Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XXV

The scripts of more than twenty-five movies have either been written by Neil Simon or are based on one of his plays.  The beloved, prolific eighty-nine year old New Yorker has a keen awareness of what makes audiences laugh, mostly by finding humor in common people or in situations to which the average film patron can personally relate.  His critics might justifiably claim that his work is either hit or miss, but when he connects it's at least an extra base hit if not a home run.

One such home run is his famous 1965 play, The Odd Couple, for which Simon won the coveted Tony Award.  Three years later Simon turned his script into a screenplay for the film comedy of the same title, starring Walter Matthau as the lovable slob Oscar Madison and Jack Lemmon as his neat freak friend and boarder, Felix Unger.  Felix is on the verge of falling apart when his wife dumps him, so he turns to Oscar for temporary shelter in the latter's grossly unkempt apartment.  It doesn't take long for Oscar to regret his generosity.  Perhaps Simon's personal life, which includes five marriages to four different women, gives him the unique perspective which helped him create Felix's character.  Simon was nominated for an Academy Award for the adaptation of his own work.  In fact, Simon has been nominated for more Tony Awards and Oscars, combined, than any other writer.  He has also won the Pulitzer prize for his 1991 play, Lost In Yonkers.

 

In addition to The Odd Couple, which is on the list below, you might also want to check out The Goodbye Girl, another romantic comedy written by Simon and starring his own then-wife, Marsha Mason.  I gave this 1977 film a pre-blog grade of B+.  As a bonus, you'll get to hear the great title song by David Gates, who is mostly famous as the lead man in the band Bread.

 

Here are the films I watched on the idiot lantern during the third quarter of 2016.

 

1.  Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore  (1974 drama; When Ellyn Burstyn's unloving husband dies, she packs up her meager possessions and young son to head west in pursuit of her long-delayed singing career.)  A-

 

2. All About Eve (1950 drama; Ann Baxter is enamored with older theater actress Betty Davis, but is the young aspirant overstepping her bounds as she becomes more involved in the veteran's off-stage life?)  B+

 

3. Braveheart (1995 war drama; Mel Gibson is William Wallace, the heroic thirteenth century Scottish warrior who battled English kings and some of his own country's traitorous noblemen to win independence for his people, all the time inspired by the memory of his wife, Catherine McCormack.)  A-

 

4. Eye In The Sky  (2015 war drama; military officer Helen Muren is itching to order a drone strike on a building in Kenya where two of the most wanted Al-Shabaab leaders are unsuspectingly located, but a little girl selling bread right outside the target causes ethical and tactical problems.)  B-

 

5. The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean (1972 western comedy; Paul Newman is an outlaw who appoints himself as judge in a tumble weed west Texas desert oasis, and presides over the town's growth while living with Mexican Victoria Principal and pining after a celebrity he's never met, Ava Gardner.) B

 

6. The Odd Couple (1968 comedy; Walter Matthau is a slovenly divorced sports writer who lets recently separated Jack Lemmon, a neat freak nerd, rent a room in his spacious Manhattan apartment, thus putting their friendship at risk.)  A-

 

7. The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974 drama; NYC transit officer Walter Matthau negotiates by phone with bad guy Robert Shaw who, along with three accomplices, has highjacked a subway and is holding a carful of passengers hostage.) B+

 

8. The Teahouse Of The August Moon (1956 comedy; In post WWII Okinawa, pompously funny Colonel Paul Ford assigns local interpreter Marlon Brando to accompany meek Captain Glenn Ford to a remote village on the island, where the mission is to assimilate the villagers to American ways.)  C