One Hour Photo is a movie that is an old overlooked classic. This is one of the few films in which Robin Williams plays the bad guy, or indeed anyone even remotely evil. The significance of this movie has been overshadowed in the recent years of how WalMart has started from a few humble stores in the American Midwest to how it is now an umbrella corporation which covers just about all of North America dotting small towns here and there with their familiar blue leviathan megabox stores.
One Hour Photo is the story of a man who develops film at his job at the SavMart which is obviously a bastardized form of the name WalMart. Not only that, he develops crushes or otherwise internalized personal views of his patients in addition to developing the photos of their views of the Grande Canyon, the waterfalls, the National Park, etc. This was in the old days of Kodachrome where developing pictures required a darkroom, some developer, fixer, emulsion, stop, rinse, etc. Now with digital cameras and programs like www.smashmash.tv, people can develop their pictures instantly without darkrooms and hands smelling of that crisp sour smell of film developing liquid.
He is a decidedly dark and psychotic man as he fills in the number of prints to be developed to be one more than the customer requests. That way, he could have a copy for himself which he pastes all over his wall in a multihundred photo collage which later on in the movie, the Police look over with interest. There is one customer in particular a woman, who he develops an empathy for. He also sees what her husband looks like in her photos and is surprised when the husband comes in alone and asks for pictures developed and sees this husband in semierotic photos with another woman. And why does this husband character look so much like the Canadian basketball player Steve Nash? He struggles with whether or not to tell the wife whom he has become friends with. While he is busily mulling over this latest controversy, the boss of the SavMart has announced that he has checked the receipts against the counter on the photo developing machine and concludes that extra copies have been printed and decides to fire Robin Williams and gives him a week's notice.
Robin Williams decides to use the last week to his advantage as he stalks the husband in a hotel room where the husband is with that other woman and under knifepoint gets him to promise to forswear his infidelity. He does. Robin Williams does not kill the guy.
It turns out that Robin Williams did not have too much to worry about because within a couple of years, photo developing would be phased out at WalMart as people are using digital cameras exclusively. Some digital cameras which are children's toys are sold for as little as $20. The scene with the blue vest on the coat hanger as Robin Williams is busily working out his latest dageurrotypical machinations must send a chill down the spine of WalMart employees.
4 stars. Five stars if he killed the guy.
The Aviator - Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, this movie is about the life of Howard Hughes.
Howard Hughes is the recipient of a fortune because his father in the oil business, invented a drill bit for oil wells.
Howard Hughes, initially in the oil industry spends his money on making early Hollywood films. Howard Hughes should be most known for his movie making efforts. He was a pioneer and one of the first movie makers to go large scale, spending millions of dollars and up to five years on a movie. His major early movies were Hell's Angels based on the World War One flying aces and Scarface, based on the life of Al Capone. Even into the 1950s, he was making movies like The Outlaw with Jane Russell.
Howard Hughes, in his early film years had started that strange descent into craziness. Phrases like "Come in with the milk" and "It's the wave of the future" were no doubt startlingly culled from whatever strange plane that Howard Hughes existed on in the Universe.
He was one of the first major directors.
Later on, Howard Hughes lapsed into his other love which was aviation. In that, he was also a pioneer. He was the first private one man head of an airline. During the 1950s, he made the world's largest plane ever called The Spruce Goose which flew on one afternoon for 45 minutes in a harbour.
Later on, he was bought out. Sigh, yes, Standard Oil bought him out of his oil ventures. Hollywood bought out his film company and finally he was forced to sell his airline to Pan Am.
In the last phase of Howard Hughes life, he became a junkie as he started to regularly intravenously use drugs such as morphine sulfate. Famously, his hair and fingernails grew long.
Howard Hughes spent his last years moving from the film studio world of Los Angeles California and its film suburbs like Burbank, Culver City, and moved to the Las Vegas strip. At that strange time in Howard Hughes life, strange characters from the criminal underworld were his personal security guards. During that time, Howard Hughes was in a real estate craze and travelled to different places buying up real estate after he had already bought up a bunch of real estate in Las Vegas. Weeks before he died, Howard Hughes even visited the Bayshore Inn on Coal Harbour near Stanley Park in Vancouver Canada.
Howard Hughes died on a plane ride from Mexico to Texas in 1979. One of his nephews had inherited his billion dollar estate.
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