Duplicity: Espionage and romance, a good combo!

In the high stakes world of corporate espionage two former spies, and lovers, hatch a plan to make the score of a lifetime. But will they be able to trust one another long enough to pull it off?

This complex caper certainly kept the audience on its toes by not only keeping them guessing as to who exactly was playing whom, but also if the main characters (Ray and Claire) could trust each other. Writer/Director Tony Gilroy did a good job of structuring the movie in a non-linear fashion, to further aide in keeping the audience engaged in the plot, but he also created clever dialogue for the cast to eat up. Speaking of said cast, Clive Owen and Julia Roberts were dynamite as Ray and Claire, trading verbal jabs as well as kisses all the while looking cool. Their crackling exchanges might even remind some of those that are prevalent in those old 1930's and 1940's screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby. But what made Ray and Claire's story so endearing, and relatable, was that the issues they were having with their relationship mirrored those we mortals face (although rarely are ours set against the background of corporate espionage). The fear of trusting someone implicitly and loving them for who they are is something most people have to deal with in their search for their better half and Owen and Roberts (thanks to Gilroy) were able to tackle those issues and more in an intelligent manner which did not insult the audience with over-sentimentality. Neither was the love story seemingly tacked on as an afterthought to justify certain aspects of the caper plot of the film.

While Duplicity successfully waves the banner as a breezy, fun caper film, it's the heart of its main characters which sets it apart from the rest.

Grade: B

Bringing Up Baby: Blame it on film class

Before I ever stepped foot in a film class I thought all old films were the same. I thought my parents and grandparents would watch them so they could relive their younger years and point out to me that "this is the way movies should be, not littered with violence and bad language like most modern films." For the longest time I didn't believe them, but then I walked into my first film class and I was blown away by the classic films, like the one I'm going to talk about, we watched. I gained an appreciation for movies that were not bursting at the seams with CGI or curse words that would make even a sailor blush.

Doctor David Huxley’s life appears to be heading in the right direction. He has just received the final bone that will complete the brontosaurus skeleton he’s worked on for four years, plus he’s about to marry his fiancé Ms. Swallow. Everything seems great, until he meets Susan Vance. After the two share a series of unfortunate events, they head to Connecticut in order to deliver a leopard named Baby to her aunt.

The premise of the film was very screwballish, but the film itself was fun and entertaining. The main reason for that were the performances of the lead actors, Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Grant’s Huxley was a bit of a bumbler prone to pratfalls and other physical humor. He was a book worm, the type of character one would not have expected the usually suave Grant to portray. He played the perfect foil to Hepburn’s Susan. She was the exact opposite of David, free-spirited and wanting to have a good time at any price. When they were together on screen the dialogue snapped back and forth and it was hard to not laugh uncontrollably as Susan antagonized David into another precarious situation. It's a shame that more modern filmmakers cannot seem to duplicate what happened on the screen in this movie for director Howard Hawks gave the audience everything they could want in a comedy. Not only did you get Grant slipping on his hat, or Hepburn imitate a gangster's moll but you got to see those characters interact and actually build their relationship. They were not just slapped together due to some silly happenstance as is so rampant in a modern romantic comedy rather, they were allowed to figure each other out and grow so that when they finally did get together the journey they endured seemed believable and satisfying. Bringing Up Baby was a classic screwball comedy everyone could enjoy.

Grade: A