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Performance: A Doll's House (1992)
One small slam for womankind
Juliet Stevenson is worth seeing in anything (and listening to on audio books), and she does a beautiful job with Nora Helmer, supported by a stellar cast including Trevor Eve as husband Torvald, and Patrick Malahide and Geraldine James as their respective friends. Director David Thacker wisely keeps the action indoors, where Nora is trapped in a marriage that suffocates her.
The high rating is for the production, which almost transcends my fundamental problem with Ibsen's original play, in which he stacks the deck with extremes. Torvald isn't just a man of his times, his behavior would be egregious in any age: a relentless moralist who thinks of his wife as an adornment and amusement. And Nora is extremely cooperative, coquettishly begging favors from him for the first two acts rather than talking with him, behavior she proves herself entirely capable of in Act 3.
During Christmas week, Torvald learns that, years ago when he fell ill, Nora had secretly borrowed money from a charlatan, and he is unappeasable: "You will still remain in my house, that is a matter of course. But I shall not allow you to bring up the children." Then, abruptly, mid-tirade, a letter arrives, saying the loan is forgiven, and Torvald does a full 180: "My poor little Nora... I have forgiven you everything." In response, Nora does a 180 on their entire life, precipitously abandoning her family: "I must try and educate myself... and that is why I am going to leave you now."
Never mind the three children, or Torvald's offer to "work night and day for you," anything short of sacrificing his honor. "Thousands of women have," Nora replies. But have they? People sacrifice a great deal, by force or by choice. But dishonor happens when you disgrace yourself, as when you desert your children, for instance. It was a radically selfish act, worthy only because when she slammed the door behind her, she opened thousands of wive's doors forever.
Force 10 from Navarone (1978)
You don't salute a corporal
Never mind that it's a sequel, as a movie about the effort to blow up a bridge to stop a Nazi offensive, "Force 10" is another solid war picture from Guy Hamilton ("The Colditz Story," Battle of Britain," 4 Bond movies, etc.). It's set, and was filmed, in the Balkans, a theater of WWII that was relatively fresh material for American filmgoers in 1978 (and still is). The plot twists keep coming, with double agents galore, and the script doesn't just clip along, it has plenty of plucky quips to keep it lively ("Next time, you can play the corpse"), and a lot of on-the-spot improvisation as they lurch from one ordeal to the next.
Harrison Ford evidently has regrets about being the right movie for him, but he gives a nicely measured performance as Barnsby, the American colonel in command of the mission. He's a solid leader, which doesn't stop the British soldier Mallory (wry Robert Shaw) from taking charge by sheer force of his character. Franco Nero is cooly inscrutable as Corporal Lescovar until he makes a fateful error, and Carl Weathers does a terrific job as Private Weaver, who smuggled himself into the mission and patiently awaited being briefed until his patience ran out at a most inopportune time, which proves a weak moment in the movie.
Best though, is Edward Fox as the explosives expert, Miller, who is almost the comic relief. He performs with with more ease and laughter than I have ever seen from the great Jackal. I've seen "Force 10" several times, largely for Fox, but, my fellow females, there's no shortage of male pulchritude on display.
The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Making sense of remakes
I have a question for reviewers who wrote things like "It's a Magnificent Seven for a new generation" and "whilst the original 'Seven' is a superior and original film, the remake allows the audience of this generation to be entertained and taught."
They're suggesting that people have problems appreciating the work of any generation other than their own. It would be a grim thought if it were true. Just consider silent films, which pre-date almost everybody. Why hasn't anyone remade Buster Keaton's "The General" or Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"? Because they don't need to, and if people born after 1930 never see them, it's their loss. Also, is cinema the only art form that doesn't cross generations? What about books? Do we need to find a new Kurt Vonnegut because GenX and/or Z write off anything Boomers valued? If so, good-bye Jimi Hendrix, the Stones, Brian Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Janis Joplin, ad infinitum.
I have nothing against remakes (although the lack of originality disappoints), and the "Seven Samurai" is a story with a lot going for it, about underdogs standing up for even worse-off underdogs, and the high cost of many moral victories. It's really impossible to improve on Kurosawa's original, but Sturges was smart to adapt it as "The Magnificent Seven," just as Sergio Leone was smart to turn other Kurosawa movies into spaghetti Westerns. The thing is, they weren't bringing the story to a new generation-- they were adapting a foreign film to an American idiom.
The Sturges version remains better than Fuqua's if only because of the battle scenes. Fuqua went full bloodbath. He must have assumed that gunfire (including the inaccurate use of a Gatling gun) and stuntmen flying off horses and hurling themselves off roofs is either what the 21st century audience wants, or what Hollywood demands. It's too bad because he assembled quite a cast. Denzel Washington was fine in as an updated Yul Brynner, though neither of them can touch Takashi Shimura. And Ethan Hawke was lean and fine, though he's no Steve McQueen. But Peter Sarsgaard? He couldn't scare a mouse.
Mansfield Park (1999)
Clueless, to say the least.
Writer/director Patricia Rozema apparently believed that she could improve on Austen. It would be one thing if she'd said that "Mansfield Park" inspired her movie, the way "Emma" inspired "Clueless." But no, Rozema kept the title and trashed the text-- including treating the shy protagonist of the novel, Fanny (Frances O'Connor), as if she had the confidence of an Emma.
Even a worse departure-- the worst, in fact-- involves slavery. The term slave is used exactly three times in the novel (text is searchable online): twice harmlessly ("slave of opportunity" and "slaving myself"), but the third time, Fanny refers to her uncle's "slave-trade," and here is what she says: "I love to hear my uncle talk of the West Indies. I could listen to him for an hour together. It entertains me more than many other things have done."
From this, Rozema conjures graphic, horrific drawings, which Fanny finds, showing scenes of the rape and torture of slaves, acts perpetrated by her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram (Harold Pinter, of all people) and his son, Thomas Jr (James Purefoy), on their plantation in Antigua. It is highly unlikely that Austen would have even been aware of the brutal realities of slavery; few people were, even in America. Regardless, she would never have included such information. Her name isn't Harriet Beecher Austen.
If Rozema had any integrity, or originality, let alone humble respect for Jane Austen, she could never have taken such a damnable liberty. The word clueless is entirely too kind for this adaptation.
I doubt that I'll see another Rozema picture, though she did show a glimmer of originality in here: Late in the movie, she freeze-frames her characters in various groupings, sans conversation, as the voice-over suggests how things might have gone differently if people had acted better. It's a lovely way to suggest that everyone should, at times, pause to reflect on their choices, and where those choices got them. Too bad she didn't reflect on her own choices before she made this costume catastrophe.
The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966)
A gentler Strangelove
"The Russians Are Coming..." is a snapshot of Cold War era, and very much a picture of the times. But it is also timeless, with the same message as its biting counterpart, "Dr Strangelove." Circumstances have changed, but when national rivalries threaten war, both nations deserve ridicule.
Both movies are satires about coming to the brink of war, but while "Strangelove" focuses on lunatic leaders, "Russians Are Coming" is about ordinary people, citizens and sailors, and it is thoughtfully constructed to remind us how similar all people are, never mind their belligerent governments. The ending nails that point, sentimentally at first with the boy (Johnnie Whittaker), and then beautifully with the convoy.
Alan Arkin deserves the highest praise. Every utterance, every gesture, every expression adds to his role as a Russian sailor trying to save the grounded submarine and its men from a foolhardy, aggressive commander (Theodore Bikel) who got it stranded on a sandbar in the first place.
Incidentally, there is something really peculiar about the citizens of Gloucester Island, which I haven't seen pointed out elsewhere. Except for a handful of children, and one young woman (Andrea Dromm) who connects with one of the sailors (an excellent John Philip Law), all of whom are youngish, every citizen of Gloucester Island is middle-aged or older. Nobody in their 20s or 30s that I saw, which is a whole nother kind of generation gap. It's a common trope to have old duffers act out for laughs. But as demographics go, that is one peculiar island-- well, peculiar for an island that isn't in Florida.
Murder in the First (1995)
Ultraviolence and trick photography
If you're going to ignore the facts so completely, why not just make up your own story? Lack of talent and imagination is my guess.
Dishonestly based on Henri Young, who attempted to escape from Alcatraz in 1939, the movie all but ignores his biography. In life, he was a repeat felon convicted of murder; in the movie, his sole crime is stealing $5 to help feed his sister. In life, he intermittently spent time in solitary confinement; in the movie, he spends three *years* in solitary. In the movie Associate Warden Milton Glenn (Oldman) is a vicious sadist; in reality, there was no Milton Glenn, and the real warden during that period, James Aloysius Johnston, was a reformist.
But the biggest lie of all: in real life, Young vanished and his fate remains unknown. In the movie-- well, that would be a spoiler.
Suffering "cruel and inhuman" treatment was his defense at trial, and the verdict worsened Alcatraz's already bad reputation. But director Marc Rocco went to town on that phrase. Bacon is all but crucified, with savagery that reminded me of "Ichi the Killer." Rocco also mobilized the camera to a baffling extent: pointless swirling tracking shots, some of them bizarre bird's eye views of the rooms. It's the work of a desperately untalented director who resorts to ultra-violence and trick photography to gin up entertainment.
The performances are all good, and certainly Dan Gordon's screenplay deserved better. He wrote "The Hurricane" (Denzel Washington as Rubin Carter) and "Wyatt Earp" (Kevin Costner as Earp), so he knows his way around true stories, and he scored when they cast Kevin Bacon. Bacon curls up whenever he's alone, unable to handle solitude after those years in solitary. He talks about a spider that crawled over him once, "it was like having company, but he had a way out." Best: When his lawyer (Christian Slater) asks him to remember something, to think back, he almost wails, "Don't want to think! I spent three years in the dark... Doing nothing but thinking!" It was a chilling moment and a great insight, and Bacon made the most of it.
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
No fair cheating
The first time I saw "Bridge on the River Kwai," years ago, I was underwhelmed, so I gave myself another chance to wake up and smell the greatness. David Lean's ambition is certainly evident in the massive cast and sweeping views of Sri Lanka's famously beautiful jungles, waterfalls, and beaches. Well, sad to report, I remain underwhelmed, in part because I perused the 'Factual errors' section under Goofs, which reinforced my disappointment. The story is, of course, fiction, but Lean reaches for high moral ground by building to a conclusion of "Madness!", so no fair cheating.
These notes may seem like quibbling, but: Japanese forces built plenty of bridges in Asia without the help of the British engineers. Japan wasn't a signatory to the Geneva Convention during WWII, so why did by-the-book Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness) expect Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) to obey those guidelines? Goofs has error that I confirmed with a freeze-frame: the explosive charges are painstakingly set at the base of the bridge, yet when they are detonated, a fiery red explosion appears up on the roadbed, near the second hexagonal tower. Since the bridge was entirely wooden, and the train had not yet reached that tower, what exploded there?
I'm also bothered by Nicholson's character and demise. His high moral code collapses along with his body when his faints and falls on the plunger. (In the original novel, both Nicholson and the bridge survive.) Why direct Nicholson to lose control rather than wilfully press the plunger he's staggering toward? To me that's Lean trying to have it both ways: Nicholson both *is* and *is not* responsible for destroying the bridge.
I know I'm in a vast minority, but I don't think "Bridge on the River Kwai" stands with the greatest war films. And by the way, for Sessue Hayakawa at his military best, see him as Colonel Suga in "Three Came Home," set in Borneo (1950).
The Eagle Has Landed (1976)
Armed to the teeth
Bulked up with odd comic and even odder romantic moments, the film is fatally erratic. Any consistency of tone goes completely out the window halfway through, when American Col. Pitts (Larry Hagman) enters as a blundering buffoon who gives all the wrong orders. He's Yosemite Sam in combat fatigues, but these aren't cartoon bullets and grenades and bazookas. Bloody bodies pile up. The battle takes place in a church and the cemetery, settings which, if this movie knew what it was doing, could have had some resonance.
It's a contrived situation, with the Nazis sending three men to kidnap Churchill from a rural Norfolk retreat: a mercenary Irishman, Liam Devlin (Donald Sutherland); and two German colonels, Radl (Robert Duvall, excellent as ever), who only appears sporadically after the opening sequence; and Karl Steiner (Michael Caine), who is the center of the operation and, thanks to Caine's measured performance, the element that keeps the movie on its rickety rails, with a little late help from Treat Williams as an American captain and Jean Marsh as woman with a deadly grudge against Great Britain.
Sutherland's character, Liam, gets saddled with the humor and the romance, and it's hopeless. For starters, he's not exactly a dreamboat. He's bug-eyed and toothy, and we get to see plenty of those equine choppers. When he's not smiling, he's laughing, presumably because he's being paid $20,000 to be the Nazi's inside man on the English coast. So, not my idea of an honorable man, either. But he gets the girl. Once in rural Norfolk, he meets Molly (Jenny Agutter), a pretty lass 17 years his junior, and he heaps on the Irish blarney. They meet only twice, the second time on a beach where he plays with the buttons on her shirt. This, apparently, is enough for Molly to fall so completely in love with him that she murders(!) a friend(!) who poses a threat to his Nazi plan. If only she'd met Michael Caine instead, and preferably in another movie.
Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971)
"It isn't a good idea, sir."
The movie opens with the arrival of a replacement teacher at a British boys' school. Mr. Ebony (David Hemmings) attempts to establish authority by threatening to hold Saturday classes as a punishment for unruly behavior. "It isn't a good idea, sir," young Mr Cloistermouth (Nicholas Hoye) warns him placidly, adding, "Mr. Pelham tried it once, sir. And that's why we killed him, sir."
Did they? They're a creepy bunch. Even the incessantly repeated honorific "sir" begins to feel sinister, though it is never said sarcastically. These boys keep up appearances. So are they capable of murder? It's plausible, and it certainly got this viewer's attention.
As others have noted, the idea resembles "Lord of the Flies," an allegory about human nature, where prepubescent boys degenerate to savagery to survive on an isolated island. But in "Unman," the boys are almost grown, and itching for freedom from the oppressive regimentation at the school. A few leaders emerge, the rest follow, and they coerce Ebony into helping. He complies, in part, because no one in charge believed him when he reported that the boys confessed to throwing Mr Pelham off the nearby cliffs. The Headmaster doesn't even believe him after he produces evidence in the form of Pelham's bloody wallet, which the boys gave him, lest he doubt what they're capable of.
Being neither British nor male, I can't speak to the authenticity of a public school where the coolly composed Headmaster (Douglas Wilmer) has such resolute faith in hidebound methods that he will not even hear dissent. Indeed, when given the bloody wallet, his reaction is to fire Ebony. Like "Lord of the Flies," it could also be considered an allegory, but in the end it feels more like a callow indictment a rigid educational system, minus mature insight.
Mrs Dalloway (1997)
The book is one thing, this movie is another
I heartily agree with nicholas.rhodes, who rated the film 7 (September 2006) and entitled his review "Visually perfect - weak plot." Mr Rhodes not only didn't read the novel, he hadn't heard of it, or of Virginia Woolf, which makes him an ideal reviewer. Movies based on books must stand on their own merits. Filmmakers cannot expect and do not want (if only for commercial reasons) their film to be seen only by people who read the book. And a stream-of-consciousness novel like "Mrs. Dalloway" is almost bound to fail as a faithful adaptation. Woolf's text introduces ideas and themes in sentences that are skilfully scrambled like thoughts, full of em-dashes and fragments, all in a jumbled timeline of past and present events. It's Woolf's ideas and they way she expresses them that matters, not the narrative.
But screenwriter Eileen Atkins and director Marleen Gorris built their movie around the events and characters, using flashbacks and hallucinatory visions. It's sensitively done, but it adds up to a mildly confusing costume drama about posh characters, especially well-heeled women with too much time on their hands, so they gossip publicly and ponder life's mysteries privately.
I also agree that the subplot of Septimus Smith, the traumatized World War I soldier, which was essential to the novel, only further confuses things here, and diminishes that part of the story. What's more, Rupert Graves is so touching in his portrayal, that Septimus really deserves his own movie.
Vanessa Redgrave has become too mannered for me to enjoy her performances, but toward the end of this movie, when she's alone in the window, she pares away gesture and gives a beautifully pure moment as she contemplates her fate. And Michael Kitchen, as her former suitor, a weak man who has been wounded by life, touches the heart in every scene, with every look and gesture. A performance of exquisite sensitivity and simplicity. Bravo.
State of Grace (1990)
When violence is your vocation
Even with Sean Penn and Ed Harris in the cast, both of whom are superb, Gary Oldman is rightly praised for his riveting performance as Jackie, the loose cannon of the Flannery clan. Based on the Westies, an Irish mob that operated in Hell's Kitchen from the 1960s to the mid-80s, "State of Grace" opens as gentrification and the Gambino family were putting an end to their rackets.
The friendship between Jackie Flannery and his old friend Terry Noonan (Penn) is more like a bond of brotherhood, as strong as but opposite to his relationship with his own brother Frank (Harris). The leader of the gang, Frank is a composed man whose ruthlessness is like magma, simmering unseen until it erupts without mercy.
It's easy to overlook the fourth character with the powerhouse performances of Oldman, Penn, and Harris, but Robin Wright manages to hold her own as Kate Flannery, a sister who knows this gang inside out, who loves her brothers one way and Terry another, but chooses to protect herself from the inevitable heartbreak that comes when violence is your vocation. Wright's performance seems unspectacular, but it is finely controlled. She's like an exposed nerve, a picture of innocence, and it helps that she looks the part, with a straight fall of hair, no lipstick, no mascara-- i.e., no mask.
The score by the great Ennio Morricone is unobtrusive compared to the iconic theme he wrote for DiPalma's slick gangster flick, The Untouchables, a few years earlier. Jordan Cronenweth's photography captures the real grit of late 1980s New York as convincingly as he forged future grit in Blade Runner. And the director, Phil Joanou, has a sure hand. More than two hours long, it feels much shorter. The mise-en-scene, the editing-- all of it works, and one scene, early on, when Jackie and Terry run through a burning building, remains burned in my memory like the Odessa Steps (I'm not kidding).
My disappointment is with the final sequence. This story calls for a dying fall. Instead, Joanou reaches for operatic heights-- a slow-motion bloodbath intercut with a St. Patrick's Day parade-- which undermines the honest emotions forged by Penn, Oldman, Harris, and Wright. It's all wrong, like punctuating a tragic poem with an exclamation point.
American Rust (2021)
A bad Hollywood habit
It's bears repeating: productions based on books must stand on their own merits. Filmmakers can't expect and don't want (if only for commercial reasons) their work to be seen only by people who read the book. I haven't read the book, but I think that the 10-episode first season's problems may actually arise from trying to be faithful to a stream-of-consciousness novel about the class of aimless underdogs America has spawned. Good luck stretching aimless characters out into 9+ hours of television.
Buell, Pennsylvania, may be fictional but it's familiar: unemployment or nonunion shops, fractured families, access to guns and opioids, and dispirited citizens who are mostly left to fester in those circumstances. If a murder hadn't happened in Episode 1, with a first-rate Jeff Daniels as police Chief Del Harris, I wouldn't have made it to Ep. 2. The investigation provides the only momentum the series has.
Three youths anchor the story: brainy Lee (Julia Mayorga), her listless brother Isaac (David Alvarez), and their listless soulmate Billy Poe (Alex Neustaedter), the latter two involved in the murder-- which is the compelling thing about either man. The 5th major character, unfortunately, is Billy's mother, Grace (Maura Tierney), a combative and greedy woman who burns down her own house to move in with Del, then becomes an agent for a fracking company that pays her to persuade locals to sign contracts that will poison their land. When one refuses because she doesn't want "three-headed chickens," Grace carelessly replies, "That won't happen." She has good qualities, like using her combativeness to try to unionize her shop, but don't expect chemistry between Daniels and Tierney, whose early charms have vanished along with any expression other than her pouty duck face. Casting her as militant Grace is a double whammy.
By the fourth episode, I was fast-forwarding through everything but Chief Del and his deputy Steve Park (Rob Yang), a loose cannon who provides a lot of creepy interest, and Lee, a law student with ambition, conscience, and purpose, unlike her buddies. After just a few scenes of Isaac's bottom-dwelling adventures on the lam, and Billy's time in prison, which was one brutal cliché after another, it was clear that both were going-nowhere characters. Skippable. But it's worth watching for Daniels, especially his scenes with his fellow officers, and one in particular, inside and outside a diner after hours, that will stay with you.
NB: I've now watched season two, enlivened with multiple murders in Buell as well as Pittsburgh, plus a plot with the Landwill Corporation and their fracking lawyers. Fortunately, the best characters, Del and Lee, remain central, along with bracing doses of deputy Steve. Billy, Isaac, and Grace keep getting crowbarred in with subplots that help fill 10 episodes, which is about 8 too many.
A Dangerous Method (2011)
Methods for madness
Almost everything in this movie is appropriately clinical-- the therapy sessions, the psychiatric discussions, the conversations between individuals, even the sex. The only displays of raw emotion happen early, and are hard to watch: the fits of hysteria plaguing 18-year-old Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly), before she is institutionalized and treated by doctors including Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender).
Like psychiatry itself, most of the movie is talk, and the dialog is of a very high order, characterized by unabashed frankness, cool objectivity, persistent inquiry, and open minds-- to wit, science, which is the "dangerous method" of the title because it is applied to the understanding of human sexuality, a dangerous subject in itself, then and now.
Enter Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen, cigar in hand), and the libido, a word that Jung shrinks from, to which Freud replies, "Is euphemism a good idea? Once they work out what we actually mean, they'll be just as appalled as ever."
Jung's methods include talk therapy and word association, which work. Spielrein improves, and is on her way to her own distinguished career in psychology. Then, for better or worse, they become lovers, which is forbidden between doctor and patient, but they bring each other out of their respective and respectable shells. She wants sadomasochism, he complies with a belt, and Cronenberg clinically films them through a doorway. Their affair is attributed in part to transference, but also to the influence of another of Jung's patients, fellow shrink Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel doing his fanatic schtick), a proud lecher and drug addict with no real interest in being cured-- indeed, he is a free-love advocate.
The costumes include eyeglasses, lest we forget they are smart, which is unlikely given the level of performances. Fassbender is the solid center of the film, the link between Speilein and Freud, and Knightley pulls out all the stops doing her hysterics (you are warned), but Mortensen, who has the most powerful role as Freud, could hardly be more convincing. He steals every scene.
The Governess (1998)
A spoonful of nudity helps the message go down
This is the first of two feature films written and directed by Sandra Goldberg, who has since been directing television series, and no wonder. "The Governess" is competently directed, but it has little to say, and what it does say is hard to believe as well as formulaic, and it's the most reliable formula of all: a spoonful of nudity helps the movie go down.
In mid-19th century London, Rosina (Minnie Driver) is a young Jewish virgin whose father abruptly dies, leaving his wife, daughters, and an aunt without income, living in a mansion which they can no longer afford. Rosina becomes the new breadwinner. She sends money to them from her next home, which is even more lavish: a castle in Scotland. Posing as a Gentile named Mary, she is the governess to the daughter of Charles Cavendish (Tom Wilkinson) and his wife (Harriet Walter, hideously coiffed). She also becomes the object of obsession of Charles and the horny son, Henry (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Rosina falls for Charles, and their affair is at the core of the film, complete with full frontal nudity (his).
I do have to praise the first scene of seduction, when Charles is posing Mary for a photograph. He adjusts her foot and she begins to draw up her skirt, very slowly, very invitingly. Nicely done, unlike the scenes of copulation to come.
If you believe that the salary of a governess is enough to maintain the household of a London mansion, this movie is for you. It may also be for you if, like me, you will watch Tom Wilkinson in anything. His talents are-- *sigh*-- were such that he could conjure a character where none was written, and none was in "The Governess," for any of the players. The characters are thinly drawn types, sustaining a May-December interfaith romance, bookended by scenes of a Jewish family struggling to live a normal life. For a masterful look at similar material, read or see "Daniel Deronda."
The Catcher Was a Spy (2018)
Because killing is easier than kidnapping
When the cast of a film includes Jeff Daniels, Paul Giamatti, Guy Pearce, Mark Strong (as Werner Heisenberg), and Tom Wilkinson, there is no way I will miss it-- especially when it's based on Moe Berg at the end of his baseball career and the start of his assignment to kill the German physicist before the Nazis produce an atomic bomb.
The movie suffers from a lack of tension since we know that the Germans didn't produce an A-bomb before we did, and that Heisenberg was not assassinated. So there's quite a lot of filler in the 1.5 hours, particularly the protracted combat scenes in Italy (filmed in Prague). Perhaps the filmmakers worried that dialog about nuclear fission would put viewers to sleep (though it didn't with "Oppenheimer").
The problem is Paul Rudd. For starters, he was too old. Berg was 32 when he started spying; Rudd was 49 when the movie wrapped. Even more problematic, he doesn't have the screen presence to play a man like Berg, who was not only a veteran major league catcher (many of whom are natural leaders who become managers), but a multilingual scholar and a paramilitary operative. Rudd's comedic talents gave him a career, and he was a terrific Ant-Man. But he is a weak presence in this film, barely holding his own with that powerhouse cast.
I have to wonder how much better the movie might have been if Berg had been played by a younger actor with serious dramatic chops. Zachary Levi, Sebastian Stan, and Jake Gyllenhaal were all in their mid-30s in 2017. If only.
A History of Violence (2005)
So, your old man's some kind of tough guy, huh?
Cronenberg certainly knows how to rock the crime genre. He's like the inverse of Hitchcock (minus the consistency): two masters of suspense. But while Hitchcock favored stories about ordinary people escaping a web of danger, Cronenberg favors the web. This movie is a case in point: half the characters are thugs. Even the kids exhibit a readiness to resort to violence, part of their bleak view of the future: "We grow up, we get jobs, we have affairs, and we become alcoholics."
Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) lives a quiet family life with his wife (Maria Bello), which abruptly ends when two homicidal thugs try to rob his small-town diner. Tom efficiently slays them, which makes him newsworthy, which is good for business. Unfortunately, one new customer (Ed Harris), with a badly scarred face and one glassy eye, calls him Joey, remembers him from Philadelphia, and has come to settle an old score. We're left wondering which man is telling the truth.
There is less violence in the film than there is the threat of it. Howard Shore composed the music for Cronenberg, and both men are adept at the use of crescendo. Tension repeatedly rises to a breaking point, so brace yourself. Viggo Mortensen gives a finely tuned performance, managing to convey only as much as he needs to, which keeps us guessing. Kyle Schmid is memorable as the lean bully who has it in for Tom's son, Jack (Ashton Holmes). But when it comes to menace, nobody beats Ed Harris and his simmering smile.
American Graffiti (1973)
Sunset for carefree youth
"American Graffiti" was spirited fun when it was released in 1973 as a nostalgic look at 1962 youth culture in California, and stands fifty years later as a classic American comedy.
An ensemble picture, it has no weak performances, and a strong one by Richard Dreyfuss as Curt Henderson, a high achiever with a scholarship to an Eastern college. He knows that his life is about to change forever, and resists: "I was thinking I might wait for a year...."
The plot is smartly contained in one night, the night before Curt heads East, so we feel the pressure Curt is feeling, he has no time for ambivalence, yet he is not the main character because there isn't one. We are immersed in the car-cruising culture that defines his coming of age, and it is wisely accompanied by diegetic contemporary pop music ranging from Chuck Berry to the Beach Boys. Lucas sustains a balance between the immediacy of youthful cravings and the inevitability of the passage to adulthood.
Consider just one brief scene that starts as a bit of harmless delinquency. Bespectacled, nerdy, and underage Terry (Charles Martin Smith) manages to pick up Debbie (Candy Clark), then stops at a liquor store, where a man agrees to buy him a pint of Old Harper. Emerging with the bottle, he tosses it to Terry on the run, pursued by the clerk (William Niven) firing a pistol at him. It's played for laughs, but there's a definite shock: Terry just witnessed a liquor store hold-up, which is not kid stuff, even if you're still a kid. Your carefree days are coming to an end.
The movie's lasting strength comes from the filmmakers' (plural) appreciation of the elements of cinema: with Francis Ford Coppola behind him, George Lucas wrote, directed, and edited the film (his 2nd feature) with collaborators and with Haskell Wexler consulting on the visuals. He was twenty-eight when filming began.
Sideways (2004)
Time to mature
"Sideways" is a coming-of-age story about grown-up men, moody Miles (Paul Giamatti) and a reckless Jack (Thomas Haden Church), and, to borrow from the screenplay about pinot noir grapes, that idea is "coaxed to its fullest expression." They're off on a bachelors' fling to the wineries of the Santa Ynez Valley before Jack gets married.
All the performances are strong, especially Virginia Madsen's, and the screenplay deserved its Oscar. It stops just short of having moody Miles abandon Jack, whose predatory, deceitful behavior toward women is maddening. Unfortunately, it's more maddening than it should be-- Jack's antics add comedy, but Miles' tolerance really stretches credulity. It's never dull, especially if you pay close attention to wry touches such as the audio coming from their hotel room TV: Henry Fonda's "I'll be there" speech in "The Grapes of Wrath."
Ultimately, it is Payne's talent that makes this movie soar. His use of close-ups and depth of field is something like lyrical. Consider just one scene, not more than a few minutes in length: Maya is talking about wine with Miles, both of them keenly interested in the subject and in each other. The camera lingers alternately on each person, sometimes talking, sometimes listening, and when Maya has finished, it lingers on Miles, and we feel just how smitten he has become.
I'd also like to praise the sex scenes. Two of three are shown, neither with dignity or sensuality: one is abrupt (Miles walks in on Jack mid-coitus), the other startling and comic (a man and his naughty wife). In wise contrast, when Miles goes home with Maya, they kiss on her doorstep before entering her apartment, and that's where the camera lingers, on her door, before it slowly pans away and leisurely pans back: it's morning, and they had their privacy. Respect.
Inside Out (2015)
From the mouths of babes
Curiosity causes me to look up the reviews of people who really hate (ratings of 1 or 2) a generally praised, even Oscar-winning film. So I read a lot of the ultra-negative reviews and came away with three observations and one conclusion:
First, a lot of reviewers simply couldn't follow the plot, writing about how confusing they found the colored balls. Second, many seem to expect every Disney/Pixar movie to be lightweight entertainment. Third and commonest are the detractors who actually complain that the film is bad for children-- "putting bad ideas in childrens heads" wrote texxas-1, sans apostrophe.
The weekend that "Inside Out 2" opened in 2024, I was in the company of one of my nieces and her girlfriend, both eight years old and-- here's the point-- both were imploring their mothers to take them to see the sequel as soon as possible. They could not wait for more of Riley's successful struggles with the slapshots life sent her way.
There is genius in this film. I am not in the least surprised that it took almost a decade to produce a worthy sequel.
Return from the Ashes (1965)
Like mother, like stepdaughter
It's a rare movie that has a chess master scoring with women as easily as Stanislav Pilgrin (Maximilian Schell) does, but it sets you up for a movie where human motivations require suspension of disbelief.
Just before Paris falls to the Nazis, he marries his lover, Michele Wolf (Ingrid Thulin), a wealthy Jewish physician who'd be better off with her colleague Charles Bovard (Herbert Lom). But never mind. She's smitten with Stan, even though she is aware of his professed venality: "If there is no God, no devil, no heaven, no hell, and no immortality, then anything is permissible."
Their married life lasts only minutes: as they exit the ceremony, she's abruptly seized and deported to Dachau. Stan remains in Paris, living in her sumptuous 'hôtel particulier' with their stepdaughter, the horny sociopath Fabi (Samantha Eggar), who takes Michele's place in Stan's bed. (FWIW, Stan and Fabi were even worse in the original novel, wherein he informs on his Jewish wife to the Nazis, and she isn't MIchele's stepdaughter, she's her natural daughter by a first marriage.)
Michele survives Dachau, and eventually returns to Paris. Twists and turns ensue, and you have to swallow a lot of bilge to believe that the intelligent, sophisticated Dr. Wolf would put up with Stan's hurtful behavior. But it's entertaining bilge. All four principal actors manage to be persuasive in the preposterous plot. Thulin is particularly good, but Schell just nails the vain, greedy Pilgin. Note the way he admires his luxurious head of hair every time he catches his reflection, and grooms it meticulously. The very essence of a self-obsessed man.
12 Angry Men (1997)
A dime a dozen
Quite a few of my fellow reviewers have argued that there was no need to remake "12 Angry Men," given the fine original version by Sidney Lumet. Perhaps they're unaware that it's been staged so often that productions are almost a dime a dozen. It began as a televised play in 1954, has had multiple stage productions (including a 2004 revival on Broadway that won a Tony). Given that, as well as the quality of this version directed by William Friedkin, I see little to complain about, especially since it was updated to include a more representative sample of New Yorkers: still 12 men (per the title), but only seven of them Caucasian.
The setting is the same, a hot summer day in a jury room, and the script is largely the same as Reginald Rose's original teleplay, with the addition of talk about the usefulness, or lack of it, of psychiatrists as witnesses. As with every production of this solid drama, it's the performances that matter, especially that of the initial lone holdout, Juror 8. Jack Lemmon is suitably calm and dignified, but he certainly doesn't improve on Henry Fonda's memorable performance.
The boldest changes are two of the Black actors: Mykelti Williamson in Ed Begley's role as the bigoted Juror 1o, and massive Ossie Davis replacing miniscule John Fiedler as Juror 2. Edward James Olmos gives a beautifully controlled performance as an Arabic juror, replacing the Czech actor George Voskovec as Juror 11.
As Juror 12, a Madison Avenue ad man, William Peterson is miles better than Robert Webber, whose acting chops always escaped me. But it pains me to say that the wonderful Hume Cronyn is more mannered than Joseph Sweeney was as Juror 9, the role for which that actor is singularly known. As for Tony Danza, though he doesn't embarrass himself, he can't hold a candle to Jack Warden, who brought an acerbic quality to the proudly blue-collar, wise-cracking Juror 7. All Danza brings is his Brooklyn accent.
The Walking Stick (1970)
Cane mutiny
Director Eric Till keeps the action clipping along in this romantic thriller, a love story built around a heist. At the height of his fame, David Hemmings is effectively ambiguous as the thief, Leigh. He keeps you guessing about his true feelings for Deborah (Samantha Eggar, before she moved to L. A. and sunk to television), the young curator at his targeted auction house.
She is beautiful but standoffish, after polio left her with a withered leg and claustrophobia from time spent in an iron lung. She only slowly accepts Leigh's persistent attentions, which certainly seem genuine. He even persuades her to try walking without her cane, which liberates her. She eventually comes to trust him and leaves her family home and moves into his rundown riverfront lodgings. (Incidentally, it's a pleasure to see London circa 1969, minus the Carnaby Street clichés, filmed in locations from ever-posh Hampstead to the then-gritty London Docklands.)
Hemmings' and Eggar's chemistry is convincing, especially in scenes with Emlyn Williams as the elegant old white-haired mastermind who ropes her into helping them break into the auction house. As he pressures Deborah, Leigh squirms on the sidelines, apparently wanting to spare her almost as much as he wants her help in the robbery. Almost.
What is not convincing, unfortunately, is that this demure and dignified young woman would ever agree to help. It is not in her character. Though she eventually fell in love with Leigh, she was deeply alarmed when he revealed the plan for the heist. She tried to dissuade him, but he was all-in and wanted her help, even though it meant she had to hide in a closet at the auction house for hours to give them safe access. No. She would have gone to the police before the crime. Her self-respect, not to mention the claustrophobia, make her involvement unthinkable, and the movie ultimately disappointing.
Citizen Ruth (1996)
Ruthless
I'm starting with the spoiler because it's crucial to an appreciation of this movie: Ruth's pregnancy ends in a miscarriage at about nine weeks. She's living with two activists (Swoosie Kurtz and Kelly Preston), and outside, on the road and the lawn, are many dozens more, anti-abortion and pro-choice, each led by a national celebrity (feminist Tippi Hedren and, effortlessly exuding smarm, evangelist Burt Reynolds). Both sides are fighting to sway Ruth (Laura Dern) their way, first with persuasion, then with $15,000 bribes. After the miscarriage, Ruth quietly departs, leaving them to their intrusive battle-- now obviously pointless.
Nobody in this movie is praiseworthy, least of all Ruth, a scrawny, foul-mouthed, inhalant-huffing vagrant who has already had four children, all taken from her by the authorities. Facing jail for the umpteenth time, the judge (David Graf) offers to reduce her sentence if she aborts the embryo, which she readily agrees to. Enter anti-abortion protesters, Mr and Mrs Stoney (Mary Kay Place and Kurtwood Smith), who pay her bail and take her in, a charitable but opportunistic act that includes a visit to an obstetrician (Kenneth Mars) who shows Ruth an obviously graphic documentary about abortion-- probably late-term based on Ruth's reaction: "I've slept in a few dumpsters. Maybe I slept on some babies." Which is a representative line of dialog in this fearless satire.
Although it doesn't matter a whit, I would like to point out that the movie was shot in the heart of the Midwest, the metropolis of Council Bluffs and Omaha, the latter being the hometown of the exceptional director, Alexander Payne, who co-wrote it with his usual collaborator, Jim Taylor. Bravo, men!
Edward, My Son (1949)
A worse parent than Mildred Pierce
A praiseworthy film about a thoroughly bad man, Sir Arnold Boult (Spencer Tracy), whose only son makes Mildred Pierce's daughter Veda seem like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Tracy somehow manages to imbue Boult with considerable charm in spite of him being an egocentric tycoon, ruthless and domineering at work and at home.
If you believe that there are such men as Boult, and I do, you'll appreciate that this movie aims for the jugular. He's a lousy husband to Evelyn (Deborah Kerr in a scene-stealing performance) and an opportunistic cad to his mistress (Leueen MacGrath, also a scene-stealer), a back-stabber to his partner (Mervyn Johns), and a lawbreaker (arson to collect insurance, for starters). On top of all that, he's a disastrously indulgent father. We never see Edward, but we hear plenty as he grows from being an ungovernable juvenile delinquent to a womanizing drunkard who fathers a child out of wedlock. Boult's attitude toward his ultra-spoiled son? Boys will be boys. More specifically, "I never admit failure."
So it's a solid portrait of Boult-- but only of him, unfortunately. The other characters are drawn too one-dimensionally as his victims, and the script lays it on thick. Evelyn becomes an idle alcoholic when he refuses to divorce her. A badly mistreated colleague commits suicide. And Edward, the son we never see, has zero redeeming qualities. Zero. Not one laudable thing is ever said about him. Indeed, when he meets his demise as a pilot during World War II, the script has him taking other men to their deaths with him when he uses the plane to buzz a girl's house below.
The Wrong Box (1966)
"Now what we need is a venal doctor."
About the original Robert Louis Stevenson novella, Rudyard Kipling wrote that he "laughed over it dementedly when I read it. That man has only one lung but he makes you laugh with all your whole inside." I read it, and I agree, and the movie is just as good-- set in Victorian London but written by an American, Larry Gelbart, more famous for the movie "Tootsie" and, on TV, "M*A*S*H."
The long-simmering hatred between the Finsbury brothers comes to a boil now that they're both septuagenarians and one of them will be worth a fortune when the other one dies. It isn't family money: they are the last survivors of a "tontine," a sort of lottery which I would describe, but it's much more fun to watch as it is created in the movie, and as its other members meet their various preposterous Pythonesque deaths.
The maniacal Masterman (John Mills) seems to be confined to his sickbed, though he rises up with a vengeance when he has a chance to murder his brother, the affable gasbag Joseph (Ralph Richardson). Joseph's heirs are his nephews (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) who, determined to keep him alive, treat him like an invalid, which Joseph resists and escapes. Masterman's heir Michael (Michael Caine, adorable at 23), an honorable lad in training to be a doctor, cares for the old fellow almost as much as he cares for Julia, an orphan whom his uncle Joseph adopted ("My father was a missionary. He was eaten by his Bible class"). The scenes of their exaggeratedly modest courtship are the only parts of the movie that drag a bit-- which, actually, is high praise for Richardson, whose performance as the gasbag is meant to be tedious but is utterly winning.
Comedy infuses all the dialog and the action, all the way to the chase scene with horse-drawn hearses. But two scenes shine as absolute comic gold: Peter Sellers as the venal Dr. Pratt, an abortionist with an office full of cats (so many that he develops furballs), black currant jelly ("It contains 12 grains of arsenic. Just spread it on your mother's bread and butter"), and death certificates, available for five shillings, payable in advance.