I’ve forgotten how we acquired the classic 1940s film ‘The Bishop’s Wife’, but we watched it at the end of 2008, and (on the whole) liked it. It seemed like a good idea to see it again as we had almost entirely forgotten what it was about. We had even forgotten that it was in black-and-white; something that isn’t obvious from the cover.
Loretta Young is Julia, the bishop’s wife of the title. She’s young, loving and somewhat neglected by her ambitious husband Henry (David Niven). He is extremely busy with his work, including an attempt to raise funds for a new cathedral. This means that he cancels dates, is regularly late for meals, and often seems to forget that he has a wife and children.
Into their lives appears Dudley (Cary Grant). We see him early in the film, helping a blind man across the street, narrowly avoiding being hit by traffic. Then we see him racing to catch a runaway pram just before disaster happens. And he speaks to Julia… but it isn’t obvious, at first, that he is an angel looking after the neighbourhood, dressed in a suit.
Dudley persuades Bishop Henry that he needs an assistant, and soon endears himself to the household staff by greeting them by name, opening doors for them, and generally treating them far more respectfully than they have come to expect. And since Henry cancels yet another date with his wife, Dudley takes her out instead, and it’s quickly rather evident that they like each other a little too much…
There are some very cleverly done sequences, all the more impressive in an era long before computer animations or graphics. We were amused by a self-tapping typewriter, for instance, and some filing cards that arranged themselves tidily in boxes. There’s some excellent timing, some enjoyable ice skating (about the only part I had remembered from previous viewing) and some clever scripting.
There’s also some poignancy, and parts that are quite thought-provoking. It’s a 1940s film so it’s going to end in a positive, moral way; but not without some heart-searching and bittersweet endings. There are some sections which would have been so much better in colour, such as the way Dudley decorates the Christmas tree. But I found myself caught up in the story for most of it, and almost forgot that it was black-and-white.
The style is inevitably very dated, the accents sound very 1940s, and I doubt if this would appeal to many people nowadays; there are so many modern Christmas films available, rather faster paced and of course in colour. But we enjoyed this, and I would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind black-and-white films, and who would like a gentler, slower film with much to think about, and a moral ending (albeit predictable).
Recommended, if you like this kind of thing. But look out for special offers, as it is often very highly priced new. The rating is U and there’s nothing in it unsuitable for children; but equally very little that would interest most of them.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
It was over twelve years since we first saw ‘Bruce Almighty’. Although we remembered the gist of the plot, we had forgotten most of the detail and humour. So we decided it would make a light evening’s viewing…
Jim Carrey stars as Bruce, a TV reporter who is sent to all kinds of strange locations. He is excellent at interviewing, and making stories out of bizarre situations. But what he really wants is to be a news anchor. He has a beautiful and loving girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston) but they have been having some arguments… and he feels that everything is going wrong.
One day it seems that life is going from bad to worse, and Bruce complains loudly to God. He doesn’t expect a literal answer, but God turns up, in the form of Morgan Freeman. What’s more, God says that he wants a break, so Bruce can take over, since he is convinced he can do the job better.
It’s a surreal and unusual storyline, but it works extremely well. Jim Carrey’s timing is superb, and, accepting the premise of the plot, he is entirely believable as an ambitious, somewhat selfish young man suddenly endowed with the powers to do just about anything.
There’s a lot of humour in the film, much of it involving Bruce and Grace’s dog and its eventual house-training. And, it has to be said, a fair bit of schadenfreude. But it’s also quite thought-provoking. Bruce discovers that answering everyone’s prayers positively can lead to a great deal of discontent. He learns that the world operates according to laws that shouldn’t be broken. And he realises that the one thing that cannot be commanded is love.
The rating is 12, which seems about right; there’s some profanity, though it’s not extreme. There are some passionate scenes of intimacy, although mostly implied rather than with any overt detail. There’s a lot of discussion of sexuality too, and some quite intense scenes. However as it all involves adults, it’s unlikely to be of any interest to children or younger teenagers. I don’t think I’d show it to anyone aged under about fifteen.
Overall, we enjoyed this film very much. Some people might find it rather blasphemous, but it’s done in such a positive way, and with Bruce realising how difficult it is to be God even in one small town, that I thought it well worth seeing. Certainly it’s different from the average rom-com.
Recommended.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
In between seeing new films we have been given, we’re watching some we liked and enjoyed about nine or ten years ago. One of these is ‘Falling in Love’, which we first saw in September 2010. I remembered finding it somewhat bittersweet, but had no real memory of the storyline; my husband didn’t remember it at all.
Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro star as Molly and Frank, two happily married people who happen to live not far away from each other. Molly is married to a doctor, and there’s evidently some tension in their relationship; but they seem mostly to be happy. Frank is married to Ann, and they also seem to be well-suited, on the whole, with two delightful sons.
Frank and Molly bump into each other while doing some last-minute Christmas shopping in a bookshop. They drop some gift-wrapped parcels and manage to get two of them mixed, leading to some surprises on Christmas morning. The film follows them separately in their different lives. They both come across as likeable people of integrity; there’s a rather sad subplot involving Molly’s elderly father.
A few months later they happen to be on the same train… and they start chatting. Neither is considering any form of relationship outside of their marriages, but there’s evidently an attraction. At first it seems as if this will be satisfied in a platonic friendship, but as they meet more often it gradually becomes clear that there’s more involved in their mutual feelings.
It’s the two main actors who make this into an excellent film. There’s not a whole lot of plot, and the coincidences are a tad unbelievable. But Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro have excellent on-screen chemistry. Both are somewhat quiet, neither has any intention of cheating on their spouses. But their sense of kinship comes across powerfully, and the growing physical attraction too, something that - it would appear - cannot be ignored.
The first time I saw the film, I hoped that it would go one way, and it didn’t. This time I remembered the outcome, though not exactly why it happened. Either possible ending would have led to heartbreak one way or another, and while I would have preferred my choice, what happened in the film worked extremely well - and showed clearly what difficult choices sometimes have to be made.
We found it poignant, even sad, but it was so well done, with such brilliant acting that we both found it almost mesmerising and were totally drawn into the story as we watched.
Definitely recommended. The rating is PG, which I suppose is about right since the bad language is mostly anatomical, and the one scene of intimacy doesn’t show any detail. But the subject matter isn’t really appropriate to children, and I doubt if anyone under the age of about fifteen or sixteen would find it interesting.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
It was nine years ago that we first saw the film ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’, so it was more than time to watch it again. My husband had entirely forgotten what it was about; I recalled the general theme, but not much more. It was made in 1967 and is thus extremely dated, but still, on the whole, well made and thought-provoking.
Spencer Tracey - who died soon after the film was completed - is excellent as the upright, principled and somewhat irascible Matt. He and his wife Christina (Katharine Hepburn) are a fairly well-off late middle-aged white couple living in San Francisco, in the United States. Christina is the owner of an art gallery, and Matt the editor of a prestigious newspaper.
They have brought up their daughter Joey (Katharine Houghton) to be inclusive, accepting and generously liberal. Racism is clearly still somewhat in evidence in the United States in this era, but Matt has written articles against it. They see themselves as modern, liberal and intelligent adults.
Joey has been on holiday in Hawaii, and has arrived back with a young man, John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) whom she has fallen in love with. He is a highly educated doctor who has worked all around the world. However he is rather older than she is… and he’s also black. For all their liberal principles, this is quite a shock to Joey’s parents.
There’s not a great deal of plot in this film, which takes place in the course of just one day. I imagine it was quite eye-opening fifty years ago, inviting viewers to examine their own hearts, to see whether their beliefs and principles would extend to their own children marrying someone with a different coloured skin. However there is a great deal of discussion and debate, as Joey and John try to convince her parents that they won’t have serious problems if they get married. And they plan to do that soon.
There’s some humour in the situations, some irony, and much that was very serious back in the 1960s in the United States. The person who objects most to the proposed union is the family’s housekeeper and cook Tillie (Isabel Sanford) who is the most racist of all and believes that John is an imposter. This is nicely balanced by the family friend Monsignor Ryan (Cecil Kellaway) who is wise, and thoughtful, and also - in places - very amusing.
When John’s parents arrive (apparently booking flights at the last moment was much easier than it is nowadays) they find themselves entirely in agreement with Joey’s parents, in another gentle irony.
Inevitably the style of the film is dated, but that isn’t a problem, even if some of the backdrops look rather fake. Harder to accept was that while three of the main characters are ideally suited to their roles, and extremely good, Joey is rather fluffy and unrealistic, making us feel that John could do better for himself! And while the black/white issue is, for the most part, no longer relevant, there are plenty of other modern equivalents, where parents might have idealistic views, but less inclined to approve when one of the parties concerned is their own child.
We had to suspend belief a little at the way everything happened, just in conversation and discussion. At times, towards the end, the film felt a bit like a play with different scenes involving groups of actors talking, and poor Tillie waiting to serve the dinner... but overall we liked the film very much and would recommend it to anyone.
Rated PG, which I imagine is for the racial slurs (though only one instance of the word now considered very bad) and other mild bad language. But it’s unlikely to be of any interest to children anyway.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
We first saw the film ‘About a Boy’ in 2009, so it seemed like a good idea to watch it again. I remembered that Hugh Grant played a young man, and that the story was about him and a twelve-year-old boy. But that was as far as my memory went.
Grant’s character Will is a young man who likes to be alone, and is mostly self-sufficient in a technological 21st century way. He’s not a hermit, exactly, but believes that, contrary to John Donne’s famous quotation, he is quite happy to live as an island. He enjoys a steady stream of casual romantic relationships, which he breaks off as soon as the woman concerned starts to become too serious.
Will tries to organise his life into half-hour segments, and keeps insisting that he’s very busy. He lives on the royalties from a popular Christmas song that his father wrote many years earlier, and watches a lot of television. He’s unmotivated, and frankly selfish - but also likeable and (deep down) kind-hearted, in a way that Hugh Grant portrays extremely well.
One day Will realises that his ideal short-term partner is a single mother. So, with the dubious aim of infiltrating a group of single parents (mostly mothers) he invents a two-year-old son called Ned. He finds one of the mothers quite attractive, and arranges to meet her, not expecting that she will turn up with twelve-year-old Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), the son of her neighbour (and friend).
By this stage in the film we have also met Marcus, in a separate storyline. He and his mother are radical - almost hippy - vegetarians, and Marcus has never worn trainers, or listened to modern music. He finds school education boring, and is increasingly bullied. His clothes are old-fashioned and geeky, his mother still walks him to school, and he has a strange habit of singing aloud without realising he is doing so.
Marcus also has the burden of knowing that his mother suffers from depressive incidents. He’s old for his years, and an incident that could have been tragic forces Will to become involved with Marcus. Marcus realises that, far from wanting to live alone, he needs more than one person around him. If there are just two people who are everything to each other, he decides, then there’s nobody left if one of them falls out of the picture. So he tries, for a while, to persuade Will to date his mother…
There’s a lot of low-key humour in the film, which contrasts well with the serious themes of bullying, abusive relationships, and clinical depression. Grant is ideal for Will’s character; his facial expressions and sense of timing are excellent. I was less sure about Nicholas Hoult as Marcus, at first, but his character grew on me; perhaps the actor was somewhat typecast at the time (as it would seem from the ‘making of’ documentary that is one of the extras) but he was only twelve when the film was made. He doesn’t have particularly good screen chemistry with anyone, but that suits the role he is playing perfectly.
The other characters are less significant. Marcus’s mother Fiona (Toni Collette) didn’t seem entirely believable to me; but she represents a particular type of person quite well. And since we’re seeing people from Will’s point of view, perhaps this was deliberate. The women are divided into those he finds attractive, and those he doesn’t, in a somewhat caricatured way.
It’s more thoughtful than the average comedy, but more amusing than many films that look at deeper themes. There’s some bad language but mostly used as expletives when someone is surprised or stressed; we didn’t find it excessive. There’s a lot of discussion about sex in general, but without specifics; and there are no scenes of intimacy or nudity at all. The rating of 12 (PG-13 in the United States) is appropriate, given that Marcus himself is 12, although I doubt if anyone under the age of about 14 or 15 would be interested in it.
Recommended.
The film was based on the book ‘About a Boy’ by Nick Hornby.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
We have planned to re-watch some of the DVDs that we last saw around ten years ago. Last night we decided to see ‘First Do No Harm’, which we first saw in May 2009. Meryl Streep stars, so we knew the first time around that it would be worth watching, despite being a free DVD from a relative’s weekend paper.
We remembered, when we put the film on last night, that it was based on a true story. It was made for TV in 1997 as a drama documentary, but it’s so well made, and so moving, that we were totally caught up in the story.
Meryl Streep is Lori, a mother of three children, and happily married to Dave (Fred Ward). They have a teenage daughter, a son of about twelve, and a younger son, Robbie (brilliantly portrayed by Seth Adkins). We see them as a normal, happy American family who have just acquired a horse.
Then Robbie has an unexpected fall at school. Nobody worries too much, but later that day he has a kind of seizure. He’s taken to hospital, and diagnosed with epilepsy. Apparently there was quite a stigma attached to this illness - I still don’t know why - but he is in a private hospital, at first, with helpful doctors who discuss the options with his parents.
Initially Robbie is put on the most commonly used drug but the side effects are terrible, so the hospital switches to something else. Then the parents discover that there’s a problem with the medical insurance; Robbie is moved to a state hospital, where the doctor in charge is not at all warm or friendly.
It’s a terrible indictment on US medical care, and we weren’t very impressed with what we saw in either of the hospitals, although the nurses were all excellent. We were shocked at the way the doctors seemed to be in charge, not giving Robbie’s parents all the relevant information, and expecting them to sign forms for quite dangerous treatment.
Lori is convinced there must be another way… and after extensive reading, she finds anecdotal evidence of the ketogenic diet. This was known as early as the 1920s but was not widely acknowledged. The last part of the film involves Lori’s fight against the medical authorities, trying to take Robbie to this treatment rather than agreeing to brain surgery.
It’s a powerful film, partly due to the subject matter, but also because the main actors are excellent. Seth Adkins was only ten when this film was made but already a professional and competent actor. Robbie is supposed to be younger than that (perhaps six) and changes from being a lively, friendly boy to an angry and boisterous one. He has increasing seizures of different kinds, and at times is shown as unable to do anything much, due to the cocktail of drugs. At no point did the acting seem forced or unrealistic.
It’s a very intense story; I didn’t watch some of the rapid action in the hospital scenes, but for most of the film I was almost glued to the screen, unaware of time and rooting for Robbie.
The only jarring note - so to speak - is a screechy rendition of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ while Lori is researching epilepsy, day after day, in the library. While the sentiments of the song work well, and a musical interlude makes sense to cover the time spent, where there is no dialogue and no action, the later part of the song was quite painful and distracting.
However it’s a minor gripe in an excellent, thought-provoking and educational film.
The UK rating is PG, which seems right to me; other than mild innuendoes there's nothing that would cause the most prudish to cringe. However it's rated PG-13 in the US, probably due to the intense and possibly disturbing nature of the story. I would not want to show it to anyone under the age of about eleven or twelve for that reason.
Highly recommended, particularly to anyone with any experience of epilepsy, or who would like to know more about the ketogenic diet as a possible treatment.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
We were fairly tired, and wanted something light-hearted and undemanding to watch. We hadn’t seen ‘Yours, Mine & Ours’ for about ten years. Having checked my previous review, I am puzzled as last time we apparently saw the original 1968 version with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. Perhaps we saw it at someone else’s house and then bought the more recent version for ourselves.
The story appears to be the same, although if we previously saw a different version, that would explain why it didn’t feel at all familiar. Dennis Quaid is the rather militant admiral Frank in this version, which was produced in 2006.
Frank was widowed a few years before the story opens, and runs his family - with eight children - in a highly structured naval fashion. They move regularly, and are rather fed up of constant changes, with new accommodation and schools to get used to.
Frank is contrasted with the bohemian designer Helen (Rene Russo) who is also widowed, and has ten children: six of them adopted. Her household is somewhat crazy, but there’s a lot more affection and fun than appears to be the case in Frank’s home.
It turns out that Frank and Helen were high school sweethearts, although they had lost touch many years earlier. They bump into each other when they are both out on dates with other people, and they get together at a high school reunion cruise.
The bulk of the film follows events when the two families move in together, to an abandoned lighthouse which needs a great deal of renovation. There are inevitable clashes. Frank produces schedules and structure, Helen encourages free expression and creativity. The children don’t want new step-siblings but their battles - some of them quite amusing, with cleverly choreographed slapstick scenes - only serve to draw their parents closer to each other, albeit worried about the future.
It’s predictable in an overall sense, of course, but it’s nicely done. It manages to feel a tad dated despite the teenagers having cell phones, but most of the humour is timeless. Some of it is a tad extreme, which is probably why this film has a PG rather than U rating. I didn’t notice any profanities, and there are no scenes of nudity or adult intimacy, other than a little kissing now and then.
There’s nothing deep in this film, and the extras aren’t particularly interesting, but it made a good evening’s undemanding viewing, with a few places where we laughed out loud. We didn't get to know any of the children individually and I had forgotten all their names by the time the film ended; there are four teenagers, and some young twins who are perhaps five, as well as all ages in between.
Recommended if you want to see something light-hearted - and unless you are very particular, there’s nothing unsuitable for children.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
