The Thin Man Goes Home (1945): written by Robert Riskin, Dwight Taylor, and Harry Kurnitz; directed by Richard Thorpe; starring William Powell (Nick Charles) and Myrna Loy (Nora Charles): So-so penultimate entry in the six-movie Thin Man series plays up comedy and Asta the dog in the first half before turning to an interesting mystery in the second half. William Powell and Myrna Loy are charming as always, but this is certainly a case of diminishing returns when it comes to a film series. Lightly recommended.
The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984): written by Tom Patchett, Jay Tarses, and Frank Oz; directed by Frank Oz; starring the voices of Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goetz, Steve Whitmire, Richard Hunt, and Jerry Nelson; and Juliana Donald (Jenny), Lonny Price (Ronnie Crawford), and Louis Zorich (Pete): Amiable third Muppets movie takes place in an alternate timeline from the first two. Or perhaps it's a movie made by the Muppets of the first two films, played so straight and non-meta that no one addresses the camera at any point.
As always, the Jim Henson Muppets are a fun and charming bunch. The film riffs on the old 'Let's put on a musical!' chestnut. It also sees all the Muppets graduate simultaneously from college at the beginning of the film. Clearly this is either Earth-2 or a fictional movie about the Muppets! (In)famous for introducing that blight The Muppet Babies on the world. Because it's not a non-fictional Muppet movie, any marriages performed seem to have been permanently treated as 'Out-of-Canon' afterwards. Recommended.
After the Thin Man: written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, based on a story by Dashiell Hammett; directed by W.S. Van Dyke; starring William Powell (Nick Charles), Myrna Loy (Nora Charles), James Stewart (David Graham), Elissa Landi (Selma Landis) and Joseph Calleia (Dancer) (1936): Frothy second movie in the classic Thin Man franchise is uncharacteristically long for its era (113 minutes!) and in need of a trim of about 20 of those minutes, pretty much all from the beginning. Perpetually drunk Nick and Nora Charles return to San Francisco after a New York vacation to find another murder to solve with the occasional help/hindrance of dog Asta and the police.
Unfortunately, the film takes its own sweet time getting to that murder, and there's only so many party sequences one can watch. Witty bon mots and double-takes and double-entendres result, along with Jimmy Stewart as the second lead, a love-lorn bachelor. Eventually a murder occurs for Nick and Nora to solve. Also much shouting. Still, diverting fun. Recommended.
Superman vs. The Elite: written by Joe Kelly, based on his 2001 comic-book story "What So Funny 'Bout Truth, Justice, and the American Way?"; directed by Michael Chang; starring the voices of George Newbern (Superman), Pauley Perrette (Lois Lane), Robin Atkin Downes (Manchester Black) and Dee Bradley Baker (Atomic Skull) (2012): One of DC/Warner's periodic attempts to make their superheroes look like anime characters. Joe Kelly, with what I'd assume is some editorial direction from up the food chain, somewhat mucks up his excellent early-oughts Superman comic-book story "What So Funny 'Bout Truth, Justice, and the American Way?". That story was a response to the ultraviolent superheroes of the time, specifically Wildstorm's The Authority.
Here, Superman is made to look like something of a moralizing twit by the reduction in the Elite's tendency to create collateral damage among innocent bystanders. Their designs on world governance remain pretty much the same, but the movie also delves into the back-story of team-leader Manchester Black, making him more sympathetic and making the team as a whole less irresponsible and less power-hungry.
It doesn't help that a sub-plot sees Superman-villain-B-lister the Atomic Skull escape from jail twice and kill dozens of innocent bystanders. Somewhere, the concrete reasons for why one wouldn't want super-powered vigilantes running around killing people gets lost in translation. And why do cities persist in jailing supervillains so close to their downtown cores? The anime style isn't particularly compelling, occasionally making Superman look more like one of the Ripping Friends. Lightly recommended, but you'd be better off reading the comic book instead.
The Best Years of Our Lives: adapted by Robert E. Sherwood from the novel by MacKinlay Kantor; directed by William Wyler; starring Myrna Loy (Milly Stephenson), Dana Andrews (Fred Derry), Fredric March (Al Stephenson), Harold Russell (Homer Parrish), Virginia Mayo (Marie Derry), Teresa Wright (Peggy Stephenson), Hoagy Carmichael (Butch Engle) and Cathy O'Donnell (Wilma Cameron) (1946): Winner of multiple Oscars -- including a Best Supporting Actor nod and a Special Oscar for Harold Russell, the real wounded WWII veteran who does lovely work here.
The Best Years of Our Lives feels at once fresh and Golden Age Hollywood, with sharp performances and a pointed script centered around the difficulties faced by both veterans and their families upon the homecoming of American troops from World War Two. The three male leads, played by Dana Andrews, Fredric March, and Russell, face different problems: Andrews doesn't have a job available for him despite the fact that he's the highest ranking of the three; March is a banker who's suddenly and painfully aware of social and class issues; and Russell must cope with both the loss of his hands and people's reactions to that loss (including his own reactions to those reactions).
The stories of those three are woven together, along with those of their loved ones, into a bundle that may seem a bit too neat at the end, though it holds together better than a lot of contemporary studio films. It's a view into a foreign country of the past with the familiar of our time just beginning to surface (the chain drugstore that offers everything and has bought out the privately owned town drug store being one example of both the familiar and the long-lost, as the drug store still has a soda jerk). Post-traumatic stress disorder, a term that hadn't even been created yet, touches the lives of all three soldiers, as does their occasional resentment of those who didn't have to go to war.
But there's also the essential displacement felt by men who've been so long away -- March hasn't seen his wife or children in five years; Andrews has been away at war for far, far longer than he was at home with his married wife (Virginia Mayo) , the two of them having gotten married on the spur of the moment just before he shipped out, only a week after they'd met (!).
Russell's struggle is made especially poignant because it's obviously a real struggle; his work with his prosthetic hooks is so deft at times that one understands the surprise of many of the characters when they first see that deftness -- and Russell's character's desire to be treated like everybody else. There's an essential sweetness to him and to his story, as there is to all of the stories here.
William Wyler's direction concentrates on the performances -- there's nothing showy here, and Wyler prefers to keep the camera on his characters with little or no movement to highlight those performances. Myrna Loy does a lovely, warmly comic turn as March's wife. Teresa Wright is bright and earnest as March's now-grown-up daughter, and Mayo is shallow but understandably dissatisfied as Andrews' wife. Really a splendid, moving film. Highly recommended.
