B E B E R E

Five movies this weekend...count'em.

Hal's discovered the AV department at the Somerville Library. If you could pick a theme for this weekend's picks, it would be Marilyn Monroe. Or (maybe, but, really stretching it here) "date films."

Let's Make Love: Ever wonder who Pepe LePew was caricaturing? Such a funny story, though not the best musical I'd ever seen. The cameos were super fun, though a bit odd in their 'shattering of the third wall' aspect.

River of No Return: Not the best story in the world, but the views of the Canadian Rockies, plus plenty of Marilyn and Robert Mitchum to look at made up for this. The theme song (sung at the beginning by Mitchum himself, I'm pretty certain, and later by Monroe) is haunting.

Niagara: Fun for the views of Niagara Fall, of course. Very very creepy, though, and quite a departure from the usual, lighter, happier ending sort of stuff I'm used to seeing Marilyn in. I distinctly remember seeing this in black and white as a kid.

I couldn't help but marvel at her costumes in these films. How on earth did they keep that chest reined in for some of the outfits she was wearing and actually being somewhat active in (corsets in "River," some incredibly slinky dresses in the other two)? I'd love to be clued in on this, as I have a very similar form, and, though it doesn't exactly pain me to not be able to wear a lot of the off the shoulder stuff that's been in fashion lately, would be nice if I could at least have the option of doing so.

Other films we saw:

Room at the Top: Romulus studio vehicle for Lawrence Harvey. Incredibly grim social commentary on a young lower-class man whose aspirations for the local factory owner's daughter and affair with the Older French Woman (Simone Signoret) wreak havoc on the town. This one actually gave me nightmares (& made Butterfield 8 seem hopeful).

Summertime: Beautiful visually, but dated David Lean film on an older spinster's dream trip to Venice. Katherine Hepburn engages in a whirlwind affair very young, very thin and very married Rossano Brazzi in this one. As I said - the theme isn't so shocking anymore, and we did find it a bit dull, but the visuals were glorious.

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In my travels over the weekend, I picked up three films that I'm sure we'll be digging into soon:

Magnificent Trio (Michelle Yeoh, Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung): An amazingly dark, post apocalyptic action film about three superhero women. The fight scenes in this one are so graceful that you don't mind seeing the wires that hold the women up every now and again.

A River Runs Through It: Beautiful, tear-jerker of an adaptation of the Norman McLean novella. This is one of Brad Pitt's first roles. He's wonderful in it.

Some film by Werner Herzog that Hal found and we'd not heard of. It might have been Invincible, but I'm not sure, to be perfectly honest.