The Cove (2009), Kiss of Death (1977), My Boys Are Good Boys (1978)

This academy award winning film was produced by Fisher Stevens, the guy who played the Indian scientist in the Short Circuit movies, I know crazy right. It concerns a small cove in Taiji Japan, surrounded by steep rock hills on three sides, in which each year hundred, even thousands of dolphins are viciously slaughtered. Some dolphins are first captured and later sold to Sea World type parks around the world where they can fetch up to $150,000 dollars a head, and are then trained to be trick dolphins.

Excess dolphins especially the young are slaughtered in what turns out to be a horrendously bloody spectacle. A large part of this film is about the efforts of Ric O'Barry, formerly the head trainer on the 1960's Flipper TV show, who became a dolphin advocate after watching one of the 'Flippers' commit suicide in his arms (dolphin breathing is not automatic and they can kill themselves if the chose to stop breathing). Members of the Oceanic Preservation Society mount what is essentially a military style operation to place imbeded cameras, (developed by a movie effects company) into fake rocks and on the bottom of the cove. Again the pictures they come back with are horrifying

Interestingly the slaughtering of the dolphins is said to be for the meat, and though dolphin meat is sold in Japan it is not commonly consumed. The filmmakers ask questions about dolphin meat to Japaneses on a street in Tokyo, and most of the respondents were not even aware people ate dolphins. In addition dolphin meat can contain high levels of Mercury and be unsafe to for humans to consume. While commercial whaling was outlawed by international convention in the 1980's, commercial dolphin hunting is still legal. One of the reasons dolphin hunting is still legal is do to Japanese success at manipulating the International Whaling Commission. The Japanese bribe foreign countries, particularly Caribbean nations, to join the council and vote the Japanese line. However the footage that O'Barry and the OSPs manage to get caused a fair amount of trouble for the Japanese dolphin industry, as they snuck the footage into a IWC meeting and showed it to delegates, the nation of Dominica even left the IWC over that footage. Much remains to be done however and film invites you to get involved through the movies web site.

This is a fascinating, truly engaging film about a little known subject matter. It's beautifully shot, the information not unimportant and many of the figures in the film are quite intriguing, from Ric O'Barry to 'Private Space'.

Grade: A

Kiss of Death (1977)

Before he made theatrical films director Mike Leigh made television movies in his native England. As George Orwell said the working class is underrepresented in English literature and Leigh seems to have made it his goal to make up for this in film. His movies are subtle, underplayed, and narratively unique. Kiss of Death is a fine example of this. It is the story of Trevor (David Trelfall) a twenty something Englishmen who lives at home with his mother and works at a mortuary.

Trevor is a weird dude, and surprisingly complicated. He laughs inappropriately at the suggestion of anything sexual, and is often aloof and a man of few words among his piers; but can be quite conversational with children, and sympathetic to those in trouble (notably the feeble old women whose his would-be girlfriends neighbour). The film of course looks seventies, its film quality is not great and the sound, or more likely the sometimes thick and non enunciated accents of its characters, can make it a little hard to understand at times. At first this seems to be the story of a not particularly deep or interesting fellow, but as it progresses he becomes more and more interesting, though his story like much of life doesn't come to a traditional closing point. Like seemingly all of Leigh's work this is not a story of the traditionally pretty people, but rather the awkward, the marginalized, the complicatedly human.

Grade: B

My Boys Are Good Boys (1978)

Low budget but unusually likable b-film, by far the best movie about a juvenile lead armored truck heist I have ever seen. The movie concerns a group of boys at a California juvenile detention facility, who with the help of one of there members sister, make a brief escape to rob an armored truck and then return to there facility as if nothing had happened. The sequence depicting the pro-longed hold up (there wasn't a lot of money in the truck so they force the driver and a guard (another guard kept tied up as a hostage) to finish there rounds and collect more money) was extremely fun in a childish fantasy way. It felt like one of those child geerd movies I remember watching on Saturday afternoons in the 1980's, but given that it's about a heist I'm not sure it ever was (at least not in Utah or Idaho).

There's also an adult subplot about marital troubles between one of the kids parents, Ralph Meeker (who also produced) and Ida Lupino, both on the old side to playing the parents of a teenager. Lloyd Nolan also appears as the armored truck company inspector who investigates the case. Kind of a guilty pleasure, I can't help but like it.

Grade: C+

The Company Men (2010), The Messenger (2010), The Answer Man (2009)

John Wells is not my favorite writer. Best known as the producer of ER and The West Wing I always kind of dreaded the episodes he wrote. He seemed to be trying too hard to be relevant, and the things he had to say where never as profound as I think they were intended to be. That being said I did like The Company Men, despite its limitations.

This is the story of overpaid business types, mostly mid-management, and what happens when they cease to be overpaid business types. Its a commentary on our current economic climate, businesses that are desperate, more then anything, to keep there stock prices up, its holders happy, and pretend its still the 1990's. To do that one of the things they do is try to keep costs down so their profits seem to go up, or something to that effect. So they lay people off, and in this economy those they lay off have a hell of a time finding new work, especially work that would pay there overinflated MBA salary's. We see this through the experience of several family's, notable the Ben Afflick's, who in the end are forced to sell there beautiful home, take jobs bellow there station, and move in with his parents.

The solution here is an idealistic one, with former corporate executive Tommy Lee Jones starting a new company so as to re-employ some of the people laid off from his old one. Its not a realistic solution really, so it deflates a bit from the rest of the movie, which is cable TV good. Also there's something just really sexy about Rosemary DeWitt.

Grade: B

When I was in a major car accident last year and ended up in the hospital for a multi-week stay, it was sometime after waking up from my coma before I saw my face in a mirror, when I did and beheld my shaved head (shaved so as to make it easyer to perform brain surgery) my first thought was 'I look like Ben Foster in The Messenger'.

The Messenger had only very recently come out at that time and I didn't see any theatrical movie again until late summer, so its just now that I got around to seeing it on DVD. This is a very impressive work, with not a false note from the leads. Ben Foster is a decorated and injured Iraq War vet who is assigned to spend the last three months of his enlistment in a casualty notification unit. This is a God awful job where you go to inform the next of kin of fallen solders. Emotionally this is rather rough on all involved.

Ben develops a fascination with a certain young widow, he violates protocol to help her with things like car repair and though its never consummated, there is a mutual attraction there. This to some degree has to do with Foster's break-up with long time girlfriend Jenna Malone, who while he was away hooked up with another guy and got engaged. But the primary relationship is between Ben and his recovering alcoholic superior officer Woody Harrelson. The two must notify a lot of grieving relations in there assignment and as a result grow an interesting bond.

This is a very good movie, solid, engaging, and something new. Impressive.

Grade: A

The Answer Man stars Jeff Daniels as the reclusive author of mega selling book called Me & God. Described as a book that shaped the spirituality of a generation, and spawned many lose imitators such as The Me & God Diet, and Me & God for Atheists. Twenty years after its initial publication Daniels has become a hermit in his Philadelphia town house, he doesn't have any friends and doesn't want any. What he dose want is to get read of a great excess of books that he's built up, and in a somewhat convoluted plot device he trades them to the owner of a small book store (who can't afford to buy them, but Daniels wants to get ride of them so much he'd give them away for free) in exchange for the recovering alcoholic owner asking him one question per five books.

Daniels is capable of offering some quasi-profound advise, but he doesn't really want to, he just wants to hold up bitterly still blaming God for the death of his beloved father from Alzheimer's. Daniels has also got a really bad back, and while seeking care for it he meets a beautiful chiropractor played by Lauren Graham (not a great actress, but very capable in her limited range). Daniels pursues a relationship with Graham, who of course has a cute young son from her first marriage (the father decided he didn't want to be a father anymore and just left three years ago). So of course Graham & son bring Daniels out of his shell and force him to re-engage with the world, and I guess forgive God.

This feels like an unusually good Family Channel movie, though it boasts a surprising number of F-bombs. Cute but far from great, it still makes for a pleasant diversion.

Grade: B-

Bonnie & Clyde (1967), They Call Me Mr. Tibbs (1970)

1967 was one of those great transitional years in film making and Bonnie & Clyde is a perfect example of it. You can tell even from the first few minutes of the movie that this is something new, that its drastically different from things that came immediately before it. That's not to say that it doesn't have its forerunners in earlier films, The Live By Night from 1948 is very similar plot wise, and Europe was already doing pictures of a similar mood by the time this movie came out. Still to have a film that dealt not just with violence, but with sex the way this movie does must have been extraordinary. The subplot involving Clydes impotence and Bonnie's sexual hunger feels quite provocative, racy and pioneering. This is also Gene Wilder's first film by the way, marvel at how the whole 'Gene Wilder persona' seems so completely established in this first cinematic outing, though in some ways his whole sequence in the movie feels like its from another film.

A sequel to one of the great films of 1967 (in fact that years best picture Oscar winner) In the Heat of the Night, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs is no where near as good. Sidney Poitier reprises the Virgil Tibbs role, but here for a rather unremarkable police procedural. While in Night Tibbs is said to have come from Philadelphia, here he is for some reason transplanted to San Fransisco, where he must investigate a popular liberal preacher accused of murdering a prostitute. The cop stuff is good, but I never quite buy Martin Landau as the preacher and the whole subplot involving Tibbs family seems just there and never really gels. On the whole it felt more like an episode of a solid but not exceptional 70's cop show.


Bonnie & Clyde: A

They Call Me Mr. Tibbs: C

The Shadow: International Crime (1938), Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1939), The Jolson Story (1946)

Sequel to The Shadow Strikes, Rod La Rocque is again Lamount Cranston, who having his identity blown in the last movie has gone on to be a radio personality (can you say synergy) and crime columnist. Lamount is minus his faithful old butler from the last movie (to Bulldog Drummond perhaps) but has gained an ethnic-type cabdriver and young female reporter in his stead. Speaking of the female reporter her characters name is Ms. Lane, and given that this film premiered in April of 1938 and Lois Lane made her comics debut in June of 38' I wonder what relation these characters names have to each other? The plot here involves evil Austrians trying to foil some kind of bond deal, it doesn't really matter though because its just the Mcguffin, but then again this movie doesn't matter much either. La Rocque skates nicely through the movie with minimal effort, but like in the first Shadow picture the acting ability of the supporting players is sub par, even for a cheap programmer. Despite this I kind of liked it.

Grade: C

Mr. Moto of 'the International Police' is undercover in Egypt trying to foil a nefarious plot to sink a French fleet and cause a rift in the diplomatic relations of England and France. Mr. Moto is Japanese, which is kind of interesting considering the time this was made, in fact a whole series of Mr. Moto films was quite successful in the late 1930's. Moto is played by Hungarian born actor Peter Lorre, and so you might think the character to be ment as kind of a racial cliche, though in fact its a fairly progressive portrait of an Asian for its time. Moto is smart, he's skilled in jujitsu and can easily take on multiple assailants at the same time, and he's on the side of international justice. Moto does take on attributes of Asian cliche however when he poses in his undercover persona of antiques dealer Mr. Kuroki, but that's to through the bad guys off base so I guess that's okay.

George Sanders is one of the bad guys, as is Ricardo Cortez who posses as a ventriloquist when he's not plotting to depth charge fleets. They are working for an unnamed country, which is wink wink Germany but the picture won't say that presumably because of U.S. neutrality. John Carradine plays an ill fated British secret agent (suffocated in a submarine), Robert Coot plays a grown up tourist whose acts like a gullible eight year old, and an uncredited E.E. Clive plays the Colonel Blimp like Port Commandant General.

Be Sure to Look For: In a scene at the variety show you can see a poster advertising for a movie staring Warner Oland. This is clever because Warner Oland was the Swedish born actor best known for playing Chinese detective Charlie Chan. Oland had died about six months prior to this films release so the reference works as a kind of double homage. I rather liked this.

Grade: B

The George M. Cohan bio-pic Yankee Doodle Dandy had been a big success, so how about we make a movie about the life of pioneering singer Al Jolson? This is what must have been going through the minds of Hollywood producers, but the movie that resulted can only be considered a bio-pic in the loosest sense. It leaves out the fact that Jolson was an immigrant, the existence of his siblings, including his brother Harry who also worked in show business and had been Al's partner, his womanizing, and composites four wives into one, though mostly based on Ruby Keeler.

Mostly the film is an excuse to play through Jolson's biggest hits. The plot is streamlined and simplified until the primary thread is reduced to: 'Jolson really likes to entertain people and keeps getting more and more successful at it'. Hardly enough to hang two plus hours on but somehow it works, you like Al and his singing enough to let it pass. The singing is actually Al by the way, he dubs his own songs for actor Larry Parks. Parks does a good job, he invests the part with a great deal of enthusiasm and spunk, requisites for playing Jolson. I was also rather impressed with his miming to Jolson's music. Parks is an interesting story on his own, a one time member of the communist party he coped to it during the blacklist all but extinguishing his acting career. Parks and his wife actress Betty Garrett did manage to make a good living however, off of the rent from the various apartment buildings they owned throughout Los Angles.

The movie ends on an odd and melancholy note. Jolson has retired from singing to appease his composite wife Evelyn Keyes. Well one night they take his parents (very Jewish, though the movie avoids all reference to the anti-semitism of the time) to a night club, Al's recognized and brought up on stage, and well you know, relapse. His wife while she loves him decides she must leave him so he can per sue his true love, performing. I don't get why they had to break up over this, it just gives a real odd feeling to the last ten minutes of the movie. In addition Jolson's unusual fondness for black face is kind of uncomfortable its self. On the whole though, while nothing much really happens I liked this movie, probably more then it
deserves.

Grade: B+

Three on a Match (1932), Female (1933), The Good Earth (1937)

Returning again to the era of pre-code film we have Three on a Match, which takes its title from an old superstition that if three people light there cigarettes with the same match one will soon die. Here our three are Jr. high school classmates who meet up again about a decade later, so yes we get time passing montages. It's that old theme of young people having certain expectations in life and growing up to find that many of them are not meet (this same plot device is used in Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears among other movies).

Ruth Wescott (Bettie Davis) had the most realistic expectations, from a working class family she went to business school and got a secretarial position. Mary Keaton (as a child played by Disney's first child star Virginia Davis and as an adult by the great Joan Blondell) was a childhood trouble maker who goes to reform school and ends up a world weary, but essentially decent small time singer. Vivian Kirkwood (nee Revere) was the best positioned to start out well in life, from a wealthy family after Jr. high she went to a private girls school and eventually married rich and successful lawyer Robert Kirkwood (Warren William).

Vivian however seems never satisfied, she abandons her husband for a playboy type and takes there only child along (a strange little child actor whose name I can't find). Eventually Mary intercedes and gets the boy returned to his father, and after Robert and Vivians divorce they marry, and Ruth gets the cushy position of the childs nanny. Vivian and her new lover fall on hard times, and she eventually becomes quite addicted to cocaine and rather unhinged. Eventually a kidnapping plot of the strange child actor is hatched to pay for playboys debts to mob boss Edward Arnold, who dispatches henchman Humphry Bogart to insure all goes as planed, anyone really expect that it will? One of the three ends up dying to secure the child's safety, lousy match.

Female concerns Alison Drake (Ruth Chatterton) a young woman running her late fathers automobile company (interestingly in Dodsworth made three years later Chatterton plays the wife of the president of an automobile company). Alison's been at the job for five years and is good at it, but in ac lamenting herself to the cutthroat male driven world of big business she has also developed cadish relational traits. She loves and leaves her male secretaries, the whole factory is a candy box of men for her to chose from. This all really seems to amuse Pettigrew, Alison's short and elderly personal assistant. Yet Ms. Drake fears that no man really loves her for her, that they love her for her position and money. So one day she sneaks away from a party being held at her mansion and runs into George Brent who doesn't know her from Adam, and surprise she's smitten.

Conveniently Brent turns out to be Jim Thorpe, a talented engineer that Drake Motors has just stolen away from there competition. But Thorpe will not be just another of Alison's conquests and rejects her romantic advances, this causes her to become obsessed with finding out what type of women Thorpe likes and remodeling herself accordingly. A relationship blossoms but Thorpe insists on marriage, Alison balks so Brent skedaddles. Alison misses Brent, can't concentrate on work and becomes in danger of losing the company; she runs to Brent, tells him that she will indeed marry him, that he can run the company and that she wants "to have nine babies".

Chatterton's menanizing was daring, throwing the pillow on those fine rugs is her signal for wanting you know what. She embraces a quasi Victorianism at the end there which is a little disappointing, and takes the bite out of the films second half, still a more or less necessary concession to the conventions of the time, and I don't know how the story would have ended without it.

The Good Earth is post code, but its also the last of Irving Thalburg's epic productions and is thus very good, better and more enjoyable even then I thought it would be. Based on the Book by Pearl S. Buck it is the story of the marriage of Chinese farmer Wang Lung (Paul Muni) and former slave O-Lan (Luise Rainer). It's set in China and does a wonderful job at evoking the time, place and culture of its setting, but its also a universal story of the journey of marriage. I've heard it called an "almost biblical movie" and I would agree, the stories a kind of allegory that feels like it should sit beside Job and Esther, also there's a plague of locusts. Through times of thick and times of thin, we follow the changing fortunes of Wang and O-Lan and how there marriage survives a variety of challenges.

This is a pretty adult picture, I was surprised at the things depicted and hinted at. O-Lan loses one child shortly after birth (it could be read that she killed it as they were all starving at the time), another child suffers apparent mental retardation owing too hunger suffered during famine. You also have revolution and adultery. The cast is a mixture of actual Asians and white actors, which you have to expect from the time this was made. Generally its very respect full, Muni is strong like he always is, but Luise Rainer is the soul of the movie. She plays a timed character, and at first it seemed like the way you'd play this role was so obvious that you'd do it on auto-pilot. But Rainer evokes a lot, she says a lot in a part were she really doesn't have that many lines, especially considering how much she's in the picture. It's a beautiful characterization that earned Rainer, whose still with us at the age of 101, the second of her back to back best actress Oscars. Good flick.

Three on a Match: B

Female: C+

The Good Earth: A-

Me & Orson Wells (2009)

I actually read the book that this movie is based on. It's the story of a high school boy with dreams of the theater who ends up with a small part in Orson Wells 1937 Broadway production of Julius Cesar. Its the kind of story that straddles that line between juvenile literature and more adult fair. Zack Efforn is adequate as the juvenile lead, and Clair Danes reminds you how charming she can be in the part of the boys love interest, but it is Christian McKay's Orson Wells that caries the film. McKay's performance has been heralded by some as the best portal of Wells in film and I think I'd have to agree with them. Wells is an over sized personality, and egotist, and doubtless one it would have been hard to work with, or even just get along with, but he's still fascinating and you can't help but like him no mater what he does. The rest of the cast is good, particularly James Tupper as Joseph Cotten. It's a lite film, not too taxing, not to innovative, but satisfying, and I thought it improved as it went on. The outdoor lighting an sets are designed to reinforce the lite mood of the piece, and a nice selection of period songs enhance the nostalgia factor. A great deal of the leads 'back story' is edited out but ultimately the film works fine without it. On the whole its a good movie that mostly avoids pretension. Grade: B-

Dear Zachary (2008)

Several weeks ago I saw my mom watching this on MSNBC. Now my mom's kind of a true crime junkie and I'm basically sick of the genera so as a rule I wouldn't be interested in this, but I couldn't help but notice the quality of the presentation. It was creative, it was interesting, it was dynamic, the editing style alone made it clear that this wasn't your standard network 'murder of the week' doc. Then a couple of weeks later a friend of mine gave it a glowing endorsement on facebook and I decided I needed to see it so I gave it first place on my netflix Que. Last night I watched it, and it was an experience.

Dear Zachery is as its subtitle says 'a letter to a son about his father'. The father is Andrew Bagby, a young doctor who was murdered by an ex girlfriend who turned out to be pregnant with his son, Zachery. Zachery's mother Shirley Turner is crazy, but the Canadian justice system is having a hard time seeing that. This documentary started out as the quest of filmmaker Kurt Kuenne to learn more about his murdered friend Andrew, and after Zachery's unexpected birth morphed into a way to explain to a future older Zachery, who his father was and the tremendous effort exerted by his grandparents to rescue the child from the custody of his disturbed mother. This is a powerful emotional film, the best documentary I've seen in a really long time, the story so poignant, the presentation so brilliant, the whole package is a wonder and you will feel from this one! Quite simply an amazing, moving work. My highest recommendation. Grade: A+

The Human Stain (2003)

Just a few weeks ago I finished the novel The Human Stain by Philip Roth and I loved it. It seemed to me though the kind of book that you just couldn't adapt well into a movie. I rented the film version largely to confirm my suspicions but to my surprise this is a rather good adaptation. The plot is complex and the kind you don't want to spoil so I'll try and leave that be. The film adaptation while of course simplified conveys a good deal of the essence of the novel, it even manages to make the shifting narrative and POV of the book work in film form, which impressed me as being concertedly novelistic in a film usually results in failure. If I had to single out a performance it would be that of Wentworth Miller, playing our protagonist Coleman Silk as a young man (Anthony Hopkins plays an older Silk in 1998 portions of the film). Anyway this was good, though I suspect that my reaction to it was boosted by recent familiarity with its very impressive source novel. I don't know how good or bad I would have thought this film was if I hadn't read the book, but to me now its simply the next best thing. Grade: B