Irene212 Reviews

The Deep End (2001)

Two-armed bandits in Tahoe

[6/10 · 7 June 2024]

Although neither this movie nor the earlier adaptation, "The Reckless Moment" by Max Ophüls (1949), adheres closely to the plot of "The Blank Wall," a 1947 novel by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, the two films stand in interesting contrast to one another.

Both are moved from the suburbs of New York to California, and both are set in peacetime, rather than during WWII, but the really profound change involves sex: rather than a 17-year-old daughter dallying with an older man, it's a 17-year-old son. Both men are predators, and the mother intervenes to protect her child, not entirely wisely.

In The Deep End, that is Tilda Swinton in a finely nuanced performance as Margaret Hall. With her husband away and unreachable, she confronts the man, Darby (Josh Lucas), demanding he desist, but he wants payment. When her son, Beau (Jonathan Tucker, forgettable), discovers this, he and Darby fight in the boathouse of the Hall home on Lake Tahoe. Beau retreats to the house, leaving Darby, who falls off the pier and is killed. Margaret finds the body in the morning, assumes Beau killed him, and dumps it in Lake Tahoe.

Enter Alek Spera (Goran Visnjic), demanding $50,000 for himself and his partner, Nagle (Raymond J. Barry), or they'll give the police a videotape of Beau and Darby having sex. It's a stunning scene, Margaret watching her son on his belly in bed with a man. The camera lingers on Swinton, whose stare will stay with you as the double devastation dawns on her: she's already assumed that her son is capable of murder, now she's seeing images that further redefine him forever-- images that are also inculpatory evidence in the murder.

She tries to raise the money while carrying on as normal a routine as she can with her three children and father-in-law, while Spera keeps returning, demanding payment. The movie never drags, but the crime is far more interesting than the dull family stuff, which is mostly Margaret chauffeuring her kids around (the movie even adds a third kid and ballet lessons). A very big deal is made of the fact that Margaret has to juggle Mom duties while also trying to protect her son from nothing less than a murder charge. Her speeches about her responsibilities didn't impress me as much as they did her blackmailer, which means either I'm cold-hearted (I'm not), or Spera is a softy. Unfortunately, he isn't fleshed out the way he needs to be (and the way James Mason was as that character in the Ophüls film).

I had a lot of difficulty believing that Margaret was so immediately ready to assume that Beau killed a man that she dumps the body before even asking him about it. And there are smaller problems, one in particular that stands out: about two-thirds of the way into the film, we suddenly learn that Beau drives and has his own car. Seriously? So why has his mother been driving him around? And why wasn't her father-in-law pitching in with his grandchildren?

If you can overlook the muddled Mom stuff (I couldn't, not entirely), the film is absolutely worth a look for the emotional complexity of Swinton's performance. She was a well-established actress in England and Europe by 2001, but her career in America took off after this, and no wonder.

36 Hours (1964)

Hollywood has ways of making them talk

[5/10 · 7 June 2024]

The plot is elaborately detailed in the movie, but the bare bones are: In May 1944, Germans know that an Allied invasion is only days away, but when? On June 1, they drug and abduct an American intelligence officer, Major Pike (James Garner), and take him to a fake U. S. Army hospital in Germany where Dr. Walter Gerber (Rod Taylor) must convince him that he's had amnesia for six years: it's now 1950, Germany lost the war, and the treatment for amnesia is to recall details of the last thing he remembers: the plans for D-Day.

If Gerber doesn't get that intel within 36 hours, SS agent Otto Schach (Werner Peters) will take over interrogation, using sleep deprivation. Time out for a reality check: about 180 hours are required for sleep deprivation to work. That's more than a week, and what good would any Intel be after the invasion? Zero. Sleep deprivation was suggested because it sounds milder than the real Nazi methods, beatings and electric shock. But no such violence is even suggested in this movie. It's all implied and euphemized, sparing the audience any genuine distress-- and, concomitantly, any genuine feeling.

Another real oddity, I thought, was the leisurely pace of the movie. Although categorized as a thriller, I can't recall ever seeing a movie with so much conversation. Threats loom, but Dr. Gerber, Anna, and Major Pike sit around, drinking and talking about psychotherapy.

To be fair, toward the end we do meet two other likeable Germans: a woman, Elsa (the wonderful Celia Lovsky), and a border guard (John Banner, anticipating his signature sitcom role as Sgt. Schulz), both of them Western sympathizers, and therefore not fools or flunkies. But it's too little, too late.

Ferrari (2023)

The wrong son died (twice)

[8/10 · 6 June 2024]

Enzo Ferrari is quoted as saying "the only perfect love in this world is that of a father for his son." He's wrong, of course (any such sweeping statement would be wrong), but it's a good intro to this movie, which is about men, start to finish (to use racing lingo), which probably factored into poor box office numbers. Maybe it will find the audience it deserves on smaller screens, because director Michael Mann is in top form here. Shot in Italy, "Ferrari" is a convincing portrait of a man whose life is divided between a sustained passion for fast cars and (because divorce was illegal in Italy until 1970) a double life as a family man.

Adam Driver delivers a finely controlled performance as Enzo Ferrari, somber at age 59, in the months following the death of his beloved older 24-year-old son, Dino. It is almost an echo of the death of his own brother in 1916, referred to in a scene when his mother Adalgisa (Daniela Piperno) says, "The wrong son died."

The racing scenes are extremely well done, especially the depiction of the crash of a Ferrari in the 1957 "Mille Miglia" road race, a tragedy so horrific that, within a week, the Italian government banned racing on public roads. The driver, aristocratic playboy Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), and his navigator were both killed, which is a risk they knowingly took, as did Joseph Göttgens, a Dutch driver who was fatally injured in the same race in a Triumph TR-3. But the Ferrari crash also took the lives of nine spectators, five of them children, and injured twenty more. Mann's staging of that crash is like a gut punch. The speed of that airborne car hurtling through bystanders-- my breath left my body as I watched. Then I braced myself and watched it again, to see how it was done. Extraordinary.

As for the private Ferrari, the most engaging scenes involve Enzo and his 12-year-old son, Piero (Giuseppe Festinese), whose mother was Enzo's inamorata, Lina Lardi. Shailene Woodley plays her well, being loving and patient, but it is a passive supporting role.

Wife Laura Ferrari (Penélope Cruz) is another matter. We meet her wielding a gun, which she fires at Ferrari, purposely missing, and he doesn't even react. Nor did I. She was instantly dismissable as an unappeasable Italian hellcat. A cliché. She spends the movie in a fury, either sulking or screaming. I felt little sympathy for her, and none when she belligerently blamed her husband for their son's death, even though he was equally devastated, and had done everything he could to save Dino. It's a man's picture, fine, but if you get Penélope Cruz to play a major role, give her a character to play.

Road House (1948)

"One word to the judge and that's all, brother."

[8/10 · 5 June 2024]

The incomparable Ida Lupino adds torch singing to her many talents as Lily, a woman with a gift for sizing people up. She books a six-week gig at Jefty's Road House, somewhere near the Canadian border, even though she can see that Jefty (Richard Widmark) is volatile, so she keeps her distance. The Road House cashier Susie (Celeste Holm) earns Lily's trust slowly, both of them having their eyes for the manager, Pete (Cornel Wilde), a man with dignity and morality, not to mention muscles. Lily cranks up the sex appeal, and he's tempted but prudent, until one night when a drunken oaf begins groping her. Pete subdues him in a bar-wrecking brawl that leaves both he and Lily wounded and shaken up. Sharing a drink later and talking, it's her honesty that finally seduces him. They end up in an embrace that amounts to foreplay, and she says, "We're not kidding ourselves anymore, are we? What brought this on, was worth it."

Unfortunately, Jefty plans to marry Lily: "She makes me think about things I used to laugh about." Before they tell him the truth, Lily reminds Pete of an earlier confrontation about nothing more than bowling lessons: "I'll never forget the look on his face... he looked like he could kill you."

But Jefty wants revenge: he frames Pete for larceny and, after Pete is found guilty and sentenced to ten years, he urges the judge to parole him into his own custody, offering to give Pete his job back, to rehabilitate him. It works, and the world sees him as generous. But in private, Jefty says, "Suppose you got mad and tried to slug me. One word to the judge and that's all, brother, ten years in the pen."

Jefty's true colors are amply revealed in one startling scene: When they're all at his lakeside cabin, he sets a can of tomato juice on a rock 50 yards away, aims his rifle and says, "Imagine that's a little duck up there, a tiny little duck waiting for its mother" BLAM! The can exploded and I flinched.

Richard Widmark may never be surpassed as an actor whose big smile hides a menace that can erupt into psychosis at the pull of a trigger. There are no bad performances here, but Widmark is unforgettable. The movie drags a bit when they're all chasing each other through a forest after the tomato can got it. But in this tight little 95-minute noir, who cares?

The Reckless Moment (1949)

Cinematic royalty in Hollywood

[8/10 · 5 June 2024]

Filmed on location in Southern California, "The Reckless Moment" is so beautifully made that it could be taught in film school. It is absolutely worth watching and re-watching for the gorgeous black-and-white photography and astoundingly fluid camerawork of Burnett Guffney (two Oscars) partnered with the great director, Max Ophüls (see the poem James Mason wrote about him in Ophüls' Wikipedia entry). The chiaroscuro lighting is extraordinary, even by film noir standards, with the heroine (Joan Bennett) moving in and out of light and darkness and shadow, visually reflecting the web of good and evil she is caught in. When she's in a boat on quiet water, the camera pauses long enough for us to note that everything is gray: she has just dumped the body of a man whom she believes her immature daughter killed.

The plot is immediately intriguing, even a bit licentious: 17-year-old Beatrice is seeing 40ish Ted Darby, a charmer whom her mother, Lucy Harper, confronts, demanding he desist. Darby will comply, but for a price, which is all she needs to know to expose him to Bea as a cad. Things don't quite work out that way. Darby ends up dead after visiting Bea, his body face down on the beach at their Balboa boathouse. Lucy suspects Bea did it, so she dumps his body in Newport Bay. It is promptly found by the police, who begin investigating-- after which the plot doesn't thicken so much as it curdles into a family drama.

It all centers on the mother (Joan Bennett), whose beloved husband is away on a job in Germany. Oh, and it's almost Christmas. To recap: this is a family drama with a lukewarm love story, not a murder mystery. Unfortunately.

Lucy is soon visited by Martin Donnelly (James Mason with his melting Irish brogue), one of a gang of crooks who possess incriminatory letters that Bea wrote to Darby. He wants $5,000 or he'll give them to the police, which will make Bea a prime suspect. The rest of the movie involves Lucy trying to raise money, which means driving around in her fur coat and jewels, trying to scrounge up cash. She's often chauffeured by Donnelly, who becomes protective of her, and blames his actions on his crime boss, Nagel (Roy Roberts). Yadda, yadda... I watched the movie for its cinematic qualities. The plot became secondary, especially with elements like Lucy's father, an old duffer who doesn't even need to be there since she's the man of the house (and suggestively dressed by Jean Louis in heavy coats and dresses with belts, cuffs, and shirt collars).

Aside from the pathos of the plot, there are problems with casting the female roles. As Darby, Shepperd Strudwick skilfully fuses smarm and charm, but Beatrice is played by Geraldine Brooks, who, in her early 20s, already has the look of a girl who's been around (she played Van Heflin's lover two years earlier in Possessed). James Mason balances criminality and conscience in almost every scene, and with no shortage of terse wit. The film comes to life when he's on screen. But Joan Bennett...

With apologies to her fans, she is not up to acting in an Ophüls movie. She delivers a few emotional scenes toward the end, but for most of the film her face looks like a woman who is concentrating hard on remembering her lines and her blocking for the mobile camera, never mind acting. Her delivery is so flat that she just seems perfunctory with everyone: her husband (on phone calls) and her family (cypher father, spirited son, Bea, and housemaid Sylvia), and Donnelly, though she makes it clear in the beginning that she doesn't like him. It's a two-note performance when an octave is required. The following year, she plays a mother again, in "Father of the Bride," and she fares much better with a Hollywood go-to like Vincent Minnelli at the helm.

In the Line of Fire (1993)

The trick was to aim high

[6/10 · 3 June 2024]

John Malkovich is a crackerjack villain, and the cast boasts John Mahoney and Fred Dalton Thompson, but "In the Line of Fire" centers on Clint Eastwood as Frank Horrigan, a Secret Service agent haunted by his failure to react swiftly when JFK was assassinated. That could be interesting, but Frank isn't: he's a bull-headed old cuss. For starters, this is what he says about that day in Dallas: "I could tell he was hit. I don't know why I didn't react. I should have reacted.... I just couldn't believe it."

Excuse me?? His entire job, all his training and his sanctimonious talk, is geared to protecting the President, who gets volumes of death threats. But when an attack happens, Frank "couldn't believe it." Instead of Dallas being a wake-up call, telling him he's in the wrong line of work, he stubbornly stays on the job, ultimately becoming the insubordinate (read: antihero) sourpuss we meet 30 years later.

He is also predatory, not only with his partner (Dylan McDermott), a junior agent whom he begs and bullies to get what he wants, but with his colleague, Lily (Rene Russo), whose attraction to him can only be explained by the need for a love interest for Eastwood, who is even given jazz chops in this movie, lest we forget who we're watching and start thinking it's a real character. The movie could have been cut by twenty minutes, and been more amusing, if Lily had sparred rather than slept with him.

John Malkovich is memorable as Leary, the villain aiming to assassinate the current President, and Wolfgang Peterson and his able D. P. John Bailey capture him from every angle and plenty of close-ups. Leary's phone chats with Horrigan are riveting because of Leary's dialog-- which, to my surprise, actually generates anti-government sympathy: he was well-trained as a killer by the feds (at School of the Americas?) and apparently well paid, too (he self-funds his assassination plot, once dropping $50,ooo without batting an eye). Meanwhile, all Frank does during these chats is growl, threaten, and swear.

It's an intricately structured movie, cleverly manipulating the plot to deliver some very close encounters, including a rooftop death scene that is meaningfully filmed. The showdown scene in the glass elevator where Frank says "Aim high" works nicely. It's also slickly written, e.g., when Frank warns that Leary is targeting the President at an upcoming fundraiser in California, the Secret Service disregards him, because why would Leary leak his plan? It's just another hurdle for peerless Frank, who has to go it alone now (that's the point), never mind that it's idiotic: their job is not to second-guess threats, it's to protect the President wherever he is.

The ending is pure Hollywood, a nick-of-time climax, triggered when Frank has a sudden insight into the when-and-where of Leary's plot. When all is said and done, it's a well-made two hours of patriotic hooey, ending with Frank and Lily sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, gazing at the erect white Washington Monument. Never mind making Frank admirable or credible, let alone alluring. Just never let us forget that he's Clint Eastwood.

Charley Varrick (1973)

I swear it's a comedy

[9/10 · 2 June 2024]

The plot is immediately involving: a deadly but astoundingly successful bank heist. Four robbers led by Charley Varrick (Walter Matthau) accidentally score a fortune from a small bank that happens to launder money for the Mafia. We don't meet any mob bosses, only their mid- and low-level flunkies, including the banker who lost their >$750,000 and is now panic-stricken.

Except for the law, a couple of kids, and one horny old lady, every major character we meet has criminal tendencies and, thanks to Charley, most become targets of a mob vendetta.

But as directed by Don Siegel, "Charley Varrick" is so swift and fun and entertaining that-- in spite of some startling violence and a substantial body count (at least six)-- I reflect on it as a comedy. Siegel telescopes future actions, mostly with visual clues, in a way that makes the story more satisfying than if the payoffs were surprises. It's solid in every way-- propulsive pace, intricate structure, performances, dialog, settings in Nevada (standing in for New Mexico).

Matthau is the implacable center of the film, a man smart enough to let his actions do most of the talking. (Eastwood turned the role down, and there's a line of dialog when a man introduces himself to a woman who says, "I didn't think you were Clint Eastwood.") At no point was I bored. There was only one moment when I thought Siegel was pushing his trust-nobody theme too far: a hit man (Joe Don Baker) hauls off and slaps a counterfeiter (Sheree North), who then smiles and takes him to bed. It felt false for her no-nonsense character, and wasn't necessary for his psychopathic one.

The final scene in the wrecking yard goes on a bit too long, but that's Hollywood for you. And since the ending is satisfying, I can't complain. This is an extremely accomplished film.

China Moon (1994)

Not the man you should frame for murder

[8/10 · 29 May 2024]

If only! The cast in this movie could not be improved upon. Every one of them commands the screen with their good looks and even better talents: Ed Harris, Madeleine Stowe, Benicio del Toro, and Charles Dance. If only Dance's character had some depth, some redeeming quality, or irresistible charm-- some reason for Rachel to have married him, let alone stay married. But no. Even the name he's given, Rupert Munro, is ugly.

This is one of very few features directed by John Bailey (he was primarily a cinematographer, and an interesting one if you look at IMDb trivia), and he keeps interest high with swift pacing and wise use of close-ups of his principal actors. The plot involves a murder and a cover-up, the details of which are credible and intricate without being convoluted. You see what you need to, to follow the evidence along with detective Kyle Bodine, whom Harris embodies as a thoughtful, compassionate detective, always proceeding with due deliberation-- until love strikes. Then he's as fallible as the rest of us, and Stowe is utterly convincing as Rachel, a woman who could inspire that kind of overpowering passion, as well as a woman who might just be a duplicitous and manipulative sociopath. Between those two extremes, Bodine gets trapped-- framed for murder, but by whom if not Rachel? Harris delivers a masterful performance of a man whose personal and professional lives are at war: he must temper his fiery love with cold proficiency.

Then there's Benicio del Toro, and wow. Even with those co-stars (and Roger Aaron Brown, who always delivers), he almost steals every scene he's in, wringing every ounce of versatility out of the role of Bodine's rookie partner. At age 24, he was already a force.

Sea of Love (1989)

Poetically licensed police

[5/10 · 29 May 2024]

The best idea in "Sea of Love" is the trap set by the NYPD for a serial killer, presumed to be a woman because all three deaths are linked to poetic personal ads: detectives post one, then endure dates with responding women to get fingerprints on wine glasses. Unfortunately, the set-ups are few (Patricia Barry as the "Older Woman" is notable), and embedded in a screenplay that boils down to clichés. A couple of hard-as-nails New Yorkers nail each other as they fall in love: 20-year veteran detective Frank (Al Pacino, looking every day of his 49 years) and shoe merchant Helen (Ellen Barkin, her distinctive face peering out under whorls of porn hair). I longed for the days when copulation was off-screen unless it was required to advance plot or character. (Has that ever happened? Maybe "Bonnie and Clyde," ignoring the fact that the real Clyde Barrow wasn't impotent.)

In terms of genre, "Sea of Love" is soft-core noir, and what would be a B picture except for the budget and the return of Pacino (this was his comeback after "Revolution" bombed four years earlier). Unfortunately, the McGuffin search for the serial killer is foreplay to their all-consuming affair: after three men are found shot dead and naked in their beds, there are no more murders because the plot doesn't need them. We're left wondering if Barkin is the perp, although as the critic Kevin Thomas noted in the L. A. Times, why would a dish like Barkin need personal ads unless she really is a psychopath? It's a thought that could and should have been mentioned by Detective Sherman or one of the other officers played by a fine cast of under-used actors: Richard Jenkins, John Spencer, Larry Joshua, Paul Calderon, and, in one memorable scene, the great William Hickey as Pacino's father, who provides the poetry in more ways than one.

Midnight Run (1988)

You lied first

[8/10 · 28 May 2024]

It's easy to enjoy "Midnight Run" purely for its spirited script and deNiro's star turn without appreciating its other qualities: an A-list of character actors disrupting the cross-country road trip of two men with opposing goals.

The story has no moral, but it's all about morality: there is no honor among thieves and precious little anywhere else from sea to shining sea-- the movie covers a lot of American territory, ethical and regional.

Bounty hunter Jack Walsh (de Niro) left the Chicago police for refusing to join his colleagues in accepting bribes from crime boss Jimmy Serrano (Dennis Farina), whom the FBI is after (Yaphet Kotto seriously in charge). Their star witness is Serrano's accountant, Jonathon "the Duke" Mardukas (Charles Grodin), who is in hiding after embezzling $15 million and skipping bail ($450G). His bail bondsman Eddie (Joe Pantoliano) hires Jack to find him and bring him to Los Angeles in five days for arraignment, unaware that his doofus flunky (Jack Kehoe) is feeding information to Serrano's thugs. Like I said, no honor.

From plane to train to bus to cars, Jack and Jon fight their way west against a cascading onslaught of G-men, mobsters, and another bounty hunter (excellent John Ashton). Adventures ensue, interrupting the duo's civilized conversations with stretches of well-placed and -directed action. Running jokes about sunglasses, badges, cigarettes, and doughnuts add to the fun.

Typical of anti-buddy movies, the budding friendship is the essence, and deNiro and Grodin make it work. DeNiro is extraordinary, making a complex character out of incorruptible Jack. Grodin is not his equal as an actor, but his dialogue does most of the work. Jon is a frump of a man, yet he's no chump, not after embezzling $15 million. A question mark sticks to him: can a self-proclaimed altruistic thief really be trusted? And Jon "the Duke" feeds that question by parsing his relationship with Jack. They lie to each other to achieve their opposing goals, but Jon insists on claiming the moral high ground in his talkative way: "But you didn't know I was lying to you when you lied to me down by the river. So as far as you knew, you lied to me first!" Why does he care? Either he wants respect as the man who donated $15m to charity, or he needs Jack to trust him. Honor will out.

Desk Set (1957)

I live alone, and so do you

[9/10 · 27 May 2024]

"What are you thinking, Bunny?" one of her assistants asks the network research chief when their office first uses the giant Emerac computer. Bunny (Katharine Hepburn) leans back on a desk and says, in amused exasperation, "Except for sex, what's left?"

A succinct question then, with that giant blinking, beeping know-it-all machine, and even more now, with its immortal ghost, AI.

Desk Set is a lighthearted but smart and prophetic look at human vs. Artificial intelligence, explored most wonderfully in the lunch scene on the wintry midtown Manhattan roof where efficiency expert Richard Sumner (Tracy) profiles Bunny. Her answers are not simply correct, they are clever, probing, and perceptive. Like a computer, she evaluates input objectively. But unlike a computer, her responses exhibit a freewheeling intelligence: a good memory in a mind not limited by the parameters of the question as worded: she answers dutifully only after evaluating the validity of the question itself, which algorithms do not do (imagine the infinity of nested loops). She has another advantage over algorithms: senses, and the screenplay is smart enough to notice. When asked about her personal life, we get this exchange:

Bunny: I don't smoke, I only drink champagne when I'm lucky enough to get it, my hair is naturally natural, I live alone - and so do you.

Sumner: How do you know that?

Bunny: Because you're wearing one brown sock and one black sock.

If you find that evaluation of AI contestable, or boring, feel free, but don't let it stop you from enjoying the movie. Hepburn and Tracy clearly had fun making it, as obvious at the goofball end of the dinner scene that Gig Young crashes. Large emotional questions are smartly underplayed, but remain poignant: Hepburn's struggle with wanting love but not at the expense of respect. Joan Blondell's dialog, and her delivery. Even the formulaic joke about the old lady (Ida Moore) who has free run of the offices because she was the original model for the network's hotsy-totsy symbol. The girls in the research department, smart as whips but undervalued (that new dress Ruthie wants), and now facing competition from machines as well as men.

(But is it a competition? Sumner introduces his efficient Emerac to their business as a tool for employees, not a replacement of them. If Emerac was a robot or cyborg, it might be another story-- but it would also be another movie.)

Adam's Rib (1949)

If this is how women defend women, I object

[5/10 · 26 May 2024]

I write this review at the risk of sounding humorless. I'm not. The first time I watched it, I found it very cleverly structured, and amusing, starting with the absolutely perfect title: Adam's Rib. Married lawyers, Tracy and Hepburn, as Adam and Amanda. They're wonderful together, especially at home, in the lively, witty "That Evening" scenes with an impish David Wayne.

Then I watched it closely, and yeesh! It's a feminist screwball romcom, but feminist and screwball tend to be oil and water. The problem is the bullet-hole-ridden plot, and the screenplay, based around the trial of a housewife for attempted murder. Let's just say that If I were on trial, I'd ask for pro se privileges before allowing Amanda to represent me, unless the prosecutor was as inept as Adam.

Judy Holiday does a true star turn as gun-toting Dolores, the wife, and Jean Hagen is almost as good a Beryl, the home-wrecker. Unfortunately, Tom Ewell as the husband only prompts the question, what's wrong with these women? The movie begins with the crime: Dolores shoots open the door where her husband is canoodling with Beryl, then closes her eyes and begins firing wildly into the room. Her husband ends up in critical condition.

No forensic evidence on those stray bullets is collected, or if it is, Adam never uses any. He sticks to countering Amanda's feminist defense strategy: that women should be judged the way men are, not only if they sleep around, but when their home is invaded: justifiable use of force.

If Amanda's strategy was just silly, okay. But it's worse. It's irrelevant, and it stoops to insult. In her summation, she invents a "civilization far older than ours in South America... the Lorcañanos, descended from the Amazons," where women rule. No such culture exists (anyway Amazons were a Greek myth, not a New World one), nor has any credible evidence ever been found of a matriarchal society anywhere in history or prehistory.

Did writers Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon really have so little real dedication to equality that they had to fabricate a false myth to argue that women are equal?

Their desperation for humor in this comedy sinks to a cringe-worthy low when Amanda humiliates Adam in the courtroom (a female circus performer lifts him off the floor), and subsequently refuses to understand his outrage.

Tracy and Hepburn bring their extraordinary talents, both serious and comic, to the roles of married couple, but when, after the trial is over, Adam and Amanda both compliment each other on their respective strategies and summations, all I could say was, "I object."

The Story of Us (1999)

Certain unromantic facts

[8/10 · 26 May 2024]

With all due respect to the IMDb reviewer wes-connors, who gave this movie a 4, I have a complaint about your complaint: "Their marriage unravels in a series of clichés, which many couples should recognize." How is that a criticism? Isn't it a strength to recognize on screen what you've been through?

The Story of Us is about love surviving heavy odds: aging, disappointment, drudgery, jealousy, meddlers (and money, which isn't an issue here). Casting was crucial, and director Rob Reiner got it right. Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer, each with considerable individual appeal as well as seasoned talents, have a screen chemistry that makes us not only buy into their marriage, but want it to survive.

Their union is convincing not only where it is expected, in their early years, but where it is unexpected, during the prospect of separation and divorce. The marriage is in trouble when we meet them, but it is obvious that both spouses are far more miserable at the thought of parting than they are over the clichéd miseries of their daily routines. After fifteen years, love is no longer "lust in disguise," it is the essential and durable core of who they are, anchored in the unromantic fact that their two teen-aged children are an integral part of the "us" of the title. This movie is the story of accepting that hard truth about marriage.

The comedy is formulaic (mostly shtick about once-hot sex) and structurally confined to four fishbowls: his friends, her friends, their marriage counselors (briefly), and their parents (ditto). Unfortunately, his friends are played by Rob Reiner who can't play anybody but Rob Reiner; and Paul Reiser, who seems to be there to lower the bar for male behavior, which he does in a robotic (and uncredited) performance. Her friends are Rita Wilson, doing her patented toothy, mouthy busybody; and Julie Hagerty, reduced to asking questions at a ladies' lunch. As for the parents, pure shtick: the six of them in bed, Freuding it out.

One recurring motif, being smartly conceived and utterly charming, is worth mentioning: the family plays a high/low game at dinner, wherein each one tells the other three about the high and low points of their day. It's a clever way to develop the character of the two teen-aged children, and a quietly convincing way to present a cohesive and mostly happy family. If the marriage ends, that game ends, and everyone will share the same low for months, possibly years, maybe forever.

Babylon (I) (2022)

The meaning of the elephant

[3/10 · 24 May 2024]

The opening sequence reminded me of the old joke: When a custodian who shovels elephant dung at the circus is asked why he doesn't quit, he says, "What? And leave show business?"

In Babylon, a truck carrying an elephant stalls and the driver endures a deluge of elephant dung attempting to restart it because he'll do anything to go to the Hollywood party that the elephant is invited to. And he's not the only one. Dignity and self-respect replaced by fawning and yearning.

Damien Chazelle is clearly trying to shock us with nudity and depravity and drugs (oh my!), but it all feels forced and phony. Unfortunately for him, that schtick has played out. According to the MPAA, of the 11,000+ movies released since 1995, only 406 were rated G. By now, our brains have such rugged shock absorbers that we barely bat an eye at climate change, let alone an orgy.

There is something shocking, however, about the Babylon screenplay: it's unconvincing, even implausible. Start with the dialog so rife with profanity that it sounds like the 2020s, not the 1920s. Then consider this line, delivered by Brad Pitt, which is problematic for another, and worse, reason: "Then he said, 'Frankly, Scarlett, you're a c*** '." Gone With the Wind was published years later, in 1936, and Clark Gable immortalized the line in 1939. So, is Chazelle being careless, disdainful, ignorant, or (desperate guess:) trying to go meta and be funny?

Babylon lacks not talent, but discipline and dignity. It is three self-indulgent hours trying to satirize self-indulgence. Chazelle doesn't have the chops.

Want to see a credible movie about the silent era in Hollywood? Try the modest little comedy Hearts of the West (1975).

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)

Ed's aunt has a point.

[5/10 · 7 May 2024]

Good old Ed Couch. All he wants to do when he gets home is have dinner and watch a game on television. Normal stuff. But his bouncy wife, Evelyn (Kathy Bates in top form) lives in a world of "should": what marriage should be, how her husband should act, what she herself should be like. Ed (Gailard Sartain) pretty much lets all that wash over him. He doesn't even complain when she tears down a wall in their house only to rebuild it later.

Ed has an aunt in a nursing home, a woman we never see but who throws things at Evelyn to keep her out of the room when they visit. This happens twice, so it's not a sudden tizzy. It's animosity, probably because she's had enough of Evelyn's incessant smile, which hides a stubborn streak, and her passive-aggressive nature that, in the worst instance, exploded in a parking lot where she heedlessly, cheerfully, and repeatedly rear-ended a car that took a parking space she wanted.

At the nursing home, Evelyn befriends Ninny (Jessica Tandy, still glorious at 81), who becomes her Scheherazade, telling tales of the Great Depression in Alabama. The Southern Gothic story of Idgie, as she calls herself (Mary Stuart Masterson) and her friend Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker) involves murder, homelessness, racism, wife-beating, and cannibalism, which is presented tongue-in-cheek (so to speak), yet we are repeatedly shown the boiling pot. Like I said, Southern Gothic.

Most of the movie is about that era, but the tone is firmly set by Evelyn who, at one point, joins a female support group, a bizarre scene that brings a whole different problem to this headstrong movie. The group meeting involves the women dropping their drawers and grabbing hand mirrors to look at their groins. To her credit, Evelyn doesn't join the lunatic gynecological tour, and I was left wondering why a movie that seems to celebrate women would choose to mock a support group using sex. It could only be another desperate-for-laughs thing, like Evelyn cheerfully weaponizing her car.

Meanwhile, good old Ed finally reaches his limit with Evelyn when she unilaterally decides that Ninny will live with them. He objects, reasonably enough, and when persuasion fails, he draws the line, "It's not going to happen." Her cheerful, stubborn, insulting reply, "I'll do all the work," dismisses her husband as if he was a boarder.

The movie expects us to like Evelyn in spite of her behavior, presumably just because she's female (or because she's Kathy Bates, who is marvelous, which is cheating), as if there's something superior about one gender or the other. But you're only as good as your actions, whatever your gender, and Evelyn needs an intervention before she rams the auto-insurance office that rejects her claim.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

The limits of charm

[5/10 · 6 May 2024]

There is undeniable charm in Wes Anderson's established style: sets like dollhouses, candy-colored design, formalized symmetry, and painterly camera work with occasional tracking shots. But here's where I jump ship: deadpan delivery from the actors. All the actors. Every single face is frozen as if posing for a painter rather than performing in a motion picture. Perhaps Anderson believes, as some directors are rumored to (von Sternberg, Mamoulian, Clarence Brown), that when actors are expressionless the audience supplies the emotion. That's a big risk, especially inside Anderson's already rigid aesthetic.

Consider Dr. Seuss, another artist with an unvarying style. His drawings are backed by wisdom and poetic genius, while Anderson's style, once established, became a necessary cosmetic for minor storytelling gifts. Ironically, Dr. Seuss's printed images are actually more dynamic than Anderson's movies.

Moonrise Kingdom is a case in point. The plot centers on two humorless twelve-year-old runaways with troubled lives. There are a few amusing lines ("Our daughter's been abducted by one of these beige lunatics!") and a few thoughtful ones, e.g., when the girl says she wished she was an orphan, the boy replies, "I love you but you don't know what you're talking about." The deadpan delivery is perfect for that line; unfortunately, all the dialog is delivered that way, minus any of the messy emotions that make us human.

Sometimes, happily, really talented actors manage to ply their craft in spite of a director's limitations. Tilda Swinton brings a crisp and believable authority to her role as Social Services, in spite of Anderson encasing her in a code-blue uniform. Equally irrepressible, Bruce Willis comes across as the most human character in the bunch, with nothing more than the practiced use of pauses and inflections, evidently the maximum display of human nature that Anderson will allow.

Dateline NBC (1992– )

Three little observations

[8/10 · 5 May 2024]

Dateline is predictable in the best way: I know it's going to be well produced and interesting, if necessarily uneven. That said:

1) First, high praise: What I like most about Dateline (and other crime shows) is that vast majority of people we meet in any given episode are good people. There's always a murderer or two, but they're the exception. The rest-- survivors, witnesses, prosecutors and most cops-- are truth-seekers in search of justice. (I forgive the defense lawyers because they're doing a necessary job). Ultimately, far from being a condemnation of humanity, Dateline proves that most of us are honorable.

2) This bugs me. Common to many, if not most, episodes is a phrase like "Stuff like that never happens here." Give it up, guys. Obviously homicides can happen anywhere-- especially the murders that Dateline specializes in, which involve family dysfunction and/or sociopaths.

3) Could someone please ask Andrea Canning to tone down her sing-song delivery; it undermines the gravity of the subject matter. I'd also appreciate it if the women being interviewed weren't coiffed and slathered in make-up. A significant number have also had significant plastic surgery without significant success. So while the men are allowed to age gracefully, the women are often one whorl of hair away from looking grotesque.

The Fifth Element (1997)

Willis and Oldman, what could go wrong?

[8/10 · 3 May 2024]

Chris Tucker, that's what. But not enough to bury the movie, and some people even seemed to find him more amusing than annoying.

I agree with pretty much every reviewer who agreed with me: an 8 rating. The Fifth Element is unapologetic fun. If you can't follow it (because it doesn't make sense), so what? It doesn't matter. Just enjoy the ride, scene by scene.

Just three things to add:

1) It takes place in the 23rd century, and though nothing is made of this in the screenplay, evidently evolution has gotten rid of every female who isn't a babe. A young babe. Either women don't age, or they die off, or end up staying home on the phone, haranguing their sons. Meanwhile, men of every age and stage, mostly middle-aged and ugly, occupy every position of responsibility or power. Not plausible, but this movie wasn't meant to attract women viewers.

2) Yet another Gary Oldman triumph, which is saying a lot for an actor who has played both Sid Vicious and Winston Churchill. Has anybody got a wider range than that? And in this movie, he is a pleasure to behold in every scene. Even Jean-Paul Gaultier's fantasy/punk rainbow leather costume can't upstage him.

3) with a bullet: this is optimal Bruce Willis. He plays Korben Dallas like a guy who has seen it all and bounced back so many times that his survival isn't even a question any more. Milla Jovovich is spectacular eye candy as well as being a gifted actress, but I just wanted more of Willis. I've watched him since Moonlighting and loved him since Die Hard, and seriously consider him the most under-rated above-the-title actor in the history of Hollywood.

Working Man (2019)

Plastics on the job and at home

[7/10 · 30 April 2024]

I tuned in for Peter Gerety, an extraordinarily gifted actor, and was pleased to find that Billy Brown absolutely held his own, and then some, as his co-star. The movie also has its heart in the right place-- with the working class-- and it has a fairly fresh idea, with an unpredictable plot, and characters who are not one-dimensional, including not just laborers at the plastics plant (stay tuned for more on plastic), but management and corporate, too.

My frustrations may seem minor, but I think the movie was undermined by two bad decisions.

First, the imbalance of dialog between Brown as Walter Brewer and Gerety as Allery Parkes. Brewer is charismatic and talkative which is a stark difference from Parkes, who is given less than the bare minimum of lines to make him seem real. Gerety's character shut down after his son's suicide, but to a degree that doesn't help the film: it's unnecessarily severe. When a character is that withdrawn, I always wonder why anybody bothers to stick around-- including me.

Second, and this may seem petty, but I'm serious: Talia Shire had no business playing Mrs. Parkes. I'm not talking about her acting ability. I'm talking about her plastic face: the amount of cosmetic surgery she has obviously had undermines every scene she's in, especially when she's counting coupons at the grocery store. Once a performer gets that much work done, they forfeit the right to play a working stiff, or his wife.

The Big Knife (1955)

He called me a child and then he--

[7/10 · 29 April 2024]

Jack Palance as Charlie Castle is the prominent lead, but the key character in this movie is really Dixie Evans (Shelley Winters, in her early 30s and in full command of her talents). Dixie is a slightly blowsy dumb blonde and a #MeToo victim of the studio system that The Big Knife attacks from both inside and out: it was originally a Broadway play (with John Garfield) by Clifford Odets, after he left Hollywood in disgust. The screenplay oozes with the knowledge that Hollywood hangers-on sacrifice their dignity just to be close to the movies.

Dixie got wise to the system the hard way, and she defiantly holds on to what little power she has (the scandalous truth about a crime) against men who dangle roles en route to the casting couch. The dialog is neutered, but it isn't hard to read between lines like, "Don't tell me about Mr. Hoff. He called me a child one minute and the next he--." Hot-headed Rod Steiger and his cold-hearted henchman Wendell Corey bring the corruption to life: the only thing that matters is power, and the measure is money. Blackmail is light work; murder, a bit more complicated.

Charlie's lament is that he's trapped (being blackmailed by Hoff about the crime) into signing a contract with Hoff studio, which forces him into roles that he plainly considers beneath him. We hear no details about his movies, but if he is as big a star as the screenplay suggests, they're not lousy little B pictures. I found myself wondering how objectionable the Hoff movies really were, Hollywood standards being what they are. Charlie ("Anything for my art") seems to think he's Olivier or Welles, but he's probably more like Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power. At worst, Johnny Weissmuller, athletic and bankable.

So, okay, he's sick of it and wants to be cast against type. Well, excuse me, but if being trapped with fame and wealth is his punishment for getting away with driving drunk and killing someone (the crime), is that really worse than prison for vehicular homicide? Charlie evidently didn't prevent his despicable bosses from giving the cops and courts a studio flunky as the fall guy, and when he says "Anything for my art," he means aiding and abetting the murder of Dixie to further protect them all. Charlie is a victim of big-box-office corruption, but he is also a selfish player in that game.

Even if Charlie Castle is throwing the snit of all artistic snits, it's an engaging movie, partly because of the set, which is echt mid-century modern L. A., complete with sunken bar. Ernest Laszlo's camera examines the room from every angle, making it a kind of palace/prison, and we are never bored. The room also includes a huge kitschy painting of a clown (like a bad Raoul Dufy), which says a lot about just uncultured Charlie really is.

Shelley Winters really delivers, as I said, as does Wendell Corey, who is vastly under-appreciated. The incomparable Ida Lupino is irresistible as Castle's virtuous wife, providing a strong contrast to Jean Hagen as Connie Bliss, a role that is an insult to both women and writing: an insufferable aging sex kitten, wife of a studio toady. The movie would lose nothing if they'd both been left on the cutting room floor.

Finally, but worth noting, the bombastic dialog is needlessly underscored by Frank DeVol's bombastic music, which includes use of the drumroll from the Nazi rally at Nuremberg as the theme for the studio boss Hoff. More than a bit over the top.

Sasquatch Sunset (2024)

There's a sort of trick to watching this movie

[9/10 · 16 April 2024]

It's possible to see "Sasquatch Sunset" at an almost anthropological level, with four humanoid creatures in a series of scenes with them eating, fornicating, walking, defecating, sleeping, etc. That could be boring.

But start with the early scene of two of them chewing on grasses in an alpine meadow-- and think of it as breakfast. This is the start of their day. After that you're watching what their daily life is like, and it is familiar. Soon an interstitial title appears, "Spring," and the time scale has opened to a year. Eventually, you stop thinking about the timeline and start thinking about the fragility of existence.

There is no backstory, but the quartet is taken to be the last of their species-- and they know it. They have a signal to call for help: banging a fallen branch against a tree trunk in a series of four distinct sounds that echo through the forest. It tells us that they were once part of a clan, and a tribe, members of whom have died in the recent past. Perhaps there were five Sasquatch a year ago, or ten. Every death brings them closer to extinction, and every time their SOS isn't answered, it's a reminder that they are alone.

The movie is brilliantly structured, with credible costuming, able performances, and a score that pretty successfully mixes folk and New Age-y forms.

But my favorite parts have to do with the glimmers of intelligence and progress. We see nascent engineering skills when a log traps one of them. One member has the urge to count things, but without numbers he has trouble keeping track past two or three. At one point he holds a fossil or rock that petrified into rows of ripples, interrupted in the middle by a dark horizontal flaw. He begins counting down from the flaw, struggling to find a way to keep track, and you realize that someday he may notice there are ripples both above and below the flaw, which will require negative numbers.

But the best scene, by far, is when they happen upon a road in their forest. Do your brain a favor; see the movie.

Born to Be Bad (1950)

Soap-opera noir

[7/10 · 13 April 2024]

This movie got under my skin. I don't know why. It's no masterpiece, but I've watched it three times, returning to it every few years because it I find it so satisfying. I think of it as soap-opera noir, and without the noir I wouldn't enjoy it. But it's well written, constructed, and paced, like most of Nicholas Ray's movies, including his neglected gem, "Bigger than Life."

The big attraction is Joan Fontaine, so silken smooth as the bad girl who never met a man she didn't want. But there's also Joan Leslie, who was only in her twenties but plays such an intelligent, mature, talented woman that she seems oddly ageless. She's one of several actresses from 1940s Hollywood who never quite reached the starry heights of Stanwyck, Bergman, Hepburn, Crawford, and Davis, but never disappoints.

Hostage (2005)

Listen for the quiet

[7/10 · 13 April 2024]

There is a moment when Sheriff Talley (Bruce Willis) empties his gun into an already dead man-- and the sound is muted. After multiple scenes of deafening gunfire and explosions, all of which were part of a police action, when he empties that weapon, the sound is muffled: it's personal. That breakaway choice is perhaps the most obvious example of the director Florent-Emilio Siri's talent. The whole of "Hostage" is carefully crafted, with the kind of operatic violence we see in exceptional action films, e.g., Seven Samurai, RoboCop, Django Unchained, Deadpool (among many others). Along with pacing and music, choices like that are what give movies their power, like drivers behind the script and the performances.

The overall rating almost dissuaded me from watching, but the negative reviews were unconvincing, especially those that claimed the plot was hard to follow because there are two sets of bad guys. Really? Some reviewers couldn't separate the young punks taking hostages in a house from the masked gangsters who terrorized both the punks and the police? It reminded me of the reviewers who didn't like "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" because they couldn't keep track of three ships (Black Pearl, Flying Dutchman, and Endeavor). Three. How did they make it out of grade school, I wonder. There are reasons to dislike the third Pirates movie, but that's not one of them.

I watched "Hostage" for Bruce Willis, who was also a producer. Evidently he brought Siri from France to direct after seeing his first feature. That confirms what I've read about Willis over his varied career: he appreciated that movies could be both popular and cinematically sophisticated. The trouble was, he was so good in "Die Hard" that audiences and producers wanted more of the same, and he delivered, but his oeuvre also includes comedy, drama, satire, science fiction, ensemble films, voice-over work, and more than a few cameos. He took supporting roles as well as leads, and made more than a few bombs like "Hudson Hawk," "Bonfire of the Vanities," and "Breakfast of Champions" (which has sunk to DVD obscurity). I.e., he took chances. Screenrant lists him sixth among greatest action stars, after Schwarzenegger (No. 1), Eastwood, Stallone, Harrison Ford, and Jackie Chan. All I'll add is that he is, by a fair margin, the most versatile and talented actor in that bunch.

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)

Gamblers, flag-wavers, and a couple of heroes

[9/10 · 12 April 2024]

It starts with six Marines and it matters how we meet them. Just returned from the Pacific theatre, we see them entering a bar where they order a single beer because they've gambled away all but fifteen cents. Heroic? Sturges is just getting started.

Led by Sgt. Heffelfinger (William Demarest), they try to pay for the beer with one of General Yamamoto's teeth (actually an elk tooth), which is rejected by the jaded waiter who counters by offering to sell them MacArthur's suspenders, the seat of Rommel's pants, a button from Hitler's coat... and then beers and food arrive at their table, courtesy of a guy at the end of the bar: Woodrow Truesmith (Eddie Bracken), whose hay fever kept him out of the corps so he's been working alongside Rosie the Riveters. But he longed to be a Marine like his father, who died in World War I. He knows everything about the Marines, every battle, every regulation, and confesses that he's been lying to his mother and everyone back home, saying he is serving in the Pacific. The beer-wielding Marines take a liking to him, and decide to help him out by escorting him home in uniform. He protests vehemently because it disrespects the Marine Corps, but he's outnumbered by marines who couldn't care less. He bought them beers, quid pro quo. So much for military pride after they made it home in one piece.

It has all the wit and pace I've come to expect and treasure from Sturges, as well as characters who flesh out the comedy, particularly the marine who was an orphan and has trouble sleeping in the dark, and who honors Woodrow's mother beyond all reason. But the soul of the movie is Eddie Bracken, the honorable would-be soldier who never stops protesting as the marines' plan spirals out of control. His hometown welcomes him with enthusiasm that builds to nominating him for mayor. The cast is an ensemble of Sturges regulars, joined by Ella Raines as Woodrow's girl and Raymond Walburn as the fatuous sitting mayor ("In a few years, if the war goes on - heaven forbid - you won't be able to swing a cat without knocking down a couple of heroes").

I have to stop here because reviewing this movie just makes me want to see it again. No review can do it justice.

Striking Distance (1993)

The striking thing about Striking Distance

[6/10 · 3 April 2024]

After reading about the movie's troubled production, which only lacked actual murders to be as fraught as the movie's plot, I was amazed that "Striking Distance" is even watchable. In fact, it's not bad at all. There's a high bar for plot twists, and it clears that bar with flying colors.

Bruce Willis, as usual, makes the movie worth watching all by himself (even though he practically disowned it later). Sarah Jessica Parker doesn't disappoint, if only because she's not slathered in make-up for a change. The supporting actors could hardly be improved upon: Dennis Farina, Brion James, and far too little of John Mahoney and Andre Braugher.

And no, I'm not forgetting Robert Pastorelli. He is one of two big mistakes that almost sink the film:

Pastorelli seemed to have invaded from another, and much worse, movie. He played Jimmy Detillo, a mentally ill cop, at a constant pitch of hysteria worse than anything I've seen in hospital emergency rooms. Why he wasn't nominated for a Razzie is beyond me. He was certainly worse than nominees John Lithgow ("Cliffhanger") and Keanu Reeves ("Much Ado"). The winner, Woody Harrelson, may have deserved it; I don't know because I have not and never will see "Indecent Proposal," which almost swept the nominations in 1994.

Deadlier than Pastorelli were the decisions to let two scenes drag on long after interest was exhausted. The car chase at the beginning lasts 5:06 minutes, not as long as "The French Connection" at 5:50, but it felt twice that, with none of the vigor or suspense that William Friedkin mastered. Worse, the climactic scene: I don't remember how many times the bad guy seemed to be dead only to surface for another fight, but I think it's more often than "The Terminator," and, again, with nothing like James Cameron's control of tension and suspense.