Fading Fast
Connoisseur
The Gay Bride from 1934 with Carole Lombard, Chester Morris, Zasu Pitts and Ned Pendleton
- A quirky '30s romcom about a gold-digging woman, Lombard, marrying or trying to marry several mob men for their money while sparring with a mob factotum, "office boy," Morris, who sees completely through her act, but falls for her anyway
- Morris does work for the mob, but only on legitimate business (it's that type of movie, so you just go with it) as he's staying clean while saving up to buy a gas station so that he can get out and lead a normal life
- Lombard, initially, laughs at Morris and his "small life" ambition as she wants money and possessions (and, literally, steals from her mob boyfriends and husbands to get them)
- But as riches come and go for her (mob money is tenuous), she begins to see the limitations of "stuff," the downside of being with men you don't care for and the appeal of an honest man - Morris
- It's pretty predictable, and the mob stuff - and body count - is treated pretty callously here, but for a '30s romcom, they keep the screwball comedy to a minimum
- Morris and Lombard have real chemistry with, surprisingly, Morris stealing several scenes from Lombard as she comes off shrilly at times, while he's in the enviable role of being the only person in the room with both integrity and who gets the joke
- It's nothing more than a hour-and-twenty-minute romcom, but Morris and Lombard make it work
The Joker from 2019 with Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro and Zazie Beetz
- Outstanding performance by Joaquin Phoenix
- Because of the incredible hype, I found I liked this very good movie less than I thought I would / also, good as it is, it's depressing as heck
- You can see it as an alternative Joker-origin story in the Batman oeuvre or, more as I did, a story about an isolated, lonely, broken and mentally ill man slowly being broken further by a society with limited resources that hasn't figured out how to consistently help people like him
- As with most movies today, the visuals are incredible, which, in this case, includes a pretty-accurate time capsule of NYC in the '70s - meaning much garbage, graffiti and disorder - just as it was when I first started coming to the city as a kid