The Devil's Advocate (1997)

In The Devil's Advocate director Taylor Hackford goes way out in left field and likens lawyers to the devil and his minions. Yes the conceit is an obvious one, but its still an interesting film, though your enjoyment of it depends in large part on your ability to buy Keanu Reeves a) as a  lawyer and b) with a southern accent, I personally went back and forth on these. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Andrew Neiderman, The Devil's Advocate is an exploration of moral choices. Keanu is a successful mid-level defense attorney who is brought into a prestigious New York law firm and in short order is saddled with its biggest criminal case in years, one which is going to test his scruples. Charlize Theron is Keanu's much tormented wife and Al Pacino is John Milton the head of the firm. Pacino of course steals the film, its his to mug with and joyfully deliver long monologues. The obvious twist isn't really a twist so they have a secondary twist which is okay. It a good looking film, fine sets, lots of atmosphere and foreboding, and the cast is good. It's satisfying though of course it may cheat a little. I'm glad I saw it, and I could certainly watch it again. ***

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Through the Shattered Lens

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1975)

A hodge podge of exploitation film types, gangster, hillbilly, vampire, woman in trouble, and with lesbian and pedophilic subtexts no less. The lead character is played by Cheryl Smith, an ill-fated actress later known as Rainbeaux Smith who would become a major starlet in exploitation fair. Smith plays Lila Lee a character who is a suppose to be 13 even though Smith was about twenty when she played her, she does look rather young though, and the makeup and wardrobe choices made for her character add to the effect and are one of many ways in which the film feels kind of dirty. Lila's Lee's father is a notorious gangster in 1920's Georgia, he has just escaped from prison and killed Lola's mother for hooking up with another man while he was in the slammer. Lila doesn't live with her mother however, she has been in the care of a nameless Reverend (played by the films writer and director Richard Blackburn) and has become something of a local celebrity for her beauty and lovely singing voice which she showcases at the Reverends church. Lila is sort of the Reverends pet project and she tries very hard to be good, she is also smitten with the Reverand who knows it and is uncomfortable with it. Lila also doesn't have many friends.

One day Lila receives a letter from a mysterious women named Lemora who tells her that her father is dying and would like to make his peace with her before he goes. In the letter Lemora tells Lila to tell no one and come to a nearby bus station that night to make the trip to the small town of Astaroth, Georgia where her father is staying. Lila stows away in a creepy neighbours car to get to town, then goes to the bus station where the creepy attendant directs her to a creepy old bus and its creepy bus driver. Basically every male Lila meets seems to take a prurient interest in her, they lust but don't act on it. Lila is the only passenger and the bus driver tells her that people rarely go to Astaroth anymore since the town was hit by a mysterious sickness. When they get near town the bus has engine trouble and the driver must stop the vehicle to work on it. He is attacked by vampire, werewolf, zombie things, Lila runs away. She is captured by someone or something and wakes up in something like a small jail, where an old hunch backed women brings her food and tells her to wait. After about a day in there Lila escapes and ends up hiding under the floorboards of a nearby house were she hears her father talking to a mysterious women. This women turns out to be Lemora. Lemora finds Lila and brings her into the house where she lives with the hunch backed women and five young children dressed in pirate costumes. She offers to give Lila a bath before taking her to a ceremony where she will meet her father.

The movie goes on an on in this weird vain, one isn't sure if it really knows where its going is just trying to introduce as many strange and atmospheric plot elements as possible. Lemora is very intersted in Lila and there is a definite lesbian subtext there to go along with the pedophilic air that the male characters seem to extend towards Lila. What happened in the town is never made exactly clear but it appears the Lemora is the queen/leader of a group of vampires who are waring against an infected group of evolutionarily degenerated vampires of whom in the course of the film Lila's father becomes one. While all this is going on the Reverend is desperately trying to find Lila, and it seems he may know something about Astartoth because he ends up there. I was actually pretty impressed with the ending, when the movie starts to show us that its really about a battle in Lila's soul between her Christan aspirations and her baser instincts. The film is low budget, but certainly creative and atmospheric, and there are some great found locations that add to the production value and look of the thing. A strange, creepy, kind of dirty film that stays just this side of the line from being truly debauched. Kind of impressive, but not for everyone. **1/2

Total Film: The Modern Guide to Movies

Abraham Lincoln (1930)

Well this is as close to a cross between the last two film I reviewed as is possible. John Huston plays Abraham Lincoln for director D. W. Griffith. Now I always felt kind of sorry for Griffith (though I've seen little of his work) that he was so successful in silent films and so not successful once talkies came around. Well turns out there is a legitimate reason for this, he's not a very good director of talkies. This film feels antiquated even for a 1930's movie set in the mid 19th century. The sets, especially at the beginning, are barley stage quality. The acting, I'll call it minimal. Huston's the only one in the film with a semblance of spark, and the movie does Mary Lincoln no favors. There is too much material covered, basically the whole of Lincolns life in little vinyets. No depth, little more then hagiography. The movie apparently exists in a number of different cuts, Wikipedia says its 97 minutes but the one I saw was just under 85. It's public domain and you can find it plenty of places online, not that you'd want to. Well as a sleep aid maybe. *1/2

Gabriel Over the White House (1933)

Despite its cloying, Capraesque title, Gabriel Over the White House is in fact one of the more disturbing movies to come out of classic Hollywood. Released in the early days of the Franklin Roosevelt Presidency, and financed by the near fanatic Roosevelt supporter William Randolph Hearst, the film is a sort of plea for an (benevolent) American Dictatorship. Walter Huston plays Judson C. 'Judd' "The Major" Hammond, and opens on his inauguration day. It is the middle of the Great Depression, and President Hammond has made a lot of campaign promises about how he is going to fight it, but in reality he's just an ineffectual, mildly corrupt, partisan hack whose in office merly to serve party and corporate interests. Hammond's long time personal secretary/implied Mistress Pendola Molloy (played by real life leftist/McCarthy victim Karen Morley) appeals to Hammond to use the office he has found himself in to do some real good for the people.Hammond instead carries on in Hoover/Harding mode until he is in a major car accident while teasingly trying to get away from some reporters. Hammond of course survives but is rendered comatose and his long time personal physician Dr. Eastman (Samuel S. Hinds) is sure that he will not pull through. Yet miraculously he does.

Weeks after the accident Hammond comes out of the coma, looks up at a mysterious light only he can see, and becomes a different man. In short order he meets with a group of unemployed veterans he had been putting off before and comes up with a plan to draft them all into a sort of public works corp. His cabinet doesn't like this so he sacks them, Congress doesn't like this so he dissolves them. Hammond also repeals prohibition, but sets up the government as the sole licensed dispenser of alcohol, infuriating organized crime as embodied by the notorious mobster 'Nick Diamond' (C. Henry Gordon), and we haven't even gotten yet to his plan to blackmail the globe into disarmament and world peace. In short Hammond becomes an unstable dictator with delusions (or as the film implies non-delusions) of divine sanction. It was maybe half way through the movie before I was hopping that someone, probably Hammond's personal assistant Hartley "Beek" Beekman (Franchot Tone) would take him out, this of course is not to be.

Gabriel Over the White House is a very strange movie, its Fascism Lite. It made me uncomfortable, and kind of angry. Never the less, I think its worth seeing, if only just to marvel at its oddness. **

You can watch it free here.

Lincoln (2012)

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln is (quit wisely) not an attempt at a life spanning bio-pic of Abe, nor does it focuses on one of the better known episodes from his Presidency, like his handling of the Fort Sumter crises or The Gettysburg Address, rather the film focuses on Lincoln's skills as a politician. Politician here is meant in perhaps its least negative sense, the film which is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize winning examination of Lincolns political skill Team of Rivals, focuses on the behind the scenes efforts in January of 1865 that resulted in the passage of the definitively slavery ending 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Lincoln ethereal but shrewd, I think a lot can be said for the unique high raspy voice he gives his Abraham.

At the start of the film the war is going so well for the Union that Lincoln fears the Confederacy might sue for peace before the newly elected Republican congress can take there seats in March. Lincoln knows that the people are tired of war, and if the south offers to surrender in return for keeping there slaves the public might just force him to accept that offer, and Lincoln is desperate to get the slavery issue decided once and for all with abolition. There fore Lincoln employs a diverse group of characters, congressman, political operatives, cabinet members, and even his wife in an effort to cajole lam duck Democrats and shoehorn in the amendment before a forthcoming Confederate peace delegation can arrive in Washington. The film is full of interesting, real-life characters who are largely lesser known, and who give a gamut of our greater character actors juicy roles with which to chew. David Stratharin, Hal Holbrook, Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader, Salley Field, Michael Stuhlbarg, Bruce McGill and many others get to put on that 19th century make up and have a fun time just acting. This is a very talkie movie, very little action per-say, but it's engaging throughout and quite fascinating in being a big budget, all-star vehicle, that one can easily imagine ending up as a stage play adaptation on PBS. Really rather refreshing. ***1/2

The Obscure Hollow- Great Pictures.

The Citadel (1938)

Adaptation of the 1937 A. J. Cronin novel of the same name that had an influence on the establishment of Britain's National Health Service. The film stars Robert Donat (a year before achieving cinematic immortality in the title role of Goodbye Mr. Chips) as Dr. Andrew Manson, a Scottish born recent med school graduate taking his first position in a small Welsh coal mining town. While there he brings a still born baby back to life (that part didn't work for me), befriends an alcoholic pharmacy assistant (Ralph Richardson) with whom he blows up a contaminated sewer, and falls in love with the local school teacher (Rosland Russell). The movie follows Dr. Manson's career as he and his new wife leave the small town to work in a medical co-op for a miners, then to a struggling London practice, and then to get success caring for London's rich and powerful. Along the way the earnest, idealistic young doctor finds himself worn to a soft cynicism by early middle age, and it will take tragedy to bring him back to his crusading idealistic ways. The cast here is strong, including Rex Harrison in a small role as one of Manson's med school colleagues. This is a film I'd wanted to see for some time and I found it satisfied my fairly high expectations. Donat is really good at this kind of sympathetic role and I found Russell to be very good in a sympathetic role as well, and of course Richardson can really chew the scenery. Directed by King Vidor. ***1/2