Black Legion (1937)

A product of 1930's Hollywood with a name like Black Legion sounds like it should be an adventure serial, not a "ripped from the headlines" Law & Order-esque social issues picture, but its actually the latter. Like many a Law & Order episode Black Legion is not so much based on a real case as it is inspired by one. There was a vigilante/hate group called the Black Legion, it was one of literally hundreds of Fascistic organizations that existed in Depression era America. The Black Legion was founded in Ohio but had chapters in Michigan and other surrounding states, the group advocated so called "100% Americanism" and were very anti-emigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-Catholic ect. Local police in the Midwest largely turned a blind eye to the groups actions until they expanded there activities to representatives of "The New Deal" which they opposed as un-American. The 1936 kidnapping and murder of WPA worker Charles Poole brought a new level of pressure on local authorities and soon the Legion was on its way out, with members rounded up in connection with scores of successful and attempted murders.

Warner Brothers was the first American studio to really have it out for Fascism and was skilled at social issue picture,s so its not surprising that they would pick the Black Legion as the subject for one of their films. The studio had to overcome some opposition from the very squeamish, controversy averse Production Code Administration, but eventually they came up with a treatment of the subject matter that satisfied the censors. The movie features Humphrey Bogart in one of his first staring roles, several years before he really made it as a star with The Maltese Falcon and High Sierra. Bogart's Frank Taylor  an everyman, a worker at a Midwest machine shop with a  wife (Erin O'Brien) and a son (Dickie Jones). Franks is a nice guy, they make a point of this at the beginning, but when he gets past over for a promotion he thinks is his in favor of a go-getter son of (presumably Polish) immigrants (Henry Brandon) he becomes receptive to the sort of nativist appeals of  groups like the Black Legion. A co-worker (Joe Sawyer) brings Frank in to the organization, and at first he's very enthusiastic about it as the group helps him run his rival out of town and Frank gets that promotion he wanted. But eventually the demands of the group cost Frank his job and possibly his marriage; his friend, neighbor and co-work Ed Jackson (Dick Foran) tries to help Frank and expose the legion only to be murdered by him!

Unlike most Hollywood films of its era Black Legion does not have a happy ending, Frank goes to jail as he should, his only redemption coming from the fact that he turns state evidence and brings a lot of the Legion down with him. The film is competently directed by Archie Mayo, and the performances are mostly good but not outstanding, exceptions being Bogart who you can see developing as an actor in this, and Erin O'Brien whose got a few good, quite moments. Not an exceptional movie, but an admirable one, departing from formula and taking a few genuine risks. **1/2

The Plauge of Zombies (1966)

This Hammer Horror film is an old fashioned romp with zombies of the voodoo school. Distinguished med school professor Sir James Forbes (André Morell) receives a letter from one of his favorite students Dr. Peter Thompson (Brook Williams) asking for help. For about the past year Dr. Thompson has been the town physician for a small Cornish village that has experienced a rash of mysterious deaths that the young doctor has been unable to explain. Sir Forbes goes to visit Dr. Thompson in the village and brings along his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare) who previously went to school with Peter's wife Alice (Jacqueline Pearce). To the surprise of no one who has ever seen a movie like this Sir Forbes and company find a depressed village filled with superstitious rural folk, in fact the villagers are so superstitious that they won't let Dr. Thompson perform an autopsy on any of the deceased, and this is doubtless the primary factor in his inability to determine the cause. Note: This film is set circa 1860, I love that so many of these Hammer Horror films are set at some seemingly random juncture in the past.

Anyway as the villagers won't let the doctors examine any of the bodies the two decided they'll just have to dig one up themselves. Almost prevented from opening the unearthed casket by two constables who stop by at just the right moment, Sir James defies orders and opens it anyway reveling, surprise, that it is empty. It takes a little bit but Sir James manages to win the chief constable over, along with the local vicar and the group then digs up more coffins and low and behold they are all empty too. That same night Alice sneaks out of the house for an unknown reason and is followed by Sylvia who ends up finding her dead in the presence of a hulking, pale skinned man.

Sir James suspension begins to fall upon a local nobleman Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson) recently returned from seeking his fortune in Haiti. After a standard expository conversation in which Sir James tries to explain voodoo to his fellows, he goes to the Squires house to confront him and is promptly kicked out, but Sir James had planned on this and unlocked one of the house windows while Squire Hamilton's servant went to fetch him. Sneaking back into the house Sir Clive finds the voodoo dolls while Peter must chase after Sylvia who snuck out on him when he was suppose to be watching her, she of course heads to Clive's place.

Now it turns out that Clive's scheme was having local's killed so he could reanimate there corpses to work in his fathers old tin mine. It turns out the mine was never safe and the local's refused to work there causing Clive's late father the economic distress that would prompt his son to go Haiti to seek his fortune. Clive came back not with a fortune, but with a mastery of voodoo and some black servants who can help him with the ritual drumming that is for some reason important to the whole zombification process. One thing I don't get about Clive's plan is how indiscriminate he is with who he reanimates, I mean I don't see Mrs. Thompson and Ms. Forbes as being particularly suited to heavy lifting. Anyway, doesn't matter, Hamilton and his cronies are burned up in the end.

There is nothing particularly distinctive about his movie but its well enough done and looks okay, though it has a ridicules amount of day-for-night shots. Cliché, but not boring. **

Melancholia (2011)

Writer/director Lars von Trier is a man known the world over for his heightened ability to depress and offend. Though Melancholia is the first of Von Triers films I've actually watched, I've seen enough episodes of Brows Held High to have a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into (and no I didn't watch the Melancholia episode until after I saw the film). Though to be fair this movie wasn't as sick and depraved as I'd expected, in fact the chief mood of the piece could best be described as, well, "melancholia".

The word "melancholia" of course is related to the mood now more comely described as "melancholy" a kind of resigned, almost bemused depression. The word "melancholia" was also sometimes used, until probably as late as early last century, as a quasi-medical term  for" female hysteria" be it real or imagined. This fits thematically with the film as it chiefly focuses on the depression (though of different types, degrees, and causes) experienced by two sisters, as well as being the name given to the rouge gas giant on its way to impact the Earth.

The film is divided into two parts, each named for and focusing primarily on one of the two sisters. The first part "Justine", is centered on the sister played by Kristen Dunst, which is not an unbrave casting call given that Dunst her self has previously spent time in a rehabilitation facility for depression. It is the night of Justine's wedding reception, being held in the lavish home of her sister Clair (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her husband John (Kiefter Sutherland, yes really). Justine is a successful, and even sought after copy writer at a large advertising firm, her husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) seems like a nice guy and most everyone (with a few notable exceptions) just wants her to be happy. But Justine can't be happy, she tries to fake it, but its just not in her. The party is a long, depressing, marginally comic farce, in short a melancholic night, and by the time its over Justine and Michael are already planning to end their marriage. And also that night its discovered that a rouge planet ten times Earth's size is on its way towards us.

The second part "Clair" focuses on Charlotte Gainbsbourg's character, who is now seized with terror at the prospect of the approaching orb colliding with our planet. Her husband John (an amateur astronomer) tries to consul her with the scientific consensus that Melancholia will just pass us by, but the other melancholia has already hit. Like her sister Clair tries to hide her depression, her all encompassing feeling of impending doom, though at times she almost seems to have suppressed it, it comes back, and after her husbands suicide (Michael having now run the numbers after Melancholia's initial flyby our planet takes an over dose of sleeping pills in the horse stable) it is never to depart. Clair tries to keep her young son Leo (Cameron Spur) in the dark and hold on to some sense of hope, or at least family solidarity as the end approaches. Ironically this is when Justine becomes the stable one, having spent much of her life facing an existential oblivion, she is seemingly relived to find herself facing a real one, and knows perhaps better then most how to act when facing extinction.

The movie is a metaphor for depression and I think should be approached as one, its logic is slightly dream like, and much of its science doesn't hold up, but this is not your typical end of the world thriller. This is a somber character study with Melancholia standing in as a dues ex machine for exploring the concept of "melancholia". Its a mixture of some really good stuff, with a lot of drawn out awkwardish stuff so I didn't love it, but I did appreciated it. Not bad. ***

See also Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which I liked better.

Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

I didn't come to Kurt Vonnegut's excellent novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death until about two years ago, but I am now decidedly a fan (I later read somewhere that this book is considered the perfect novel for smart 14 year old boys, so make of that what you will). Even while reading the book I couldn't help but think it presented a very difficult prospect for cinematic adaptation, what with all the unstuck-in-timeness and all, as a consequence I really wasn't expecting all that much from director George Roy Hill's 1972 film version, so I'm delighted to say just how much those expectations were upset. Slaughterhouse-Five gets it, it strikes the right tone, somehow incorporates the majority of what you'll find in the novel, and very wisely uses a cast of unknowns. While Michael Sacks film career never really took off, he was the perfect Billy Pilgrim, a quite man who keeps his sense of awe, whether it be while serving in the second world war, training his beloved dog Spot, or finding himself in an alien zoo on the planet Tralfamadore..

The novel was the fruition of Vonnegut's long sought attempt to capture in writing his experience as an Allied POW survivor of the viscous carpet bombing of the old German city of Dresden. Vonnegut presents his tale through a fictional surrogate (though the author makes a brief cameo in the book suffering from a sever stomach aliment) and in his own unique style. It's genera bending, incorporating history, science fiction, domestic life, comedy, drama, satire and more. The disjointedness of the presentation is chief among both the book and movies strengths. We see the impact of those days in Dresden set against the panorama of an entire life, and see the deep impressions left by witnessing those horrors. Beyond the absurdist surface reading the text is often interpreted as a metaphor for post traumatic stress syndrome, and the story works well on both levels. This movie packs a lot into a 104 minutes but I never felt overwhelmed, though perhaps I would have had I not first read the book. There are a few things missing or chopped, like the character of Eliot Rosewater being cut to one scene, but I found on the whole this to be a very satisfying adaption, and I'm glad they made it in the 70's, it wouldn't have seemed as radical if made today. ***1/2

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)

The 1984 film version of George Orwell's legendary dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, makes the boast in a 'title card' at the end of the movie that is was filmed in London and environs during the months of April-June 1984, the same time and place in which the novel is set. Now this isn't exactly necessary, but neat as trivia, and I think it captures the film makers desire that the film serve more or less as the definitive picturization of the novel, and I suppose it is. That being said, any attempt to put Nineteen Eighty-Four on film can't help but be a mere simulacrum of Orwell's indefatigable novel. So much of the power of Nineteen Eighty-Four's story is that it is told as a novel, that it can present the interior of the protagonists (in this case Winston Smith) mind in a way that can not be communicated in film. The movie also lacks the ability to truly present the in-world essays on Newspeak and Goldstein's book, which are among my favorite parts of the work. Still if this movie does nothing more then to perhaps interest viewers in reading the book then it has done its job.

The movie does do a number of things right, from the propaganda sequences at the three-minutes hate, to the decaying streets of Airstrip One. Even the two leads John Hurt as Winston Smith and Suzanna Hamilton as Julia look pretty much the way you'd imagine those characters to look, though full discloser since I first read the book in the mid-1990's I pictured Julia as Pig Stye actress Liz Vassey (and no I never watched Pig Sty but she made an impression from the commercials). Richard Burton in his last film role is a pretty good O'Brian, his line reading conveys a sense of underplayed, bureaucratic, creepiness masked as benignancy. I won't say much about the plot because you should know it, save that the film does manage to cover most of the high points of the novel. I saw the edited broadcast TV version and from it you can tell that the unedited version is mildly racy. In all about as good as a film version of Nineteen Eighty-Four can be. ***

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journy (2012)

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson returns to the realm in which he made his career more then a decade ago, and in turn he does nothing new with it. It is perhaps not surprising that Jackson would be tempted by this project, rooted as it is in what proved to be his zenith. Audiences in general it seems have not known exactly what to make of Jackson's films made subsequent to the Lord of the Rings trilogy (King Kong, The Lovely Bones), though the same could honestly be said for his pre-LOTR's work (The Frighteners, Meet the Feebles). Jackson seems intent on focusing his energies on epic adaptations of existing properties, and in no way does he shy away from length, excess length in fact is one of his signatures.

The Hobbit was originally a book that author J.R.R. Tolkien had written for his children, but its surprising success upon publication prompted the author to embark on a darker, longer, and for more ambitious and adult sequel that came to be his three volume epic novel The Lord of the Rings. But I don't think Peter Jackson likes the idea of "smaller" much. Instead of a simple children's film, The Hobbit is for adults, or kind of, it wants to be for adults, but it can't help but be something of a sick sister in comparison with LOTR. Jackson really pads this thing out, somehow making it into three movies. He introduces a lot of foreshadowing of the Lord of The Rings movies, and actors like Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving, and Cate Blanchett reprise their roles from the earlier trilogy. There is plenty of what The Nostalgia Chick calls "Forced Peej Conflict", whose seemingly only purpose is to make the story longer.

All this being said however this first volume of the The Hobbit is not a bad film, its just a safe film, where we've seen everything before. The appeal lies in a desire to return to the world of the LOTR trilogy and see it fleshed out. I was not a huge fan of the original films but I liked them, and I liked this, though at the same time I can't escape the feeling that its all just slumming. ***

From the Earth to the Moon (1958)

Now I have never read the Jules Vern novel of the same name on which this movie is based, but surely, unlike this movie, it has a point to it. This movie, which I assume was made at least in part to capitalize off of the success of Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, made four years before, has no point to it, and is insidiously dull, a criticism that has been leveled against the earlier Disney film, but even as a child I found that movie to be quite engaging. Anyway the film makers do try to do a few things right with this, like casting Joseph Cotten and George Sanders, there both usually good, but here they are just waisted. In addition Don Dubbins and Debra Paget are added for a love subplot, that in keeping with the seeming ethos of the movie is flat and doesn't go anywhere, 20,000 Leagues notably didn't bother with a love sub plot.

The actual plot of the movie seems like it should be strait forward, but the title is misleading, we never get a scene on the moon. Now again I haven't read the original Jules Vern novel so I can't attested to exactly how closely this film follows or differs from the original story, but I hope a novel called From the Earth to the Moon actually involves a landing on the moon. The stories two central characters are Victor Barbicane (Joseph Cotten) a Florida based manufacturer of explosives, and Nicholle (Geroge Sanders) a presumably Virginia based maker of shell casing. Now these two have had a falling out, it seems Barbicanes explosives proved to powerfull for Nicholls shell casing and the latter blames the former for a lions share of the responsibility for Confederate defeat in the recently concluded Civil War (this movie starts in 1868 by the way).

At the beginning of the film Barbicane invites a group of wealthy munitions makers from around the world to his Florida estate to announce that he has discovered a new, ultra powerful explosive he calls "Power X" which he claims is capable of propelling a shell hundreds, even thousands of miles distant. Barbicane, and here's the writers trying to be Cold War current, proposes uniting with his piers and selling these Power X super weapons to every nation on earth, thus solving the problem of war through the threat of mutually assured destruction. When Nicholl hears about this he makes it his personal mission to prevent Barbicane from destroying the world. The Barbicane character by the way is never that consistent, at times it seems he is willing to unleash Power X on the world just to make money, at other times he comes across as an idealists just trying to prevent war, a strange thing for a munitions maker to be concernded about. However neither of those two outcomes will be accomplished when after a secret heart to heart with President Grant (odd choice given this Barbicanes supposed to have been a supporter of the Confedercy) Mr. B  becomes convinced that the world is just not yet ready for the destructive power of his Power X.

Then Barbicane gets a new idea about what to do with his supper bom-bom powder, how about a trip to the moon, that should unit humanity, right? But who to make the rocket ship? Why Nicholl of course, with a little help from the brilliant Barbicane he should be able to make a metal strong enough to cope with the power of Power X. During construction of the rocket Nicholls daughter (Debra Paget) falls in love with Barbicanes chief assistant (Don Dubbins) and subsequently sneaks onto the ship with the three men. Nicholl is horrified when he learns this, because he has rigged the ship to blow up before reaching the moon, thus keeping Barbicanes secret of Power X from an unready world and saving humanity, for now.

I'm not going to bother with the ending except to say that of course Paget and Dubbins survive, though Cotten and Sanders die, presumably, though we never get to see them after the ship is segmented. This is a pointless, painfully dull waste of a movie, The First Men in the Moon is a roughly period movie along a similar subject line that is infinitely better, and even that is little hooky, but hooky's fine, pointless and dull isn't. I was pretty pissed off by how pointless this movie proved to be. *