Powers, Tom

Double Indemnity (Universal Legacy Series)

Julius Caesar

An examination of the relationship between political power and personal conscience, Joseph Mankiewicz's traditional Julius Caesar (1953) is a veritable master class for aspiring thespians. As the opportunistic Marc Antony, Marlon Brando delivers the famous funeral speech with pure conviction, elsewhere casting an intense physicality that recalls his work in A Streetcar Named Desire. James Mason suggests a latent Hamlet in his turn as the honorable Brutus, while John Gielgud is positively serpentine as the lean, hungry Cassius. Louis Calhern invests Caesar with intelligence and edgy noir echoes, and director Mankiewicz astutely balances the Renaissance view of Caesar as a power-obsessed, corrupt tyrant destined for punishment with modern suggestions that his murder may have been ill advised. The director's scrupulous pacing is supported in no small measure by Miklós Rósza's stunning score. At film's end, power itself is without a master, and the spirit of Caesar has been left unrevived: and to Mankiewicz's credit, the latter is revealed to be the true tragedy of Julius Caesar. --Kevin Mulhall

Film adaptation of Shakespeare's play chronicling the aftermath of Caesar's assassination at the hands of Marc Anthony Cassius and Brutus.Running Time: 121 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569659186 Manufacturer No: 65918

Destination Moon

When production on Destination Moon began in 1949, everything about the project was state of the art. The great science fiction author Robert Heinlein cowrote the script (based on his novel Rocketship Galileo) and served as technical advisor. The film's astronomical visions were realized by Chesley Bonestell, whose artwork virtually defined the look of space travel at the dawn of the rocket era. Destination Moon is even noted in NASA's official timeline of space-travel history, and almost inevitably won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects. It remains a milestone film, not so much as classic science fiction but--like 2001: A Space Odyssey 18 years later--as an attempt to visualize the reality of space exploration. (To educate the audience on this topic, Woody Woodpecker makes an animated guest appearance, hosting an instructional film on the basics of rocketeering.)

The movie now seems quaintly nostalgic, and its depiction of man's first lunar landing is inaccurate on several details. Taken in context, however, it remains impressively authentic, and conveys the same charm and wonder of the later classic Forbidden Planet. The motivation for the lunar conquest remains military: the country that controls the moon will control the Earth, and cold war paranoia fuels the mission of the rocket ship Luna, which blasts off from the Mojave desert carrying four daring astronauts.

The stalwart crew consists of noted scientists and engineers, but Everyman Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson) is aboard for broad audience appeal; he's the kind of Bronx-born guy who pronounces "Earth" as "oith" and complains that the moon has "no beer, no babes, no baseball." But when a payload crisis threatens the crew's safe return to Earth, Joe rises to the occasion. It's all a bit goofy now, but Destination Moon is still a wonderful movie, bursting with the awe and enthusiasm that would eventually lead to "one giant leap for mankind." --Jeff Shannon

An American man gets support to help build a rocket so the U.S. can get to the moon before the Russians.
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: NR
Release Date: 28-OCT-2003
Media Type: DVD

Destination Moon/Rocketship X-M

Angel & The Badman

How can you go wrong with a movie featuring the great Harry Carey as a philosophical lawman named Wistful McClintock? Well sir (or ma'am), you can't, and this first production from John Wayne's personal unit at Republic is simply one of the loveliest Westerns anybody ever made. The producer-star plays gunslinger Quirt Evans who, wounded by his archrival Laredo Stevens (Bruce Cabot), is taken in and sheltered by a Quaker family--in particular, by the daughter of the household, a dark-eyed angel (Gail Russell) who could entice Satan himself to the path of virtue. Not that these good people get pushy about converting "Brother Evans." For his part, Marshal McClintock, who's amiably looked forward to hanging Quirt someday, keeps dropping by to see which happens first--Quirt's reformation, or Laredo's return to finish the job he started.

Entrusting the direction to screenwriter James Edward Grant, Wayne bolstered Grant's debut by tapping Yakima Canutt to handle the hard-riding second-unit stuff. The Duke also stole a few moves from a little project he'd been working on with Howard Hawks, Red River. Such larceny may have been superfluous. Grant wrote far and away the best script Wayne had ever had at Republic, creating a gallery of memorable characters (including comparative bystanders) and developing some very entertaining business for them--especially for such juicy character actors as Paul Hurst (the Quakers' mean-spirited neighbor), Olin Howlin (a braggadocious telegraph operator), and Hank Worden. The result was a minor classic deftly blending humor, romance, authentic sweetness, and just enough leathery menace to keep things on the generic up-and-up. This one's a real treat. --Richard T. Jameson

Donovan's Brain

We're Not Married

Anyone who thinks everyone in the 1950s held marriage sacred hasn't seen We're Not Married, one of the more gleefully cynical snipes ever aimed at that fundamental institution. Five couples discover that their marriages aren't legal--Ginger Rogers and Fred Allen as a bickering pair of beloved radio personalities; Marilyn Monroe as a beauty contestant with her oppressed house-husband, David Wayne; Eve Arden and Paul Douglas as a chatty pair who've run out of conversation; Louis Calhern as a kindly tycoon married to gold-digging Zsa Zsa Gabor; and Eddie Bracken as a soldier who's just learned his not-quite-wife Mitzi Gaynor is pregnant. Into their lives comes a letter from the government revealing the truth about their unions, and suddenly everyone considers what their lives might be, if only... We're Not Married spins five variations on a theme, with smart, sly, and sardonic results. --Bret Fetzer

A fun-loving comedy about a judge (Victor Moore) who unknowingly marries a number of couples before his appointment is official. Years later, when the couples discover their vows aren't valid, the results vary from hilarious to heartbreaking. Marilyn Monroe stars as a young mother on the beauty pageant circuit whose husband (David Wayne) wishes she would stay home. Finding out that they're not legally hitched, they wonder whether it's wise to stay together. Other couples questioning their vows include a pair of eternally bickering radio performers (Ginger Rogers and Fred Allen) and a pregnant bride (Mitzi Gaynor) whose husband (Eddie Bracken) is going off to war. Along with Zsa Zsa Gabor as a fortune-hunting shrew trying to take her tycoon husband (Louis Calhern) for everything he's got, in this classic comedy explores the true meaning of marriage.

Ten Wanted Men

Randolph Scott's movie-star reputation was redeemed late in the day by Budd Boetticher's remarkable "Ranown" films in the late '50s and Sam Peckinpah's sublime Ride the High Country, Scott's swan song, in 1962. Ten Wanted Men typifies the pictures his career needed redeeming from--formula oaters that are workmanlike at best and suitable for recommending only to confirmed fans of the genre.

Scott plays a well-to-do rancher who sends for his lawyer brother (Lester Matthews) to help civilize his corner of the Southwest. That's enough to tick off Scott's chief rival and former protégé, Richard Boone, who gets even more irritated when Scott's nephew charms the local señorita Boone has been wooing in his heavy-handed way. His reaction is to import a passel of gunslinging plug-uglies and start making life miserable for everybody.

Boone would prove a superb adversary to Scott in The Tall T two years later, but here he just flails. Scott's character is possibly the most irritatingly self-righteous he ever played, so he scarcely bothers to play it at all. Bruce Humberstone's lax direction leaves no doubt when a stunt double has stepped in for Scott, and if a gunshot happens to fill the frame with smoke, you can count on the air being clear as a bell in the next camera angle. The only mildly interesting thing to wonder about in Ten Wanted Men (apart from exactly which 10 the title refers to) is how elements of Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War came to be grafted onto the otherwise nondescript plot. --Richard T. Jameson

Randolph Scott rides tall in the saddle as a powerful cattle rancher in this action-packed western. Scott who made a noteworthy contribution to this genre in the late 50's as a lean mean cowboy stars as John Stewart an Arizona rancher determined to rule his vast empire with strong willed integrity. Stewart meets with opposition however from local landowner Wick Campbell (Richard Boone) who prefers the persuasive power of the pistol to the letter of the law. Suddenly Stewart is forced to defend himself and the woman he loves Jocelyn Brando) against Campbell's renegades who are determined to ransack the town. Now Stewart must take a life-and-death stand in a rugged confrontation that pits one man of justice against the overwhelming odds of TEN WANTED MEN.System Requirements:Running Time: 79 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 043396091429 Manufacturer No: 09142

Lucky Me

The star of a third-rate theatrical troupe in Miami catches the attention of a Broadway songwriter.Running Time: 101 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 085391137221 Manufacturer No: 113722

Doris Day was nearing the end of her incredibly hard-working Warner Bros. contract when she made Lucky Me, a lighter-than-air confection with a showbiz backdrop. Doris is part of a shoestring song-and-dance troupe, marooned in a Miami hotel after defaulting on a tab. Wouldn't you know it, famed songwriter Robert Cummings is also at the hotel, and he needs a leading lady for his new musical. But first, there's some labored romance as Cummings pretends to be a humble auto mechanic, thus gumming up his chances when romance blooms. That's a thin plot even by the standards of Warners musicals, but Lucky Me gets a boost in the form of CinemaScope, which was still a newfangled widescreen process. Two numbers, especially, shine in the widescreen treatment: the opener, "The Superstition Song," which takes Doris along a few backlot city blocks as she avoids the bad-luck traps awaiting her; and "I Speak to the Stars," a daffy fantasy number set somewhere above planet Earth. The other members of Day's troupe are Phil Silvers, Eddie Foy Jr., and pint-sized Nancy Walker, all of whom trail the aroma of old vaudeville. This is not a memorable movie, but Day was nevertheless at her early-phase twinkliest, and you can see why audiences loved her. --Robert Horton

Angel and the Badman

How can you go wrong with a movie featuring the great Harry Carey as a philosophical lawman named Wistful McClintock? Well sir (or ma'am), you can't, and this first production from John Wayne's personal unit at Republic is simply one of the loveliest Westerns anybody ever made. The producer-star plays gunslinger Quirt Evans who, wounded by his archrival Laredo Stevens (Bruce Cabot), is taken in and sheltered by a Quaker family--in particular, by the daughter of the household, a dark-eyed angel (Gail Russell) who could entice Satan himself to the path of virtue. Not that these good people get pushy about converting "Brother Evans." For his part, Marshal McClintock, who's amiably looked forward to hanging Quirt someday, keeps dropping by to see which happens first--Quirt's reformation, or Laredo's return to finish the job he started.

Entrusting the direction to screenwriter James Edward Grant, Wayne bolstered Grant's debut by tapping Yakima Canutt to handle the hard-riding second-unit stuff. The Duke also stole a few moves from a little project he'd been working on with Howard Hawks, Red River. Such larceny may have been superfluous. Grant wrote far and away the best script Wayne had ever had at Republic, creating a gallery of memorable characters (including comparative bystanders) and developing some very entertaining business for them--especially for such juicy character actors as Paul Hurst (the Quakers' mean-spirited neighbor), Olin Howlin (a braggadocious telegraph operator), and Hank Worden. The result was a minor classic deftly blending humor, romance, authentic sweetness, and just enough leathery menace to keep things on the generic up-and-up. This one's a real treat. --Richard T. Jameson