His Other Band

Zeitgeist: The Movie (2007), Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

2012-01-19T11:11:00.001-07:00

Zeitgeist: The Movie

Internet polemic by independent filmmaker Peter Joseph, this has been periodically revised over the years and is kind of a YouTube favorite in the conspiracy theory department. Though it has spawned several sequels this film remains the flagship of the Zeitgeist Movement, whose central concerns are the establishment of a more equitable society and ecologically sustainable way of life, as well as informing people of the 'lies' on which our world is based. The film is divided into three acts, each seeking to expose ways in which the collective 'we' are manipulated by a power elite. The first act concerns astrotheology and the way in which Christianity is really just the latest in a series of Sun worshiping religions that has been appropriated by the elite as a tool for controlling society at large.The second act is about 9/11 conspiracy's, very well presented in a disturbingly plausible sounding way, though the consensus of experts in the fields here discussed do not agree with the thesis of the film makers. The last act concerns the global conspiracy of the power elite to return the world to a form of feudal state.

The film is really a mixture of many of the 'conspiracy greats', the false flag attack, the moneyed class and the fed, the Bush dynasty and the new world order. The thing that sets it apart the most would have to be the critique of religion, other wise most of whats in this film corresponds to the apocalyptic precepts that Pat Robertson has been expounding for years. This is kind of one of the musts for Internet film literacy, agree or disagree its certainly interesting.

Fair

Hot Tub Time Machine

It is the marked consensus of theoretical physicists that if a hot tube where a time machine, it would inevitably take you back to the mid-1980's. Director Steven Pink examines the implications of this theory on a trio of friends and one of their nephews, each of whom have experienced largely disappointing lives. After Rob Corddry is hospitalized after an apparent suicide attempt, his long time friends decide to take him upon his release to The Kodiak Valley Ski Resort, scene of there youthful glory days. Kodiak too has seen better days, and is now largely run down. Disappointed, the group gets sloshed and takes a dip in their hotel hot tube, only to spill a Russian energy drink on the controls and get sent back in time.

It of course takes them all a little bit to realize what has happened, ("are they having some kind of retro thing this weekend?"), but after a while they figure out that they have somehow travailed back to 1986, and while they look the same to each other, every one else see's them as the image of their period selves (with nephew Clark Duke looking as he did in 2010 given that he hasn't been born yet). A mysterious mystical hot tube repair man (Chevy Chase) implies that they must not significantly change the past so as to avoid the 'butterfly effect' that may significantly change their futures, and could result in Clark not being born at all (they arrive on the weekend of his conception).

This film owes a lot to Back to the Future, not least the presence of Crispin Glover as a hotel doorman destined to have his arm chopped off. Lead John Cusack, veteran of 80's teen comedies, is a fine disappointed sad sack, as indeed are all of the characters, their lives hadn't turned out as they'd hopped when they were younger, and the temptation to change the past to better themselves grips them all, with Clark doing his best to keep them on track and insure that he gets born. Craig Robinson drunkingly calling his then nine year old wife to chew her out for cheating on him is an awkwardly funny moment of which this film has many. But in near Apatowian style the crudity has pathos to it, and the midlife crises trope has one of its better film outings.

Good

The Rules of the Game (1939)

2012-01-14T18:52:00.001-07:00

As France stood precariously on the eve of a second world war, the prescient film maker Jean Renoir took on a decedent, self obsessed culture on the brink of collapse, and created a genera bending satire that is today recognized as one of the greatest films ever made. The Rules of the Game is a comedy of manners, if an unusually subtle and probing one. Renoir took on this classic form because it is through a societies frivolity that some of its most damning defects can be made clear.

This is not to say that The Rules of the Game is either an excessively lite or an excessively dark film, indeed it is a hard to classify one. Though the through line of parallel criticism of two social classes (more on this later) is ever present the film moves shiftingly through a sea of conventional genera types. It begins as 'white telephone' melodrama, escalates too high farce, and ends in a melancholy, almost resigned sense of tragedy. It is Shakespearean.

The film concerns as it where, two classes under one roof, a perfectly fitting metaphor for any society, be it expressed as the British Upstairs, Downstairs, or its true life American counter-part Backstairs at the White House. Love (and lust) transcend class, with one as likely to be felled by it as the other. Here we see parallel 'love triangles', though sometimes containing as many as five players. We see class distinctions not so much in the game, but in the rules by which it is played.

Among the upper classes it is a game of form, odd unspoken rules, hypocrisy and a passive aggressiveness that is sometimes directed out word and sometimes in. Andre Jurieux (Roland Toutian) is a daring aviator (at the beginning of the film he's just set the world speed record for a solo flight from New York to Pairs) and is in love with Christine de la Chesnaye (Nora Gregor), the Austrian born daughter of a late famous orchestra conductor. Chrisitne is married too Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio, good in this straight role, though he usually played comic figures), a bored, independently wealthy French aristocrat whose spends his time indulging a passion for mechanical toys and music box's. Robert is also having an affair with Genevieve de Marras (Mila Parely, who ironically died just last week at the age of 94), though he wants to end it and recommit to his wife.

Among the 'lower classes' in this film is Lisette (Paulette Dubost), Christine's loyal maid, who is married too Gaston Modot (Edouard Schumacher), the groundskeeper at the de la Chesnaye's country estate. As Lisette always accompanies Chrisitne to the city which is her primary residence, the young maid's frequent absences from her husband allow her to conduct an ongoing affair with Octave, who is played by Renior himself. Octave is the only character in the film who transcends or bridges the classes, feeling comfortable in both worlds, a cultured man with little money. He studied under Chrisitnes late father in Vienna, and is a friend of the aviator Jurieux. Reluctantly Octave agrees to ensure that Jurieux is invited to a weekend of quail and rabbit hunting at the de la Chesnaye estate, so that he may try to persuade Christine to run away with him.

While at the estate Robert befriends Marceau (Julien Carette) a poor local who has been pouching rabbits on his land. Marceau has recently become the object of Modot's frustrations, a poacher he couldn't catch. When Modot does apprehend Marceau he finds that Robert doesn't care as he'd been trying to get rid of the rabbits anyway. Robert gives Marceau a job on the estates household staff where he becomes enamored of Lisette, who returns his affections, and the two attempt to start an affair. Modot, who already hates Marceau, picks up on this and becomes insanely jealous. As Modot has a gun, and is a member of the lower classes, he is more apt to become violent in love then his more reserved betters.

The film more or less climaxes in a prolonged, comic party sequences before ending a forlorn manner after Christine and Octave revel that it is really each other that they love, and Octave decides he must leave as the consequence of a mistaken shooting in which he was not really involved. Complicated and tragic, though sometimes funny, this mediation on 'the game' seeks to point out, among other things, the often selfish way in which we pro fess to love others, and the degree to which we will degrade our selves in loves pursuit. Insularly amusing themselves with the game of love as the world falls apart around them, Renoir's film is a fatalistic rumination on the French of all classes, that is really a comment on the complicated nature of all men & women.

Great

The Perfect Host (2010), Suddenly (1954), Kisses for my President (1964)

2012-01-12T11:35:00.002-07:00

The Perfect Host

We all like David Hyde Pierce, but it seems he has nothing to do. How to use him? He's done animated voices (A Bugs Life), and Tony Randell like fay supporting characters (Down With Love), but nothing that puts him at the center of attention; even his Niles Crane played second fiddle to Kelsey Grammer. But first time film maker Nick Tomnay had an idea.

In The Perfect Host, a kind of cross breed between Psycho, Dexter, and Hard Candy, Pierce plays Warrick Wilson, a character of multiple characters. We first meet Warrick when the films marginal lead (Clayne Crawford), a bank robber on the lamb, knocks on his door and precedes to 'con his way inside' faining having been mugged and a mutual friendship with 'Julia', a name he got off of a postcard in Warrick's mail box. At first Warrick appears to be a cultured, presumably gay man who is preparing to host a dinner party; he offers Crawford wine. Crawford believes his rouse is working until a report about his recent robbery and wanted status comes across the radio. Crawford turns on Warrick, threatening him, commanding that he cancel his dinner party and put him up for the night on pain of death. Warrick however has drugged Crawford's wine, he passes out, and the party gets started.

A sadistic evening ensues, with Warrick torturing and humiliating Crawford in various ways over both psychological and physical over the course of a very long night. Warrick has his dinner party only its not quite what Crawford might have expected, because it turns out that only Warrick can see and hear his guests. This is a great show piece for Pierce, who gets to let lose and seems to really enjoy the part, towards the end of the film he dons a personality quite different from anything we have seen before, and while it doesn't truly work it lets him stretch a little. Crawford's adequate, not much expected of him, though he does get a flash back story that renders him slightly more complicated then uppers at surfice. Not a lot of other characters in this one, mostly Warricks imaginary party guests, and Helen Reddy unexpectedly playing Warricks nosey, Jehovah's Witness neighbour.

In many ways this is only fair, but Pierce's almost hypnotic performance and a couple of good twists push what could have been an only mediocre outing into full Good status.

Suddenly

Vaguely norish, imminently disposable 'political thriller' with canned screen play and performances. Sterling Hayden is the Sheriff of the small town of Suddenly, a quite post-war berg that's about to get an unexpected visitor or two. Hayden is woodenly trying to woo a war widow (Nancy Gates) with a young son (Kim Charney). Gates won't give Hayden the time of day, even turning down his invitations to accompany her to church, although son Charney thinks he's cool because he has a gun. Nancy doesn't like guns, she lives in perpetual mourning of her late husband who was killed in 'the war' three years before (so that would make it Korea). Nancy lives with her father-in-law (James Gleason) in a hill top house overlooking the town train yard.

Sheriff Hayden is called down to the train station to receive an urgent secret message through the town telegraph operator. It seems the President of the United States will be stopping by to disembark a train and take a motorcade to a near by ranch (I guess the president is going on vacation?). Hayden teams up with the highway patrol and visiting secret service agents to ensure the presidents security during his brief stop, extra important as it seems the chief executive has recently become the target of a suspected assassination plot. Chief agent Willis Bouchey is pleasantly surprised to find that the owner of the house on the hill is (conveniently) his retried former boss from the Secret Service. Bouchley and Hayden head up to the Benson house to visit Gleason and insure that this prime shooting point is secure. They are too late.

Frank Sinatra and a couple of associates have already arrived at the Benson house, first posing as FBI agents sent to scout the place for the presidents visit, but quickly reveling themselves to be the intended assassins. The family is held hostage, Hayden and Bouchey stop by, Bouchey's killed and Hayden's wounded. Later the TV repairmen shows up and is also taken hostage. Sinatra is a crack shot, decorated in the war (this time the war in question is WWII), he doesn't know whose hired him, he's mostly in it to stoke his ego. But can the unstable Sinatra's pride and ego be used against him to foil the assassination? Can Nancy overcome her aversion to guns to save those she loves? And will the darn television get fixed.
It's pat, wooden, and the script's paint by numbers composition draws undue attention to its self. Thank goodness its only about 75 minutes long, because this is a rather poor movie.

Kisses for my President

Comedy about the first First Husband. Leslie McCloud (Polly Bergen) has just ridden a landslide of female support to become the first women President of the United States (not a lot of experience, though she came from a political family and has served as a judge). Her husband Thad (Fred MacMurray, in full family comedy mode) was forced to sell his electronics business to avoid conflicts of interest relating to government contracts, and now finds himself stuck in the White House with nothing too do. It seems the whole role of the presidents husband has been surprisingly un-thought out by Bergen's advisers and staff, in fact they haven't even settled on a formal title yet.

With his wife generally too busy for him, and his young son and teenage daughter just trying to adjust to life with secret service protection, MacMurray finds himself spending lots of time in his femininely decorated office, and trying to engage his secret service men in conversation. Then Leslie finds something for him too do. Valdez (Eli Wallach) the dictator of an unspecified Latin American country has come to Washington in the hopes of renewing U.S. aid for his crocked regime. The President is dubious, reluctant to bend to her general election opponent, Senate Majority Leader Edward Andrews demands that aid be renewed. While contemplating what to do Bergen sends her husband out to show Valdez the sights which results in various comic episodes, including a car race, a speed boat race, and a brawl at a strip club. MacMurray must face Andrews down at Senate hearings regrading accusations that his fight with Valdez was orchestrated to provide an excuse for cutting off foreign aid (huh, how dose this make sense or even matter). McMurray bests Andrews by exposing the ties between Valdez's government and the Senators former law firm. Then Bergen gets pregnant and resigns her office for her health and the safety of her unborn child.

The pregnancy plot not very feminist, but Bergen comes off as a competent, able leader, and a pretty good mother as well. MacMurray gives the type of performance you hire him for in the type of role he usually played, good natured, pron to misadventure, vaguely irked. It's nothing special, but is moderately entertaining. Fair

They All Laughed (1981), Battle: Los Angeles (2011), The Assassination of a High School President (2008), Garbo Talks (1984)

2012-01-05T12:20:00.002-07:00

The All Laughed

Part detective story, part screwball comedy, part romance, part Woody Allen movie, and part navel gazing. In what he confesses is his favorite of the films he's directed, Peter Bogdanovich here indulges himself with pet cinematic proclivities. He'd always wanted to make a movie that had a long opening sequence so he does that, he'd always wanted to make a movie with Audry Hepburn so he does that, he likes Ben Gazzara so he's in the movie, as is Jon Ritter, and a diverse cast of Bogdanovich associates whose characters are often modeled on themselves, including screen writer Blaine Novak as a rollerskating private eye.

The plots not really that important, and becomes obscenely complicated in the standard screwball manner, and I must confess this is on of the most precisely constructed screwballs since the 1940's. The movie is a love song to New York as well (hence the Allen reference) and captures the city at a moment of transition, the end both of the gritty seventies, and a sub strata of formality and class that had endured beneath it. The films a little jarring at first, its hard to get a handle on all of what's going on, but it was designed to be that way and if you can get passed the initial discombobulation then you'll have a good time. I get the sense that this movie improves on re-peat viewing, but despite its strengths I don't feel that there's really that much here, maybe when I see it again my assessment will improve, but for now its a Fair.

Model Dorothy Stratten makes her debut in this movie as a young women with an obsessive husband, ironically and tragically Stratten was killed by her real husband before this movie could be released, it is dedicated to her.

Battle: Los Angeles

Think Independence Day, only concentrating on one theater of the war. SSgt. Micheal Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is haunted by the death of men under his command in Iraq, no back in the States as a Marine instructor Nantz just wants to quietly retire, but this is not to be. You so those meteors the press keeps on talking about aren't really meteors at all, there alien space craft bringing a race of invaders to our shores (literally) in an effort to steel our precious water.

After the death of there young commander (Ramon Rodrigues) Nantz must lead his reluctant and appropriately racially diverse charges in an effort to rescue civilians in Santa Monica. When a tough air force intelligence TSgt (Michelle Rodriguez of course) gets separated from her unit and joins Nantz, there mission changes to an effort to cut of the aliens conveniently located, and conveniently only central command center. Wait, I don't want to spoil the surprise ending.
Nothing here we haven't seen countless times before from Roland Emmerich. Likable enough, but completely derivative, and director Jonathan Liebesman doesn't really seem to be trying. I hesitate to call it poor because I guiltily kind of liked it, but it is. Poor

The Assassination of a High School President

Think Brick, but less serious. Bobby Funke (Reese Thompson) is a sophomore and aspiring reporter for the student newspaper at his Catholic High school. Assigned to do a fluff piece on the schools popular, basket ball star, student body president Paul Moore (Patrick Taylor), Funke who idolizes Woodword and Bernstein stumbles across a possible connection between Moore and the recent theft of SAT tests from the office of the schools gum hating, Gulf War veteran principle Kirkpatrick (Bruce Willis, in what's suppose to be a self parody).

Some how the school newspaper lets him run his muckraking story, Kirkpatrick finds the tests in Moore's locker, Funkie is vindicated and secretive and arrogant vice president Marlon Piazza (Luke Grimmes) ascends to the presidency. All of this is accompanied by the sudden interest beautiful senior and Piazza step-sister Francesca Facchini (Mischa Barton) takes in Funkie. What's Femme Fatal Francesca's true interest in Funkie, what goes on in the secretive recesses of the student council, why are some of the schools smartest students doing so poorly on their SAT's, and will Funkie really get that coveted scholarship to Northwestern's summer writing program? Only the films conclusion and possible Internet spoilers will tell.

This film is rated R, and surprisingly sexual in content. Thompson's kind of annoying at first, but you get to like him. There's nothing that original in the characters of the various students, and the film makers are trying too hard with Willis's character, who acts like his days in the Gulf where as traumatic as Nam (he did lose a leg there however, so maybe there's some warrant). Barton, who I've never watched much has a strong presence, and gives probably the best performance among the films limitedly talented key players. I liked the groups of misfits who befriend Funkie, and the depiction of in-school suspension being run like a prison is funny and Brick like. Funkies final driving school sequence, in which his performance greatly improves when hung over is pretty fun as well. Brick broke this territory first, but as I inferred above this movie is less rigid and self serious. Both films feature drug themes and a lack of parents. Not for high schoolers. Assassination, though it has some moments (particularly the evolution of Barton and Thompson's relationship), too often falls back on vaguely annoying cliche and thin characters. Fair

Garbo Talks

I've wanted to see this little film for some time, turns out it was as sweet and likable as I had hopped, and also boastes a dryer sense of humor then I'd expected. Though I haven't seen him in many things I like Ron Silver, though I'd always gotten the impression that he was something of a tough guy, in Garbo Talks he plays anything but. A quite, unassuming, even shy accountant, Silver's Gilbert Rolfe is at first a rather passive character. His wife (Carrie Fisher) loves him, but hates New York and longs to move back to California to be near her rich parents. His mother Estelle (Ann Bancroft) is an over sized character, its easy to see how she might raise a timid son. She means well though, and they truly love each other, though Gilbert wishes she'd just dial it down a notch.

Estelle loves three things, her son, standing up for social justice (she has a life long marked proclivity towards protesting and getting arrested), and Greta Garbo. The Garbo movie she's across the years watched often coincided with important moments in her life, and it is the actresses strong, self-willed persona, that proved a life long source inspiration. When Estelle is diagnosed with terminal cancer she mentions that she would like to meet Garbo before she dies, and so Gilbert sets out on a quest to contact the reclusive star (who was then in New York, where she had lived most of the latter half of her life). Gilbert tries everything, hiring a paparazzi who once got a picture of Garbo, taking on a second job as a delivery man to get in the building where she lives, hunting down an obscure actress who's a friend of hers, and trying to find her place on Fire Island.

Gilbert becomes so obsessed with finding Garbo that he starts neglecting his work, strains his already faultering marriage, and doesn't get to see his mother as much as he would like. Amidst this a relationship slowly starts to bloom with co-worker Catherine Hicks, an aspiring actress who takes a liking to Gilbert and with whom he becomes fascinating. Carrie Fischer's leaving him, and Hicks work helping him track down that obscure actress (Hermione Gingold) brings the couple together, and as Gilbert comes more and more out of his shell a new lease on life opens up to him. Then after three months of searching Gilbert tracks the notoriously bargain savvy Garbo to a flee market, makes his case, and fulfills his mothers dream.

A likable, sweet natured film, with a beautifully breezy and enchanting score. A low tempo movie with a sense of romance, it revels in its shear pleasantness. The movie also boasts a number of veterans of the classic film era in small supporting roles, including the above mentioned Gingold, as well as Howard Da Silva in his last role, and cameo's by Adolf Green and George Plimpton. This simple, unasumming movie is simply Good in almost every way.

Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970)

2012-01-01T18:22:00.002-07:00

Otto Preminger was one of those directors who always liked to be current, who always wanted to be cutting edge. You can see this in his film choices, touching on controversial topics in the 1950's such as drug abuse and rape (The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder), and in the 1960's the Arab-Israeli conflict, homosexuality and racism (Exodus, Advise & Consent, Hurry Sundown). For his first feature of the 1970's Preminger made Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, adapted by Marjorie Kellogg from her novel of the same name. As far as what 'controversal' topics it covers their are a couple, homosexuality, disfigurement, the welfare state, epilepsy, though I think Preminger mostly wanted to cover contemporary youth culture, as his previous attempt Skidoo didn't quite succeeded on that front.

The characters in this feature aren't exactly your typical young people though, and some of them really aren't that young. The movie centers on three characters, all of whom had spent time together in a hospital and decided to pool their resources and live together upon release. The title character of Junie Moon is played by Liza Minnelli. Junie had been a party girl, and one night on a date the man she was with turned out to be quite disturbed and pored battery acid on her face and arm leading to some disfigurement (this is why she was in the hospital at the beginning of the film). Robert Moore is a paralyzed homosexual confined to a wheel chair, and Ken Howard an epileptic with a difficult childhood. None of these characters have much in the way of actual family and bond together because of there mutual outsider statues.

Junie secures a home for the trio, a little run down bungalow owned by a rich, eccentric elderly women, and they all move in. Robert has a small monthly stipend left to him by his grandmother, and Ken is eligible for welfare but refuses it feeling he's been on it too long. Ken decides to contribute his share to the groups expenses by getting a job, but his epilepsy prevents him from returning to his old position. A kindly, middle-aged fish shop proprietor agrees to give him a job, but backs off when he receives an anonymous call by someone accusing Ken of being a sodomite (this turns out to be the trios meddlesome neighbour who wants them to move out). Ken is distraught by this an sinks into a melancholy period of hallucinatory depression and wanders off on the road. When Ken doesn't return home after his first day on the job Liza sets out looking for him. She comes across the Marty-esque fishmonger (James Coco) who apologizes for dismissing Ken and the two set out together in search of him (with the lonely Coco hopeing this could be the start of a relationship with Minnelli.

Eventually Ken is found and returns home, though he is more depressed then before and having stopped taking his medication is experiencing increased frequency and severity of seizures. Thinking they all could use a break, and hopeing to further ingratiate himself with Liza, Coco offers to pay for them to have a free vacation to the beach (this movie appears to be set in the Carolina's). Coco stays home having to run his fish shop but the trio set out for the beach, maintaining a flimsy facade to the hotel establishment that Liza is a disfigured heiress. Its in this beach side vacation town that most of the youth culture elements come in, with Robert enjoying a spree on the town with black beach boy Fred Williamson (which ironically results in the former having heterosexual sex), while Ken confesses his love for Liza. The movie ends tragically.

Unconventional, especially for the time (this is the kind of stuff that Micheal Cunningham would do in the 1990's), likable, and very well directed. I was surprised how good this was given that the post-1965 Preminger films I'd seen had been of noticeably lesser quality then his earlier work. The movie has a nice rhythm to it, not rushed, much like the largely rural south in which it is set. Both the lead and secondary characters are intriguing, and there is a general feeling of modest nobility about it. Unexpectedly solid, worthy of its directors gifts.

Good

World War III (1982), Hugo (2011), Another Year (2010)

2011-12-29T13:08:00.005-07:00

World War III

"Epic" mini-series not so much about World War III as about the event that triggers it. The United States has enacted and encouraged other nations to enact a grain embargo against the Soviet Union, this causes wide spreed hunger and unrest in the USSR and ironically also hurts the US economy. Elements with in the Soviet government conspire to send an elite squad of commandos into Alaska and threaten to disable the famed oil pipeline and further hurt the US economy, that is unless the Americans agree to lift the embargo and encourage the other participating nations to do the same.

The Soviet Squad eventually engage in a prolonged stand off with a small group of American solders, consisting largely of an Eskimo lead unit of the Alaska National Guard and a recently transferred Colonel who is "some kind of frustrated genius or something". As an unsteady stalemate holds in Alaska U.S. president Rock Hudson (a little thought of pol who recently succeeded to the office after the death of his much admired predecessor) attempts to negotiate a settlement with the Soviet Premier (who never approved of the expedition to Alaska but is being constrained by extremist elements in his government), while also attempting to keep the whole situation secret from the American public. Needless to say despite his best efforts Hudson fails and the movie ends just moments before the third world war is about to begin.

The first half is far too slow but it becomes genuinely interesting in the second; ironically the combat sequences in Alaska are less engaging then the geopolitical maneuvering in Washington, Moscow and Iceland (where the two world leaders meet for a secret conference). Reminds me a lot of Virus in its end of the world theme and largely snow covered setting.

Fair

Hugo

The operative metaphor in this films is machines, that we are all necessary components in the big human machine with parts to play. This is perhaps a bit of a strange metaphor for a film that is largely about imagination and a sense of wonder, or in short about creativity. The consistent presence of gears, and clockwork, and even an automaton does lead one to an increased awareness of just how well constructed this film is, which shouldn't be surprising considering that Scorsese is directing. Do to its children's book origins and non violent story line your not going to see many of the standard Scorsese elements and themes in this film, save for the extraordinary love of "the movies" displayed throughout.

Though the title character of Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is a young orphan who maintains the clock works at a large Pairs train station in the late 1920's, the character who is the films true center is that of Georges Melies (Ben Kingsly, actually not slumming for once). Melies is a real figure and an exceedingly important one in early cinema. Beginning in 1896 the former stage magican produced and astounding 531 films in a seventeen year period. These short, imaginative, and technologically revolutionary films are mostly lost today, but the ones that survive amply illustrate the energy, genius and sense of fun of their maker.

As the film starts out Melies is a forgotten man, running a small mechanical toy shop in the Pairs train depot. He is constantly trying to forgot the past, bitter about the demise of his movie making career as the worlds attention turned to less fanciful things at the outbreak of the first world war. The movies central thrust at first is Hugo's efforts to repair an old automation left to him by his late father. The automaton turns out to have been originally constructed by Melies, leading Hugo and his friend Isabel (Chloe Moretz) to delve into the mystery of Melies secret past and reawaken his joy in life.

The film is supplemented by a number of secondary stores concerning people who work in the train station, including Sacha Baron Cohen as the station inspector, a veteran of the war with an artificial leg who is constantly trying to catch Hugo and is the films primary source of comic relief. Emily Mortimer, Jude Law, Christopher Lee and Michael Stuhlbarg all have supporting parts. The films man attraction to many however will be its 3D, a first for a Scorsese movie, and excellently handled; in addition to the expected swooping and roller coaster shots there is a truly unique montage of Melies silent films that is like nothing you've ever seen. Hugo is a warm, play full, and at times even enchanting film in which Scorses lets lose in a new direction and a love for the magic of movies is on full display.

Great

Another Year

I love Mike Leigh films, I love the poignancy of his human renderings. I think I can safely say that no director working today is better able to convey the true essence, the inner humanity of his characters, then is this great writer/director. The stories Leigh puts on screen are of the sort that mostly go unmade, dealing as they do with the unbeautiful people, the working men and women, poor to middle class. They don't have plots in the traditional sense where everything is leading to a tightly wrapped conclusion, but rather take us into the lives of his characters over a short period of time and show us who they really are, by going deeper, beyond the surface and beyond caricature.

The time frame for this film is of course larger then most for Leigh's work; it takes place over the course of a seemingly average year in the lives of married couple Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen, wonderful) Hepple and a small circle of their friends and family. The films presentation is in four episode, each spanning only a day or so and taking place in successive seasons. The 60ish couple both work, he as a geologist and she as councilor, they have one child, a thirty year old son named Joe (Oliver Maltman) who is a solicitor specializing in helping poor people keep their homes. Tom and Gerri ('you get used to it') are still very much in love, they enjoy spending time together tending their plot of community garden, hosting visiting friends, and being one anothers confidants.

Among their friends are Ken (Peter Wright) a chum going back to their more radical days in the 1960's (the couple is still rather liberal). Ken is divorced, he smokes, he over eats and over drinks and is incredibly lonely, he's of retirement age but won't give up his job because otherwise he wouldn't know what to do with himself. Mary (Lesley Manville, also quite good) is a receptionist at the health center where Gerri works. We're given to know that Mary had one bad marriage, and and an affair with a married man whom she considers her true love and who she hasn't seen in perhaps decades. Like Ken, Mary is also very lonely though she rejects the formers advances when they meet. Once a party girl she pines for her younger days and is deeply hurt that most men no longer find her attractive, she drinks to excess. She has so little going in her life, and accomplished so little in it, that the biggest thing in her life at the start of the film are her planes to buy a car (she hasn't driven since 1984).

Mary gets the most screen time out of the friends and she is the most interesting. Manville's performance has got to be admired, she plays such a sad, pathetic figure, and she brings out her soul, her wants, her needs, her resentments and desperation. Mary develops an unhealthy infatuation with the Hepple's grown son, and reacts in an uncomfortably competitive fashion when Joe brings a new girlfriend (Karina Fernandez) to meet his parents. Toward the end we meet Tom's brother Ronney whose wife has just died and whose lone child Carl (Martin Savage) hates him. Indeed unhappiness is rife throughout this film, but so is love and life's simple pleasures, the kaleidoscope of feelings that mark any human year, or even human day. As always with Leigh's films Another Year is a carefully observed character work which finds in the subtlety of human neediness a soul piercing sense of the profound.

Great

Holiday Affair (1949), It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), Blossoms in the Dust (1941)

2011-12-25T18:13:00.001-07:00

Three lesser known, vaguely Christmas entries that were all surprisingly good.

Holiday Affair

Would you buy Robert Mitchum as a toy salesman? Well neither would I, but you don't have to buy him as one for long in this little Christmas romantic comedy. Produced by RKO it feels as though the studio just wanted to include their biggest star in some kind of a Christmas offering so they hit on this. Janet Leigh is a war widow with the request precious son (Gordon Gebert). Leigh has a job as a 'comparison shopper' for a department store (mom works for department store and child has no father figure, and its Christmas, cribbed from Miracle on 34th Street perhaps?), which mean she goes around and buys products and returns them (why she doesn't just 'compar the prices' instead of making awkward purchases is beyond me). Anyway she ends up costing Mitchum his job, which he wasn't too attached too anyway as he's just saving up money to go to California and build boats. He does however become interested in Leigh (and her progeny) and engages in a surprisingly civil competition with her blandish, nice guy, Ralph Bellamyesq boyfriend Wendell Corey. No surprise who gets the girl (and son) but its genuinely pretty amusing; I love Corey and Mitchums prolonged awkward idol chatter upon first meeting at Leigh's Place.

Good

It Happened on 5th Avenue

Solid, lightly screwball period comedy that would likely be better known if not for having a no name cast. There all good though, especially Victor Moore whose Aloysius T. McKeever should have been a star making turn. McKeever isahobo of sorts, he'd be homeless if not for his habit of squatting in the mansions of traveling millionaires. His winter residence for the last three Christmas's has been the 5th Avenue home of the worlds second richest man, photography averse land developer Charles Ruggles, who winters at his other home in Virginia. Ruggles 18 year old daughter Gale Storm runs away from finishing school, goes to the 5th Avenue house and encounters McKeever and a displaced returned G.I. (Don DeFore) he's taken in after Ruggles company demolished his apartment building. Storm pretends to be a poor Midwestern girl hopping that DeFore will come to love her for who she is and not for her fathers money. Gradually more and more people end up squatting Ruggles mansion, including Ruggles himself who pretends to be a penniless man named 'Mike' in order to get to know DeFore at his daughters urging (father can't say no to daughter). Soon the Ex-Mrs. Ruggles (Ann Harding) comes to stay and a rekindling of lost love seems imminent. Meanwhile DeFore and some of his war buddies attempt to purchase an abandoned military base from the government in order to build affordable housing for returning service men and there family's. Of course there's a bidding war going on between the vets and Ruggles company, only at first neither knows that the others there computation,comedy of errors. At the end there are to be two marriages resulting from the collective trespassing and McKeever heads south to summer at Ruggles Virgina Residence. As good any comedy to come out of that era, this movies a surprise treat and worthy of your two hours.

Good

Blossoms in the Dust

Bio-pic of pioneering children's rights advocate Edna Gladney is a perfect vehicle for star Greer Garson, she's a brave, noble, crusading women of dignified bearing and tender heart, in short Mrs. Miniver. Gladney's story is a surprisingly long one, Edna is born in 1880's Wisconsin to a locally prominent family, her adopted sister commits suicide after her perspective in-laws through a fit about her 'illigetimat' statues. Edna marrys and moves to Texas to be with her husband ( of course Walter Pidgeon ) who owns a granary and experiments with hybrid wheat's. They have a baby, the baby dies young and Edna's unable to have more, she grows bitter, she rediscovers purpose in running an early daycare, the granary goes bust, the couple sell most of there belongings and move to Ft. Worth where Pidgeon takes low level job and continues to experiment with wheat's in his off hours. Edna founds a progressive orphanage/child placement service, the city cuts her funding, her husband patents a successful new breed of wheat and then dies. The wheat money allows Edna to expand her adoption services, and later she takes on a Texas law that brands children of unwed partners as illigament in government documents such as wedding licences and birth certificates. I was surprised to learn as well that for some time 'illigetamit' persons could not hold civil service jobs. So yeah, Edna Gladney's a near absurdly admirable women, and that's why Greer Garon's fit to play her.

Good

Carnival of Souls (1962), Fall from Grace (2007), The Story of Mankind (1957), The Mortal Storm (1940)

2011-12-18T17:30:00.002-07:00

Carnival of Souls

Kind of famous in the small circle of independently produced horror film aficionados; Carnival of Souls concerns a young woman (Candace Hilligoss) who mysteriously survives a crash off a bridge in which neither her fellow passengers or the car itself is recovered. Shortly there after instead of taking time to deal with her trauma, recent music graduate Candace heads off to a small community just outside of Salt Lake City where she has landed a job as the organist for a small (what I perceive to be Episcopal) Church. Candace has visions of a mysterious man as she travels at night to her new home, and once there develops a fascination with the abandoned Saltair to which she feels strangely drawn. Between organ practices and fending off the advances of her neighbor, Candace continues to have bizarre experiences including seeing the mysterious man and periods in which she can hear no noise and is apparently invisible. This stresses Candace out. She confides in a local Doctor, visits the Saltair, wanders around downtown Salt Lake (true guerrilla film making, I doubt they had permission to film on Temple Square) and basically goes crazy. When she returns to the Saltair she finds it inhabited by a group of ghosts who look like the somnambulist from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Film contains a creepy Twilight Zone type ending. Intriguing.

Verdict: Fair

Fall From Grace

Documentary about the Rev. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church. These are the people that travel around protesting pretty much anything and claiming that all the bad stuff that happens to this country is because of societal tolerance of homosexuality. Their signs declaring 'God Hates Fags' and 'Thank God for 9/11' are infamous, as is there practice of protesting at the funeral and grave side services of fallen solders. This Kansas based congregation has only around forty members and most of them are decedent of the Rev. Phelps, who turns out is a disbared lawyer (many of the Phelps kids are lawyers, one wonders who hires them). In short the WBC hates everybody and everybody hates them, thus K. Ryan Jones is a brave man.

Jones started this project as part of his film studies courses at KU (home of the Jay Hawks). He established a working relationship with the Phelps's by striving for an intense objectivity, one which eventually produced a film that both pro- and anti- Phelps forces perceive as being fair, even supportive of their side; thus he is also good documentary film maker. There's a lot here, and even the special features are as interesting and reveling as the film its self. (Jones speaks about the awkwardness of having the Phelps's be nice to him and call him by name when he's filming their protests.) The members of the WBC seem to get off on offending people and think they are the center of the universe. The best example of the latter point is when a protesting Phelps girl asks an upset man if he thinks its a coincidence that U.S. solders are being killed by IED's given that an IED was set off on the Phelps's property in the 1990's (no one was injured). Well yes, I'm going to say that it was a coincidence. These people are morbidly fascinating though I'll give them that.

Verdict: Good

The Story of Mankind

Movie starts with two divine stars talking to each other (ala It's a Wonderful Life), followed by a celestial trail in space (ala A Matter of Life and Death) and winds up in an open ended cold war parable (ala The Butter Battle Book). Old Scratch (Vincent Price) and The Spirit of Man (Ronald Coleman) argue the nature of man in front of divine Judge Cedric Hardwicke. They are aided in making their arguments with hokey vinyets taken from (largely western) history and staring a cornucopia of (mostly B level) stars including Virgina Mayo, Peter Lorre, Dennis Hopper, Agnes Moorhead, and the Marx Brothers. Kind of reminiscent of vintage educational film.

Verdict: Fair

The Mortal Storm

Pro-Nazi Robert Young and Anti-Nazi Jimmy Stewart compete for the love of aging professor Frank "That's a Horse of Different Color" Morgan's lovely daughter Margaret Sullivan. Set in a snowy German mountain village in 1933 film does an admirable job of depicting the rise of Nazism and its effects on 'average' Germans. The Roth family is torn apart by this, Morgan's two step sons become Nazi's while his biological daughter and son do not. There is a reason for the dynamics of this particular split though the films 'afraid' to be too explicate; Morgan is never referred to as Jewish (which of course he is suppose to be) but simply as non-Aryan. Still a modestly impressive film which features a rare cross country sky chase.

Verdict: Good

The Pawnbroker (1964), Jolson Sings Again (1949), The Muppets (2011), House of Saddam (2008)

2011-12-11T17:50:00.001-07:00

The Pawnbroker

It took American film nearly 20 years to really deal with the holocaust; the anti-anti-Semitic Oscar winner A Gentleman's Agreement (1947) doesn't even mention it, while The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) is of course not about the concentration camp experience. Director Sidney Lument broke this and a couple of other boundaries with The Pawnbroker. Rod Steiger gives a ligament contender for the best film performance of all time as Sol Nazerman, a holocaust survivor with a tormented inner life who threatens to unravel as the anniversary of his wife's death approaches. Sol's wife and children died in the camps and all he has left is the oblivious suburban family of his sister-in-law, and the wife of an old friend who was killed in the camp and with whom he is having a rather grim sexual relationship. Nazerman runs a pawn shop in Harlem, bringing him in constant contact with a whole other type of human suffering, which doesn't help him any. He has become a callused human being, just trying to protect himself, but as that moral cocoon threatens to burst this tragic figure hopes for death. Riveting. An Amazing movie, a must see.

Great

Jolson Sings Again

Sequel to the Al Jolson bio-pic The Jolson Story. It picks up where the last movie left off, Jolson's composit wife has just left him as he performs in a night club, he searches for her in vain though eventually decides her leaving is for the best, thusly the film makers don't have to pay Evelyn Keyes again. Jolson enjoys a brief come back, followed by a number of years of narcissistic self amusement, followed by performing for U.S. troops in World War II, re-marriage to a much younger southern nurse (Barbara Hale, rather sexy actually), and finally a late in life re-emergence in the Zeitgeist with the success of his bio-pic The Jolson Story. The latter sequences are odd and regressive, including Al Jolson dubbing for Alan Parks dubbing for Alan Parks, also its an excuse to show clips from the first film and thereby save money. It is what it is.

Fair

The Muppets

The fact that writer/star Jason Segel is a huge and sentimental Muppet fan is on emanate display in this nostalgic tribute to the creations of Jim Henson. In fact this has got to be the best Muppet product to come out since Henson's death more then twenty years ago. The basic plot of the Muppets trying to save their old theater has been done before as part of a Christmas special, but here it is profoundly better done and aided by the insertion of a romantic sub-plot for human characters Segel and Amy Adams. This counterbalancing of Muppet wackiness with a more conventional story acts in much the same way as did the secondary plots in the later Marx Brothers movies, providing an anchor that actually makes the true stars more impressive. The film is loaded with cameos ranging from Mickey Rooney to Selena Gomez, and contains some very well done musical work. It was a treat.

Good

House of Saddam

Joint HBO/BBC miniseries production about the former Iraqi dictator and his kin shows us how they where all just one big happy family. Not so much. It reminded me a lot of the prime time soap Dallas, only with more palm trees and executions. I loved how the names of the husbands of Saddam's two daughters were Saddam and Hussein. Production keeps the right balance between indictment and objectivity as well as a surprising amount of context for the last thirty years of mid-east history (I feel like I understand the Persian Gulf War a lot better now).

Good

Elvis Meets Nixon (1997)

2011-12-04T19:16:00.001-07:00

The photograph of Elvis Presley shaking hands with Richard Nixon immediately after their first and only meeting is reputed to be the most asked for photo from the National Archives. Why this picture? What about it is so intriguing, why is it so, well, funny? The shear randomness and incongruity of it perhaps? Elvis and Nixon, they couldn't have anything in common; or could they?

This movie in opening narration by Dick Cavett points out that the two figures had oddly parallel carers, both burst on the scene from no where to spectacular success in the 1950's, fell largely from relevance through most of the 60's, had unexpected comebacks in 1968 (Nixon elected president, Elvis's career revitalizing Christmas special), and meet tragic ends of one form or another in the 70's. So how did these two come to meet? Well its a story made for a Showtime television movie

Just before Christmas 1970 a board and frustrated Elvis Presley made a 'secret trip' to Washington D.C. with an eye to being made a "Federal agent at large" for what was then called the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Elvis snuck out of Graceland, and on his own without an entourage for the first time since he was 21, made his way for the nations capital. While the Nixon scenes prior to his meeting with Elvis are an uninteresting exhausted caricature, the Elvis scenes work because they are true. Elvis buying his own ticket and using a credit card for the first time, Elvis pulling a gun at an all-night donut shop, Elvis not used to being alone at night flying out to California and encountering hippies who don't recognize him.

Elvis, much like Nixon it seems was an isolated figure, living cut off from the world, largely out of sync with the popular culture. "I wonder what my fans would think if they knew I didn't even like rock-n-roll music anymore?", musses Elvis to an old associate. Later an anti-war activist tries to recruit Elvis to the cause, 'you were the first rebell' he says 'you made all this possilble'. But Elvis isn't pleased, the rebel has become a reactionary. Elvis loves America uncritically, he loves Nixon, and while constantly popping pills he wants to help fight the war on drugs. An unlikely and amusing true story.

Fair

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

2011-12-03T17:16:00.001-07:00

In the summer of 1946 needing a last minute cash influx to pay for costumes in his stage production of Around the World in Eighty Days, Orson Wells arranged with Columbia studio head Harry Cohn to direct a film adaptation of a book he hadn't even read (If I Die Before I Wake by Sherman King) in exchange for a $50,000 advance. The film that resulted from that deal, while less ambitious then Citizen Kane, would be saturated with the Wellsion style, almost too the point of self parody. The visuals, the casting (with the notable exception of Rita Hayworth), the melancholy mood, weird characters, and winking sense of humor would all combine with an almost indecipherably complex plot and result in a film that left Cohn flummoxed and more then a little bit irritated.

Into this idiocentric project would come, by her own insistence, Rita Hayworth, Columbia's biggest star at the time. Hayworth was then in a failing marriage with Wells and insisted she be included in the film hopping that their working together would help the marriage; it didn't they were divorced the next year. Hayworth made some sacrifices for her role, she was not playing her usual care-free flirty type, but instead a sort of low key fem-fatal; and to Cohn's frustration cut her signature long red main and appeared instead as a short haired blond.

The plot of the film has Wells playing a Irish seaman (complete with accent) who saves a rich young trophy wife from a possibly staged mugging in Central Park. He takes the woman (Hayworth of course) back home where she informs him that she is about to leave with her wealthy husband on a long Yacht trip through the Panama Canal to California, and would like to offer him a job there on. Wells senses that it wouldn't be a wise idea to go and turns the offer down; the next day Hayworth's husband, a prominent lawyer (Everett Sloane) who looks like Marty Feldman and for some reason sports crutches, tracks Wells down and essentially forces him into taking the job on the condition that he will hire two of his friends as well.

The Yacht trip is awkward, Wells, Hayworth, Sloane and his smiley end-of-the-world obsessed law partner Glenn Anders, as well as a mysterious crewman who turns out to be a PI hired by Sloane (Ted de Corisa). There's tension, somethings off, they all seem to recognize it, and even though they don't address it openly, recognize that everyone else recognizes it. The plot is not clear, we know a somethings afoot, but it comes down to a question of whose plotting with who to kill whom? It is Big Sleep complicated.

Eventually they get to San Fransisco, Wells against his better judgment has fallen for Hayworth and somebodies murdered. Wells of course is the prime suspect but with a little police work I think it would be easy to see that it wasn't him, but the plot demands he stand trial so he is; to be defended of course by Sloane, who may or may not want him to go free. Orson Wells reportedly hated lawyers and he has fun poking holes in the legal balloon throughout that court sequences. Senseless squabbles between the lawyers, plainly gimmicky arguments, a largely impotent judge, and a juror who keeps sneezing. When the verdict is set to be read Wells mounts a sudden escape, scenes in a Chinese opera, and (iconicly) a house of mirrors follow, and in narration Wells admits hes acted pretty dumb.

Its a strange trip, noirish in many ways but also rather Camus. I recommend.

Great

Glorious 39 (2009)

2011-12-02T13:00:00.001-07:00

In the summer of 1939 the world was posed on the brink of what would prove to be the defining turning point of the 20th century, World War II. While Japan had long held Manchuria and Korea under its control, Italy had invaded Ethiopia, and Germany had annexed Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia the previous year, what we generally think of as WWII wouldn't begin until September of 39 when German troops marched on Poland. Rushing to the aid of there Polish allies France and Britain entered the fray and in a little over two years essentially the entire planet was at war. Great Britain's role in the war is today so iconic and vaunted that it can be hard to believe that in mid 1939 the UK's entrance into the conflict was far from certain.

The First World War had been a horrible thing, traumatizing all of Europe. England had entered that war with enthusiasm largely on behalf of there allies the French. After four years of largely pointless fighting the conflict came to an end with the collapse of the Kaiser's regime; the German people were made to pay unfair reparations after the peace and thusly setting the stage for the second global conflict. Alexander Walton (Bill Nighy) fought in that war and it haunts him, now a member of Parliament Alexander wants to keep out of Europe's newly brewing conflict, and how much he wants to keep out will not be clear till later. Alexander has three children, the first an adopted daughter Anna (Romola Garai) whom he adores and is fast becoming one England's rising film actresses. Anna is in love with Lawrence (Charlie Cox) who works with her brother Ralph (Eddie Redmayne) in the intelligence service. They and others all get together for a surprise birthday party for Alexander. The elder Walton brings with him from London a mysterious associate (Jeremy Northam) who seems displeased when Anna's friend Hector, an enthusiastic young member of Parliament, repudiates Chamberlain and supports Churchill's more aggressive foreign policy in dinner conversation. A few days later Hector turns up dead of an apparent suicide, prompting Anna's suspicion and investigation into the murky goings-on that seem to surround her.

A historical thriller Glorious 39 is continuously exciting and unusually good. For those who think they've seen every variant on the World War II story in film this may prove surprising. The internal politices es of Britain at the time are central to the tale, as are allegations of an alleged conspiracy to keep England out of the conflict. While the later 'conspiracy' under Churchill to get the America's into the war receives more attention, especially on the internet, this earlier effort, no doubt in some degree real and backed by powerful people is lesser known. How organized either of these efforts wear, and the extent to which they may be characterized as sinister cables is an open question, but makes for good viewing.

One of the great things about this movie, and a perspective that we don't see that often, is its projection of the sense of fear and despair that saturated England through much of the war. People fleeing London, children relocated, houses shuttered up, martial law, and one thing I don't think I've heard about before, the mass ethunization of pets. It has a 9/11 vibe, that feeling of fearful uncertainty after a massive global change, this movie brings that home.

This movie is filled with strong performances, but they all pale in comparison to Romola Garai's glorious anchoring of the piece. Memorable as the 18 year old Briny in Atonement, Garai has a slightly different look and her shear presence on screen conveys a a strong sense of depth in her characters. She is the detective of the story, the woman on the run, a person who a strong sense of right and wrong who only wants to be believed by those she loves. Her sense of fear, feeling that she might be going slowly mad is palpable, and her courage enveloping.

This film gives you a more or less contemporary framing story that seemingly gives you a broad outline of whats going to happen, but mixes it up a little at the end, though not entirely satisfactory. Christopher Lee and Julie Christie are big names in the cast with little to do, and Hugh Bonneville steals a couple of scenes as an also ran character actor with whom actress Anna has become close. A very satisfying feature as both history, mystery, and thriller, as well as a good character peice, Glorious 39 comes highly recommended.

Great

Due Date (2010)

2011-11-30T08:51:00.001-07:00

Ah, it's an old chestnut the buddy road comedy, and its done well here. They don't start out as buddy's though, Robert Downey Jr. and Zack Galifianakis. It's basically Plains, Trains, and Automobiles minus the trains. Galfianakis gets Downey and himself kicked off an airplane and put on a no fly list. Downey left his wallet on the plane and is strandrad in Atlanta while his wife (Michelle Monaghan, pretty but with little to do in this one) is in L.A. due for a cisarian section in just a few days. Downey must get to her, Galifianakis has a rental car, so away they go. He's a trying one to travel with that Galifianakis, and Downey's very uptight, but thanks to a series of adventures and a little drug use Robert Jr. comes to warm to him. This movie does its genera well, there's some gross out humor but not too much, it mostly concentrates on more traditional comedy very much like PTAA. Rarely do I find a comedy that's this much of a pleasure to watch.

Good +

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

2011-11-28T17:24:00.001-07:00

Well that was rough. I had to watch it in parts, at first because I couldn't get into it, and later because it was intense, and often off-putting. It was effective though I think, Darren Aronofsky is a director that you can't just watch placidly, you have to grapple with everything he does, he makes it that way. The plots, the themes, and the execution, he has an idiosyncratic style. I haven't seen Black Swan yet, and now I both want to more and am afraid to more. I was very impressed with The Wrestler, but didn't like The Fountain.

Requiem is only Aronofsky's second film, it is a story about addiction, an examination of it through four interleted characters. In a way its like an updated more intense and graphic version of The Days of Wine and Roses, a relationship that may have seemed promising but was doomed. Jennifer Connelly and Jared Leto do good work as the doomed couple, and Marlon Wayans is satisfactory as the best friend, but its Ellen Burston's movie.

I love Ellen Burston, she just enhances everything she's in, your drawn to her performances. She's strong even when portraying a weak character like this one, Sarah Goldfarb. Her husbands dead, her son's a trial, she lives in a small apartment on Brighton Beach, and I suspect living off some kind of welfare. She enjoys watching an infomerical over and over again. She gets a call from a casting service saying she has been selected to be on TV, presumably for a game show. She's not told when, or for what program, only that they will be contacting her. She waits, she waits, she gets a form, she fills it out and then she waits again. She's not happy about how she looks, she wants to lose weight for her television appearance, but every diet she tries she finds she can not sustain, a neighbour tells her about these wonderful little pills.
,
The repeated sequences of the drug ritual, Sarah's pill popping, the toking up or whatever it is the other characters are doing. Things spin around and around, going faster and faster. One of my main problems with the film at first, in addition to not having the most relatable characters for me, was how slow it seemed. But the pace picks up and keeps going and going, building and building. By the end were ricocheting between character and character as they repeat parallel mistakes and actions, as the spiral leads to inevitable and unpleasant conclusion, until all is lost.

So needless to say a bit of a downer. But quite something, which even though I didn't really 'like' this movie, I was impressed. Your forced to go to a place you'd rather not, to witness a train wreak, and I don't know if you could ever make a better anti-drug movie. It's something.

Great

Smokey & the Bandit (1977), What! NO Beer? (1933)

2011-11-22T18:25:00.001-07:00

Smokey & the Bandit, I'd never seen it. The gold standard of the 1970's trucker genera I'm glad I saw it because I suspect this will make a very good wallpaper film, one of those movies you can have on in the background and just kind of lightly pay attention too. I confess that's what I did with this film. Sally Field cute, Jackie Gleason, we'll he's what you'd want out of a Jackie Gleason character. Turns out Smokey means a cop or patrolmen, where as Bandit means Burt Reynolds. Bandit has a lot of colorful trucker friends who help Bandit keeps the Smokey's off of his tale as he runs a truck load of beer from Texas to Georgia, which for some reason is considered bootlegging and hence a major reason to avoid smokey's . Not spectacular.

Good

What! No Beer. A Buster Keaton talkie. Buster didn't do too well in the talkies, though obviously still revered as a silent genius. Busters voice sounds the way you'd expect it to given his naive stone faced persona, he's perfectly adequate as a talker. Jimmy Durante steals it though, how could he not. Buster and Jimmy made a number of these buddy comedies together, in this one they are two friends who hope to capitalize off the repel of Prohibition by fixing up an abandoned brewery. They jump the gun however and start making the beer the day after the referendums and don't wait for the official repeal. The cops come, but the pair didn't really know how to make beer and turns out there product was alcohol free. The police let them go. Jimmy finds someone who can make real beer but they tell upright Keaton that it's near-beer. Organized crime becomes interested in using them as a distributor, Keaton is smitten by a gangsters moll. Hijinks's. Roughly Three Stogies quality.

Fair

The Brotherhood (1968)

2011-11-22T17:43:00.001-07:00

Quite good proto-Godfather offering. Kirk Douglas helms the film and carries it, his characters interesting enough to hang with for an hour and forty minutes. Douglas's father had been a mobster and now he's one too, part of a powerful syndicate but still fostering deep sentimental ties to the old school Mafiosos who have been pushed aside. He welcomes his brother (Alex Cord) into the outfit after the young man's marriage, Douglas is a family man and loves having him around. He is also a cautious man and when his compatriots decide they want to get involved in a scheme to skim money from the federal government, Douglas decides its too risky and repeatedly vetoes the measure (the syndicate operates as a kind of council that requires unanimous consent from its leaders). Frustrated his fellow mobsters decide that if Douglas doesn't play along they will have him eliminated, they enlist his younger brother to try and talk some sense into him. Douglas won't listen, then he discovers that one of his fellow board members was responsible for the death of his beloved father, he must settle this (kill the guy) and then flee to Sicily. The syndicate later sends the brother out to off him, and the story ends in an interesting way. Good, solid, satisfying, Douglas's character a multi-fascinated one and his performance makes the film. Worthy. Directed by Martin Ritt.

Good

Nosferatu (1922)

2011-11-22T17:19:00.001-07:00

Classic example of German expressionistic cinema. F. W. Murnau directed this lose adaptation of the Dracula story (changed so as to avoid hefty copyright fees) set in a fictional Germanic city called Wisborg in the 1830's. Gustav von Wangenheim and his young wife Greta Schroder are happy but not as well off as Gustav would like them to be. He takes a commission for his employer Alexander Granach to travel to Transylvania to sell a house in there town to the reclusive Count Orlok (Max Schreck).

Orlok is of course a vampire. Schreck is an interesting looking man, looking at an old photo of him on the internet you can see how gaunt and morose he seems, with an odd bulbous head. This serves him well as the base upon which one of the most memorable makeup jobs I've ever seen rides. He's scary, this is a scary kind of vampire, unearthly, misshapen, with long claw like hands and a face that honestly looks bat like. He will torment Gustav, he will pursue Gretas lovely neck, and Knack (Alexander Granach) will go made. Good sense of moode in this, maybe a little slow. I like how the rats who accompany Orlok in his dirt filled coffians are worked into the story, they spread plague to fair Wisborg; a little bit Camus. Not as memorable as The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari but still good.

Good

Water for Elephants (2011)

2011-11-15T17:10:00.001-07:00

Unexpectedly good.

Engaging

I didn't hate Robert Pattinson.

Reese Witherspoon in tights.

Some good supporting parts.

Depression era setting.

Standard framing story for flash back bulk of the film, but it features Hal Holbrook so that's okay.

Christoph Waltz makes this film.

You have to wait like forty minutes before you see an elephant drink water.

Grade: B+

The Protocals of the Elders of Zion (2005)

2011-11-15T17:08:00.001-07:00

Lose form documentary by Jewish filmmaker Marc Levin. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is of course a notorious piece of anti-Semitic literature, a forgery that casts its self as the minutes of a late 19th century meeting of a cabal of Jews bent on world domination. While the text first appeared in 1903 its still in wide circulation on the Internet and elsewhere, and despite being debunked numerous times is still held as true by certain white supremest groups, a distressingly large number of Muslims, conspiracy theorist and some people who just don't know any better.

In the film Levin travels around and talks to people about the pamphlet, having interviews with white supremacist, people on the street, and a surprisingly thoughtful group of prison inmates. An interesting film, I'm glad it wasn't just about the tract itself in a narrow sense, but rather a broader portrait of the psychological and cultural worlds in which it is taken as fact.

Grade: B

The Devil Rides Out (1968), Fail Safe (2000), The Omen (1976), Berserk! (1967)

2011-11-02T14:16:00.001-06:00

Halloween Edition

The Devil Rides Out

Charles Ray and Christopher Lee are two World War One veterans who have agreed to keep an eye out on the son of a fallen comrade. They meet together once a year on the anniversary of the death of Simon's father but one year in the early 1930's Simon breaks the appointment. The two men journey to Simon's new home, only to find that he is already hosting a party, a meeting he says of an astronomical society he has been planing to join. Lee is suspicious, he insists on seeing the observatory that has been added to Simon's home, there he discovers space set up for a Satanic ritual. Ray and Lee knock Simon out and take him to Lee's home (all the homes in this movie seem to be mansions). Lorene Green, leader of the Satanic cult is not pleased.

Ray is unconvinced of Lee's assertions, Simon escapes and the two friends return to his home to look for clues as to his current whereabouts, theyencounter an evil spirit, Ray becomes convinced. Ray tries to seduce a young lady he saw at Simon's party in the hopes of finding his whereabouts before he can undergo his satanic initiation (which mustbe performed in conjunction with a lunar cycle that is about to end).The young women (Nike Arrighi) escapes as Ray attempts to sequester her at the home of Lee's niece (Sarah Lawson) and her husband (Paul Eddington, yeah). Ray has learned that Nike has yet to undergo the satanic initiation that would rob her of her soul and being smitten by the lass hopes to save her too.Lee and Ray meet up, they find the location where the black mass is to be celebrated, thy disrupt it and rescue Simon and Nike whom they take to the home of Lee's niece. Lorene Greens wants his two would-be acolytes back, though they have now recognized the danger to there Souls. A final confrontation is in store.

This was good, a little campy undoubtedly but enjoyable. I've never seen a film quite like it, Satanists are a surprisingly underused horror movie villain. Guilty pleasure.

Grade: B-

Fail Safe

A remake of the sold 1964 film of the same title doesn't seem necessary but the form it takes makes it worthwhile. This film, made for television and shot in black and white was mentas an homage to the classic teleplays of the early years of television. That it was a live broadcast lends it a certain extra energy and quality of immediacy. The cast is all star, Richard Dryfuss, Harvey Keitel, George Clooney, Hank Azaria and more. At first maybe a little stiff, but the strength of the story and dialogue (much lifted from the original film) careis it. Worthwhile effort, I'm glade they made this.

Grade: B

The Omen

This is a classic, semi-revered, and I'd never seen it. The story is familiar, diplomat Gregory Peck adopts a child in Italy who is destined to be the anti-Christ. Years later while Peck, his wife (Lee Remick,so beautiful) and the child Damien (Harvey Stephens) are stationed in London strange things begin to happen, the child's nanny kills herself, animals go mad in Damion's presence and Damon goes mad when he's brought to a church. Peck receives cryptic warning from Catholic Priest Patrick Troughton, and later embarks on a search for Damien's origins with freelance photographer David Warner. Surprise, there is a final confrontation.

It wasn't all that good at first, felt kind of hollow, slow and predictable, but it picked up. It's one you should see just to say you've seen it. A tad disappointing, but significant to its genera.

Grade B-

Berserk

A late career Joan Crawford slumming in horror. She's the head of a traveling circus in England, her high wire artist dies a grisly death in front of an audience, he is quickly replaced by thirty-seven year old Ty Hardin, who improbably pins for sixty-two year old Crawford. There are various circus types including dwarf (George Claydon), human skeleton Ted Lune (who would die the year after the films release), as well as Crawford's comely daughter (Judy Geeson). More members of the circus die, Scotland Yard investigates, and the murdererturns out to be somone whom it would be basically impossible for them to commit all those murders. Watchable but little more, harmed by the ending.

Grade: D+

The Wicker Man (1973), The Wicker Man (2006)

2011-10-27T16:42:00.003-06:00

Robin Hardy's 1973 film The Wicker Man was a deliberate and in my book very successful effort to make a new kind of horror movie. A rejection of the kind of camp horror that was being produced in mass in England at the time, The Wicker Man is creepy, but creepy in a way I've never encountered before. The wicker man (massive spoiler coming) is a reference to a giant man statue, a cage really in which ancient Celts used to sacrifice animals and even people. This titular object of horror will of course make an appearance before the end of the film, but it is the process of getting their that entrances as much (if not more so) as the main event.

Edward Woodword is Sargent Neil Howie of the West Highland Police, he travels by way of a small sea plane to the isolated island of Summerisle, home of a reclusive community known for their ability to grow fine fruit. Sargent Neil has come to the island because of a report alleging that a young girl on the island has disappeared, when he gets there he finds that the local residents claim that the girl Rowan Morrison doesn't exist. Even the woman who is suppose to be the girls mother and who supposedly sent the request for help claims there is no such person as Rowan Morrison (though her verifiable daughter says the Rowan is the name of a Hare that plays in the meadows).

Sgt. Howie must stay on the island overnight, in part because its gotten too dark to fly and in part too continue investigating the increasingly curious case. A very pious and observant Christian Sgt. Howie becomes disgusted by the behavior of the community members, bawdy songs in the pub, open sexuality including intament displays outdoors and propositioning by the innkeepers daughter (played by Swedish model Britt Ekland). Sgt. Howie quickly discovers that the islanders practice a form of paganism and have little use for Christian rigidity. Around the same time that Howie learns this he also learns that there is in fact a real Rowan Morrison, or to be precise there was, but that she died in a fire last fall (the movie is set in the last few days of April and the 1st of May 1973).

Sgt. Howie is confused by the fact that there is no death certificate for Rowan, and why the islanders at first denied her existence, he stays on to investigate. He has a meeting with Lord Summersile at his palatial manner. Lord Summersile is the of the third generation of community leaders, his grandfather having moved to the island in the 1860's to take up the breeding of special strains of fruit that he had developed. To motivate the locals grandpa Summersile reintroduced pagan practices and traditions to the island, in time they drove Christianity out and his son and grandson continued the practice, and apparently even became believers themselves.

Lord Summersile gives Sgt. Howie permission to exhume Rowans grave, when he does so he uncovers a coffin containing a dead march hare. Howie demands answers, the natives suggest he leave before there May Day celebration, he attempts to leave so as to bring back additional officers, only of course the plane won't start. Having become convinced that Rowan is alive and being held captive so as to be sacrificed on May Day to 'atone' for a poor harvest the year before, Sgt. Howie scowers the island, and attempts to infiltrate the islanders May Day celebrations in a stolen costume.

The end I'll leave out here as an incentive to view this remarkable, strange, and literate horror classic. There is certainly enough heft to the film to support a remake but the one released in 2006 leaves much to be desired. Directed by Neil LaBute and staring the perennial lead of bad movies Nicholas Cage, this version is relocated to the Pacific Northwest and contains a strong feminist slant, not out of place in a movie involving pagan religion. I must admit I was mostly with this movie, which surprised me, but I suspect I was mostly riding on the buzz of having seen the original film the night before. Not as awful as I'd suspected, somewhat flat and the ending just, I don't know lacked that oomph, wasn't realized well. Of course no remake could possibly live up to the original but I think I could have made a film better then this. Skip the limp imitation, but see the remarkable original.

1973: Grade A-
2006: Grade C-

Rough Cut (1980), Virus (1980), Von Ryan's Express (1965), Night of the Living Dead (1968)

2011-10-24T19:49:00.001-06:00

Rough Cut

Having recently watched the 'Every Which Way' movies with Clint Eastwood I've come to see that a successful formula for Carter era films is a lite tongue in cheek plot which is bluffed through on the bases of how cool the star is. Burt Reynolds is cool, he's at the height of his coolness. Jewel thieves are also kind of cool, as long as there cool like Burt Reynolds. It's also cool for a jewel thief to have a beautiful love interest and be assisted by wackier cohorts like a disco singer and an ex Nazi. David Niven is also cool, the whole jewel thief thing is very Niven retro, though here he plays the long arm of the law, sort off. Reminiscent of To Catch a Thief.

Grade: B-

Virus

This was the most expensive Japaneses made movie up till its time. Disaster movie premise, a seemingly unstoppable virus destroys world civilization almost wiping out the human race. Movie is padded with appearances by the likes of Glen Ford, Robert Vaughn, Edward James Olmos and George Kennedy. This movie was a bomb, in fact its already been allowed to land in the public domain, but I kind of like things like this, even in there paint-by-numbers sensibility. Like a cheap made for TV disaster film you'd see on Sci-fi, only this is better. Guilty pleasure.

Grade: B-

Von Ryan's Express

I expected little more then a cheap Great Escape want to be, but this was good. Frank Sinatra, a River Kwai type British officer, a train (like in the movie The Train) full of POW's and a flight through Italy to Switzerland. A Vicar pretends to be a Nazi officer, an Italian sports an eye patch, a group at first divided among themselves come together, courage, sacrifice ect. Plenty of enjoyable little set pieces, pleasantly surprised by the ending.

Grade: B

Night of the Living Dead

A lot of Zombie films are made these days, and to be honest I'd rather watch most anybody elses over those made by George Ramero. He's the godfather of the genera but I just don't think he's that good, the last one of his films before this that I tried to watch I could only make through the first 20 minutes, flat, derivative, poor. But he did launch the genera, develop the standard model that is still largely followed, and Night of the Living Dead is the seed from which the whole zombieverse would grow. This movie was actually very good, I guess Romero's talents just haven't aged well. Its obviously a cheaply made movie, but it still works well, genuine suspense, tension, largely sub par acting. I can see why this film is so memorable. The photo montage and the end sequence with the Sheriffs posy invokes the civil rights era, interestingly the lead role was not specifically written for an African American.

Grade: B

Frozen River (2008), White Zombie (1932), No Way to Treat A Lady (1968)

2011-10-20T12:54:00.002-06:00

Frozen River

The frozen reaches of upstate New York, a Mohawk reservation, the Canadian border, people living on the margins and just subsisting, things we're not accustomed to seeing in film. Two woman, one a mother of two whose husbands abandoned the family leaving not enough money to pay for their new trailer home, the other an American Indian widow whose young son has been taken from her by her mother-in-law, at first they have an adversarial relationship but grow to be partners in crime and friends. Strong performances anchored by one of our best under used actresses Melissa Leo. Moving and in its way inspiring.

Grade: A

White Zombie

Considered to be the first zombie movie. Rushed into production at the height of Universals early talkie horror cycle, this film uses left over sets from Frankenstein and Dracula, and of course Bela Lugosi. These are not the zombies your used to from contemporary films, they are the old Haitian voodoo school, people brought back from near death to work as mindless slave labour. Lugosi is the owner of a mill who is recruited by a neighbouring plantation owner (Robert Frazer) to help him win the girl of his dreams. At first the love struck landowner hopped to detain the girls fiance long enough to win her over, but Lugosi convinces him that he could not accomplish this and instead offers to turn her into his zombie love slave, this Lugosi does. Only having a zombie love slave ain't that fulfilling on a relationship level, Frazer asks Lugosi to bring her back to her normal self, instead he makes the remorseful lover a zombie as well. Lugosi, zombies, the girls true love (John Harron), and a Christian missionary (Joseph Cawthorn) end the film in a final confrontation. Also there's a vulture. "Do you have a light?"

Grade: C-

No Way to Treat a Lady

No relationship to the Linda Ronstadt song, this is the story of an actor with a mother complex who uses his makeup skills to disguise himself and kill a series of widowed old women. Rod Steiger is very versatile, he does a great job as the villain and his various alter-egos (though those are mainly very stereotyped performances they are still fun), he's a serial killer worthy of a Dexter antagonist. George Segal is the Jewish detective (complete with over the top nagging mother) investigating the murders and who Steiger torments by phone. Lee Remick and her beautiful blue eyes are a potential witness and love interest for Segal. A satisfying crime thriller.

Grade: B

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

2011-10-13T15:16:00.001-06:00

I can't believe it took me this long to see this movie, it is just great. The iconic title doesn't tell you much as to what the stories going to be about, I knew a little but I think my viewing of the film was benefited from not really knowing the direction it would take. In fact for a while I though it was going one direction, and then it became much more. A sad beautiful film. Heartbreaking, even devastating. The whole cast with maybe one or two exceptions is putting in bravo performances. Dorthy McGuire gives the kind of performance I didn't suspect she was even capable of, so many levels to it. Peggy Ann Garner is perfect as Francine. Joan Blondell always fun to have around. But it is James Dunn, today little known even by me, who steals the picture. His performance as the luckless dreamer Johnny Nolan is a marvel, one of the greatest feet of acting and pathos I've ever seen. I was surprised how current and emotionally real the film seemed, even while being so firmly rooted in the sensibilities of its time. This is not what you would traditionally think of as an Elia Kazan film, but his handling of the film in a well crafted almost studio director style works wonderfully. This is really an amazing movie, I was surprised, moved and very much pleased.

Grade: A+

Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)

2011-10-13T14:44:00.001-06:00

Vincent Minnelli is a real hit or miss director, Meet Me in Saint Louis is great, Some Came Running I hate. This is a miss though it tackles much the same subject matter as an earlier hit, The Bad and the Beautiful. This move is considered by some a kind of lose sequel to that film, I think some of the backstory is inspired by the later but the characters are not the same. I don't know why they decided not to do a direct sequel, probably because the plot here is borrowed from a book and perhaps there were copyright reasons.

Anyway this is the story of an alcoholic ex movie star (Kirk Douglas, who was also in The Bad and the Beautiful) who has been three years in rehab at a private hospital in Connecticut. Douglas is released from the hospital and then takes an offer of a small supporting part in a film being directed by his one time collaborator Edward G. Robinson. The two had had a falling out but Robinson flys him to Rome where he's shooting the picture (a historical romance). When he gets there Robinson decides Douglas is not right for the part, but that's in an effort to lure him into supervising the dubbing on the film, which is due in two weeks or Robinson loses the right of dubbing to his producer.

While there Douglas finds romance, is kind of stalked by his ex-wife, fights with Robinson and others, then Robinson has a stroke or something and Douglas takes over directing the feature. Robinson recovers, fires Douglas and takes all the credit for the film. Douglas turns back to booze, is almost in a car accident, and then unexpectedly regains his will to live and pursue his career. Douglas's strange epiphany is sudden, it doesn't fully seem to fit and feels almost like an add-on, but I suspect it was in the original script as the movie wasn't particularly well written. To quite Wikipedia:

Bosley Crowther in his New York Times review of August 18, 1962 wrote: "The whole thing is a lot of glib trade patter, ridiculous and unconvincing snarls and a weird professional clash between the actor and director that is like something out of a Hollywood cartoon."

I agree, it wasn't very good. It felt trite and a forced effort to come across as Hemingwayesque, much like Some Came Running. I'd say more but I think I've said it all.

Grade: D+

Manhattan Melodrama (1934)

2011-10-13T11:24:00.000-06:00

John Dillinger saw this movie in a theater immediately before he was ambushed and killed by the FBI, well at least it was a good one. Given its title one might be suspecting one of those 'White Teleophone' pictures common at the time, all plush apartments, heiresses, and tears. Manhattan Melodrama could probably be categorized as a 'crime drama' but its really a story about friendship. The structure or organizing principle of the film is one perhaps most associated with the classic Cagney/O'Brien feature Angels with Dirty Faces, two childhood friends end up on opposite sides of the track and one must ultimately sacrifice himself for the principles of the other.

In this case the two friends are Clark Gable and William Powell. When they are children (Micky Rooney plays Gable as a boy) their respective parents are killed in a tragic steam boat accident (you've got to love a film that features a river boat fire in the first five minutes). The two are briefly taken in by a nice Jewish man but he's killed in a riot and the film then becomes rather vague about how the two survived. Natural born con artist and charmer Gable goes on to become a kind of crime lord lite (he goes by Blackie), while studious Powell ends up an earnest and dedicated lawyer in the district attorneys office. Interestingly the two remain friends, Powell openly lets Gable know that if he's every arrested it will be his duty to prosecute, Gable for his part still respects, even venerates Powell envisioning a successful future political career for his friend.

Eventually Powell is elected district attorney, unable to attend Gable sends his girlfriend Myrna Loy to the celebrations, and of course love blooms. While Gable loves Loy he seems to love Powell even more and wishes the two the best as they embark on a romance that ends in marriage. As time goes by Powell is put up by his party to run for Governor, an associate in the DA's office expects to ride his coattails up the political ladder, but Powell knows him to be corrupt and even dismisses him from his current position. The bitter ex-associate threatens to defame Powell, charging that he purposely let Gable off on the murder of a bookie he is widely rumored to have killed (he is actually not prosecuted for lack of evidence). Loy tells Gable this, Gable kills the crooked former lawyer, Powell makes good on his promise to prosecute Gable if he was ever arrested, Gable's sentenced to death and Powell is elected governor.

Though he loves Gable, Powell refuses to grant him a stay of execution, feeling it would be an abuse of his power to intervene legally for the sake of a friend, as well as a betrayal of the voters who elected him on his anti-crime credentials. On the night Gable is to be executed Loy tells Powell that Gable committed the murder in order to ensure his election as governor. Loy says she'll leave Powell if he lets Gable be executed, he sticks to his principles and says he can not let Gable off. Torn Powell goes to visit Gable as he awaits execution, he moved by his friends willingness to face execution for the sake of his friend, in fact Gable is down right nonchalant about his impending execution. Powell wavers and offers to save Gables life, Gable refuses and is executed.

How Powell got elected governor I'll never know, he is simply too virtuous. Viewing his 'moment of weakness' in offering to save his friends life as making him unworthy of his high office Powell resigns the governorship (kind of a betrayal of what Gable sacrificed his life for if you think about it), he and Loy are reunited. A melodrama to be sure, and a good one. Charming and anchored by fine performances this is an engaging and likable picture, and while too unlikely a story for the real world, as cinematic morality tale it excels.

Grade: B +

Every Which Way But Lose (1978), Hard Candy (2005), Nineteen Eighty- Four (1954)

2011-10-07T19:19:00.000-06:00

I watched this and Every Which Way You Can out of order. I don't think the formers as good as the later, this first one feels more somber, can I say that about a comedy featuring and Orangutan? The first one features most of the plot elements, characters, and structure of the second. The theme here though I think is slightly superior. I love the comic sensibilities of these films.

Grade: B-

Hard Candy is something. An independent film, few sets, a small group of then mostly upcoming actors and a controversial and creepy story line. Ellen Page may appear at first to be a naive 14 year old girl who meets a much older man (Patrick Wilson) on the Internet and is destined to be his sexual victim. But she is more then Wilson takes her for, a former abuse victim, whip smart, viscous, determined and out for revenge; she also spouts beyond her years, witty per-Juno dialogue. She not Wilson has actually done the luring. Once at his bungalow she drugs him, ties him up, emotionally destroys him and then castrates him. Fascinating, dark and just damn good. It goes without saying this is not for every one, but for those it is Grade A.

An British television adaptation of George Orwell's iconic book, Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of the best of the black and white era teleplays. Good cast, Peter Cushing as Winston, Donald Pleasence as Sim. Despite flimsy sets and slow parts, especially near the beginning, this is a perfectly decent adaption, and I would suspect strikingly good television for the era in which it was produced. It's neat to have seen this story made in a context of roughly the same time in which the book was first published ( a mear five years later).

Grade: B-

Take Her She's Mine (1963), Hitchcocks Holocaust Documentary (1945)

2011-10-01T20:38:00.003-06:00

Take Her She's Mine

Comedy about a father (Jimmy Stewart) trying to protect his daughter's (Sandra Dee) virtue as she enters college. Reminiscent in tone and style of another Jimmy Stewart film' Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation', which came out the previous year. Entertaining enough comedy of errors, a family film but with a touch of the sex comedy about it, but those early 60's sex comedies where nothing compared to the raunch fests of today. Movie has a recurring gag of people mistaking Stewart's character for the actor James Stewart. Neat to see what constituted 'rebillion' in the post beatnik per-hippie window.

Grade: B-

Alfred Hitchcock the Holocaust Documentary

Uncompleted British documentary on holocaust atrocities directed in part by Alfred Hitchcock. The film is missing the final real and has segments where the audio's missing but still an interesting work, its pretty direct and calls out the whole German people for letter this inhumanity happen.

Grade: B

Dark Passage (1947)

2011-09-28T16:30:00.000-06:00

The structure is interesting even experimental but the plot is classic noir. Bogart and Bacall, a love born of difficult circumstances. The first 20 minutes or more of the movie is first person, you are the camera, your seeing things from the leads point of view. Bogart just escaped from prison (where he was serving time for a murder he didn't commit), only he's not Bogart yet, that's why no face. A creepy plastic surgeon gives him a new face, but he still must deal with suspicious cops, a small time crook who wants to blackmail him, and the person who really murdered his wife. Everything you could want from this kind of picture really, and in unusual packaging.

Grade: B

Capitilism: A Love Story (2009)

2011-09-28T16:23:00.001-06:00

I think Micheal Moore is largely right; capitalism is an often cruel inherently selfish system, the problem being that none of the proposed alternative systems have really worked either. It's good to point out the problems however and Moore does a good job of this. It's right up his ally, essentially a compilation of everything he's done into one movie. He trys to confront business men, he feels sorry for poor people, he uses clips from old educational film, he gives you a sort of one sided history of his chosen subject matter. But too me he didn't come of as craven as he sometimes does. Certainly this is a critique of the statues quo that many people would benefit from hearing.

Grade: B

Tangled (2010)

2011-09-28T11:27:00.005-06:00

It feels like it was complied from elements of old Disney films, as well as from Shrek. A kind of paint by numbers Disney film taking no risks and offering no surprises, and yet I quite liked it. Mandy Moore and Zachery Levi are perfectly cast as the lead voices, and the songs good if not great, some sounding a little over broadwayesique, as if Disney already has plans for this on the Great White Way. Possessing of the old school Disney feel, as well as a little of that winking knowing quality one found in Enchanted. A minor success.

Grade: B

Any Which Way You Can (1980), 127 Hours (2010), Top Hat (1935)

2011-09-23T10:18:00.004-06:00

Any Which Way You Can

Clint Eastwood, an organatange, an aspiring country singer, a neo-nazi biker gang, a bunch of millionaries, crooked fight promoters, fustrated cops, scared tourists, and for good measure Ruth Gordon. Somehow this whole thing works, a surprisngly enjoyable comedy. Wait a second, this was a sequel?! Netfilx que.

Grade: B

127 Hours

Danny Boyle tells the true story of Aron Ralston, an avid mountain climber who had to cut his own right arm off after being wedged in a mountain crevasse for 127 hours. James Franco gives an excellent performance as Ralston and proves that he is one of those actors capable of holding the screen pretty well by themselves. I liked Boyle's cinematic sense for this film, though at first I wasn't quite sure where he was going with it. Combining music with Ralstons memories and hallucinations the film is able to present a character study in a rather unconventional way, and on two fronts really. I hesitate to use the phrase, but rock solid.

Grade: B+

Top Hat

The most iconic of the Astair/Rodgers musicals, clips of this film are seen in such later works as The Purple Rose of Cairo and The Green Mile. The plot, not important (can you say mistaken identity), its all about the Irvin Berlin musical numbers, the stars chemistry, and the lite comedy provided by such character actors as Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore. Beautiful art deco sets.

Grade: B

The Tillman Story (2010), Metropolis Refound (2010), The End of Suburbia (2004), Red Belt (2008)

2011-09-21T17:03:00.003-06:00

The Tillman Story

Pat Tillman, a safety for the Arizona Cardinals famously left a multi-million dollar football deal to join the U.S. army in the aftermath of 9/11. Tillman served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and it was while stationed in the latter country that he was killed in 2004. Originally reported to have died in combat it later came out that Corporal Tillman was killed by friendly fire and that this fact had been covered up. This documentary covers the efforts of Tillman's friends and family to bring the truth about his death to light.

Some have argued that this film is too political, but I'm not sure how it could not be. The nature of the cover up and the use of Tillman's image as a symbol and recruiting tool to be exploited by people Tillman apparently didn't much like, well...

Grade: B+

Metropolis Refound

Story of how the only known copy of the complete version of Fritz Lang's 1927 silent German epic Metropolis was discovered in film archives in Argentina. Okay that's neat that they found the complete film, but we don't need a documentary about this. Even at 45 minutes this is too long.

Grade: D

The End of Suburbia (2004)

Works as a kind of companion piece to the superior Collapse. The idea of suburban living, now so entrenched in the American ethos is an unsustainable one. An inefficient use of space with neither the virtues of city or country living, the suburbs are too spread out and too removed from food production. In the aftermath of peak oil production the viability of the suburbs will plummet, and they may well become the slums of the future. A bleak outlook, but backed up by some knowledgeable sounding experts, and also by the fairly obvious fact that oil is not an unlimited resource. The film is low budget (also Canadian) and hurt a little bit by the fact that host/producer Barrie Zwicker is not a natural in front of the camera and that he is best known for his work involving 9/11 conspiracy theories. Most of the films Eisenhower era suburban footage is taken from the same Redbook Magazine promotional film.

Grade: C+

Red Belt (2008)

This really surprised me, but I should have known better its Mammet. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a former solder who now runs a Jiu-Jitsu studio and tries to live his life under a very strict code of ethics. After an accidental shooting at his studio and saving an over the hill action star from a fight at a club Chiwetel is caught up in a number of situations involving the movie star and his producer, his two brothers-in-law, a cop, a loan shark, a fight promoter, a women lawyer and rape victim, and a rigged tournament. It doesn't really sound all that good but it is, surprisingly subtle in that Mammet way. One of the most powerful closing scenes I have witnessed in some time.

Grade: A-

Tamara Drew (2010), Contagion (2011), I Married a Witch (1942)

2011-09-15T21:12:00.007-06:00

Tamara Drew

An 'ugly duckling' has a nose job and returns to her home town looking like Gemma Arterton. No longer having a beak like nose Tamara Drew is able to sleep with a couple of men including a rock star and a popular author of mystery novels, pushing off the reconciliation with her childhood sweetheart until the end. There are also subplots about the cheating mystery novelist's much put upon wife and a visiting American English professor, as well as two 15 year old girls and there efforts to meet Tamara's new rock star boyfriend. I've been trying to think of the word to describe the mood or pace of the movie, and I've hit on comfortable. The movie is one you can just be in, the plots not that important and you don't care if it just winds along slowly, though the resolution seemed a bit too quick.

Grade: B

Contagion

Straight forward story, we've seen it before, a mysterious new virus starts up in a remote land (rural China) and spreads around the world. The handling here though is more realistic seeming then most film viruses, the virus comes across as feasible, the symptoms not of an exaggerated nature, and while it kills off tens of millions of people it doesn't apocalypticly crash human civilization (though it does cause a good bit of damage). It's like the story of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic in a contemporary context, and focuses on the outbreaks victims, profiteers, and the doctors who fight it. Films large and good cast includes Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburn, Jude Law and Kate Winslet. Dr. Sanjay Gupta cameos.

Grade: B+

I Married a Witch

Pro-generator to Bewitched. After having father and daughter witch's burned at the stake, a 17th century puritan is cursed with having all of his descendants end up unhappy in love. Fast forward 270 years and one such descendant (Fredrick March) is running for governor of an unspecified New England state. The tree that the two witch's spirits were trapped in is hit by lighting and they escape the night before candidate March's arranged marriage with the daughter of a newspaper magnate. Witch Jennifer incarnates herself as Veronica Lake (then at the height of her popularity) to tempt March and ruin his wedding, she accidentally drinks her own love potion and becomes devoted to him, much to the chagrin of her father Cecil Kellaway. Hijinks's ensue, 'true love' (though it was induced by a magic potion rendering the whole thing... odd) triumphs. Movie enhanced by the presence of Robert Benchley.

Grade: B-

Mon Oncle (1958)

2011-09-12T20:40:00.003-06:00

Jacques Tati's second Monsieur Hulot film and winner of the best foreign film Oscar. This is a charming film focusing on the relationship between Hulot and his roughly six year old nephew. It is also a satire on 'modern' (1950's) French life. In the first shots of the film we see a pack of small dogs make there way form a warm, lived in, and slightly dilapidated old neighbourhood into a modernistic one, sterile, empty, artificial.

Hulot lives in the old neighborhood, a friendly place with vegetable carts, open air cafes and children playing in the streets. His nephew lives with his family in the new neighbourhood, one that is fastley encroaching on the old. The nephews family live in an ultra modernistic, uncomfortable seeming house. Even the yard is complicatedly laid out and overly manicured, the setting for the funniest dinner party scene I can think off.

Hulot's sister and brother-in-law desire to make him respectable, meaning part of their social circle. They try to set him up with a neighbour and get him a job in a rubber house factory, suffice it to say none of these things turn out as they hopped. The scenes with the little boy and his friends are also pretty funny, the games they play on the adults, such as whistling while hiding in a small bluff, and wagering on whether the whistle will cause a pedestrian to walk into a light post (this happens about 50% of the time). Again, warm, light hearted, sentimental in its way and quite obviously reminiscent of Chaplin's 'modern' satire City Lights.

Grade A-

Enduring Love (2004)

2011-09-12T19:57:00.003-06:00

From the novel by Ian McEwan. Play write Joe Penhall adapted the source material loosely, a lot of changes are made from the novel but its all in service of the greater theme which must have attracted him to the work (this being Penhall's first screenplay he would later adapt The Road). Like Kubrick or Preminger Penhall took what he liked from his source material and largely adapted it as an examination of the theme from the book in which he was most interested, in this case the nature of love.

The movie starts with a spectacularly staged accident in which a hot air balloon with a man and his grandson briefly lites upon a country meadow, only to be pushed back up by a gust of wind the grandson still inside. A number of passersby converge on the balloon and try to help, as the balloon begins to rise again all but one of the men let go, that man later falls to his death. The movie then follows how a number of figures who witnessed the accident cope, and the profound effect it has on there lives.

Daniel Criag is a university professor (though its hard to grasp precisely what he is a professor of) who obsesses over the incident and pushes live in girlfriend Samantha Morton away. This is all made more complicated by the presence of Rhys Ifans a lonely man who develops de Clerambault's syndrome a stressed induced erotic obsession with Craig. Craig views Rhys at first as a mear nuisance and becomes more and more concerned as time goes on, and for good reason. Yet his own obsessions with the accident and Rhys increasing intrusions on his life are making Craig into an unpleasant man and straining his relationships. Craig's Darwin conceptions of love, Morton's romantic, and Rhy's religiously tinged all come into play in this examination of what exactly love is.

Director Roger Michell, perhaps best known for his romantic comedies, might seem a bit of an odd chose for this piece, but he works. In fact the whole direction is fascinating, the choices made, some unusual shots like those that encompass two rooms at once through doors, or the concentration on mundane activities such as eating, this all adds to something, the sense of being on an unstable brink. The whole film is an excellent mode piece with mounting almost tangibly uncomfortable pressure building. I'm a fan of McEwan's book and am happy to say this movie was up to its task, and in fact even exceeds the book in its creepiness.

Grade: A-

A Foreign Affair (1948), The Blue Angel (1930)

2011-09-09T11:47:00.008-06:00

Leave it to Billy Wilder to dare and make a comedy set in the ruins of occupied Berlin. Jean Arthur is Congresswoman Phoebe Frost (R-Iowa 8th District) who along with a number of her colleagues travels to Berlin as part of a House subcommittee investigating the morale of American solders there. Though their official escorts attempt to put the best possible spin on things Congresswoman Frost quickly notices the high level of fraternization going on between the G.I.'s and the native Frau's. Arthur sneaks away from her escorts to investigate the situation herself and in the company of a couple of solders who think she is a German girl chances upon a seedy nightclub where the troops are being entertained by cabaret singer Marlene Dietrich (always a cabaret singer that one).

When the Congresswomen discovers that Dietrich had been the girlfriend of a high ranking Nazi, and that an unknown American service man is sheltering her from being questioned in Nuremberg, she sets out to uncover the ner-do-wells identity. The officer Arthur enlists to assist her in this search is a member of her own congressional district, Capt. John Pringel (John Lund, a little known actor for whom this film was probably his career highlight). It turns out ironically that Pringel is the one sheltering Dietrich from the authorities as the two are carrying on an affair on the down low. Now Pringel must attempt to 'help' the congresswomen track down the offending solder while at the same time secretly obstructing her efforts to do so in order to save his own hide. When Arthur gets too close to discovering the truth Lund tries another strategy, seducing the romantically inexperienced congresswomen.

In course of time Lund actually falls for Arthur but then Dietrich unmasks him as her lover. Ms. Frost is heartbroken, but Lund is not punished as his superiors intend to use him to flush out Dietrich's old Nazi boyfriend whose in hiding but whose extreme jealousy for Dietrich might flush him out. In end,well what do you think?

Wilder cynicism combines well with co-writer Charles Brackett's more polished studio sensibilities; the two had a long and successful partnership which resulted in such hits as The Lost Weekend and The Major and the Minor. Lund gets suitably exasperated and is good at playing a man caught in the middle of a no win situation; I wonder why he never really made it as a comic even romantic leading man. Arthur is adorable as always, watch how she just melts like butter for Lund in her trademark Jean Arthur way. Dietrich plays a type she'd play many times and is good at it. I love the world worn pragmatism she displays, cozying up to which ever sides in power, as Lund's character comments she goes in for whatever's 'fashionable', 'last year it was a swastika, next year who knows, maybe a hammer and sickle.'

Sly and well executed but also demonstrating that old school Hollywood heart; I'm not sure why this movie isn't a better known piece of the Wilder canon. Grade: B+

The Blue Angel, the movie that made Dietrich a star and the first of her six films with director Joseph von Sternberg, is a well regarded mini-masterpiece. Emil Jannings, who was at the time considered about the best film actor there was, plays Immanuel Rath an esteemed English professor at a local Gymnasium (college preparatory high school) in a moderate sized German town during the post World War I pre-Nazi era. Never married and living in a small rented room, Rath is treated by his students as a sort of comic figure whom they mock behind his back.
One day Rath discovers that some of his students are in possession of 'racey' pictures of a cabaret singer (Dietrich of course). The students are too young to be admitted to the Blue Angel nightclub where she preforms, so Rath goes there in the hopes of catching some of his pupils on the premises.

Rath attempts to confront Dietrich about her apparent sanctioning of the boys visits, but is essentially immobilized by the singers sensuality and simple niceness to him. He goes back to the club the next night to return some of her panties which he accidentally took from her dressing room the previous evening. Rath later attempts to protect the woman's honor by driving off a lusty sailor and Dietrich is genuinely flattered by this having not been treated like a 'real lady' for some time. Some of Raths students discover that he is genuinely love struck and ribe him about this at school; he continues to see her and some of the school authorities find out about this threatening his career. Just before Dietrich and her fellow performers are about to leave town for there next booking Rath purposes, Dietrich accepts, and whole group think having a professor with them will lend the troop an aura of class. It does not.

Years pass, Rath is reduced to selling Dietrichs racy pictures, and he later becomes the groups clown. Dietrich is nice too and genuinely found of the professor but treats him as a cuckold. At a return engagement to Raths home town the professor is humiliated, the whole community seems to have come out to see the depths to which the once great man has fallen. He snaps. He is later found dead in his old classroom.

A tragedy in the true sense Jannings is excellent at playing the slow degradation of this once proud man. Though some of the sets might be slightly surrealistic, the moves goes for realism. Rath was never a really happy man, though he had self respect. With Dietrich he thinks he has found something greater for his life, the love he's never had. He gives up everything for her, and then slowly eats away at himself; once self righteous man he is now consumed by self hate. One of the interesting things about this movie, and apparently a part of von Sternbergs style is his lack of moral judgement, and unusually rounded characters. While it would be tempting to blame things on Dietrich, it is Rath who is really responsible for his condition, and Dietrich never comes across that badly. In German with subtitles I thing this might be the oldest foreign language sound film I've ever seen. That it crossed over to America at that time and made a mark, later allowing the anti-Nazi Dietrich to permanently leave German and continue a successful career in the states, is testament to its greatness.

Grade: A-

The Divorcee (1930), A Free Soul (1931)

2011-09-08T12:09:00.003-06:00

A Norma Shearer double header. The Divorcee begins with a group of friends and family enjoying themselves at a fishing lodge, two of this group (Shearer & Chester Morris) get engaged much to the chagrin of Shearer's would be suitors Conrad Nagel and Robert Montgomery (father of Elizabeth). On the way home that night a drunken Nagel rolls his car disfiguring Judith Wood (1906-2002) whom he later he later marries out of guilt. Shearer & Morris have a high church Episcopalian wedding and on there anniversary three years later Shearer discovers that her husband has been cheating on her with Mary Doran. Morris explains that "it doesn't mean a thing" and heads out on a business trip. While he's gone a distraught Shearer sleeps with Morris's best friend Montgomery (this is pre-code). Guilt ridden Shearer tells her husband that she's slept with some one else (thought she never reveals it was Montgomery) and discovers that he has quite a double standard about these things. They divorce, she sleeps around, he turns to drink, they are both unhappy, they get back together in Paris. The End.

Better is A Free Soul. Shearer's father Lional Barrymore is a talented but too often drunken lawyer (I'm surprised this part wasn't played by his famously tipsy brother John). Barrymore manages to get "notorious gambler" Clark Gabel acquitted on murder charges. Gable takes a shine to his lawyers pretty daughter, she takes a shine to him thus neglecting her earnest polo player fiance Leslie Howard. Barrymore gets sober enough to insist to Shearer that Gable is no good, she agrees not to see him if father agrees to stop drinking, they go on a three month excursion to Yosmitte to 'dry out'. When they get back to civilization Barrymore immediately goes back to drinking and is presumed killed in a train accident; Shearer scorned by her upper crust extended family goes back to Gable. Gable becomes too possessive and threatens Shearer, jilted lover Leslie trys to defend her, he kills Gable. Shearer realizes she really loves Leslie who now seems certain to go to prison for life! If only there were a talented lawyer to defend Leslie; Shearer stumbles over a drunken Barrymore while looking for him (hopping he is alive) in a seamy part of town (this is set in San Fransisco). Barrymore sobers up enough to defend Leslie with a 'stirring oration' in court, he then dies in front of the jury. In the coda Shearer & Leslie's future together is left somewhat in doubt, but hopeful.

The Divorcee is stylistically superior but members of 'the smart set' sleeping around gets old. A Free Soul is more conventional fair, good in the beginning, ho-hum in the middle, and stronger at the end. I think I prefer Ruth Chatterton to Shearer.

The Divorcee: C
A Free Soul: B-

The Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), I Knew it Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale (2009), Zero Hour! (1957)

2011-09-05T20:00:00.006-06:00

The Gold Diggers of 1933

When you think of depression era musicals you should think of this, as its a depression era musical about depression era musicals about the depression. Three struggling actresses end up taking three rich men to the alter, with varying degrees of willingness on the men's part. Likable. The 'Forgotten Man' musical sequence at the end feels tacked on and clashes with the predominate mood of the film, but it really is a rather impressive Busby Berkly number. Grade: B

I Knew it Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale

Documentary on the late actor John Cazale. In addition to being a distinguished stage actor Cazale appeared in only five movies (The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, The Deer Hunter) each of which was nominated for a best picture Oscar. An intriguing looking unusually talented actor he was known for the vulnerability he brought to his performances, and the little looks and ticks he could do that just brought the soul out of his characters and added so much to his portails. Cazale became romantically involved with Meryl Streep and she was at his bed side when he died of lung cancer in 1978. Unfortunately at only forty minutes this documentary (like Cazale life) was too short. Grade: B

Zero Hour!

The plot of this 'airplane in danger' film was later lifted for the immortal comedy Airplane!. In addition to the plot about food poisoning striking the passengers and crew of a commercial airliner mid-flight, large portions of dialogue where appropriated from this film into Airplane!, making this movie unintentionally funny; even the the reluctant pilots named Stryker! Leads Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell are here on the downward slope of their carers and just look leaden and tired. Sterling Hayden in what would later be the Robert Stack role is slightly annoying, so far I've only liked Hayden in the parts he played for Stanley Kubrick. Low budget, set in Canada. Grade: C

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)

2011-09-02T10:14:00.001-06:00

One of the most famous of the German silent expressionistic horror films (yes this implies that there were more of those). Dr. Caligari is a mysterious not particularly trustworthy looking man who displays a freaky looking Somnambulist (a fancy way of saying a sleepwalker) at a carnivale.
While unconscious this somnambuilts can tell your fortune, he can also secretly sneak out at night and kill you. He kills this one guys friend so the one guy mounts a search and eventually tracks Caligari down to an insane asylum he administers.

Odd plot, but neat looking, you can see the influences on artists the likes of Tim Burton (Cesar looks a lot like Edward Scissorhands), Terry Gilliam, and even Dr. Seuss. Arguably better then the more famous Universal monster movies that followed it a decade later. Even the title cards here are unique, though they where probably redone during the 1996 restoration of the film. I can not deny however that the film benefited from its succinct running time (70 something minutes) you wouldn't want to drag this simple story out any longer.

Grade: B+

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

2011-09-02T10:04:00.002-06:00

A clumsy combination of western stock characters and science fiction conventions. The aliens, monolithic and uninteresting combinations of the space invaders from Independence Day and the Incredible Hulk are after gold, (pesky aliens are always after one of our resources) so they travel to the Arizona Territory in the year 1873. They blow up cows, rope in humans, and interfere with stock western plots like the cattle baron with the bratty son, the mysterious stranger, the tired old sheriff ect. (I'm surprised there wasn't a comic drunk). This feels like a combination of every summer movie though its surprisingly slow, in fact I didn't get mildly excited until the end. Waste of a good cast and potentially interesting concept. Not really bad per say, but not good. Grade: C-

The Resident (2011)

2011-08-31T22:37:00.003-06:00

Standard plot, emergency room doctor Hillary Swank has just separated from her longtime boyfriend (he cheated on her) and needs to find a new apartment in New York City. She does, its a nice one, the price seems to good to be true, the hunky landlord (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) also seems to be to good to be true, he is.

Swank and Morgan flirt, make out, she thinks better of it and just wants to 'be friends'. Morgan wants to be more then friends, he stocks her, which indeed he'd been doing all along, it was not by accident that Swank found this great apartment. Morgan has passageways behind the walls of the old apartment building, he uses them to spy on Swank, sneak into her apartment and drug her wine, and at night comes to her bed. Morgan also eventually kills the boyfriend (Lee Pace) just as the two are reconciling. The movie ends in a cool protracted hide and seek chase/fight in Morgans apartment catacombs.

Not a remarkable film, Swank must have just been attracted by the prospect of doing a kind of movie she hadn't done before. With stubble bearded Morgan you get the feeling that he may just be there because they couldn't it Javier Bardem. Christopher Lee, in a small role as Morgans grandfather, is just there to pad the cast. Yet it works, no surprises but you can feel that this movie was just done better then most recent films of its type. So, B-

Jefferson in Paris (1995)

2011-08-31T22:06:00.004-06:00

This film tells of the story of how Thomas Jefferson's sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemmings started. I remember when I first heard about Jeffersons reported relationship with the young slave girl, it was in the mid-1990's right around the time this movie came out. I was upset, having then a very rose colored almost sainted view of the Founding Fathers (still for the most part very great men, but far from perfect). Indeed many people where understandably put off by these allegations, and there's been an unwillingness to believe them simply because its Thomas Jefferson. But now, fifteen years later its generally accepted that Mr. Jefferson had four children by Hemmings, its been proven now by DNA evidence.

The film story is of course set in Paris, appropriate given the title don't you think. In 1784 Thomas Jefferson (here played by Nick Nolte) was dispatched as the fledgling American governments ambassador to France; which had just been the only real allie they had in their war for Independence from Britain. Jefferson would stay in his post for five years, witnessing the early days of the French Revolution (which he predicted would turn out well) before being recalled to America to serve as George Washington's first Secretary of State.

While in France and in accordance to his position Jefferson spent a lot of time among the royal court and the French aristocracy. This being a Merchant/Ivory production it really gets the period feel down. The ruling class had long been decadent, they throw themselves lavish entertainments, sumptuous dinner party's, and indulge in every passing fade such as wand healing and mesmerism. Yet at the same time these Frenchmen could be great patrons of the arts and sciences, and exciting things besides politics where happening there, such as early hot air balloon experiments. Amid the French swells Jefferson meets and falls in love with Maria Cosway (Greta Scacchi) the English/Italian wife of the apparently gay portrait artist Richard Cosway.

Jefferson vacillates between his love for Maria and loyalty to an oath he made to his late wife never to remarry and which his daughter Pattsy (Gwyneth Paltrow) won't let him forgot. Apparently unable to decide what to do Jefferson ends up in a relationship with Sally Hemmings (Thandie Newton) which both Pattsy and Maria find out about and are non too pleased, though partly in keeping with the propriety of the times they refuse to speak about this issue openly (indeed in the film nobody seems to address the issue directly). Nolte in the middle of his 1990's hay day is a good Jefferson, which is almost unimaginable now given the current state of his career and public perception. The rest of the cast is very good too and this inherently slow motion picture does manage to sustain interest over its 2 1/2 hour running time.

Grade: B+

Skidoo (1968)

2011-08-31T11:18:00.004-06:00

In an effort to become more relevant to younger audiences Otto Preminger produced and directed Skidoo, a kind of drug comedy that features both mobsters and hippies. Written by Doran William Cannon (later to achieve success for his script of Brewster McCloud); Skidoo stars Jackie Gleason as a retired mob hit man who has taken up a suburban life as the owner of a car wash so as to raise his daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay, whose very pretty but never really made it as an actress) in safety. One day 'The Tree' the originzed crime outfit Gleason had worked for comes calling to request his services in murdering a former associate turned government informant (Mickey Ronney). Gleason tries to say no but after they murder his best friend he agrees and is sent to prison in order to kill Ronney; he is to be assisted in this by one Freddy the Professor (Austin Pendelton) a brilliant draft dodging druggie who has also been sent to prison for this sole purpose. Ronney safe in a private prison apartment (from which he operates a successful enterprise as a stock trader) proves difficult to get at and in the end Gleason decides he doesn't want to kill him and so escapes with the Professor and another inmate in an improvised hot air balloon.

Gleasons disappearance from home is of course noticed by his daughter and wife Carole Channing (also a former associate of The Tree) who along with a band of hippies and a sort of junior mob bureaucrat in charge of Oregon and Idaho (Frankie Avalon), set out to locate the head of The Tree, a mysterious figure known as "God" (Grocho Marx if you can believe it). "God" is in exile on a yacht in international waters from which he runs The Tree, all the major characters will converge there for the odd musical finally, a lyrically poor but catchy toon called 'Skidoo' sung in a Hello Dolly style by Channing.

The movie is odd and has a reputation as a total disaster, but when approached in the right spirit its quite entertaining and deserving of the 'cult statues' it has achieved. The movie boasts a number of groovy songs (my favorite being the musical number featuring the dancing trashcans) composed by the artist Nilsson who also appears as a 'tower guard'. A strange film that's surprisingly memorable and seems to work by virtue of not quite working. Even the closing credits in this film are enjoyable. Grade: B-

Hangover Square (1945)

2011-08-31T10:42:00.007-06:00

Set in London in 1899 Hangover Square stars Laird Craiger (a rather husky leading man) as George Harvey Bone an up and coming composer. Bone has a number of problems in addition to his last name, chief among these is that whenever he becomes really stressed and hears a loud sound he goes into a hypnotic state in which he immediately sets out to murder someone. After performing said deed and disposing of the body (his preferred method for this being fire) he comes too with no memory of what he has done, though does suspicious about these missing time experiences.

Bone is also concerned about finishing the concerto he has been working on in time for its debut performance. Bones patron is Sir Henry Chapman whose daughter Barbra has taken quite a shine to him. Now Barbra is a good looking women, though Bone becomes more enamored of nightclub singer Nette Longdon (Linda Darnell, Hollywood's "woman with the perfect face"). Longdon leads Bone on, though she is not attracted to him she has been successful at getting the composer to write popular songs for her. This is unfortunate for Bone as it distracts from work on his concerto causing stress, and there's construction going on outside his town house so loud nosies are common. Things are not to end well for Bone.

Despite its b-movie plot and the mostly just adequate performances, this is a stylish and very well executed film. Stand out among the sequences are two, one a massive bon fire on Guy Fawks Night in which Bone dispossess of Longdons body made up to look like an effigy, the other the fantastic burning of the concert hall as Bone debuts his concerto. Craig is good in the lead role, and unfortunately this would prove to be his last film. A husky man whose weight had proved an asset in earlier films such as Blood and Sand where he plays a pompous critic and The Black Swan where he is a notorious pirate attempting to reform, Craig longed to be a romantic lead and his crash dieting resulting in his death from a heart attack at the age of 31.

The film is one of Darnell's early 'bad girl performances' and she's adequate in it though mostly on screen for her looks. The most disappointing part would have to be George Sanders as a Scotland Yard doctor who attempts to help Craiger discover what he does during his missing time experiences. Sanders simply doesn't have enough to do, the role is too easy for him and he comes across as if on auto pilot. The film however is surprisingly good and what should be a C warrants a B-.

Sleuth (2007), In The Loop (2009), The Ghost Writer (2010), The Illusionist (2010)

2011-08-21T22:22:00.007-06:00

Sleuth

Like a game of cat and mouse by Samuel Beckett. Kenneth Branagh adapts the play by
Anthony Shaffer , a story of a mystery (Michael Cain) writer and the out of work actor who is sleeping with his estranged wife (Judd Law). The whole thing takes place in a slate gray marble house, they play psychological games with each other. Sometimes they even seem to adopt different persona's in relation to these games, even border line homosexual ones. I enjoyed the first act, when the stylized dialogue was fresh, but after that it got confused and repetitive. Still kudos for being so different from most modern pictures. Grade: B-

In the Loop

Dry British comedy of political satire centers around political bureaucrats on the eve of an ill considered Iraq type war. It's bright in an understated way, but plays it too safe to be really thought provoking. The profanity really got oppressive in this one and brought it down a peg. Grade: B-

The Ghost Writer

An unusually good, unusually smart political mystery. Ewan McGregor is a nameless professional ghost writer who takes on the task of sprucing up the memories of a Tony Blair type former British PM, after the original ghostwriter turns up dead. Of course this means there's 'more then meets the eye' going on and McGregor ends up caught in a semi-complicated plot involving the CIA, weapons companies etc. Most of the action takes place on a Marthas Vineyard type island which provides a suitably creepy setting. This is not an explosion filled action thriller, but rather it is a smart mystery story, very enjoyable in part because we see so few of these kind of movies made anymore. Great cast.

Grade: A

The Illusionist (2010)

Sweet , beautiful looking animated feature from the creator of The Triplets of Belleville Sylvian Chomet. Based on an unproduced script by the beloved french comedian Jacques Tati, this is the Chaplinesque tale of struggling magician past his prime, and the young servant girl who adopts him as a surrogate father figure. Set mostly in Scotland in the year 1959 this film isn't as stylized as Belleville, but Chomet's signature is everywhere present, and did I mention its just beautiful. The story, the scenery the characters, all understated and sentimental in a good way. The occasional slow spot but on the whole a lovely movie that brought me almost to tears.

Grade: A-

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part I (2010), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 (2011), The Town (2010), Watch on the Rhine (1943)

2011-08-20T19:28:00.006-06:00

When the first Harry Potter movie came out ten years ago I didn't think that the film series would be completed. I didn't think peoples interest would hold out, I suspected Potter was a fad, now we know that its firmly rooted in the cultural zeitgeist and it probably will be for some time to come. I'm impressed that they finished the series, and even more impressed with its consistent quality.

There is a lot of story to the Potter tale, a lot of characters and magical things to keep straight. At the beginning of Deathly Hollows, having not watched a Potter movie in about two years I had a hard time keeping things such as the secondary characters straight. But as I watched I began to remember more, and became immensely impressed with how everything tied together. Everything that was introduced before seemed to have a point, and in something of a rarity for a blockbuster series like this, the ending was actually worth waiting for.

The first part of Deathly Hollows had only one really good 'action sequence', the one in the Ministry of Magic. Much of the film is spent with Potter and friends in exile, we thusly get some slower moving sequences and a lot of brooding and teen angst, not my favorite part. Part 2 however was just excellent, even amazing in a way, everything it could have been. Voldemort never became a watered down villain, impressive considering how much he'd been built up; and seeing so many of the characters from the previous films making often unexpected semi-cameo reappearances was really rather enjoyable. Also that last battle at Hogwarts had for me more resonance then the famed battle at Minas Tirinth in The Lord of the Rings, you have more of a history with the place and characters in Potter and I thought it was just better (not the The Lord of the Rings isn't impressive). In the end while part I could have been a little stronger, part II was a total pay off.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part I Grade: B+
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part II Grade: A+

A kind of thematic follow up to his superior 2007 Boston crime drama Gone Baby Gone, director Ben Afflick's The Town is a solid enough action piece, with somewhat interesting characters, but simply lacking in the sense of grit and pathos of the earlier film. Afflick also plays the lead, the head of a group of masked robbers who have had a pretty successful run of bank and armored car heists (successful enough to have attracted the attention of the FBI and disappointingly dull agent Jon Hamm). During once such robbery a bank manager (Rebecca Hall, I like her) may have gained some unanticipated clues to the identity of one of the robbers (Jeremy Renner). Afflick decides to check on this, strikes up a conversation with the women at a laundry mat, and proceeds to fall in love with her. This complicates things.

The movies fine, though not as deep, reveling or even good as I think it wanted to be. Some good action sequences, but with the exception of Hall and Afflick none of the characters come alive in anything approaching a meaningful way, and even they aren't as affecting as they should have been. That's not to say this isn't a good movie, it's just not a great one.

The Town Grade: B

Based on Lillian Hellman's successful Broadway play, Watch on the Rhine is as boring as heck. Only a half ass effort is given to opening this thing up, still the vast majority of the action occurs in just a couple of rooms. This is the story of a German family involved in the anti-fascist movement, who return to the American wives (Bette Davis) childhood home outside of Washington D.C. (her father had been an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court). The family has one kid who thinks he's real smart and likes to talk all fancy, with the other two children being fairly generic. The father is noble but kind of stiff. In short the play (which premiered in 1940) was meant to bring home to American audiences the importance of the moral fight in Europe, three years later as a movie it just seems redundant. The action as it were mostly consists in trying to deal with a visiting Romanian Count who might inform the local German embassy of the freedom fighting family's presence. Lucile Watson was Oscar nominated, mostly for saying 'they woke us up out of the magnolias' or some such supposedly deep summation. Again this was boring as heck.

Watch on the Rhine Grade: F

The Docks of New York (1928), Fantastic Planet (1973), Hobo with a Shotgun (2011), The Unholy Three (1930)

2011-08-17T19:38:00.009-06:00

Someone once commented that it was a shame that sound film arrived when it did because the silents were just starting to get good. It is true that most American silent films of real artistic merit (with the exception of the comedies) where not produced until about 1925-28. Artistically The Docks of New York certainly has a handsome look, gritty, it felt as though the entire production was shoot through a lite film of oil. Even though its director Josef von Sternberg was Austrian born the film never quite crosses over into the preferred Germanic surrealist style of the time. While the sets and look are great the plot and characters are thin, which is pretty consistently the case with silent film. At first I thought the movie might have been a commentary on American moral degeneration in the 1920's, hey the stern preacher of few (title card) words even looked a little like Calvin Coolidge. Later I learned that von Sternberg made a point of never making a 'message pictures', so I guess suicidal girl, horny sailors and bitter murders wife are all just there to be taken as they are, judgmentless? Well the film makes a late concession to happy endings, but to be honest I never really cared for the 1D characters in this film, so it might actually have been more satisfying had things all ended with more misery.

Grade: C-

It's Salvador Dali meets The Yellow Submarine meets the Animated Star Trek. It's "Monty Pyhton meets Pink Floyd's The Wall." Its Luis Bunuel meets The Martian Chronicles. It's Fantastic Planet.

A film festival favorite at the time of its release, the Czechoslovakian made Fantastic Planet is really just your standard slave revolt story. Humans, called Oms, have somehow been transplanted to the home world of the Draags, giant blue people obsessed with meditation (wait till you find out why). Some Oms are kept as pets, while others live in the wild as feuding tribes. Ter is the pet Omn of the Draag prime ministers daughter, Draags age a week for each human year so Ter grows up around this adolescent until he escapes at roughly age twenty. Having garnered much Draag knowledge Ter could be real helpful to his fellow Oms, where it not for religious superstition against such knowledge. When the Draags communistic government orders a "de-Omification" and kill 'the Wizard' among others, Ter leads a group of survivors to an abandoned rocket depot were they construct a ship to take them to the Draags sacred moon, otherwise known as Fantastic plant.

What happens at the Fantastic plant is very odd, and deserving of the descriptions given in the first paragraph. But the part of the film on Draag is surprisingly engaging. Again the stories simple, but very engaging perhaps because of its simplicity and quasi-earnestness. The strange flora and fauna on Draag are truly alien and kind of a joy to watch. Though the animations odd, sometimes the people are almost chalk drawing like, I was won over by the shear differentness of this picture.

Grade: A-

(The) 'Hobo With a Shotgun' first made his appearance as a 'fake trailer' attached to the Canadian release of Grindhouse in 2007. The premise is simple, a poor hobo, who just wants to buy a lawnmower, takes up the cause of vigilante justice with the aid of his trusty shotgun.

The nameless hobo (Rutger Hauer) rides the rails into Hope Town, a crime infested burg where seemingly anything goes (think the alternate Hill Valley in Back to the Future II, only worse). This mayhem is primarily organized by one Drake (Brian Downey, who plays him as a kind of variation on Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth character in Blue Velvet). I guess Drake is a sort of crime lord and along with his two sons (the Uday and Qusay to his Sadam) enjoys imprisoning people in altered sewer caps and ripping there heads off with the aid of rope and automobile, along with general rapping and pillaging.

Even for an exploitation picture I found this movie ultra violent. It's gory, and can be cruel and gross to excess. The hobo befriends a young prostitute (Molly Dunsworth) who he seems to think is a teacher, and in the end they face off in a final battle with Drake, surviving son, the crooked police department and a couple of bounty hunters known as The Plague. You want to like it, you want it to be tongue-in-check, and it is, buts its also disgusting. I couldn't make up my mind about this one.

Grade: C

The 1925 silent version of The Unholy Three had been a success for 'man of a thousand faces' Lon Chaney, so why not make a sound version with the same star five years later. In his final role before his death (released seven weeks prior to his dying of a throat hemorrhage), Chaney is a crime minded ventriloquist. He teams up with the strong man and midget when there carnival is closed down, and with the help of his girl friend (the really attractive Lila Lee) they set up shop with a bird shop.

Of course the bird shop is a cover, it allows them to meet wealthy bird patrons who they might want to rob. To hide there identities they take on the roles of a grandmother (Chaney in drag), her son in law (strong man Ivan Linow in a suite) and a little baby (Harry Earl, two years before his signature role in Freaks), Lee posses as Chaney granddaughter. Lee falls in love with the rather clueless Hector McDonald (Elliott Nugent), who is working as a clerk in the bird store while he goes to night school. A burglary goes wrong, a rich guy dies, Hector is implicated, and Lee begs Chaney to do the right thing.... He does. This was okay, not great but enjoyable, benefits from the a-typical cast.

Grade: C

Whirlpool (1949), Angel Face (1952), River of No Return (1954)

2011-08-10T21:42:00.007-06:00

It was the movie Laura that established Otto Preminger as a film director to be reckoned with. Originally slated to be a B picture it became a huge hit and an important proto-noir; while set among the upper classes of New York it still helped to establish certain thematic and stylistic elements, and to a lesser extent the suspense that would come to characterize the emerging genera. Though Preminger cast a wide net in terms of his directorial projects, he would return to noir film making a number of times. Perhaps the best of these is Fallen Angel, staring Laura's male lead Dana Andrews. Perhaps the worst of these is Whirlpool.

Reuniting the director with actress Gene Tierney, who had been elevated to A-list stardom with her title role in Laura, here the actress seems flat where she had previously been vivid. While many have commented that over time Tierney improved in her acting, even if just in her limited range, Whirlpool seems like a definite back track. She's largely going through the motions, and some of her performance is bad, especially when she gets into hysterics. Part of this is the sub par script, in which Tierney's character is not fully consistent, and goes through a few rather jarring emotive and motivational turns, and this is not including the times she's suppose to be hypnotized.

You see that's what this movie is about, hypnotism, and its use in perpetrating and scapegoating a murder. The hypnotism is performed by Jose Ferrer, who portrays a George Sanders type character who decides to use Tierney as a fall gal for the murder of his former lover and swindle partner Barbara O'Neil. Ferrer chooses to use Tierney in his murder scheme as she has a bit of a shop lifting problem and is willing to submit to 'therapeutic hypnosis', and her husband is O'Neil's psychologist, and hence posses recordings of therapy sessions that incriminate Ferrer, and which a brain washed Tierney can easily steal. Speaking of the psychologist husband he is played by Richard Conte, a largely tough guy actor who feels very miscast in this role. I just don't buy him as the sensitive type, so how could be such a successful psychologist, (yet one who somehow misses his wife's father complex induced shoplifting).

Conte first thinks he's been betrayed by his wife, who he's been lead to believe is having an affair with Ferrer. He soon figures it out however, but now he must somehow find those missing recordings. But How? Well take his wife back to the scene of the crime and see if she recovers some of her memories, how else. The resolution includes a contorted, yea downright stupid plot contrivance where Feerer hypnotizes himself so as to arise from his hospital bed (he scheduled surgery as cover for the murder) and once again (as he did for the murder itself) 'secretly' (how could you do this secretly?) make his way to Barbara O'Neils house to retrieve the incriminating recordings hidden there in. He ends up dying. Charles Bickford plays the police detective assigned to the case who in a nice middle ground portrayal is neither stupid nor brilliant at his job.

A more successful noir outing for Preminger was Angel Face. The plot is fairly standard noir, the relationship between Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmions has some parallels to both the Bogart/Bacell relationship in The Big Sleep, as well (to a lesser extent) as the Stanwyk/McMurry relationship in Double Indemnity. It does what it dose well, but like the critics of the time I felt that I had 'been there and done that', and do not afford the film the same forgotten gem statues as many film buffs. The things I liked most about this are Jean Simmons (love that hair) and Leon Ames as the unscrupulous defense attorney (Jim Backus plays a refreshingly laid back district attorney).

Speaking of Simmons the reason Preminger was brought in to make this movie has to do with her. Having been given a contract by RKO but spurning the romantic advances of the studio's owner (and notorious womanizer) Howard Hughs, Simmons had become a persona non grata. Simmons had one film left in her contract which had to be made before a fast approaching deadline, Preminger was known as an efficient director capable of making a film that would come in on time and on budget, so Hughs recruited him to come in and film this noir in less then a month (I believe there were only about 18 spent shooting). Hughs didn't care how well it turned out, he just wanted it done and Simmons off the payroll. It did turn out fairly well, and boasts a rather quick and somewhat surprising ending, though through most of the film you just know where its going.

Speaking of knowing where a films going how about River of No Return. Robert Mitchum again, this time a western, kind of a weird property for the very European Otto Preminger to be helming. At the request of his long time friend and patron Daryl F. Zanuck, and even though by this time Preminger was no longer under contract at Fox, he agreed to take the job as a favour. Preminger was just then begining what would prove to be a long and successful stint as an independent producer/director and he certainly didn't need the job. He also quickly determined that he didn't need the stress of working with the famously difficult Marlyn Monroe, who plays the sultry saloon singer who is destined to end up with Mitchum (Mitchums kind of rough with her, one scene comes close to being a near rap).

For most of the movie Mitchum, Monroe and Tommy Rettig (the child actor who plays Mitchcum's son and who Monroe apparently became quite attached to on the set), are rafting down 'The River of No Return' (presumably the Salmon River of Idaho which is also known by that name). They are in pursuit of Monroe's lover Rory Calhoun, who cost Mitchum his farm and horse, and are simultaneously being pursued by Indians (I like how the Indians have no apparent motivation for this, they just seem to want to kill these people). Much if not all of the rafting scenes are done in the studio pool, and the back screen projection process employed doesn't work and makes the whole thing look very fake. What isn't fake is Monroe's wet clothes sticking tightly to her figure.

The River of No Return is most certainly not a great movie, but it doesn't try to be and is likable. While Henry Hathaway would have been a more obvious choice to direct this, Otto Preminger does a sufficiently good job, and gets to play in the wide screen format that he would later do so much memorable work in.

These three are most certainly among Preminger's lesser works, but they mostly constitute a sort of middle ground between his great triumphs (like Laura, and Anatomy of Murder) and his almost unwatchable mistakes (The Man With the Golden Arm, Bunny Lake is Missing).

Whirlpool: D+
Angel Face: C+
River of No Return: B-

Strangers in 7A (1972), The Great Buck Howard (2008), Drag Me to Hell (2009)

2011-08-06T19:28:00.009-06:00

Strangers in 7A

Television movie staring Andy Griffith as a downsized industrial worker turned building superintendent and Ida Lupino as his wife. They are a middle aged couple, no children, just barley making it by financially and in a vaguely strained relationship. When Ida takes a trip to go visit her sister Griffith stops in at the local bar where he is quickly seduced by a young women. The women claims to have no place to stay and that she is unable to afford a hotel room, after some near pouty faced pleading Griffith agrees to let her stay in an apartment at his building whose tenets are travailing for the 4th of July holiday. Griffith becomes convinced that the women wants to sleep with him and isn't exactly against this idea, but alas its all a rouse.

Shortly after getting to the aforementioned apartment the young women's companions barge in. They are a group of disgruntled Vietnam veterans who insist they just need a place to stay for a few days. They threaten to reveal to Griffiths wife his attempted affair if he doesn't keep quite. Lupino returns from her trip early, and some tenets are starting to report noises from the supposedly vacant apartment. Griffith eventually goes to check this out and discovers that the vets are planing to rob the bank next door. They capture Griffith, and eventually his wife and hold them captive pending there caper. But the robbery goes wrong, one of the men is killed by the police, and the leader Brandon kill his other partner in spit, while the young lady declares 'she can't live like this anymore' and abandons Brandon as well.

Brandon decides to hold the building hostage with a bomb, but of course he is incapacitated by Griffith who then successfully defuses the bomb. The action is followed by a coda in which Griffith and Lupinos relationship is shown to have been set aright. Even given that Griffiths heroism makes Lupino forgive his attempted affair (she figures it out), why is Griffith allowed to keep his job as superintended? I mean he's kind of at fault, he let the bad guys in and didn't inform the authorities out of fear of his wife. The apartment the bad guys hid in is damaged, and big wholes blown in the neighbouring bank, not to mention that everyone in the building was almost blown up, yet somehow all is forgiven.

Though given his heroism I suppose a case can be made for Griffith's job retention, but why was he involved in the first place? The bad guys knew about the empty apartment before hand and had no trouble entering the building, so why did they need to involve Griffith? Presumably they could have snuck in on there own, they had no problem opening the apartment door without a key, why bring Griffith in as a potential informant? Was it just in case tenets reported sounds in that vacant apartment? Considering the clandestine nature of there enterprise you'd think they could have kept things quite? Lastly even though the Vietnam vet angel reeked of an attempt to keep this fairly conventional caper film 'current', the dichotomy between how the poor Vietnam vets and Griffiths poor World War II vet handle there respective economic woes is kind of interesting.

Grade: C-

The Great Buck Howard

Largely directionless law school drop out Colin Hanks takes a job as the personal assistant to fading illusionist Buck Howard (John Malkovich). Writer director Sean McGinly based Howard loosely on famed illusionist The Amazing Kreskin, for whom he once worked. While Howard's tricks and on stage personality are taken largely from Kreskin, his off stage personality and personal story are given a much darker hugh. Howard easily flys off the handle, is a megalomaniac and possibly a closet homosexual (weird strained relationship with Star Treks George Taki).

The film never opens up like I thought it would, the trailers presented the film as being about the magicans largely unexpected late in life comeback, but this is only a small part of the film, maybe 10-15 minutes of screen time before he's back performing at small dive venues. Colin Hanks is likable enough, but not that interesting, and other then as an excuse for Malkovich hamming there doesn't seem to be much of a point to this film. Tom Hanks was brought in to play his son Colin's father; I think largely this was done in an effort to lend the film some more (and needed) gravities. Howard is just too broad to make for a good character study, and the central plot (as it were) would have worked better as a short story. Not so great.

Grade: C-

Drag Me to Hell

Before he was best known for the Spider Man trilogy, Sami Raimi was perhaps best known for the cult classic Evil Dead trilogy. Raimi returns to his roots in this slightly camp horror film about a young banker (Alison Lohman) who refuses to grant an old gypsy women a third extension on her mortgage, and to ill effect. The gypsy places a cure on Lohman who becomes in grave danger of being dragged to Hell. Strange things start to happen, most of which only Alison can see. Her boyfriend Justin Long is not a believer but tries to stay supportive, so Ms. Lohman gets most of her help in dealing with the Lamia demon who is after her soul from fortune teller Dileep Rao. Out matched Dileep recommends another psychic (Adriana Barraza) who has dealt with the Lamia before (this is depicted in the films brief prologue). Lohman has three days to defeat the Lamia before she's to be drug down to hell, and a lot of the movie explores how much this good at heart character is willing to do keep out of Hades (she even has an opportunity at one point to send a slimy co-worker to hell in her sted, but will she do it?)

Unfortunately most of this movie is a little to slow and at times downright boring. Never really scary or really tongue-in-cheek it therefore fails on both counts. Lohman is cute, and the many closes up of her face (sometimes happy but generally ranging for slightly distressed to horror stricken) are a plus, but not quite enough. This movie reminded me about Alison Lohman, who I'd really like to see in more things, but not necessarily tormented by demons.

Grade: C-

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

2011-07-31T16:27:00.005-06:00

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)

2011-07-29T09:20:00.005-06:00

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)

2011-07-23T20:48:00.004-06:00

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)

2011-07-20T20:29:00.004-06:00

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)

2011-07-17T20:13:00.004-06:00

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)

2011-07-11T19:49:00.003-06:00

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)

2011-07-08T10:05:00.003-06:00

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)

2011-07-01T16:01:00.002-06:00

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

The Last Station (2009), The Conspirator (2011)

2011-06-30T16:52:00.003-06:00

James McAvoy is an actor I primarily associate with period dramas and here are two examples, both based on fact.

The Last Station is about Leo Tolstoy, if only it were more about Leo Tolstoy. Christopher Plummer's good in the title role, but I wish the film had been more about him and less about the supporting figures. Instead of Tolstoy dispensing sage advice we get infighting between the acclaimed authors wife and the Tolstoyian communal group that had been built up around him. McAvoy is Tolstoys new secretary, he engages in hero worship, sneezes when nervous, has a nice little love affair, and attends the great man at his death in a train station (hence the title). The work is well crafted and kept my attention but was never as emotionally involving as I think it was suppose to be. It picked up a little at the end, in terms of expressing some kind of emotional resonance, but again this movie for me was just going through the motions.

The Conspirator on the other hand is a much better movie. James McAoy plays Fredrick Aiken, a Captian in the Civil War who is reluctantly pressed into service as legal council for Mary Surratt, the widowed owner of a boarding house who was the only woman charged with involvement in the conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln. In the fashion of movies of this type Aiken is gradually won over by Surratt (a strong subtle performance by Robin Wright), and gives to her defence an extraordinary amount of effort despite opposition on nearly every side (it even costs him his girlfriend played by Alexis Bledel, sadly the weakest link in the cast). On the whole however the cast is great, Evan Rachel Wood, Danny Houston, Stephan Root, Colm Meany, Tom Wilkinson as a high minded senator and Kevin Kline as Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (the primary villain of the piece). It's a really interesting, lesser known story, done skillfully by director Robert Redford. Also as much as we hear about Lincolns assassination I don't know if I've ever seen it depicted in detail on film before.

McAvoy gives strong performances in both films, but Conspirator just plan works better then Station. Director Micheal Hoffman tackled a different and ambitious kind of project in Station, but the more movie friendly storyline of Conspirator, while less ambitious, ultimately was the more effective outing. Surely though McAvoy will continue to play many more second string historical figures in the future.

The Last Station: C
The Conspirator: B+

The Shadow Strikes (1937)

2011-06-26T19:41:00.004-06:00

Most familiar to us from old time radio and a rather uneven Alec Baldwin film, 'the Shadow' is a child of the pulps and gets sufficiently pulpy treatment here. Independently wealthy "armature criminologist" Lamont Cranston is here played by one time silent star Rod La Rocque, who just a few years after making this film would retire from acting to become a real estate broker. Cranston is helped by your standard type devoted butler as he goes about being "The Scourge of the Underworld". Two seemingly unrelated criminal plots Cranston is working against of course end up connected, though its kind of confusing how every things suppose to fit together.

Early in the film 'The Shadow' foils the attempts of two crooks to rob from an office safe, he doesn't leave the premises fast enough however and is stumbled upon by a cop. Having already apparently ditched his minimal disguise (comprised of a down turned hat and a cape the he must awkwardly hold Dracula like to cover his face), Cranston just ad-hocs a claim to being the lawyer whose safe was almost busted, and ends up just kind of running with this cover for most of the rest of the movie. This seems short sighted on Cranstons part because he's passing himself off with this false identity all over town and that would surely present difficulties down the road for when he's working on other cases, not to mention isn't he suppose to be a 'well known playboy', you'd think someone would recognize him (or at least be aware that he doesn't look like the established lawyer he's pretending to be, good thing the real guys on vacation).

Anyway notable about this film is how bad the writing and acting (with the exception of La Rocque) is. The movie was produced by a company called Grand National Pictures, an outfit so small that I wasn't even familiar with them. The acting is on par with your weaker community theater groups, the dialogue far worse then that in the Dick Tracy, and Bulldog Drummond series. Man who works with the real attorney:"Jeeze this is exciting maybe he's a criminal or something?" Underworld boss after being told that a robbery he commissioned has been foiled by The Shadow: "I'd just like to know who he is?" Also the reporters say a lot of really inappropriate stuff within hearing distance of a bereaved family: "A murder, just what we needed" (spoken enthusiastically). This awkward badness though is part of what makes this movie enjoyable, so it washes out with a grade C.

They Live by Night (1947/49), Side Street (1950)

2011-06-24T14:58:00.003-06:00

Nicholas Ray (best known for Rebel Without a Cause) made his directorial debut with this low budget RKO feature about a young couple on the lamb. Comparisons have been made to Bonnie and Clyde, which are relevant in someways such as the inventive camera work (one of the first films to us a helicopter shot for following an automobile) and the fact that its a 'young couple on the lamb' movie, though these two sweethearts don't actually commit any crimes together. The leads are Farley Granger, a young man whose spent most of his life in prison and just escaped with a couple of fellow inmates, and Cathy O'Donnell the niece of one of Grangers fellow escapees.

The two of course fall in love, its a sweet romance of awkward country virgins whose circumstances are anything but favorable. They split with Grangers share of a Texas bank robbery and travel around the country just trying to stay together. The media has misinterpreted Granger to be the master mind so that only adds to there trouble, they do however take time to stop and get themselves married. The wedding was necessitated by the production code of the time so as to allow for another plot development, O'Donnell's pregnancy. When this comes to light Granger wants to get them to Mexico for safety, espically after his two former compatriots are killed. Of course they never make it and O'Donnell is left a poor young, pregnant widow.

The film can't help but bring to mind Gun Crazy, a much more hard edged, twisted and psychological 'young couple on the lamb' film, which interestingly stared Grangers Rope co-star John Dall. For whatever reason Howard Hughs, president of RKO at the time, sat on the film for two years, though the movie garnered good buzz for Ray and Granger even before its release.

Granger and O'Donnoll have a strong chemistry, he must have known they would as Granger was the one to suggest her as his co-star. Shortly after Nights American release Granger and O'Donnoll were paired together again, this time at MGM in a noir titled Side Street. Filmed largely on location in New York City (an unusual practice for a studio film of the time), Side Street has a basic stock plot of a down-on-his-luck young man who gets in over his head; here in an attempt to steal what he thinks will be just a couple of hundred dollars, Granger ends up with $30,000 and you can bet the crooks he stole it from would like it back.

O'Donnoll doesn't have much to do here, she's pregnant and/or in the hospital for most of the movie (she's really got a lovely face Cathy O'Donnell). There are a number of good character players here to make up for it, including Jean Hagen in a small but memorable part as a gangsters ill fated moll. The cinematography is excellent, all sorts of neat shots, including some very impressive high angle shots that give an extra dimension of 'entrappedness' during the films signature final car chase. The police procedural elements are very Dragnet, but fun and earnest. Two completely solid and rather unique looking noirs.

The Live by Night: B-
Side Street: B-

Hereafter (2010)

2011-06-20T12:34:00.005-06:00

Speaking to the dead, returning from the dead, all too common in current films and television. Clint Eastwood wanted to freshen our perspective, treat the subject 'seriously' and make it new again. He failed.

"Your wrong its not a gift, its a curse" says retired psychic Matt Damon to his brother Jay Mohr. That's the most cliche line possible about 'supernatural abilities', and the casting of Jay Mohr as the money hungry brother is a cliche as well. The movie is three different 'short stories' about death that eventully come together at the end, the basic Babel-type story structure that I think works a hell of a lot better in books then in movies.

The first story concerns a french journalist (the pretty and mostly unknown Cecile de France) who has a near death experience during the 2004 Asian tsunami. After being caught up in a large CG wave Cecile has a brief stay in a vague and fuzzy looking afterlife before coming too among a couple of locals. She becomes obsessed with her experience, it affects her work, she takes a leave to write a book about former French president Francois Mitterrand but instead begins research on a book about near death experiences. When she submits the first three chapters to her publishers they are upset, she loses her contract (both there and with her old TV station) and at the publishers suggestion begins to write the book in English for an American or British audience.

The second story is about young twin English boys, one of the boys is killed in a tragic accident, and the survivor is taken away from his unfit mother and put into foster care. He becomes obsessed with contacting his dead brother and tries a number of avenues including psychics, and some guy with a special recording machine, but to no avail.

The final story concerns Damons San Fransisco based psychic. He has come to the determination that he can never have a life of his own if he spends it talking to the dead, so he quits the business and works a $2,000 a month job at a factory. He takes an Italian cooking class at a local community center and there he meets Bryce Dallas Howard who is putting on the adorable. They hover at the edge of a relationship in what is probably the most successful part of the film. She however finds out he used to be a psychic, and in this capacity he finds out she was sexually abused by her father and the budding relationship ends suddenly. Despite importuning by his brother to go back into the psychic business after Damon is downsized, our reluctant psychic instead decides to take a trip to England to visit the home of his favorite author Charles Dickens. This of course is when our three stories come to intersect, and each character finds what they truly most want in life.

It's a little hard to understand the point of this movie. Its a sober treatment, not flashy or explotive, in fact its maddeningly dull throughout. Eastwood makes a point of showing how psychics and others who claim to be able to contact the dead are con artists and frauds, so you wonder what his point is in giving us one psychic who isn't? A node towards hope? 'It's a great mystery what happens hereafter and who knows, maybe somebody can actually contact the dead?' The message felt mixed, I don't really know what he was trying to say. None of the stories were as affective to me as I suppose they were suppose to be, even the ten year old kid with the dead brother rang contrived and hollow. I don't know, its well executed as you'd expect from an Eastwood directed film, but it was also a bore and sold out for the trite. I'm sorry Clint but only my respect for you keeps this above an F. Grade: D.

Gun Crazy (1950)

2011-06-09T18:17:00.004-06:00

Oddness. Limited budget combined with exquisite handling. Noted for its realism but actually highly stylized; The carnival, the shooting competition, the long shot, the hovel in Montana, the duck blind. The lanky Dall with the big grin, Cummins showing her shape in the tight cowgirl outfit. The unrealness, the crazy danger of there first filtration/shooting contest. Nedrick Young's glasses. Ruby and the kids in the little house by the rail yard. Two generations of Sheriffs Boston.

A moralizing beginning, like out of Reefer Madness. Obsession. Guns; phallic. Exile and return. Mad love; like Bonnie and Clyde racing around the country. Banks and meat packing plants. A couple as viewed from the backseat. Contradiction. She'll kill in a panic while he's blocked from shooting any living thing. They're bound together, a mutual detour. It circles back home and to the mountains. What is the moral? Does it need one? Grade: B

The Damned United (2009)

2011-06-08T21:09:00.003-06:00

Actor Michael Sheen continues his apparent project of playing every interesting Englishman of the last fifty years. Here Sheen is Brian Clough an ambitious and brilliant football coach whose career is almost ruined by an obsessive rivalry with Leeds United coach Don Revie. The revelry is born of a perceived slighting of Clough by Revie at a 1968 soccer match. Clough becomes obsessed with beating and bettering the legendary coach, and through a combination of talent and will, as well as his extremely capable assistant coach Peter Taylor (played by Timothy Spall, who I've come to highly admire as an actor) brings the struggling Derby County Football Club from the bottom of the 2nd Division in 1968, to winning the 1st Division cup in the 1971/72 season.

The movie is based on author David Peace's largely fictionalized novel centering on Clough's disastrous 44 day tenure as the coach for Leeds United. Clough took the position after Revie retried to take the coaching spot for the English National Football Team, but the residue of their rivalry alienated Clough and the teams players resulting in his swift outre by the clubs board. Afterword Clough reunited with his old friend Pete Taylor and the two went on to win the First Division Cup, the League Cup, The European Cup, the FA Charity Shield, and the European Supper Cup, for Nottingham Forest.

Clough comes across as an egomaniac and an ass at first, but as we learn the back story from flashbacks we begin to kind of understand his behaviour, and in the end Clough seems to learn his lesson and his career gets back on track and even soars. I didn't expect that I'd like this movie that much, I don't really care about English football, but this film is a great character study and consistently engaging with strong performances and fine writing. A welcomed surprise. Grade: A-

Dick Tracy versus Cueball (1946)

2011-06-04T20:32:00.003-06:00

Cueball has a tendency to strangle people with hat bands, also he's got a bunch of hot diamonds he's trying to unload; and that's about it for this entry. Also 'Vitamin' seems really gay. Grade: D+

Phantom of the Opera (1943)

2011-06-03T13:11:00.002-06:00

This version boasts Claude Rains as a violinist secretly paying for the voice lessons of aspiring opera singer Susanna Foster, that is until he gets acid thrown in his face and becomes The Phantom. Policeman Edgar Barrier and opera star Nelson Eddy compete for Fosters attention, Hume Cronyn and Fritz Feld have bit parts. Very nice cinematography and set design (for which the film won Oscars); the refurbished opera house set from the original 1925 version looks amazing. Film also contains sequences of two 'operas' created for the film to get around a difficult copyright situation because of the Second World War (opera copyright holders in Europe could not be contacted). Solid rendering of oft repeated story. Grade: B-

Find Me Guilty (2006)

2011-05-27T08:28:00.004-06:00

IMDb

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)

2011-05-26T17:46:00.005-06:00

IMDb

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)

2011-05-24T20:23:00.004-06:00

IMDb

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)

2011-05-23T20:21:00.002-06:00

IMDb

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)

2011-05-19T16:50:00.002-06:00

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)

2011-05-14T20:51:00.003-06:00

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)

2011-05-13T12:26:00.004-06:00

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)

2011-05-13T12:16:00.002-06:00

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)

2011-05-08T21:23:00.004-06:00

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)

2011-05-05T22:05:00.006-06:00

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)

2011-05-04T16:32:00.005-06:00

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+

All or Nothing (2002)

2011-04-29T14:34:00.006-06:00

Mike Leigh film about, what else?, the British working poor. The film follows three family's in a government subsidized housing project in London. The family of primary focus is the Bassetts, two middle aged aged parents and there roughly 20ish daughter and 18ish son, all living in the same home. Of the four of them three work, the father as a Taxi driver (but he sleeps in until around noon so only earns about half a days wages), the mother as a check out girl at a grocery store, and the daughter cleaning at an old folks home (where a creepy sixtyish fellow worker seems to have an eye for her). The son, Rory, is an unpleasant fellow, he's overweight, doesn't work, and is rude and unappreciative. The family is unhappy, disenchanted, and just making it by. Like nearly all the people in this film, there also not very good looking, and in the case of the father, son, and daughter all grossly overweight.

The second family consists of single mother Maureen and her daughter (whose probably in her early twenty's) who gets pregnant by a worthless boyfriend. Maureen had her daughter by a man she says she know "for all of 5 minutes" before her only child was conceived. Interestingly Maureen seems the happiest, most well adjusted of the central players in this film. The third family consists of two alcoholic parents and a daughter, again in her early 20's. The daughter here, played by Sally Hawkins (whose about the only name in this film, the rest of the cast is good but largely unknown) attempts to steal the no good boyfriend away from her secretly pregnant neighbour, and becomes the object of desire for a mentally maladjusted young man.

A consistent stream in this film is that the parents are mostly exhausted, they work, but have little money and hope, so each deal with there resentment and disillusionment in there own way, and for the mostly part rather ineffectively. The children tend to be rude little brats (with the exception of Rachel Basset whose quite and withdrawn), always fighting in one way or another, and again making little of there lives.

When morbidly obese Rory Bassett has a heart attack, it becomes an emotional catalyst that could change all there lives, or they might just try harder for a little while and then sink back into there perpetual funk, at the end we don't know. Mike Leigh likes to take us places we don't usually go in movies, he likes to explore the emotional world of the poor and disposed, he dose so truthfully and always seems to have something a little new to say. It's a downer, but its solid and knowing. Grade: B+

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial (2007)

2011-04-24T22:41:00.005-06:00

Documentary made for PBS's Nova program about the noteworthy 'intelligent design' court case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Basically the story is this, some members of the school board in a small Pennsylvania school district passed an ordinance insisting that 'intelligent design' be presented as a viable and scientific counter theory to Darwinian evolution, and that Darwin's theory not be present as, in there word, fact. The movie talks to Dover area residents involved in the ruckus, and presents re-enactments from the federal court case that arose from it. Both sides of the argument are presented, but what I'll call 'The Darwinian side' clearly had the stronger case. The arguments presented, taken largely from the court transcripts themselves, are very strong and logical, while the ID side's arguments were for the most part retorted easily, and some of their witnesses are known to have lied. One can believe in 'intelligent design' if one so chooses, but it is not science because it can not be tested, its arguments are easily refuted by the existing evidence, and its mostly based on inherently religious pre-suppositions. This is a documentary but its presented as what it is, a modern day Scopes trial, and it is riveting as courtroom drama, science, and sociological discourse. Grade: B+

Twist of Faith (2004)

2011-04-24T19:14:00.008-06:00

I've enjoyed two other of director Kirby Dick's documentaries, the confronting the FCC doc This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006), and the closeted gay but anti-gay Republican congressman film Outrage (2009). Twist of Faith is a film about the Catholic priest sexual abuse saga that came to a head in the early 2000's, but more specifically its a film about one man, and his family's ordeal.

Tony Comes is a decent man, he's 33 years old, married and has two kids. He's a firefighter in Toledo, gives fire safety presentations in elementary schools, and he's an active Catholic, even getting his wife to convert before there marriage. However Tony Comes is a victim of sexual abuse, inflicted on him when he was 14 years old by the religion teacher at his Catholic high school, a priest named Dennis Gray. While Tony had become open with his family about what had happened starting in his 20's, had made a point about telling his wife before there marriage, and was even involved as a 'John Doe' in a class action lawsuit against the archdiocese, things reached a turning point when shortly after moving into a new house with his family, Tony learned that Dennis Gray lived just five doors down.

This event triggers something in Tony, and while Gray is essentially forced to move from his home, an intensity is released in Tony in regards to his childhood abuse like none he'd felt before. He comes out to the public about his abuse, meets with the Bishop of Toledo about his trauma (who apologizes profusely but also lies to Tony's family that he was the only one that Gray ever abused, in fact there were a half dozen or so more), becomes more involved in the lawsuit, joins a victims group for those who have been sexually abused by Catholic clergy, and becomes so obsessed and angry that he threatens the stability of his own marriage.

This is a powerful film, I wasn't sure that it would be because we've all been hearing variations of this for so long, but the personal quality of this story really hits home. We see things through the experience of one man, one victim, who twenty years later is still reeling for his childhood abuse. Director Dick provides Tony and his wife cameras to use on there own at home to record there thoughts and feelings, this combines with Dick following the couple around some, as well as some news clips, and footage of Dennis Gray's deposition for his crime. A moving, surprisingly kinetic film, Twist of Faith is the definition of what a strong, personal documentary can be. Grade: A-

Oh My God (2009)

2011-04-22T18:08:00.005-06:00

Documentary in which filmmaker Peter Rodger travels around the world and asks people the question 'what is God?' At first I wasn't terribly impressed with this film, I thought there was too much montage early on, and it didn't feel deep enough because there were so many different interviewees. But the movies whole point I think was to be something of a survey course on this question, and when you look at all of the people and religions presented in this film together, it really does become kind of a tapestry.

Interestingly and I think thankfully this film doesn't take a hard stand on its subject matter, it doesn't even insist that God exists, and several atheists and agnostics are interviewed. The film does advocate the not unreasonable proposition that the core teachings of all religions are pretty much the same and we should all learn to live together. Directer/writer/host Peter Rodger is a reasonable man, he doesn't come at his interviewees with disrespect, with the possible exception of one particularly dogmatic Muslim man.

The film does convey a sense of generous wonder about the multiplicity of perspectives on God in this world. As this film progressed it elicited in me a feeling of satisfaction that we as the human race even ask this question, contemplating the mysterious I think can raise the soul, though when we think we know the answer to everything it can destroy it. I also think this film found a good balance between its celebrity, scholarly, and everyday interview subjects. Though its not amazing I didn't expect this documentary to be as good as it was. Grade: B

Tom Jones (1963)

2011-04-18T22:50:00.006-06:00

I complete my viewing of the entire Best Picture Oscar cannon with Tom Jones. Based on the Henry Fielding novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, this is a playful, bawdy, and lightheartedly vulgar film of immense likability. Tom Jones (Albert Finny), a bastard child raised by a wealthy country gentleman in mid 18th century England, is of a sort well liked by the ladies. Tom Jones gives into his fleshly desires on a frequent basis, but his adopted father loves and sees good in him, while his outwardly pious, inwardly petty cousin Bilifil plots against him.

Toms true love is neighbour lady Sofie (Susannah York), but they are kept apart by the machinations of others, and in the course of the story Tom is banished from his home, goes on a number of adventures, and beds a number of women. The plot is likably episodic and engaging, but its the presentation that makes this film. Tongue-in-cheek, knowing, and as I said playful, the movie begins with a sort of 'silent film' sequence of baby Tom's discovery at the Allworthy estate, and continues to employ visual flourishes, and camera tricks throughout. We have a delightfully droll narrator, who comments on the goings on and makes sure to cut out the love making scenes, so as to accord with 'a sense of propriety'.

It's kind of surprising that a film like this could be released in 1963, and embraced so by the Academy. The film was a portend of things to come I suppose, but also features a bit of an old school nudge, nudge approach to sensuality, (though there's sure a lot of cleavage in this film). Perhaps appropriately this movie about a charming, hansom womanizer was the last film JFK ever saw, he watched it five days before his death. Anyway this is a great, fun, and sadly lesser known Best Picture Oscar winner. Grade: A

Detour (1945)

2011-04-17T17:41:00.009-06:00

I remember hearing once that some famous European art director considered Detour to be the finest American motion picture of all time. Made at the short lived poverty row studio PRC, you can tell this film was done cheaply, but it was done creatively and well. Through taught pacing, intriguing characters, solid acting, and some interesting editing, Detour rises far beyond the middling production it could have been. It is a contemplative and fatalistic noir, while its story seems fairly standard, its effect feels heightened, this is no doubt do to the excellent direction of Edgar G. Ulmer who makes you feel trapped like his protagonist.

The plot concerns Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a down on his luck piano player hitchhiking from New York to Los Angeles to reunite with his fiance (Claira Drake) who traveled there in hopes of becoming an actress. Working his way west Roberts is picked up in Arizona by a man named Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald), who literally drops dead on Roberts in what would appear to be incriminating circumstances. Roberts stashes Haskell's body in the desert and assumes his identity, hoping to ditch the car and Haskell's belongings once he makes it to California. Before he get to his destination however he picks up a hitchhiker who goes by the name of Vera (Ann Savage), and boy is she a sour character. Having been picked up hitchhiking before by the real Haskell, Vera takes Roberts as a sort of hostage through blackmail, and uses him in her attempts at several schemes, before finally settling on an unrealistic plan to get money from Haskell's dying millionaire father.

The film has a claustrophobia, a real tension, Roberts is a poor everyman that its easy to sympathize with, while Vera, a strangley complicated, detestable character, and surprisingly sexually aggressive for that era. While it might not seem much on the surface of it, Detour captures something emblematic, perhaps its the grimness, small budget, and largely unknown cast which make it seem seamyer, more depressing, a noir's noir. It doesn't have that classic polish, but it has a strange kind of truth to it, one which simply makes it better and more engrossing then it ought to be. Grade: B+

Kick-Ass (2010)

2011-04-17T16:01:00.006-06:00

You know interestingly the most enthusiastic recommendation I got for this film was from a young Mormon women. Kick-Ass is an adaptation of the same titled comic book series about mostly young superheros. It attempts to go at its subject matter in, what for lack of a better term, I must call a 'more realistic' approach then you get from most comic book inspired movies. The film sets its costumed vigilante characters in a more-or-less realistic world, and explores the logistical, personal, and physical problems of superherodom. In that respect it is much like 2009's Watchman, only crossed with some of the indie comic extravagance of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

This film has been criticized for its surprising amount of profanity (and not the milder type), extreme and graphic violence perpetrated by characters including a twelve year old girl, and largely implied under aged sexuality. I expected to be turned of by this, and it was certainly a little intense in places, but as the movie gained momentum and started to expand on its scope, I really got swept up and enjoyed the thing. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure I suppose, but this was kind of awesome, true vicarious fantasy for the underdogs in life. I'm kind of surprised Robert Rodriguez didn't direct this, it seems right up his alley, but Matthew Vaughn did a fantastic job. Sequel please. Grade: B+

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (2007)

2011-04-17T11:23:00.004-06:00

Documentary on legendary folk singer Pete Seeger. Peter Seeger has lead a long and interesting life, and is still with us at age 91. He seems a very true man, a man of his convictions, and a man of simple goodness. His politics have caused him problems throughout his career, but I think the opposition he faced in life is what makes him so endearing, and in a way so powerful. Also a man whose been married, and seems very much in love with his wife after nearly seventy years, simply warms the heart. Film harmed a little bit by a not particularly dynamic presentation. Though the information is good, I think I'd have almost rather read it then watched it, but then I wouldn't have gotten the music, which would have largely negated the point. Pete Seeger's an A, but the movie's only a C+

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

2011-04-10T21:55:00.003-06:00

Final film in the Christopher Reeve Superman cycle is simply not needed. Now the first two films were strong, as a child growing up watching them I thought they were real good, and on re-watching them a couple of years ago I thought they were solid if hokey. Superman III of course is less effective, a bizarre hybrid of a Richard Pryor movie, it mostly seemed awkward, and was lacking too many of the central players, like Gene Hackman, and little more then a cameo appearance by Margot Kidder. Hackman and Kidder are back for this outing, along with a twenty-something Mariel Hemingway, and oddly Jon Cryer.

The film is a weak late cold war tale, as with Rocky bringing about Detente, here Superman tries to solve the arms race. Any potentiality in this movie is waisted with the senseless rehashing of the plot of the last two Superman movies, namely Superman must fight another superpowerd being or beings (in Superman III its himself). There's this nuclear/solar powered guy made from some of Superman's 'genetic material', he's just muscly and boring. Mariel Hemingway is pretty, and that's about the best thing I can say for this movie. Film feels like it had too many scenes cut, but then again all these Superman movies had blaring continuity problems and logical leaps. Entertaining enough, at least for one viewing, but mainly an exercise in ringing the last bit of juice from a franchise. Grade: C-

Obscure Muppet Stuff

2011-04-10T19:55:00.002-06:00

Who dosen't love obscure Muppet stuff, enjoy.

Dragon Fire

Violent Coffee commercials

Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947)

2011-04-08T19:31:00.004-06:00

Doctor A. Tomic of State U. discovers a chemical that will freeze people in place for 15 minutes. So Doctor L. E. Thale gets his girlfriend I. M. Learned, who happens to be the Dr. Tomic's assistant, to steal the chemical. So Thale and villains X-Ray, Gruesome and Melody use it to rob the First National Bank of $100,000. But Tess Truehart just happened to be at the bank, and she witnesses the robbery because she was in a phone booth at the time the gas was released, and I guess the gas can't penetrate phone booths. So Dick Tracy and Pat Patton track Gruseome from a bar called The Hangman's Noose, to Y. Stuffams taxidermy shop, and eventually to Wood Plastics by way of a hospital interlude. All the bad guy's die, and the last of that wacky gas gets out just in time for a comic freeze frame ending. Not as good as the first movie in this 1940's Dick Tracy cycle. Grade: C-

Bound for Glory (1976)

2011-04-08T10:31:00.006-06:00

I wanted to see this because I like 1930's era folk music, and I share a birthday with the man this movie's about. Bound for Glory stars David Carradine in what is probably his strongest, serious dramatic performance, as folk music pioneer Woody Guthrie. While the movies 2 1/2 hours long, it is not an exhaustive bio-pic, instead it tells the story of maybe two years in Guthrie's life, in which he rises from out of work Texas sign-painter, to some prominence on California radio, and then chucks away opportunities for big money and a national CBS radio show in order to stay 'close to the folks'.

'The folks' for which Guthrie develops an arguably obsessive fondness are the poor, down on there luck people of depression era America. Guthrie starts pre-disposed in there favor, being one of them in a small, dying, Texas farm community. Unable to find steady work to support his family Guthrie sets off hitchhiking and box car riding to California, which according to gossip has jobs a plenty. Of course when he gets there, as anyone familiar with The Grapes of Wrath knows, there ain't much work for country folk, and what there pays penny's a day and is backbreaking hard.

When union organizing folk musician Ozark Bule (Ronny Cox) stops by to preach labour and entertain the folks at a work camp where Guthrie is staying with a young Randy Quaid and his family, our protagonist ends up in a fist fight with hierd thugs and must flee with Bule for safety. Ozark takes a liking with Guthrie's guitar plucking, and eventually he lines up a regular radio gig for Guthrie so he can send for his family in Texas. Of course first Guthrie has an affair with a rich widow (Gail Strickland), but because 'she has so much, while so many have so little' it doesn't work out. Plus Guthrie does love his wife Melinda Dillon, but he's so darn full of wander-lust and love for 'the folks' that he walks out on his radio job to go and entertain poor labours in there own environment. After a while of doing this, his wife leaves him, takes the kids and moves back to Texas, so then Guthrie turns down some very lucrative singing offers to head back out on the rails and entertain his beloved 'folks'.

It really took about a half hour for this movie to get going, during its first thirty minutes or so Guthrie just sort of bumbs around the dying town where he and his family lives, but then he finally decides to leaves and its another thirty minutes before he makes it to California. Much of the film is episodic, just little pieces about the poor people Guthrie meets, the 'real' plot as such doesn't truly begin until Woody meets Ozark at that California labour camp. Through much of the movie Woody's a rather zen figure, he just floats along where ever circumstance takes him and is always nice to everyone (save maybe his frustrated wife). It isn't until his innate sense of justice gets aroused that Woody shows off his righteous indignation, and his stubborn streak proves it will always get in the way of any peace he might find with his family. This happens around the same time Woody starts to get successful, and you understand why he can be so frustrating to those around him, he's self righteous, but in kind of an oddly noble way.

This movie, directed by Hal Ashby, is very much of that uber-slow, atmospheric, reflective school best epitomized by the work of Mark Rydell. It took me, a lover of slow film, quite a while to get into it, but it's an honest and strong work, and Carradine does a surprisingly good job of carrying the piece, with the aid of some rather low key supporting players. I don't think I really loved it, but by the end I was feeling quite satisfied, and despite the difficulties of its languid pace and highly strung leading character, this movie actually felt quite warm. Grade: B

The Social Network (2010)

2011-04-06T22:45:00.006-06:00

One of the top critical favorites of last year, The Social Network takes a subject that doesn't seem like it should be interesting (the founding of Facebook), and makes it interesting. Likewise the combination of director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin doesn't seem the most natural thing in the world, though they both share a preference for dark lighting in there work, but again, this works.

Mark Zuckerberg is far from the most likable person in the world, through most of the film he's 'trying rather hard to be an a-hole'. Jesse Eiesnberg was the right choice to play Zukerberg, a darker Micheal Cera. As one would expect from a Sorkin screenplay, this movie is talkie, but intriguing. It is certainly a film that fits its zeitgeist, and though I'm a little surprised that Zukerberg just kind of let it be and made no real protest, I'm also not surprised, if this film leaves you any impression of Zukerberg, its that he doesn't care that much about 'rehabilitating his image.'

As this is one of those films for which it can be argued 'nothing much happens', its kind of hard to write about. It's about an anti-social revolutionary in social networking, a man who made friend a verb, but probably doesn't have many. Like another well regarded Sorkin film A Few Good Men, this movie is good, its well crafted, the story's fine, but the point seems a little bit vague. I know we are suppose to make our own judgments about Zukerberg, I know he's important and not uninteresting, but why this movie, why make a film about him? That's what a lot of the people in this film seem to be asking, why is Mark Zukerberg a revolutionary figure, the worlds youngest billionaire, and Time Magazines 2010 person of the year? Well I don't know, this film doesn't fully seem to know, and I doubt if Zukerberg himself does, and I guess that's the point. Zuckerbergs a bit of a contemporary Rorschach. Grade:A-

The Graduate (1967)

2011-03-30T23:19:00.003-06:00

Yep, I hadn't seen The Graduate. If your at all cinema conscious however you can't help but be aware of the film, its so iconic. In fact I thought its virtual ubiquity in cinematic circles, as well as its subject matter, might turn me off of this film, but I was surprised to find out how truly good it really is.

It is and was one of those turning point films, it captured something of the time in which it was made, but also something more universal. I'm not entirely sure what the metaphor is, it might simply be about that place in life, just post adolescent, where you don't know what you want or what your doing, but you know you want something. 'I'm worried, generally, about my future', as Ben Braddock might say. I think this is a movie about the obstacles in the way of your goals, even if you don't know precisely what those goals are, or why you might want them, or what to do when you've achieved them.

I was really surprised by how funny this movie is, I wasn't expecting that. It's a dry, kind of odd ball, almost surreal humor, and it blends in well with the films surprisingly interesting visual style. It's also kind of an unsettling picture, which again ties into the whole post-grade anxiety theme of the film. All the leads, and even the supporting players are excellent, the cast magnificent, as is the writing, performances, and of course that music. I think this is pretty close to a perfectly realized film, I can't think of anything they could have done better. I can tell, even having just finished it, that this is the type of film that's gonna dwell in my mind for awhile, there's a lot there, and as I've intimated above, I don't think this film is truly about what it seems to be about. I think perhaps its about exploring, at its most rudimentary, or maybe rebellion. Anyway, I was pretty amazed, this deserves its place in the cannon. Grade: A+

Mean Frank & Crazy Tony (1975)

2011-03-29T23:15:00.006-06:00

Frankie and Tony are mobsters, Frankie and Tony become friends. I guess this is considered to be one of the better of the grindhouse Italian mobster films (in English, but set and filmed in Italy, I suppose largely as a cost saver, along the lines of the spaghetti western). Tony Lo Bianco is Tony Breda, born in Italy but raised mostly in New Jersey, Tony has returned to his native country to hang around in pool halls and aspire to be a mobster, like his hero Frankie Diomede.

Frank Diomede (Lee Van Cleef) is an established mob boss who journeys to Italy to visit his legally legit brother (he's some kind of research scientist), and take care of members of his outfit who seem to be defecting. When Tony hears that Frankie's in town, he chooses to neglect his beautiful and eager girlfriend to try and spend some time with Frankie, whose none to interested.

There's a plot where Frank intentionally gets himself arrested, so that he'll have an alibi when he goes to kill a turn coat associate (he's temporally and secretly let out of prison by a corrupt cop). In the course of events Tony gets swept up in a police raid on a gambling establishment and ends up in prison with Frankie, where he saves his hero's life from hierd assassins. Frankie then takes a shine to the kid, and after Tony's release he helps Frank escape during a prisoner transfer. They take off after Franks enemies (who've now killed his brother), and the movie becomes sort of a wacky chase comedy for awhile. The duo eventully end up in the south of France for a final shoot out with Franks old gang, after which the vetern mob boss heads off to self imposed exile in Tanagers, but not before giving Tony a parting word of advise, namely to stay out of organized crime.

You know I actually liked this movie, it grows on you, though the back and forth between wacky comedy and violent mob picture can become a little jarring. The two lead characters develop a genuine and enjoyable, if not amazing chemistry, and I find that I'd like to see a toned down version of this movie remade. Possible light homosexual overtones in Tony's obsession over Frankie. Grade: C

Machete (2010)

2011-03-26T22:52:00.007-06:00

"They call him, Machete." I first became aware of 'Machete' from a sort of fake trailer that was attached to the 2007 Rodriguez/Tarantino outing Grindhouse. I quickly became aware that director Robert Rodriquez actually wanted to make this movie, but I was kind of surprised when he actually did.

Machete (Danny Trejo) was a legendary Mexican Federales whose wife and daughter were killed by a former associate turned drug kingpin (Steven Seagal). Three years after there deaths Machete is reduced to working as an illegal day-labourer in Texas. After witnessing Machete's victory in a street fight, corrupt businessman Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey) heirs him to assasinate a stringently anti-immigration state senator (Robert De Niro), but the whole things a rouse to simply wound the Senator (by aid of a second sniper) and frame an illegal immigrant for the crime (thusly insuring the senators re-election, and ability to push through legislation desired by Booth).

Unfortunately for Booth, and a whole host of baddies, Machete survives and sets out for revenge. He is assisted in this by his brother, a priest played by Cheech Marin, and hotties Michelle Rodriguiez, Jessica Alba, and Lindsay Lohan, as well as a bunch of other minor characters. It's over the top bloody fun, full of surprising cameo appearances (Don Johnson!), but feels very much pulled from the Planet Hell playbook, with some scenes rather reminiscent of ones in that previous film (such as the holding cell scene, the whole 'legendary agent down on his luck' aspect, and some of the love scenes). Yes Rodriquiez can make a 'grindhouse film', but it all felt just a little bit blah. Still I'd rather see this then most any straight action picture they make now days. Grade: C+

Also, was this all a sly commentary on the unsustainablity of the Republican coalition?

The Animal Kingdom (1932)

2011-03-25T19:01:00.000-06:00

Pre-code film, which I suppose you'd call a melodrama, is about an independent minded heir to a publishing house and his somewhat complicate personal life. Tom Collier (Leslie Howard) has long been a disappointment to his father Rufus (Henry Stephenson), having dropped out of Harvard and Cambridge, bummed around with his friends, lived with a women for three years (Ann Harding), insisted on the publishing house printing unprofitable artsy fair, and having an ex prize fighter for a butler (William Gargan). Rufus thinks his son might be on the verge of reforming when he's invited to Tom's country house to learn of his engagement to proper lady socialite Cee Henry (Myrna Loy).

Tom is in love with Cee, but still feels a deep connection to Daisy (Harding), a women with whom he apparently once had a 'friends with benefits' type relationship. When Tom visits Daisy, recently returned from a long trip to France, to inform her of his engagement it results in a rupture in their relationship. Tom takes to essentially holing up with his wife in the country and neglecting the reset of his old bohemian friends.

Less then a year after his wedding Daisy returns from an extended absence in Mexico where she was practicing to be a painter. Tom looks her up in an attempt to rekindle their friendship, but Daisy pushes him away, because you see she's really in love with him. Cee also loves him, but she actually gets along with his father and encourages Tom to make more practical business decisions. This is apparently too much to ask and in the end Tom leaves Cee and returns to Daisy, whom he's always really loved.

This was kind of ridicules, Tom just proves that he wants to regress, because he views 'growing up' to be 'selling out'. I thought Cee was perfectly nice, and not unreasonable, of course she was a little uncomfortable with Tom and Daisy's previous relationship, but why wouldn't she be (on the whole she's very understanding about it, epically given the period). If Cee was perhaps a little too comfortable around Rufus's assistant Owen (Neil Hamilton, who played Police Commissioner Gordon in the 1960's Batman TV show), it's because they once dated, and she never even kisses the guy, which is more then can be said for Tom who kisses Daisy throughout the movie. I don't think there was any good reason to leave Cee, he could have just told her that he didn't want to sell the family publishing house, and I think she would have accepted that. Anyway Myrna Loy's prettier then Ann Harding, but the latter was the bigger star at the time.

This movie's okay I guess, but there was disappointingly little to it, and other "scandalous" films of the period certainly had more guts. The more I think about it, the more of just a waste of time this movie feels, for both the viewer and the actors, who are all capable of doing so much more. I don't think a lot of thought went into this thing, which was very workman like in its execution and little more. No sir, I did not like it, Grade: D-

Animal Kingdom (2010)

2011-03-24T11:12:00.000-06:00

Joe F. thought I was too critical of Australian cinema (based on that one movie) and insisted that I see this. Now I don't think I would have ever sought this movie out. When It started I was ill disposed towards it. It seemed like it would be a too typical crime drama, it even felt a bit like an episode of Prime Suspect. The lead character Joshua 'J' Cody was one of those too silent people, the kind your kind of disappointed even exist, showing no emotion and seeming to just not care about most anything. Josh watches the Australian version of 'Deal or No Deal' while the paramedics tend to his mother for a heroin overdose. She dies, he calls his grandma, and moves in with her and his uncles.

The uncles, well there robbers. In association with family friend 'Baz' they've done pretty well, but the cops suspect that there the ones behind a crime spree, and periodically stake out there residence, primarily in search of the particularly violent brother 'Pope'. The film takes about 20+ minutes to really get going, but when 'Baz' is killed, something I didn't expect to happen, not that early in the film at least, things change. 'Baz' was murdered by some particularly violent cops, so 'Pope' and his brothers set a trap and kill some patrolmen. Some members of the family are arrested, but there is no real evidence so they are released. Brother Craig gets paranoid and decides to hid out with an old accomplice, but the cops have bugged the guys house and Craig is killed. An honest cop played by Guy Pearce tries to get 'J' to turn on his uncles, and succeeds when an increasingly paranoid 'Pope', convinced that 'J' has already turned, kills his girlfriend Nicole and tries to kill him. Also something is defiantly not right with family matriarch Janine, who has connections (i.e. dirt) which make it so 'J' is neither safe in witness protection or with any member of his family.

I can't remember the last time I saw a film that I so disliked at the beginning and was so impressed with at the end. Animal Kingdom is about the savage in man, brute animal instinct and cruelty, the strong preying on the weak, panic and heard instinct. A few might rise above this bestiality, Detective Leckie, maybe 'J', perhaps even 'Baz' had he lived. It's rare to see a film that progresses so naturalisticly, like life it doesn't seem planed out so much as just played out. The characterizations are all fine, unusually real seeming, and even nuanced in a strange way. I almost can't say that I liked it, no one to truly invest in or connect with, but I was impressed by it. It leaves a certain taste in the mouth that's hard to accept, to embrace, or to even enjoy. But it leaves a strong, pungent impression, its deep even as its base. A film that can be worth reckoning with, but with which I can not bring myself to love. Grade: B

The Tales of Hoffman (1951)

2011-03-22T22:50:00.000-06:00

A Powell/Pressburger film I hadn't seen. I've long thought it was interesting how P & P, a team perhaps best known for making films about World War II, would so often counterpoint their film making with movies about ballet, or nuns. The Tales of Hoffman is defiantly in the pairs latter tradition, an adaptation of Jacques Offenbach's 1879 Opera of the same name, which in turn was based on the writings of the German Romantic author E.T.A Hoffman (who is best known for being the author of the novelette from which came Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker).

From the opening of the film, with its surprisingly long 'program notes', to its expressionist sets that would be at home in an F. W. Murnau film, you know this movie is going to be something different. It's a stage production on an impossible set, the story of three doomed romances in the life of Hoffman the poet. The palate is that typical bright and vivid brand of technicolor so characteristic of The Archers films. The set and costume design by Hein Heckroth runs from the classical and childlike, to the Salvador Dali. The cinematography and the staging is superb. Visually its impressive, the dancing often compelling, and the music pretty good, but its also kind of boring.

It's kind of hard to rate this as a movie, it feels more like a stage play with camera angles. The operatic style of singing renders the English verse hard to understand, and the plot is abstract. I think I might have enjoyed any one of the films three acts more separately. I think this would be a wonderful film to have as background on a busy day doing things around the house, but to sit and watch it all, for me and I'm sure many others, simply requires a certain mood that I don't think I was fully in when I watched this. I can tell its a very good piece of work technically, as an adaptation of Offenbach I don't know enough to tell, as a film a piece of art, as a movie not so swell. Again its good, but I had periodic difficulty keeping it the center of my attention. As a balance of its artistic merit and its movie watchability I give it a C+

Hoffman (1970)

2011-03-18T17:43:00.000-06:00

"Reality betrays us all."-Hoffman

Peter Sellers is best known for his often bazaar, quirky character parts that can sometimes boarder on being impressions. I remember from his bio-pic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, that he was a little frustrated by this and longed to do more conventional, leading man type roles. Could he possibly have thought this would be one of those? Sellers plays a sexually frustrated, middle aged blackmailer, who forces a pretty young blond women (future Mrs. Jeremy Irons, Sinead Cusack) to spend a week with him in his flat, or else he'll revel to the police her fiances involvement in a crime.

Sellers came across perhaps his greatest role as Chance the Gardner, in the 1971 Jerzy Kosinski novella Being There, so we can assume the actor was in something of the habit of looking into eccentric works of literature for roles for himself, but what about Enrest Gebler's novel Shall I Eat You Now? convinced him to make this movie? Or perhaps I might rephrase that as why didn't he resist? Later in life Sellers reportedly commented that he hated Hoffman, because the lead characters personality was too close to his own (Sellers hated himself, for more on this see The Life and Death of Peter Sellers).

It's the story of a 'plain sad faced man', who 'missed the boat, but still needs love'. So he forces his secretary whom he's long been obsessed with to spend a week with him. It's a fantasy of a dirty, middle aged man. Given Sellers history of obsessing over beautiful women its even more disturbing as a film choice. He essentially kidnaps the woman, because 'he knows what she needs', and feels that if she's forced to spend time with him, she might fall in love with him. And in the movie it works!

Sellers gives a creepy performance, at first strongly implying an intent to violate the women, but never acts on it and gradually reveals different layers to his character. It is actually one of his strongest, most strangely subtle performances. Cusak is good, though I think her character changed a little too quickly. A little!? Perhaps the worst thing about this film is I kind of liked it, it's very unique, almost stage play like, but its hardly believable and it shouldn't work. But it does just enough, and intrigues just enough, and the musics good enough, that I've got to a give it a B-. Do not do the things in this movie, but if you watch, you might be surprised that it's kind of satisfying, in a weird, vaugly creepy way. Strange.

Hoffa (1992)

2011-03-17T23:17:00.000-06:00

In this current time of union busting, perhaps it is fitting to take a look back at Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa was the union leader who best epitomized what the opponents of unions most hated about them. Was he corrupt? Yes. Did he have mob ties? Yes (though he may or not have had mauve ties). Was he a son of a bitch? Yes. Was he effective? Hell yes.

The movie Hoffa isn't a bio-pic in the strictest sense. I don't get the impression that its makers cared that much about name or dates, and there are perhaps too many composite or fictional characters, but what the movie is trying to get across is an impression of the man. Hey, I know practically nothing about Jimmy Hoffa, but it feels like he would be like this, it feels like he would be a man of contradiction, if he wasn't there really wouldn't be a lot of point to this movie.

The framing story is of course fictional, liberties are taken about the man's final hours, and I'm okay with this because no one (whose talking) knows about the final hours of Jimmy Hoffa. His death is the second half of the 20th century's Amelia Earhart story, nobody knows exactly what happened, but I feel we have a pretty good idea.

Some have commented that the life of Jimmy Hoffa is a pretty good summation of the arc of organized labour in America over a roughly fifty year period, it started out idealistic, ambitious, and a little corrupt, and it ended cynical, ambitious, and very corrupt. The merits and draw backs of unions can be debated endlessly, though in many ways I don't think that the film makers particularly care, as this is a surprisingly nonjudgmental movie.

The screenplay by writing god David Mamet of course has his trademark violence, ambiguity, and elaborate story structure. He makes of the life of Jimmy Hoffa a series of vignettes, often fictional flashbacks (even had by a fictional character), on the life of a man, on whom it has no particular take other then 'these are the kinds of things that he did'. They must add up to the kind of man that he was, but its up to the viewer to make the call on what that means.

I add in closing only that Danny DeVito is a pretty good director. You get the sense that he has a great affinity for the style of films made under the old studio system. Some of his sets really look like sets, and I think that's intentional. He plays with conventions of style and genera type (gangster, bio-pic) and gives you a satisfying picture, that though it doesn't stray too far from the expected, definitely bears the unique imprint of it impresario. Though maybe it was just a little too long. Grade: B+

Becoming Human: Nova (2009)

2011-03-17T09:27:00.000-06:00

Three part PBS documentary series on human evolution. Now we all know the basics of this from school, apes become humans, but I've never heard it in such detail, where the hows and whys of this process are really explained. For example, what would be the advantage of being a hairless ape, well this documentary explains that, the ability to sweet. Also among the strongest evidences for human evolution, lice, though you have to see it to understand. Anyway while the presentations a little repetitive, the information really is quite fascinating. If you want to understand human evolution, this is a good place to look. Grade: B-

The White Ribbon (2009)

2011-03-13T17:50:00.000-06:00

The White Ribbon is the most realistically disturbing movie I've seen in ages. It feels like a Bergman film, in both cinematography and subject matter. It follows, mostly through the eyes of a 31 year old school teacher from out of town, events in a small north German village from the summer of 1913 until the start of World War I. ' It must have started with the doctor,' says the narrator, our protagonist teacher later in life. 'I tell the story of the happenings in our little village because I feel it might shed some light on what happened later', and I believe it does.

The incident with the doctor involves a wire deliberately set to trip him on his horse as he returns from a visit with the local barron, the not well liked, but respected employer of half the town. What it sheds light on is the zeitgeist in turn of the century Germany, and how it feeds into that country taking the world into a global war twice in the space of thirty years.

'I don't want our children to grow up in this environment' says the barron's wife, after returning from a long stay in Italy, helping her oldest son recover from a sever betting, and being tied up in the communal barn (which later mysteriously burns down). The village she says is a place full of 'malice, envy, apathy, and brutality, of petty revenge'. It is all these things, but bellow the surface, and nothing is to be mentioned about them, as the towns pastor says 'we don't want respectable families to be maligned'.

A parable of how a society can breed monsters, both from a crushing moralism, and out and out abuse. There is fornication, sexual abuse, physical abuse, spiritual abuse, animal abuse, murder, incest, inequality, and hypocrisies of all types. All this counterpointed by the tale of the town teacher, and his remarkably chaste courtship of a young women who moved to town for work. These, the most sympathetic characters, are of course strangers to the village, normally I might protest such an obvious story telling choice, but I think the audience needs it, we need someone to root for. The town pastor comes close to being sympathetic, but though you can tell that he does mean to do well, he is also too committed to a failing system to really lift men's souls, even in his own family.

This is a remarkable picture, its two and half hours long, in black and white, and with subtitles, but it is well worth it, even to those who might not usually view such fare. Grade: A