Find Me Guilty (2006)

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One of legendary director Sidney Luments last films, I'm sad to say its not that great. The sick sister of the masters court room trilogy (the others being 12 Angry Men, & The Verdict), it felt just kind of there, going through the motions. Based on the true story of mobster Jackie Dinorscio who defended himself in the longest organized crime trial in U.S. history and won, it unfortunately felt a bit like a hodge podge of mob movie conventions, and an odd championing of a guy, however quirky, who was not just a gagster, but a gangster.

I'd been thinking that maybe it was the fact that Vin Diesel was the lead that turned me off, but he was actually pretty good, I think its probably the highest that his limited range can take him as an actor. Ron Silver of course was good as the judge, but no standouts among the reset of the large cast. The best scene is when Dinorscio questions the cousin who shot him on the stand, that's pretty strong, the reset little better then made for TV good (that's regular TV, not HBO). Anyway It's workable for a few hours once but I never want to see it again, my curiosity for Vin Diesel in a suit is satisfied. This just felt like the hollow shell of a good film. Grade: C-

The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

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The werewolf story, but not as we're use to it. If this story is not the source material from which our werewolf legends derive, it certainly feels like it should be. It has a literary quality, 18th century like its setting. It's primary protagonist Leon Corledo (aka 'the werewolf'') as portrayed by Oliver Reed evokes an (ironically) more principled version of Tom Jones or Barry Lyndon (yes my knowledge of 18th century literature is pretty much confined to its cinematic treatments).

There is a surprising amount of back story here, Leon is the son of a deranged former beggar who spent roughly 20 years in a dungeon, and a rather buxom mute girl he raped (I know, unexpectedly 'graphic' for lack of a better word (thankfully the rape is not shown)). Anyway Leon is raised by a well off family in Spain, he has a brief bought of werewolfism as a child, but his adoptive father and a Catholic priest seem to get that under control so that Leon's not even aware it happened. When he comes of age Leon sets off to make his way in the world, falls in love with a girl, but her father would never approve, so he reverts to werewolfism and in the end his adoptive father has to kill him. Pretty good actually, quite a lot different from your average horror film in structure and even plot. I liked it. Grade: B-

The Brides of Dracula (1960)

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Did you know that vampires are polygamists? (Insert own 'blood atonement' joke here.) A naive, collagen lipped young French women can't understand why all these Transylvanians are afraid of nighttime visitors in black, especially when they are polite enough to invite you to their castle. Sounds like she's a prime candidate to become one of the 'Brides of Dracula'. Interestingly Dracula is already dead at the beginning of this movie so it should actually be 'Brides of Baron Meinster', but that doesn't have the same ring.

I liked Peter Cushing's portal of professor Van Helsing, he's not fanatical, just dedicated. When Van Helsing encounters Yvonne Monlaur in the woods he tells her not to be afraid because he's a doctor; turns out he's a doctor of philosophy, theology, and metaphysics, so he was kind of misleading the poor young French girl (though Baron Meinster misleads her more). The real doctor is played by Miles Malleson, whose just awesome as the marginally competent Dr. Tobler, whose mostly concerned about getting paid. This is a fun movie, I liked its take, and I especially liked the unique color quality you find in these early 60's British horror imports. Grade: B-

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

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This is the film about the two kids raised by lesbian moms who track down there father (i.e. there mothers sperm donor). Turns out dad's a lade back cat who owns an organic restaurant, one mother is very put off by him while the other finds him kind of fascinating. The title is apropos as the kids are generally the most adjusted characters in the movie, the adults have there various neuroses, but none really that over the top.

Obviously many people won't care to watch a film about this kind of family, and I'll admit some of its more explicate/sexual scenes were kind of uncomfortable (I'm thinking of one in particular), but the film seems fair to me, though defiantly on the PC side. Good performances, deft handling and a refreshingly different kind of plot make this one an A-

28 Days (2000)

A party girl alcoholic is sentenced to 28 days in rehab after driving a limousine into a house. Fairly typical offering of various eccentrics in an institution, film is raised a peg by the presence of Sandra Bullock. Far from taxing, but likable. Grade: B-

The Phantom of the Opera (1962)

Hammer horror version of the off told tale fiddles with the formula a little, the storey's moved to London, the Phantoms given more of a back story, and we hear a surprising amount of the actual opera. Mostly this is dull though, a few moments of mildly engaging staging and a villain whose really an a**, but everything else is pretty bland. Grade: D-

Moscow Does Not Believe In Tears (1980)

Winner of the Best Foreign film Oscar for 1980, this is a strong even fascinating portrait of everyday life in the Soviet Union. One of a select few films that can legitimately be described as 'bitter-sweet', this movie follows three friends and there successes and failures in love from the late 1950's to the late 1970's. Film has an epic scope in terms of the expanse of time covered, but is still intimate and lightly melancholic. You believe the lead three as friends, and there is something honest and true (yet still a little on the romantic side) about how there lives play out.

One couple who starts out in a promising situation, the husband is a beloved hockey star, ends up hobbled by the mans fall in the alcoholism, which ironically turns out to be caused by the defect of his primary virtue. Another couple has a consistently strong relationship, they love each other, have realistic ambitions and are the success story of the three. The final and primary of the three leads Katernia (played the beautiful Vera Alentova) gets pregnant by a man who abandons her, and claims no responsibility do to a reluctant deception on her part. Toughened by her experience of abandonment, single mother Katernia works hard and by the lat 1970's has become a successful business director and member of the Moscow city council. She finds a late chance for love in the form of a tool and die maker played by Aleksey Batalov. Batalove's is a fun character, he knows what he wants, likes to cook, has an engaging personality and wry philosophy of life, though he's a little uncomfortably wed to traditional male concepts of how a relationship should be. Also Natalya Vavilova, who plays Katernias daughter, looks remarkably young considering she was twenty when she played her part (she honestly looks 14 or 15).

This movie has an old chestnut of a story line in following the bond between friends, and its very well done here. One of the most fascinating aspects of the film is its portrayal of every day life in the Soviet Union. You see the Russians as real people, politics or ideology never seems to enter there lives, or at least the primary considerations there in. There's an honest appreciation of the societal deficiencies of life under the U.S.S.R., food shortages, bureaucracy, and the persistence of something of a class system (even while Katrina continues to sleep in a fold out sofa bed while serving in the Moscow city council). It's an engaging even endearing picture, and so unique in its setting and cultural perspective. I really enjoyed it. Grade: A

Paranoiac (1963)

Surprising good old horror film, in fact after Peeping Tom it might well be the best of the genera's B-school to come out of the early 60's. The plot is kind of complex, it involves a wealthy English family and the possible return of a supposedly dead son. There are twists on twists, and while at first the movie seemed distressingly on the bland and slow side, it turned out in its own largely low key way to be an exquisitely wrought piece of family psychosis. I recommend. Grade: B

Eleanor and Franklin: The Early Years (1975), Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1976)

From the golden age of the American mini-series, these two entries are based on the Pulitzer prizing winning biography of the same title by Joseph P. Lash. They tell there story mostly from Eleanor's point of view, which is good because we tend to know less about her then Franklin, and to be honest I think she's probably the more interesting half of that couple. It is truly a portrait of a marriage, the historical events are of course there and well covered, but it is the relationship between these two that is the central focus. It all, as it should, feels very real, we see the course of a forty year marriage, we see it's ups and downs and can feel the changes in feelings and attitudes. The marriage is not smooth sailing, Franklin nearly ruins it with a affair in the 1910's, but they keep going, the dynamic very much altered.

There's a surprising subtlety here, and great personal performances. Edward Herrman is a good Franklin, but Jane Alexander's Eleanor is inspired, surly the fullest rendering of a first lady that I've ever seen. The first film gives you a lot of background, which fascinating, and great to have; It is an excellent piece, especially for network television. Yet as much as I liked the first I actually liked the second half more, though it wouldn't have worked half as well with out the first part. The extra context that we have for how the marriage got to where it was at the time of Franklin's inauguration is invaluable, it casts everything in a much more illuminating light. I'm also very grateful that the film didn't seem rushed, that long scene near the end with Eleanor and her daughter Anna talking about some really painfully things shortly after Franklin's passing; now that's the type of scene that is seldom allowed to play so long, but I'm very glad it did. Both films are solid, engaging, informative, and finely honed, each well worth your time.

The Early Years: B

The White House Years: B+

The Man Who Feel to Earth (1976)

Adapted from the Walter Tevis (The Hustler) novel of the same name, The Man Who Feel to Earth is a weird movie. David Bowie plays an alien from a dessert world come to Earth presumably in search of water, only he gets stranded. Though he has some advanced technical knowledge he is not a scientist, so he gets a gay patten lawyer (played by Buck Henry) to set up an ultimately very successful company for him exploiting the alien technology he does know, mostly improvements in things like cameras and something akin to a CD player. Bowie, whose character goes by the name of Thomas Jerome Newton and somehow sports a British passport, hopes to use his fortune to develop a new spacecraft (with the help of chemist Rip Torn) so he can get back to his wife and kids on his home planet.

The plot sounds like it could be interesting but its rather oddly done. The editing is odd, there are whole sequences where it looks like Newton is experiencing two realities at once, but that's never explained or really dealt with in the feature. In addition the sense of time is off, it flips forward a great deal, with some of the characters aging decades, but it always looks like the 1970's. Newton enters a long term relationship with a girl he meets at a New Mexico hotel (Candy Clark), where he relocates his company presumably because he likes the desert. Newton starts to give into our vices, especially alcohol and watching a lot of television, and a whole lot of shall we say 'intimacy' with Candy Clark, though I suppose you can say at least he does stay faithful to her (but what about his alien wife?). Ultimately there's this corporate/government cabal who thinks Newton's World Enterprises Incorporated may be overheating the economy do to its rapid output of new technologies, unable to get Bowie and Buck Henry to slow things down, they kill Henry and take Bowie prisoner for years.

This is really an odd movie, it brings to mind a number of out there, structurally or plot eccentric films of the 1970's like The Little Prince, Johnathan Livingston Seagull, and The Ruling Class. The film seems very much an influence on the directorial style and arguably themes of the work of Bowie's son Duncan Jones. Also it would be hard not to believe that the character Adrian Viedt from The Watchman was not based on Bowie's character. This is a weird film that runs from puzzlingly intriguing to tedious and never really seems to work. Grade: D

Sleepers (1996)

Based on "the controversial best seller" of the same name, Sleepers is the story of four friends who are sent to a "home for boys" after their involvement in a prank gone wrong. While at this reformatory they are brutally beaten and sodomized by a group of guards, thirteen years later they would have there revenge. The cast is excellent, Robert De Niro (playing a good priest), Dustin Hoffman (as a lawyer whose seen better days), Kevin Bacon (as the lead sadistic guard), Brad Pitt & Billy Crudup (as two of the kids grown up) and Minnie Driver (as the love interest). The actors who play the lead characters as young boys are also very good.

Film has good pace, interesting characters and settings, as well as blended genera's, its like The Shawshank Redemption as coming of age story (uggh). The film doesn't hold its punches when it comes to some hard reality's, such as the long term psychological effects of sex abuse, and the lack of opportunity's afforded to good kids in "Hells Kitchen" all though many of leads are hoods themselves, even killers, we are essentially suppose to forgive them because of there bad childhoods, this actually works better then I hope it does in real life. A good solid movie, especially strong in its first half, but still just a little shy of being a home run. Grade: B+