What a star!

Five great movies that showed Elizabeth Taylor at her best

Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"
A scene from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
Elizabeth Taylor starred with Mickey Rooney in "National Velvet"
Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra

For many actors/actresses, it's hard to pick even a couple of great movies they starred in. But Elizabeth Taylor, who died of congestive heart failure today, was no ordinary performer.

Through her long and illustrious career, from child star in the '40s to film star ever since, Taylor created so many memorable roles that she ranks seventh on the list of the American Film Institute's female acting legends.

It's difficult to whittle the list to five, but to get a sense of Taylor's on-screen greatness, you can't go wrong renting these films (or look for them on Turner Classic Movies):

1. National Velvet (1944) — Already a star because of her role in Lassie Come Home a year earlier, the 12-year-old Taylor endeared herself to audiences as a young girl who trains her horse to win the Grand National race. She remained friends with co-stars Mickey Rooney and Angela Lansbury throughout her life. Many of her lifelong back problems are traced to her fall off a horse during the filming.

2. A Place in the Sun (1951) — A heartbreaking American classic, this film marked a turning point in Taylor's career as she made the transition from child star to acclaimed dramatic actress. Taylor won praise for her role as a spoiled socialite who falls in love with a handsome man from the wrong side of the tracks (Montgomery Clift). She and Clift developed a special bond that lasted until his death in 1966.

3. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) — This watered-down version of Tennessee Williams' classic play is worth watching for the sizzling chemistry between Taylor and co-star Paul Newman, who were both in their prime. About a week after shooting began on the film, Taylor's husband Mike Todd was killed in an airplane crash.

4. Cleopatra (1963) — Taylor, the world's highest paid actress, met the love of her life, Richard Burton, during filming of this movie. They were both married to other spouses at the time and the tabloid press had a field day. (For those too young to remember, they were the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie/Jennifer Aniston of their day.) The cost of the movie spiraled out of control and nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox. The movie is a bit of a clunker, but it's worth it to see Burton and Taylor together on screen for the first time.

5. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) — Taylor won the second of two Academy Awards for her portrayal of the boozy wife of a college professor (Richard Burton) in the movie, based on the searing Edward Albee play. Taylor, who shed her glamourous image and gained 30 pounds for the role, won in part because the Academy loves actresses who play against type.

Her first Oscar, for her role as a call girl in the 1960 movie, BUtterfield 8, is not considered one of her great films (in fact, it's a bit of a camp classic). Taylor candidly admitted she won because of the sympathy vote after she nearly died in a London hospital after a bout with pneumonia and an emergency tracheotomy.

Others that could easily be on the list include Little Women (1949), Father of the Bride (1950), Suddenly Last Summer (1959), The Taming of the Shrew (1966), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and my personal favorite, Giant (1956), based on the Edna Ferber classic and set in west Texas, in which she stars with James Dean and Rock Hudson (another close lifelong friend). Dean died in a car crash late in the film's production.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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