM included in their Spotlight series. That movie had approximately the same runtime but seemed twice as long.
The previous reviewer is right that it doesn't contain any big laughs -just some chuckles here and there, but I think it was meant to be more romance than comedy anyway.
In short, this is a fun, well-paced movie that I found surprisingly enjoyable.