I previous wrote a rather sentimental tribute to Mayberry and The Andy Griffith Show–and praised the themes of Barry Manilow’s CD, Fifteen Minutes, on the corrupting influence of fame–and strangely enough, I’ve now found a movie that combines the two!  A few years before landing in Mayberry, Andy Griffith starred in A Face in the Crowd…and was not playing the Sheriff Andy Taylor we know and love.

The movies opens with Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal), who arrives at a small-town jail looking for material for her local radio program.  There she finds Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith), locked up with his guitar, under a week’s sentence for drunk and disorderly conduct.  Dubbing him “Lonesome Rhodes,” she convinces him to come host at the radio station.  His mix of humor, stories and singing takes off, catapulting Lonesome into national fame.  But Marcia finds herself in the role of Dr. Frankenstein as fame goes to Lonesome’s head and he spirals out of control.

IMDB tells me this was Griffith’s film debut, and that it has been described as “stunning.”  It really is.  It was filmed before The Andy Griffith Show, but the context now is unavoidable, and I think it strengthens the movie.  While I can’t imagine Andy Taylor ever in jail for being “drunk and disorderly” (actually, that could make a good plot, if it was a mix-up…), Lonesome still seems rather like a rough-edged Andy Taylor when we first meet him.  He’s got the accent, the guitar and the big grin–and you can almost ignore the feeling that there’s something just a bit off about his open-mouthed laugh. Continue reading “Movie Review: A Face in the Crowd, starring Andy Griffith” →

I was twelve when I first read The Giver by Lois Lowry, and then reread it again recently when the fourth book in the quartet came out. It’s one of my favorite dystopias, so I was intrigued—and alarmed!—by the movie version. I went to see it mostly out of curiosity, and while it wasn’t perfect, I was pleasantly surprised by how well it was done.

The book and the movie both tell the story of Jonas, who lives in a community where all of life is carefully ordered and arranged by a ruling council of elders. When Jonas comes of age, he is assigned the role of Receiver, to receive the memories of a time before the community. Jonas’ time with the old Receiver, now dubbed the Giver, and the memories he receives, open his eyes (almost literally) to the world around him. Continue reading “Movie Review: The Giver” →

I have a regular movie night with some friends, and have encountered a lot wonderful movies that way. The most recent is Sleeping with the Enemy, an excellent but intense 1991 movie starring Julia Roberts.

Roberts plays Laura, a young woman trapped in an abusive marriage. She manages to escape and begin a new life—but it becomes quickly apparent that her husband Martin (Patrick Burgen) is on her trail.

Short plot summary, because I don’t want to give too much away! But also because it really is a simple plot, though a powerful one. This movie reminds me very much of Hitchcock, in that much of it is ordinary life…but with a deeply dangerous undertone. There’s brief violence and brief sex that are more overt than you’d be likely to see in Hitchcock, but the overall feel of the movie is very Hitchcockian. Continue reading “Movie Review: Sleeping with the Enemy” →