Priest of Love

IMDb

Following the banning and burning of his novel, "The Rainbow," D.H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, move to the United States, and then to Mexico. When Lawrence contracts tuberculosis, they return to England for a short time, then to Italy, where Lawrence writes "Lady Chatterley's Lover."

- Written by George S. Davis



RogerEbert
It's an irony, but there you are: The two best films about the life of the passionate British novelist D. H. Lawrence are based on his fiction. They are "Sons and Lovers" (1960), with Dean Stockwell playing a Nottingham miner's son (obviously based on Lawrence's memories of his own childhood), and "Women in Love" (1969), with Glenda Jackson, Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in a sexual tangle that reflected Lawrence's liberating view of sexuality.

Now comes "Priest of Love," a movie based on a biography of Lawrence and some of his letters and memoirs. This is said to be a factual biography, but, of course, any screen biography is fiction -- in this case, the imaginative impressions of the filmmakers about the life of a man they never knew. In "Priest of Love," we see many of the actual places where Lawrence lived, and the homes he occupied there, but we don't learn much about the man. Certainly not as much as we could intuit from those two earlier films (and learn from his books, of course).

I believe that underlying poetic truths about people's lives are more important than the facts, anyway. It doesn't matter when you were born, but it does matter what kind of relationships you had with your fellow travelers through life. "Priest of Love" doesn't seem that interested in Lawrence's inner life, though. It's more concerned with arranging attractive photographs of the period he lived in. It gives us all the correct costumes and props and attitudes, but when it comes to what made Lawrence live and breathe, the movie falls back too easily on talk about "genius."

The great British actor Ian McKellen, fresh from his triumph in “Amadeus” on Broadway, does an interesting job of impersonating Lawrence. He looks something like him, he doesn't overact a role filled with temptations for bombast, and in the scenes where he is seen writing, we get the impression that there is thought behind his writing, and not just an actor's pushing of a pen.

But McKellen is sandbagged by a script that requires him, too, to fall back on nonsense about genius and the poet's mission. I was reminded of the story about the time publisher Bennett Cerf told James Joyce's wife, Nora, that her husband was a genius. "It's easy enough for you to say that," Nora sniffed, "as you do not have to live with the man."

The action in "Priest of Love" tends to avoid Lawrence's childhood, which was in some ways the most interesting period of his life. We see young Lawrence in misty, ill-defined flashbacks -- picture postcards about early loves and dead family. The adult Lawrence is bedeviled by censors, hounded by the British press, and splashed all over the scandal sheets after his marriage to Frieda Lawrence (the press could not forgive Lawrence for marrying the sister of the German flying ace Baron von Richthofen, or for the fact that he took her away from a husband and three children).

The Lawrences set sail for America and the art colony run in Taos, N.M., by the eccentric patroness of the arts Mabel Dodge. It is fascinating to see Ava Gardner playing Dodge; at 60, Gardner is beautiful, mysterious and just right for this role. But by then we've lost interest in the movie. It doesn't set up conflicts, only arguments, and it doesn't generate suspense, only curiosity. I have the notion that D. H. Lawrence, if he could see it, would wonder who it was about.

Just for a point Ian McKellen/Gandalf/Mr. Holmes Is Real Hung

Full movie on TubiTV

The Snowtown Murders

IMDb
Based on true events, 16 year-old Jamie falls in with his mother's new boyfriend and his crowd of self-appointed neighborhood watchmen, a relationship that leads to a spree of torture and murder



Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

When 16 year-old Jamie is introduced to a charismatic man, a friendship begins. As the relationship grows so does Jamie's suspicions, until he finds his world threatened by both his loyalty for, and fear of his newfound father figure, John Bunting: Australia's most notorious serial killer. -- (C) Official Site

Full Movie on Zumvo

Star 80

IMDb
A successful young model finds trouble when her obsessive manager-turned-husband becomes dangerously jealous. Based on the true story of 1980 Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten.



RogerEbert

Bob Fosse dresses all in black and makes films about the demonic under-currents in our lives. Look at his credits: "Cabaret," "Lenny," "All That Jazz" and now, "Star 80." Although his Broadway musicals have been upbeat entertainments, he seems to see the movie camera as a device for peering into our shames and secrets.

"Star 80" is his most despairing film. After the Nazi decadence of "Cabaret," after the drug abuse and self-destruction in "Lenny" and the death-obsessed hero of "All That Jazz," here is a movie that begins with violent death and burrows deeper. There were times when I could hardly keep my eyes on the screen, and a moment near the end when I seriouslyasked myself if I wanted to stay in the theater.

And yet I think this is an important movie. Devastating, violent, hopeless, and important, because it holds a mirror up to a part of the world we live in, and helps us see it more clearly. In particular, it examines the connection between fame and obscurity, between those who have a moment of praise and notoriety, and those who see themselves condemned to stand always at the edge of the spotlight.

Like Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," it is a movie about being an outsider and about going crazy with the pain of rejection.
The movie tells the story of two young people from Vancouver. One of them was Dorothy Stratten, a shy, pretty blond who thought her hands and feet were too big, who couldn't understand why anyone would value her, but who was close enough to some sort of idealized North American fantasy that she became the 1979 Playmate of the Year. The other was Paul Snider, a Vancouver small-timer who worked as a salesman, con man and part-time pimp.

When Paul saw, Dorothy behind the counter of a hamburger stand, he knew she was his ticket to the big time. Dorothy resisted his compliments at first, but he was so relentless in his adoration that she surrendered to his fantasies. Paul masterminded Dorothy's rise to the big time. He arranged the photo session that attracted the eye of Playboy's talent scouts. He bought her dresses and flowers, He pushed her into the limelight and then edged into it next to her.

But then she went to Los Angeles and found the real stardust, the flattery of the Playboy Mansion, the attentions of young men whose sports cars were bought with their own money, while Paul's was bought with hers. Paul had a vanity license plate made: STAR 80. But Dorothy had moved out of his world, had been given a taste of a larger world that, frankly, Paul didn't have the class to appreciate.

She fell in love with a movie director. She went out of town on location. She and Paul drifted apart, and he went mad with jealousy and resentment. On Aug. 14, 1980, Dorothy went back to the shabby little North Hollywood bungalow they had rented together, and Paul murdered her. "Star 80" begins with the murder. Everything else is in flashback, and, therefore, the film has no really happy scenes.

Dorothy's triumphs are all stained with our knowledge of what will happen. Every time she smiles, it's poignant. We know Paul will go berserk and kill her, and so we can see from the beginning that he's unbalanced. Fosse knows his material is relentlessly depressing, and so he doesn't try for moments of relief. Although we enter the world of Playboy and see Dorothy partying in the mansion and posing in nude modeling sessions, although the whole movie is concerned with aspects of sex, there is never an erotic moment. Fosse keeps his distance, regarding Dorothy more as a case study than as a fantasy.

That makes Mariel Hemingway's performance as Dorothy all the more powerful. She has been remade into the sleek, glossy Playmate image, but at 22 she still has the adolescent directness and naivete that she used so well in "Manhattan" and "Personal Best." She's a big kid. Her eyes open wide when she gets to Los Angeles, and she's impressed by the attention she's receiving. The character she plays is simple, uncomplicated, shallow and so trusting that she never does realize how dangerous Paul really is.

The other performances in the movie are equally strong. Eric Roberts, as Paul, even succeeds in persuading us to accept him as a suffering human being rather than as a hateful killer. LikeRobert De Niro as Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver," he fills his role with so much reality that we feel horror, but not blame. Carroll Baker, as Dorothy's mother, is heartbreakingly incapable of connecting in any meaningful way with her daughter.

What is the point of "Star 80"? I'm not sure, just as I wasn't sure of the points of "In Cold Blood" or "Lacombe, Lucien" or "The Executioner's Song." There is no redemption in the movie, no catharsis. It unblinkingly looks at the short life of a simple, pretty girl, and the tortured man who made her into something he couldn't have, and then killed her for it. The movie seems to be saying: These things happen. After it was over, I felt bad for Dorothy Stratten. In fact, for everybody

Full movie on Movie2KTO
and PutLocker

Into the Wild

IMDb
After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters that shape his life.



Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

Freshly graduated from college with a promising future ahead, 22 year-old Christopher McCandless instead walked out of his privileged life and into the wild in search of adventure. What happened to him on the way transformed this young wanderer into an enduring symbol for countless people. Was Christopher McCandless a heroic adventurer or a naïve idealist, a rebellious 1990s Thoreau or another lost American son, a fearless risk-taker or a tragic figure who wrestled with the precarious balance between man and nature? McCandless' quest took him from the wheat fields of South Dakota to a renegade trip down the Colorado River to the non-conformists' refuge of Slab City, California, and beyond. Along the way, he encountered a series of colorful characters at the very edges of American society who shaped his understanding of life and whose lives he, in turn, changed. In the end, he tested himself by heading alone into the wilds of the great North, where everything he had seen and learned and felt came to a head in ways he never could have expected.

RogerEbert

For those who have read Thoreau's Walden, there comes a time, maybe only lasting a few hours or a day, when the notion of living alone in a tiny cabin beside a pond and planting some beans seems strangely seductive. Certain young men, of which I was one, lecture patient girl friends about how such a life of purity and denial makes perfect sense. Christopher McCandless did not outgrow this phase.

Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, which I read with a fascinated dread, tells the story of a 20-year-old college graduate who cashes in his law school fund and, in the words of Mark Twain, lights out for the territory. He drives west until he can drive no farther, and then north into the Alaskan wilderness. He has a handful of books about survival and edible wild plants, and his model seems to be Jack London, although he should have devoted more attention to that author's "To Build a Fire."

Sean Penn's spellbinding film adaptation of this book stays close to the source. We meet Christopher (Emile Hirsch) as an idealistic dreamer, in reaction against his proud parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden) and his bewildered sister (Jena Malone).

He had good grades at Emory; his future in law school was right there in his grasp. Why did he disappear from their lives, why was his car found abandoned, where was he, and why, why, why?

He keeps journals in which he sees himself in the third person as a heroic loner, renouncing civilization, returning to the embrace of nature. In centuries past such men might have been saints, retreating to a cave or hidden hermitage, denying themselves all pleasures except subsistence. He sees himself not as homeless, but as a man freed from homes.

In the book, Krakauer traces his movements through the memories of people he encounters on his journey. It was an impressive reporting achievement to track them down, and Penn's film affectionately embodies them in strong performances. These are people who take in the odd youth, feed him, shelter him, give him clothes, share their lives, mentor him and worry as he leaves to continue his quest, which seems to them, correctly, as doomed.

By now McCandless has renamed himself Alexander Supertramp. He is validated by his lifestyle choice. He meets such people as Rainey and Jan (Brian Dieker and Catherine Keener), leftover hippies still happily rejecting society, and Wayne (Vince Vaughn), a hard-drinking, friendly farmer. The most touching contact he makes is with Ron (Hal Holbrook), an older man who sees him clearly and with apprehension, and begins to think of him as a wayward grandson. Christopher lectures this man, who has seen it all, on what he is missing and asks him to follow him up a steep hillside to see the next horizon. Ron tries, before he admits he is no longer in condition.

And then McCandless disappears from the maps of memory, into unforgiving Alaska. Yes, it looks beautiful. It is all he dreamed of. He finds an abandoned bus where no bus should be and makes it his home. He tries hunting, not very successfully. He lives off the land, but the land is a zero-tolerance system. From his journals and other evidence, Penn reconstructs his final weeks. Emile Hirsch plays him in a hypnotic performance, turning skeletal, his eyes sinking into his skull while they still burn with zeal. It is great acting, and more than acting.

This is a reflective, regretful, serious film about a young man swept away by his uncompromising choices. Two of the more truthful statements in recent culture are that we need a little help from our friends, and that sometimes we must depend on the kindness of strangers. If you don't know those two things and accept them, you will end up eventually in a bus of one kind or another. Sean Penn himself fiercely idealistic, uncompromising, a little less angry now, must have read the book and reflected that there, but for the grace of God, went he. The movie is so good partly because it means so much, I think, to its writer-director. It is a testament like the words that Christopher carved into planks in the wilderness.

I grew up in Urbana three houses down from the Sanderson family -- Milton and Virginia and their boys Steve and Joe. My close friend was Joe. His bedroom was filled with aquariums, terrariums, snakes, hamsters, spiders, and butterfly and beetle collections. I envied him like crazy. After college he hit the road. He never made a break from his parents, but they rarely knew where he was. Sometimes he came home and his mother would have to sew $100 bills into the seams of his blue jeans. He disappeared in Nicaragua. His body was later identified as a dead Sandinista freedom fighter. From a nice little house surrounded by evergreens at the other end of Washington Street, he left to look for something he needed to find. I believe in Sean Penn's Christopher McCandless. I grew up with him.

Full Movie on FFilms
And LivemotionPicture is mobile friendly

Wild

IMDb
A chronicle of one woman's 1,100-mile solo hike undertaken as a way to recover from a recent catastrophe.


NYTimes

“Wild” is the story of a very long walk, a trek of over 1,000 miles along the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, from the Southern California desert to the lush forests of Oregon. Based on Cheryl Strayed’s best-selling memoir, the film begins, like the book, in the middle of the journey, with a scene that at once celebrates the sublimity of nature and the spirit of solitude and douses such romanticism in a demystifying spray of cold water.

Cheryl, played by Reese Witherspoon with grit, wit and unblinking honesty, reaches the top of a rocky outcropping with a panoramic view of surrounding mountains. Her panting, sweaty, irritated presence contrasts with the tranquil glory of the landscape, her contemplation of which is interrupted by the loss of a toenail and then of a hiking boot. That mishap elicits a keening howl of frustration and a perfectly self-defeating gesture of protest as she hurls the other boot away.

Continue reading the main sto 

In due course, we will come to know a lot more about Cheryl — about her childhood and her sex life, about the death of her mother and the end of her marriage — but we start out with the crucial information that this is not a woman who makes things easy, for herself or anyone else. The story “Wild” has to tell is partly about how Cheryl deals with hardship, and about how, following a piece of long-ago maternal advice, she learns to putherself “in the way of beauty.” But it is also about her appetite for difficulty and her insistence on confronting ugliness, inside and out.

Continue reading the main storyVideo

PLAY VIDEO|1:07

Movie Review: ‘Wild’

Movie Review: ‘Wild’

The Times critic A. O. Scott reviews “Wild.”

 Video by Robin Lindsay on Publish DateDecember 5, 2014. Photo by Anne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Ms. Strayed’s book, written in a frank, funny voice that only occasionally drifts into clouds of self-help abstraction, is a complicated blend of grief memoir and travelogue. It tries very hard not to stick to the well-marked autobiographical path, blazed by St. Augustine in his “Confessions,” from sin to salvation, even as it passes through some classically Augustinian moral territory. Before setting out on her trek, the author had been using heroin and cheating on her husband. She insists, however, that her goal is not redemption but self-acceptance, not a catalog of regrets but a clear view and welcoming embrace of experience in all its forms.

The structure of “Wild” is as complicated as its themes. The “action” on the trail — walking, thinking, pitching the tent at night and packing it up in the morning — is punctuated by looping reminiscences of the life that preceded it. What is most audacious about the film, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée(“Dallas Buyers Club”) from a screenplay by Nick Hornby (yes, that Nick Hornby), is how closely it follows and how fully it respects Ms. Strayed’s free-associative, memory-driven narrative. In its thrilling disregard for the conventions of commercial cinematic storytelling, “Wild” reveals what some of us have long suspected: that plot is the enemy of truth, and that images and emotions can carry meaning more effectively than neatly packaged scenes or carefully scripted character arcs.

Photo

Wild," based on the memoir by Cheryl Strayed, stars Reese Witherspoon as a hiker on the Pacific Crest Trail. CreditAnne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight Pictures

Mr. Vallée’s approach places enormous pressure on Ms. Witherspoon, who appears in nearly every frame of “Wild.” The overstuffed backpack she hoists onto her shoulders is a metaphor not only for the baggage the character is carrying but also for the scale of the actress’s undertaking. It is clear from the beginning that her task is not to make us like Cheryl, but to help us understand her. And since Cheryl doesn’t understand herself — she can’t really say why she’s on the Pacific Crest Trail in the first place — a certain amount of patience will be required. We are not going to be charmed, teased, flattered or befriended. We will start walking and see what happens.

Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

What happens is that a series of encounters in the wilderness — mostly with men, some of them scary, some of them kind, almost all of them intrigued by the presence of a solitary woman so far from civilization — dissolve into montages of memory. The dominant figure in these is Cheryl’s mother, Bobbi, an almost magical, not quite tragic figure played by Laura Dern. Bobbi’s death from cancer is the great trauma of her daughter’s life, and while the movie is careful not to posit grief as the cause of Cheryl’s reckless, risky behavior, it does lay out a row of dots for her and the audience to connect.

Photo

Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl on the Pacific Crest Trail in Jean-Marc Vallée’s “Wild,” which also stars Laura Dern as her mother. CreditAnne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight, via Associated Press

And it is Cheryl’s specific and ordinary suffering that connects us to her and allows us to share her adventure. “Wild” the book is part of a literary tradition that stretches back to Thoreau and Wordsworth, and the movie is part of a more recent trend that includes “Into the Wild,” “127 Hours” and“Tracks.”

The paradox of all these accounts of lonely wandering is that they actively solicit the companionship of readers and viewers. Cheryl Strayed needed to be alone in the vast American outdoors, but she also needed to tell us about it. The film adaptation of her book — itself already a classic of wilderness writing and modern feminism — provides another reason to be grateful that she did.

“Wild” may be full of natural beauty — Yves Bélanger’s cinematography unostentatiously captures the infinite colors and vistas of the West — but it is also a celebration of the power of art. Cheryl, a budding writer, is also a devoted reader, filling log books with quotations from Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Adrienne Rich and James A. Michener (the subject of a recollected argument with Bobbi). Those words crystallize some of the film’s ideas, while its feelings are carried along on a current of music: a well-timed Grateful Dead cover; hummed and whistled snatches of “El Condor Pasa,” by Simon and Garfunkel; and an unexpected a cappella ballad that delivers a clean and overwhelming catharsis near the end.

“Wild” has its shortcomings. There is too much montage in the middle and too much voice-over at the end, and maybe not quite enough detail about some of Cheryl’s relationships (which is to say not enough Gaby Hoffmann, who plays her best friend). But you wouldn’t want a movie that celebrates imperfection, improvisation and the importance of mistakes to be slick or seamless. What makes its heroine worth caring about — what makes her a rare and exciting presence in contemporary American film — is not that she’s tidy or sensible or even especially nice. It’s that she’s free.

“Wild” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Sex, swearing, drug use, blisters.

Full Movie on MovShare

Son of the morning Star

NYTimes
This second half of the sweeping TV adaptation ofEvan S. O'Connell's novel (see entry 129099 for details on Part One) stars Gary Cole as George Armstrong Custer, leader of the 7th Cavalry of the Great Plains in the early 1870s. Custer's efforts to maintain peace with the surrounding Native Americans are doomed to failure due to his own arrogance and miscalculations. The Indians reluctantly marshal themselves for war when the white man's lust for gold results in broken treaties and ravaged lands. Part Two culminates in a spectacular (and fairly accurate) recreation of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, pitting Custer against another headstrong tactician, Chief Crazy Horse (Rodney Grant). As in Part One, Part Two of Son of the Morning Star is narrated by Buffy St. Marie, attempting--with moderate success--an "old lady" characterization. Parts one and two were later merged into a single 186-minute TV movie. Side Note: Kevin Costner was offered the role of Custer in Son of the Morning Star, but turned it down to concentrate on his own Native American epic--a little diversion called Dance With Wolves (which also featured Rodney Grant). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi


IMDb
The story of George Custer, Crazy Horse and the events prior to the battle of the Little Bighorn, told from the different perspectives of two women.


Dull Movie on YouTube

Caligula (1979)

Ok WARNING This movie is just over Rated Porn. Someone Told me I would like it. I found it a Shock. It was Showing Some Good actors at the time just full out and they're skills not used. But my Friend said I had to post it for the high ranking. I asked what Rank would that be.


RogerEbert

"Caligula" is sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash. If it is not the worst film I have ever seen, that makes it all the more shameful: People with talent allowed themselves to participate in this travesty. Disgusted and unspeakably depressed, I walked out of the film after two hours of its 170-minute length. That was on Saturday night, as a line of hundreds of people stretched down Lincoln Ave., waiting to pay $7.50 apiece to become eyewitnesses to shame.

I wanted to tell them ... what did I want to tell them? What I'm telling you now. That this film is not only garbage on an artistic level, but that it is also garbage on the crude and base level where it no doubt hopes to find its audience. "Caligula" is not good art, It is not good cinema, and it is not good porn.

I've never had anything against eroticism in movies. There are X-rated films I've enjoyed, from the sensuous fantasies of "Emmanuelle" to the pop-comic absurdities of Russ Meyer. I assume that the crowds lining up for admission to the Davis Theater were hoping for some sort of erotic experience; I doubt that they were spending $15 a couple for a lesson on the ancient history of Rome.

All I can say is that the makers of "Caligula" have long since lost touch with any possible common erotic denominator, and that they suggest by the contents of this film that they are jaded, perverse and cruel human beings. In the two hours of this film that I saw, there were no scenes of joy, natural pleasure, or good sensual cheer. There was, instead, a nauseating excursion into base and sad fantasies.

You have heard that this is a violent film. But who could have suspected how violent, and to what vile purpose, it really is? In this film, there are scenes depicting a man whose urinary tract is closed, and who has gallons of wine poured down his throat. His bursting stomach is punctured with a sword. There is a scene in which a man is emasculated, and his genitals thrown to dogs, who eagerly eat them on the screen. There are scenes of decapitation, evisceration, rape, bestiality, sadomasochism, necrophilia.

These scenes -- indeed, the movie itself -- reflect a curiously distanced sensibility. Nobody in this film really seems to be there. Not the famous actors like Malcolm McDowell and (very briefly) Peter O'Toole and John Gielgud, whose scenes have been augmented by additional porn shot later with other people and inserted to spice things up. Not the director (who removed his credit from the film). Not the writer (what in the world can it mean that this movie is "Adapted from an Original Screenplay by Gore Vidal"?) Not even the sound track. The actors never quite seem to be speaking their own words, which were so badly dubbed in later that the dialogue never seems to be emerging from the drama itself.

The film even fails to involve itself in the action. "Caligula" has been photographed and directed with such clumsiness and inelegance that pieces of action do not seem to flow together, the plot is incomprehensible, the events are frequently framed as if the camera was not sure where it was, and everything is shot in muddy, ugly, underlit dungeon tones. The music Is also execrable.

So what are we left with? A movie, I am afraid, that may be invulnerable to a review like this one. There are no doubt people who believe that if this movie is as bad as I say it is, it must be worth seeing. People who simply cannot believe any film could be this vile. Some of those people were walking out of the Davis before I did Saturday night; others were sitting, depressed, in the lobby. That should not, I suppose, be surprising.

The human being is a most curious animal. often ready to indulge himself in his base Inclinations, but frequently reluctant to trust his better Instincts. Surely people know, going in, that "Caligula" is worthless. Surely they know there are other movies in town that are infinitely better. Yet here they are at "Caligula." It is very sad.

My friendly recommendation is that they see "The Great Santini," to freshen their minds and learn to laugh and care again in a movie. People learn fast. "This movie," said the lady in front of me at the drinking fountain, "is the worst piece of shit I have ever seen."

Full Movie on FFilm
And Alluc

MOMMIE DEAREST

For Mothers Day



Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Info

When her adoptive mother Joan Crawford died in 1977, erstwhile actress/author Christina Crawford and her brother Christopher were left out of Joan Crawford's will, "for reasons which are well known to them." Industryites have suggested that it may have been this posthumous act of rejection rather than an alleged lifetime of parental abuse that inspired Christina Crawford to pen her scathing autobiography Mommie Dearest. The 1981 film version of this tome was evidently meant to be takenseriously, but the operatic direction by Frank Perry and the over-the-top portrayal of Joan Crawford by Faye Dunaway (whose makeup is remarkable) has always seemed to inspire loud laughter whenever and where-ever the film is shown. According to the film (and the book that preceded it), Joan Crawford was a licentious, child-beating behemoth, who stalked and postured through life as though it was one of her own pictures-more Strait-jacket than Mildred Pierce. This is the film with the notorious "wire coat hanger" scene, just in case you need a reminder. Surprisingly, one emerges from Mommie Dearest with more sympathy for the monstrous but intensely vulnerable Crawford than for her whining daughter (played as an adult by Diana Scarwid, and as a child by Mara Hobel). Our favorite scene: Joan Crawford dazedly replacing her ailing daughter in the cast of a daytime TV soap opera. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

RogerEbert

I can't imagine who would want to subject themselves to this movie. "Mommie Dearest" is a painful experience that drones on endlessly, as Joan Crawford's relationship with her daughter, Christina, disintegrates from cruelty through jealousy into pathos. It is unremittingly depressing, not to any purpose of drama or entertainment, but just to depress. It left me feeling creepy.

The movie was inspired, of course, by a best-selling memoir in which adopted daughter Christina Crawford portrayed her movie-star mother as a grasping, sadistic, alcoholic wretch whose own insecurities and monstrous ego made life miserable for everyone around her. I have no idea if the book's portrait is an accurate one, but the movie is faithful to it in one key sense: It made life miserable for me.

"Mommie Dearest" repeats the same basic dramatic situation again and again. Baby Christina tries to do the right thing, tries to be a good girl, tries to please Mommie, but Mommie is a manic-depressive who alternates between brief triumphs and long savage tirades, infecting her daughter with resentment and guilt. In scene after scene, we are invited to watch as Joan Crawford screams at Christina, chops her hair with scissors, beats her with a wire coat hanger and, on an especially bad day, tackles her across an end table, hurls her to the carpet, bangs her head against the floor, and tries to choke her to death. Who wants to watch this?

This material is presented essentially as sensationalism. The movie makes no attempt to draw psychological insights from the life of its Joan Crawford, not even through the shorthand Freudianism much beloved by Hollywood. Mommie is a monster, that's all, and there's some mention of her unhappy childhood. Christina is a brave, smiling, pretty, long-suffering dope who might inspire more sympathy if she were not directed (in both her childhood and adult versions) to be distant and veiled.

The movie doesn't even make narrative sense. Success follows crisis without any pattern. At one moment, Joan is in triumph after winning the Oscar for "Mildred Pierce." In the very next scene she goes so berserk we want to scrape her off the screen with a spatula. The scenes don't build, they just happen. Another example: After an especially ugly fight, Joan sends Christina to a convent school. There's a scene where the mother superior welcomes her and promises to reform her. One scene later, Christina checks out of the school, and the nun wishes her godspeed. No mention of what happened in the school, how it affected Christina, or whether the nun changed her opinion of the girl.

The movie also offers few insights into Crawford's relationships with others. There's a loyal housekeeper, but never a scene where Crawford speaks personally with her. There is a lover and a third husband, both enigmas. Crawford's acting career is treated mostly in ellipses. The sets look absolutely great, Faye Dunaway's impersonation of Crawford is stunningly suggestive and convincing, and little Mara Hobel, as Baby Christina, handles several difficult moments very well. But to what end? "Mommie Dearest" is a movie that knows exactly how it wants to look, but has no idea what it wants to make us feel.

Full Movie on PutLocker