Shaun Berk’s 10 Movie Recommendations- 160th Edition

Welcome to the 160th Edition where I got quite carried away with the Barrymore family. I got started with it, then I just felt that I had to keep featuring more. There are plenty of unsuccessful Barrymores that I did not bother to look into. I also start the Random Myspace Profile selection where I have chosen nine names randomly, three of which on on this one. I don't believe anything will be on next week's but I will be featuring all of them in the coming weeks and then I will choose the next nine so you could all be next. Well, I will shut up now and give you my ten for the week.

Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple (2006): This is a movie Travis showed for his Co-Op film festival. It is a PBS documentary on the famed cult leader Jim Jones who lead the bizarre mass suicide. It talks about his origins in my state of Indiana and his rise in the church. He was also very known with his love of diversity which showed in his adopted children and the people in his church but also the control he gained over everyone. It has many of his surviving church members speaking on the things that went on and the last days in Guyana. There's not much more to say except to check this one out. If you don't know who Jones is, just google the name and you'll learn.

Full Metal Jacket (1987): Stanley Kubrick directed this great Vietnam film and one of my dad's favorite movies. Matthew Modine stars in this movie as Joker who starts out in Boot Camp which was the big highlight of the film. Retired Boot Camp instructer R. Lee Ermey plays the boot camp officer. LAW AND ORDER: CI star Vincent D'Onofrio had a great early role as the soldier given the name Gomer Pyle who was quite slow and a bit of a loose cannon. After that it shows the war from Joker's point of view and the effects of it. My mom's boyfriend Tony was pointing out the realness of the scenes to me. Kubrick also put this together with many unknown actors.

In Her Shoes (2005): This is part one of nine in the Myspace Profile Selection and for this I choose Beth. I went to school with her from elementary school and up to graduation in high school and her name was the first that came up in this random selection process. Curtis Hanson directed this film based on the novel by Jennifer Weiner. Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette star as a pair of two very different sisters. Diaz plays Maggie, a party girl who can't hold a job. Collette, one of my favorites, stars as Rose, a very successful attorney. What they have in common is their mother, who died and a very difficult step-mother. When the sisters have a falling out, Maggie goes to track down her long-lost grandmother played by the legendary Shirley MacLaine and that's where things kind of start. This could be dismissed as a chick flick and my friend Chelsea at the Blue Bottle made fun of me a little bit but I found this to be quite moving and as I said I have always liked Toni Collette so this movie became quite worth it to me.

The Little Colonel (1935): I now bring in Shirley Temple in this post Civil War film. We start with Southern belle Elizabeth Lloyd, played by Evelyn Venable, who marries a yankee soldier much to the dismay of her father, a former confederate soldier played by Lionel Barrymore. He soon disowns her but years later when moving back into town, Elizabeth has a daughter, played by Temple who slowly forms a relationship with the grumpy Colonel. Bill "Bojangles" Robinson plays a servant and a great tap dance scene occurs on the stairsteps. Respected actress Hattie McDaniel stars as a servant of the house. This has some rather racial elements by today's standards but if you can understand of those times, you might find this to be a good movie.

Never Love a Stranger (1958): This is part two of nine in my Random Myspace Profile selection where I chose the tribute profile of Steve McQueen. I have many myspace friends that are tribute profiles and when they are chosen I will look into some of their more unknown work if possible. This is where my Barrymore obsession for the week started for this is very early McQueen and the star of the movie is John Drew Barrymore and since I have always been curious to see a movie of his, I knew this was the one. Barrymore stars as Frankie Kane whose mother dies at childbirth and stays at a Catholic orphanage who they learn his parents were Jewish and kick him out. He then takes up a life of crime slowly rising to the top. Steve McQueen plays a childhood friend but becomes his adversary when becoming a cop. This was something I found on Netflix which was worth a view to see a very young Steve McQueen and to even see John Drew Barrymore who had a very unsuccessful acting career. They did what they could and even Barrymore was not horrible but never got to rise in his career due to things like drugs, among many other things.

That Midnight Kiss (1949): This is my musical for the week which stars Kathryn Grayson as an upcoming soprano actress Prudence Budell who gets her chance in an opera. She must sing with tenor Guido, played by Thomas Gomez. She then discovers another man with a great tenor voice played by Mario Lanza who then becomes her love interest. Ethel Barrymore co-stars as Prudence's grandmother and adviser. This is a fun little musical romance for if you like musicals.

The Legend of Drunken Master (1994): This is my martial arts film for the week and in my opinion Jackie Chan's best work. He stars as Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-Hung, who Jet Li has played many times in the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA series. Here, he accidently gets caught up in a smuggling ring and must fight a group of foreigners. He learns the fighting style of Drunken Boxing which his father Wong Kei-Ying, played by Ti Lung, is very opposed to. Anita Mui stars as Fei-Hung's stepmom. This movie has some great action and good fight scenes. I just wish it was not English dubbed when I saw it.

Fever Pitch (2005): The Farrelly Brothers directed this baseball comedy which stars SNL alum Jimmy Fallon as a teacher named Ben and a die-hard fan of the Boston Red Sox. Drew Barrymore stars as Lindsey, a businesswoman. Ben and Lindsey then form a relationship but she sees complications when the Red Sox are playing. I guess I relate a lot to the Ben character. Lately, my life is community theater, watching movies, and hanging out at the Blue Bottle coffee shop and I would be hard to have a relationship with but I am very content with my life right now. This movie was set during the World Series season of the Red Sox and was a nice light-hearted comedy by the Farrelly Brothers who have been known to do some very obsene things.

The Invisible Woman (1940): This is one of the sequals to THE INVISIBLE MAN thought this was more of a comedy than the first one. Virginia Bruce stars as the title character whose name is Kitty Carroll who is a model that answers an ad to volunteer to become invisible. John Barrymore plays the eccentric Professor Gibbs who has invented a machine to become invisible the success leads to some pretty funny moments. This is a much later movie for Barrymore and definetely an overlooked Universal film.

The Trial (1962): I now end with part three of nine in the Random Myspace Profile selection process, this time choosing movie buff Midnight Desperado who I appreciate having this movie I had never heard of until now. Orson Welles directs and co-stars in this strange movie which stars Anthony Perkins as a man who is arrested on this 30th birthday and is never told what for. It then leads him into a strange journey to look for the truth. This is something that has to be followed straight through which has some strange camera angles from Welles who is known for his camera work. Anthony Perkins is very good and it is unfortunate that he is really only known for playing Norman Bates in PSYCHO. I am always glad to check out his unknown but good work which he has quite a bit of.

That is it for this week. I don't believe I have anyone from the Random Myspace Profile selection for next week so I really don't know when I'll get all nine in but when I do, I just choose another nine. Thank you all for reading and please tell me what you love and what you hate and I'll be back next week in a week which includes a Pete Smith short, a River Phoenix film, and even something with Sean Astin.

FUN LITTLE FACTS

Vincent D'Onofrio (Full Metal Jacket) plays Orson Welles (The Trial director and co-star) in the 1994 film ED WOOD and later in a 2005 short film called FIVE MINUTES, MR. WELLES which he also directs.

Cameron Diaz (In her Shoes) and Drew Barrymore (Fever Pitch) played two of the three CHARLIES ANGELS in the 2000 film and in the 2003 sequal CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE.

Not much explanation really needs to be made here but Lionel Barrymore (The Little Colonel), Ethel Barrymore (That Midnight Kiss) and John Barrymore (The Invisible Woman) are all siblings. John Drew Barrymore (Never Love a Stranger) is the son of John whose career never rose like the three mentioned. Drew Barrymore (Fever Pitch) is the daughter of John Drew and the only survivor of these five and the most successfuly Barrymore since the first three mentioned. For those who do not know the Barrymores are a four generation acting family starting in the late 1800s with Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew, so you see where the name Drew comes from.

My Facebook friend Terry played the ghost of John Barrymore (The Invisible Woman) in an Anderson Mainstage comedy called I HATE HAMLET.