Track the Films You Watch (2008) - Page 19

Michael Elliott · 02-21-2008, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatW

Nice review. This definitely is on my must see list. I just haven't gotten around to seeing it yet.

Thanks. I'm trying to get all the Oscar nominated films done before Sunday. I'll probably miss a few (THE SAVAGES, CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR) but should have the rest done. I'm going to try and watch AWAY FROM HER tonight and my girlfriend and I plan on seeing NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN this weekend.

As for ATONEMENT, I was really worried walking into it as I find a lot of British films to be downright dull but the film really won me over. I wouldn't have given it a Best Picture nom but would have given it a Best Director nom, which is the opposite of what it actually got.

Pete York · 02-21-2008, 03:32 PM

2/20/08

Witness To Murder (1954) Dir: Roy Rowland

Cheryl Draper (Barbara Stanwyck) is stirred from her sleep by the wind through the window. Getting up to close it, she witnesses a man strangling a woman to death in the apartment directly across from hers. Cheryl immediately calls the police. Meanwhile, the murderer quickly moves the body to the vacant apartment next to his just before the police get there. The man is a writer of dubious reputation (he’s a former Nazi), his name is Albert Richter (George Sanders). Albert, with the body safely stashed, suavely tells the police they must be mistaken. Satisfied (rather easily I might add), the police then convince Cheryl she must have been dreaming it all. But Cheryl won’t let it go. Unfortunately for her, Richter can explain what she saw and there’s no other real evidence. Did she imagine it? Now aware of his accuser, Richter fiendishly embarks on a plan, playing to Cheryl’s doubts, designed to either drive her crazy or convince the police that she should be committed. Or if he must, get her out of the picture permanently.

Imagine Witness to Murder as someone taking a bunch of noir conventions, putting them in a hat and composing a story out of what they pick out. The murder seen through a window, the witness nobody believes, a woman in peril, involuntary commitment to an institution, the Nazi whose mission is more important than someone’s life. And yet it’s all well done for sure. Stanwyck is fine, although reminiscent of her Leona Stevenson from Sorry, Wrong Number. Sanders is a tad hum-drum, but has a good scene near the end where, confronted by Cheryl, he reveals his misanthropy and madness by compulsively breaking into German and barking no doubt inspiring slogans at her! Gary Merrill doesn’t add much as the detective working the case who falls for Cheryl. There are also a few wonky plot devices that were annoying; breaking into apartments and taking evidence seemed to be a favorite way to move the story forward – Richter doing it is one thing, he’s a criminal, but Cheryl does it and so do the police (I may be mistaken, but I believe the Fourth Amendment was firmly in place by 1954).

The photography is also of interest, the film is shot by perhaps the noir lensman, John Alton. From the film’s opening shot to the early scene of Richter hiding the body before the police arrive is prime choice chiaroscuro. When Cheryl is ordered by the police captain to be examined in an asylum, the institution is suitably an expressionistic nightmare. (An aside, one of the other patients is played by Juanita Moore, her character is identified in the end credits as ‘Negress’ – yikes!) The denouement, a chase through a building in construction, is also bathed in high contrast light and shadow.

This late entry in the noir cycle ultimately plays too familiar, like a pastiche with no new angles, from its story to Stanwyck’s role among other things, thus robbing it of any impact.

out of 4

PatW · 02-21-2008, 05:23 PM

Of Human Bondage (1934)

Mildly interesting movie about a medical student who falls in love with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

Plenty of melodrama here but this movie is worthwhile only for Bette Davis's brilliant performance. Why she didn't win an oscar, I'll never guess. I think this would have been a much better movie if they had picked a different actor for the role of Philip Carey. He added nothing to the character, had very little chemistry with Davis, and she acted circles around him. The more movies I see, the more I'm convinced that she's the greatest actress of her generation.

American Gangster (2007)

Well done crime drama set in the late 60's, early 70's about a New Jersey cop who is determined to bring down the top rank drug dealers in New York and New Jersey. Based on a true story Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) is hired to set up a narcotics task force. He is an honest cop surrounded by many corrupt cops, his partner included. Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) is a New York gangster, a drug importer who goes to the source and in effect cuts out the middle man. He is able to release a purer drug on the streets resulting in some deaths. Richie Roberts is determined to clean up the streets, arrest the top drug importers and make a clean sweep of the corrupt cops.

This is a well told crime story, intriguing from beginning to end. The two main characters are interesting and well drawn out. Both Crowe and Washington give superb performances. There are alot of characters in this movie and alot of them are under utilized. For instance, Cuba Gooding Jr's character was little more than a glorified cameo. What was the sense of that. I like him as an actor but his character added nothing to the story. I imagine there is alot of his footage on the cutting room floor. Also Ruby Dee's performance was almost a cameo yet she was nominated for an academy award. But then again so was Judy Dench for Shakespeare in Love. Ridley Scott has fashioned himself another involving thriller. My family thought it was overlong. We watched the unrated extended version and someday I'd like to watch the theatrical version just for comparison.

Michael Clayton (2007)

A great suspense movie that sucks you in and doesn't let go. I don't mind saying that I was totally confused at the beginning. Maybe I was tired or probably old age is starting to set in but most everything did eventually come clear. This has brilliant performances from both George Clooney as Michael Clayton and Tom Wilkinson as the chief litigator for the firm that Clayton works for. During the course of the movie, Clayton begins to understand what's going on and we the audience with him.

This is where the movie gets you. What seems like a confusing mess turns out to be quite a well thought out story, one that keeps you watching to the very end just to figure it all out. I'll have to watch this one again when I'm less tired.

Starter for 10 (2006)

Entertaining British film about a working-class boy who gains entry to an exclusive university and learns some lessons about life and love. The success of this movie is due in a large part to James McAvoy who captivates us from the very beginning. He's one minute smart and witty and then faced with love, awkward and shy. Though James McAvoy is probably about 10 years older than the character, he pulls it off quite well. Though I'd not heard of this movie before, it was a pleasant watch.

george kaplan · 02-21-2008, 08:05 PM

Atlantic City

Probably Malle's second best after Elevator to the Gallows, this is good, though it doesn't hit the heights of that film. I found the ending weak, with most of the characters doing things I didn't buy.

Pete York · 02-22-2008, 12:20 AM

2/21/08

The Woman on Pier 13 (1950) Dir: Robert Stevenson

Originally released as I Married a Communist, this is a fine, if overly sensational, thriller that attempts to exploit the “red scare” of the era.

When we first meet newlyweds Brad and Nan Collins (Robert Ryan and Mrs. Leo Durocher herself, Laraine Day) on their honeymoon and find out they married after a whirlwind courtship, we suspect one of them is hiding a deep, dark secret. When Nan says to Brad, “But you know absolutely nothing about me”, it’s clear she’s not the one we should be worrying about. Later that night when Christine Norman (Janis Carter), one of Brad’s old girlfriends, shows up where the Collins’ are having dinner, it’s perhaps a little too much coincidence. Christine is in fact a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA. See, Brad is now a successful VP at the Cornwall Shipping Company. He started as a stevedore and worked his way up. But when Christine knew him, he was a hot-headed, alienated idealist named Frank Johnson. And a commie! Back in his labor-agitating days for the party, Brad/Frank over-enthusiastically busted some heads and killed a man. While Brad’s turned the page, the CP hasn’t. They send their top man in San Francisco, a Mr. Vanning (Thomas Gomez), to convince Brad to pick up where he left off with the party. Or else. While Brad initially resists, his self-preservation instinct kicks in when Vanning threatens to go to the police with evidence of the murder. It’s only a matter of how far and how long Brad’s willing to go, especially when his new life, including Nan and her brother Don (John Agar), is threatened.

While The Woman on Pier 13 was more or less used by Howard Hughes as a hammer to establish his anti-communist bona fides, it exists rather comfortably as a noir. Consider the universal theme of a man running away from his past, or a mistake that he tries to live down, but can’t. He can still be a sympathetic figure by gaining some measure of redemption. In other words, while it’s a propaganda piece, that’s merely the trappings. There’s a solid noir buried in here.

Hughes, scoundrel that he could be, apparently used the script as a kind of loyalty litmus test; work on this or you’re fired. It’s interesting then to think of Ryan and Gomez, two notable ‘progressives’, doing this film to either save their jobs or as a sort of preemptory strike, knowing they would be targeted, against those who would question them. Or perhaps they weren’t bothered by the story at all. Regardless it’s good to see Ryan as a (somewhat) normal person, with failings and weaknesses like everybody else and not just an unhinged psycho. Laraine Day is plucky enough when needed. Gomez is always terrific. Janis Carter is dynamite in the first half of the film as the woman with the ulterior motives. Eventually her character falls in love with Don and unfortunately loses her edge. Rounding out a fine cast is William Talman as the commie hit man who runs an amusement park shooting gallery as a front (he wastes one stooge by bounding his arms and legs and then hurling him into the water – nasty!). John Agar is the one sour note.

Photography is by the excellent Nicholas Musuraca. The film takes place in San Francisco and there are some fine location shots. There is also a beautifully lit final shoot-out in a warehouse.

As a noir - suspenseful, well acted and well shot - but if communist paranoia makes you queasy, skip it.

out of 4

Michael Elliott · 02-22-2008, 09:14 AM

02/21/08

Kameradschaft (1931)

G.W. Pabst

German propaganda film which is based on a true incident that happened in 1906 but the film updates the setting to current day 1931. Tensions are running high between French and German miners until the French suffer an explosion and several miners are trapped underground. The German's send in two rescue teams to try and save the French. This is a highly impressive film but like a lot of German films in this period, there's more style than substance, which in the end keeps it from being a great film. The visual style of the film is terrific and it makes the film come off very realistic. The director does a great job inside the mine and the claustrophobic sense we get is very strong. There are countless great shots in the film but I feel they get in the way of the story, which at times drags in certain spots. After the explosion happens there's a good fifteen-minutes of downtime before the rescue team shows up and these down moments come off pretty boring. Outside of that the film is very good and it was also interesting seeing how miners worked back in the 1930s.

Cimarron (1931)

Wesley Ruggles

Oscar winner for Best Picture tells the story of a newspaper editor (Richard Dix) who takes his wife (Irene Dunne) and son to Oklahoma to settle on some land and start a new life. This here turns out to be one of the worse Best Picture winners and I have to wonder what voters loved so much about this film. It certainly plays dated today but even by 1931 standards this thing is pretty dated. Looking at the other films nominated for Best Picture, it's clear voters had to have been on drugs because most of the noms are now forgotten while countless other films from this era are remembered and loved. I think the biggest problem for this movie is that the direction is so incredibly flat that there's not an ounce of energy to be spotted anywhere. The story itself isn't even original so making a familiar story boring is just deadly. Another problem is the performance by Dix, which comes off quite hammy and at times downright silly. I'm not sure what type of accent he's going for but it doesn't work. Dunne doesn't add too much to the picture but the supporting cast does include Estelle Taylor, Nance O'Neil and George E. Stone. The film is certainly ambitious and beautiful to look at but that's pretty much it. The highlight is the opening sequence, which shows the Oklahoma rush.

Mario Gauci · 02-22-2008, 10:49 AM

02/19/08: AWAY FROM HER (Sarah Polley, 2006)

I’m not usually one to watch films dealing with diseases of any type – believing them to be maudlin, manipulative and even somewhat morbid – much less mental illness, but since this is expected to earn Julie Christie another Oscar (which would probably make it the longest gap between the first and second win), I decided to check it out in time for the upcoming awards ceremony.

Christie’s character has been struck with the debilitating Alzheimer’s Disease but, thankfully, she – or, more precisely, writer-director Polley (a likeable actress in her own right, though not appearing here herself) – doesn’t bemoan her fate; rather, she accepts it with grace and even treats the condition with mild humor (which is the way these things should be approached but, I guess, one has to really be going through them himself to really know). Incidentally, I find extremely silly and unwarranted the recent warning by some hysterical group when, in her acceptance speech at the SAG awards, Christie joked that if she forgot the name of anyone it’s because she was still in character!

The film is undeniably moving as we see the aging heroine degenerating to the point that she can’t even recognize her own devoted husband (Gordon Pinsent) and even attaches herself to a fellow patient (Michael Murphy) at the clinic to which she’s eventually admitted. Ironically, considering the accolades showered upon Christie, I feel that it’s Pinsent who’s the real protagonist here: quietly despairing yet brave in coping with the heartbreaking situation (unsurprisingly, he strikes up a friendship with Murphy’s own wife – played by Olympia Dukakis). On the other hand, the viewpoint of the younger generation (obligatory in our zealously-PC world) is present here – though in a somewhat idealistic manner, if you ask me – via a teenager who chats with Pinsent during one of his visits to the clinic (and, in a deleted sequence, is revealed to be a neighbor of Dukakis and occasionally takes care of Murphy for her).

Actually, this isn’t the kind of film one would expect an emerging young director to make – particularly since it has aspirations of being a Bergman-like chamber drama which, while fairly compelling and austere (aided with respect to the latter by the snowy Canadian setting), clearly lacks the necessary depth which a master craftsman would otherwise bring to such material.

02/20/08: COOL WORLD (Ralph Bakshi, 1992)

To begin with, I’ll admit that I haven’t been as taken with Bakshi’s adult animated films (of which I’ve now watched six) as I had anticipated myself – but this mix of live-action and cartoon is easily the most unsatisfying of the lot! Striving to recapture the magic of WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT (1988), it doesn’t really have the necessary in terms of plot (despite the generous length of 102 minutes) – whereas the animation too often resorts to pointless zaniness in the style of (but a long way from) Tex Avery!

Gabriel Byrne is a cartoonist who gets thrown into the world of his own creation (a` la the equally dispiriting BRENDA STARR [1989]); his star character – Holly Would(!) – is, unsurprisingly, a voluptuous nymphomaniac (modeled after Kim Basinger, who also plays her in live-action form). Brad Pitt is another human (called “Noids”) who has made the transition to “Cool World” and is free to roam among the cartoon characters (“Doodles”): actually, he represents the law over there and is hostile to any intruder from the ‘other side’ – much less the man who invented it all and who, he believes, wants to bring their ‘way of life’ to an end!; he’s also involved with a ‘local’ girl and, at the end, joins their ranks himself.

As I said, the narrative doesn’t amount to much: apart from relentless disco dancing and her attempts to bed Byrne, Holly goes looking for a Doodle scientist – who has crossed over to the world of the Noids (acquiring the nickname “Vegas Vinnie” in the process) – in the hope that she can retain her human appearance. Incidentally, the effect starts to wear off just as she’s turning audiences’ heads at a casino with her rendition of Marilyn Monroe’s “Let’s Make Love”!; Basinger is ideal casting here but seems somehow uncomfortable within this hybrid environment, and the same is true of her co-stars. Ultimately, while not always outstanding, Bakshi’s other films – and not just the more ambitious stuff such as THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978) and AMERICAN POP (1981) – are clearly superior.

02/18/08-02/21/08: QUATERMASS (TV) [Episodes 1-4] (Piers Haggard, 1979)

I viewed this as part of a two-film retrospective of John Mills titles (the other being THE SINGER NOT THE SONG [1961]) to commemorate the centenary of his birth on the 22nd of February. Incidentally, I’d purchased the R4 DVD edition – and two other Nigel Kneale-scripted made-for-TV efforts, THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS (1968) and BEASTS (1976) – following the death last year of that noted sci-fi literary figure, one of my favorite exponents of the genre, but hadn’t yet gotten around to watching it until now!

Of course, this is the fourth (and last) of Kneale’s serials revolving around Professor Bernard Quatermass – submitting yet another scary (but totally persuasive) scenario to challenge our established notions of humanity, the world and beyond. Interestingly, the protagonist was played by a different actor each time: here, Mills turns in a typically excellent (albeit low-key) performance. However, the muddled apocalyptic plot – in which space missions go horribly wrong, Britain is reduced to a wasteland, a mass of fanatical but deluded youth is “harvested” (read exterminated), senior citizens are forced to literally live underground, etc. – is somehow insufficient for the film’s 200-minute length; this eventually gives rise to a fair bit of repetitiveness throughout (particularly with respect to the gibberish chants of the Planet People).

The serial does culminate in an intense and moving finale in which Quatermass meets up with his missing granddaughter, who has joined the ranks of the Planet People, just as he’s set to fire a nuclear missile at the death ray from outer space; about to perish himself (from a heart attack!), it’s she who guides his movements in saving the world. One of the definite assets here is the effectively moody synthesizer score; besides, the supporting cast is led by Simon MacCorkindale (from JAWS 3-D [1983] and the MANIMAL [1983] TV series) – who’s good in his role of the young scientist aiding Quatermass understand the extraterrestrial phenomenon; a histrionic Barbara Kellerman appears as his wife, who soon falls victim to the devastation; Margaret Tyzack (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY [1968]), Brenda Fricker (future Oscar winner for MY LEFT FOOT [1989]) and actress/rocker Toyah Willcox also appear.

While not up to Kneale’s earlier QUATERMASS scripts in the long run, this is still quite good – with the 20-year gap since that character’s last TV appearance enabling a far smoother production. In fact, there was no need to adapt it for the cinema as Hammer had done with the first three; rather, the serial was probably made with this in mind (director Haggard had made another cult-based supernatural horror piece – THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW [1971]) and subsequently got reduced to about half its length for theatrical exhibition. Originally shot in Panavision, the four episodes are however presented here open-matte so as to preserve the standard TV format; the Australian 3-Disc Set I purchased, then, thoughtfully includes both versions.

02/21/08: PUMPKINHEAD (Stan Winston, 1988)

This is another popular horror outing of the 1980s; it’s not too bad, and actually manages a reasonable atmosphere throughout. Even so, the design of the titular creature is rather disappointing – given that it’s just another ALIEN (1979) clone – but admittedly its rampage is creepily effective. Lance Henriksen stars as a man whose son is killed in a motoring accident and, having witnessed an attack by Pumpkinhead as a child – this particular boogeyman is usually conjured up for purposes of revenge – he now makes it go after the group of teens (ex-Superman Jeff East among them) involved in the boy’s death. Interestingly, Henriksen is able to ‘feel’ the creature’s wrath (and, eventually, has second thoughts about the request he made to the witch who revived it); however, the final suggestion that it may have been him all along is rather baffling – since, as I said, Henriksen winds up confronting the monster himself! Director Winston is best-known as a special effects wizard, though the film isn’t particularly gory. As is the norm for such “boogeyman” fare, it was later followed by a host of obscure sequels.