The Women -- Movie Chain Review #1

Chain chain chain... chain of reviews...

I've had this idea in my head to start a Chain O' Movie Reviews. What does that mean, you ask? Well. Often for home film festivals I'll create my own movie marathon by chaining together films with a common link. It's kinda like TCM does with a day or month dedicated to one star, but instead of sticking to just one actor I'll chain together film after film with different links in between. Say I start with The Philadelphia Story, then I might move on to Notorious (Cary Grant is the Link) and then I might move on to Casablanca (Ingrid Bergman as the Link). It doesn't just have to be actors as links, either; you can chain directors or even themes back to back (ex: movies with a lot of rain, or perhaps a movie and then the remake). Anyway, I thought it would be fun to carry this habit of linking movies to the blog world. How will it work?

I'll kick things off here with a movie review, the first link in the chain. If you want to join in, after that you'll have to:

1. Call dibs on doing the next review in the comments. First one to speak up gets it, others will have to wait to join up to the next link in the chain! (Chains usually only link one at a time, after all. It's not a movie review tree.)

2. Write your own review of another movie (it should be one not yet used in the chain) and post it on your blog. Make sure the link to the previous review is made clear and that you link back to the original post where the chain began (so we can keep track of how the chain grows). The link can be an actor or actress, director, or something more creative (like a theme).

3. Include the rules of how to continue the chain, and let someone else continue it!

Simple enough, right? Let's get it started!

Movie Chain Review #1: The Women (1939)

Link: First link in the chain, not connected to any reviews (yet).

Review: I found the opening credits of this movie so helpful. As the actresses are introduced, each is paired with an animal that represents her character. So right away you know who's the deer, who's the fox, and who's the old cow. I think more movies should do this.

The word at the beauty parlor, where "Jungle Red" nail polish is all the rage, is that Mary Haines (Norma Shearer) has a husband who's stepping out on her. When Mary's friend (I use the term loosely here) Sylvia (Rosalind Russell) hears about this, she relishes the gossip and eventually sets things up so Mary will hear the rumor.


Mary has been blissfully happy in her marriage to Stephen and as mother to Little Mary (Virginia Weidler). Can she just pretend that nothing is going on and continue her life? Not once she has met the other woman, Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford). The two have a showdown and Mary, choosing pride over love, ends up on a train to Reno. Mary's sweet friend Peggy (Joan Fontaine) is surprisingly also along for the ride, as well as two other women getting divorces: Miriam (Paulette Goddard) and the often-married but still-romantic Countess Flora. The women bide their time at a dude ranch (!) while waiting for their divorces to become final. (Is it wrong to say I was a little happy when Sylvia showed up there as well?) Who will reconcile, who will move on, who will fall in love again? I'll leave the final twists for you to discover.


The joy of the movie for me was not so much in the plot as in the performances. Director George Cukor is completely in his element here with a dialogue-heavy, all female (even the dogs and horses?!?) production. (Interestingly, Cukor was only available for this movie because he was replaced as director of Gone With the Wind. Paulette Goddard too would have only been available here since the one-time frontrunner for the role of Scarlett O'Hara lost out to Vivien Leigh.)

While the actresses are all great in their roles, I was particularly taken with Norma Shearer. How could anyone leave her for Joan Crawford? Impossible.


One thing I didn't really like about the movie was the idea of giving up your pride for love. Maybe occasionally one has to choose, but then, that wouldn't be the case if people just behaved better. Which brings me to what I really didn't like about the movie: the way it portrays female relationships. Maybe it's true that women can be a bit catty, even toward their friends. This movie certainly highlighted that! We've got "friends" gossiping about each other, men-stealing, gold-digging, and dubious advice getting passed along (even from mother to daughter). While all of this does make for an interesting story, I found myself wishing more positive aspects of female friendships could have been included as well. Maybe the estrogen overload just started getting to me after a while. I missed the men.

Final analysis: see it for the great actresses/performances, but don't model your life/love/friendships after it.

Rating: (Although I'm kinda wishing I had made half wing ratings, because this feels more like 3.5 to me.)


Now, what movie will be the next review in the chain? There's plenty of links here to pick from!

Movie reviews in brief

Although I haven't been posting much lately, I have still (of course) been watching movies! Instead of doing individual posts for every movie I've seen recently, I thought it might be fun to share some brief thoughts on the films I've been watching.

Two classics are first:

Modern Times

Another one from my mostly seen movies list. Some familiar gags (Charlie getting fed by one machine and caught in the cogs of another) were still quite amusing on re-watching. But my favorite part was a bit I had never seen before, with Charlie as a dancing and singing waiter. Watching as he pulled himself around by the seat of his pants had me laughing so hard I was crying. Chaplin is great. And Paulette Goddard is just so cute!

5/5 wings



As a side point, watching this movie made me realize why it's so hard for me to get into silent movies. Since I love to multi-task, I often put a movie on in the background while I'm doing other things. This works great for revisiting favorite classics where I know what's going on, but silent movies demand more of my attention, so I watch them less frequently. Modern Times reminded me why I should spend more time on movies without dialogue.


Kitty Foyle

The film (particularly the dialogue) does feel a bit dated, but it's worth watching if only to see Ginger Rogers in her strong, Oscar-winning performance. Kitty Foyle is a white-collar girl (the costumes reflect a very literal interpretation of this) facing an important decision: to marry one man or run away with an old flame.

The conclusion to the central dilemma of the story, which man Kitty will end up with, is not really a shocker, but it's an emotional journey nonetheless. I only wish there were more options out there for the heroine. Wyn is fun, rich, romantic, and a coward. Mark is steady, stable, thrifty, and (let's be honest here) rather dull. Are there really no other men in Kitty's acquaintance? In the movies, there is no middle-ground. The choices are love, passion & heartbreak vs. friendship, stability, & boredom. I think Kitty should have held out for door three.

(I'm tempted to give it 3 wings, but I'm weighting it higher as a classic and for Ginger.)

4/5 wings



Now for two new-ish movies:

Chicken Little

Fun family movie that drags a bit toward the end. The very cute Chicken Little really needed a cuter voice. But the vocal stylings of Joan Cusack and Steve Zahn were quite delightful. And Fish Out of Water was just too cool.

3/5 wings



The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

What I liked: The aging effects, the man with the backwards clock, the guy who got struck by lightning, and very little else.

The comparisons to Forrest Gump are justified. And while I'm no big fan of that movie, I think I did like it a bit better than Benjamin Button.

If you take away the gimmick of a man aging backwards and the few interesting things that arise from this, you are left with a very mundane tale. Whether you like it or not then may depend on the strength of the love story between Benjamin and Daisy. While I did sympathize with Benjamin, particularly at the beginning of the movie with his earnest innocence shining through the body of an old man, I personally did not care for Daisy at all (and didn't get why Benjamin did).

What is the message of this meandering movie? That even if your life seems disjointed, it's OK. Maybe you were just born to live a disjointed life. The idea that life is only about what is thrown at you and not what you make of it is not a theory I subscribe to, sorry.

(Would be 1 wing for story alone, but for Pitt's performance and for the effects I'll add on one more wing.)

2/5 wings



Now, a movie I actually saw in the theater! (It's been a while.)

Star Trek

Well, there's definitely things to nit-pick if you want to. Stuff I didn't like: the uninteresting bad dude, what they did to the Romulans (tattooed heads, now?) and a plot that was a bit weak if you thought about it too much (though all time-travel stories seem to unravel if you think hard about them).

But the movie was more about reintroducing the characters and giving their stories a spin, and I thought that was done well. (Although I've never been a huge fan of the original Star Trek, I prefer TNG & DS9, so they could have changed things really dramatically and I wouldn't have minded or maybe even noticed.) It was visually cool and super entertaining. And I think it found a good balance between pleasing Trekkies and finding a new audience (and setting up for some sequels).

A couple leaving the theater just ahead of my group did not agree. Old enough to have been fans of the show when it was first on TV, they did not seem to appreciate the changes at all. The wife was particularly distressed about what had been done to Spock's mother. The husband's complaints were more about movies in general, how the world is so bad that people just want flashier entertainment to distract them. You know, he's got a point there.

(The movie's not perfect, but for sheer entertainment value it gets 4 wings from me.)

4/5 wings



By the way, if you are wondering what happened to the Vulcan James Dean, I retired him so he wouldn't be in your face every time you loaded the page here. But if you want, you can Trek Yourself. It's fun to do with actors and famous movie lines!