mryerson Reviews

Hereafter (2010)

Ya gotta give him credit for trying.

[4/10 · 25 October 2010]

Eastwood, ever the shrewd and expedient filmmaker, set out to make a movie which might inform its audience on the hereafter and has succeeded nicely, creating a viewing experience which approximates death. Over the years, Clint has aimed high and as often as not, managed to pull it off, albeit a bit too glossy for my taste, but here it just doesn't work. I never felt 'connected' to the characters, was never able to develop any empathy for them.Compartmentalizing the story into three distinct parts means we're watching three short stories not one long, organic narrative. I think it was a huge error to do subtitles in the early going, it effectively put up an emotional wall. I'm sure the actors, an attractive pair of continental types, were emoting all over the place while I was reading. The wow special effects remained just that, special effects, the underlying human tragedy befell strangers. Even the two French leads had, at this point, not been developed, just a couple of privileged vacationers. Matt Damon, a swell actor in most settings is poorly cast here. His range and physicality seem to deny him torment. He's prohibitively good-looking, athletic, with a quick and winning smile and we're asking him to play 'torment'? When he tries 'torment' it comes across as 'befuddlement'. Adrian Brody would have been the wiser choice. The film is littered with brief, one-dimensional encounters, the cooking school instructor, cooking class partner, the publisher, all there to simply move the narrative along with not enough business of their own to imply they actually have lives beyond their meager business here. At one point, Matt-the-medium does a reading for his cooking class partner, a tall, slender, dark-haired girl. He starts off by saying, 'I see a tall, slender, dark-haired woman,' he looks up asking, 'your mother?' The girl seems surprised. Puhleeze. It's obvious the early reviews were posted by people with a vested interest in the movie, industry apparatchiks ginning up some positive buzz. I gave it four stars for the two English kids and the wave.

The FBI Story (1959)

Overly earnest retelling of Hoover's fairy tale.

[4/10 · 2 October 2007]

This film is to the F.B.I.'s history as Knott's Berry Farm is to the old west. Shamelessly sanitized version of the Federal Bureau of Investigation fight against crime. Hoover's heavy hand (did he have any other kind?) shows throughout with teevee quality script-reading actors, cheesy sets, cheap sound effects and lighting 101. With Jimmy Stewart at 20% of dramatic capacity, Vera Miles chewing the scenery, the film features every c-lister known in the mid-fifties with nary a hint of irony or humor, from the 'Amazon jungle' to the 'back yard barbecue', everything reeks of sound stages and back lots. Even the gunshots are canned and familiar. I imagine Mervyn Leroy got drunk every night. Except for a few (very few) interesting exterior establishing shots, nothing here of note beyond a curio.

Never So Few (1959)

Never So Few. Boy, you can say that again!

[3/10 · 7 September 2007]

In and of itself, the idea of 97 lb. weakling Frank Sinatra playing an action hero is preposterous. I'm sorry but Mr. Sinatra might have struck a certain manly chord in a six hundred dollar suit, holding a highball glass and a smoldering Chesterfield but with his Hepburn neck and delicate shoulders he's miscast here. The plot, apparently based on some real life derry-do, is nonetheless implausible with Sinatra's ratpack jocularity trumping rank structure and cultural norms, as though he's holding forth at an after-hours Vegas smoker. The film further labors under sundry staging goofs and the otherworldly appearance of GinafrickingLollobrigida in a little black cocktail dress and stilettos. In the Burmese Theater of operations?? Oi! Suspiciously convenient for the Chairman of the Board, I must say. When Sinatra walks through a doorway and finds Gina in soft focus, heaving a throaty sigh and prancing around in those patent-leather pumps, I'm reminded of Billy Pilgrim rooting around on a chaise with Valerie Perrine in outer space. In one action shot, two trucks are running next to each other and the men in one truck are machine-gunning enemy troops by firing directly 'through' the other truck! No, I'm sorry Frank Sinatra is a little thin in the hips to be an action hero. Peter Lawford always looks like he's trying to keep up with Frank and Frank is delivering lines which would never fly except that he's Frank Sinatra. Basically a cartoon. What the heck were Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson doing in this movie?

Zodiac (2007)

Flabby thriller

[6/10 · 20 August 2007]

Absent an original script written for the screen, one of the essential talents of the filmmaker is knowing what (from the book, the play, the serial) to leave in and what to leave out. You get no style points for including it all and likely you get a poor film to boot. With Zodiac you get a film that dazzles and dazzles and dazzles and...Pretty soon you just want it to be over. Much of the dazzle is stylish and interesting but fails to advance the storyline. Hard to know where to place the blame for this but likely the director and editor were in cahoots. Too long by at least 40 minutes, there is a good, maybe great, movie in here, buried under excess celluloid. Director Fincher has established his reputation with a small repertoire consisting mainly of Se7en (a knockout), Fight Club (a TKO) and The Game (a slick psychological thriller in spite of the presence of 'names' Michael Douglas and Sean Penn). With the Jodie Foster vehicle, Panic Room, a little suspicion crept in as the film was too slick, too commercial, almost bland, the camera lingering on Ms. Foster's face when a more crisp look would have added to the tension. But such are the compromises forced into a production with a 'star'. And now we have Zodiac, a project with several preproduction puzzles it never seems to solve. First and most obviously, it is based on a well-known series of murders, so how to tell the story and create and sustain some dramatic tension when the resolution (or lack thereof) is widely known? Secondly, it is based on a popular book written by a peripheral player in the developing news story who is consequently a character in the movie, so how to tell what is essentially a first person narrative and still introduce expository material? And thirdly, it is a story of many parts, ranging over several decades with numerous important characters, so how to tell the story and still provide the audience with a singular POV, a third person narrative(?), first person(?), where is the satisfying continuity with which the audience can identify? In the case of Zodiac, the sum of its parts is impressive film-making that fail to add up to an impressive film. Unfortunately there are simply too many parts. What starts out reasonably enough with a pre-opening credit murder and proceeds in what appears to be the tried-and-true, story-told-through-the-eyes-of-an-innocent, becomes a seemingly endless series of storyboarded vignettes artlessly separated with elided time notations, "two weeks later" fade, "three months later" fade, "two years later" fade, my gawd, there must be thirty of em! The casting is wonderful, not a false note in the lot, especially Robert Downey, Jr. who mesmerizes as the burnt-out crime beat reporter Paul Avery, who is so consistently good it has become almost trite to sing his praises. They should just give this guy an Academy Award every year and be done with it. Jake Gyllenhaal does a nice job with a thankless stock role and Mark Ruffalo rings true as the frustrated homicide detective. There is little dropoff in quality as you get into the supporting roles and bit players, Chloe Sevigny as the long suffering wife, Anthony Edwards as the bland partner and an amusing turn from Brian Cox as the pretentious, self-absorbed Melvin Belli. The cinematography is crisp and inventive, the score a period-correct mix of rock and R&B, the dialogue feels natural and unforced with a satisfying mix of cynicism, humor and angst, the production and art design, costumes, locations, hairstyles and sundry props perfectly capture the period and the communications, written and voice, with which the Zodiac taunts the authorities, provides a nice over-the-shoulder feel to the proceedings. So where did they go wrong? In the early going it looks as though we'll see the story through the eyes of the Gyllenhaal/Graysmith character but he is supplanted by a blinding series of set-piece murders and near murders larded with the obligatory gnashing of investigative teeth which then give way to a police procedural coupled with the deteriorating Downey/Avery character before we return to the Gyllenhaal/Graysmith character for a really bang-up, creepy, skin-crawly closing thirty minutes, all the while the director advancing the narrative line with the aforementioned typeset screen cards. My best guess is that Fincher should have stayed with the Gyllenhaal character as first person narrator. He is a nice wide eyed innocent in the newsroom, whose discovery of the various players and his subsequent discovery of critical evidence would nicely serve as our discovery. Using the newcomer in this way is an old plot device but nonetheless satisfying and effective. It could have worked. Perhaps that's what Fincher thinks he did. Alternatively, how about largely eliminating the Gyllenhaal character and going with a straightforward police procedural. Let the Ruffalo character run with it, let his frustration be our frustration. Let us suffer as he descends into late-career with this failure of a case around his neck. It could work. Perhaps that's what Fincher thinks he did. Alas, the film tries to be all things to all men. And fails to be any one thing. By the way, I wouldn't make any changes that would jeopardize the last thirty or forty whizbang minutes of the film. Damn, there's a really fine ninety-five to a hundred-twenty minute film in here, somewhere.

Manhattan (1979)

Woody gets it just right

[9/10 · 18 July 2007]

"Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Beneath his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. I love this. New York was his town, and it always would be..."

The first time I saw Woody Allen's Manhattan I knew it was a special film. I mulled it over for a week or two, didn't rush it, let it's sensibilities soak in slowly, and then went back for a second viewing. It knocked me out. I thought it might be a perfect movie, which is not to say the greatest movie ever made (if there can be such a thing) but a perfect movie given the relationships between the elements that make up a film, in this case, the Gershwin score, the slightly overexposed b&w photography, the multi-layered script, the actors organised in a true ensemble, the direction and editing with Allen at his most confident. This is no mean feat. I cannot think of a single casting change I'd make, there is nary a false note in the entire piece. Allen, Keaton, Streep, Murphy, all brought their 'A' game but Hemingway is transcendent. She is an absolute revelation and the relationship with the Allen character rings true in every scene. New York never looked better, Gershwin never sounded better, Gordon Willis never exposed film better. This is what can happen when a singular talent holds all the cards and knows how to play them. Over the years, I've only lowered my opinion of this film very slightly. For me this ranks with City Lights.

Woody/Issac musing about life, "Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh... Like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh... um... and Wilie Mays... and um... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... um... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's face..."

I've never ordered crab at Sam Wo's and if I've ever heard Louis Armstrong playing Potato Head Blues, I didn't realise it, but I've seen a nearly perfect movie and, somehow, that also makes life worth living.

A Walk in the Sun (1945)

Comes close.

[9/10 · 17 July 2007]

Lewis Milestone, himself a combat veteran, tells the story of war from the infantryman's point of view. Isolated, claustrophobic, wise-cracking, fatalistic. Very little discussion of strategy, very little 'big picture', very little 'why we fight'. From a grunt's point-of-view, the story is always the same: how do we get from point 'A' to point 'B', do our job and what will be the cost? For the individual soldier or Marine, this is what it always boils down to: one foot in front of the other, protect yourself, protect the guy next to you, do your job. Milestone knew this. It suffuses All Quiet on the Western Front, it permeates Pork Chop Hill. Life in a combat zone can be intense and terrifying but it is mostly tedious and boring. Usually you don't know anything, nobody tells you anything, maybe because they don't know either. You can only see as far as the next hill, the next treeline. The sound of distant gunfire, the rumble of bombs or artillery, what does it mean, who is it, everybody looks and wonders but no one knows. Seemingly endless physical labor, dirt and heat, noise and near silence, sometimes only the sound of your own boots, the sound of your own digging, sudden gunfire, a plane, a tank, a sniper, dirt in your food, dirt in your mouth, walk some more, sweat. The hours roll by, someone is killed, maybe a friend, surely someone you know, no time for grief, move on, be happy it wasn't you. The individual only needs to know a little slice of the whole, the small unit only needs to know their little corner of the whole, a task, sometimes a near impossible task, time grinds down on the planning, other units are on the move, other men will depend on you completing this task, how to do it? How to survive but still, how to do it. Here Milestone has populated a simple story with a predictable mix of archetypes, almost daring himself to tell a familiar story in a new and fresh way with shopworn components. He has avoided caricature by allowing the characters to develop slowly, to reveal themselves as unique individuals, with histories, with grievances, with hopes, always avoiding the danger of slipping into the maudlin, the sentimental. The dialogue is earthy and believable even though he had to avoid actual profanity but the delivery is rapid and wise. It feels right. The cast is well-suited to the story, a collection of young rising talent, destined for long careers with only Dana Andrews an established 'name'. Some have said it is slow and boring, well, this ain't Stallone or Schwarzenegger. This ain't an 'action' movie. This is the infantry and in the infantry you walk, it is a slow and tedious way to get anywhere but your feet and a dry pair of socks are all you have and there is always a little black cloud sitting on your shoulder.

Sexy Beast (2000)

Gem of a black comedy masquerading as a caper film.

[8/10 · 16 July 2007]

Snazzy little, fast-paced noir. If the excess in this Brit caper film doesn't make you giggle out loud, have someone check your pulse. Quality production top to bottom with most players unfamiliar to American audiences. The plot is deceptively simple: retired safecracker is approached by hood to come out of retirement for one last 'go' at the behest of a distant crime boss. Turns out to be an offer he can't refuse. Ian McShane plays crime boss Teddy Bass with reptilian cool, Ray Winstone's safecracker Gal Dove is sleek, tanned and thoroughly retired and James Fox gives the connected bank executive just the right balance of smarmy decadence. The troop of supporting actors is fresh and without caricature, the women beyond adolescent coquettishness, cool, secure and supremely sexy, the men displaying accumulated bling and adipose fat, rutting through middle age. But this film belongs to Ben Kingsley and his psychotic Don Logan. Sometimes seething, sometimes frenetic, always thoroughly frightening, he is absolutely mesmerising. Easily the most consistently threatening performance in recent memory. Beautifully photographed, the direction is deft and crisp, the dialogue dense and believable and, thankfully, not lost in the usual muddle of British accents. A high grade entertainment on many levels but see it for Kingsley. You won't be disappointed.

'Gung Ho!': The Story of Carlson's Makin Island Raiders (1943)

Gung Ho Ho Ho! The Story of...well Nothing.

[2/10 · 14 July 2007]

Should have been titled 'Balderdash!' Little in the film is true except the name of the island and the fact submarines were involved. Little more than training film quality with poor camera work, muddy stock footage and perhaps the low point of stereotyping 'Japs' with laughing Japanese infantry, laughing Japanese fighter pilots and one-dimensional square-jawed Americans dying left and right. Sixty years later it is unintentionally funny as an odd artifact and as an opportunity to see what is possible when the war fever is upon you. The plot and the dialogue remind me of playing guns on a summer's afternoon in my childhood, peering through the neighbor's hedge to gain a fatal advantage on my best friend Steve and my little brother. In actual fact, the Makin Island raid was a near total failure with Carlson and his men wandering around in the dark exchanging gunfire with shadows until finally, thirsty and completely disoriented, looking for someone to surrender to, before they happened upon some equally confused Japanese soldiers who promptly surrendered to them! In the withdrawal several of Carlson's Marines ended up on another island and were abandoned! The film, of course, couldn't tell that story, not in 1943, so this bit of whimsy was fabricated and rushed into release to the beating of drums. With Randolph Scott, and his jaw, as Colonel Thorwald (Carlson) leading a unit comprised almost entirely of stock caricatures, the green recruit (Harry Landon, Robert Mitchum), the grizzled veteran (J. Carroll Naish, Milburn Stone, Sam Levene), the country-bumpkin (Rod Cameron), the all-American boy (Alan Curtis), and scores of sneering (when they weren't laughing) 'Japs'. And yet the cast nearly overcomes the material. Almost. Randolph Scott's narrow range is well suited to his role of earnest commander and he is supported by a solid group of professionals who do their best with thin gruel. But in the end, the one-note object of the exercise wins. Any pretense is totally abandoned at the close when Randy Scott simply looks directly into the camera and delivers a stirring (well sorta stirring) call to arms. The cast was better than this material. So was the audience. Should be viewed with Reefer Madness and a bottle of moderately priced Merlot.

Command Decision (1948)

Ten O'Clock High

[6/10 · 13 July 2007]

Political expedience clashes with strategic necessity in the skies over Europe and the results ain't pretty. Although talky and with poorly integrated actual wartime footage, MGM attempts some distasteful truths about war and largely succeeds. Clark Gable, perfectly cast and photographed to great advantage here, plays Brigadier General 'Casey' Dennis who recognises the crucial importance of initiating and completing an air operation to destroy the three factories involved in producing German jet fighters which will be vastly superior to allied aircraft. He also recognises the weather will dictate he move swiftly if the opportunity is not to be lost. He also recognises the breathtaking losses his aircrews are likely to suffer. He will be resolute. Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown. Yet the steep price will be a hard sell to a politically sensitive general staff and especially to his immediate superior Major General Kane (Walter Pidgeon) as it will open the entire allied air effort to increased scrutiny, criticism and second-guessing by the wartime press in the person of war correspondent Elmer Brockhurst (Charles Bickford). Gable sets his magnificent jaw and goes forward with the operation on his own authority knowing there will likely be an unpleasant reckoning later but for now, let's bomb those stinkin' jet factories! The script is competently written, presenting a complex of issues plausibly and yet...and yet...somehow the entire thing seems premeditated, too many set pieces, too many speeches, the dialogue sometimes crackles but is sometimes too pat, the humor too broad, the sentiment bordering on the maudlin. Being from a play (by William Wister Haines), the predictable effect is of a well-oiled precision machine, humming along noiselessly. With some subjects this is not a problem, a murder mystery perhaps, or a drawing room comedy but here, in the crucible of war, the consequence is a loss of dramatic tension, a loss of spontaneity. People under extraordinary pressure just don't talk like this, certainly not people surrounded by circumstances over which they have little or no control. MGM being genetically predisposed to great lighting, a rousing score and happy endings, one can feel Louis B. Mayer's hand on this production picking his way through a veritable minefield of depressing images and tragic outcomes. But the underlying source material does present an intelligent rumination on the claustrophobic alternatives faced by military commanders throughout history. Frequently compared to the superior Twelve O'Clock High. Still worth your time.

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

Boffo Show Biz Meller has Legs.

[8/10 · 12 July 2007]

Still enjoyable after all these years. This is what Hollywood liked to think would pass for gritty expose' but was little more than a glossy, retelling of hoary industry myth. (For an update on the story see Altman's The Player) Kirk Douglas (at the absolute top of his game here) plays the S.O.B. producer, Lana Turner (in that brief moment between the baby fat and middle age that seemed to overtake her so swiftly) as the cynical, hard-drinking, vulnerable, showbiz outcast, near ex-actress, Barry Sullivan as the neophyte director looking for a break, Walter Pidgeon as the bottomline fixated studio head, and Dick Powell as the Pulitzer prize winning author and font of high quality original material. The supporting cast is chock full of quality types, Gloria Grahame has some nice moments as Powell's wife, Gilbert Roland as a Latin Horndog and the magnificent Elaine Stewart as the current object of his rutting interest. Douglas' Jonathan Shields is brilliant and ruthless, in fact, so brilliant that it's difficult to see how he came to be in such poor circumstances at the opening of the film. But he quickly surrounds himself with the components necessary to move smartly up the ladder and therein, of course, lies the rub. He sees those around him as little more than 'components' and they recognise the opportunity for great wealth and fame he offers them while they luxuriate in the comfortable fiction that their relationships to him are more than 'just business'. Hurt feelings and gnashing of teeth to follow but not before the Turner character has a career again, the Sullivan character has a resume, the Pidgeon character is awash in black ink and the Powell character has banked thousands of relative easy dollars and accumulated enough first-hand material for a blockbuster on Hollywood Babylon. Director Vincente Minnelli delivered a solid entertainment and it should be measured as just that. It is a well-made melodrama that exposes little about the 'real' Hollywood. It does not match the sophistication of All About Eve nor the mesmerising drama of Sunset Boulevard but it will hold your attention for the full running time and amuse you in the bargain.

The Good German (2006)

Captain Renault meets Harry Lime

[5/10 · 7 July 2007]

Steven Soderberg attempts Carol Reed, fails to stick his landing. George Clooney plays an overly curious American captain, returning to Berlin after the war, who yearns for the good-old-days when he had the mysterious Lena all to himself and who gets his butt kicked by a seemingly endless parade of trench-coated continental baddies, up-to-no-good American spooks and a not-so-subordinate enlisted man, while he's looking for her. He gets punched out, kicked, pistol-whipped, hit with a chair and, in a shocking lapse of military decorum, whipped like a dog by his jeep driver. Gee, he's the hero fer chrissakes, let him win one, just one! Clooney seems to be channeling Chuck Wepner. Tobey Maguire plays an all-American blackmarketeer with adenoids, also hopelessly in love with the mysterious Lena and looking for one big score to spirit her out of Europe and back home to Mom or perhaps a basement apartment in Budapest. Who knows? It is a mystery, after all. Unfortunately, with his pre-adolescent voice he has difficulty striking the right blend of menace and world-weariness, sounding instead like Walter Denton whining to Miss Brooks about that snap quiz. Predictably, no one seems to take him seriously and, ultimately, he is found floating face down in a river. It is his best scene. Cate Blanchett, an enormously talented actress, here plays Lena, an equal opportunity mistress, the object of everyone's affection, as an East German moll/bargirl/prostitute/'widow' tettering dangerously between a heavily sedated Greta Garbo and Lili Von Shtupp. My gawd, I half expected her to burst into a medley from Cabaret. It escapes me as to why the men in this movie find the Lena character so irresistible. I suspect she has big feet. Really big. I can see George Clooney fresh off of the success of Good Night and Good Luck, listening to the producers pitch him about how they have this great idea to make a film look just like the old films of the late forties. Unfortunately, he heard Third Man, when they were talking Bowery Boys. An homage is one thing, blunt force trauma is quite another. All that's missing in the closing scene is Claude Rains playing a zither.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

Pure hokum. What's not to like?

[9/10 · 19 June 2007]

All right, I'll admit it, this one makes me weepy every time I see it. Over-the-top MGM production values, first rate score, solid players and a literate script based on a thrilling true story and, voila', wartime cornpone at its best. The problems derive primarily from the cardboard characters, staunchly middle American archetypes generously contrasted against one-dimensional foreign stereotypes, the idealized missionary couple, the Chinese doctors, the Chinese civilians and guerrilla soldiers and the largely unseen Japanese. The facts of Doolittle's raid are well known, a daring, perhaps even foolhardy, attack on the Japanese homeland very, very soon after Pearl Harbor as a demonstration that they were, in fact, vulnerable and we could bring the fight to their shores. It is unlikely the bombing had any real effect on Japanese industrial capacity but at home, as a morale booster, it was a great success, the air crews and everyone associated with the raid rightfully hailed as heroes. But I suspect the real story is somewhat grittier than portrayed here. Van Johnson's Ted Lawson comes across as apple pie ala mode with nary a discouraging word, Spencer Tracy breezes through his unchallenging turn as Doolittle with little to do beyond stern and resolute and Robert Mitchum hits just the right note as a buddy pilot. Don DeFore supplies the comic relief which, of course earns him a painful fate on a China beach (he's lucky they didn't kill him off) and Robert Walker lards on the golly-gee-whiz. Phyllis Thaxter's performance as Ellen Lawson bears a warning: avert your eyes if you are susceptible to sugar diabetes. Rarely has the syrup run so thick. Still an enjoyable two and a half hours if you don't ask too much of it. Nary a shirker, nor a coward, nor a cynic to be found. If only war were this simple.

Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–2024)

Are you my Caucausian?

[9/10 · 29 December 2006]

If Kafka were a screenwriter living in the Mid-Wilshire district, this is the show he'd write. Larry, here channeling a monied Egbert Souse' ('accent grave over the 'e''), is just a guy trying to get through life with as few bruises as possible but he finds life stalking him.

He gives offense when none is intended, he sees offense where none exists. To this add the obvious circumstance where self-defense calls for small arms fire and you have a day in the life of a Westside mensch.

Surrounding himself with capable, if largely unknown, supporting players and a generous helping of guest stars, usually playing themselves, David then settled on the genius of improvised dialogue within scripted situations. The result is nearly sublime.

The episodes seem to move at a snail's pace and yet turn on the relationships of well-developed characters dealing with just a soupcon of continuing plot lines to provide a sense of continuity. The Jewish sensibility is mined for the humor but is never overwhelming. This could just as easily be about any essentially decent, white middle-aged guy who has known a little success and doesn't have a good explanation as to how it happened. In fact, Larry doesn't have a particularly good explanation for how anything happens in his life, it all seems to move mysteriously from one unanticipated crisis to another.

This is not for all tastes. While I find it laugh-out-loud funny, many will find the humor alternately sophomoric or obtuse, some allusions too esoteric or topical, the subject matter occasionally off-putting and in poor taste. But, in a way, that's the point, just like real life.

(Disclaimer: Like Larry, I am an avuncular white guy with thinning hair and an aversion to coitus with known Republicans.)

Coo-Day-Lah, Larry, Coo-Day-Lah.

I Led 3 Lives (1953–1956)

One from the days before irony

[7/10 · 8 October 2006]

Ah, for the good old days of rampant paranoia. This show's silly two dimensional world view, coupled with a modest production budget, left the screenwriters little to work with each week, the plots basically revolving around two or three predictable situations, to bring the audience to a peak of breathless anxiety. Richard Carlson was earnest and workmanlike as was the overall feel of the series. 'Secret' meetings on park benches, 'secret' notes folded into newspapers, microfilm, typewritten code, 'hide-in-plain-sight' signals, droning narration and an iconic theme. Although it seems to still appeal to the political fringe today, it is nevertheless, a true artifact of the fifties. Not to be missed. Somewhere John Foster Dulles is smiling.

Bullitt (1968)

I love this silly movie

[29 June 2006]

This movie is about style and little else. The plot is largely predictable and most of the relationships so one-dimensional as to be nearly disposable. And yet for a man of my generation, the iconic 'cool' of Steve McQueen was irresistible. We, or at least many of us, modeled ourselves on this character, his comfortable relationships with men he considers allies, his partner, the black doctor, the cab driver, his informant, his way of dressing, of walking and talking, his treatment of women and nearly disdainful attitude toward his 'superiors'. Listen, the plot is full of holes. It revolves around a witness brought into town by an ambitious DA and put up in a flea bag hotel down on the embarcadero. What, Walter Chalmers couldn't afford to put this guy up in a decent hotel? This is his 'star' witness, after all. But this is a total flea bag! No security, no door locks (the 'chain' hardly qualifies!) and no reason on earth they put this guy in this death trap! But there he is and Frank Bullitt is asked to guard him for a couple of days until the big congressional hearings begin. So does Frank move him to a more secure location? Like perhaps an uptown hotel with a doorman, security cameras and a few potential eye witnesses wandering around? No, he decides that the rusty chain on the door is good enough. So they up and leave the youngest officer with a bag of sandwiches, a stack of magazines and the mob informant, while Frank goes out to dinner with his girlfriend and we are treated to a montage of McQueen and Bisset in stylish soft focus, in a trendy north beach eatery, swilling white wine over a forgettable jazz track. The restaurant phone rings, it is for Frank, the killers have evidently shown up at the hotel and had the desk clerk announce their presence by calling the room with some flimsy story about Walter Chalmers being in the lobby and wanting to come up for a nightcap. Wait. They call the room? They call the room?? They could have gotten the room number from that feckless desk clerk by flashing the Winchester pump or with a sawbuck and a clenched fist. They didn't need to call the frigging room! Well Frank smells a rat. 'Don't let them in, I'll be there in five minutes,' he tells the young policeman. But apparently no one had anticipated these guys would let themselves in by kicking the door down! What did they think? That these guys would knock? So in the five minutes it supposedly takes Frank to arrive, not only has the shooting occurred, but a crowd has gathered, uniformed policemen are directing traffic, several ambulances and assorted police back-up units are on the scene, and EMS has the wounded officer on a stretcher in the lobby! Now that's some five minutes! But, get this, the ruthless, professional killers, armed with a 12 gauge shotgun, have failed to actually kill anybody, even though they had these two essentially defenseless guys trapped in a small room. I wonder how they would do with fish-in-a-barrel. But maybe they're as cheap as Walter Chalmers and only brought two shotgun shells. The film is full of implausible situations. Even the car chase, as well staged as it is, is sort of pointless. Why were the two baddies following McQueen? To find the hidden witness, who they assumed was still alive? And when it becomes obvious that McQueen has spotted them, they continue to follow him?? As though he would still somehow lead them to the injured witness. Hahaha. Perhaps to kill McQueen? Okay, why not simply pull up beside him when he picks his car up at the car wash and exchange gunfire? But no, they follow him around until he manages to get behind them (to the delight of every fourteen year old in the audience) and then he starts chasing them! To what end? I mean, there is no evidence McQueen has called for any backup during the chase, so he's planning to do what when he 'catches' them? Flash his badge and tell them to climb in the back seat of his Mustang? A shoot out then? Two against one? Why are they running? No, as a plot device, the car chase doesn't hold up under the slightest scrutiny. So why do I love this goofy movie? Maybe it just takes me back to that time when movies didn't have to make sense. When it was enough to watch McQueen squint and smile. The director here recognised McQueen's minimalist gift. Eschewing dialogue for long, unflinching close-ups of that great, expressive face, McQueen can convey a page of script with a simple look. Watch his three or four close-ups while the emergency room staff work to save the dying mob informant. A remarkable minute or two. It is a lovely display of the actor's craft. Watching Steve McQueen deal with the likes of an over-reaching politician or a two-faced police captain or a beautiful, long-legged woman, wearing nothing more than a man's dress shirt while hanging on his every word, was enough. It's still enough.

Two-Gun Lady (1955)

This is not a B movie...

[17 February 2006]

This is not a B movie, it's a b movie. Veterans Robert Lowery and Marie Windsor must have cringed every time they saw this 'vehicle' scheduled on the late, late, late show. This one screams 'cheese' from the opening credits. Ed Wood move over. Super cheap, nearly non-existent production values, somnambulistic direction and editing, canned music and shop worn props, all in slightly overexposed black-and-white. The plot, such as it is, deals with a revenge tale of gunslinger/trick shot artist Peggy Castle (here artfully utilizing both of her facial expressions; angry and more-angry), snarling her way through assorted heavies, hunting for the baddies who killed her parents and burned down the family homestead. She meets up with somewhat undercover Federal Marshal William Talman, and they grudgingly form a tepid bond which is meant to pass for an adult relationship but plays here more like the director (Richard Bartlett, in a bravura performance) didn't want to monkey around with all that lovey-dovey stuff. Don't want to give away the WOW ending but don't miss Marie Windsor's unscheduled appearance in one scene, simply walking onto a hot set and then visibly realising what she'd done, flouncing out again as though she forgot something or Lowery's hesitant, sleepy delivery of his lines in the 'face-off in the barroom' scene, he seems to be pausing for effect, and pausing and pausing, but what I think was really going on was he couldn't believe his career had come to this and wanted future film students to savor the beyond-atrocious dialogue. That Windsor's literal misstep and Lowery's near-trancelike delivery weren't edited out and both appear in the final cut, says all you need to know about Two-Gun Lady. And just think, these people got paid for this thing. I hope none of them took the points.

Munich (2005)

Munchen ist phantastisch

[28 December 2005]

I have seen Steven Spielberg's new film 'Munich'.

I am largely an admirer of Spielberg's body of work. I think Schindler's List a chilling, singular film of a harrowing story, some sequences in Saving Private Ryan as close to actual combat as anything I've ever seen in film and Duel a model of efficiency in storytelling on an obvious budget. To a lesser degree, I enjoy his science-fiction/fantasy although this is not my favorite genre.

And now he's made a film which takes its story from the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, by Palestinian 'terrorists'.

I use quotation marks here because the very term 'terrorist' has been so prostituted over the last forty years, made to serve obvious and, in some instances blatant, political agendas, it has become a largely useless term, it has become hard to know when it is being used truly to identify someone as a terrorist or even if terrorist is still a meaningful word at all.

I wondered here about Spielberg's choice to make this film and what exactly his 'story' would be. I trust Spielberg, I didn't want to be disappointed, but my antennae go up when a filmmaker decides to make a film, the very essence of which may turn on the pernicious usurpation of the term 'terrorist'.

Spielberg has been a gifted filmmaker from the beginning and, over the years, he has developed these gifts to a high degree. The film was visually and emotionally evocative, powerful will be a frequently used term. Nuance, however, has never been his hallmark, I wondered how deeply the contrasts would be drawn, how much black and how much white, how much gray.

Spielberg is a much greater filmmaker than I had imagined.

Oh, as drama, it has its faults. It seems overly long and some plot devices seem contrived, for instance, the general level of (in)competence displayed by the Israeli assassins should have been explored (it is not) and the family of French information brokers seemed implausible. But next to the remarkable achievement of successfully threading a moral needle which has eluded us all, these things grow pale indeed.

Casablanca (1942)

Of all the gin joints, in all the world...

[18 November 2005]

Sunday, November the 20th is the anniversary of Marcel Dalio's death in 1983. It was the end of a serendipitous life. You know him. He was a citizen of the world. Born Israel Moshe Blauschild, in Paris, in 1900, he became a much sought-after character actor. His lovely animated face with its great expressive eyes became familiar across Europe. He appeared in Jean Renoir's idiosyncratic Rules of the Game, and Grand Illusion, arguably the greatest of all films. True to his Frenchman's heart, he married the very young, breathtaking beauty Madeleine LeBeau. He worked with von Stroheim and Pierre Chenal. He had it all.

But then the Germans crushed Poland, swept across Belgium and pressed on toward Paris. He waited until the last possible moment and finally, with the sound of artillery clearly audible, with Madeleine, fled in a borrowed car to Orleans and then, in a freight train, to Bordeaux and finally to Portugal. In Lisbon, they bribed a crooked immigration official and were surreptitiously given two visas for Chile. But on arriving in Mexico City, it was discovered the visas were rank forgeries. Facing deportation, Marcel and Madeleine found themselves making application for political asylum with virtually every country in the western hemisphere. Weeks passed until Canada finally issued them temporary visas and they left for Montreal.

Meanwhile, France had fallen and, in the process of subjugating the country, the Germans had found some publicity stills of Dalio. A series of posters were produced and were then displayed throughout the city with the caption 'a typical Jew' so that citizens could more easily report anyone suspected of unrepentant Jewishness. The madness continued. 'Entree des artistes', a popular film, was ordered re-edited so that Dalio's scenes could be deleted and re-shot with another, non-Jewish, actor.

After a short time, friends in the film industry arranged for them to arrive in Hollywood. Nearly broke, Marcel was immediately put to work in a string of largely forgettable films. Madeleine, a budding actress in her own right, was ironically cast in 'Hold Back the Dawn', a vehicle for Charles Boyer with a plot driven by the efforts of an émigré (Boyer) trying desperately to cross into the United States from Mexico. But the real irony was waiting at Warner Brothers.

In early 1942, Jack Warner was driving production of a film based on a one act play, 'Everybody Comes to Rick's' but had no screenplay. What he had was a mishmash of treatments loosely based on the play and two previous movies. But he had a projected release date and a commitment to his distributors to have a movie for that time slot and little else. Warner Brothers started to wing it.

Shooting started without a screenplay and little plot. Principal players were cast and a director hired but casting calls for supporting roles and bit players continued and sometime in the early spring Marcel Dalio and Madeleine LeBeau were cast as, respectively, a croupier and a romantic entanglement for the male lead. Veteran screen-writers were hired to produce a running screenplay, sometimes delivering pages of dialogue one day, for scenes to be shot the following day. No one knew exactly where the plot would go or how the story would turn out. No one was sure of the ending. And, of course, they produced a classic, perhaps the finest American movie.

They produced a screenplay of multiple genres, rich with characterizations, perfectly in tune with the unfolding events in Europe and loaded with talent from top to bottom. Oh, and they changed the title to 'Casablanca'.

It is so well known, that many lines of long-memorized dialogue have passed into the slang idiom. 'We'll always have Paris', 'I was misinformed', 'Here's looking at you, kid', ' I am shocked! Shocked! To find that there's gambling going on in here!', 'Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship', 'Oh he's just like any other man, only more so', 'I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one', 'Round up the usual suspects', and, of course, the oft quoted, apocryphal, 'Play it again, Sam'.

Madeleine LeBeau plays Yvonne, the jilted lover of Humphrey Bogart, who is seen drowning her sorrows at the bar early in the film and who later, to get back at Rick and looking for solace takes up with a German officer finding only self-hatred. She is luminous.

And when Claude Rains delivers the signature line, 'I'm shocked! Shocked! To find that there's gambling going on in here!' the croupier, Emil, played by Marcel Dalio, approaches from the roulette table and says simply, 'Your winnings, sir.' It is a delicious moment ripe with scripted irony, one among many in this film, but one made all the more so, knowing where Dalio came from and what he and his wife had endured to arrive at that line.

I have often wondered exactly when they saw the final script or if they only realised the many parallels to their own lives when the film was released.

Alas, they separated and divorced the next year, both going on to long successful careers. Dalio never remarried.

Late in his career, when Mike Nichols was looking for a vaguely familiar face to deliver a long and worldly, near-monologue in Catch-22, he turned to Dalio. Faced with a hopelessly idealistic young American pilot, Dalio, as simply 'old man in whore house', in tight close-up, delivers a discourse on practical people faced with impractical circumstances, of the virtues of expedience in the face of amorality . Using his wonderful plastic features, now beginning to sag, in a voice full of melancholy, the old man reassures the young man that regardless of what 'grand themes' may be afoot in the world, in the end, little matters but survival.

Morning of the Earth (1972)

visual/tone poem to the surfer lifestyle

[8/10 · 10 May 2001]

This film depicts, in a languorous mood, the special connection surfers and other performance artists have with nature. The overall feel of the movie is mellow and mesmerizing, with long shots of wafer-thin wave faces and hypnotic tube rides. An absolute blast, this is for everyone who has ever ridden a wave or simply wished they had.

Tailspin Tommy (1934)

stalwart heroes face underhanded heavies in air action

[6/10 · 27 April 2001]

The thirties, drifting unknowingly toward the horrors of WW2, provided the context for these appropriately earnest young men to prove themselves by successfully competing for a mail contract( it could have been anything of value). The villains are devious and uncomplicated. The women chaste and nearly helpless. The acting (especially Noah Berry, Jr and Grant Withers) projects to the highest seat in the balcony. The flying sequences may be the best the film has to offer but on a Saturday afternoon in the mid-thirties this was quite good enough, thank you. This film stands as a worthy example of our sweet, innocent past.