Insomnia (2002)

This pre-Batman Christopher Nolan film is a remake of a 1997 Norwegian movie of the same name, though as made plain in the commentary the director was more interested in playing with the mood and themes of the original then doing an exhaustive retread of the plot. The story concerns legendary LA Police detective William Dormer (Al Pacino playing a grizzled veteran police detective as only he can) and his partner Hap Eckhardt (Martin Donovan) who have been loaned out to a small town police department in Nightmute, Alaska (there is some history here between Dormer and the local chief played by Paul Dooley, but its details are never made clear) to investigate the murder of a 17 year old girl, Kay Connell (Crystal Lowe). While trying to hunt down the girls killer, and getting little-to-no sleep as a result of the seasonal "midnight sun", Dormer also must deal with learning that his partner is going to testify against him in an ongoing Internal Affairs investigation back home. Luring the killer to the location at which Connell's body was found by planting a false report that her backpack was still missing in the local press, Dormer shoots and kills his partner in the dense fog. Knowing how this will look Dormer decides to claim that the shot came from the fleeing suspect, who little to the detectives knowledge has seen him shoot Hap.

Dormer is now relieved of one big problem, Haps pending testimony, but has gained others, namely guilt for what he's done and the necessity to subtly cover up any lose evidence of his crime. In one of his sleepless nights at the local hotel Dormer is called by the Connells killer, a reclusive mystery novelist named Walter Finch (played by Robin Williams who here is cast against type, and very effective because of it). Finch claims the murder was an accident and that he was simply mentoring the girl who was an aspiring writer, he also uses his witnessing of Haps murder, and a conversation he records of Dormer as leverage against him. While Dormer is thus compromised he is also being investigated by young local detective Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank) in a pre-forma way as regards Haps death, but when things start not adding up she begins investigating further. Finch meanwhile is pushing Dormer to help him frame Kay's abusive boyfriend Randy Stetz (Jonathan Jackson)for the girls murder.

This is a pretty taught, character study of a murder mystery that does a good job of imparting its sense of disorientation. The setting is effective, the plot reasonably complex, the characters intriguing, and there are plenty or twists and turns both in the external action of the story and internally within the characters. Maura Tierney does some memorable work in a small part as the sympathetic manager of the hotel at which Dormer stays. Impressive stuff, a thriller that makes you feel smart, a Chris Nolan specialty. ***1/2

Retroist http://www.retroist.com/

100 Years of Movies One cinephile's chronological journey through a century of film...

Herve Attia

The Late Night Distemper of Our Times by Kliph Nesteroff

Killng Them Softley (2012)

Based on the 1974 novel Cogan's Trade by author George V. Higgins (so that's why it reminded me of The Friends of Eddie Coyle), this was kind of an odd choice for a Brad Pitt vehicle. Pitt plays Jackie Cogan a hit man for the mob who spends most of the movie acting as a kind of agent for another hit man, the down on his luck Mickey(James Gandolfini). In fact Cogan is kind of a secondary character for much of the film, the central focus of the story being on a due of small time hoods (Scoot McNairy & Ben Mendelsohn), who get in over there heads working for Johnny "Squirrel" Amato (Vince Curatola) pulling off a heist against a gambling den run by the ill fated Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta in the Ray Liotta role).

I liked that the film focused on such rather pathetic low level players in the seeming under world of this unspecified city, which could be anywhere from New Orleans to Detroit. At the same time I kind of wondered why, I mean what was the point, a character study yes, but not about very interesting characters. The violence is brief, though fairly intense, the movies plays as a series of dialogue scenes, most of them too long, punctuated by brief pieces of action. I suppose they were going for a Tarantino effect with this, and while I have a hard time pointing to any specific thing in this film as being out and out bad, my gut reaction to it was that I didn't much care for it, maybe it was trying to hard, watering down the small core of its substance to much.

The film is set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crises, this is to make it seem more relevant I guess, to provide an intriguing but not entirely effective counterpoint of a truly large level hold up of the entire financial system going on in contrast to the relatively small matter of a couple million in mob money. As I look back on the film I find myself liking it more in hindsight then I did sitting through it, maybe I just wasn't in the mood. At the same time I'm not the only one I know who found the film disappointing, I think the movie thought that playing around with genera conventions just enough to make it 'different' would make it somehow 'better'. Instead this felt disappointingly average. **1/2

Neat Index of Television Scripts

Coma (2012)

This A&E mini-series is one of the last productions to have Tony Scotts name in its credits, given the producers death two weeks before its premier. Now I personally have been in a coma and was curious to see how this productions depiction of that odd state compares with my own muffled memories thereof. However I miss read what this mini-series was to be about, its not about being in a coma, its about a nefarious plot to put people in comas for hidden purposes. No matter, this was good, turns out to be a medical thriller based on a Robin Cook novel of over 30 years ago, which had also been adapted into a movie once before.

The cast here is impressive, Richard Dreyfuss, Geena Davis, James Woods and Ellen Burstyn in supporting parts, with Burstyn's a particularly hammy one which doesn't make a ton of sense but is fun to watch, which pretty much applies to this production in toto.  The underused Lauren Ambrose is the lead playing Susan Wheeler a young medical student interning at a hospital that her grandfather co-founded (this movie is apparently set in the Atlanta area, but that isn't made clear until late in the second half). Susan notices that the hospital has been experiencing an unusual number of comas of late and proceeds to investigate, she is warned off, and threatened, but a well connected surgeon who has his own suspicions about what's going on (played by James Woods) becomes her unofficial patron and encourages her efforts. There is also a likable love interest in the form of Dr. Marc Bellows (Steven Pasquale, who interestingly made his film debut playing a love interest to the brother of  Lauran Ambrose's character on the HBO series Six Feet Under).

There are secretive staff at the hospital and even more secretive facility for coma patients call The Jefferson Institute. Susan's apartment is bugged and her roommate driven off, while Dr. Bellows has drugs planted in his car, and James Woods meets an untimely accident that ends up putting him in, you guessed it, a coma. There was a little moment early in the production were it looked like Susan, after a head injury at a swimming pool might have ended up in a coma herself, and whole mini-series would have simply occurred in her head, that was not to be however, though that probably would have been more interesting. Still I'm not really complaining, this was a fun thriller that doesn't take its self to seriously. Michael Weston, who menaced Ambrose's characters brother David (Michael C. Hall) on Six Feet Under, menaces her quite effectively in this production. I'm thinking the casting directly must have been watching a certain DVD set just prior to beginning work on this project. ***

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)

This Italian film is an example of a genre known as Giallo, which is Italian for yellow and is a reference to the color of the cheap paperback mystery and crime novels from which it derives, there are also horror and or erotic sub tones associated with Giallo. The protagonist of this film, Nora Davis (Leticia Roman) is a devotee of this kind of work, in fact when we first see her it is on a plane reading one such novel. Nora is supposed to be a young American women on her way to Rome to visit an ailing aunt. Actress Leticia Roman is hardly convincing as an American, she looks way too Italian for the part, but it kind of works in this film, because like a cheap paperback its not suppose to be realistic.

On her flight to Rome Nora's seat mate hits on her (she's model hot) and strikes up a tentative friendship, but as soon as he gets off the plane is arrested for smuggling marijuana. Nora goes to her aunts home only to find her very sick, her young hansom doctor Marcello Bassi (Italian American actor John Saxon) is there tending to her, he advises Nora of her aunts deteriorating condition and tells her that should the old women have another attack she must immediately administer her medication, he then tells her he will be at the hospital all night and gives her his phone number there should she need help. Well turns out shortly after he leaves she does, the power goes out and auntie has another attack, but by the time Nora has gotten the medicine ready the old lady has passed on. She tries to call the doctor but the phone connection is to poor to be understood, so she decides to go to the hospital which is just off the nearby Piazza di Spagna (you'll see a lot of this Piazza in the movie, its a good location to shoot). In the plaza at night Nora is mugged and the delayed effects of the marijuana cigarette her flight mate secretly gave her start to kick in. Just before blacking out completely Nora swears that she witnesses the murder of a young woman, when she comes to the next morning she is discovered by a policeman and taken to the hospital were she reunites with Dr. Bassi, the obvious love interest.

The 'everything that can go wrong will go wrong' opening minutes of the film set the disoriented mode of the picture, and quite effectively. Your really not sure what's going on, where the movie is going, or even really what its about. There is a bit of a Hitchcock flavor here, intentional, but not overwhelming, much like Charade. The plot is messy, confusing, but not that important, the films really about its mood, and how sequences are staged, and what old conventions to play with. A film enjoyable for its unpredictability, where the twists all make sense, but don't really make sense at the same time. Fun. ***

Burke & Hare (2010)

While doing research for my review of The Body Snatcher (1945) I stumbled on to the existence of this movie. Now I was actually kind of surprised that I'd never heard of it before, I mean the cast is well known if not A-list, and its directed by John Landis, who granted he hasn't done much worth writing home about in 20 years, still has impressive comic bona fides. Burke & Hare is a kind of a lose, revisionist, "comic" re-tailing of the famed West Port Murders of 1820's Edinburgh, which shout out to Edinburgh is a city that can still manage at places to stand in for its self of 180 years ago.

Simon Pegg is Burke and Andy Serkis is Hare, two down on their luck Irish immigrants, her portrayed as not very effective con-men. When there latest "cure all elixir" is outed as a fraud the two are fortunate enough to return home and find that one of Mrs. Hare's (Jessica Hynes) tenants has died. They take the corpse to a med school instructor hard up for dissectible corpses (Tom Wilkinson) who tells them he'll pay five pounds for any additional bodies they can provide him. (There as subplot about Wilkinson's Dr. Knox being in competition for a royal prize for medical research with his rival Professor Alexander Monro, played Tim Curry.) It dose not take long sadly for the two to turn to murder to keep Dr. Knox supplied with bodies and themselves supplied with loot.

While Hare is mostly greedy Burke has fallen in love with an actress, Ginny Hawkins (Isla Fisher), who seeing him out on the town celebrating comes to the kind of mistaken belief that he's made it rich in the field of "medical supplies". Burke desperately wants to finance Ginny's all female production of Macbeth, and reluctantly goes along with the murders, which they always just barley pull off, bunglers that they are. Any way its not really that funny of a picture, there's some slapstick, and a few obvious name dropping jokes ("Dr. Lister, please don't take this the wrong way, but your breath is horrible"), and a fair number of cameos of British actors you probably don't know, the funniest of wish was  Stephen Merchant's entirely silent performance as a royal footman. Pleasant enough, at times mildly clever, and I wanted to like it. Looking back on it though I canna give it more then **1/2.

Trainspotting (1996)

One of the 1990's signature highlights in that amorphous genera known as independent film, Trainspotting was also the movie that marked for American viewers Danny Boyle as a director to watch. As we know from his later best picture Oscar winner Boyle is more then happy to take us into the slums, he's very capable with characters and environments on the margins, and in general is a director with interesting things to say and clever ways of saying them. Trainspotting is based on the novel of the same name by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, an concerns a group of young adult heroin addicts and associated economically poor hangers on in late 1980's Edinburgh. One of the interesting things about this film for me was recognizing some locations from a trip I took last summer to Scotland, there's also a scene in which by implication an American tourist is mugged, which thankfully did not happen to me.

The main character in the film is Mark "Rent Boy" Renton (Ewan McGregor in a strong early performance). At the beginning of the film Mark decides to give up heroin, however he seems to pretty consistently need "just one last hit", and sobriety doesn't take, that is until he's more or less forced to quite by tragic circumstances later in the film. This movies not in a hurry to get where its going, it just seems to wander around with a group of pathetic and tragic characters for a long while, but its always interesting, and always building even if you don't notice it at first. In addition to a few well known streets in Edinburgh Boyle's done some amazing location scouting, one slum apartment in particular standing out in its rotting depressingness.

Things happen to the characters in the film that mostly they are not equipped to handle, and mostly they fall back on drugs. There is the tragic death of a baby in this movie, a child that is introduced early on crawling around in the decayed flat its mother lives in. There is a hunting shot of this child dead in its cradle, mouth open, mother panicking and desperate for a hit of heroin because she just doesn't know how else to cope, the dead child returns in some of Mark's later detox, hallucinatory sequences, crawling towards him on the celling, also quite the haunting image. There are many characters and plots in this film and they climax in a wonderfully strange almost muted drug deal and aftermath. The cast is pretty large and contains fine performances from then up and coming Brits like Jonny Lee Miller and Kelly Macdonald. It's a fine film that evokes an almost documentary flavor as it penetrates its target sub-culture. Full of rich character pieces, dark humor, tremendous energy, and a plot which you consistently don't know where it will lead you. Probably still Boyle's masterpiece. ****

Smashing the Money Ring (1939)

Reagan's third "Brass Bancroft" film proves that the "creative" powers behind this short lived franchise really didn't have that many ideas for it, or at least not good ones. The villains are of course a group of counterfeiters, but get a loud of this, they are printing their counterfeit bills inside of a prison! Keeping stolen plates a secret in prison is one thing, but where are you going to find a printing press in there? Why at the prison newspaper of course! What an odd kind of make work program, what an "out-of-the box warden", but the Prison Bugle actually gets sold on "the outside", and even the guards enjoy it. But its not the warden (William B Davidson) who is the gangs inside man, but rather a crocked guard whose name I can't be bothered to remember.

The trouble starts when the gang decides to launder there money on a gambling boat that takes wealthy patrons just outside of U. S. territorial waters to indulge their vice. The boat is run by a reformed hood of prohibition days who decides he won't play ball again and that the only way to keep himself safe is to get arrested, only instead of getting the thirty days he was expecting for hitting a cop (enough time he assumed for the authorities to figure things out), a tough on crime judge sentences him to a year in prison, and guess which prison they send him to? Now because it worked in the first film the Secret Service decides to send Bancroft undercover as a prisoner (I wont begin to discuss the ways this shouldn't work), and those scenes are actually the better parts of the film, which on the whole is just kind of there. They don't even bother giving Reagan a love interest in this one. * 1/2

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979)

Now I didn't come to The Poseidon Adventure until relatively recently (about four years ago) but in the time since I first saw that film it has taken on a near sacred quality to me, being close to the platonic ideal for a film of its type. Almost everything about that film is perfect, the pacing, the effects, the sets, the casting, the characters, it works on just about every level, it ranks alongside San Francisco (1936) as one of the two greatest "disaster movies" of all time. Now that's a lot to live up to, but The Poseidon Adventure isn't the kind of movie that leans itself to a sequel, so its not something anyone should really ever have to worry about. Ahh, but Irwin Allen, he couldn't help himself, in fact it was all foreshadowed in the originals hit song, "There's got to be a morning after", and this is it.

The only thing that really ties this film to the original, that references it at all, other then the ship, is a brief flyby of a rescue copter presumably taking the survivors of the first film to safety. It is glimpsed by the three man (or two man and one women) crew (Michael Caine, Karl Malden, and Sally Field) of a tug boat that somehow survived the massive tidal wave that capsized the titular luxury liner. Anyway the tug, named Jenny (not a Forrest Gump reference) didn't go completely unscathed, it lost the cargo it was carrying and as a result the ships captain and owner Mike Turner (Caine) will probably lose his strangely beloved craft to the bankers. That is until the crew realizes what happened to the Poseidon, they hurry to the upturned vessel in the hope of obtaining some of its doubtlessly valuable cargo under rights of maritime salvage, and maybe save some survivors while they are at it.

 

When Jenny makes it to the big boat they are met by another vessel captained by Telly Savalas. Savalas character Dr. Stefan Svevo claims to be part of a Greek Orthodox affiliated rescue mission, though being Telly Savalas, and given that he's dressed like a yachtsman, has a too fancy looking boat and a team of black outfitted henchman, I wouldn't be so sure. Anyway the two groups decide to team up to look for survivors and loot, they find both, including a blind Jack Warden and wine coinsure Slim Pickens, among others, as well as enough gold from the pursers office to ensure that Mike keeps the Jenny, and that Karl Malden get the surgery he needs for the unspecified illness he's been poorly trying to hide.

 

Anyway all turns out to not be well as  Dr. Svevo is in fact after something mysterious on the boat, which turns out to be plutonium, which is plain ridiculous. Svevo and his men get in gunfight with Turner, crew and the survivors, a shoot out not being something I had expected to see in this movie. Turner and company now must escape the still sinking ship, because in case you forgot it's still sinking, this movie seems to forget that at times, they were racing against the clock in the first film, while in this movie the boat only seems to take on water at random intervals. Anyway the group must escape and make it back to the Jenny, and a few must die in the process of doing so, you know so it means something, and Field and Caine must realize they really love each other. This is a ridiculous movie, so much talent in the cast, yet none of it on display, its pretty much a waist, as has been every other attempt I've seen to try and recapture the magic of the original Poseidon Adventure, I guess sometimes title wave only strikes once. * 1/2