Divine-HD: It Should Happen to You *** (1954, Comedy)
Summary: All Gladys Glover wants is to make a name for herself in New York--which explains the giant billboard with her name plastered across it. Celebrity, of course, follows. It Should Happen to You proves that the concept of "being famous for being famous" did not arrive with Angelyne or Paris Hilton. This comedy was designed for the dumb-blonde talents of the expert Judy Holliday, re-uniting with Born Yesterday writer Garson Kanin and director George Cukor. She's in prime form, and some of her scenes with Jack Lemmon (his film debut) have a spritzy give-and-take. (Alas, his character, a documentary filmmaker, is a bit of a nag.) The media satire is a little dated, from a 21st-century perspective, and a subplot with soap magnate Peter Lawford doesn't wash. The pleasures are in Cukor's airy Manhattan location shots and Holliday's offbeat line readings, her lasting gift from a brief career. --Robert Horton
HD Cinema (106): In Country ** (1989, Drama)
Summary: Directors Sidney Lumet, Alan J. Pakula, Sydney Pollack, and Norman Jewison astutely documented the political pulse of the '60s and '70s with such films as Prince of the City, The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, and In the Heat of the Night. Lumet and Jewison have carried their cinematic social consciousness into their past two decades of filmmaking as well. In Country (1989) is Jewison's mournful look at one American family's struggle to survive the aftermath of Vietnam. The film is based on Bobbie Ann Mason's book and it was Bruce Willis's first effort to break out of his Moonlighting and Die Hard mold by tackling the dramatically dark role of Emmett, a Vietnam veteran whose flashbacks of battle horror have pushed him into isolation from the world. His niece, Samantha (Emily Lloyd), lost her dad in the war, and these two unlikely people form a bond based on a past Emmett can't escape and a future that looms bright and beautiful for Samantha. What Jewison does best is evoke the sense of hope that was once held by the forgotten survivors of that terrible war. In Country ambitiously struggles to pull all of its threads together, and while this is a wonderful character study, it has a messy, meandering structure that never quite gels or answers the questions it poses. Yet there's no denying that the climactic closing scenes have a poignancy and power that will bring tears to anyone watching. --Paula Necha
