MovieChat Forums > Owlwise > Replies
Owlwise's Replies
And with him goes yet another piece of my youth.
He was a doctor, striving to find new ways of helping people tormented by psychooigical damage & lifelong inner wounds. He got some things right, he got some things wrong, but always tried to heal rather than hurt. Personally, I tend more towards the approach of Carl Jung, but I won't dismiss the pioneering work that Freud did.
No plot hole, it's a humorous re-introduction, kidding around in order to take a chance on getting to know Holly again under different circumstances for both of them.
Best answer here! :)
It's a film about adults, for adults, made by adults. Its pace is just fine.
I was born in 1953, so I lived through the pre-digital world, and it could indeed take a long time to trace a phone call back then. Additionally, as this is a movie, we can allow for a certain amount of dramatic license ... or we could, once upon a time. The present is often so literal-minded, analyzing every tiny point to death! The willing suspension of disbelief seems to have waned in storytelling, which is a pity.
It <i>is</i> a good movie. Not a great one, but definitely a good one. I agree with previous viewers that the female leads are a bit better than the male leads. And the story touches on many issues of the day without becoming heavy-handed, providing a fascinating time capsule. The jazz alone makes it worth watching, unless you don't like jazz, which sadly seems to be the case with the OP.
Beautifully & perceptively stated. Thank you for this thoughtful post.
They Might Be Giants is a wonderful small film. Just be sure to see the full-length version (still only 98 minutes or so long); a couple of crucial scenes are cut on some DVDs. I was lucky enough to get the complete Anchor Bay release some 20 years ago, now sadly out of print. But the new Blu-Ray edition is complete, I believe.
Yes, it has been largely forgotten. A smaller film, but one with considerable charm, I'd say.
Agreed. People seem to think they only really exist if they're seen, if they're constantly performing for some unseen audience. And as with any drug, the longer it's used, the stronger the dose required to get high.
All too true. This is not the future I envisioned as a boy, sad to say. If anything, we seem to have regressed in many ways.
Of course they were traitors. Just like Major Nidal Hassan, who decided his loyalty to Islam was greater than his oath as an Army officer & killed 13 fellow soldiers & wounded 30 more at Fort Hood, is a traitor. One who is currently on death row in Fort Leavenworth. The only difference is that the Confederate traitors killed far more than 13 of their fellow soldiers.
Beautifully & truthfully said, my friend. For all the turmoil, all the urgent issues of wat & race & major changes in every aspect of life, there was always a sense of hope & joy that things were getting better all the time. There was a sense of endless possibilities, not just on a large scale, but on an individual scale as well. And the music of the Beatles played a vital part in that. I wish we could get it back again.
As for the faces of Bartlett & MacDonald when they're about to be shot, it always seemed to me that they were already expecting something like that from the Germans, that it wasn't any real surprise or shock. They understood all too well by that point what the Germans were capable of, especially the Gestapo & the SS. To me, there's a split second of cold realization, and then a sense of, "Well, of course ..."
Ace, as always, a thoughtful & informative post.
And he had something going with Sheree North's saloon singer when he was Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore show. As well as a fling with Mary's "aunt" in more than one episode.
Thanks so much for posting this perceptive review here. I discovered the film in the 1980s via cable, and it was so different, so much better, than the slew of teen movies coming out then. Or many that have come out in the decades since, for that matter. It deserves to be better known.
So will we all, sooner or later. I'm 68 myself & I know that I look old & tired!
I hope you'll enjoy it, as I'd hate to find that I'd steered you wrong. :)
James Franciscus is very good as the dedicated teacher, idealistic but not naive, making occasional mistakes but always genuinely concerned about his students. Some of the stories are more about his relationships with other teachers & the parents than with the students, in fact.