|
Re: Track the Films You Watch (2006)
The Strange Woman (1946) 7/10
Hedy Lamarr stars in this mid-19th-century period piece about a femme fatale who ensnares various men, apparently because of the psychological scars left by her abusive dad. The solid supporting cast includes George Sanders and Gene Lockhart, and while the story is more episodic than focused, the various seduction scenes are compellingly done.
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) 7/10
Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte star in this combination social conscience/heist movie, with racial tension between two of the crooks being part of their potential downfall. The more noirish stuff about the characters being trapped in desperate circumstances is quite good, and the heist itself is a terrific sequence, but the strong female performers (Shelley Winters and Gloria Grahame) are underused, and the ending is pretty hokey. Still, the basic heist elements are sufficiently well executed to make it work on that level.
Bullets or Ballots (1936) 8/10
Somewhat slow and talky at the beginning, but the narrative and visual interest picks up very effectively once the story really gets going. The usual suspects of Robinson, Bogart, and MacLane get some good support as well in this one from Joan Blondell.
There's an interesting meta/post-modern/insert-buzzword-here twist to the first scene, where the bad guys, played by MacLane and Bogart, are watching a newsreel in a movie theater (it already starts off a little self-referential just before that--when MacLane buys the tickets, he asks "when does the crime picture start?"). The newsreel shows a re-creation of the verdict being read at a trial for MacLane's character, Al Kruger, where he was found not guilty, and the judge admonishes the jury for allowing justice to be perverted. They show the happy reaction from the Kruger character, with a different actor standing in for him. So MacLane's character is watching a newsreel where he sees a re-enactment of something that happened to him, but with someone else playing him.
San Quentin (1937) 7/10
Bogart, Pat O'Brien, and Ann Sheridan star in this unusually short (only 70 minutes) gangster/big-house movie. All three of the leads are good, as are several of the big scenes, including a prison yard showdown between O'Brien's warden and a crazed inmate, and a big escape sequence near the end. The narrative arc doesn't really conclude for anyone except Bogart's character, so it's tough to rate this one any higher, but most of what's there works reasonably well.
|