The Longest Yard (Robert Aldrich, 1974)

This one is simple to suss out. Check out that mouthy poster below. It doesn't lie. Everything except the 45-minute football game is a mess, tonally, structurally, narratively. The first half drags out the exposition and still leaves many fundamental questions unanswered. This includes dreary attempts at humor and a shoddily written warden character that the normally perfect Eddie Albert can do little to salvage. The game, by contrast, is tight, pure excitement. Any film that gets me to bite my nails over the outcome of a football game has got to be performing some kind of miracle. So that's a strong B indeed. But no crowd-pleasing sports flick needs to run 123 minutes. Trim that first half and we'd have a fabulous genre pic. 

Grade: B 

The Killing of Sister George (Robert Aldrich, 1968)

Lawd, this was difficult to get through! It reminded me of the most overrated film of all time - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966). Why do the characters in both films act as if they've been stricken with hebephrenia? I know Susannah York's Childie is supposed to be an adult baby (of sorts) but what's the excuse for the other characters? As with Woolf, why do they sound like Martians trying out English for the first time? Was it a function of transferring plays to film? Was this considered great acting then (and now?)? As with Prêt-à-Porter and Gosford Park, I see no huge qualitative differences between the two films. I also can't see Aldrich, the fine stylist of Kiss Me Deadly and Ulzana's Raid, in this at all. Help?
Grade: a tentative B-minus