Authors: Bill Chambers Archives - Page 24 of 68

Terri (2011) – Blu-ray Disc

October 17, 20112011, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, Teen

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
starring Jacob Wysocki, Olivia Crocicchia, Creed Bratton, John C. Reilly
screenplay by Patrick deWitt
directed by Azazel Jacobs

by Angelo Muredda On paper, Terri looks insufferable. From its unfortunate trailer, which sells a uniform-outfitted protagonist and whimsical, quintessentially Sundance plot in which a young misfit bonds with a fortysomething man (John C. Reilly, naturally) and feels the first pangs of young love, you'd think it was assembled from the discarded organs of Wes Anderson movies past. What's most surprising about Terri, though, is its skepticism towards the calculated quirkiness of botched American indies about social rejects. When people behave strangely in this film, it isn't the result of a screenwriter groundlessly insisting on his creations' idiosyncrasy (Natalie Portman is thankfully not on hand to make a series of unique sounds when dialogue dries up), but rather a token of what Reilly, in one of many lovely moments, affectionately calls the "unknowability" of people. That curiosity about the unusual and sometimes dark impulses that decent individuals wrestle with makes director Azazel Jacobs's first feature since 2008's Momma's Man something special: a humane portrait of people who speak in fits and starts, throw inappropriate temper tantrums, and awkwardly test their sexual boundaries. Most importantly, it doesn't presume to have its young protagonists figured out. The result is an affecting twist on the coming-of-age narrative, as well as a rare film about teenagers that's in no hurry to turn the amorphousness of late adolescence into something solid and prescriptive.

Scre4m (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

October 12, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Satire, Wes Craven

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts
screenplay by Kevin Williamson
directed by Wes Craven

by Walter Chaw It seemed like a neat idea, didn't it, to offer a riff on horror movies while making a horror movie? To prove smarter than the genre while producing an effective genre product just the same–something Wes Craven couldn't quite pull off with his New Nightmare (though it was a good try). He did pretty well with the first Scream film, however, which not only gave faint, and ultimately false, hope that Craven was back, but also launched Kevin Williamson as a geek flavour of the month in the Joss Whedon mold. But looking back, Scream is the proverbial slippery slope, pulling off a neat trick at the cost of a couple of sequels (the underestimated first, the godawful second) that require that this deconstructionist urge be carried through to its only logical end: the destruction of the subject. What made Craven interesting initially, with stuff like Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, wasn't the lo-fi, kitchen sink aspect of his films (the lousiness of them, truth be told), but that they understood essential horror. Fear for your children, mainly–the thing that really moves A Nightmare on Elm Street, and powerful enough that even Craven's shitty sense of humour and timing (remember the banjo music in Last House?) couldn't undermine it. The problem with the long-postponed fourth instalment of the Scream franchise, Scre4m, is that it doesn't have anything essential about it. Built on a specious concept and the backs of films that actually have something at their centres, it's a smug, arch, irritating thing that hates its audience, hates genre films, and, curiously, hates itself most of all.

The Lion King (1994) [Platinum Edition] – DVD|[Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

October 2, 20111990s, 2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical

**/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
BD – Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
screenplay by Irene Mecchi and Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton
directed by Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff

by Bill Chambers The day The Lion King came out, during the summer of Gump, I bought a ticket for Wyatt Earp instead, convinced that I would be more satisfied by its three hours than by The Lion King's hour and change. Nobody remembers this now, but back then, the trades were counting on the reunion of Silverado collaborators Lawrence Kasdan and Kevin Costner to deliver the sleeper hit of the summer; although back then everybody involved in the production tried to pawn off the film's failure on the growing cult of Tombstone, the fact is that Wyatt Earp is, if not the most boring movie ever made, perhaps the second-most. Still, even when a friend rolled up his sleeve for me a few weeks later to reveal four fingertip-sized bruises he sustained from watching The Lion King with his girlfriend (she white-knuckled her way through the wildebeest stampede 'til his arm went to sleep), I remained unconvinced that Disney's latest blockbuster cartoon, which had grossed over $200M by that point, was worth the price of a ticket, having been taken for a ride by the prestige surrounding the dreadful Beauty and the Beast.

“Odds” and Ends

September 28, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Canada, Directors: Francis Ford Coppola, Directors: William Friedkin, Drama, Film Festivals, Horror, Thriller, TIFF, TIFF 11

The first TIFF movie I saw this year, a Canadian teen-gambling thriller called The Odds (**/****, Canada First!), is unfortunately a tiny dot in the rearview now. What I remember of it is that writer-director Simon Davidson, shooting in ‘scope presumably to announce his transition to a bigger canvas (he’s a veteran of short films, all of which previously played at the TIFF), seemed to have a good eye but trouble maintaining momentum for the length of a feature. With its Psycho-esque shocker a half-hour into the film, in fact, The Odds comes to feel like a short with two more acts tacked on. And its distinctly “Degrassi”-esque vibe of kids playing dress-up affirms the wisdom of Rian Johnson’s Brick in stylizing its high-school setting to abstraction.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (ds. Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky) + Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life (d. Werner Herzog)

September 24, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Werner Herzog, Documentary, Film Festivals, TIFF, TIFF 11

On August 19 of this year, the West Memphis Three–the no-longer-young men railroaded in a triple homicide that left a humble Arkansas town mobbishly seeking justice–were finally released from prison, making Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, which premiered at the TIFF on September 11, instantly obsolete. (The film reveals their parole in a postscript that feels laughably abrupt after 100 minutes of handwringing.) Where 1996's Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills dealt with the role of religious paranoia in the scapegoating of the West Memphis Three (who were accused of killing a trio of boys as part of a Satanic ritual) and its 1999 sequel, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, was profoundly if not explicitly about the ineffectuality of the original as an agent of change, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory is mostly a lot of housekeeping, a refresher course for viewers of the first two films and a lint trap for details about the case that have emerged in the media over the past decade. More a glorified DVD supplement than a documentary, the picture's at its best when it shows how easy it is to work up a head of righteous anger for dead kids by framing one of the fathers of the victims, Mark Byers, as the killer with "evidence" no less flimsily circumstantial than that which was used to condemn the West Memphis Three. (He had priors, his son's death didn't curb his criminal lifestyle–he must have done it!) In fact, Byers is compelled by his moment on the other side of the torch-wielding villagers to write a letter of apology to Damien Echols, the only one of the West Memphis Three on Death Row, whose head he called for back in '93. But by the end of the piece, another of the fathers, Terry Hobbs, has implicated himself in the killings by virtue of suing the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines for slander, and Byers hastily commits to this new version of events, drafting a giant pros-and-cons list that seals Hobbs's guilt in his eyes. Hobbs may well be the culprit (the DNA does not work in his favour), but the point is, eighteen years later, nobody has learned to let nature take its course–except the Zen-patient West Memphis Three.

Paul Williams: Still Alive (d. Stephen Kessler)

September 21, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music, TIFF, TIFF 11

Stephen Kessler's fun, funny Paul Williams: Still Alive proves that you can revere and challenge a documentary subject at the same time, and in that sense, the film was a tonic after watching two-plus hours of Pearl Jam blow their loads into Cameron Crowe's waiting mouth. Paul Williams is of course the diminutive singer-songwriter who was a veritable Zelig in the '70s, his facile wit making him a favourite guest of Johnny Carson, his unique look making him a viable character actor, his whorish need for attention making him powerless to turn down any offer to appear on television. (The…

Thor (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

September 20, 20112011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Fantasy, Superhero

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins
screenplay by Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz and Don Payne
directed by Kenneth Branagh

by Walter Chaw An uneasy collision of the Henry V Kenneth Branagh and the Peter's Friends Kenneth Branagh, Branagh's foray into the long-form Avengers trailer sweepstakes Thor features a star-making turn from handsome Aussie soap actor Chris Hemsworth (whose star was actually made as James T. Kirk's dad in the Star Trek reboot), a lot of debt to the kitsch elements of Superman II, and another waste-of-life post-credits teaser starring everyone's favourite one-eyed motherfucker. It has the titular Norse God of Thunder deposited fish-out-of-water-style in bumfuck New Mexico (better than Arizona, I guess, where he'd be asked for his papers, denied an education, then probably shot), where he falls under the care of mousy (?) physicist Jane (Natalie Portman), her mentor Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård), and wacky alterna-intern Darcy (Kat Dennings). He's been banished, see, by daddy Odin (Anthony Hopkins); betrayed by tricky brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston); and separated from his beloved hammer until such time as he can prove himself a true Asgardian. Gibberish? You bet. Leave it at this: the movie's pretty decent in a Starman sort of way when Thor's tossing down coffee mugs at a local greasy spoon and demanding more drink and pretty horrible when it's depicting the war between the Norse and the Frost Giants on a massive CGI stage that triggers Tron: Legacy flashbacks like wet heat does Vietnam.

Jeff, Who Lives at Home (ds. Mark & Jay Duplass)

September 18, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF, TIFF 11

I'm no mumblecore slut and found the two previous Duplass Brothers films I'd seen--The Puffy Chair and Cyrus--to be an off-putting cross between Judd Apatow and Henry Jaglom, but Jeff, Who Lives at Home is lovely. Jeff (Jason Segel) is an unemployed, 30-year-old pothead living in the basement of his widowed mom, Sharon (a surprisingly tolerable Susan Sarandon). He's obsessed with the movie Signs, but the filmmakers seem to accept, rather than ridicule, that it is simply the thing that helped him crystallize his fatalistic belief system, and that if his worldview were less limited by circumstances--namely, depression--he would perhaps…

Countdown (d. Huh Jong-ho)

September 17, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Film Festivals, South Korea, TIFF, TIFF 11

Speaking to my new friend George after a screening of the stylish but gratuitously long South Korean export Countdown, I said, "It was a good yarn, at least. It reminded me of the kind of thing Hollywood used to do and do well." "Yes, you can just see Bogie in it," he replied. Then, almost in unison, we both added: "Only the Bogart version would've been over in 90 minutes." Tae (Jung Jae-young) is a debt collector who receives a terminal diagnosis of liver cancer after passing out in traffic. Since his best hope is a transplant, he puts his…

The Oranges (d. Julian Farino)

September 13, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF, TIFF 11

Except perhaps for Hugh Laurie, who tries valiantly but hopelessly to extricate the mannerisms of Dr. House from his American persona, The Oranges feels like it was cast by a computer--why are Alison Janney and Oliver Platt even still willing to read scripts that call for a sardonic homemaker and a schlubby hubby, respectively? Catherine Keener is Laurie's ballbreaking wife, Adam Brody and Alia Shawkat are their ironic offspring, and Leighton Meester is Shawkat's hotter frenemy; what happens is that rather than elevate the material, this archetypal, overqualified cast only exacerbates its familiarity. Distinguishing itself from the rash of post-American…

Dark Horse (d. Todd Solondz)

September 11, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF, TIFF 11

For a while, at least, Todd Solondz's Dark Horse does suggest something of a response/antidote to the oeuvres of Judd Apatow and Happy Madison in general and Apatow's The 40 Year Old Virgin specifically. Jason Alexander-esque Jordan Gelber is Abe, a thirtyish man who lives with his parents (an embalmed Christopher Walken and Mia Farrow) in his childhood bedroom and works for his father in a small office that does real estate business for strip malls. He drives a Hummer, listens to '80s music, and bids on "Thundercats" memorabilia when he's supposed to be filing reports. He abuses his status as…

Pearl Jam Twenty (d. Cameron Crowe) + Sarah Palin: You Betcha! (ds. Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill)

September 11, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music, TIFF, TIFF 11

When Cameron Crowe's Pearl Jam Twenty was over, I lined up to use the bathroom between two other people, a woman and a man, who were at the same screening. The woman, who looked perhaps like she might've been in kindergarten when Pearl Jam's "Ten" came out, asked me, "That Chris Connell [sic], the guy with the–" she crooked her finger over her lip to indicate a pencil moustache, "–was he in the band?" "No," I said, "he's the lead singer of Soundgarden." "Oh," she replied, and I could tell this answer didn't satisfy her in the least, but the bathroom became vacant and she excused herself. Then the man behind me, who was closer to my age (36) and patchouli-scented, wanted to know what I thought of the film. I told him that as someone who lost track of the band–lost interest in it is the truth, but something told me not to say that, for he'd take it personally–after "Ten," I had trouble keeping up with it. He nodded sagely and said, "The thing about the drummers?"

A Dangerous Method (d. David Cronenberg)

September 9, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: David Cronenberg, Drama, Film Festivals, TIFF, TIFF 11, UK

by Bill Chambers I wish David Cronenberg would direct a script of his own again. A Dangerous Method is recognizably Cronenbergian in its careful anthropology (DePalma-esque, too, in its frequent use of the split dioptre), but it's also a hit-or-miss period talkfest, identifying it as a Christopher Hampton adaptation of a Christopher Hampton play through and through. Distilling all the expected body-horror in grotesque and painful-looking contortions of her jaw, first-billed Keira Knightley does fine if exhaustingly histrionic work as Sabina Spielrein, a patient of Carl Jung's (the ubiquitous Michael Fassbender) who becomes his apprentice while in therapy. Jung corresponds…

We Need to Talk About Kevin (d. Lynne Ramsay)

September 8, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Drama, Film Festivals, Theatrical, TIFF, TIFF 11

Elliptical, sprawling, transfixed by the natural or at least the pseudonatural (chiefly, food), We Need to Talk About Kevin confirms that Lynne Ramsay is the heir apparent to Terrence Malick in more ways than just her lack of prolificacy. But she shows that his method can be used to more sobering, less transcendental effect. Where billowing curtains are a hopeful, ethereal symbol in The Tree of Life, here they signify death; where Malick has locusts wreak biblical havoc on the farm in Days of Heaven, Ramsay has ants devour a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich left angrily smeared on a glass coffee table.…

Prom (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD

September 7, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Disney, Drama, DVD, Teen

*½/**** Image A Sound B Extras C+
starring Aimee Teegarden, Thomas McDonnell, De’Vaughn Nixon, Danielle Campbell
screenplay by Katie Welch
directed by Joe Nussbaum

by Bill Chambers Prom–not inconsequently promoted as “Disney Prom“–is an ensemble piece I’d love to call Altman-esque, but its major influence appears to be episodic television, specifically the seriocomedies one finds on Disney- owned and operated ABC Family. Much like that weekly dose of “Greek” or “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”, Prom features multifold, compartmentalized storylines, a cast that meets the minimum requirements for forming a model U.N., an unyielding soundtrack geared towards dictating emotions and/or spurring iTunes downloads, and subject matter that alternates between light comedy and light controversy. Its ending even feels like that of a season finale–enough to tide viewers over during the summer, perhaps, but hardly the soaring stuff of Chuck Workman montages. Audiences seemed to sense that Prom was just going to place a big-screen surcharge on the type of thing they’d normally watch for free, and without any larger box-office incentives (3-D, a certified heartthrob, a pre-established character), the film barely recouped its paltry $10M budget.

The Big Lebowski (1998) – [Limited Edition] Blu-ray Disc

September 1, 2011****/****, 1990s, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Sports

****/**** Image C+ Sound A Extras B
starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi
screenplay by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
directed by Joel Coen

by Walter Chaw I think that once the book closes on the Coen Brothers, they'll be seen as the premier interpreters of our time: the best literary critics; the Mark Twains. I used to believe they were simply genre tourists on this mission to do one for every genre, but it becomes apparent with each new No Country for Old Men and True Grit unlocking each vintage Miller's Crossing and The Hudsucker Proxy that they were interpreting genres long before they took on specific pieces as a whole. Coming full-circle from the wry noir of Blood Simple and Fargo and presenting itself eventually as of a piece with a later Coen noir, The Man Who Wasn't There (just as A Serious Man is a companion piece to Barton Fink), The Big Lebowski serves as the transition point in that process while also moving the brothers from broad genre takedowns to a very specific kind of literary adaptation. That they would follow it up with O Brother, Where Art Thou?, their take on The Odyssey, speaks to a mission statement of sorts: like it, The Big Lebowski is a distillation of a classic piece of literature (Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep) that completely understands its simultaneous responsibility to its own medium and to its source material. It's not as easy as it sounds.

The Fox and the Hound (1981) [25th Anniversary] + The Little Mermaid (1989) [Platinum Edition] – DVDs|The Fox and the Hound/The Fox and the Hound II (2006) [2 Movie Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

August 22, 20111980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance, ZERO STARS

THE FOX AND THE HOUND
***½/**** Image C- Sound B Extras C
uncredited screenplay, based on the novel by Daniel P. Mannix
directed by Art Stevens, Ted Berman, Richard Rich

THE LITTLE MERMAID
*½/**** Image B- Sound C Extras A
written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. With The Fox and the Hound and The Little Mermaid bookending an especially turbulent decade for a studio mortally locked in a struggle to reconcile its animation pedigree with its crass commercial instincts, the former has come to be regarded in the Disney mythology as the Good Friday to the latter’s Easter Sunday. It’s therefore fitting that the two films they most emulate are 1942’s Bambi and 1950’s Cinderella, respectively, as the Forties marked the last time the Mouse House was on the brink of foreclosure. (The Fox and the Hound goes so far as to recycle cels from Bambi.) Much like The Little Mermaid represented a somewhat cynical reboot of the fairytale default, so, too, was Cinderella a glorified salvage operation following the money-/audience-hemorrhaging pro bono work Uncle Walt did on behalf of FDR’s Good Neighbor policy. Alas, the Good Friday and Easter Sunday analogy applies to not just Disney’s phoenix-like resurrection but also the tonal and moral disparity between the two pictures: one is the sad truth; the other is wishful thinking.

Bellflower (2011) + The Change-Up (2011)|Bellflower – Blu-ray Disc + DVD

August 4, 20112011, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Fantasy, Romance, Theatrical

BELLFLOWER
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Evan Glodell, Jessie Wiseman, Taylor Dawson, Rebekah Brandes
written and directed by Evan Glodell

THE CHANGE-UP
½*/****
starring Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Mann, Olivia Wilde
screenplay by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
directed by David Dobkin

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Bellflower earns the right to its melodrama by asking what you have to live for and, more importantly, what you're willing to do to keep your life uncomplicated. Woodrow (writer-director Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Taylor Dawson) don't seem to have much of a life beyond hanging out with their friends and drinking too much–but their minds were suitably "warped" by a second-generation VHS tape of Mad Max. Now they spend their days constructing flamethrowers and muscle cars destined to fit right in with that film's end-of-the-world milieu. Woodrow hooks up with a young woman named Milly (Jessie Wiseman), and as the relationship blossoms (and breaks down), Glodell takes the opportunity to explore the unfathomable guilt and anger that drove George Miller's original road warrior–as well as what Glodell's own heroes have failed to understand about his journey. When we first meet him, Woodrow doesn't know too much about guilt or anger, so his coping mechanisms are extremely fractured. Confrontations with others are typically brief, sometimes without logical end, and the director intentionally tones down most of the violence so that his characters can wallow in passive-aggressive detachment. Sometimes the violent images are chopped out entirely, only to be saved for later in the movie, where they may or may not have been mentally re-edited by Woodrow to conform to a more favorable outcome. That's the thing about the apocalypse: it never goes quite the way you want.

Arthur (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

July 25, 20112000s, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Romance

*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C-
starring Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, Greta Gerwig, Jennifer Garner
screenplay by Peter Baynham, based on the film Arthur written and directed by Steve Gordon
directed by Jason Winer

by Ian Pugh Boy, that Russell Brand sure does talk a lot, doesn't he? Jason Winer's modernization of Steve Gordon's 1981 comedy Arthur serves as your latest reminder that Brand is turning his long-winded rambling into a full-blown comic empire–and it's a good thing it makes that point perfectly clear, because otherwise I can't think of any reason why this remake exists. Brand's slurring motormouth is on full display here, and he's such a suffocating presence that Arthur Bach's now-famous inebriety hardly plays a role. Who needs booze when you've got an immature dude who just won't shut up? Of course, the character is still nominally an alcoholic–and the film attempts to "fix" that problem in precisely the wrong way. Fearing it will be seen as an implicit endorsement of excessive drinking, Arthur launches into an overwritten screed about the attendant dangers of same, somehow assuming that Gordon's original didn't comprehend the seriousness of its own premise. Between that mistaken belief and its broad, bland humour, the picture might be more accurately considered a remake of the notorious Arthur 2: On the Rocks.

Viva Las Vegas (1964) – Blu-ray Disc

July 12, 20111960s, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Musical, Sports

***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Elvis Presley, Ann-Margret, Cesare Danova, William Demarest
screenplay by Sally Benson
directed by George Sidney

by Bill Chambers First, a word about Richard Attenborough's awesome, heartbreaking Magic. In that 1978 film, Anthony Hopkins plays Corky, a rising star on the ventriloquism circuit–hey, it was the '70s–who beats a hasty retreat to the Catskills to avoid a psychiatric evaluation that would doom his chances of working at NBC. There, he looks up his high-school crush, Peggy Ann Snow (Corky used to recite this sadly desperate/desperately sad rhyme about her: "Peggy Ann Snow, Peggy Ann Snow/Please let me follow, wherever you go"), who really could've been played by any actress of the moment approaching middle age, from Ellen Burstyn to Jill Clayburgh to Marsha Mason to Faye Dunaway. But Attenborough, ingeniously, cast former sex kitten Ann-Margret, so that Corky's nostalgic affection for Peggy isn't an abstract concept. Thereafter, the actress made a cottage industry out of her fading torchdom that reached its inevitable apotheosis when she tackled Blanche Dubois, but in Magic, it provides a crucial point of identification with a main character who can be inscrutable and unlovable that we have a pretty good idea of what Peggy Ann Snow used to be like. We'd pine for her, too.