Reviews of movies with James Stewart.
Monday, July 9th 2007
Grade: C
Synopsis: A witch (Kim Novak) casts a love spell on her publisher neighbor (James Stewart).
Bell Book and Candle has all the ingredients to make a great movie. There’s star power (James Stewart, Jack Lemon, and Kim Novak), a great premise, and good production, but unfortunately the result isn’t as good as the sum of the parts.
The script, based on a play, simply isn’t very funny. Another director may have gotten more out of it (Billy Wilder would have been perfect), but we’ll never know. Director Richard Quine does a competent, but unremarkable job.
If not for the sheer charisma of principal cast, Bell Book and Candle would be a chore to sit through but, like true stars, Stewart, Novak, and Lemon carry the picture. MORE »
Posted at 9:46 PM in Movie Reviews and James Stewart.
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Thursday, July 5th 2007
Grade: A+
Synopsis: A wheelchair-bound photographer (James Stewart) witnesses strange goings on while watching his neighbors.
Rear Window is a great example of a master director at the top of his game. Director Alfred Hitchcock takes a dynamite premise and exploits it to its full potential, delivering both a taunt thriller and a subtle expose of our voyeuristic society.
James Stewart and Grace Kelly seem to ooze charm and effortlessly pull you into the story, and Thelma Ritter, who plays Stewart’s nurse, gets some of the script’s best lines. The result is a movie that you can keep coming back to, time and again.
For his part Hitchcock tells the story flawlessly. While a lesser director would have spelled everything out, Hitch puts us in the room with Stewart and lets us come to our own conclusions as the story progresses. MORE »
Posted at 11:27 PM in Movie Reviews, Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart.
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Monday, July 2nd 2007
Grade: A+
Synopsis: An idealistic tenderfoot lawyer confronts the fiercest outlaw in a small western town.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a masterpiece. John Ford works like a master conductor leading an orchestra of stars –including Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, and Lee Marvin– through a marvelous script, and yet still manages to make a movie greater than the sum of it’s parts.
The script is outstanding. Working on one level as a classic western –noble underdog Jimmy Stewart up against mean outlaw Lee Marvin– it also works as a deconstruction of the western mythology and the inevitable end of the ‘might makes right’ mentality that pervaded frontier towns. MORE »
Posted at 4:15 PM in Movie Reviews, James Stewart, John Ford and John Wayne.
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