Green for Danger (1946)

British film set at war time country hospital is an often drawing room-style, melodramatic mystery. First half hour is honestly pretty boaring, but once Alastair Sim’s Inspector Cockrill arrives on the scene he immediately begins chewing. All in all an intriguing take on the formidable archetype British detective of story telling myth, with Cockrill a character who is simultaneously capable, cocky, lazy, drool, non-committal, and at times maybe even a bit cowardly. One only wishes the detective had a more intriguing mystery to solve, and that the supporting cast had characters who were as interesting as their well realized performances. Thumbs: Sideways.

The Strattion Story (1949)

Bio-pic is the story of Monty Stratton, a poor farm boy from Texas who during a stint with the Chicago White Sox in the 1930’s became one of the sports most successful pitchers. All was nearly lost however when a hunting accident cost Stratton his leg, but Monty didn’t give up and in time returned to baseball with some success (though not as much as the movie may be seen to imply he had). Still, Jimmy Stewart in a baseball uniform overcoming adversity, what could be more American then that. Crowd pleasing piece of cornball was Stewart’s first real post-war box office hit. June Allyson plays Jimmys wife (the first of three times she would do so on screen), and Frank ’The Wizard of Oz’ Morgan plays the films major character part, Monty’s trainer Barney Wile. Likable as all get out. Thumbs Up.

The Fall (2006)

You could sum it up as an unusually sweet movie about attempting suicide, but that wouldn’t do it justice. The Fall is a very likable, visually impressive, and structurally playful movie about an injured movie stuntman (Lee Pace), who while stuck in a 1920’s Los Angles hospital, contemplates suicide and tells a meandering, seemingly improvised story (conveyed in bright and eccentric fantasy sequences) to a precocious little Hindi girl with a broken arm (Catinca Untaru, the most genuinely adorable little girl in cinema in a long time). The film is a mix of fun with a little poignancy and draws you in with its shear originality and spirit. The film is set in the innovative years of early Hollywood, and does an excellent job of reclaiming the sense of narrative and visual possibilities both of that time and place, as well as what we can be done now with advanced film technologys and a passport (the fantasy sequences take place in locations all over the world). A little pleasure of a film that should certainly be better known then it is, worth your time and suitable for nearly any age group. Thumbs Up.

The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002)

Documentary on the rise, fall, and subsequent lesser rise of the famously self promoting producer and studio head Robert Evans. Evans discovery is a famous Hollywood story, an executive for his brothers women’s clothing company, Robert was discovered by the actress Norma Shearer while swimming in the pool of a Beverly Hills Hotel. Shear thought Evans looked a lot like her late husband MGM production chief Irving Thalberg, and asked him if he’d like to play Thalberg in the movie Man of a Thousand Faces, a bio-pic about Lon Chaney. Evans of course said yes and that was the start of a brief acting career, one highlighted by his almost being thrown off the movie The Sun Also Rises, until producer Daryl F. Zanuck intervened (hence the title of this documentary).

Evans quickly transferred his Hollywood ambitions from acting to producing, and managed to briefly set up shop at 20th Century Fox before the undoubtedly eccentric new owner of Parmount, Charles Bluhdron, taped the neophoite to run that studio. Evens quickly elevated it from 9th to 1st place among Hollywood studios with a string of hit’s the included Rosemary’s Baby, The Godfather, and China Town. Evans eventually left his job as head of the studio to concentrate on the slightly less draining duties of producing, but was eventually sidelined by drug addiction, and tangential involvement in a Hollywood murder case which dried up his career and lead to near poverty. Eventually others who recognized Evans talent brought him back into the business and he’s been mildly successfu ever sincel, even voicing himself in an odd and thankfully short-lived animated series of Comedy Central (Kid Notorious).

While the rise is much more interesting then the fall, and large portions of his personal life a left out (save his marriage to Ali McGraw, which gets a lot of screen time) this is an uncommonly watchable and cinematic documentary. It’s very kinetic, full of movement, picture montages, movie and television clips, decidely period lit re-productions of Evans Hollywood home, all held together by Evans own memorable voice giving narration. Certainly a clever, showy movie befitting a maybe too clever, too showy man. Quite likable all the same. Thumbs up.

Jean Simmons (1929-2010)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

The first movie shown at the new movie club I’m in that I hadn’t actually seen before. It was a bit of an experience watching this film, it’s not what most of us were expecting. Though I was aware of the films reputation for being quite violent and was thusly braced for that, I must say that I found the first 20-30 minutes or so extremely off putting. The violence must have been quite a shocker for its time, and today still registers as particularly nervy. The shear audacity of the opening sequence, a robbery attempt in which who the good guys and who the bad guys are never feels clear (a theme actually throughout the movie) and civilians are viscously slaughtered in the streets. The film memorably comments on its self with images in the opening showing little children settings scorpions amid a colony of fire ants, and later setting burning sticks atop the insect conflict; children playing with violence, quite a metaphor, but who director Peckinpah is indicting is not entirely clear, though he himself would be a good candidate.

The film starts to get a little humanity when the defeated group of outlaws make their way down to Mexico for safety, and we start to get a little character development, with William Holden’s Pike Bishop getting the most attention. None of the characters are particualry likable and this is intentional because as I see it the film is about amorality and its consequences. Pike and his gang take a job stealing a shipment of guns from an American military train to supply a Mexican warlord and his German backers with further means of inflicting misery on others (the train robber in fact is the most fun scene in the movie). Even after having spent time in villages raided by this warlord, knowing him to be an awful man, his backers to be suspect, and in effect being asked to engage in treason against there own government, Pikes gang does the deed (only their Mexican member Angel expresses real reluctance, and he agrees on the condition that he can deliver one of the crates of guns to the Generals enemies). The conflicted feelings that arise from the evil they know they have done in aiding General Mapache, and his subsequent torture of Angel for his ‘betrayal’, leads to the films bloody climax (which resembles in many ways a bloodier version of the ending of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). An intense, in many ways unlikable movie, it does have a fair bit to say, contains some rather nuanced performances, show’s great technical skill, and gives us a sense of what a western by Tarantino might look like. So while I was far from sold at first, in the end I was impressed, challenged and entertained, so I give it a thumbs up.

A Few Good Men (1992)

Aaron Sorkin adapted from his own stage play, the one that put him on the map. Story is a legal drama about a cover up involving the accidental murder of a Marine stationed at Guantanamo Bay. Very well crafted story, but I was surprised how little it had to say about much of anything, I guess I expected more from Sorkin. That being said the movie is again very well executed and has seemingly everybody in it, Tom Cruse and Jack Nicholson‘s performances being the best remembered. Solid but not quite spectacular film. Thumbs up.

The Bridge (2006)

I think Dane Whipple had told me about this one years ago but I only now got around to seeing it. The Bridge is a documentary on the worlds most popular suicide destination: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, and some of the people who both attempted and succeeded in ending there lives there during the course of 2004. Sad film is haunting in parts, and boringly prosaic in others, but on the whole holds a tragic eeriness. Apparently the film makers had set cameras on the bridge for the course of a year and you see several people actually jump to their deaths throughout. Interview subjects are mostly family and friends of the deceased and so you get an interesting cross section of responses to suicide. Really a brilliant if morbid idea for a documentary. Thumbs up.

Bedtime for Bonzo (1951)

Movie that served as the punch line for countless Ronald Reagan jokes. Reagan plays a psychology professor (no I don’t buy it either) who in an effort to prove to his perspective father-in-law that he is worthy to marry his daughter despite his fathers criminal record, borrows a chimpanzee from the biology department and attempts to teach it right from wrong (to prove that behavior is learned not genetic you see). Reagan hires the pretty young Diana Lynn to serve as Bonzo’s nanny/mother surrogate, and Walter Slezak plays the part of the biology professor as if it had been written for S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall. Modestly funny and charmingly low key film is likable and worth a peak if your curious. Thumbs up.

Jennifer Jones (1919-2009)

I have too long failed to mention that Jennifer Jones died. I was hopping to be able to sum up her career with something insightful and brief, but even though I’ve seen a representative sample of her work I don’t really have a verdict on her as an actress. She was good in some modest roles like in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and you can see some potential in films like Since You Went Away. But she was also in overwrought productions like Duel in the Sun, David O Selznick was obsessed with her and put her in almost anything he could, I believe she was once his mistress, and later of course they married. Anyway certainly an actress who left a moderately impressive filmography.

The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)

This is the movie Woody Allen compulsively rewatchs in Annie Hall. A French documentary on occupied France during World War II, it clocks in at 4 hours 11 minutes, fortunately its divided into two parts. The film focuses on the Clermont-Ferrand region and interviews subjects from all sides including Germans, Englishmen, French collaborators and resistance fighters. What’s most impressive about the film is how honest everyone seems to be, you don’t see people aggrandizing themselves in this film, nor doing a showy job of beating up on themselves. The film is very thorough and covers all aspects of occupied France, from the political situation, to the movies, the resistance, the dating scene, even the Tour de France. Solid documentary film making, and interestingly I found the second half more engrossing then the first, just when you’d have thought the subject matter should be getting tiresome you get into its grove. Impressive, see it.

My Sister's Keeper (2009)

Based on the book by Jodi Picoult (which I guess a lot of people must love), this movie is a failure both in its predictably trite story line and its inept cinematic execution. I have some major problems with the structure of this film, its fractured narrative, the overdone musical interludes which serve only to pad the movies soundtrack, and how Jesse’s delinquency naritive is introduced, but never resolved or even explained (what’s he doing in the city by himself all the time, turns out in the book he’s setting fires, I didn’t even get a hint of that from the movie). Also on casting Cameron Diaz as the obsessive mother, no, do not cast in these kinds of parts again. The most I can say for the film is that some of the court room scenes towards the end are of middling television series quality, and Alec Baldwin is always fun to have on screen, even when he has little to do. This movie though is just a half baked mess. Skip it.