Glen or Glenda (1953)

This movie was way wacky. Maybe I am kind of getting into watching Ed Wood movies, but I probably won't consume them at a rate quicker than 1 per month. Anyway, this movie is pretty odd. It's hosted by Bela Lugosi ala Masterpiece Theater. He tells the story of Glen/da, who is a man transitioning to be a woman. I guess this is loosely based on Christine Jorgensen's story, also.

Going into this, I thought the narrative would inevitably be transphobic, at least with posters advertising it as a "strange" case of a "man." Most of the film does treat Glenda as a freak, but there are a couple of glimpses into Ed Wood's maybe interesting opinions about trans issues. As far as I know, he was into wearing ladies' clothes, but he still identified as a man. Once or twice in the film, the narrator makes it clear that changing your gender does not make you weird, strange, or unnatural. He even states that humans do a lot of unnatural things, like drive cars or wear make up, so why is changing one's gender so wrong?

P.S. This movie is #366 this year, so I guess I've surpassed my goal of watching 365 movies.

3/5 pizzas

Night and Fog (1955)

Man, what a not fun movie to watch right before you go to sleep. I maybe didn't know what this movie was about, only that it was directed by Alain Resnais -- a dude who directed another movie I like. Anyway, I found out this was maybe the first Holocaust documentary made. It's only 30 minutes, but it's incredibly powerful and disturbing. Although he does show a bit of film footage, Resnais mostly uses stills and narration to reveal the horrors of concentration camps.

Very disturbing, very worth watching, very insomnia-causing.

4/5 pizzas

Them (1954)

This movie is incredibly boring for being a story about giant ants that attack a desert town. Only during a couple of scenes do we see actual ants eating people or getting burnt to a crisp. Most of the time, Edmund Gwenn and a team of investigators just ask people questions about the ants.

"Did you see anything strange?"
"Yes, officer, I saw a print. An ant print."
"Why don't you show me this ant print, son."
"Golly, officer, we have to waste at least 10 more minutes in this scene before I can show you the marking, so why don't you ask me some other questions about what the footprint looked like."

2/5 pizzas

Auntie Mame (1958)

For a person who claims to love Rosalind Russell, I hadn't seen many of her movies -- just the fabulous one. I decided to watch Auntie Mame so I could expand my Ros knowledge. Her friends call her Ros, no big deal. Unfortunately, AM has none of the charm that His Girl Friday has -- probably because the movie is 2 1/2 hours long, is made in Technicolor, and features the flamboyant little boy from a choice Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." It also lacks feminism and Cary Grant, which are the two buttresses for the cathedral wall that is Ros Russell in HGF. Maybe I should forget architectural metaphors.

Auntie Mame has a lot of problems. The first the viewer encounters is racism. Mame's servant - yes, servant - is an Asian man named "Ito" with a very heavy racist accent. This is almost as bad as another movie. The second problem is that this movie is loud. Mame is pretty much a blabber mouth -- picture Lorelei Gilmore + Ros Russell in His Girl Friday + Ethel Mirman in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World + Ralph Kramden + Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Russell had one thick script for this movie. The third problem is that they use the same gags over and over. Rape may also be a big joke for this movie.

Don't watch it.

2/5 pizzas