Change Your Image
Hallick
Reviews
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972)
No Restoration on Earth Could Save This 'Classic'
"The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid"(the comma between the city and the state in the title doesn't make an appearance in the actual film) is a movie that fails the test of time. Alternately shoddy, glib and cheap-looking, the film seems more like a made-for-TV quickie than a critically praised "classic" that earned a Writers Guild nomination for its screenplay. Repetitive scenes of Pinkerton Security enforcers inside a train car, as the man himself rails against the James/Younger gang, quickly become laughable in an Ed Wood sort of way.
Harper (1966)
The Original Post-Modern P.I.?
This I don't understand-
For years I've believed in how Elliot Gould's Philip Marlowe in "The Long Goodbye" was the first effort at making a P.I. character a whacked out loser with a post-modern attitude. Yet, I'm watching "Harper" today and my jaw is bounding off the floor like a yo-yo. Because in the lead role Paul Newman gives one of the ten best performances I've ever seen, and maybe the best comedic one from a non-comedian actor ever done. Even at the two thirds mark, when 99% of the screenplays usually have nothing new to say about their characters, Lew Harper was still leaving me damn near breathless. How "Cool Hand Luke" is more famous than "Harper", which is never mentioned anywhere as the king-size sleeper it is, bewilders me entirely.
One Day in September (1999)
Over-directed and equally confused documentary
If Kevin MacDonald wanted to make a kind of action documentary out of his film of the hostage taking at the 1972 Munich Olympics he's succeeded, if only in making the sort of drecky, tin-eared action film you'd find in the archives of 1980's schlockmeisters Golan-Globus. From the NFL films-style montage of athletes at the games that pads the movie at various ill-advised points, to the shrill use of seventies rock music, the movie is gunned past it's natural rhythm so often that the technical flaws overwhelm attention to the outrageous story underneath it all. It's as if somebody furiously copied every trick in Errol Morris' book (down to the dead giveaway use of Philip Glass) and got so excited about doing them that they forgot to do anything original as well.
The Boys (1998)
A scorching, infuriating landmark of a movie
The filmmakers of "The Boys" get so deep inside the blamings and self pity of humanity's monsters, you could almost miss the culpability of the ineffectual women who enable them to grow up into walking catastrophes. The events of this film, set off by the first day of parole for angry young headcase Brett Sprague, lead to a decision so horribly wrong-headed and repellent, that a suspended moment of nothing but a black screen is one of the most excruciating pregnant pauses in the history of films. Up to this point, there's a kitchen sink drama like almost no other (Gary Oldman's "Nil By Mouth" a close cousin, but not nearly as upsetting) and lacerating performances by the cast and crew - The sound designer gets a deserved opening credit.
It appears that this movie was well appreciated in Australia, but had an abortion of a release here in the US. Now that it's on video, it's one of the best lost gems you're likely to score this year.
Desolation Angels (1995)
A fascinating post-rape tragedy
This is a difficult movie to explain because so much of it is about a variety of human flaws that have nothing to do with date rape, per se. The victim is unwilling to press charges, the rapist is still welcome in her circle of friends, and her boyfriend is stymied because everybody is treating him worse than the bad guy, just to begin with. It's incredible that this unfolds in such a realistic and daring way. In some ways, the victim is the one you'll understand the least, and the rapist has emotional issues that make his crime pale by comparison. There's a pivotal scene between the lead actors in a kitchen that is as filled with potential trauma as the game of Russian Roulette in The Deer Hunter. A great modern tragedy.