The Love That Lifted a Man to Paradise...

...and Hurled Him Back to Earth Again

The man would be Philip Carey (Leslie Howard); a sensitive, club-footed artist who is forced to study medicine after his art work is deemed mediocre in Paris.

The film would be "Of Human Bondage".

In London Philip meets Mildred Rogers (Bette Davis) an illiterate tearoom waitress with whom he becomes infatuated and obsessed.

He sees her in his anatomy books and fails his medical midterm because he can't get her out of his head.

He invites her to the theater and courts her, to which she usually replies "I don't mind" with her heavy Cockney accent. Then one day she announces she will get married to Miller (Alan Hale), an older salesman, and asks Philip to get over her.

He obviously doesn't and throughout the story Mildred will exert a strange power over him that will lead him to forgive her every single time, giving her an apartment while she flirts with his best friend and leading to a tragic conclusion.

Based on W. Somerset Maugham's autobiographical novel and directed by John Cromwell, this is the most famous of the film versions, mostly because of what it wasn't.

In what to this day remains a known anecdote for film buffs and award insiders, the movie, which resulted in unanimous praise for Davis, was not nominated for a single Academy Award.

It was Davis' twenty third film, but considering this was in the studio system era when actors were forced into contract films and ended up starring in up to four films a year (Bette herself had four more pictures released in 1934) we can say that this was her breakthrough.

She'd been working since 1931 and was 25 when "Of Human Bondage" was released. The critics loved her work, mostly because it was a total revelation.

Legend has it that Leslie Howard wasn't so keen on working with the newbie and started the film acting carelessly; later, he would constantly try to up his game in order to catch up with his ferocious costar.

Now it seems unbelievable to think back of a time where Howard's name had top billing and Davis was an unknown. Makes you wonder what the actor would've accomplished if it hadn't been for his untimely death. He apparently was very influential, even giving Bogie his first major role, but that's a story for another occasion.

When Oscar announced its nominations in 1935 the film failed to be nominated in every single category, the biggest upset was of course Best Actress.

Davis would be quoted as saying her career was BM and AM (before Maugham and after Maugham respectively) which is a small example of how big the film was in her life.

After Davis' snub, Hollywood went beserk and for the one and only time in Academy history there was a write-in nominee.

Since the Academy didn't allow this in its rules, official records don't show the nomination, but it happened.

And so did this performance, a tour de force in which her sexiness and vulgarity played side to side, luckily it's pre-Code so the sexuality of the characters is on the surface.

Her Cockney accent is perfect, but the work she does with her mannierisms and eyes is the real wonder here. Somehow she makes Mildred someone so awful and revolting that you can't stand her, but at the same time you understand why Philip takes her back every single time.

In her last scene (a shocking transformation that doesn't happen outside as it does within her) you make up your mind about your feelings toward Mildred and whether they are good or bad, very few performances in history dig so deep under your skin.

It's as if we were bound to her in some way or another.

As every human being is to something or other.

Why so smug Javier?

Click here to find out.

Oh...

Nevermind.

Lucky bastard!

Vantage Point *

Director: Pete Travis

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker

Eduardo Noriega, Edgar Ramírez, Said Taghmaoui, Ayelet Zurer

William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver

Boasting an impressive cast, the film tells the story of the attempted assassination of the American President (Hurt) through eight different points of view.

The story unfolds in Salamanca, Spain, home to a world summit to stop terrorism where several heads of state are meeting. Of course the one causing the most controversy is the American one and in the film's only moment of truth, crowds are seen protesting and accusing him of being the real terrorist.

With this hostile setting, it comes as no wonder when the President is shot by a sniper. Minutes later a bomb explodes killing dozens of people in the square where the conference is being held.

After this, the film goes back in time to the exact same hour in order to show the events through the eyes of each character. Not as "Rashomon" in its development as it wants to be, it feels more like an episode of a television action drama, where after each commercial break we get new clues to solving the mystery and save the world.

While the technical execution is rather good and engaging (although they could've gotten a different shot of the explosion for each flashback...) , the story is filled with more clichés than a Hallmark card. These come especially in the form of some characters and the dialogues they're forced to say.

Weaver injects fire and entertaining bitchiness to a CNN like producer, Zoe Saldana brings a peaceful sense of dignity to her outspoken reporter. Noriega and Ramírez are affecting as opposing sides who have more than they think in common, Quaid's performance as a not so young bodyguard trying to live up to his glorious past gives the actor a great opportunity to shine and Hurt can probably do no wrong, despite the awful lines he's given which are supposed to be inspirational.

But with most characters the film paints everything too by the numbers, sometimes insulting laws of common sense.

As if this wasn't bad enough, most of the film's flaws come in the shape of stereotypes the characters are supposed to be fighting against.

Having Whitaker play a saintly man who can do absolutely no wrong and goes around saving little girls and taping everything with his indestructible camcorder comes off looking as a forced attempt to soften his enigmatic looks, while the beautiful Zurer is given Spanish lines which for American audiences might result romantic, but for people who know the language sound like soap opera parodies.

There is nothing eminently wrong with a Hollywood film that features over the top chase sequences, explosions and body doubles. In a way we've come to expect it of a film like this.

What results monstruous is that the same film tries to deliver a message of world conscience, while reducing the idea of terrorism to a game whose winning is limited to the regulations of American foreign policy.

A film which at some level tries to promote international understanding and then kills off every non American character comes off looking as one with double standards, or maybe scarily honest in its innocence not to nocitce what it's doing.

"To be Queen is to be less than human...

...it's to put pride before desire."

Wearing very white makeup and a shaved hairline, Bette Davis played Elizabeth I in 1939's "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex".

Starring opposite (in more ways than one) Errol Flynn as the Earl of Essex, the film chronicles the love affair between both characters and the crown that ultimately separated them.

While director Michael Curtiz does his best to create a compelling drama, sometimes the story comes off looking as a bit shallow and merely at the service of the sumptuous Technicolor cinematography and Orry-Kelly costumes (an inspiration for last year's Elizabeth film perhaps?).

Sometimes the actions lead us to think that this is an essay on how rulers first and foremost are human, leading them to commit mistakes in the name of their very essence.

But is it really safe to say that Queen Elizabeth I would force her troops to withdraw from Ireland just because she was having a lovers' quarrel?

While Errol Flynn is at his charming best (that he chooses to use his Aussie accent proves just how much of a star he knew he was) and Olivia de Havilland, Vincent Price and Donald Crisp are satisfying in supporting roles, the film ultimately belongs to Davis.

Giving one of her best, and curiously less famous, performances she chews the scenery, does her best British accent and commands her subjects without ever losing perspective of the more personal side of what it's like to be a woman who happens to be a queen.

Davis was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar that year for "Dark Victory" which she said was her personal favorite.

In the movie's greatest scene she declares her love to Essex, only to minutes later realize this love could bring down her entire kingdom.

The shift in the mood occurs in the blink of an eye and despite all the wigs, jewels and clothes she has on, Davis is practically naked up there.

She would reprise the role later in her career and some of the themes in the plot would surface along her majestic filmography.

Horton Hears a Who! ***

Director: Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino

After the maligned live action versions of two of his most beloved books, Hollywood finally turns to CGI in order to deliver Dr. Seuss' "Horton Hears a Who!"; a beautiful fable that has not lost any of its relevance and power.

Horton is an imaginative elephant living in the Jungle of Nool. One day a tiny dust speck flies past him while he's taking a bath. To his disbelief Horton hears a sound coming from it, catches it and carefully places it atop a clover.

Soon he discovers that he was right and in fact the dust speck holds the city of Whoville, led by Ned the Mayor who begins to communicate with Horton and agrees that the city needs to be put in a more stable place.

Horton decides to lead them to safety to the dismay of the entire jungle, including self appointed ruler Sour Kangaroo who does everything she can to stop Horton's insane ideas from spreading through the entire population.

The Mayor of Whoville is going through the same situation, since he must convince the skeptical city council that something wrong might happen to their town and that he's receiving his information from a giant elephant in the sky.

Dr. Seuss' books were usually made of a few dozen pages, which when taking into consideration the debatable rule that one page equals one minute of screen time, would deem his stories worthy of only short films.

In theory this may have been what made the live action adaptations so dreadful and what should make this one a failure as well.

It may have seemed as if the books and cinema would never be able to come together. While one is intimate and straight to the point, the other needed the spectacle to feel relevant.

But behold! The filmmakers behind this adaptation have made the first feature length Dr. Seuss' film that pays tribute to both mediums.

Horton's motto that "a person's a person, no matter how small" doesn't really need much time to be explained, which is why it's surprising that here it never exhausts its stay.

With painstakingly gorgeous animation work, every little element in the jungle seems to have popped to life from the book.

Despite the fact that Dr. Seuss' illustrations were usually monochromatic and very simple, in the CGI world created for this movie, all the objects and characters give us the idea that this full form was merely the next step.

The animals are filled with curious little details and Whoville could very well be dubbed as the city of whimsy. Like its source material, the film has the ability to make you smile without trying too hard.

Of course sometimes we get the obligatory pop culture references, like a networking site called Whospace, Al Gore jokes and the resemblance of the mayor's son Jojo, to Paul Dano's character in "Little Miss Sunshine", but even these small nuances can't hide the joy that lies behind a timeless story that aptly empowers audiences to question their surroundings.

Dr. Seuss had the ability to make his McCarthyan allegory a tale from which everybody could get something.

For some it might be an initial kick into wondering what is beyond this world, while for others it remains essentially a reminder to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Whatever conclusion you get to, the film speaks better for itself and with itself, for how often can you go to a theater and have an animated elephant evoke "A Man for All Seasons"?

Bette Davis Week.

To celebrate the centennial of one of the greatest film stars that ever lived, it's "Bette Davis Week" at Movies Kick Ass.

Visit the site where I will be reviewing a brand new (to me at least) Davis' movie every day until Saturday when I'll be counting down on my favorite Bette moments.

And right here at the blog there'll be quotes, pictures and all sorts of things from her films.

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy week.