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442,840 | 819,382 | 167,404 | 4 | Sluggish supernatural mystery . | I realize this film had many good reviews . That's why I bought it . But it somehow managed to get by me without hooking me in . Its lack of impact had little to do with the acting , which is pretty good all around . Toni Collette is especially noteworthy . And Willis gives what is for him a subdued performance except , I have to say , that when he tries to grin with happiness or gets misty eyed with love , something within me begins to churn . The kid , Osment , is okay . Thank God he's not a cutie-pie . The direction is deliberate but effective , supported by a semi-somnolent score that throws in a sting from time to time , as when the first ghost appears briefly , to wake the audience up . The plot , alas , is a mish mash of overly familiar themes . Is it RIGHT to try to cure a kid who seems to know more than we do ? ( Cf . , " Equus . " ) Even if the kid is frightened by the " dead people " he sees , who sometimes scream at him and scratch him ? ( Cf . , " The Shining . " ) How come the kid speaks Latin ? ( Cf . , " The Exorcist . " ) Or is this the momentary hallucination of someone who is dying ? ( Cf . , " Incident at Owl Creek Bridge , " or " Point Blank . " ) Who are these ghosts anyway ? Why do they taunt the kid ? Why does he see only tortured ones , people who have been hanged , poisoned , killed in car accidents , shot in the belly , or who slashed their wrists ? Do they see each other ? Do they eat and excrete ? They seem to have the power to move objects in their environment . They can steal bumblebee pendants or scratch the kid . They can , to give a more specific example , shove a box containing an incriminating tape out from under a bed and ask Osment to show the tape to their bereaved father . Well then why can't they themselves give Dad the box ? Or leave it where he's bound to find it ? If someone has done them dirt why must they use Osment as the middleman ? Why not just kick ass ? Oh , and a final question . By the end of the film we know why Osment finally spills the beans to Willis , but why on earth hasn't he told his mother about it a long time ago ? " I'm ready to communicate with you , " he tells her solemnly when they're trapped in a traffic jam . Well , why now ? There is one way , though , in which the plot is cleverly constructed . In fact , the surprise ending seems to have been thought of first and the entire movie structured around this revelation . Yes , the story is as full of holes as a slice of Emmenthaler cheese but the whole point is the onion soup beneath . That climactic twist is a big relief in another way . Now we know why nobody wants to talk to Bruce Willis except Osment . And it's not his aftershave lotion . It's a pretty gloomy picture actually , awfully low key , though the photography of Philadelphia is engaging . Willis and his wife , Olivia Williams , are shown admiring an award he has just won , as the film opens . They're drinking wine and joking about Dr . Seuss , but even then there's no exhilaration on the screen . However , people seem to have given this film a cornucopia of plaudits so the weakness may be mine rather than the story's . There is no statistically significant difference between women and men in the user ratings - - he said confidently after merely eyeballing the results . I would have predicted a greater appeal for women . Maybe you'll get more out of it than I did . |
443,572 | 819,382 | 39,101 | 4 | Melodrama lacks focus . | Ava Gardner returns from Chicago to her little home town of Ashburn . We're never made sure of the reasons . But she takes up with her old boy friend , George Raft , a semi-sot who seems to do nothing more than play nickle-and-dime poker and is supported by his doting mother . Raft is still in love with her evidently because he throws over his new girl friend who promptly dies of natural causes . Gardner's affections aren't exactly steady . A sharp exchange with Raft over something or other and she turns to Podunk's Mister Big , Tom Conway , who runs a fancy club , the Flamingo , and has lots of money , a pencil mustache , and a suave British accent . For much of the rest of the film she wafts back and forth , prompted by the slightest of gestures or perhaps by pheromones yet undiscovered . That's the central weakness of the whole movie - - motivation . From the very beginning , we don't know why Gardner decided to return to Ahsburn . Nor what attracts her to the wooden and ordinary-looking Raft . We don't know why Raft's friend , Victor MacLaughlin , your basic friendly bartender , is plotting one minute to rob and kill Tom Conway with Raft's help . That plan fizzles out because Raft doesn't do his part , for some reason having to do with Gardner's figuring it out intuitively . We don't know why , the next minute , MacLaughlin wants to be Conway's best friend and help Conway patch up his differences with Raft . MacLaughlin was perfectly willing to murder the guy a little while ago . And so it goes . The plot meanders from scene to scene , leaving ox-bow lakes behind , each incident linked to the others only by their shared ambiguity . Ambiguity is okay in its place but it must be augmented by something else - - some directorial style or an admirable display of acting talent or epic sweep . ( Think of the ambiguity in " Lawrence of Arabia . " ) But " Whistle Stop " has no such compensations . MacLaughlin is bulky , sounds dumb , and is sometimes photographed in close-up with a wide-angle lens that turns his face into something resembling a sea turtle with baggy eyes . Raft is simply Raft , a proletarian whose face seems to develop cracks when he's forced by the script into an agonizing smile . Ava Gardner is difficult to criticize . Her performance may be the best of the bunch although it hardly matters since she's so stunningly beautiful in a conventional way . A little less glamorization from the make-up department wouldn't have hurt . Actually , Gardner was from a one-horse town herself , Smithfield , North Carolina . The town has built a tiny , slightly shabby museum in her honor . It's a poignant tribute . Gregory Peck has visited the place . But , as for the movie itself , it doesn't work very well . " Clash by Night " had a similar story but serves as an illustration of what might have been accomplished with a little more effort and more talent . |
441,945 | 819,382 | 26,245 | 4 | Routine B Crimebuster . | It zips along quickly , like most B productions , with little wasted motion and no time spent on incidental events or reality intrusions . It's a British crime thriller starring Esmond Knight and Lilli Palmer and was made in 1935 , about the time Hitchcock was hitting his stride in the same arena . You can't help wondering , as this thing rolls along in its complicated but uninspired way , like any cheap second feature starring Boston Blackie or Charlie Chan , what Hitchcock would have done with it . There's even a scene shot in an illegal casino in which one of the villains is eating a meal . And that's it . He just eats . All the scenes show about as much interest on the part of the participants as this one , as exciting as watching a barnacle clinging to a rock . Lilli Palmer plays a slightly tarnished moll who falls for the hero and turns good . She's recognizable to those familiar with her later films only because her voice is the same . It's really strange . She was 21 when this was released and quite pretty . Ten or fifteen years later she was beautiful . Did she get a nose job , or what ? Unless you have a taste for old-fashioned crime films with the undercover Scotland Yard agent finally trapping the cackling villain - - " Of course , you think I'm mad . I prefer to call it genius . " - - you might better think about spending your time doing something other than this absolutely formulaic B film . |
441,914 | 819,382 | 59,274 | 4 | Aimless Drama of British Stockade . | I saw this years ago and thought it was a little dull , then I saw it tonight and thought it was even duller . It's the story of a handful of disparate British soldiers in the African desert of World War II , sent to the stockade for one or another offense , and subject to demanding discipline , the chief example of which is a big sandy hill that the men are forced to clamber over repeatedly . The problem lies with the script that might effectively been much shorter . There's absolutely nothing wrong with the performances . Some are sterling . They're all good but among the best are Harry Andrews with his mess hall intonations and Ian Bannen as the most sensitive of the three non-coms in charge of the joint . Harry Andrews may run the place , and he's pitiless , the but the other sergeant enjoys seeing the inmates suffer . There's nothing lacking in Sidney Lumet's direction either , although this was definitely not Lumet territory . He does what he can to introduce texture into an otherwise flat story , including an elaborate crane shot under the credits . There are as many scenes of emotional display as can be shoehorned in . The obstacle of the hill is made a point of , naturally . Lumet even includes a POV shot from inside a gas mask so we can hear the victim's tortured breath . At one point , the prisoners are sitting in the dark , passing a cigarette back and forth , and laughing blood-burstingly over nothing at all . Made me wonder what kind of cigarette it was . It's just that not enough happens to keep the pace up . We get the general idea of the stockade immediately . The prisoners must double time it everywhere they go . All personnel stride around in cadence , carrying swagger sticks under their arms , stomping their feet like robots . The prisoners to whom we are introduced are stereotypes - - the tough sergeant major disgusted with combat , the fairy , the fat man , the black guy , the ordinary joe . They even get to sass the cadre from time to time . ( Let Cool Hand Luke try that . ) It all seems like a one-act play padded out to feature film length . I'll give an example of what I mean . Harry Andrews as the officer in charge and his staff sergeant , Walter Lynch I think , are staying up late and having a contest of wills over who can drink more booze . A dozen empty glasses are scattered across the table . Finally the sergeant collapses and Andrews staggers off to his bunk , only to roll off onto the floor . It takes about five minutes of screen time , and what's the point ? If anyone enjoys this , and they may , because I freely admit to my warped sensibilities , they should also check out " Cool Hand Luke " if they haven't already seen it . And , if they're given to reading , go through the stockade scene in " From Here to Eternity " - - the novel , not the movie . That part was edited out of the movie or the Army wouldn't have lent its cooperation to the production . |
442,560 | 819,382 | 288,477 | 4 | Welcome to the SS Overlook Hotel . | Movies about deserted houses or communities are somehow enjoyable partly because of the milieu . As a kid I strolled around the deserted Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook , New Jersey , established before the Revolutionary War , a thriving city in itself during two World Wars , and then closed to the public except for a handful of Coast Guardsmen . All the buildings were intact if not well kept . There were stacks of 20 mm . shells around . The base hospital still had drawers full of stained tissue on microscope slides . And not a soul to be seen . It was like the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone , enough to make one's hair stand on end . That creepy feeling of derealization is what gives this movie its impact . And that's about it . The half dozen members of a salvage tug run across a huge Italian passenger liner that disappeared 40 years ago , they board it and explore it . Weird , man . Cobwebs on things , all the brightwork with a green patina , cloth rotting away . And it's all dark and slick feeling . Nothing else about the movie is memorable except the exploration of that ship . The story is senseless . Ghosts come and go . An empty swimming pool decides to fill up with blood when nobody is around . Doors swing shut and lock . Beans turn into worms . Liquor bottles glide by themselves across the table . Every shock accompanied by a sting on the sound track . No point to any of it . Do you remember the scene in Kubrick's " The Shining " when Danny comes running to Jack Nicholson saying someone is in one of the hotel's rooms ? And Nicholson slowly enters the room ? And there is someone in the bathtub ? And it's a beautiful young woman ? And she gets out of the tub and slinks towards Nicholson who stares at her greedily ? And while they are smooching she turns into an aged corpse ? And Nicholson runs away in horror ? And when he gets back to his family and they ask him what happened and he says , " It was nothing " ? That was probably the dumbest scene in " The Shining . " " The Ghost Ship " is ALL like that scene . Except for the sets , there is nothing in this film that you haven't seen dozens of times before . I'll give one more example . A crew member from the tug enters a deserted and half-wrecked ballroom ( cf . , " The Shining " ) and finds a lighted cigarette in an ash tray . In the Twilight Zone episode it was a cigar . I won't go on about this movie because it's not worth it . Kids might enjoy the shocks . They're kind of naive about such things . |
442,816 | 819,382 | 120,461 | 4 | Volcano . About a volcano . | The modern wave of movies about collective disasters began , I think , in 1954 with " The High and the Mighty . " I've been trying to figure out how and why they managed to evolve ( or devolve ) into gargantuan productions involving masses of humanity and such monuments to civilization as the world's tallest skyscraper ( " The Towering Inferno " ) and the city of Los Angeles ( " Earthquake " ) . I think it has to do with the natural development of simple things into more complex things . Something that succeeds begets things that are bigger than the original . I think Herbert Spencer made this observation with regard not just to organic systems like plants and animals but to human artifacts like governments and tax codes . Mies van der Rohe , the architect , described the reaction to this trend simply as " less is more . " But you can't fight city hall . In the end , MORE IS MORE . Take the original " airplane in jeopardy movie " , " The High and the Mighty . " The problem with an airplane that has partially failed is that the passengers and crew become the sinews that hold the story together - - their little dramas , their foibles . And either nobody dies or everybody dies . Well , unless you want to follow it up with a mid-air collision ( " The Crowded Sky " ) . In that case it's easier to stick to the strict moral formula and kill off the bad people instead of having to guide them through some epiphany in which they realize how wrong they've been . You can do so much more with BIGGER disasters , as depicted in " Volcano . " Not only do you get the same little human dramas , but you get multiple sub-disasters . In the kind of earthquake that generates a volcano in downtown Los Angeles , or what there IS of a downtown in Los Angeles , not only do buildings fall or almost collapse , but cars swerve and crash on the undulating roadway , fire mains burst , fires break out , dams fail and flood the villages in the valley , and ( if you want to push it ) airplanes can be forced by lack of fuel to land on runways that are being cracked apart by tectonic forces . The whole earth - - that thing under our feet that we always take for granted - - shrugs and heaves and makes us think about God . Yes . If we think about it , I suspect we can all agree that an earthquake is the best of disasters , especially ones that generate a flood of lava in a huge city . Great opportunities for computer-generated special effects . Loved ones can go missing - - and they may have been killed or saved , unlike that tiny airplane way up there in the sky in which it's all or nothing at all . Most of these sub-disasters happen in " Volcano " - - PLUS those plaster animals in the La Brea Tar Pits get swallowed up in their entirety . Tommy Lee Jones is separated from his daughter . Anne Heche is pretty and blond as the requisite scientist . The movie is frantic and doesn't give the audience much chance to breathe . No acting is called for and none is on display . This is about money , not art . And when it comes to money , MORE IS MORE . Watch it if you want . I did once and managed to see it all the way through , but I never cared much for L . A . in the first place . |
441,913 | 819,382 | 41,761 | 4 | Your Treasury Department at Work . | This is a pretty routine crime drama involving narcotics in New York . The SS Florentine docks and unships a crate of medical dope but instead of dope there is nothing but sand in the crate . The purser has stolen it , with the complicity of one of the passengers , a Miss Toni Cardell . Two Treasury agents , Scott Brady and Richard Rober , latch on to the case and track the dope through a network of heavies and murderers led by Yul Brynner . They succeed with the help of the U . S . Coast Guard and at the cost of Brady's life . Right away , though , I had a slight problem in that nobody anywhere is named Miss Toni Cardell . It's the kind of echt-schiksa name that somebody might dream up because it sounded right , like " Ellie Arroway " in Carl Sagan's novel , " Contact . " But just try to find a name like Toni Cardell in a phone book , especially in Shanghai . I dare you . Secondly , the crate carrying the dope is opened by customs agents . It's a big crate , the size of a wardrobe , and it's filled entirely with sand . A reasonable inference is that a LOT of dope is missing , yet when the box of narcotics is finally discovered in a locker at Grand Central Station , it's only big enough to contain , say , three dictionaries . Those , of course , are minor things . Yet this is a minor movie . It's a routine track-'em-down mystery with T-men putting themselves in danger by posing as somebody else . Scott Brady is okay . He's an Irishman with Burt Lancaster's habit of sticking out his jaw in a defiant scowl when he's angry . It's rather likable . His partner , Richard Rober , on the other hand , has practically nothing to offer , a bland , acceptably handsome contract player . He's the one who should have been knocked off early on , allowing Scott Brady to continue the chase . Best performance , hands down - - Yul Brynner with hair as the Vladimir Putin look-alike who heads the whole operation . What a background the guy had . A Jew from Sakhalin Island off the Siberian coast , a stint at the Sorbonne in Paris , a trapeze artist . " The King and I " brought him fame but left him socked into a domineering and unsubtle persona . Here , he gives his most earnest performance . He's suave , handsome , delicate even . And - - this being 1949 , the year when the Cold War became an undeniable fact - - his Russian accent fits the temporal template . He's better here than he ever was later . But , taken as a whole , what we have here is an inexpensive Eagle Lion crime drama with self-sacrificing heroes and ruthless villains . Nice to see the Coast Guard in action . Even if , to pump up the action , the writers and Lazlo Benedict , the director , have Brynner shooting his snub-nosed revolver at an 83-footer armed with a 20 millimeter cannon on the bow . Diverting , yes , but not much new . |
442,751 | 819,382 | 99,165 | 4 | Notes From the Underground | The point of Wolfe's original novel - - indeed the point of the whole story - - is that things take place because of a carefully calculated sense of expediency . The goal is survival within a particular kind of life style . The novel is full of malice . The only relationship that rings emotionally true is that between Sherman and his daughter , Campbell , and that's only touched upon . That aside , everyone is out for what he can get in the way of publicity , power , money or self aggrandizement . Wolfe was criticized for hitting every character and every social segment of New York City over the head . His response was a denial . After all , he lived in New York himself and belonged to a neighborhood improvement committee and other admirable organizations , exactly the qualifications one would want on his resume in order to deny that he disliked New Yorkers . ( Wolfe has a PhD in American Studies from Yale and is no dummy . ) Those supposed weaknesses are what made the novel memorable . Nobody was any good . And Sherman McCoy wound up broke , a professional protester for social justice . The movie throws all of that away and imposes a moral frame on the story that simply doesn't fit . Wolfe did his homework . The novel was rooted in reality . Every event was not only possible but thoroughly believable . Wolfe might have made a great cultural anthropologist - - he knows how to get inside a system and record its details . Yes , any of us might have found ourselves , as Sherman and his mistress do , stuck in the South Bronx , threatened by a couple of black kids , and making a getaway after bumping into one of them . That scene is transferred neatly from print to celluloid . But after that scene the movie seems not to trust its audience and at times become frantic in its attempt to spell out its message , however nebulous the message is . Sherman might accidentally hit some kid and be arrested for it as he is in the novel , but he would not immediately upon his release from jail go back to his phenomenally expensive condo , take out a shotgun , and start shooting into the ceiling with it , as he does in the movee . In what's supposed to be a funny scene , ceiling plaster falls all over the party guests and they scurry away , shrieking . It simply would not have happened . The movie has left the novel's unspeakably detailed reality in the dust . Wolfe's sensibility , the work he put into capturing the real , has been lost . What we get instead is a noisy , fantastic , and silly scene that doesn't do anything except wake the audience up . Similar empty scenes follow , screaming out for Wolfe's verisimilitude . The movie also fails because it thrusts a lot of sin and redemption into an entertaining story of moral nihilism . Here we see " Don Juan in Hell " at the opera . We get lectures on redemption from a poet with AIDs . We see a lot of guilt in Sherman . A black judge who preaches from the bench and gives one of those final speeches about how we all have to start behaving nicely again . A reporter who feels sorry for Sherman after turning him into a sacrificial lamb . And a happy ending in which Sherman gets off by breaking the law with an idiotic grin . The scene sits on the movie like a jester's cap on a circus elephant's head . The movie not only makes points that are already trite and unoriginal , it overstates them , as if the audience were incapable of absorbing any subtleties . It's not the acting or the direction that's poor . The film's not bad in those respects . And the photography is pretty good too , including two rather spectacular shots - - the gargoyles of the Chrysler building and the landing of the Concorde . It's the script that is thoroughly botched . The first half of the movie , roughly , is okay in conception and execution . It keeps some of the little details from the novel . Sherman and Judy's dog is named Marshall . Who the hell would name a dog Marshall ? It loses its focus almost completely in the second half and on the whole is barely worth watching . Wolfe's cynical redneck right-wingism may be offensive to a lot of people , but he's got the cojones to lay his percepts out . Alas the writers and producers did not have the courage to pick them up and thus blew the chance to make a fascinating study of New Yorkers . |
443,161 | 819,382 | 38,965 | 4 | Derivative mystery . | This was directed and co-written by Joseph Mankiewicz . The cast includes John Hodiak and Richard Conte . Almost all the scenes are shot at night around Los Angeles and on the lot . It ought to be good but in fact it's no more than routine . Let's recall John Huston's superb " The Maltese Falcon , " in which the hero , Sam Spade , is hired to find a fabulously expensive statue of a bird whose trip through time has left a trail of dead bodies behind . Spade searches for the statue , discovering a little more about it each time he runs into the colorful and quirky figures that are associated with its pursuit . The Fat Man , the Gay Levantine , the dame with the past , the Gunsel - - they come crawling out of the woodwork , enough of them to make a minion . In the climactic scene they are all brought together in Spade's apartment , where all is explained . And they leave , only to have Spade ring up the police and clue them in , except for the Ambiguous Dame who is revealed as the chief villain . I suspect " The Maltese Falcon " must have provided the model for this dark mystery , though enough cosmetic surgery has been performed to disguise the features of the original mold . Instead of the mysterious " black bird " , John Hodiak , the man with no memory , pursues his own past and the two million dollars hidden somewhere within it . He runs into a gang of colorful and quirky characters . The Fat Man here is just a guy with a sinister face and a German accent and a classy phraseology . The Gunsel is a huge " tub of lard " who is barely able to string three sentences together . There's no Gay Levantine , but a few other characters make up for his absence . The Ambiguous Dame is split into her two constituents - - the louche broad who slings around French clichés and the honest , brave Nancy Guild who falls in love with Hodiak ( and vice versa ) two minutes after they meet . Hodiak is beaten up by the hoods , just as Spade was . At the end , he demands a " fall guy " for the police , just as Spade did . The hoodlum gang , instead of leaving , just shrug and their leader tells them philosophically that " the jig is up . " The friend turns out to be the real scheming murderer - - Spade's Ambiguous Dame there , a secondary but likable character here . The direction is okay . Mankiewicz was no slouch . And some of the writing is passable , as is Hodiak's performance as George Taylor and , especially , Lloyd Nolan's as the police lieutenant . The rest are pallid facsimiles . There are , in fact , too many quirky and colorful characters and none of them could act . Neither could Nancy Guild , although she was attractive enough . Hodiak's pursuit of his own identity , his pal Larry Cravat , and the two million bucks grows tiresome - - and confusing too . There are too many leads , too many red herrings . We watch Hodiak travel from place to place , mostly meeting with hostility from people who don't even know him , garnering little scraps of information which may lead somewhere , or maybe not . The musical score has no lilt to it . And the characters have only one note on their instruments , except for Nolan who delivers sarcasm and irony with effortless aplomb . Mankiewicz was to do much better , later on . These semi-noir mysteries were not his forte , though he made another one of them and that one , " No Way Out , " was pretty damned good . |
443,357 | 819,382 | 50,500 | 4 | modest sub movie | You have to feel sorry for anybody who tries to write the screenplay for a submarine movie . How is it possible to avoid all the established clichés ? The shattered chronometer , the bursting pipe , the ritual commands , the toy submarine nosing through the murk , the wounded skipper lying on the deck and ordering the boat down , the periscope slicing the sea , the tin can approaching at high speed , the pinging sonar gear , the tense sweaty faces , the walloped camera as the depth charge explodes , the conflict between the CO and the Exec , the playful bantering of the crew , a down-the-throat shot . Added to that are the problems that any Navy movie has . The men have no chance at individual heroism and practically none of being dramatically wounded . ( Unless one of them gets appendicitis or has a torpedo fall on him , which happens from time to time . ) Basically , the crew are there for comic purposes , so the burden of the drama must fall on the officers . The question can never be about who is going to rush out with his tommy gun and save the rest of the patrol , so it can only be about whose judgment is correct , the skipper or one of his officers . ( Sometimes a romantic conflict on the beach is thrown in , but that's rather arbitrary , kind of like the appendicitis patient . ) This one isn't too bad , as sub movies go , but it arrives late in the post-war genre . Nobody in it is weak . The enemy is dehumanized , the dialogue trite and exhausted , the action scenes shot on the cheap , and the story is twisted , hard to follow , and sometimes pointless . ( Example , midway through the movie a great deal is made of Captain Reagan's having brought back an accurate chart of the Japanese mine fields , but when the subs are sent out en masse it turns out the mines have been moved around so the chart is now irrelevant . ) The performers do as well as they can under the circumstances , although Nancy Reagan is definitely in the wrong part here . The right parts would have been those taken by the elderly Bette Davis . The cast has a lot of familiar faces , but none of them memorable because of their having given good performances elsewhere , only memorable because we've seen them so often before . The director should be spanked . A man is knocked about during a depth charge attack and is taken to sick bay . After he's been treated and bandaged up , there are still trickles of blood down his chin and the side of his face . Once winces at such sloppiness . And there is another painfully staged scene , when Reagan and Davis are saying good-bye . Davis's face is in the foreground . She stares unblinkingly just to the left of the camera's lens while Reagan stands behind and speaks to her over her shoulder . This particular part of cinematic grammar must antedate cinema itself . Should you see it ? Well - - why not . It's a historical curiosity if nothing else . |
442,479 | 819,382 | 427,392 | 4 | Highly infectious viral plot . | Don't show emotion , don't blink your eyes , walk like a zombie , and above all don't go to sleep - - or else you change into a simulacrum of your former self . Where have we heard this before ? Well , it was a story in Collier's Magazine in the early 1950s . It was made into a superior low-budget science fiction movie by Don Siegel in 1956 . Remade and up dated in the 1970s . Done again , with less panache , ten years later . Then Carpenter's remake is in here somewhere . And now , yet again , the permutations of the plot have been shuffled and here we go . This time , Dr . Binell is Nicole Kidman . It's from a woman's point of view , and she has a child that must be protected . See , women are more helpless than men , and children even more so , so that less effort needs to be put into the attempt to involve the audience in the protagonist's predicament . There is no mention of pods , though I kept thinking throughout of the victims as " pod people . " This time , what appears to be " the flu " is " going around . " One wonders where the flu " goes " when it's not going around . Some vast staging area in the sky probably . But , as the experienced viewer already knows after the first few minutes , this is a remake of " The Invasion of the Body Snatchers " and the problem has nothing to do with earthly pathogens . It's a large virus from outer space that goes to work in the human body when " hormones are released during REM sleep . " ( There are several inserts of gurgling blood streams and bursting spiked basketballs , just so we understand what's up . ) The extraterrestrial virus does something to the skin before it morphs the victim too , so that we see one guy , half-morphed , who looks like a thousand-year-old freeze dried Peruvian mummy . The plot is nonsense but it hardly matters . The plot of the original was full of holes too , but Siegel did such a good job of conveying the small-town atmosphere of Santa Mira and the performers were so good at their jobs that the impression left at the end was that of a good fairy tale . This one is a bad fairy tale , tasteless , tawdry , cheapened in every way except in terms of budget and cast . There's nothing wrong with the cast . Nicole Kidman is expert at handling some challenging roles - - " To Die For " and " Eyes Wide Shut " come to mind - - but she has nothing to work with here . Basically , she runs and runs and runs , usually tugging her child by the hand , while pursued by gangs of zombified goons . There is no atmosphere to speak of , and less character . The direction is perfunctory and the script pandering . There are shoot outs , grotesque spastic semi-corpses , falls from skyscraper rooftops , transmission by means of vomit colored like spinach dip , multiple car chases , multiple car crashes , and gore galore . It borrows clichés from every action thriller you've ever seen , including a gratuitous hypodermic jab into the heart , from " Pulp Fiction . " It raises , almost by accident , some interesting questions . In the background of all this hectic activity , we notice on TV that the world leaders have stopped bickering because , presumably , they've been infected with the virus . Kim Jong Il disbands his nuke project ; the president turns Iraq over to the Iraqis ; pharmacies give away vaccines for AIDS , and so on . Zombies have nothing to fight about or to covet , you understand . So , then , what's so bad about zombification ? The original posed an interesting conflict between humanity , with all its flaws and virtues , including love , and a placid but will-less existence . Absent here . And is Kim Jong Il a pod person ? Is George W . Bush ? And , if the victims don't really care about anything , how do they reproduce ? The film raises another interesting point . There's a virus going around , for sure , but it's a viral idea that spreads from production to production , first insidiously , then fulminatingly , leading to terminal Gargantuanosis . An idea , once proved to be commercially successful , invades the other Hollywood cells and forces them to replicate the DNA of the original until they finally pop and release still more viruses into the cinematic blood stream and before you know it , every new movie you see is a replica of an earlier one , whether this is acknowledged in the title or not . Yes - - " The Invasion " is the perfect title for this piece of brummagem garbage . |
442,399 | 819,382 | 52,611 | 4 | The Beast From One or Two Fathoms . | This is a brave and robust monster - - and it travels well too . It started off around 1950 as a Ray Bradbury story about a lonely sea monster who mistakes a lighthouse fog horn for the mating call of a possible mate . Then it became " The Beast From 20 , 000 Fathoms " , about an Apedosaurus who is released from his cryogenic state by a nuclear blast , attacks New York City , pillages rabidly , kills with its radioactive blood , and perishes amid a conflagration in Coney Island's roller coaster . ( I'm thinking - - twenty-thousand fathoms . That's 120 , 000 feet or 23 miles . The deepest location on the earth's crust is the Marianas trench , and that's only 6 . 8 miles . ) This animal may not be deep but he is tough to kill . Here it shows up on the English coast , under a different name , with a smaller budget , and starring Gene Evans and Andre Morell . Gene Evans is the scientific expert who cuts up the radioactive fish that wash ashore in adumbration of the monster's appearance . A morel is some kind of eel . The plot is very similar to that of " The Beast From 20 , 000 Fathoms , " really . Some of the shots are almost exact duplicates of the original . A fishing vessel is attacked at sea . An amusing , oddball professor is a paleontological enthusiast and is done away with . A brick wall crumbles beneath the animal's elephantine foot and crushes the pedestrians on the other side . A car is stomped , chewed up , thrown away . Citizens in a panic run this way and that in front of the camera . Someone falls and the others clump over him or trip and fall themselves . The streets of London are eerily empty of people and traffic because no one is willing to venture outside . Urgent international emergency broadcasts in six different languages . The monster's skull is too thick to penetrate , so a radioactive projectile must be blasted in through a soft point in its neck . The original was no masterpiece but it's better in every respect , from the acting to the special effects by Ray Harryhausen . Here , instead of Cecil Calloway , there is Gene Evans . Gene Evans . Not to put the guy down , but he is from Holbrook , Arizona , which I recall from a generation ago as consisting of a crossroads , some scattered housing , a few small shops , a gas station , and a Dairy Queen . I'll have to look up his background to find out how Gene Evans managed to get from that Dairy Queen to a starring role in a British monster movie . His looks - - balding , freckled , with a fringe of russet hair around his ear line - - is most unprepossessing . His acting talents were modest . ( You or I , dragged in fresh off the streets , could probably equal him in a contest . ) And when he announces , " I'm just going to cut up a fish , " he sounds as if he knows a lot more about cutting up fish than about science . I've kind of made fun of the film and , to be honest , I don't really know why it was made . But I watched it all the way through , partly out of curiosity , and partly out of respect for Andre Morell , a fine actor who looks and sounds the part he plays . If you like these kinds of movies , you'll enjoy this movie . It's not likely to present you with any kind of challenge , anymore than it challenged the plagiarists who wrote it . |
442,980 | 819,382 | 212,304 | 4 | Ex Wife REALLY nails hubby . | Strikes me as routine , as far as TV movies go . I can believe that it's based on a true story because the plot seems too clumsy to have been written by anyone with storytelling skills . For instance , good old John Ritter ( now a rather bulky and bearded villain ) poisons his wife enough to make her ill , then accuses her of being psychosomatic and leaves to marry another young woman immediately . Fourteen years pass before the story picks up again . Why fourteen years ? I would guess that though the narrative doesn't demand it , history does . Some of the particular scenes , however , are so cinematically apt that they were almost certainly dreamed up by a writer . Pawing through her attic , Helgenberger , Ritter's first wife , stumbles across an old electrical appliance and has one of those black-and-white flashbacks with stings on the score - - suddenly she recalls when , fourteen years ago , she discovered Ritter shaving selenium filings from a rectifier , carefully collecting them , and putting them in her shampoo and her eyelash liner ( or whatever it's called ) . Later it develops that he was putting it into her coffee as well . Frankly , I don't believe it . I don't believe either that she had that particular epiphany in the attic or that Ritter put selenium shavings into her shampoo or eyeliner . Selenium is referred to in the movie as a " toxic metal " and I suppose it is , in sufficient quantity , but it's also an anti-oxidant that's sold over the counter in drug stores and swallowed . Someone will have to demonstrate - - as no one does in this movie - - that it is a topical poison . Many people have tried the nicotine patch and failed . So how come some selenium in her shampoo gives Marg Helgenberger immediate and drastic headaches ? And her eyes become as painful as boils when she applies makeup ? I think the anthropologist E . B . Tylor called this simple-minded idea " sympathetic magic , " but I'm not sure . Mais je divage . Anyway Ritter evidently tries the same stunt with his second wife fourteen years later , although no evidence of trickery is ever produced when she becomes ill with the same symptoms . Wife Number Two is taken to Mexico and apparently cured but suddenly drops dead shortly after her return . Circumstantial evidence piles up against Ritter , who plays the villain with all the stops out - - when his first trial is dismissed he SMIRKS at Helgenberger , who has prompted the investigation . You see , Helgenberger was good friends with Ritter's second wife and was terribly disturbed at her demise and its manner . ( I'll bet . ) And she wants to prevent the same thing from happening to the wealthy young woman who seems lined up for third place in Ritter's marital schedule . ( Sure . ) The best performance is given by the guy who plays Detective Mauser - - Lawrence Dane ? Everyone else acts by the numbers . They project emotions and thoughts with the subtlety of a warning at a railroad crossing . But Dane does little things that are original . " I'm told you want to report a murder . ( Long pause while he sits down and waits ) , then abruptly thrusts his face towards Helgeberger and inquires in a reasonable and curious voice , " So who was murdered " ? I suppose except for the bare bones of the historical events , nothing prevented characters or their actions from being drawn differently than they were in real life . I mean , what the heck , Ritter is still in jail convicted of murder and Helgenberger's character is dead , so who is to object ? I wish the forensic stuff had been made clearer . Ritter seems to have used so many poisons and toxic metals - - let me see , selenium , cyanide , a massive dose of chlorine , and maybe something else - - that I was confused by it all . Not that I was rooting for Ritter . Here's a mathematician with a Ph . D . who insists people call him " doctor . " He even corrects people who address him merely as " professor . " Most Ph . D . s get that narcissistic problem behind them very quickly . " Jes ' call me Whitey , even though I know how to get a standard deviation and you don't . " Average TV fare . |
441,753 | 819,382 | 352,248 | 4 | And a left - - and a right ! | I don't think the theme goes farther back than Lysistrata , about 400 BC . Women object to men's aficion for combat and try to stop it . This looks like a TV movie with higher production values and better actors . For forerunners of poor families drawn into boxing look for " Body and Soul " and " Rocky " . Yet , as a feel-good movie , as most of Ron Howard's are , it works - - in the sense that you feel good at the end . Want to draw two lessons from it ? Have a devoted wife ( a great performance by Zellwiger ) and every dumb Irishman should have a smart Jewish manager . So as not to burden the viewer with the necessity of thought , the script shows us characters that are exclusively one dimensional . Braddock's probity is never in doubt . And Max Baer is thoroughly evil , along the lines of Mr . T in " Rocky III . " No character ever changes or develops in any way . What you see at first is what you get all the way through . The film even preaches that during the Great Depression , communism ( or " unionism " ) was wrong-headed . Braddock's socially engaged working-class pal gets run over by a horse-drawn wagon in a Hooverville . Braddock , who refuses to fight anything that he can't see , like " the economy , " emerges victorious . That's the movie's political point of view , although the fact is , as every sensible person know , under capitalism man exploits man . Under communism it's just the opposite . There are two good things about it . One is the fight scenes , that resemble paintings by Bellows . The choreography hasn't much new to offer but at least it doesn't repeat shots that have now become clichés . Little in the way of slow motion . On the other hand , Howard is so anxious for the viewer not to overlook even the most obvious points that when Braddock has one or two ribs cracked during a bout , the director actually shows us a brief X-ray of the ribs ! Does it resemble any previous sports movies ? How could it not ? Put " The Rookie , " " Rocky " , and one or two others into a Waring blender and this is what you get . An entertaining , even gripping , thoroughly commercial fairy tale . Not that it's bad . It IS after all a feel-good movie . And the scenes of economic desolation are convincing . When my grandmother died my grandfather , an immigrant , was saddled with three kids , the oldest about 12 , while working 12 hours a day including Saturdays . He farmed them out and chipped in as well as he could , just as in this movie . Those who think of those days as a golden age , before taxes and such social programs as LIHEAP , ought to rethink things . A second interesting point , though , is the stovepipe into the wealthy class . It really worked for minorities . First Irish , then Italians and Jews , then blacks , then Latinos . Boxing , barbaric as it is , serves the same economic purpose as the military - - a way out of poverty . |
442,482 | 819,382 | 457,433 | 4 | Routine Mystery . | Halle Berry is a reporter whose best friend is murdered . She pursues the case over the objections of her editor , who finally fires her . ( If she were a cop , this would be the scene in which she hands over her gun and badge . ) With the help of a friend at the paper , Giovanni Ribisi , she goes undercover and is hired by the prime suspect , Bruce Willis , a nasty executive at the firm where Berry's friend last worked , a guy who exudes menace and embodies a kind of serpentine lechery . It's a pretty tough slog for the viewer . The writers have done what they could but not much of interest happens , despite some trumped-up suspense plug-ins . Red herrings abound . Everybody turns out to have secrets of one sort or another and they are uncovered , one by one , except for those of the murderer . Halle Berry looks delicious , though she is no longer the cherub of yesteryear . That's not necessarily a disadvantage . The part calls for a fully grown and determined woman , not a cutie pie . Her acting is seasoned and pedestrian . Giovanni Ribisi is a good nerd but occupies so much screen time that we KNOW he's more than just a helping hand . Bruce Willis is toggled into his minimalist mode , which renders him more ominous but less human than in his usual action movies . I prefer him dashing along steel girders with a pistol in hand . The ending calls for a suspension of disbelief uncommon outside of frank delusions . I don't know why this is so dull . Maybe - - at least in part - - because no one has yet found a way to make participation in internet chat exciting . |
443,218 | 819,382 | 32,283 | 4 | A War of Necessity | All the combatants seemed to sidle into the First World War crabwise , without really intending to do much other than preserve national pride , and then , before you know it , kaboom . Barbara Tuchman , who wrote the prize-winning history " Guns of August , " used to tell the story of a lecture she gave at a famous Midwestern university and being congratulated by a student for making the casus belli so clear . " I'd always wondered why they called the other one World War Two , " said the student . Not that " British Intelligence " is about World War I anyway . It's set in 1917 but it was shot in 1940 as a spy mystery that shifted back and forth from Berlin to London . Except for some differences in uniforms and the use of Zeppelins instead of Heinkels , it's really World War II the movie is dealing with . The movie's speeches , which I won't bother repeating , practically hit us over the head with the real conflict . And here the Americans enter the war without having to be bombed into doing so . Boris Karloff is an obsequious French butler in a classy London house where all the British high staff seem to meet and trade secrets in front of open windows and whatnot . Karloff had his hands on some good roles in his time - - " Frankenstein " , " The Body Snatchers " - - but this role demonstrates his weaknesses . He overplays it outrageously , fawning and bowing , and saying things like , " Here , let me help you with your coat . " And his French accent is execrable . " Zeppelin " comes out " Zepp-lawn . " Better he shouldn't have tried at all . The other performances are decent enough and there's nothing awry with the direction but it's rather a long , slow slog through hidden identities and intrigues . On the whole it's like watching a very old screenplay that has been dug up out of a shoe box on the back shelf and refurbished by Second Spin Ltd . It's not insulting - - it's not that bad - - it's just rather routine and dull . |
443,225 | 819,382 | 37,121 | 4 | Harmless Flag-Waver About Boot Camp . | A routine program filler with some familiar faces in the cast - - Rosco Karns , Robert Armstrong of " King Kong , " Horace McMahon in a walk-on . It's sort of a training film - - " What to Expect When You Join the Navy and What You Should Avoid Doing . " The opening narration tells us about the men in civilian clothes who are being marched into the Great Lakes Naval Training Center , " Yesterday , you lived in Glencoe , Illinois , in Hammond , Indiana , in Podunk , Nebraska . And you were a machinist , a clerk , a farmer , a philatelist ( well , not that ) , but today you're joining the Navy and you are sailors . " That's fine for the half dozen men whose careers we follow , but a little upsetting to Johnny Zumano , a boxer whose career was just getting started and who wanted to become a champ to provide for his impoverished parents . Johnny , whose story this chiefly is , gets over his initial frustration but when , on top of everything else , he is dumped by his girl friend he gets drunk and is about to be court martialed and discharged . Through the seasonable interposition of a gracious providence , the four-striper who is about to pull the lanyard on the guillotine of justice overhears Johnny talking to the chaplain . " Gee , I wanted to stay in the Navy something awful and ship out with the other fellas but I couldn't tell the Captain that . " Johnny has his pride , see , and he don't go whining to nobody . However , the Captain having overheard Johnny's confession , so to speak , now realizes how committed Johnny is to the U . S . Navy . Does Johnny avoid a discharge ? Does he join his comrades ? Do they ship out together ? No power on earth could drag the answers from me . It's a low-budget effort , true , and we can't expect too much in the way of acting or story or art direction . Yet , every time I tell myself that , I think of Val Lewton over at RKO who in the same time period was churning out one little gem after another on a similar budget , and horror pictures at that , with such unpromising titles as " The Leopard Man . " Or , ten years later , the inexpensive but vernacular art of the Scott-Boettiger Westerns . It's the difference between merely doing a job and showing some degree of craftsmanlike care in your product . |
442,186 | 819,382 | 147,163 | 4 | Yet Another Serial Killer With a Theme | This one , David Keith , is an antiques vendor and schlepper who for some reason is killing 30-ish successful women by plastic-bagging them , then dressing them , grooming them , and posing them in the position of antique dolls . Kelly McGillis is an ex-medical student , a graduate in fact , who was Keith's first victim but managed to escape his clutches before being turned into a dead doll . She has an MD from Texas but , after spending some time recovering from her trauma , she is now an ordinary homicide cop in Houston . ( Sure . ) The plot . Well , you already pretty much know it by now , I presume . A number of women turn up dead in peculiar ways . The police have to figure out if there is a link between the killings . There is . Then they have to figure out the particular theme this serial killer is using . Usually phrased as , " What do these women have in common ? " In other movies of this genre - - and it IS a genre unto itself - - the killings are based on puzzles from Alice in Wonderland , or replications of previous high-profile serial murderers , or a drawing of a pentagram on a map , or - - I think there's one based on a game of tic tac toe . Or was it hopscotch ? One forgets after viewing a dozen or so examples . McGillis does alright by her role , although she hasn't much in the way of range . ( It's hard to imagine her getting stoned and enjoying herself . ) And she has one of those cases of asthma or whatever it is that disable her at critical moments , a momento of her earlier abuse . She is intense enough , though , and that's about all that's required of her . Moffet , or whoever plays her partner Detective Cirillo , seems to have only one key on his instrument . It would have been a more interesting movie if he'd been the heavy . David Keith has the juiciest part , an outwardly charming , inwardly explosive , sadistic madman . What a scuzzball he is , trying to spoon feed pecan pie to one of his victims before offing her . He gets a bit of exercise because he's required to change personae from time to time . Bruce Dern , gone gray and losing his hair under his cowboy hat , has played numerous psychotic heavies and if he'd been a few years younger would have done fine as the heavy in this movie as well . He's hardly on screen , though . There's nothing original in this flick . I'm beginning to yawn when the finale begins with the lone female investigator breaking into the murderer's darkened house and creeping around with a flashlight whose beam reveals spooky objects and ominously closed doors . It worked okay for a while but has now become redundant , after " Silence of the Lambs " and any number of other examples . Other boilerplate scenes include the fight between the investigator and the maniac . The investigator is armed but has the gun knocked out of his or her hand . A shot of the pistol skidding along the floor . A shot of somebody's hand grasping for the weapon just out of reach . To my knowledge , this sequence was first used in a motion picture in the year 1798 . You know something , though ? It's bad enough that these plots always involve the murders of young women , but this film has a drawn-out and especially execrable scene in which the murderer , Keith , teases one of his tied-up , terrified victims . The victim knows she's going to die and so do we , but we must sit there and watch David Keith try to pamper her and then throw a fit of pique when she refuses to eat his goddamn home-made pie and then plastic bag her while she screams and wiggles . At whom is this scene aimed ? What I mean is , who will enjoy seeing something so brutal and disgusting ? It's not necessary to our understanding of either the plot or the character . Casting decisions must have been given about 5 seconds of thought . The first killer we see , being sentenced in a Texas court , is a big , hulking , ugly , sneering brute who spits at Inspector Kelly McGillis . How much more interesting if he'd been a little mouse . David Keith , the killer-in-chief , has always been cast as a weak , perennial loser . The uncooperative sexist detective on the Houston PD is a fat guy with a mustache and no neck who could have won the blue ribbon as prize hog at the Texas State Fair . Well , looking at the donut instead of the hole , the formula wouldn't have been reused so often if there weren't something workable about it . And there IS one well-written , if overacted , scene at an outdoor flea market in which Keith almost , but not quite , lures a beautiful blond customer into his web . If it's late at night and you find you can't sleep , you might give this a try . Either it will act as a distraction from your distress or as a soporific . Both ways , you win something . |
443,263 | 819,382 | 50,249 | 4 | Unprepossessing Cops vs . Gangsters | There's nothing particularly original about this story of corrupt unions on one side and the " chief attorney " on the other . The stark but unimaginative lighting and photography stems from the fagged out noir cycle . The story could easily have been out of a Warner Brothers drawer with George Raft in the lead . The performances are routine , the direction flat , and even the set dressing perfunctory . ( An alley is shown by a single plaster wall of simulated brick . It has one poster on it . The poster says , " Post No Bills . " ) We are introduced to the story and some of the characters by a portentous narrator who informs us that , while most unions work hard and honestly to advance the causes of their members , a few are corrupt . But we don't really get to know much about the unions or how they operate , although I suppose they were fair game after the success of " On the Waterfront " a few years earlier . Here they're just a peg to hang the tale on . The real ring leader is a disbarred lawyer who runs things through three or four thugs . The District Attorney ( or whatever he is ) finds out , like Dana Andrews did in " Boomerang , " that the wrong man ( Dick Foran ) is charged with a murder and he spends the rest of the film almost alone , digging up evidence of Foran's innocence . He gets into fist fights and shoot outs like any inexpensive movie private eye . Brian Keith is the D . A . He's shown some insinuating displays of talent elsewhere , but here he spends most of the time speaking quietly and staring at the floor . Elisha Cook , Jr . , is a likable rummy but can't do a good drunk . Beverley Garland is okay but is undermined by the direction , which has her gawking in a night club when she should be furtive . The remainder of the cast would be suitable for a TV series . And nobody is helped by the writing . When a " B girl " is about to be shipped by the union mob to the Filippines , someone advises her that she only has to learn a few words of Spanish . " I only know one word , " she says , " Si . Yes . " The writers have not trusted the audience to know that " si " in Spanish means " yes . " The plot is clumsy and has holes in it . Keith visits a witness in her flat over a night club . He enters the door and has a gun shoved in his back by a yegg , but he outwits the heavy and knocks him out . Then the orders someone to call the police . The rest of the scene , played out at some length in the night club downstairs , forgets all about the police and they never show up , nor are they expected by anyone . It's nothing to be ashamed of , and some people might enjoy it , but there is similar stuff , better done , elsewhere . |
443,240 | 819,382 | 43,625 | 4 | Pedestrian . | Pretty decent cast - - John Garfield , Wallace Ford , Selena Royle - - but the film is no more than routine . Garfield is a gangster who has just committed a payroll robbery . On the run , he takes refuge in the working-class apartment of a girl he just met , Shelley Winters , and her family - - Mom , Pop , and kid brother . His identity is discovered by the family and he quietly takes them hostage , holding a snub-nosed . 38 on them . But what's he going to do with them ? How is he supposed to get away with the dragnet out for him ? Mom and Pop are quietly repulsed by him , but Winters is attracted and evidently spends the night with him , intending to accompany him on his getaway . He sends her out to buy a car with part of the payroll money but comes to believe she didn't buy the car . Instead , she's betrayed him to the police . In the end , she's forced to shoot him at the doorway to the apartment house . He looks surprised , says , " You never had no love for me , " stumbles out the door , only to discover before he collapses that she'd been true to her word . There sits the car . And Garfield plops into the rain-filled gutter . Mostly - - throughout the movie - - they talk . Then they talk more . Then they go on talking more . Garfield's character emerges as embittered and cynical , self pitying , angry at those who have betrayed him all through his life , beginning with his mother . But he's not very smart . He allows the family to go out in order to show up at work or run errands , as long as he has one member at home for a hostage . While the rest are absent , in a burst of generosity and hope , he has an elaborate turkey dinner prepared . When they return , he beams with pride and tells them to dig in . But they remain silent , and Mom produces some left-over stew , which they proceed to spoon out without enthusiasm . " I don't get it , " says Garfield . " What's the mattah with the toikey ? Ga head - - cahve it up . " Pop tells him solemnly , " This is our dinner . The turkey is YOUR dinner . " Garfield is dumbfounded . " Huh ? Oh - - I GET IT . " ( Finally . ) It could easily have been a radio play , still popular at the time ( 1951 ) or a live TV show from Playhouse 90 . The budget is low and the story skeletal . Usually they find room for remarks about how this is going to be the hottest day of the year or something . Here the patter is limited to remarks about the future , about good character , about responsibility , and they lead nowhere . I usually find John Garfield's performances likable - - another lower-middle-class guy from New York - - but never magnetic . Shelley Winters usually gets panned but I don't know why . She's never bad , and often better than the script calls for . |
442,034 | 819,382 | 47,966 | 4 | Always remember you're a guest at the party . | Six GIs , about to be send home and discharged , get drunk and sneak into a cult meeting in Asia . Surrounded by hooded figures , two male dancers pretend to have a fight . Behind them , on an altar , a woven basket opens and a figure painted emerges and begins imitating a snake , finally biting one of the dancers on the neck . The imitation snake is dressed in some scaley looking body tights . ( This is definitely a female imitation snake . ) The cult member who has sneaked them into the secret meeting has warned the six men repeatedly that the ceremonies must not be interrupted and , most definitely , no photos must be taken or else they will be hunted down and killed . Naturally , the GIs take a flash photo , send the cult members into an angry hysteria , steal the basket containing the " snake " and run off with it into the Asian night . One of the guys , the most offensive and snarky , dies from a cobra bite on the neck , though no one can explain how the snake got into his hospital room . Back in New York , it all seems rather old news as the discharged men settle down into their civilian lives , still maintaining their bond with one another . Their jobs range from manager of a bowling alley ( David Janssen ) to graduate research student ( Richard Long ) . James Dobson , Jack Kelly , and Marshall Thompson are also part of the neighborhood . Richard Long has a nice blond girl friend . Kelly is a somewhat reckless womanizer . But they all get along well enough and all of them seem happy . Then a dark , shifty-looking , mysterious woman ( Faith Domergue ) shows up and Marshall Thompson takes a liking to her and insinuates her into the group . Guess what happens . First Janssen is terrified by a shadow in the back seat and dies in a car crash . Then Kelly gets a visit from Domergue . Something scares him so badly he tumbles through the window and dies in the fall to the sidewalk . Long and Dobson begin to suspect what the viewer already knows - - that Domergue has had something to do with the deaths . They also reckon that maybe she's turning into a cobra , which is the case . Dobson confronts her with his suspicions and she proves his point . By this time Long and Thompson are thoroughly frazzled , particularly Thompson , who is in love with Domergue and has discovered that she is attracted to him , too , although he must explain to her what " love " is . No matter . A final reckless attack by the cobra woman against Long's girl friend - - not one of the six original offenders - - and Thompson must throw the snake out the window . On the pavement below , the body changes to that of Domergue . The end . I think I'll skip over most of the questions that the plot raises . I'll just mention one of the more prosaic ones in passing . Who paid for Domergue's fare from somewhere in Asia to New York ? Who's paying her utility bills in the hotel ? Who paid for her spectacular wardrobe ? How come she speaks American English so well ? What the hell's going on ? The writers and director have clearly seen some of Val Lewton's modest horror films and , though not much effort has gone into this production , they've unashamedly stolen some gimmicks from Lewton . In Lewton's " The Cat People " , for instance , the woman is transformed into a black leopard but , with one tiny exception , the threat is always kept in the shadows and is all the more spooky for it . Most of the transformations here use shadows too , but unlike Lewton's , the shadows are clumsy and unambiguous . Lewton also made occasional use of what he called " buses " . Lewton's first " bus " was a literal one . A potential victim is hurrying alone through the dark tunnels of Central Park with only the sound of footsteps . Something or someone is following her . She freezes with fright under a street lamp . Something rustles the branches of the shrubs above her . She looks upward . There is a loud , wheezing shriek that makes your hair stand on end . It's a bus using its air brakes to stop for her . The producers used at least two " buses " in this film and they amount to nothing . A guy is walking distractedly across an intersection , for instance , and there is the sudden rumble of a truck that almost hits him . There is no set up to the shot . It's jammed in with a shoe horn . I don't much care for movies that perpetuate the stereotype of serpents as slimy , ugly , venomous , and phallic . As a matter of fact , no snakes are slimy , most are harmless , and many are extraordinarily beautiful . Furthermore , they're more feminine than masculine in their sinuous movements and serpentine approach to goals . You want a reptilian symbol for masculinity ? Try a six-lined racerunner . It's a really fast lizard . When it sees something to eat , it rushes up and gobbles it down . Anyway , if you want to see some fine , low-budget scary films , don't bother with this one . Find " The Cat People " or one of Lewton's other minor masterpieces , of which this is an obvious copy . |
442,909 | 819,382 | 54,614 | 4 | Torpid Modernization of Othello . | I kind of looked forward to this - - Patrick McGoohan , Charlie Mingus , Dave Brubeck , Billy Shakespeare . How could it go wrong ? But it's pretty slow and ultimately unbelievable . When I see a band manager being taunted by a drummer , McGoohan , and becoming enraged while stoned , instead of flinging himself on the couch with three bags of Doritos , there's something wrong . With dialog like , " Do you agree with Margolis that jazz is nothing more than regressive narcissism ? " , I shiver all over . I couldn't even get hep to the music . It's noisy and represents the most banal form of West Coast jazz . And while the saxophonist could keep up , the trumpeter had no idea of what the hell Dave Brubeck was up to at the piano with his fancy time . Brubeck can't act either , though he's not pressed too hard in that regard - - one or two lines . McGoohan CAN act but he's playing a fast-talking hustler and con man here and that's not his strong suit - - not his FORTE , so to speak . He's best at slow , sly , deliberate lines delivered in a clipped voice with odd hesitations as if there are all kinds of wheels turning behind that utterance . Richard Attenborough can act too , but he doesn't put much effort into his role here . There is , after all , nothing to put much effort into . One notable property of this film . If it had been made in the USA , it would have been all about the happy marriage of a black man and a white woman . Racial epithets would have been hurled around . Charlie Mingus , author of " Beneath the Underdog , " would have torn off his clothes on the bandstand and run around naked , shouting , " Oogoo Boogoo MAU MAU . " But in this British movie , nothing is made of the mixed marriage . Nothing is made of race at all . Refreshing in a 1962 movie . It's not bad , in the sense that it's not insulting . It doesn't treat the audience as a horde of unkempt morons . It's just that it's so much less than engrossing . |
442,087 | 819,382 | 424,600 | 4 | Another Bloated Remake . | I don't know why anyone would take a reasonably decent movie like " The Andromeda Strain " from the 1970s and mess with it . Until the last few minutes , the original was like a clearly written technical manual in which a team of scientists tries to solve the puzzle of a lethal organism captured in space and brought to earth . What is it ? How do we deal with it ? The central problems in 1978 have become the MacGuffin here . Nobody really has much trouble finding out what the organism is . THAT conundrum , which was Michael Crighton's chief interest , is booted out of the way quickly in favor of human interest , violence , and political intrigue . Oh - - and special effects that dwarf the modest versions of 1978 , naturally . For the most part , the technical stuff is reduced to 1950s sci-fi gibberish . " Looks like a pure conversion system . " " Try all known bacteriophages . " Scientists use " theory " in the lay sense . " Do you have a better theory ? " They mean " explanation . " If , in the original there was a complicated but systematic detective process through which the organism's sensitivity to extremes of Ph levels was discovered - - here the boring procedure is skipped and nobody has to " figure it out . " The answer comes to the beautiful young scientist in the form of a Kekule-like dream . There is no longer any tension associated with the investigation of the organism . It's as if the writers threw up their hands and figured the audience was far too impatient and stupid to sit through such high-school science antics . Bratt and the babe scientist have had an affair and they talk about why they broke it off . " I'm sure it's not the first time a researcher has had an affair with his assistant . " This is terribly tedious stuff . It's like all the stricken-airplane movies in which the stewardess has had an affair with the pilot . At a tense moment , when the world may be destroyed . Aide : " Is there anything you want me to do , sir ? " President ( thoughtfully ) : " Are you a religious man ? I don't mean every four years but - - do you have FAITH ? " ( Pause ) Aide : " Yes , sir . " President : " Well , then , you can pray . " Now - - if they had only held on the president's solemn expression after he asked about faith , and then cut . But , no . The ritual of this stereotypical exchange must be followed through to its suppurating end . The skeleton of the plot isn't entirely without interest . A message from afar , or maybe from our own future , telling us about a dangerous pathogen . I admit I got lost here and there in the complexities of the story . And the last scene , involving a 2001-style space ship with some kind of serum being stored in a freezing compartment left me behind entirely . I think it was intended to wrap up some loose ends , some unsolved mysteries . I only wish that as much effort had been put into clarifying those mysteries as had gone into the scenes in which victims go nuts on the screen and saw their own heads off with hedge trimmers . It might have been an interesting story . Some of the acting is okay - - Benjamin Bratt and Andre Braugher - - but they don't get to do much . This is a great , big , ambitious , poorly directed imitation of a tidy old movie that should have been handled with more delicacy or just left alone . The MBAs who greenlight projects like this must have just about run out of ideas by now . How else to account for the current cascade of remakes ? |
442,040 | 819,382 | 50,294 | 4 | Big Bug Formula Soldiers On | Something strange is happening in remote areas of the Arctic . An Air Force weather station is found wrecked , its occupants missing . An Eskimo village is destroyed . A fishing vessel disappears . Curious spoors are found in the snow . A four-foot piece of a living organism is found near a destroyed airplane . The piece looks like half of the claw of a giant Alaskan crab . The military ( Craig Stevens as an Air Force officer ) and its experts are baffled . A distinguished scientist ( William Hopper ) and his pretty assistant ( Alix Taltan ) are called in from New York . Hopper deduces from this flimsy evidence that they are dealing with a monstrous praying mantis . He's right . The pretty assistant happens to look out the window of the office and sees the hideous face with its bulging eyeballs staring in at her . She drops what she's carrying , claps her hands to her cheeks , and screams in horror . The mantis begins flying South along the Gulf Stream , pausing now and again to attack major population centers like Washington and New York to overturn buses and eat people . Military weapons don't affect it much but finally Stevens crashes into it in his jet fighter and mortally damages the beast , which comes to earth and occupies the " Manhattan Tunnel " linking New York and New Jersey . Stevens , having survived the collision , leads his team into the tunnel and kills the big bug with " 3RG mines " despite its fierce appearance , threatening behavior , and earth-shattering roars . Stevens and Taltan kiss in front of the body while Hopper chuckles and takes their picture . Ho hum . Like the deadly mantis itself , the formula by this time was panting and gasping for air , flopping around , seeking as its prey not human beings but anything at all in the way of a fresh or original idea . As it is , they overlooked one cliché . Hopper should have hurriedly had to invent a Super Duper DDT that , alone , could defeat the insect . That's what the 3RG mines should have been filled with , rather than ordinary explosive . The model work is pretty good , considering what the budget must have been . Not much money could have been spent on anything else because everything else is pretty routine . Craig Stevens is bland , a face and style made for a TV series . William Hopper looks right - - tall and silver haired - - but his instrument has only one note . The pretty assistant is rather plain , considering her role . The part calls for Joan Weldon or Laurie Nelson . They couldn't act either but carried with them slight but distinct intimations of molestibility . Anything would have helped this fagged-out movie . I wish the deadly mantis hadn't roared so loudly and so often because you can't roar - - you can't even whisper - - if you don't have lungs . I didn't mind , though , when the monster met its demise in the tunnel . A praying mantis is a graceful insect in its own spindly way and it's great to have them in the garden because they eat caterpillars and whatnot . But when you get right down to it , they aren't really very appealing . The male mantis is smaller and weaker than the female , as in humans , and when the couple are just about through copulating , the female bites the head off the male , also as in humans . But at least human males know when to stop . The male mantis keeps on copulating for several minutes even though he is now without a head . We humans don't have mindless males copulating with goal-driven females . Do we ? |
441,757 | 819,382 | 120,696 | 4 | Rain City | There's a certain novelty value in the sight of three jet skis chasing one another up and down the flooded hallways of an abandoned high school during a flood at night . And that's about it . We have thieves led by Morgan Freeman trying to find the money in a small inundated Indiana town that was removed from a stranded armored truck . The surviving armored truck driver is trying to escape from the thieves who want to force the location of the hidden fortune from him . He picks up a sympathetic young girl along the way . There's also a sheriff and one or two pals who don't help much . Now the concept is that this town is being flooded , you see , and we have these three groups trying to find each other . That's the concept . The problem in realizing this concept to to squeeze as many clichés into the story as possible , and to wedge some queer sights into it . They had plenty of previous movies to borrow from . It is , after all , " Titanic " except that instead of a ship sinking we have a town being covered by rising water . Same thing . People locked into a jail cell will be drowned , the same as people jammed into a ship's compartment . The usual conventions of action movies are followed . If somebody dies his death is forgotten in a moment . Under stress , people trade wisecracks . There is an old-fashioned shotgun-wielding couple who won't give up their property and are supposed to provide some chuckles but they don't . In the end though - - after all the chases , after the guns are drawn from underwater and immediately fired , after the boat crashes , the electrocutions , the Olympic-length underwater swims - - in the end , the film is really thought provoking . Here's the thought it provokes . " Morgan Freeman , would you mind telling us what the hell you're doing in a picture like this ? " |
442,320 | 819,382 | 89,757 | 4 | Read a book or something . . . | What could be an interesting story about a madman and the police in pursuit of him is turned into a soap-opera tragedy of the week punctuated by a few anonymous shots fired from a pistol in close up . We learn an awful lot about Detective Ed Zigo's tribulations , mainly centering about his wife's terminal illness , and very little about the key figure in the story . David Berkowitz was a paranoid schizophrenic who worked for the post office and obeyed orders given to him by a neighborhood dog , which he called " Sam . " He led the police and the press a merry chase . The newspapers and TV reporters of the time were going berserk with speculation . He was an ex-policeman because he used the two-handed combat crouch that cops used . ( All he had to do to learn that stance was go to a movie . ) He was on the lookout for girls with long brown hair parted in the middle because of some buried trauma . ( Every young woman in the United States of America had long brown hair parted in the middle . ) He was an artist or an architect because of the fussily neat printing he used in his letters to journalists . ( He was nothing of the sort , just a guy with neat printing . ) He had some kind of cowboy complex because he used a . 44 caliber weapon . ( It was just convenient , he had other weapons too . ) He turned out to be , not David Berkowitz , but rather " David Berkowitz , " an adopted child with an Italian background . ( All my Jewish friends breathed a sigh of relief . ) Whatever his background he was nutty as a fruitcake . A hole in his apartment wall had a cartoon balloon over it , saying , " Hi . My name is Mr . Williams and I live in this hole . " The fact that a guy so flagrantly nuts could work in an ordinary post office without detection is almost as scary as the fact that he could stalk the streets at night . The story was filled with ironies . The ol ' . 44 he toted was built by Charter Arms . It's a large-caliber gun . Yet , despite firing at very close range , he only managed to kill six of his 13 victims with it . Was it possible that Charter Arms ' . 44 pistol wasn't really as lethal as everyone had thought ? A spokesman for the firm was more or less forced , in effect , to defend the product and apologize for the fact that most of the victims survived . None of this is in the film . Not that the acting is poor . Martin Sheen is quite good , as usual , especially hustling across the street to inform his partners that he has just discovered the shooter's identity after searching his car , practically dancing with excitement . But the people making this film didn't seem to know what they were aiming for . The first several shootings take place without elaboration or explanation before we meet any of the characters . The procedures involved in tracking Son of Sam down are skipped over , as if they were interruptions of the tragic drama of Zigo's life , the main subject of the movie . James Edward Olmos , a first-rate actor , is given a surfeit of screen time at the expense of the detective story . There are extended family scenes that deserve no more than footnotes . All of this detracts from the impact and suspense of a sensational story , even from our interest in it . Where did the director and the writers think they were going with this ? Into Plan A , The disease of the week protocol ? If you want to learn about the case , read one of the several books available about it , including a novelized version by Jimmy Breslin . Don't waste time on this misguided effort . |
443,140 | 819,382 | 58,947 | 4 | Tepid WWII Drama . | The years between " The Guns of Navaronne " and " Patton " saw the release of a number of World War II epics and would-be epics , some good and some , like " Anzio " , pathetic . " The Battle of the Bulge " is about in the middle , with nothing much to recommend it and no outrageous flaws . I hated to click on the " Contains spoiler " box above because this is , after all , a pseudo-history of one of the major battles that took place towards the end of the war in Europe and he or she who does not know the outcome has been living on the distant planet of Ymir . But so be it . A poll taken some years ago indicated that a substantial number of America's youth didn't know which side of the war Japan had fought on . So here it is , kids . Spoiler alert . The Allies were at war with Japan and Germany , and by the end of 1944 ( A . D . ) the Germans were running out of everything , especially fuel . Hitler organized and implemented a last-ditch counterattack against the British and American lines in the mountainous Ardennes forest near the German border . Those thick and snowy woods were considered unsuitable for tanks and deemed a quiet sector where infantry already exhausted by combat elsewhere could be sent for rest , and an area where newly formed and unseasoned units could be safely stationed and get used to conditions in the field . Nobody expected the Germans to roll through these mountains with massive tanks and hordes of infantry but that's what happened . Everyone was caught unprepared ( except Patton ) . But the Germans were so short of fuel that the success of the attack depended on the capture of American stores . That didn't happen . The " bulge " created by the attack was squeezed by Montgomery from the north and Patton from the south and eventually disintegrated . This movie doesn't give a viewer a clear sense of what happened . The Germans ' fuel shortage isn't even mentioned until the climax , when it is discovered by Henry Fonda , who plays an intelligence officer . Fonda's figure is a familiar one in war movies . He's the only guy who can figure out what's going on - - and nobody upstairs listens to him or believes him . Most of the other characters are familiar too . The dumb young lieutenant ( James McArthur ) who learns to develop character and leadership from his tough top sergeant ( George Montgomery ) . There's one of those tough , avaricious Brooklyn characters ( Telly Savalas ) who manages to have a romantic encounter with Pierangeli in the middle of this hailstorm of battle . Robert Ryan is wasted as a general . Dana Andrews is Ryan's chief of staff who delights in ridiculing Henry Fonda's warnings with cutting sarcasm . None of the characters are real historic figures . General McCauliffe , who was surrounded in Bastogne , isn't named either , though he's identified as the figure who responded to the German demand for surrender with " nuts . " ( Some have argued that his real response was a single word that , in Samoan would be rendered " turu , " in Selozi " masipa " , and in French , " merde . " ) The most complex character and the most challenging role is that of the German colonel who led the Panzers in the attack , played by Robert Shaw . He's so ambiguous he's almost real , but unfortunately Shaw plays him as some kind of a frozen tree stump who eschews the company of easy women and whose only passion is victory . The most endearing performance is that of Hans Christian Blech who plays the German corporal who is both Shaw's servant and sidekick . His lines , like all the other lines , may be stilted but he makes the sentiments believable . A good actor , here and elsewhere . I've watched this twice now and my opinion of it hasn't changed much . The overall dynamics of the battle are lost amid the tumult of charging tanks , dueling infantrymen , arguments among officers , and faceless figures diving into muddy ditches . There are three or four different plot threads , mostly unrelated to one another . And only one simplified map to tell us where we're headed . There are better cinematic descriptions of the Battle of the Bulge available ( " Battleground , " " Band of Brothers " ) but the incidents are seen from the grunt's point of view and none gives us the more general textbook picture . This one has a grandiose title and aims high , but it loses the battle . |
442,494 | 819,382 | 41,615 | 4 | Emma Bovary : Sensation Type . | Carl Jung , the Swiss psychologist , posited four types of personalities : the sensation type , the feeling type , the thinking type , and the intuitive type . Now , your typical sensation type ( lecturer points to portrait of Madame Bovary ) lives for the moment , switches allegiances on impulse , luxuriates in the indulgence of her sensory apparatus , cannot be depended upon , and is insensitive to the feelings of others except as they affect her . We may forgive a sensation type , but are we really supposed to like her ? Says who ? That's kind of how I felt about this story . I'd heard as a youngster that this was supposed to be a sexy novel . It was known as " Madame Ovary . " So I tried to struggle through it but gave up because it seemed boring . Maybe in French there were grace notes in the prose , absent from the English translation . But I really don't know how anything could have saved this from being a weeper . The viewer gets the general idea quickly enough because the narrator , James Mason , gives it to us right off the bat . The young , poor Emma Bovary ( Jennifer Jones ) lives in a world of romantic fantasy , a kind of Ruritania of the mind , with dashing knights and love in Swiss chalets . Her walls are plastered with illustrations from fairy tales . And she never outgrows this world of make-believe . She doesn't have enough insight to know that marrying the devoted but dull village doctor ( Van Heflin , in a good , bumbling performance ) is not the answer . She attributes her dissatisfaction to her need for a child , a boy . She eventually has the child , but it's a girl and the girl rejects her in favor of her husband and her housekeeper . And who wouldn't reject Emma ? Half the time she's hysterical , and the other half she's about to become hysterical . Anyway , the next thing you know , Emma has taken up with the local clerk and , when he's booted over to Rouen by his domineering mother , she takes up with the handsome , dashing , narcissistic , rich Rodolphe Boulanger ( Louis Jordan ) . She decorates poor Doctor Bovary's house in expensive fabrics and furniture , borrowing secretly from a stone-faced usurer who will in the end bring her and her family down by selling the notes , which means bankruptcy for the Bovarys . She throws herself at the feet of an erstwhile lover and begs for money . " I haven't got it , " he says , and throws her out . In an excess of self-pity ( I didn't notice much in the way of guilt ) she eats some arsenic and is called away to answer to a higher authority . The movie has one or two neat set pieces , directed by Vincent Minelli . There's the scene at the first ball to which the Bovarys are invited , the ball at which Emma first dances with Rodolphe and the awkward , anxious husband gets drunk . I'm not much for balls . Everybody gets dressed up and dances in circles . " I don't know how to waltz , " Emma tells Rodolphe . Well , Emma , neither does anyone else now . In a college class I was trying to get across the notion of dialectics and asked for a volunteer from the audience to help me demonstrate the waltz step . No volunteers because nobody knew how to waltz - - or what a waltz was , for that matter . Minelli sets up this ball , though , so that it's not nearly as boring as most . The guys are boozing it up , the women look gorgeous in their elaborate Walter Plunkett gowns , and when one of the ladies feel dizzy from dancing the host orders attendants to bash out the windows . There is also a wild wedding scene that might have come from Pieter Bruegel or maybe Sam Pekinpah's " Ride the High Country . " Jennifer Jones is Emma with a breathless lisp . Van Heflin is nearly perfect as the humble , inarticulate doctor . ( Doctors in the 1850s weren't as high in the status-sphere as they are today . If they had been , Emma would have been not only foolish to betray her husband but downright loco . ) This role must have stereotyped Louis Jordan because he seemed to play little but the same careless French lover in film after film . However , although I may not have gotten very much out of it , others might . I haven't looked at the user's ratings but I'd be mildly surprised if women didn't give it a higher score than men . Sensation types of either gender are likely to switch channels before it's over . |
442,357 | 819,382 | 116,253 | 4 | Man Was Never Meant to Fly . | David Suchet and his Arabic-speaking goons hijack a 747 with the intention of exploding a bomb filled with nerve gas over Washington and wiping out the eastern seaboard . The hijackers demand the release of an Arab prisoner of indeterminate national origin . Washington is worried . They need not be . Not with Steven Seagal organizing his own squad of electronic wizards and commandos who board the airliner over the ocean . Seagal swiftly disappears from the plot , having business elsewhere , and the team of professionals is an ensemble led by Kurt Russel . This isn't a stupid movie like " Air Force One . " It's just another dumb action movie , and if it seems subdued in comparison with some , it's because you can't have multiple shoot outs with high body counts at a high altitude . So the movie perforce must rely on suspense in addition to every cliché in the Action Movie Handbook . As it is , there are several shootings that take place without , luckily , the slug passing through the recipient's body and then the hull of the airplane . The writers and producers don't trust you to be absorbed enough in the electronic innards of the 747 enough to sit through an hour with no bullets or blood . There is gore aplenty , though , once the airplane's altitude drops below 15 , 000 feet , enough to wake up the sleepiest , most bored audience of children . Below 15 , 000 feet decompression can occur , as the Handbook stipulates . Actually , it takes place at altitude , and we see the usual screaming passengers groping for their oxygen masks through the loudly swooshing escaping air stream filled with whirling papers and other debris . ( Cf . , page 251 of the handbook . ) No stereotypical incident or character is avoided . David Suchet is a fine actor but he's given lines like , " Today I free the sword of Allah and plunge it into the heart of the Infidel . " There is the inevitable pair of wire cutters poised , trembling , over the green wire or the black wire connected to the bomb . There is the lip-biting sequence in which the perspiring amateur pilot who has never soloed must land the 747 without help . The sequence was better parodied in the original " Airplane . " Suchet's stated motive must be revealed as fraudulent . He's not doing it for Allah . He's doing it for reasons of personal revenge . One must not offend any Moslems in the audience . ( Footnote , page 241 . ) I didn't mind so much the fact that this is recycled garbage . What really irked me was the presence of Steven Seagal . Every time I see him I try to remember how to spell his name and always wind up getting him mixed up with the horde of other Seagals in Hollywood - - or Siegels or Segals - - they all spell their names differently . There's even a Barbara SEAGULL . The voices tell me that this is part of a cosmic conspiracy on the part of the Seagal Meshpuchah , designed deliberately to drive me mad . And I'm inclined to believe them . The voices never lie - - although they usually trick me when it comes to the stock market . They must have their occasional pranks and I don't object to pranks if they're funny , but this movie is a prank that isn't amusing at all . If you want to see a better version of an airplane-in-jeopardy movie , watch " Airplane " instead . And if anyone insists on doing a remake of this movie - - " Executive Decision II " - - the very thought makes one blanch - - I'd like to suggest that instead of hijacking a 747 with Halle Berry as a stewardess , they just hijack Halle Berry and forget the airplane entirely . More fun for everyone involved . |
443,154 | 819,382 | 112,896 | 4 | Dx : Anemia . | Mel Brooks has brought out a couple of outrageously funny movies , and Leslie Nielson has starred in his own series , but this one measures up to neither standard , alas . One of the problems is that the original " Dracula " with Bela Lugosi was so perfect in its thingness that , after only a few viewings , it's practically a self parody . In the 1930s version , Lugosi serves some drugged wine to Renfield . Renfield : " Aren't you having any ? " Dracula : " I never drink - - wine . " I doubt that the people involved in the production intended the line to be a joke , but that's what it's become . In Mel Brooks ' version , the line is repeated and the camera holds on Leslie Nielson's face , waiting for the laughs to die down . A second problem is that the gags vary from funny to silly , as is usual with Brooks , but there aren't enough of either kind . We seem to follow the 1930s version fairly closely , almost as if it were to be taken seriously . And the jokes that pad out the scenes simply aren't that amusing . In one conversation ( in " ancient Moldavian " ) both Nielson and Brooks try to get the last word in . It drags on . And in the last scene of the movie , Brooks is alone with the coffin containing the now thoroughly cremated Nielson . He glances around , slyly opens the coffin an inch , and shouts in the last word of the ancient Moldavian conversation they'd had half an hour earlier , then slams the coffin shut and strides out with a look of satisfaction . If that's the best that could be done for a climactic gag , well , there's a problem . There are other problems . Brooks is okay in the part of Van Helsin , but Leslie Nielson is a bit old for the part of Dracula , and he doesn't have the accent . ( It ought to be overblown in a movie like this . ) See George Hamilton do a better job with better lines in HIS Dracula parody , " Love At First Bite " . It's not a total waste and there are some funny moments . It's just that there aren't enough of them . |
442,576 | 819,382 | 199,920 | 4 | Pitfalls of Celebrity | An allegation of aggravated sexual assault along with some other unpleasant peccadilloes , including improper use of a broom , are made against half a dozen or so of the most popular high-school jocks in Glen Ridge , New Jersey , by a " mildly retarded " student ( Heather Matarazzo ) . The investigation and building of the case are handed over to the DA's office , where Ally Sheedy and Eric Stoltz are put in charge . Rumors about the case spread through Glen Ridge , an upper-middle-class suburb where the jocks are adored by everyone in the community . ( One of their fathers is a police lieutenant . ) Nobody believes Matarazzo . " Our boys would never take a slut like that down to the basement , rape her , and subject her to such sexual humiliation . " The question is whether Sheedy and Stoltz will ever be able to shape a sufficiently cogent case that they can bring the jocks to trial . Matarazzo is not an ideal plaintiff . She's desperate for love and friendship , and that makes it easy for faux friends to mislead her into making false statements . A slimy reporter says , " You can trust me , " but it turns out the reporter can't be trusted at all . Another student , a very popular girl in school , pulls a Linda Tripp on Matarazzo , pretending to be her bosom buddy but all the while asking her leading questions about the incident - - and taping the results ! As a consequence , watching this story unfold is like being on a roller coaster . At first it looks like a good case for Sheedy and Stoltz . But then , oops , the community organizes against the law . Then it looks good again . But then the reporter interferes . Then that obstacle is no sooner overcome , than Linda Tripp pokes her big nose into the investigation and makes public the tapes that seem to indicate Matarazzo was lying . ( Well , actually , she WAS lying - - but she was lying to her interrogator in order to please her . ) Then that's overcome , but Matarazzo objects to taking the stand because she doesn't want to be characterized as " retarded . " Eric Stoltz is fine in the part of the prosecutor . I say that for the simple reason that he and I lived in Pago Pago around the same time . ( I hope he wasn't the kid I had that altercation with at the bar of the Seaside Club . If he was , I take back my compliment . ) Ally Sheedy is a strange actress and hard to characterize . She did a marvelous self-restrained job in " Fine Art " but I didn't sense any particular effort being put into this role , which was rather formulaic anyway . I mean , neither she nor Stoltz nor anyone else could give a bravura performance in what's essentially a comic book story . The producers and director had the good sense to choose Heather Matarazzo for the role of victim . The very worst thing they could have done is cast an ethereally lovely , neotenous blond . Instead , Matarazzo , without being at all ugly , looks rather plain and this ordinary quality is complemented by her grooming and make up . Nor have the writers turned her wistful and gentle . She has a temper and is sometimes irritating to listen to , which is all for the good . Matarazzo's character is the best drawn in the film . The jocks are stereotypes . Pure evil . They think themselves above the law , barge in on some nice girl's party in East Orange , trash the place during a party far worse than " La Dolce Vita's " climactic orgy , and leave without explanation or apology . They deserve to get it in the neck - - and they do . I referred to this as a comic book story and that's pretty much what it is . It challenges none of our prejudices . It reaffirms out belief that the world can be divided into Good and Evil . And we don't have a moment's doubt about who's who . What I'm waiting for - - not really , that's just rhetorical - - is a movie almost exactly like this one and a dozen others , but in which the victim is LYING in order to get her name and photo in the papers and garner all those sympathy chips from right-thinking folk like the rest of us . The film is based on a true story , as are so many others we've all seen , and even more fictional features . ( Eg . , " The Accused " . ) Some are good , some are strictly routine . Okay . Fair enough . Now when do we get to see a film about the Tawana Brawley case , in which the teen-aged girl disappeared on a whim for a few days , then had her friends strip her , tie her up , and smear her with dirt , so she could claim she'd been abducted and raped by the police ? Now THAT would be a challenge in a way this one simply is not . |
442,943 | 819,382 | 210,719 | 4 | Isn't it time to give up ? | I hate to do this but how can one NOT compare the several Gatsby films to the novel on which they're based ? The book has three outstanding features : ( 1 ) A somewhat disjointed narrative in which Gatsby is a man of mystery until half-way through , and then POW . It's like Hitchcock killing off Marian Crane in the middle of " Psycho " . ( 2 ) A first-person narration by the naive but thoughtful Nick Carraway , whose prose sometimes edges sideways into poetry . And ( 3 ) a subtext about the death of illusions , romantic and otherwise , as they bark their shins against reality . How does this TV version , from 2000 , handle the story ? Well , the mystery is over with in the first 15 minutes , when a flashback shows us the first meeting between the lovers Daisy Fay and Jay Gatsby . Daisy even gives him his fake name . ( His real name is Gatz . ) Any mystery behind the way Gatsby makes his living is likewise done away with , unlike the novel , which only hints at a slightly crooked source for his immense wealth . According to the film , Gatsby and his partners in crime forged bonds and sold them . Nick burns the documents at the end to save Gatsby from being labeled a swindler post mortem . The prose , out of necessity , is clipped and trimmed for Nick's voice overs . Too bad . Some of the most famous lines are retained intact ( " And so we beat on . . . . " ) . Others are pruned . " In his blue gardens , men and girls came and went like moths among the champagne and the whispering and the stars . " In the film , " and the stars " is dropped , probably because the scene in which it's heard is shot during daytime , but it still leaves us wondering what moths are doing in the garden when the sun is shining . Much of this kind of surgery can't be helped in transposing a written work for the screen , but this movie doesn't give us much visual compensation for the loss of Fitzgerald's writing . Daisy's observation that " poor boys don't marry rich girls " is dropped . Daisy is wrong , of course . It's not just a matter of money , because Gatsby is now filthy rich . It's a matter of class and character . In Tom Buchanan , Daisy has found a companionate moral moron . The disillusionment - - well , Nick Carraway's disillusionment anyway - - is kept pretty much intact . It pervades the narrative , and the writers have wisely preserved the most relevant parts . Nick begins by telling us that when he was a young boy his father warned him against making hasty judgments about others , and Nick in fact avoids such judgments until the day of the somber " party " at the Plaza ( or the Biltmore , in the film ) . He realizes on that occasion that today is his birthday . He's 30 . A milestone age , when one becomes experienced enough , mature enough , to begin making judgments about others . And it's on this day that he realizes how worthless Tom and Daisy are , how stunningly and stubbornly romantic Gatsby is , and it's on the next morning that Nick tells Gatsby that " they're a filthy bunch . " You can't repeat the past , Nick tells him earlier . " Why of course you can , old sport , " replies Gatsby easily , wrapped in his fantasies . The production , while not as splendiferous as the 1975 version , is good enough . The performances vary . Nick Carraway is okay , and so is Toby Stephens as the deluded Gatsby who mistakes high-end whoreishness for love . Myrtle is vulgar without being sensual . Wilson is adequate , no more than that . Mira Sorvino is miscast . She has a decent range as an actress - - eg . , " Mighty Aphrodite " - - but she is not the frivolous , nervous , high-pitched , silly , careless Daisy of Fitzgerald's novel . She plays Daisy's love affair with Gatsby straight . She makes us believe that Daisy's whimpering submission to Gatsby's advances are a sign of something genuine , instead of an airhead getting it on with an old beau . And Tom Buchanan is miscast too . Tom Buchanan is an ex-athlete , a polo player now . The book emphasizes his musculature and his dominating demeanor . The actor , Martin Donovan , has done decent work elsewhere but here he comes across as whining and snide , not the kind of guy who commands his environment . I wish I could recommend this but I think I'll recommend the novel instead . |
442,008 | 819,382 | 406,816 | 4 | The perfect stereotype ? | I wish I knew what to make of a movie like this . It seems to be divided into two parts - - action sequences and personal dramas ashore . It follows Ashton Kutsher through survival swimmer school , guided by Master Chief Kevin Costner , then to Alaska where a couple of spectacular rescues take place , the last resulting in death . I must say that the scenes on the beach struck me as so stereotypical in so many ways that they should be barnacle encrusted . A typical bar room fight between Navy guys and Coast Guardsmen ( " puddle pirates " ) . The experienced old timer Costner who is , as an elderly bar tender tells him , " married to the Coast Guard . " The older chief who " keeps trying to prove to himself that he's still nineteen . " The neglected ex wife ashore to whom Kostner pays a farewell visit . The seemingly sadistic demands placed on the swimmers by the instructors , all in pursuit of a loftier goal . The gifted young man hobbled by a troubled past . The problem is that we've seen it all before . If it's Kevin Costner here , it's Clint Eastwood or John Wayne or Lou Gosset Jr . or Vigo Mortenson or Robert DeNiro elsewhere . And the climactic scene has elements drawn shamelessly from " The Perfect Storm " and " Dead Calm . " None of it is fresh and none of the old stereotyped characters and situations are handled with any originality . It works best as a kind of documentary of what goes on in the swimmer's school and what could happen afterward and even that's a little weak because we don't get much in the way of instruction . It's mostly personal conflict , romance , and tension about washing out . It's a shame because the U . S . Coast Guard is rather a noble outfit , its official mission being " the safety of lives and property at sea . " In war time it is transferred to the Navy Department and serves in combat roles . In World War II , the Coast Guard even managed to have a Medal of Honor winner in its ranks . But , again , we don't learn much about that . We don't really learn much about anything . The film devolves into a succession of visual displays and not too much else . A disappointment . |
443,152 | 819,382 | 41,253 | 4 | Second-Hand Stuff . | Raoul Walsh does his usual yeoman-like job of directing this mediocre Western with Joel McRae as an outlaw trying to make one last big haul by robbing a train , Dorothy Malone as the young woman he thinks he loves , and Virginia Mayo as the girl who is , as he finally realizes , made for him . Walsh also directed the original story , " High Sierra " , with Humphrey Bogart , Joan Leslie , and Ida Lupino in the same roles . " Colorado Territory " absconds with the story but leaves John Huston's felicitous script behind as scraps . Walsh has never directed a dull film , and this isn't dull . What it is , is simple minded . All of the subtlety and ambiguity that made the original so fine , so artful , is discarded and instead the characters and their motives are simplified to the extent that any particularly aware third-grader can grasp them . What I mean is - - how should I put this ? Maybe I can make the point by giving an example . In " High Sierra " , Bogart meets a simple , kind old man with a crippled grand-daughter who needs an operation . That's the teen-aged Joan Leslie we're talking about , and , man , she looks good , though rendered sullen by her disability . Bogart comes into some loot and gives much of it to Joan Leslie's family so that she can have her operation . Meanwhile , he falls in with Ida Lupino , a whore who has been kicked around , loves Bogart , and will do anything for him . Before adopting Lupino , Bogart tells her that there's no place in his life for her . ( He's thinking of settling down with Joan Leslie once she's fixed up . ) Leslie's operation is a success and from her recovery bed she showers Bogart with gratitude - - but not love , as she explains to Grampa . On his next visit , Bogart finds her drinking and jitterbugging frenetically with a boyfriend . Leslie is still grateful to Bogart but she rejects his possessiveness , and he leaves her forever with Ida Lupino . Huston and Walsh fill these scenes with love , ambiguity , a frantic hope and a hopeless remorse . In the remake , the Joan Leslie figure , Dorothy Malone , has nothing wrong with her except that she is greedy and treacherous . Although McRae gives the family enough money to start their farm , Malone tries to alert the sheriff to MacRae's presence in order to collect the twenty-thousand-dollar reward . The Ida Lupino character , Virginia Mayo , actually has to have a physical fight with Malone to keep her from rushing out the door . There is no ambiguity , no sense of real life . Malone is not a nice , if slightly empty-headed girl , who wants to just enjoy her new freedom . She's a bad girl . " Colorado Territory " is miscast , as well . Joel McRae is a good light comedian or light action star - - a nice guy . He's not the tough ex-con that Bogart was . And Virginia Mayo is supposed to be part Pueblo Indian , though she looks about as Indian as Jean Harlow , the heavy makeup notwithstanding . One of the most touching ( because grounded ) elements of the original is that Bogart had to give up the vivacious young Joan Leslie for the older , husky , used , and rather plain Ida Lupino . In the remake , the succulent Virginia Mayo of 1949 could give Dorothy Malone a run for her money any day . It's like a high-schooler having to give up his romance with the head of the girl's cheer-leading squad for the love of the Prom Queen . There's not much of a sense of loss . I've picked out just one set of relationships to compare , but any viewer could easily spot a dozen more in which the original is superior to the remake . ( Humphrey Bogart , describing what a Tommy gun sounds like , taps his finger three times on the desk and says , " Tap tap tap . That's all . " Nothing like that here . ) Nice location shooting , but if you want to see a movie made for adult sensibilities , rent the original . This remake is pretty watered down . |
441,893 | 819,382 | 315,297 | 4 | Red Herrings in the Fog . | In some ways the best touch in this movie , efficiently directed by Philip Kaufman , comes at the climax . ( Caution : spoilers ahead ) Ashley Judd as the chief suspect is a serial murder case is forced to watch her avuncular mentor , Samuel Jackson , blow his brains out at the end of a foggy San Francisco pier and flop into the nightime water of the bay . As the sound of the shot fades , we hear the barking of distant sea lions roused from their sleep . That's just about it for the good touches , except to say that the performances are good , as we might expect from such a cast . The location shooting isn't bad either , avoiding many of the clichés found in San Francisco movies . ( No car chases down Vermont St . ) Frankly it's the plot that well and truly sucks . Ashley Judd is a decent actress but the part calls for her to be a casually and aggressively promiscuous police officer who always dresses in black , right down to her underwear . Don't get me wrong . She looks just fine in leather jackets , and in black underwear too for that matter . But she seems tiny , chubbily childlike , innocent , and this macho stuff doesn't come easily to her . And the role itself is almost an impossibility . It's one of those deals in which the investigator keeps coming up with more and more evidence that he or she is the criminal . Not too much effort is put into explaining this . Something to do with " bad blood . " And there are plenty of red herrings in San Francisco Bay . There are a couple of ex-boy friends who know all her habits and might be responsible . Then there's Andy Garcia as a potentially new boy friend . Is he killing all her ex-lovers out of jealousy ? Is it someone whom she does not know but has been studying her habits ? Is it a complete stranger ? Is it really serial suicide in which several unrelated men first torture themselves with cigarettes and then pound their own faces to a pulp with some kind of martial arts wooden instrument that looks like a dildo ? And how ABOUT those sea lions ? I've made it sound kind of silly , but that's okay because it is . I like it as much as I do because it's more of a mystery than another boring action flick . There's a bit of the old ultra violence but only one shot is fired on film and , in fact , there aren't showers of gore and exploding fireballs as somebody's car rolls off the road . I wish more effort had been put into pruning the mystery , into making it more logical , into filling in plot holes . Well - - two examples . One : Can a completely loony serial murderer turn his rage off for 15 or 20 years and then decide to turn it on again ? How does he manage to keep his job at the post office or wherever if he's so bonkers ? Why doesn't his explanation of the murders make sense ? ( That was all in the way of one example . ) Example Two : We find out that Ashley Judd couldn't have committed the murders because she'd been rendered unconscious by a drug someone put into her wine . Okay . Then how come she wakes up one morning after another victim has just been pounded to death and she finds she has a black eye and some blood on her ? How do you commit self-echymosis , especially when you're asleep ? And why does the drug turn out to be a " date-rape " drug with a long name ? And why is such emphasis placed on the fact ? Why not just a plain old safe chloral hydrate cocktail ? End of example two . I could go on but won't bother . Man , this is a muddled story . I don't know how such a talented cast and director became involved in it - - or why Veronica Cartwright is reduced to a featured bit part so small that she is uncredited . But then this movie leaves a lot of questions unanswered . |
443,198 | 819,382 | 461,872 | 4 | Aping a success . | Traffic was a well done film , clear in its ambiguity , and ending with a small and ironic victory after a string of defeats . There were few heavies - - most people were in the grip of self interest . Less effort went into this production . I missed most of the first part but the texture of the flick is apparent from what I caught . The most surprising and effective part is the location shooting . For a Lifetime Movie , this is unexpectedly grimy . It ends with a shootout in Newark in the rain . Well , considering that it's Newark , I guess we can't say that the location is especially dirty . The rest of it is probably above average for a Lifetime Movie and below average for what it attempts to be - - the expose of a shocking trade in illegal goods , namely human beings . Southerland is fine . He's aging nicely . Mira Sorvino doesn't belong in this part . The structure is confusing in a way that " Traffic " is not . And the plot is more like a James Bond movie . It gives us a ring of human traffickers with a lot of organization and a single heavy sitting on top - - a kind of Doctor No or Blofeld - - who is killed off at the end . ( He takes 94 bullets - - I counted . ) Perhaps worst of all , it takes a problem which undoubtedly exists ( name a vice that doesn't ) and PREACHES at us for neglecting it ! The problem needs to be carefully studied and , as far as I'm aware , it never has been . Surely pretty young people wind up in some sort of sexual slave trade , but I would guess that they are mostly kidnapped from ( or sold by ) families on starvation diets in third-world countries . Few of them are likely to be beautiful Russian models or preadolescent girls from vacationing middle-class American families . And it's impossible to imagine why it would be necessary to trick and brutalize women from all around the world just to have them wind up in a whorehouse in Newark , where hookers are already a glut on the market . ( Offhand , I would expect to find a lot of Africans , Afghanis , Indians , and possibly Chinese girls among the kidnapped . ) But , to be sure , I don't know the dimensions of the problem . No one possibly can at this point . So the outcry of mass rage that the movie inspires is not yet justified and , even if it were , has no target yet . There's another feature film floating around on TV that follows the kidnapping selling of the president's daughter , no less , and winds up with her rescue at Dubai , UAE . That movie uses our new enemies as heavies - - the Arabs . This one uses a tried-and-true heavy - - the Russians , cashing in on sentiments left over from the Cold War . German heavies seem to be fading away , along with people who remember World War II . It's remarkable , the way political winds sway our fictional narratives . " Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Iranian " , anyone ? |
442,795 | 819,382 | 366,627 | 4 | Good Cast , Hobbled by Poor Script . | Nice cast , all of whom have done interesting work elsewhere . It's good to see Kris Kristofferson still working after all these years . He's stretched his skills to encompass heavies and here , darkly bearded and wrinkled , he fits the role of the Medical Director , half sadistic , half bedside manner . Jennifer Jason Leigh is good as well in a low-key part as a humanistic psychiatrist . Adrian Brody has played characters so obnoxious ( " Oxygen " ) that my appreciation of him as an actor was tainted , but he's since redeemed himself in my unimpeachable opinion . He keeps his performance under restraint here , so to speak , and manages to do a convincing if highly improbably love scene with Keira Knightley . And this despite his having a nose that , like Cyrano's , marches on before him by a quarter of a mile . But who put this mish mash together ? Brody , a Gulf War vet , is framed for a cop killing and sent to a hospital for the criminally insane . Like Randall P . McMurphy before him , he upsets the routine and is tortured for it . He's strapped down on something resembling a morgue slab , shot full of dope , and slid into a closed drawer where he hallucinates to beat the band . Something about time travel enters the picture . It's all confusing and not very believable . I'll give one instance of the improbable . Brody is shabbily dressed , an escapee from a funny farm , bearded , disheveled , standing by a roadside telephone on Christmas eve . The sultry Keira Knighley happens to be a waitress at the nearby diner and , seeing this dangerous-looking stranger , offers him a ride . " Where are you going ? " she asks . " I don't know , " he replies distractedly . Let me ask you , the experienced driver who knows the lay of the land and has seen slasher movies involving deranged hitch-hikers - - what would YOU do at that point ? What SHE does is take him to her home , invite him to fix something to eat while she bathes , and puts him up on her couch for the night . All that's missing is the sign over her front door : " Welcome Serial Murderers . " The direction is no help in understanding this olla podrida of unrelated episodes . While on the morgue slab the camera descends into Brody's iris and this is an excuse for multiple flashbacks in high contrast and black and white , only seconds long , and empty of meaning . I didn't bother watching the end . Maybe the creature lifts itself out of the muck and wobbles on to a satisfying conclusion . Isn't it pretty to think so . |
443,610 | 819,382 | 111,257 | 4 | Movie Culture | It's always interesting to look at movies through history as if they were all part of the same overall culture , drawing on similar behavioral conventions and technologies . Like living cultures , movies have a historical context , undergo innovations , evolve over time to reflect changing folkways , and so forth . Speed gives us an ultimate example of innovation and originality , leading through convention , to utter decadence . There have been speed movies ever since there were movies and they were new and exciting at the beginning . The Keystone Kops were pretty good . Then they became conventional , with Model As careering around urban corners , tommy guns blazing out the windows ; Bogart wheeling his speeding coupe up the slopes towards Mount Whitney in accelerated time . The big ones were saved until the movie's end usually . Then the car chase underwent what anthropologists call a revitalization movement . I'm talking about Bullitt . Nothing like this chase had ( or has ) been put on film . Then we enter a period of decadence , which we may define as increasingly perfunctory repetition and variation of a once-original idea . ( The ancient Egyptians drew very careful open hands in their hieroglyphic script . Over the millenia , with less attention being paid and with a good deal of sloppy borrowing going on , the open palm managed to turn into a simple delta shape , from which we get our letter D . That's decadence . It's a real thing . ) Well , if it's good once , let's do it again and make another nickel . Other outrageous chases followed in The French Connection , the Seven Ups , and so on ; nicely choreographed but no longer original . Now the public has seen enough car chases . Let's introduce other vehicles into the chase . We can use a runaway cruise ship . Let's put the chase at the beginning - - why make the audience wait until the end ? Beverly Hills Cop STARTS with a chase involving a car and some kind of garbage truck . Finally we reach a sort of climax with Speed . With the exception of some shenanigans on and in an elevator , the entire movie is one big chase involving diverse vehicles , most prominently a bus . Sandra Bullock is cute as the wisecracking girl drawn into the plot . Keanu Reeves is clean-cut and handsome , no more than that . But none of that matters . The only important thing is that lumbering behemoth banging cars off the freeway , leaping through 50 feet of open space , and smashing everything in sight . It's thrilling . Of course it's thrilling . We could dispense with the characters entirely and it would still be thrilling - - a thrilling hour and a half of a bus zipping along the streets of Los Angeles like a juggernaut and demolishing everything it can . I'm wondering . Surely they have a video game for children out by now , called " Speed . " One point for each traffic sign or highway cone . You get five points for squashing a pedestrian . Ten points for a wrecking a car . Fifteen points for a truck . Glancing blows earn you half credits . If you turn too quickly and flop over , or if you hit a locomotive , you lose . |
443,201 | 819,382 | 373,450 | 4 | Weak murder mystery . | It starts off alright , as a kind of " Goodfellas " dealing with a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis team in the 1950s . Kevin Bacon's narration , both matter-of-fact and kinda surprised , carries the viewer along in exposing the corrupt underbelly of the Martin-Lewis bonhomie . But the problems crop up rather quickly . What can this movie tell us about Martin and Lewis that Jerry Lewis hasn't told us already ? But that's the best part . After the introduction to the phoniness behind the act and the telethons , it turns into a routine murder mystery , and a not very interesting one . No - - more than just not very interesting . Absurd . Ionesco couldn't have developed a more bizarre plot than one of the comedy team , a homosexual in the oppressive 1950s , murdering an exploitative young woman and the team , in a panic and still stoned on Tuinal , packing her body in a crate full of lobsters and ice and shipping it from Miami to Newark . The only thing is - - the butler did it . I swear I'm not making this up . Most of the acting is okay , except for Alyson Lohman as the central figure . She looks fine and should have a flourishing career in afternoon romantic dramas . Kevin Bacon is pretty good . As he's aging , he's acquiring some character . His face seems now kind of monkeyish but not at all unpleasant , and his voice is a deep-throated kek kek koaxx koaxx . When he tells his story in voice-over we can believe him . As an entirely , though , the movie isn't worth watching . At least I don't think so . Others might . It's not so poor as to be either insulting or funny . It seems more confused than anything else . |
442,805 | 819,382 | 102,614 | 4 | See Brooklyn and Die . | A cop's partner is killed for no apparent reason , giving the cop a revenge motive . He searches for the killer around his Brooklyn neighborhood , beating the crap out of anyone who gets in his way , and running into a couple of cute babes and elderly capos along the way . There is an outrageous shootout at the end , with the cop more or less eliminating everyone in an apartment house all by himself . Bodies abound . Right . You've seen it a thousand times before . This one has some twists . Well - - they almost HAVE to have twists unless they are shot-for-shot remakes of one another . First , and try to remember this because it's important , Steven Seagal tries to act like somebody other than Steven Seagal . Well , that's not entirely true . He tries to SPEAK like someone other than Steven Seagal . It's the kind of New York Italianese English that we've become familiar with through mafia movies , the kind of speech in which " business " becomes " bidness . " These phones are embodied in the expectable locutions . " Now , I need to tell you this , meaning no disrespect . " That's twist one . Twist two is the attention paid in this film to emasculation . I missed the first half hour or so , and I was not deliberately counting , but in the last fifteen minutes alone , Segal manages to kick two no-goodniks in the cojones and thus disable them . A third , he handles with a shotgun blast . That's six abused testicles in 15 minutes - - or one testicle every two and a half minutes . Third - - and this isn't a twist at all - - third , Seagal wallops everyone without ever seeming to breathe hard . More than that , although they may gang up on his six to one ( and these are tough guys ) they never land a blow on screen . Everyone else is rendered unconscious , sprawled across the furniture and pool tables , their noses broken , while Seagal looks around serenely , fondling a pool ball . I can't let this go without mentioning that the bad guys are gluttons for punishment . Poor Bill Forsythe , my co-star in " Weeds " . He emerges from hiding towards the end and says go ahead and shoot me , an unarmed man . When Seagal invites him to fight mano a mano , Forsythe grins and literally leaps at the chance , which only gives the film makers an excuse to see the really bad guy get it over and over and over again . He's a bleeding shambles on the floor , a short , pudgy guy , out of breath and barely conscious , but he still reaches a quivering hand out for a corkscrew or eggbeater or something , so that Seagal can REALLY let him have one . If you like mindless action or the sight of Seagal trying to be someone else , you should love this . |
442,105 | 819,382 | 107,420 | 4 | Routine Mystery | What an uninteresting hodge-podge . It could have been something more but no imagination seems to have gone into the script or the direction . A man is framed for murder by his wife and her lover . The conspirators do a pretty thorough job of making him look guilty . But the man ( Richard Thomas ) , whose psychiatric records reveal him as " stable " and " unimaginative " , manages to escape from jail , beat it to the conspirator's beach house , and secretly record a conversation between them in which they reveal their guilt . Then he accidentally drops the tape recorder with all the evidence on it into the sea water but manages to retrieve it . He shows a heck of a lot of creativity and improvisational skill for an unimaginative guy , if you ask me . The tape is now damaged goods but it's enough to break down the wife's lover and he sobs out his confession . Bad people are punished . Good people are saved . The location shooting is impressive . The beach house is nothing more than a wooden exterior thrown up on the grounds of Fort Fisher Battlefield on the Cape Fear peninsula . The house was torn down immediately after the production wrapped . It's a pretty place . Unfortunately it's a little hard to see because someone seems to have shot every scene through a pair of pantyhose stretched over the camera lens . It's all very fuzzy . And for all the natural splendor of the location the viewer never gets a real sense of place , of what the sand feels like , of the texture of the gray bark on the stunted evergreens . The acting is okay but the performers have nothing much to work with . The best performance , as is often the case , is given by Dick Olsen as a sleazy but not unsympathetic defense lawyer . Virginia Madsen radiates infidelity with every beat of her eyelashes . Ted McGinley is within his range as an immoral weakling . The musical score neatly blends the ominous with the mysterious and is effective . If you want to hear the original , from which this was ripped off , rent Hitchcock's " Vertigo " and listen to Bernard Hermann's suspenseful theme . I can't think of any particular reason to catch this one except utter boredom . |
442,051 | 819,382 | 35,489 | 4 | Lycanthropy is a real disease ! | It's hard to imagine that this was a product of 20th-Century Fox because it looks so much like a B feature from Universal Studios - - the isolated mansion , the absence of daylight , the ground-covering fog , the spooky music , the family haunted by a curse , the dark figures slinking through the shadows , and most of all the werewolf . I haven't read the novel but the writers have used every cliché in the monster book . I could hardly sit through it - - wouldn't have sat through it except that I'd bought the DVD . There's nothing wrong with John Brahm's direction except that it's flat and unimaginative . He's done much better work elsewhere , as in " The Lodger . " Really - - in a dark corner of the room , a hairy hand sneaks out from behind a heavy curtain while the musical score tells us to notice it and be frightened . There is not only no poetry here ; there's very little effort at all . The script sucks . The dialog not only lacks sparkle but is predictable from moment to moment . There is even one of those ancient proverbs that serves as a warning , " Even the man who is wholesome and sane must cover his rear as he walks by wolfbane . " Something like that . ( Repeated twice , and also displayed on a plaque . ) And the score , by the way , so stereotypical , is by David Raksin , who was to go on two years later to produce the pretty little suspenseful and romantic theme for " Laura . " Heather Angel is okay . She has the proper delicate features . But what is James Ellison doing as a Scotland Yard scientist assigned to investigate a death and mauling at the estate of an upper-class British family ? He brings to the part the broad vowels of an American cowboy from Iowa . And the director doesn't help him in the least . Ellison rushes through his scenes as if the film were a one-hour quickie from Monogram Studios . As it turns out , one of the family members suffers from " lycanthropy " - - the belief that under certain conditions he turns into a wolf . The problem is that in this instance he really DOES turn into a werewolf . We see him looking like hairy Lawrence Talbot until he's shot , and then as he dies he assumes his normal human form . A sample of his wolf hair disappears in the lab while under analysis . And yet , at the end , the whole business is treated as a quirk of the victim's mind , a kind of insanity , even by the family's doctor . It makes no sense . Either lycanthropy is a delusion or it's real . The movie gives us both , contradicting itself and papering over the plot holes . The most interesting scenes involve the spectrograph and the centrifuge . Both the instruments had been around for a while so they're not anachronisms . |
442,979 | 819,382 | 328,031 | 4 | Pointless Gore Fest . | I don't know anything of the writer's or the director's earlier work so I hadn't brought any prejudices to the film . Based on the brief description of the plot in TV Guide I thought it might be interesting . But implausibility was piled upon implausibility . Each turn of the plot seemed to be an excuse to drag in more bloodshed , gruesome makeup , or special effects . The score was professional and Kari Wuhrer seems like a decent actress but the rest was more than disappointing . It was positively repulsive . I will not go through the vagaries of the narrative but I'll give an example of what I think of as an excess of explicit gore . Chris McKenna goes to an isolated ranch house and pulls the frozen body of his earlier victim ( Wendt ) out of the deep freeze . McKenna had killed Wendt by biting a chunk out of his neck . Now he feels he must destroy the evidence of his involvement in Wendt's demise . ( What are the cops going to do , measure his bite radius ? ) McKenna unwraps Wendt's head and neck from the freezer bag it's in , takes an ax , and begins to chop off Wendt's head . Whack . Whack . Whack . The bit of the ax keeps chipping away at Wendt's neck . The air is filled with nuggets of flying frozen flesh , one of which drops on McKenna's head . ( He brushes it off when he's done . ) McKenna then takes the frozen head outside to a small fire he's built . He sits the head on the ground , squats next to it , takes out some photos of a woman he's just killed , and shows them to Wendt's head . " Remember her ? We could have really made it if it hadn't been for you guys , " he tells the head . " Duke , you've always liked bonfires , haven't you ? " he asks . Then he places the head on the fire . We only get a glimpse of it burning but we can hear the fat sizzling in the flame . I don't want this sort of garbage to be censored . I'm only wondering who enjoys seeing this stuff . There's no reason to go on with the rest of the movie . Well , I'll mention one example of an " implausibility , " since I brought the idea up . McKenna has been kidnapped and locked in a dark bare shack . He knows he's going to be clobbered half to death in the following days . ( He's literally invited the heavies to do it . ) What would you do in this Poe-like situation ? Here's what McKenna does on what may turn out to be the last night of his life . He finds a discarded calendar with a pin-up girl on it and masturbates ( successfully ) . Give that man the Medal of Freedom ! A monster who looks like Pizza the Hut is thrown into some unnecessary flashbacks . The camera is often hand held and wobbly . The dialog has lines like , " Life is a piece of s . Or else it's the best of all possible worlds . It depends on your point of view . " Use is made of a wide angle lens that turns ordinary faces into gargoyle masks . A house blows up in an explosive fireball at the end while the hero , McKenna , walks towards us in the foreground . Some hero he is , too . He first kills a man for $13 , 000 by bashing him over the head several times with a heavy statue , then a potted plant , before finally tipping a refrigerator over onto the body . ( This bothers him a little , but not enough to keep him from insisting on payment . ) Then , I hope I have the order straight , he kills Wendt by ripping out part of his neck . Then he kills the wife of his first victim by accident and blames the heavies for it , although by almost any moral calculus they had nothing to do with it . Next he burns the head honcho ( Baldwin ) alive . Then , having disabled the two lesser heavies , he deliberately blows them up , though one of them isn't entirely unsympathetic . And we're supposed to be rooting for McKenna . These aren't cartoon deaths like those in the Dirty Harry movies either - - bang bang and you're dead . These are slow and painful . The first one - - the murder for $13 , 000 - - is done clumsily enough to resemble what might happen in real life . It isn't really easy to kill another human being , as Hitchcock had demonstrated in Torn Curtain . But that scene leads to no place of any importance . Some people might enjoy this , especially those young enough to think that pain and death are things that happen only in movies . Some meretricious stuff on screen here . |
441,897 | 819,382 | 71,817 | 4 | Inferior Remake - - Another One . | What's the point ? Why do they do it ? The original " The Mark of Zorro " was not exactly a cinematic classic but it was rousing fun with everyone hamming it up . Well , this is not a shot-for-shot remake , but it uses the same score and lifts some of the dialog from the original . Why ? I guess another nickel might be squeezed out of the adventure tale . I can't think of any other reason to remake a film that was about as good as it could be expected to be . Nothing quite measures up to the original . Nothing wrong with Frank Langella as Zorro . He's convincing enough in his prissy disguise . Further , I admire Langella as a man and as an actor . His craft was important enough for him to write a piece for the New York Times , when , in Italian-American households , according to Gay Talese , being " literary " is a bit of a stigma . If you write a novel like , say , " The Blackboard Jungle , " you change your name . Beyond that consideration ( whatever that consideration was - - I've already forgotten ) , the acting is simply not up to snuff . Frank Langella , okay . Maybe . Although he's given a fashionable 1974 hair style in contrast to Tyrone Power's curly Spanish locks . And Gilbert Roland brings so much history to his role that it's hard to criticize him . The rest of the performances are no better than TV standards . Anne Archer is a beautiful woman , but she is not a virginal teenage Lolita . Makeup has been unkind to her . Ray Middleton as the alcalde lazes his way through the part as if on opiates . Ricardo Montalban is actually pretty good , but not up to the required standards of evil established by Basil Rathbone in the original . In short , well , watch the original if only for one reason . It's better . |
443,346 | 819,382 | 115,862 | 4 | Mediocrity . | If the title , " The Chamber " , is meant to be a pun , it's a pretty good one . There's the judge's " chamber " where decisions are made , and , at the other end , the gas " chamber " where those plans are executed along with the inmate to whom those judgments were passed down . In some ways , the title is the niftiest part of the movie . For John Gresham , whose intentions are always benign , it's a pretty weak story . ( It shouldn't be , with William Goldman doing the adaptation . ) It's Gresham's most pedantic . Condemned are both racist violence and the death penalty , the former more so than the latter . That's the bothersome part of the plot . Okay , Gene Hackman does his best with the role of the lifetime KKK bomber who takes the rap for the real killer of the two Jewish children . But he's miscast . Hackman is not an unreflective , defiant , redneck racist and murderer . JAMES WOODS is that character . Hackman is absolutely first-rate ( without being a bravura actor ) when he gets the right role , whether it's villainous or heroic , but he's never been good with accents and , man , does this role call for one . At that , he gives the strongest performance in the film , with support from a couple of seasoned players like Harve Presnell . Gresham's relatively innocent young idealist , Chris O'Donnell , does not convince . He looks the part alright but his voice and gestures suggest a weakness that the character shouldn't have . And he's the main man . Some of the supporting players , like Bo Jackson as Sergeant Packer , can't seem to act at all . The climax involves one of those detailed execution scenes I've come to loathe . I don't understand why they're there . In a short cinematic exercise in the early 1940s , Orson Welles used the first-person camera to guide the viewer into a gas chamber . Then , in the mid-50s , there was a detailed execution of Susan Hayward in " I Want to Live . " Then there was a hiatus for another twenty years or so before these tasteless scenes came back with a vengeance . Here we get to see Gene Hackman gassed to death , the foamy spittle dripping from his mouth as he expires . But what does this tell us ? That execution is horrifying and painful ? What else is new ? So what do these scenes tell us that we don't already know ? I understand some TV channels are negotiating with Texas to film executions for broadcast . ( How long before the opportunity to pull the switch is auctioned on eBay ? ) What kind of audience do the writers and directors think they're addressing ? The musical score is by Carter Burwell and it's fairly conventional , full of deep and ominous chords . He's a talented composer who has done quirkier work in better films like " Fargo " and " The Spanish Prisoner . " Judging from the movies that are based on his novels , John Gresham is in the not-uncommon position of being at odds with the values of the society he grew up in . A lot of other marginalized writers have also been prompted to explain the sins of their culture's past to the rest of us , beginning maybe with Nathaniel Hawthorne and running through the Southern giants of American literature and playwriting - - Tennessee Williams , Faulkner , and the rest . Gresham fits the mold and his work is interesting , but this is a failed effort . The legal aspects are confusing , the characters a bit muddled , and the story itself either too simple or too complex , depending on how you look at it . |
442,294 | 819,382 | 115,857 | 4 | The very definition of routine . | The frozen landscapes are impressive . Ice-covered lakes , stark bare tree trunks that look black against the snow . It gets so cold that at night you hear trees crack when their sap freezes . In upstate New York , I used to stare out the windows during dull lectures and wonder how the Iroquois could have survived winters in such a climate . Here , unfortunately , we have to look at interiors in Chicago and Washington , DC , and even in the exterior scenes the actors have a habit of getting in the way of the scenery . What happens , very briefly , is that a handful of naive young scientists , including Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz , are involved in an experiment which they hope will supply the world with energy that costs almost nothing . They don't know it but they're working on a secret CIA project . The company intends to suppress the results of the experiment because they don't want a world-wide panic when oil becomes nothing more than a paleontological curiosity . It's cheap energy that is the MacGuffin here , but it could be anything else - - a Fountain of Youth serum , the top-secret formula for Coca Cola , a single pill that keeps you high the rest of your life , a draught that turns you into a Priapistic monster in the blink of an eye , the missing National Guard records of an important personage , the tax returns of another - - anything you like . The whole thing is exciting and full of propulsion and is written and directed strictly by the numbers . It could have come out of Screen writing for Dummies . There is intrigue and suspense in the story , but only enough of a plot to link the violent episodes together , or the chase scenes , just as there's enough plot in a pornographic movie to bring the performers physically together . The casting and direction are able to clear the same , very low bar . The evildoers look ugly . The well-meaning but confused FBI guys look well-meaning but confused . The two innocent leads are beautiful . Not a single opportunity is wasted in pumping up the adrenalin of the viewers . If a hero is being chased across the Michigan Avenue drawbridge and it begins to open , he must reach the very end of the tilted structure and dangle from it . If he and the heroine run through a tunnel while being pursued , he must hold her hand and pull her along behind him . They can out-race exploding fireballs . Why go on ? It's an effective chase thriller if that's what you're looking for . And Morgan Freeman gives an outstanding performance , saddled as he is with lines like , " The world isn't all that simple , Eddie . " What's most bothersome is that the problem that should be at the heart of this heartless movie is almost entirely dispensed with . Homo sapiens ' place in the ecosystem in which he plays such an important part is hardly dealt with - - not even in passing . Our place in nature seems to be too important to be used as a Hollywood gimmick , a device to hang an uninspired plot from . I don't mean the movie has to be full of gravitas . But even comedies have done a better job of dealing with the kinds of questions this film raises . See " The Man in the White Suit " for an example . |
443,571 | 819,382 | 109,198 | 4 | You have already seen it . | Madeleine Stowe , as Cody Zamora , is a hooker who shoots a man in self defense . Being what she is , that is to say , not being Mother Teresa , she doesn't generate much sympathy in this rough-riding town and the good citizens decide to hang her . " Get on with it , " she tells them with defiant contempt . They're about to do just that when three other young women of dubious repute rescue her at the last minute and ride off . In pursuit are a variety of justice seekers , including Pinkertons and other law types , one or two of them , such as Dermot Mulroney and James LeGros aren't too bad . On the trail they run into the Jarrett Gang . Some of the bad girls , and some of the pursuers as well , carry baggage with them related to the Jarrett Gang . There is a violent shoot out . Now , we must note here that the writers weren't reaching too far for original character names . The leader of the girls is Cody Zamora , whereas the leader of the Gang is Kid Jarrett . I'd be surprised if the writers hadn't seen James Cagney in " White Heat " as a gang leader named Cody Jarrett . At least there were no Wades or Coles or Lukes or Matts , although there was a bad guy named Yuma , which is pretty bad . In fact , though , all four of the bad girls could as easily have been men , or more easily . They WOULD have been men back in the 1950s or 1960s . But then I suppose the Jarrett Gang wouldn't have had an opportunity to treat Drew Barrymore to a lesson in Tough Love . At that , though , this is a BIG improvement over " Westward the Women , " with Robert Taylor as a sadistic wagonmaster hired to cart a caravan of would-be wives out to a female-starved Western outpost . Taylor consistently treats his wards like dirt and actually whips some of them when they don't work hard enough . There's nothing original here except the gender of the four leads . There is some suggested nudity but no simulated sex or anything else to pique one's interest . They just seem to have rounded up four popular actresses and thrown them into a well-worn dusty rut . The climactic gunplay is lifted straight out of " The Wild Bunch " , as are a couple of slow-motion gunshots . No reason for it , except that it had been done before . I thank the whole tenor of the pitcher is captured when there is a scene of them four hoorah gals a-settin ' around the camp fire and a-havin ' a peaceful chat . All four of them is exquisitely dressed and unimpeachably groomed with modern hair styles and make up in full panoply . Not a hair out of place , y'know ? But the make up department has very carefully brushed a comely taupe area on one cheek or a smear of raw sienna across some otherwise impeccable forehead . That's dust and dirt from the road . They been on the trail fer quite a spell . And they talk like they just graduated from Wellesley . ( That's this here classy college back East , kids . ) Not a single " g " is dropped at the end of a word like " nothing , " or - - as we rawboned cowboys like to call it - - " NUTHIN . " How can writers and directors be so careless , so contemptuous of viewers ? Or maybe I'm mistaken . Maybe they have a different audience in mind . But if so , what is it ? |
442,641 | 819,382 | 37,746 | 4 | Now You're a Good Jap . . . . | I saw this movie on TV as a kid and enjoyed it thoroughly - - Flying Tigers ! I saw it again on TV tonight for the second time , and found it to be a howler from beginning to end . It's easy enough to find effective , cheaply made flag-waving propaganda movies made during the war years that have redeeming qualities , properties that make them worth watching . They may be no more than suspenseful actioners , like " Destination Tokyo , " or may have more thoughtful narratives embedded in the framework , like Hawks ' " Air Force . " " God is My Co-Pilot " hasn't got much of anything except a few minutes of good aerial photography . In the air , as usual , a kind of war-time trainer called the " Texan " substitutes for the Japanese Zero-sen , as it did in " Tora ! Tora ! Tora ! " The P-40s are attractive airplanes , with clean lines , although they appear to be Model Es rather than the Cs the AVG used . A small matter . In any case , you can only admire the airplanes for so long before the story line and dialog begin to intrude into your consciousness . Scott's book was a simple , straightforward autobiography . The movie is piled high with extraneous material based on two themes : ( 1 ) a vicious and unrelenting racism that must have been offensive to some Americans over the age of ten even in 1945 , and ( 2 ) something to do with whether Scott believes in God or not - - or was it the other way around ? The dialog stretches desperately to reach upward to the level of banality but doesn't quite make it . I think I should give a few examples and leave it at that . Japanese pilot { played by Hawaiian-born Chinese-American Richard Loo } called " Tokyo Joe " radioing to a P-40 he has lined up in his sights : " Just hold it right there , Yank . " P-40 pilot radioing back : " Don't call me Yank ; I'm from Georgia . " American pilot radioing to a Japanese pilot he's shooting down : " Don't look now , but your Zero's showing . " American pilot to another Japanese going down in flames : " Now you're a good Jap . " General Chennault watching from the ground with a big smile as his pilots slaughter the Japanese : " The boys must be in a good mood today . " The real life epilogue ? Chennault was a pretty clever guy , forsooth , trained his AVG mercenaries very effectively , and warned everyone back in the Western Hemisphere that the Japanese Zero was a remarkably maneuverable fighter , better than anything we had . ( His warning was ignored ; the Zero came as a big surprise after Pearl Harbor . ) There was no room in the U . S . Army Air Force for a hero like Chennault , who had carved out a reputation in some other air force , namely the Chinese , and he was promptly " disappeared . " The original AVG pilots were given the choice of becoming just another couple of guys in the Army Air Force or being kicked out and sent back to the states . AVG disbanded . End of Flying Tigers , except in our national mythology . |
442,988 | 819,382 | 371,257 | 4 | Occurrence at East River Bridge | In Ambrose Bierce's story , " The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge , " a man with a noose around his neck is pushed off the bridge for execution . The rope breaks and the man escapes . He laboriously makes his way home before feeling a great pain in his neck and dying . The whole thing was a dream between his stepping off the bridge and his reaching the end of his rope . That , basically , is the story here except that instead of an execution we have a multi-car accident on the Brooklyn Bridge . " Basically , " that is , the story lines are similar - - but man are the " executions " different ! Bierce's story was a straightforward fantasy . But what razzle-dazzle in this film . Note the splendidly arty effects . Whew . Enough to knock your socks off ! No wonder the list of f / x contributors and consultants and CGI Meisters is twice as long as the cast . I'd like to be able to say I really got a kick out of it because , obviously , a great deal of work went into its construction , but I frankly found it nerve wracking . Dreams , the sex ones aside , tend to be irritating , puzzling , and scary . And this film is all of those things . On top of that , although all dreams that I'm aware of assume a first-person point of view , this one is a dream seen from someone ELSE'S point of view . In other words the dying man sees himself in his dream through someone else's eyes . A patient ( Gosling ) reveals to his psychiatrist ( McGregor ) that he's going to kill himself in 24 hours . The rest of the film has McGregor dashing around all day and all night , trying to help him , in a way my psychiatrist never did ! ( What is his bill going to look like ? ) To ensure our confusion shots are repeated numerous time , sometimes in sequences lasting a second or two . Explosions and sparks . The threat of gun play . A blind man miraculously cured who doesn't seem the least bit curious about how it was done . Somebody's parents who may or may not have been murdered and may or may not be alive . Cameras turn upside down . Actions speed up . The cables of the magnificent Brooklyn Bridge turn into spider webs . Strange characters come and go , uttering non sequiturs . It rains a lot . McGregor's girl friend ( Watts ) is solicitous but can she be trusted ? ( Trusted to do what , you ask ? I don't know . ) After all , she took two razor blades into the bathtub with her in case , after she cut her wrists , she became weak and dropped one of them . We don't get to see her in the bathtub , though , alas . That double razor blade thing was pretty bizarre , but then almost everyone in this movie is hostile or frankly daft as the doctor goes about trying to do good . And the doc seems nuttier than a fruitcake himself . At the end , as Gosling lies dying or dead on the pavement , surrounded by wrecked cars and concerned onlookers , we see among the faces most of the important characters that the doctor has run into during his search . Here's the face of the manager of the book store . And there's his aid . And a Chinese cop . And a black guy who was reading Hamlet . All strangers to one another . ( There are multiple allusions to Hamlet , though their relevance escaped me . ) The movie cheats , actually . Dreams don't flash and spin . They're often ominous but often sluggish and boring too . And you can't READ anything in a dream because , who knows , your cortical bombardment is selective . Another thing about dreams is that they're supposed to STOP when you wake up ( or die ) , whereas the team here simply can't give up its tricks even after poor Gosling has passed . The camera seems to twirl about whimsically and the hell with anybody's point of view . I didn't even truly care about Goslin's being killed , although I wish he hadn't . I didn't get to KNOW him well enough to be thoroughly bonded with his character . I was happy , though , that he went out the way he did . As the red blood cells in his brain yield the last of their oxygen , his head is being held by passerby Naomi Watts who is leaning over him , holding his temples , almost in tears , begging him , " Look at me ! Look at me ! " Okay , I'm looking . |
441,918 | 819,382 | 43,131 | 4 | Concussed , Confused Mitchum Stumbles Through Dullish Crime Drama | I understand that the director , John Farrow , has done some admirable work and that Mitchum is a noir icon when he has a trench coat on , but both the director and the actor are undone by a poor script here . Briefly , Mitchum is a doctor in San Francisco who falls in love with a suicidal patient , Faith Domergue . She would have been undone by the script too , had there been anything worth undoing . Howard Hughes had her " on the hook " at the time . The falling-in-love part lasts about thirty seconds of screen time . Domergue takes Mitchum home to meet her rich father , Claude Raines , who turns out to be her husband . Raines and Mitchum fight and Raines is knocked to the floor of the mansion . While Mitchum is clearing his concussed head in the bathroom sink , Domergue smothers the unconscious Raines and convinces the woozy Mitchum that he , Mitchum , is responsible . Mitchum wants to go to the police but Domergue insists they skip across the Mexican border . We spend about an hour on the road with the desperate duo . Domergue is a nag , a liar , and an ex-psychiatric patient , which in those days was a lot different . Mitchum's concussion is affecting his judgment and his coordination until , by the time they reach Nogales , he is half paralyzed . Mitchum is stumbling about , caroming off the walls and crashing into the furniture of their shabby hotel room , and Domergue tries to smother HIM too after the penny drops . A final confrontation takes place at the border crossing , after which Domergue dies and Mitchum is cleared and returns to his faithful nurse and devoted girl friend from San Francisco . That would be Maureen O'Sullivan , far too canny to let a doctor escape potential husbandhood just because he appears to have committed murder and run off with another girl . As I said , I know Mitchum was a noir icon , but I never had the impression he could act until later in his career when , in fact , he became quite good in some genre movies like " Farewell , My Lovely " and " Cape Fear . " And he was sometimes even better in original films like " Night of the Hunter . " Here , he simply seems to be sleepwalking and , for a doctor , pretty slow to catch on . And I hate to say it , but there's something almost comic about the climax , watching Mitchum drag himself along the street , clutching buildings to remain upright , while Domergue pulls a pistol and shouts , " Don't come any closer ! " There's nothing much else to be said for this patched together B story . The location shooting is not at all evocative and the events implausible . Not implausible in the way that life is , but implausible in the way a lousy script is . Lots of competent character actors give the story what little propulsion it has . You can probably find better ways to spend an hour and a half of your life . |
441,963 | 819,382 | 39,748 | 4 | Routine Crime Melodrama | John Ireland plays Duke , a thief who dumps his wounded partner , sets up a frame for an innocent young man , then goes around knocking off people who are wise to what's going on or who have money he wants or who otherwise crimp his cool , manipulative style . At the end he is caught and killed in a shootout with the good-guy cop . C'est tout . The acting isn't as poorly done as the script . Ireland is one dimensional , but the head honcho is kind of neat , an older guy fond of quoting Oscar Wilde . I'd never heard of the good girl , Shiela Ryan , and now I know why . I keep getting her name mixed up with the far more appealing and vulnerable girl from " Odd Man Out . " Jane Randolph plays a hardened whorish blond who is Ireland's property . It's impossible to fathom what appeal he has for her . He slaps her around , scowls constantly , insults her , and tells her things like , " Why are you getting tough with me ? Crackin ' up like that . Drinkin ' like a fish . I don't like people who get tough with me . " She's his devoted accomplice in the frame too , at least until her conscience gets the better of her and she wants to spill the beans to the cops , at which point what happens to her is what happens to all of the people who try to cross or get tough with John Ireland . When she whines she sounds like Claire Trevor in " Key Largo . " But I don't care is she's garish and nasty . To me she'll always be the pointy chinned adoring friend of Kent Smith in " The Cat People . " Try to shake it as she might , she still has the screen presence of a light cream-filled pastry . The problem with the movie is that - - directed by Anthony Mann or not - - it has no flair . None of the characters has much complexity to begin with and the director adds nothing to what is essentially a routine B crime movie . Nothing INTERESTING happens on screen . When someone is shot , he or she falls down and dies - - period . The camera placement and staging are functional , no more than that . Nobody is quirky . Well , maybe the Oscar Wilde quotes and the perfumed bullets are a nod in that direction but they don't clear the bar . Neither has anything to do with the story . And the guy who is in the hot spot ? The innocent young man who was framed ? He disappears half way through and we don't see him or hear about him again . I guess there IS one particularly noticeable feature of the movie . It's dark . The photography in fact isn't bad . At least we can feel the photographer trying to do something . There are lots of table lamps casting like upward and making sinister faces into images of evil . Sometimes the lighting overreaches . When Ireland is plugged ( oh , so implausibly ) at the end and sinks down out of the frame , the only lighted object we can make out is his right ear sliding deliberately from our sight . |
443,015 | 819,382 | 102,870 | 4 | Average TV Fare | The murder of a lawyer's wife takes second place in importance to the impact of gossip on members of the small town . By gossip , I mean the exchange of supposedly confidential information about persons and their relationships . It's a better research problem than murder because we can all understand why someone might kill someone for personal reasons . They hurt us or they stand in our way . But when malicious gossip endangers the peace of mind and the social status of a heretofore upstanding citizen , we must wonder about it . What is it that makes some of us hate well-known and respected people ? Why do we seem so eager to believe everything bad about them ? The victim doesn't even get a trial , just summary judgment . Briefly , the plot is this . Peter Coyote is a kind of smug defense lawyer who gets Lesley Ann Warren off after she murders her husband . Coyote beams . He's won yet another case , which makes him look good but makes the police chief look like an idiot . Warren becomes enamored of Coyote , power and celebrity being the aphrodisiacs that they are , but Coyote is happily married and has a few kids . He spurns her advances . Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned . Warren hires some dumb stud to kill Coyote's wife , telling the murderer that the whole thing is being instigated by Coyote himself . After the killing , Warren blames Coyote publicly and at the grand jury she testifies that she was nothing more than an intermediary between Coyote and the killer . The cops having been humiliated by Coyote once too often , are happy to dig up whatever circumstantial evidence they can to make him look bad . Then the plot falls apart . Warren takes the stand to make sure that Coyote gets skinned alive , but she begins to stutter . The media describe this as a " nervous breakdown on the stand . " ( It would be nice to see a courtroom drama in which nobody has a nervous breakdown on the stand . ) Coyote is set free . He walks out of the courtroom vowing never to leave Travis . I don't know why he doesn't leave Travis . With some exceptions , the towns folk seem to have leaped on him like a rabid pack of his namesakes on a rotting pronghorn carcass . And what kind of climax is that , anyway ? All this intrigue , murder , family love , gossip , and what happens ? Nothing really , except that Coyote is let go . Peter Coyote is a pretty good actor . He's confident and professional . Lesley Ann Warren is very sexy but cannot act . She should have made more soft-core skin flicks . Those goggling dark eyes , her breathless quivering voice , he nervous little laughs , her tics . Nobody else really stands out . No more than average . It should have gotten more into the dynamics of small-town gossip but the movie isn't ambitious or dark enough to tackle a subject so reluctant to yield simple answer . |
442,774 | 819,382 | 94,669 | 4 | Etiolated | This is the fifth in the recent series of Agatha Christie mysteries to have shown up on film , and it is the least of them . It has the usual all-star cast , though perhaps not as starry as the earlier ones , but it is , ultimately , kind of boring . The best of the series are the two earliest - - " Murder on the Orient Express " and " Death on the Nile . " They were positively marinated in local color . None of the later versions has anything resembling the shot in the introduction to " Murder " in which a uniformed authority figure slurps down a newly opened oyster to test its freshness before allowing the crate to be put aboard the train ; or the shot of the two lovers in " Death " racing across the desert on handsome Arabian horses to a swelling , romantic score . The first two also had plots that were made crystal clear . Those sorts of things are lacking in " Appointment With Death , " despite the quality of the cast and the colorful location shooting . The director seems to have simply not bothered with those touches that add such flavor and exhilaration to what's on screen . And the writers seem to have been unable to come up with a script that holds one's interest . Part of the problem too is with the cast . Lauren Bacall and Piper Laurie stand out as memorable characters , and that's about it . John Gielgud as Poirot's sidekick is fine , naturally , but his role is small and his friendship with Poirot lacks the historical depth of earlier sidekicks . As Poirot , Peter Ustinov seems tired and older , although his performance is less restrained than usual . And the poor guy isn't given much of a mystery to work with . Too many of the remaining cast members seem almost interchangeable . It's hard to tell one from another . Except for Jenny Seagrove . She is not a powerful actress , perhaps not even an especially talented one , but she exudes elegance - - slender , uniquely attractive , and she runs like the wind . But nothing can keep this film from being the dullest of the series . It carries a perfunctory quality , as if everyone involved had been blanched and desiccated by the need to grind out yet another version of a Christie mystery and by the overpowering desert sun . |
442,961 | 819,382 | 119,468 | 4 | You've already seen it . | The niece of a Washington , D . C . , police psychologist disappears from her campus in North Carolina . The psychologist ( Freeman ) goes down to help out the local cops . Shortly , another young woman ( Judd ) , an intern at the local Regional Center is likewise kidnapped . We follow her story as she is taken to an underground dungeon , drugged and bound and raped . She escapes . Judd and Freeman join forces . They match the local kidnappings , which sometimes end in murder , with others that seem to follow the same pattern in California . They fly to California and discover that a cosmetic surgeon who lives in Marina Del Ray ( all L . A . doctors live in Marina Del Ray ) has ordered a huge supply of the rarely used drug that was used on Judd during her captivity . If you find this a little confusing , wait until you see the movie . The plot is not simply complicated , but riddled with lacunae . Unless I blinked at the wrong moment , the movie doesn't explain the relationship between the East Coast killer and the West Coast killer who is duplicating him . I also have no idea how the Eastern killer got hold of the same drug that the West Coast killer is using . And I don't understand why , just before they fly to L . A . , Freeman rejects Judd's suggestion that they notify the F . B . I . It's impossible for anyone to know why , after Judd escapes from the killer's hideaway , she stumbles through perhaps 100 yard of forest then jumps into the river , and yet the police and the FBI still can't find the obvious superterranian entrance to the killer's lair . I mean , why couldn't they figure out that it must be located along a two or three miles stretch of the river , less than 100 yeard from the left bank ? Why do they refer to benzodiazepines as " benzos " when docs call them " diazepines " ? I don't know why the killers off some of the girls and preserve others . The first girl who is offed is Heidi Schanz . The killer deserves to be strung up by his Buster Browns for that . I don't care how many rules she's broken . No additional clarity is provided by the director , who seems to have found out that a camera can be hand held . And the editing introduces further murk . Quick cuts of Ashley Judd practicing her kick boxing in the dungeon , with an occasional brief shot of her doing nothing in particular . Irrelevant tanker trucks that zoom suddenly out of nowhere and almost run Freeman down at a tense moment . Why go on ? Some people will undoubtedly like it because watching it will be comforting . Like all rituals watching a variation on the serial killer theme may provide a fixed point in a changing and disappointing universe . Well , a chaque a son gout . I don't know how many times I've heard Stan Getz's solos with Woody Herman's band , but I could listen to them a hundred more times . Speaking of music , somebody plays a sprightly jig from a suite by Bach and later another piece . The first is really difficult . The violinist deserves a medal for introducing some unexpectedly fresh airs into an otherwise stale production . A shame , too , because the leads are both imposing performers in their different ways . |
442,520 | 819,382 | 51,522 | 4 | Exceptionally Typical Western . | Fred MacMurray is the judge in a small Western town . A man named Rudy Hayes ( Christopher Dark ) has killed a farmer and been found guilty by a jury of his peers , although it's hard to imagine a peer of this unkempt miscreant . The whole town wants to see this guy hanged and MacMurray has already decided that that is what his sentence will be tomorrow . Flies in the ointment . First of all , Rudy Hayes has rather a large extended family , clearly descended from the Kallikaks or the Jukes . Two of these goons are already hanging around town , smilingly telling the judge and his assistant ( Edgar Buchanan ) and the sheriff ( John Ericson ) that if good ol ' Rudy dies , they die too . Well , says everybody , there's only the two of them . But then two or three other Hayes relatives ride into town , each meaner lookin ' than the last . Or - - let me take that back . Nobody looks meaner than Lee Van Cleef . They gang up on the sheriff and beat him . Then they rearrange MacMurray's face . They terrorize the whole town , even the victim's widow , so that everyone begins wondering if , rather than hanging the prisoner , it wouldn't be better to follow the hoodlums ' suggestion and , well , just kinda BANISH good ol ' Rudy and make him get out of the territory . Unbearable pressure is brought upon the judge to follow this path , just as pressure was brought to bear on sheriff Gary Cooper in " High Noon . " Does Fred MacMurray give in and simply banish Rudy ? Or does he sentence him to hang ? I leave it to you , the discerning and experienced watcher of Westerns , to guess . There's a second fly in the ointment . Judge MacMurray has been engaged to Joan Weldon and he plans to marry her as soon as he buys that little house . But he's a circuit judge and this takes him out of town a good deal . During one of his trips , Weldon and Ericson have fallen in love , but both are reluctant to tell MacMurray . Enough of the plot . Not so much because I'm reluctant to give any of its developments away , as that it's not genuinely worth going into in any further detail . Of the acting it can be said that this is a good , seasoned cast of Hollywood regulars - - MacMurray , Ericson , Van Cleef , Buchanan , Robert Middleton , Edward Franz , Marie Windsor - - you'll recognize a lot of faces . And in this inexpensive and somewhat tired Western , they illustrate their range . They ground out these B features like Sonicburgers in the 50s but their day was coming to an end . " Gunsmoke " was around the corner . |
442,579 | 819,382 | 22,854 | 4 | Sentimental and Routine . | I must have missed something here because the movie seems to have found so many receptive viewers , but it's necessary to call them as I see them . And this one is a ball , wide and outside . The tale puts Marie Dressler in the role of Mammy in " Gone With the Wind , " except that Mammy , or Emma , in this case being Caucasian , she gets to marry the rich doctor after his wife dies in childbirth . Of the four children , only one , Ronnie , is gay and loving towards her . The girls are snobs . When the dead doc leaves everything to Emma , Emma of course wants to give it to the children , but the girls gang up on her and Emma is accused of murdering the doc , while Ronnie , flying to her rescue , dies in a crash . Emma is found not guilty but , realizing that she has no place in the home any longer , after 32 years , she bids the girls adieu and heads for the unemployment office or rather - - what is it called now ? The Employment Assistance Ministry ? Anyway , in 1931 , it was the unemployment office , and it still is , though they transpose the name into Esperanto . Not to fear . Emma finds another loving family exactly like the dead doc's and everything ends happily . Marie Dressler is unimposing in every way except for her physical bulk . Her performance is of the period , as is the sob story . The comic element is limited to Emma's fake solo in a flight trainer . I can't find the slightest thing original about it , nothing that would separate it from dozens of other movies made during the early thirties . It isn't a BAD flick . And Marie Dressler may have been a fine and loving person . It's the movie and just about everything in it that never rises above the precisely routine . |
441,957 | 819,382 | 139,809 | 4 | Paper or Plastic ? | I have to admit that this one got beyond me from time to time so these are just some impressionistic shards . It's about a software engineer ( Craig Bierko ) whose boss ( Armin Mueller-Stahl ) is murdered , sliced to pieces in fact , one night in Los Angeles . The police come to suspect him . Bierko feels that the clues to the recent murder lie in the past , in Muehler-Stahl's youth , in the Los Angeles of 1937 . Mueller-Stahl has been working on a device that sends the user back in time and it's possible that he has been leading a double life , one in modern LA and the other in 1937 LA . When the subject's consciousness is transferred , it loses awareness of itself and assumes a different , time-specific identity that does not remember the future . Bierko has his friend and co-worker ( Vincent D'Onofrio ) send him back for two hours . ( Anything more than one hour is dangerous . ) The machine has a glitch or something and before you know it , there are several people switching back and forth from past to present . One of them is Gretchen Mol , which is nice . It's all pretty jumble and confusing to me and seems mainly an excuse for magnificent displays of computer-generated images , bars of laser-light like , and all the expectable rest . Splendid production design , though , in both parallel worlds . Mueller-Stahl is always reliable and Gretchen Mol is a beautiful young woman . Craig Bierko has a talent that seems made for TV . His performance is adequate but illustrates the limits of his range . George Clooney with a voice that squeaks when it expresses excitement . Very good performance by D'Onofrio with a face and demeanor that could go either way . Have you seen the Los Angeles of 1937 in " Chinatown " ? ( If you haven't , then do so at once , I implore you . ) It's all sunny and bright . Fewer cars , less smog . Fewer people , more orange groves and flowers . This 1937 Los Angeles is dark and wet , just like the Los Angeles of the present . Everything is dark . Even the offices of the software company are dark . I'll bet the surgical teams are performing laparotomies in total blackness . Well , maybe a candle or two . It's just a silly fad , this dark lighting . In fact , considering that another movie about time travel and solving a murder was released about the same time , " Deja Vu " with Denzel Washington , I'm beginning to wonder if time travel to solve a murder isn't liable to become a craze in and of itself . It would be nice if it were a genuine possibility . I'd like to go back to 1937 Los Angeles myself , but only with my present consciousness intact , so I could buy up all the real estate and discover Lana Turner in Schwab's Drug Store . Things being what they are , however , and being stuck in the present , I gave up on this about half-way through . It simply didn't seem interesting enough to hold my attention . They blew too many opportunities . For example , there ought to be multiple instances in which people are transported into the past and bump into different fashions of quotidian life . Isn't anyone surprised at the price of gas at the pump in 1937 Los Angeles ? Where are the bottles of milk with the cream separated at the top ? I'm listening to the climax now , from the other room , and it's full of the kind of gun shots that suggest the time-travel mystery has turned into a more familiar shoot ' em up , but in any case I doubt that the sun is shining , wherever and whenever the characters are . |
442,066 | 819,382 | 100,114 | 4 | Macho Man | Have you ever wondered why these guys - - Seagal , Stallone , Willis , et al - - manage to survive all those gunfights in which they're outnumbered ? I think I've got it figured out . The enemies always miss , and the hero doesn't . Here , Seagal has a pistol and outshoots a half dozen heavies firing at him from a few feet away . One of the heavies has a shotgun . Or maybe two of them have . It doesn't really matter . There could be a thousand shotguns blasting away at him and Seagal would still emerge with his ponytail intact . And when it comes to mano a mano combat - - forget it . The evildoers may or may not be armed with swords or knives or blunt object but Seagal , with his skill in aikido or tempura or sushido or play-do or whatever it is , brushes them aside with a few dismissive blows . Not only is he a master of these outré skills but his physical strength is Herculean . More than once he snaps somebody's long bones as easily as we would break a toothpick . One he breaks a guy's SPINE over his knee . I'll tell you something . ( I'm getting into the spirit of the film here because Seagal uses that line , " I'll tell you something , " several times , along with , " What's that supposed to mean ? " ) These guys are fully deserving of extinction in any good Xenophobe's handbook . They are all black , speak with unintelligible Jah-MAY-can accents , wear dreadlocks that look in dire need of a shampoo , they torture and murder with aplomb , and - - here's the worst part . They're unchristian . That's right . They practice voodoo . Actually the voodoo element comes close to being the most interesting element of the film . They got the constituents of the ritual pretty well - - cigar smoke , rum spitting , the sacrificial chicken . They only left out the possession dance in which the spirit rides the dancer . They should have read Metraux on voodoo . Otherwise the plot adheres to the usual conventions . What was done to Jaqueline Bissett by the voodoo-practitioners in " The Deep " is done here to a friend of Seagal's . What was done to John Wayne when he was stuck between trucks in " McQ " is done here to Seagal himself . At the movie's very opening , when Seagal makes a brief speech about having seen too much pointless violence in his DEA career so he's now happily retired , and when we are introduced to his friends and family , I tried to keep track of his affiliates to see if I could pick out which ones would be horribly murdered or maimed to generate his quest for revenge . The acting doesn't really require much comment . But Charles , the Jamaican cop , played by Tom Wright , is really pretty good . Wright has considerable range . Here , he's an associate of dubious allegiance , rather sinister . But in " The Pentagon Wars " he has a comic part that he underplays perfectly . The Jamaicans never flew as movie villains . I don't know why exactly . It's a small movie market . And if you go to Jamaica stick to Montego Bay . However , if you want to see Jamaican voodoo drug dealers as heavies , and if you're in the mood for another typical-standard action flick , this should be a satisfying view . |
443,338 | 819,382 | 74,899 | 4 | Awful | There's no need to go on about this prototypical piece of chauvinistic rubbish except to say that it's an insult to the brave people involved in the battle . Every subtlety is deleted . Every American error glossed over . Obtrusive subplots detract from the essential story . The editing is a mish mash of model work , actual overused combat footage , and excepts from a previous movie , and is confusing to the point of , well , confusion . The role of sheer luck is downplayed . The Japanese fully expected the American carriers to sally forth for a big Mahanian confrontation , which they did , and sent scouting submarines towards Pearl Harbor . But by the time the subs reached their assigned positions , it was too late . Our carriers had already passed to the west . The sole reason we were able to pull this off was our decryption of Japanese plans , which enabled our forces to move far more quickly than could reasonably be expected . At Coral Sea our forces were so little experienced that Douglas SBDs ( with one foreward-firing fixed gun ) were sent one on one against agile Japanese zeros . After the Battle of Midway the Japanese carriers , their airplanes , and most of their pilots were gone , of course , but there was still an enormous striking force afloat . This force slowly turned away after the battle , tempting the remaining American forces to follow and initiate another clash . Had we struck at the lure , the best guess is we would have been clobbered , if only because American forces were so outmatched . And there is an excellent likelihood we would have lost the island of Midway . Spruance wisely chose to withdraw his forces rather than leap aggressively at the bait . Had Halsey been in charge , had he not been hospitalized with a skin disorder , it is difficult to imagine his turning down such a tempting offer , but luck was with our side again , and Spruance , having achieved victory , departed the field , while Halsey itched . The movie is a piece of junk . |
441,991 | 819,382 | 385,307 | 4 | Light-hearted sequel . | I can't compare it to the original , which I didn't see , but this good-natured but slightly desperate film has " sequel " written all over it . It is a mixed bag . There is the mismatched cop buddy theme , involving Sandra Bullock's antisocial and physically aggressive black partner who punches people and knocks them around . ( Ha ha . ) She and Bullock become friends by the end . There is the theme of the cop given an assignment which divides her loyalties . There is the gay sidekick who provides most of the best laughs . ( " I just LOVE Vegas , " he says , " Where else can you find a 24-hour wiggery " ? ) Lots of pratfalls . Lots of people chasing each other full tilt through hotel lobbies . Dolly Parton playing a fake playing Dolly Parton . Vegas acts with female impersonators belting out show tunes . Come to think of it , I just love Vegas too . Where else in the world ( outside of your own deranged mind ) can you find large-scale models of the Empire State Building , the Sphynx , and the Tour d'Eiffel parked next to one another , and all festooned with fluorescence and raw primary neons ? If you seek perfection you don't need Katmandu . Well - - it depends on the kind of perfection you're seeking . Sandra Bullock is okay in the role , snapping out wisecracks in the middle of muscular hi-jinks . I didn't care much for it because it seemed to me to be trying too hard to borrow from the good will generated by the successful original and because , when you get right down to it , it's not all that funny . On the other hand , if there's nothing else on and you want to be distracted for a while , this may do the job . You can just let your mind drift , your passivity interrupted by an occasional chuckle . There's a big chase scene at the end involving water . |
443,320 | 819,382 | 174,931 | 4 | Don't Do It , Lola ! | The cover of the DVD has a photo of Lola ( Anna Ammarati ) on her bicycle , laughing over her shoulder at the camera , her skirt hiked up to her waist and revealing her panty-covered behind . The movie opens with this scene . Lola bicycles around town with her filmy skirt up around her neck , turning all the men on , including two priests who sniff her bicycle seat after she dismounts . Oh , she's a gay creature and a whimsical one . She's about to be married to a young baker but doesn't want to remain a virgin until then so she tries to seduce him in every way , but the young man is a demon of chastity . So Lola starts looking elsewhere for her defloration , but everyone seems frightened away by her forwardness . It's hard to figure out why . She's easy enough on the eyes . But when she puts the moves on her own father , maybe she's going a little too far . There's a credit given for clothing design and I suppose it's deserved , at least for everyone except frivolous Lola who spends half the movie running around buck nekkid . She's seen in a wedding dress at the end but she's not wearing underwear . In the rest of the movie she wears only one outfit - - a red top , easily slipped down , a diaphanous transparent skirt and a pair of white panties ( sometimes ) . There is an abundance of what I think the trade calls up skirt shots . I will tell you something . If this were a real Italian gal in a small village , she'd be put away subito . There isn't much to the story except for Lola's whimsical yet desperate attempts at seduction . The whole thing is a fantasy . A monk admits she turns him on and he appears to masturbate an ear of corn after she kisses his ancient forehead , proving that he may be old but he's not dead . Later he gets a chance to spit out some happy obscenities . The musical score is lively and demotic . The photography bleeds much of the color from the scenes and appears to have been shot through a goldfish bowl . The acting is okay as far as I could tell . I had no objection to Lola's lying in bed and plucking out pubic hairs - - " He loves me , " " He loves me not " , or whatever it was . I had no real objection to any of it . The problem is that it really isn't very sexy , although there is an abundance of Lola's nudity , and it isn't in the least amusing . I wouldn't sit through it again . |
443,471 | 819,382 | 55,539 | 4 | Courtroom drama lacks focus . | I don't know what the novel was like but it was probably tighter than the script for this movie . I'll have to lay out the plot , which is essentially this : four American GIs stationed in Germany rape a teen aged German girl ( Christine Kaufmann ) . They are charged and court martialed , defended by Kirk Douglas and prosecuted by E . G . Marshall . ( How many times has E . G . Marshall played a lawyer ? Sometimes I lull myself to sleep trying to remember them all . ) The townspeople are bursting with animadversions aimed in one direction or another . The local whores hate Kaufmann for her superiority . Her father is a demanding local official who is all agitated because the family is involved in a scandal and he wants to see the four GIs get hanged . A gossip is happy to testify against Kaufmann . Her boyfriend , a student , loves her and wants to run away with her . A dirty old man who lives across the street from Kaufmann kind of likes her because she sometimes does morning exercises nude in front of her open window . Kirk Douglas interrogates her and he comes to like her too . She's so innocent , so young , so einbeisslich . Of course it is Douglas's job as defense counsel to attack her story if she gets on the stand . Douglas practically begs Kaufmann's father to talk her out of testifying but the old fellow is dead set on seeing GI blood . Once on the stand , she's torn apart by Douglas's questions . It's revealed that she took off her " bikini " - - a word that somehow emerges as some kind of infernal device - - and was nude when the soldiers raped her . Douglas shows the bathing suit to the jury , yanks on it , and it comes apart almost as easily as Kaufmann's poise . She winds up sobbing with her hands over her face and later offs herself . Despite Douglas's vicious defense , the boys don't get the death penalty Kaufmann's father wants , but they get beaucoup years in Leavenworth at hard labor . It's tragic . She loses her life . Her father loses his beloved daughter . The GI's lose their freedom . Douglas has lost the case and is ridden with guilt . But somehow it doesn't quite come together , at least for me . No individual scene flops , and there are no major errors , but neither does any character develop in any way . Nobody seems to learn any moral lesson . There's very little suspense in the trial because we don't have much doubt about how the participants will act . So what do you come away with ? Well , small German towns can be as full of intrigue and empty-headed hatreds as small American towns . And those damned Yanks ought to go back home or pick on more available targets . As an old German proverb goes , " Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly . " ( I'm afraid only electronic technicians will get that piece of word play . ) And , wow , is Christine Kaufmann a superior kind of seventeen-year-old girl . Whew . Of course no decent guy would want to rape her but in real life it might be fun to squeeze and pinch her if she let him . Or the other way around . Overall , it's pretty depressing . The black-and-white photography is stark and edgy . The sound seems to crackle with hostility . Makeup is uninspired . All of the men have short hair , thoroughly moussed , causing them to look as if they'd been groomed to appear in a film . And while Douglas isn't bad , Christine Kaufmann gives a weak performance . And then there is that tin-pan-alley theme song , " Town Without Pity , " played repetitively with and without the sodden lyrics . But these are all personal judgments and , although I found the movie not very rewarding , others may find it more interesting . |
442,069 | 819,382 | 64,148 | 4 | Peck's Not a Bad Boy | Gregory Peck does a reasonably good job as a Nobelist who is sent to China to steal an enzyme that will increase the world's food supply . The Chinese , you see , want to keep it a secret and use it themselves . ( They've since given up hoping for miracles and have turned to a much more sensible one-child per family policy . ) I guess - - legally speaking , the enzyme IS in fact a Chinese invention and belongs to them , doesn't it ? What I mean is , is it entirely ethical for Peck to sneak into China under false pretenses , swipe something of theirs , and smuggle it out of the country ? After all , when the Americans and Brits get the enzyme at the end , they too stash it away to use as a " weapon " instead of handing it over to all humankind , as Peck wants to do . It's like Clint Eastwood sneaking into the USSR and stealing the most advanced fighter airplane in the world from them ( " Firefox " ) . Problems like this don't bother the film makers . Absconding with the MacGuffin is a good idea - - period . To show how good it is , even the Russians are on our side and only the Chinese are " enemies . " And how does our side show its appreciation for Peck's life-endangering efforts ? They have planted a complex transmitter in his mastoid sinus . He has willingly allowed them to do it . What they haven't told him is that there is a coil of explosive wrapped around the chip that will blow his head off if detonated by the authorities . At the last minute , the general in charge ( Arthur Hill ) relents and doesn't explode Peck's head . That's gratitude for you . The director has tried to turn this into a light-hearted thriller , along the lines of " North by Northwest . " Accordingly , we are introduced to Chairman Mao while he's playing ping pong . And Peck is given plenty of wisecracks under stress , on top of which his performance is sort of sing-song , more animated than usual . Somehow it doesn't jell . It would have been no trouble at all in 1943 to change a few things around and have this turn out to be an anti-Nazi war film , all cloak and dagger , shadows and fog , and racing black sedans . Not one of Peck's better career choices . |
442,947 | 819,382 | 373,926 | 4 | Splendidly dull . | I've usually admired Sidney Pollack's work as a direct ( and actor ) and he's pretty good here in both roles . The direction is just about flawless - - not too much stylization , but just enough . The photography is crisp and colorful when it needs to be and the darkness is properly ominous . The location shooting captures New York in several of its moods . And the acting can't be criticized . Sean Penn does a fine , subdued job . And , I mean , who could criticize the performance of Nicole Kidman , even if she couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag ? How come the Commonwealth keeps fielding these toothsome blonds , anyway ? We cannot NOT mention Catherine Keener , who has both talent and a facial bone structure that seems made for film , a structure that could go either way - - sympathetic or sinister , here the former . So why is the film dull ? Well , the story has multiple twists and confusing characters and no genuine plot engine . It's as if whoever was responsible for the story had become so thoroughly familiar with the characters and their backgrounds while developing them that he or she thought a few words of description or a photograph would be enough for an ordinary viewer to keep the characters straight . It isn't . Not for me , anyway . It helped a bit that one of the villains , the chief of security at the UN , looks like a heavy , with eyes slightly askew . I had him pegged right away . ( But then I had Catherine Keener , Penn's associate and friend , pegged for dead meat and I was wrong about that . ) There is a quick outline , two or three minutes ' worth , telling us about the African guy who was once a democratic rebel leader and has since become a genocidal dictator . And there are two guys who are trying to get rid of him so they can replace him . One of the would-be replacements looks confusingly like the janitor at the UN - - or maybe he IS the janitor , or the janitor's roomie . A bus blows up . Penn's wife has recently been killed in a car crash with her boyfriend . Some French guy commits suicide by bleeding himself out in a bath tub for reasons none of us would kill ourselves over . The plot is impenetrable . The viewer's mind drifts . Here's the wind-up before the pitch . Kidman is a translator at the UN . She accidentally overhears part of a plot to kill the dictator of an African country and she reports it to the authorities . She has a hell of a time convincing them she's not lying . And here's the pitch . At the climax we find that she and her family have been destroyed - - emotionally or physically - - by this dictator and she holds him at gunpoint , about to blow his brains all over the place , before Sean Penn talks her out of it . If she planned to kill the guy anyway , why did she squeal when she overheard somebody ELSE's plot to kill him ? Oops - - a beanball . A nicely mounted , boring film . Too bad . |
443,159 | 819,382 | 42,982 | 4 | All These Girls Need is a Little Discipline . | An idealistic doctor , Paul Henreid , is a counselor or something at a new prison for naughty young girls . No walls , but humane treatment - - that sort of thing . The fly in the ointment is the headmistress or foreman or whatever she is , the top sergeant , who runs the place on a day-to-day basis . And what an old-fashioned meanie she is , groomed like Mrs . Danvers or maybe the wife in " American Gothic " . This movie was one of a spate that came out in the post-war years dealing with one or another social problem , often , as here , penology . Among the others were " The Snake Pit , " " Sniper , " " Gentleman's Agreement , " " Crossfire , " others whose titles don't come to mind at the moment . This is a lesser example of the genre , but not entirely without interest . What makes it interesting is that , though Paul Henreid , Ingrid Bergman's husband in " Casablanca " seven years earlier , was by now over the hill and reduced to B pictures , the movie is full of those naughty young girls , including the 18-year-old Rita Moreno and the 19-year-old Ann Francis . They run around in their skivvies , get into fights , talk nasty , are cynical about everything , trying to run away - - in other words , these luscious young beauties are just begging to be spanked . That's all they really need . They don't need an understanding headmaster , just a couple of whacks . Oh , not savage whacks . Not at all . Rather , deeply caring whacks , whacks of love , so to speak , not enough to hurt but just enough to warm . Why didn't Paul Henreid try that instead of this antiquated humanism ? Huh ? I'll bet he WANTED to turn Ann Francis over his knee , that lanky and insinuating blond vixen , and teach her a lesson . You can see it in his face . The gentle smile can't mask the lascivious grin of the maniac underneath . Come to think of it , if that didn't work , why he could just have THEM spank HIM . They'd be learning a trade too - - professional dominatrix . Anyway , if he didn't , he must be as crazy as the rest of this unimaginative movie . Some of the shots are striking ; in others the lighting alone could have been handled by an alert ten-year-old kid . But why go on ? This movie is " reformist " in the same way that Cecil B . DeMille's early movies showed a lot of nudity , just to make sure we knew how sinful nudity was ; or in the same way as one of those anti-war pictures that show us the brutality of combat before we inevitably win the battle . What hypocrisy . |
443,043 | 819,382 | 75,005 | 4 | A commercial bullseye . | The Exorcist made an awful lot of money , so it was inevitable that there follow a spate of supernatural thrillers . This is one of the first , itself to be followed by I forget how many sequels and imitations . Suspenseful , gory , and thoroughly commercial , this slice of machine-processed turkey baloney was notable for a couple of reasons . Pretty stylish goings on , what with the Ambassador to the Court of St . James and all that . Well-known stars too , Peck and Lee Remick . And , finally , " The Exorcist " didn't have any violence to speak of but " The Omen " made up for it . Reviewers couldn't help commenting on the shocking violence . Poor David Warner . His head is not only lopped off by a sheet of glass but it rolls over and over like a bocce ball . It's hard to believe now that this was once considered a shockingly violent supernatural thriller . It's been overtaken by its own vulgarity . Subsequent film makers promptly deep sixed the supernatural element or minimized its importance . Since the point was to establish a cascade of gore - - period - - why shoot it in fancy , expensive locations ? And let's get rid of the tiresome plot logic , which might cause someone to think ? Let's just have evil incarnate . Give him fingers with scissors on the end and have him slice up nubile young girls on the screen . Or have a group of semi-naturals stumble into a farm run by a family of ghouls and maniacs . Nobody will notice the holes in the Swiss cheese plot because the entire plot will be one big hole . Nobody will care anyway . And nobody did . That said - - " that " being that commercial greed begets commercial greed - - this isn't bad as far as these things go . There are only four truly violent episodes and they're set up more carefully than we would now take for granted . The plot is still an attempt at a story . And the locations are neat and the acting not bad . David Warner is not too well cast . His angular , leptosomic form and horse face seem better suited to comedy or bitchery . The script doesn't help anyone . " Have no fear , Little One . I am here to protect thee . " ( " Thee " ? ) And the priest is afflicted with what might be called the gibberish syndrome . A person has some extremely important information to tell someone else and finally finds himself in a position to do it , within some tight time constraints . But instead of laying out the message linearly , he begins spouting gibberish . The priest doesn't say , " You've adopted the anti-Christ . " His visage becomes that of a lunatic with red-rimmed eyes and he keeps chanting , " Eat the body and drink the blood of Christ , " over and over . The score is by Jerry Goldsmith , who did the splendid " Chinatown . " In this case he resorts to the generic - - pounding drums , shrieking strings , a male chorus chanting " Satanic " verses - - like Karl Orff on mushrooms . Nothing , though , can lift it out of its own sump . The producers clearly designed the climax in a way that could lead to a sequel or sequels if there still seemed another nickel might be made out of it . That happened , pari passu . The originality and craftsmanship behind " The Exorcist " was long forgotten . How about this ? We get rid of the human writers entirely and just program a computer to grind out variations on themes ? |
442,723 | 819,382 | 51,706 | 4 | Routine period mystery / thriller . | The Haunted Strangler has been compared to " Dr . Jeykll and Mr . Hyde " and to the Val Lewton horror productions at RKO , and it's easy to see why . Boris Karloff is Rankin , a novelist with a devoted wife and loving step-daughter . Twenty years after the hanging of the notorious Strangler , Rankin develops a theory that the hanged man wasn't guilty at all , but that it was the pathologist in the case , Tennant , who half-strangled and butchered those five women . With the help of a psychiatric intern , and against the advice of his friend Burke ( Anthony Dawson ) , the police detective , Rankin investigates the case and finds evidence incriminating Tennant . Shortly after the Strangler's execution , Tennant was found to be suffering from fits of paralysis and violent outbursts , followed by amnesia for the events . Tennant was ensconced in a mental hospital but escaped with the help of a nurse who had fallen in love with him . About half-way through the film we learn that Rankin himself was Tennant , and his now loving wife was the nurse who helped him . But by this time Rankin has begun to suffer again the murderous paralytic rages and the amnesia that follows . It gets kind of confused somewhere around here . Rankin's recent spells seem to be triggered by the scalpel that was missing from Tennant's collection of surgical instruments . When he grasps the scalpel , Rankin turns into a twisted wreck and he murders without reason . Poor Karloff's face wears a prosthetic or two that twists it all out of symmetry and gives him a look that is at once demonic and full of pain , as if he were suffering the grandfather of all abscessed teeth . On top of that his hair gets messed up . If he first set out to find Tennant guilty , he now must run around trying to convince others that he himself is Tennant . Well , Jeykll and Hyde , yes . Tennant / Rankin is an upright man , no question about it , and his paralytic self is a raving , murderous animal who leaps about to a dissonant , tinkling score . The ego and the id . But Val Lewton , no . Everything in this film is overdone . The acting is in-your-face and not always convincing . The performance of the Newgate turnkey is positively painful . Rankin's butchery isn't as explicit as it would become in the slasher films but it is on-screen butchery . And there is an unnecessary scene of a prisoner being whipped at Newgate Prison . The whipper is a cliché - - a big , fat , bald , sweating sadist . The dialog is entirely functional , without the spark of any inspiration , and the period detail perfunctory . The direction is of the same quality , everything spelled out as if for an audience of children . The scenes in the madhouse are filled with the hoots and howls of the insane so that the hospital sounds more like a zoo . ( Alas , this was likely to be too often true before the chemical straight jackets of phenothiazines were discovered in the 1950s . That was the second revolution in mental health . The first was the unchaining of the maniacs at La Bicetre by the humanitarian Philippe Pinel . Before that , they weren't zoos but infernos . ) But then - - everybody seems to shout . They run , they shout , they wave their arms and disfigure their faces with emotions unless , like the intern , they are utter blanks . In the end , I felt sorry for Karloff . The actor , not the character . He was seventy or thereabouts when this was shot and , as good natured as William Henry Pratt was , he probably joked about the role . Still , thirty years beyond Frankenstein and he's playing another monster . |
443,265 | 819,382 | 82,862 | 4 | A tough row to hoe . | To tell the truth , Shakespeare isn't really easy to follow , what with his tangled syntax , his poetry , his puns , his arcane lexicon . But Anthony Hopkins , I think , did a splendid job . I managed to buy this one by mistake , through clumsiness , and it just isn't the same . The actors don't seem to speak slowly enough , I guess , and Iago seemed miscast , no Derek Jacobi . But , heck , the sound on this DVD was so lousy that no one could overcome that obstacle . And this is an inexpensive production , looking very much like a stage . I'm not convinced that Shakespeare is so hot that even a misplaced production like this is worth much attention . It's not like the Lord's Prayer or anything , suitable for all occasions . As much as I hate to say it , I'm afraid that Olivier and his elaborate extravaganzas have got practically a lock on the material . It's not just the production values either - - the blaring trumpets , the real live horses , the period costumes . It's Olivier's performances . He speaks slowly enough in , say , " Hamlet " to understand his every word , though we may not know its exact referent in the real world . And when he speaks quickly , as in much of " Richard III " , he still manages to articulate each juncture . His pauses are precisely timed . And , by God , anybody who can turn the half-mythical but ever-filthy Richard into a clown has got my vote . Hopkins ' version of Othello was splendid . As someone said , " he has the kindest EYES . " Now THAT was the tragedy of the Moor . This version is just a tragedy . |
442,653 | 819,382 | 104,265 | 4 | Confusing story of murder , insanity , and assorted mishigas . | Kind of disappointing considering the cast - - Richard Gere as the morally upright but slightly imprudent psychiatrist , Uma Thurman as his " caterpillar " patient , and Kim Basinger as Thurman's seductive older sister . To help him understand Thurman's problems , Gere seeks out Basinger and winds up making furious love to her on their first date . She , lamentably , is married to one of those madly jealous Circum-Mediterranean gangsters who has muscles all over his body as well as inside his head . This is Eric Roberts in his perfect evil greaseball mode . He dominates Basinger and makes her do humiliating sexual things , which is perhaps his one good idea before she bashes his head in with one of his own dumb bells . It seems she suffers from " pathological intoxication . " One sip of alcohol and she becomes violently psychotic , and she had innocently sipped some alcohol-based cough medicine just before the homicide . Gere helps her shape her defense , brings in his friend , Paul Guilfoyle , to serve as her lawyer , and she gets off with a " not guilty by reason of temporary insanity . " Thereafter , it gets twisted . A little too twisted if you ask me . By the end I could hardly tell who was who or what was what . It's pretty thrilling all the way through . It's just that it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense . Thurman's character begins in cahoots with her sister , then betrays her , then helps her escape from the funny farm , then takes over her identity and murderous quirks . Why ? It would take more than a shrink to determine that . It would require a mind reader , or maybe a seasoned screenwriter . It's nicely acted and the location photography is picturesque - - San Francisco at its most glorious , the Golden Gate Bridge is in every other shot . But it's cheap too . The director uses every cliché in the book regardless of whether they fit together . The climax at the top of a light house has the railing collapsing and Gere dangling over the crashing breakers - - in a howling electrical storm the likes of which Point Reyes has never seen . The fulsome orchestral score belongs to the genus Slasher . And , as I say , the plot is dizzying and at times makes no sense . Okay . Basinger is accused of murder , which she has in fact committed . The only question in whether a condition called " pathological intoxication " exists or not . The prosecution calls an expert witness , a haughty woman psychiatrist with a bony face and a foreign accent . She declares that the condition does not exist except in the minds of defense counsels . Why doesn't she believe there is any such thing ? Because there is no physical evidence . It doesn't show up in brain scans or blood tests . An experienced defense attorney would have jumped all over her and asked if there were any " physical evidence " that schizophrenia exists . There isn't , but nobody can deny that the condition is real . Anyway , in a sense , it's an exciting movie and soothing too , watching cliché follow cliché while common sense flies out the window . Kind of a ritualistic experience , like listening to a familiar but meaningless pop tune . |
441,979 | 819,382 | 106,453 | 4 | Fun and Games With Madonna and Willem . | Madonna is married to a very rich older man with a heart condition . He dies , leaving her eight million dollars . The circumstances are suspicious . He's had a heart problem for years , there is cocaine in his nasal spray , and he's been handcuffed to the bed while Madonna has been doing him . Did she marry him and deliberately induce his heart attack ? Just for his money ? To kill her husband for MONEY ? MADONNA ? Are you kidding ? She hires Willem Dafoe to defend her in court against the slurs and attacks of DA Joseph Montegna . Dafoe doesn't know whether she's guilty or not , nor does he care . At first he just wants to win the case . Soon enough , though , he wants a bit more of a retainer from Madonna . And who wouldn't ? She describes herself as " irresistable . " That's when I started to dislike the character . I didn't mind the handcuffs so much . After all , SOMEBODY has to wear them . And when she and Dafoe are getting it on , and she pours hot wax all over his chest and more sensitive parts ? I didn't mind that either . Let him suffer . Dafoe had no business being on Madonna's opulent Oregon houseboat in the first place . ( I think all men would have to admit , the scene makes one wince . Still , " A chaque a son gout , " as they say in Guyana . ) And when word gets around that Madonna and Willem are making the beast with two backs , and Dafoe's wife ( Julianne Moore ) leaves him - - well , that was a shame , but what do you expect ? No , it was when she called herself " irresistable " that she lost any sympathy I had for her . That , and the fact that she insists on always being the one on top . Reminded me of my marriage . Enough is enough . Nice supporting cast . Joe Montegna is always good , even if the film is sometimes mediocre . Julianne Moore is fine too , although she is no staggering beauty by Hollywood standards , just an exceptionally good actress . Jurgen Prochnow , who made his international mark as the sensible and sympathetic skipper of the U-boat in " Das Boot " , has a role as another of Madonna's dupes . Ditto Frank Langella , who deserves a medal simply for getting out of Bayonne . Anne Archer has equal screen time as one of Madonna's victims . Dafoe is eminently reliable . But that's about as far as the film's virtues go . The script limns in an unbelievable plot . First of all , Madonna is an actress of only modest talent , although she is an expert at self promotion . And I can't understand how Dafoe's defense counsel could become so stupid and glandular after what appears to have been a fairly successful career . There's been no intimation that his marriage or his life is worth turning over so thoroughly . There were three or four sex scenes that were long and drawn out and , I suppose , intended to be shocking . ( One has Madonna being unwillingly sodomized , with a man on top for a change . ) But they did little more than satisfy a viewer's curiosity about the topography of Madonna's anatomy , which is okay , by the way . They were no more arousing than any late-night weekend movie on cable TV , the kind with titles like , " Forbidden Passions " and " Sex Games in Cancun , " all billowing lace curtains and burning candles and ersatz eroticism . So did Madonna kill her husband for his money ? You bet ! |
443,228 | 819,382 | 209,013 | 4 | Not the Best Example . | I'll keep this short . Martin Ritt's " Norma Rae " was a more original , less stereotyped study of exploited Appalachian workers and their tribulations , and so was Barbara Koppel's documentary of this confrontation between union organizers and the evil company they labor for . The acting isn't bad . Holly Hunter is good , as she usually is , and Stellan Skarsgard is fine as always . He's a remarkably relaxed performer , whether the role calls for villainy ( " Ronin " ) or sympathetic understanding , as in " Good Will Hunting " . Hunter's Southern accent may sound overdrawn to some , but thirty-five years ago I imagine it fit the template well enough . It's the story that sags . There are good people and evil people and none of them are particularly complex . That's more or less how Koppel's documentary rolled along too , but it's nevertheless not how life on the ground is structured . The conventions followed here are those of a soap opera , except that instead of a deceitful and vicious husband , we have a nefarious corporation . It doesn't matter that the film was shot in Canada . That has little to do with its quality . I only wish the script had given the audience a bit more to chew on , just a little food for thought , a ham hock or two , rather than Pablum . |
441,754 | 819,382 | 44,789 | 4 | Would you buy a used car from these men ? | Preston Foster as the cop who wants his reputation and his job back is human enough , but as for the rest - - what a line-up of heavies . Neville Brand going chubby and coarse . Jack Elam of the chameleon eyes . And Lee Van Cleef , New Jersey's contribution to heavydom , along with Bruno Richard Hauptmann . And there's not an ounce of ambiguity or humanity among them . They're pure e-vil . The film itself , while in no way evil , is unfortunately not so hot . Phil Karlson has left some unexpected gems among the dross - - " Phoenix City Story , " " Walking Tall . " But this isn't one of the gems . Aside from the limitations imposed on it by a small budget , this B movie lacks finesse . Every other shot is a gigantic looming closeup of somebody's sweaty , greedy face . It's pretty violent for a 1952 film though . During one of the many scuffles it appears that two of the guys get punched in the jewels . John Payne isn't bad . He's just unremarkable , along the lines of , say , MacDonald Carey . You can't object to him because there's nothing really there to object to . Colleen Gray has sparkling eyes and tiny red lips that can suddenly explode into a dazzling smile . Her chirpy voice moves in leaps and bounds . Often , when she says " going to " and " you " , they come out as " gonna " and " ya " . She's utterly charming . I don't care if she IS a lawyer , she's still winning . The story is complicated , improbable , and full of holes . The script is no help whatever . A robbery takes place and Payne , who knows nothing about it , is interrogated by the police . They beat hell out of him for two days . Then , finding out that he was set up for a frame , they tell him they know he's innocent and let him go . Nevertheless , he's fired from his job . The first thing he does is run to an old buddy asking for help because " I've got to clear myself . " Clear himself of what ? He can't have much money because his job was driving a flower delivery truck , yet he spends a good deal of money tracking down the robbers , following them to a raffish Mexican town . The transfer to the DVD I saw was lousy and maybe this has influenced my judgment of the film itself . It looked like it was a kine scope copy , filmed directly from a TV show . Someone else might like it more than I did . I didn't find it hateful , though , just unengaging . |
443,349 | 819,382 | 52,545 | 5 | Hope as Insurance Salesman Out West . | I think the kids might enjoy this more than adults . The situations are amusing - - imagine Bob Hope as Jesse James ' bodyguard in Missouri - - but they're kind of slow , a little drawn out , funny in a sitcom way . The punch lines are followed by rather long silences while the audience is supposed to be laughing . The kids might be laughing but the grown-ups , I suspect , are no more than smiling . I'm not a curmudgeon either . I laughed along with my twelve-year-old at some of Hope's earlier Western comedies , like " Fancy Pants . " The usual wisecracks are muted . Slightly off kilter . And I didn't notice any playing with the fourth wall , usually a refreshing surprise . Hope is funny enough as his usual quivering coward , but I miss the fast pacing of his 1940s comedies and the easy exchange of barbs between him and Bing Crosby in the Road movies . Maybe I AM an old curmudgeon . |
442,400 | 819,382 | 41,831 | 5 | Slight Ealing Comedy . | Donald Houston and Meredith Edwards are two Welsh miners who win a trip to London and two-hundred pounds . They are to be met at Paddington Station by a reporter ( Alec Guiness ) who will be their guide . They miss Guiness , then they lose each other in the streets . Houston picks up a young woman with designs on the prize money . Edwards runs into an old friend , Hugh Griffith , now a drunken rapscallion reduced to singing Welsh ballads and begging on corners , yearning for the harp he had to pawn two years earlier . Everyone runs around trying to catch the others , getting swept up in events along the way . That's about it . The film tries to be more charming that humorous but its charm , like its comedy , is spare . It has a lot of good-natured energy but not too much else . When Griffith accidentally smashes his harp through a shop window , he shouts angrily , " If your rotten window has hurt my harp , you'll pay for it ! " It doesn't get much funnier than that . There's nothing wrong with the performances , the direction , or any other aspect of the production - - and there are one or two nice Welsh songs - - but whimsy is a poor substitute for plot . The Ealing comedies were best when they pitted canny rustics against bureaucratic ritualists . You could cheer for the peasants . Here , you cheer for everyone and there's no tension , no spring , behind the plot . Will they make the train home on time ? It's such a small matter . |
442,109 | 819,382 | 45,669 | 5 | So Long at the Boat Deck | I guess by 1953 Jeanne Crain's career was sputtering out . She wasn't much of an actress although evidently a sweet lady , and she gave an unimpeachable performance earlier in " Leave Her to Heaven " as the virginal " gal with the hoe . " Her performance here is adequate and no more than that . She's beautiful and has a fine figure , but she's given no help by a hoary and unimaginative script , by the dated wardrobe , by the pedestrian direction , or by makeup and the hair stylist who have turned her into a Rhonda Fleming clone . It's a little painful to watch her break down in the ship's dining room . Sought by some of the officers she must push her way frantically through the crowd of couples dancing then , cornered , she has to scream , " No ! No ! " , and collapse into the arms of kindly ( not to say saintly ) Michael Rennie , the ship's doctor who half believes her crazy story about her missing husband . Rennie . Is the guy really handsome ? I can't tell . He's tall and a little cadaverous . He'd probably have played out his career in horror movies . His hair is gelled to a fault , his long nose a fleshy beak , and his cheekbones belong in the Smithsonian Institute . Yet he was evidently a notorious lady's man . The plot is so old . I couldn't begin to outline its genealogical tree . I'm thinking " So Long at the Fair , " " The Lady Vanishes , " and " Bunny Lake is Missing . " All of them are better than this one . The award for worst acting should go to Anna Quinn as a stewardess who looks vulnerable and frightened whether the scene calls for it or not . She was pretty good as the nurse in " Lifeboat . " Here , with her wide , scared , nystigmatic eyes it's as if she were being directed by Cecil B . DeMille in a silent movie . Actually I rather liked her . Anyone who looks more terrified than I usually feel gets my vote any day . At the same time it's hard to understand why Crain's " missing husband , " who actually exists , would do away with her for money . After all , the guy is already married to her and she's just inherited a fortune . That particular kink in the movie's logic was never worked out , but then there are quite a few kinks lolling around . Michael Rennie gets whacked over the head with a 25-pound snatch block and falls to the deck . Then he shakes his head to clear it and leaps back to his feet . No matter . The movie has a narrative voice-over by Crain , which disappears halfway through the film . It's a small movie without a lot of ambition . It's not a disaster , just a routine shipboard mystery . It could have been so much improved by a bit more imagination in the direction . |
442,374 | 819,382 | 1,100,911 | 5 | Average True-Crime Story of Serial Murderer . | The so-called Green River killer was responsible for more than three dozen deaths of women , mostly prostitutes , in the Seattle / Tacoma area of Washington state . This lengthy , slow , dark film isn't really his story . It follows the career of Dave Reichert ( Thomas Cavanaugh ) , the head of the Green River task force at the King's County Sheriff's Office , with some additional time given over to the trials and tribulations of one of the killer's victims , Helen Remus ( Amy Davidson ) . It's not much more than a routine rendering of what has by now become a familiar narrative - - the mounting toll of bodies , the frustrated police , the dead ends , the pressure from the press , and finally the cathartic payoff . " The Deliberate Stranger " , the TV movie about Ted Bundy , for all its flaws , was a more tightly wound and better scripted tale , focusing as it did on the ensemble of cops , on the one hand , and Bundy's peregrinations on the other . The insertion of Bundy's affair with one or another woman was an informative diversion . Here , Helen Remus provides the narration , speaking from beyond the grave , in a warehouse filled with the GRK's other victims standing in a silent tableau . Her maunderings cover a lot of philosophy , with God dragged in by the heels , mostly centering around free will versus fate . ( She quotes from William Henley's " Invictus " - - " I am the captain of my fate . / I am the master of my soul . " ) It all sounds like so much padding , although everyone is entitled to his or her philosophy about life , whether elegant or folksy . Heck , it's REQUIRED that we have one , even if we have to bootleg it in by the back door . It does get tiresome , though , and predictable . She was basically a good-hearted girl who came from a dysfunctional family and all the rest of it . If she weren't a hooker , she might have been a nun . That kind of portrayal of the victim as abused but still brave and generous , cheapens the narrative . She was murdered and her body dumped . Would it have been less a crime if she'd been shown as the cynical , self-indulgent hooker she might well have been ? But that's just part of the problem with this film . There is no wit in the meandering script , no sparkle . And what passion it tries to evoke is undercut by the weak acting . Thomas Cavanaugh looks the part of the chief detective , but he has only a tentative hold on his instrument . His explosion of anger at the end of his interrogation of the captive killer looks like that of an actor trying to act out an explosion of anger , and his tender scenes aren't much better . I don't mean this as a slur on Thomas Cavanaugh the man . He probably has a loving family and a nice dog . It's just that , as a performer , he has a way to go . There are a couple of nice shots of rivers flowing through dismal gray rocks , stirring and foaming , suggestive of peace and nature and submerged corpses . Now THAT makes one wax philosophical . It would have been nice , finally , if it had had a faster pace and if it had had a few more scenes that were brightly lighted . Even the sheriff's offices are filmed with only a few scattered lights . The lighting isn't stylish or dramatic . It's just too low . Where did this noirish nonsense come from - - " The X Files " ? |
442,023 | 819,382 | 47,844 | 5 | Half Past High Noon . | Fred MacMurray is a peaceful shopkeeper who kills one of the Dennis gang with a lucky shot . The rest escape . MacMurray becomes a hero throughout the state of Texas . The remaining five members of the gang determine to kill him . The other town residents know it and begin to avoid MacMurray . They offer to stake him to a new store in far away Amarillo . Should MacMurray hide his tail between his legs , pack up his loving wife and adorable kid , and skip town ? Are you kidding ? This is a routine 1950s Western . There must have been hundreds of them ground out , intrigues and drama in a studio-built town with one dusty main street , flanked by a dozen building fronts made of wooden planks . Here , the core issues of Heartland America were on display - - bravery , cowardice , love , treachery , and the question of what you do with a neighbor in your tidy suburb who refuses to mow his lawn as often as everyone else . The 1960s were a transitional period , turbulent and full of excess and challenge . By the 1970s , the issues had changed to corruption and street crime and the milieu in which these dramas were played out was changed to the city streets . But this is from the 1950s . And was released five years after the wildly successful " High Noon " with Gary Cooper as the upholder of reticent righteousness . In " High Noon , " a couple of gunmen are returning to town to kill Cooper because he " sent up " the viperous Frank Miller . In " At Gunpoint , " the same number of gunmen are coming back to town to kill Cooper , I mean MacMurray , because he accidentally shot a gang member who was the brother of another . The rest of the story is familiar . The gang sneaks in at night and murders the town marshall . Everyone knows they will come back and take care of MacMurray too . As in " High Noon " the town gradually marginalizes the well-meaning shopkeeper and his family , but he refuses to leave town because a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do . His wife , Dorothy Malone , plays Grace Kelly and disparages his attempts to maintain his self esteem but , unlike Kelly , she's quickly won over . We see the gang riding into town for the final show down . We see the scared MacMurray behind a couple of barrels on the street corner , taking a few shots at them that miss their marks by seven hundred yards . The gang trot on towards MacMurray , grim and determined . Now , this is not the kind of movie that has any tricks up its sleeve . That's the whole point - - it should be comforting in its predictability . For instance , one of the character we meet at the beginning is the harmless , smiling , younger brother of Malone . There's no particular reason for his being there . He's always in the background being pleasant , but this story concerns MacMurray and Malone - - not MacMurray and Malone and Malone's BROTHER . Discerning viewers , those with the aficion for old movies , will recognize immediately that this character is DEAD MEAT . And so he is . Well , for the gang to continue its trot up the powdery street , right on up to the helpless Fred MacMurray , whom they then shoot full of holes , is unacceptable . Not because it wouldn't happen in real life but because it would surprise and challenge the audience . The only alternatives are ( 1 ) MacMurray to have four MORE lucky shots left in his Colt , or ( 2 ) the townsmen relent and capture or kill the gang . There are no other possibilities that don't involve supernatural intervention . No power on earth could force me to reveal which alternative the movie chooses . Oh - - those viewers with the aficion for old movies will recognize a lot of faces in the supporting case : Walter Brennan , Whit Bissell , the miscreant Jack Lambert , Harry Shannon ( cf . , " Citizen Kane " ) , John Qualen , and Frank Ferguson . Social psychologists will note the illustration of one of the more surprising findings of cognitive balance theory . Take a person who holds attitude A and opposes attitude B . Tell him that you'll pay him to act AS IF he holds attitude B . After he argues for attitude B long enough , he'll lose his belief in A and genuinely switch to B . In " At Gunpoint , " the townspeople are friendly to storekeeper MacMurray . After the first shooting , they begin to avoid him out of fear for themselves and their families . Pretty soon , after they've acted as if he had the plague , they come not to like MacMurray very much and want to get rid of him . They begin with attitude A , act AS IF they held attitude B , and finally FEEL attitude B . They don't even congratulate him when his reward check comes , and they don't say thanks when he buys them a ceremonial drink at the saloon . Have you non-psychologists grasped the point ? Good . That will be ten cents . |
442,347 | 819,382 | 61,204 | 5 | Farce is full of effort . | Its a story of two older cousins - - John Mills and Ralph Richardson - - the surviving one of which pair will inherit a fortune , and the fortune will of course be passed on to his younger relatives . The two cousins haven't spoken in forty years . One of them , Mills , is an angry , sickly fellow . Richardson is an old bore . All of them , and all of their greedy young relatives , are proper Victorian types . There is a mix-up in which both men are mistakenly thought to be dead . Wrong boxes are shipped around from site to site . Two of the younger relatives ( Peter Cook and Dudley Moore ) connive to have Mills declared dead so that their living uncle can inherit the ten thousand pounds . It gets kind of complicated and winds up in a rattling chase of horse-drawn hearses and other vehicles , some containing dead bodies in pianos , others containing boxes full of money . I don't know why this doesn't quite clear the bar but it's simply not as funny as it ought to be . It was released in 1966 . " Tom Jones " , a wildly successful period picture , was released two years earlier , and I suppose this was an attempt to follow up . But " Tom Jones " was a raucous story set in Georgian England of 1745 . People fell into mud . They ate like animals before they copulated . And that is definitely NOT Victorian England , and you can't develop a successful parody in the same way . How can you exaggerate a proper and prim Victorian man or woman ? Make him or her still MORE prim ? You wind up with an ice sculpture . The humor is so understated that it isn't very amusing . ( A woman glimpses a man's bare arm and fairly swoons . Twice . ) Maybe , given the script , they should have gone the way not of " Tom Jones " but of some of the earlier Ealing comedies . Instead of zeroing in on mugging and flat jokes , had the story been played straight and ironic , it might have worked . As it is , the fulsome musical score , lush color photography , and row upon row of fine actors , are more of a distraction than a virtue . The jokes are milked for what they are worth , and they're not all bad . Two examples . Michael Caine is invited to the house of his inamorata and finds the house full of eggs of all sizes and colors . Splashy title card : " AT LAST ! ALONE IN A HOUSE FULL OF EGGS ! " ) Nanette Newman : " My uncle collects eggs . " Caine ( goggling ) : " Very commendable . " Newman : " I find them obscene . " When Caine leaves , Newman says politely and a little breathlessly that it was nice meeting him . Caine : " Not at all . I hope to see much more of you . " Newman gasps at his boldness . Two cast members , however , make memorable every scene they're in . Wilfred Lawson as the aging butler , trembling and shuffling , whose every utterance is a strangled attempt at speech . ( He was good in " Tom Jones , " too . ) And , especially , Peter Sellers as a drunken and discombobulated , disreputable doctor who performs abortions and helps poison people who have become nuisances . ( He MUST have improvised some of his business . ) He tries to sign a phony death certificate under the coaching of Peter Cook and finally manages to print out his name in ugly , scraggling letters . W . Pratt MD . Then he peruses it with half-stunned satisfaction and reads it aloud - - " W . Prattmd . " I mean , he incorporates the " MD " into his last name . No other single gag matches that one . I don't intend saying that this is a boring film . A viewer doesn't get a sense of failure at every turn , only that so many of the jokes aren't as funny as the script tries to make them , and some are plain silly . It's very genteel , and not at all irritating . Goes down like a draught of the black balm . You might enjoy it , so many other people have . |
442,589 | 819,382 | 382,628 | 5 | Murkey waters , rather . | Well , it's a Schreckfest alright , and sometimes an effective one . Lots of eerie scenes . A dead body or two but no bloodshed . The atmosphere is terrific . The photography and production design deserve credit . And the players are uniformly professional . Pete Postlethwaite's face seems made up of lumps of play-do . John Reilly , as the apartment house manager , is sincerely phony . The little kid does as well as any little kid could do . Tim Roth as the lawyer doesn't have much of a part as Platzer the lawyer but comes across as reassuringly reasonable , the only halfway trustworthy person we meet . Jennifer Connolly as Dahlia has matured and from some angles is unrecognizable as the virginal ice princess of , say , " Hot Spot . " She's no longer a succulent girl but a beautiful and statuesque woman , even aside from the flawless geometry of her nose . With maturity has come a little more energy , or so it seems to me , judging from her performances here and in " A Beautiful Mind . " The plot itself , regrettably , is so dark as to be almost impenetrable to logic . Frankly , I got lost . I was able to identify the influence of - - let me think - - " The Shining , " " Psycho , " " Repulsion , " and " The Exorcist . " Not just in the plot but in individual shots . The movie is a scary enough experience , and I guess if that's all it was intended to be , it succeeds . But it doesn't make much sense . Nothing " stands for " anything else . The water , for instance . In Connolly's dilapidated apartment it drips through the ceiling from the apartment above , it rushes from the faucets the color of Brown 25 , it explodes from toilets . Sometimes it floods the floors , black and turgid . In the end , Connolly seems to drown in it . Is it real ? Or is it some paranoid hallucination on Connolly's part ? Sometimes it's real . The manager , the lawyer , and the custodian all see it and react with disgust . Other times the fluid , looking like something just flushed from an ancient rusty car radiator , gushes out of faucets and toilets in the little girl's school when Connolly is nowhere near , and the school teacher simply describes the floors as " flooded . " Flooded with WHAT ? The kid has an imaginary playmate who insists on sticking around , yanking the kid's hand while she's trying to finger paint . This mysterious spirit , which I'm tempted to call " Mistress Howdy " , seems to be connected to another little girl who drowned in the water tower on the roof but I'm not sure . Both Connolly and the daughter get to see this dead little girl . ( Whose hallucination IS this , anyway ? ) Finally , Connolly manages to save her own little girl from being drowned by the spirit of the other , at which point Connolly seems to be crushed by a veritable Niagara Falls of water from the apartment upstairs . The medical verdict on cause of death ? " Not apparent . " Well that's really frustrating because nobody dies from hallucinated water . Yet if the water is of this world , it would have been present in sufficient quantity to flush all the roaches and all the furniture and all the people out of the entire ten-story hovel . Still , it at least has the virtue of giving the viewer an arousal jag without the easy shots of throats being slit and virgins being disemboweled . Some work went into the execution of the plan . It's the plan itself that's weak . |
442,821 | 819,382 | 99,091 | 5 | Strangers on a Pier . | I don't know . The first time I saw this , years ago , I thought it was pretty exciting but it hasn't held up well on a second viewing . It's essentially the story of Yuppie James Spader who meets the charming , but vicious and clever Rob Lowe , and is led astray by him . An office rival of Spader's plays a computer trick on him that derails his coming promotion . Spader swallows his resentment and goes to a bar in Manhattan Beach - - Los Angeles , that is . Nursing his sullenness , he is insulted and ordered to get out by some ill-mannered greaseball . He's about to comply when a stranger , Lowe , bashes the bruiser and throws HIM out . Welcome , friend . From Lowe , Spader learns not only to stand on his own two feet but to play dirty . He hijacks his office rival's computer and forces the miscreant to straighten out the kink in Spader's account . ( In " Wolf , " Spader would play the office rotter to Jack Nicholson's turning worm . ) The things get a little out of hand . Not only does Spader learn to get even with his enemies . Lowe gets him stoned and drunk and takes him out on a wildly criminal spree involving the hold up of a couple of convenience stores and the savage beating of Spader's rival . This is a turning point for Spader , as it was for Farley Granger in Hitchcock's " Strangers on a Train . " Lowe has been crashing at Spader's apartment and Spader throws him out . It doesn't work too well . Lowe is forward-looking and has amassed evidence of Spader's debauchery , including a video of Spader boffing a young lady to whom Lowe introduced him . Lowe shows up at a party at the house of Spader's fiancée and manages to have the tape played for the enjoyment of the entire family and assembled well-dressed guests . Then , as if that weren't enough , Lowe bashes in the head of Spader's young lady and spread evidence around that incriminates Spader . In fact , Lowe is constantly outwitting Spader and his brother Pismo ( a fine performance by Christian Clemenson ) . Until the end , when during a final confrontation Spader is able to capture Lowe's unwitting confession on tape . But , as Lowe would insist , it's not enough to get even , you have to demolish your enemies and Lowe winds up in the Pacific Ocean with a bullet in him . The taped confession is convenient . It absolves Spader of any guilt connected to the beating of his office rival and the murder of the young woman . But Spader had better get a phenomenally good lawyer because the residual charges are enough to send him on a long vacation to San Quentin - - participating in at least two armed robberies ; accessory before , during , and after the fact ; obstruction of justice ; illegal possession of a weapon ; and exhibiting an obscene videotape to awed and morally upright white people at a party where champagne is being served . Curtis Hanson directed . Nothing wrong with the direction , though he was to be more daring in " L . A . Confidential . " Spader is good as the Yuppie , too . He's ALWAYS been good as the Yuppie . Rob Lowe , on the other hand - - I was watching this film the first time with a mixed group and I thought Spader seemed kind of handsome in a bland , middle-American way , so I asked the women present if my impression were correct . Do women find him handsome ? " No - - the other guy . " I guess that must account for Lowe's many appearances on screen because his acting talent comes in as rather Lite . Not that he's so BAD . It's just that most of us could do just as well . Look . Let's be honest . There's nothing outstanding in any way about this film . It's entertaining , up to a point . But the theme is spelled out for us . As Lowe tells Spader , " I'm just filling all your wishes . " And the theme is much more subtly - - even masterfully - - explored in " Strangers on a Train . " Go to the original . |
442,194 | 819,382 | 97,662 | 5 | Fatal Femme | Joanne Whaley is a deceitful slut in this complicated neonoir thriller , and Val Kilmer is the private eye she manages to suck into her scheme to steal money from Michael Madsen who has just stolen it from the Mafia . There are multiple murders along the way . In the end everybody gets dead except for Kilmer who makes off with the entire stash . I don't know why the plot let him get away , because he's done all kinds of illegal stuff and proved himself as untrustworthy as anyone else . But the narrative has established him as just about the only sympathetic character in the movie - - his wife recently died in a drowning , for instance . The natural locations around Lake Mead are splayed out across the screen in gorgeous color . You really want to dive into the electric blue of that man-made lake . Urban settings are less well realized . The story line is involved and not very plausible . This babe , Whaley , conks Michael Madsen over the head with a rock while he's at the urinal , which is among other things very bad manners . What's she doing in the men's room anyway ? What kind of a movie IS this ? After Whaley and Kilmer have been together for a while , Madsen finally catches up to them , threatens and beats Kilmer , and rapes Whaley who manages to find a gun and appears to shoot Madsen multiorgasmically . But no ! Madsen shows up for the climax of the film and he and Whaley fall into each other's arms and laugh . I guess he's forgotten about getting bashed in the urinal . And I guess he's still alive because Kilmer didn't bother to check and see if Whaley had REALLY shot him after being raped . Are you following this ? Good , because I couldn't . Oh - - and I also must have missed the part in which Kilmer gets to take the money out of the attache case and fill the case with junk , including a can of Spam . In fact - - well , okay , I admit it . I lost track of the money per se once or twice during the film . I'm also not certain why we are left to assume that , at the end , Kilmer can be presumed to be safe from both the Mafia and the police . I'm sure there's some reason because I am a mechanical determinist . Performances . Whaley is suitably sluttish and very yummy . She looks a little and acts a lot like Natalie Wood and is about the same size . I rather liked her appearance - - that saucy ever-jiggling bosom , those big dark eyes looking outward in two slightly different directions . Whatever " charisma " means , Val Kilmer hasn't got it here . He recites his lines as if reading them from a cue card on an afternoon drama . There is no animation in his delivery or his movement . He seems bored by having to speak . And he has prissy good looks that are repugnant . But , man , did he come awake for some roles in later movies , doing for instance a splendid job in " Heat . " But here he seems to be playing his instrument with a mute . Poor Michael Madsen , a nice guy in real life apparently . But if you've seen " Reservoir Dogs , " you know what he's like here , slavering over the prospect of torturing bound prisoners with lighted cigarettes , automatics , a hunting knife , a baseball bat . Sometimes he switches from one application to another in the middle of a schtick . I was kind of in the mood for it and was pretty much disappointed by it , but I can see why someone in a less demanding mood might enjoy it . It doesn't really seem to deserve much applause . |
443,175 | 819,382 | 33,149 | 5 | Lupino's picture . | A pretty good Warner Brothers working-man flick , recycled though it is , that makes you feel for the poor guys driving those big rigs and trying to squeeze in as many hours on the road as possible . But that's only part of the plot . The main story has the slightly mad Ida Lupino , married to the boss , the good-natured airhead of Alan Hale , falling for George Raft's blue-collar kind of guy , who in turn is in love with foxy and sympathetic Ann Sheridan . Disgusted by Hale , Lupino does a monoxide number on him so she can be free to marry Raft . Raft , however , is an ethical guy and rejects her . Lupino then goes to the police in a major snit and blames Raft for forcing her to murder her husband . At the trial , she breaks down . Raft is freed and takes over the business . All's well that ends well . I wonder how many legal-types have ever seen a witness break down on the stand . Did anyone ever cry , " Okay , I DID it , I DID it . She had it coming , but I didn't mean to kill her . It was an ACCIDENT , I tell you , and ACCIDENT ! Understand ? " Well , that's not exactly what Ida Lupino does on the stand here . Instead , she sobs , " The DOORS made me do it ! " The film is more interesting than it is compelling . Of course we want the good people to survive and flourish , and we want the evil people to suffer and die a lingering death . Lupino's character is not exactly evil , though , which is one of the things that makes the movie interesting . She's a little impulsive and disturbed throughout , and at the end she turns into a complete fruitcake . While we certainly don't want her nefarious scheme to succeed , neither do we want to see someone who's obviously insane suffer more than they are already going to suffer in the days before phenothiazines . No . Lupino has a tough enough road ahead of her in some psychiatric warehouse . We are spared at least seeing her led down the last mile and being strapped in the chair . Warner Brothers ground out dozens of these kinds of flicks during the 1930s , often reworkings of the same plot , and they knew what they were doing . Very professional team at Warner Brothers . Jack Warner worked his major stars half to death and paid them about as much as waiters were paid at The Brown Derby - - and no tips . |
443,308 | 819,382 | 881,934 | 5 | It Could Have Been Worse . | This could easily have been turned into an exploitation flick , the kind that's so easy to visualize among today's profusion of junk . See , there would be a John Lennon look-alike with a phony Liverpudlian accent , and half the film would follow him around on his last day on earth . Then there would be a Mark David Chapman , who wouldn't have to be much of a look-alike because nobody knows what Chapman looks or sounds like , but he would have a violent past and have bizarre encounters with negative images of spooks and spirits , instantaneous shock cuts , an ear-splitting electronic percussive score , the fondling of the blue steel Smith and Wesson , the climactic ejaculation in the portcullis of the Dakota , the foot chase , the speeding cars , the shrieking sirens , the exploding fireball , the shots exchanged in the empty warehouse , Chapman spread-legged atop a flaming petroleum tank screaming into the empty night sky - - " Made it , Ma ! TOP OF THE WORLD ! " Well , you get the picture . But this Indie production doesn't adhere too closely to the dumbed-down Hollywood template . It's more subtle than that . It's quieter , more thoughtful , if not more enlightening . Because , after all , who can understand Mark David Chapman ? The killing of John Lennon was preposterous . Sure , Chapman considered Lennon a " phony , " as defined in Chapman's favorite book , " The Catcher in the Rye . " Lennon , who made so much of his spiritual identity , owned five farms with Holsteins , a weekend cottage in Florida , and five apartments in the Dakota . But by such a lenient definition of " phoniness , " we are all phonies . Lennon could have been anybody - - almost was . Chapman even carried around a back-up list of other targets in case he missed Lennon - - Jackie Kennedy , Johnny Carson , and two or three other phonies . So this movie , or any movie like it , that attempts to dig up a motive from Chapman's fulguritic brain , sets itself an impossible task . Not even Chapman knows the answers . If the film doesn't follow the received wisdom of Hollywood , it at least imitates a good source , Martin Scorsese's " Taxi Driver , " which derives a lot of its stuff from Bresson . There is a slow and deliberate narration by Jonas Ball , who plays Chapman , telling us of his feelings , his deliberations , his confusion . The movie was shot inexpensively in New York and there are multiple shots of the Dakota , an apartment house that's probably familiar to fans of " Rosemary's Baby . " The acting is naturalistic . It sounds real , rather than read from a script , as in so many TV commercials . There are the kinds of awkward pauses that are typically found in real life . Nobody's a stereotype . The cops who arrest Chapman clearly dislike him because of what he did , but they show more curiosity and disapproval than anger . The film is slow but surprisingly gripping . This is partly because we know what's going to happen . And what's going to happen is so pointlessly tragic that it's hard to sit through . The climactic act is so hateful that it makes the movie irretrievably joyless . It's like watching a well-made film of a man walking down the sidewalk and having a safe fall on his head . Who needs it ? |
443,002 | 819,382 | 268,695 | 5 | Flashy story based on Wells ' Novel | The 1960 version by George Pal has stop-motion effects that seem dated now , especially compared to the dazzling images we see on the screen here , and yet I kind of prefer the earlier version . It was dated , pedantic , and simple - - or simple minded , if you like . But that very simplicity made it easier to follow the plot and to understand the points that Wells was eager to make . This version is longer , better acted , but is filled with action , some of it gory , that Pal's version wasn't very concerned with . Neither version , I gather , was that close to Wells ' original . Pal's was closer in depicting the Eloi as an air-headed white-bread society with pink skins . This one is more realistic . The Eloi seem to be a mixed race . They look vaguely Polynesian - - what with body tattoos , pareus , and cowrie shells . In fact their culture looks like that of the Samoans and so do many of the Eloi themselves . If you took a sample of genes from all three major racial stocks , put them in a blender , and dumped them out on a table , they'd look like Samoans , which is not the worst fate in the world . Mara ( whatever happened to Weena ? ) doesn't look quite as corruptly innocent as Yvette Mimieux but we can live with that . Guy Pearce is pretty good . He has a commanding face , prognathous and full of masculine bone structure , and his performance is quite different from that in " L . A . Confidential , " the only other work of his that I've seen . Jeremy Irons has a bit part as the Uber-Morlock , the brains of the subterranean outfit , so to speak . He's given what I guess are philosophical points to make in his brief appearance but I must be slow because I didn't get them . The problem with these films is that they both throw away Well's reasons for why things turned out the way they did . Capitalism has led to a two-tier society ( the eaten and the eaters ) , and evolution ( still a controversial idea ) had its way for reasons that Wells spelled out . All of that is missing . We don't get any reasons for the lack of sexual bifurcation in the Eloi , nor any reason for their empty-headedness . Instead , we are given the Eloi as is - - " Here they are , folks ! " No hint whatever that they are the descendants of the worn-out wealthy class of earlier days . I don't mean that this film should have been a series of lectures on the future physical and cultural evolution of our society . Just that certain questions and answers could easily have been built into the story itself , particularly if some of the violent scenes , unnecessarily long , had been elided . And what the hell is the black , stinky , gooey stuff on those blowgun darts anyway ? It can knock down a full-grown man but it only frightens a little girl . Overall impression : Not bad , not insulting , but it looks as if it were the consequence of a meeting of a board of MBAs who began by asking , " What NEW story is there that we can juice up with modern computer-generated images ? The Time Machine ? Great ! Cannibalism and a destroyed earth - - a bonanza of fireworks ! " |
442,721 | 819,382 | 28,231 | 5 | Undistinguished but enjoyable thriller . | Hitchcock was professionally competent in directing this , but not yet the tantalizing genius he was to become with maturity . John Gielgud , Madeleine Carrol , and Peter Lorre are sent to Switzerland to eradicate an unknown German spy who is about to buy Arabia during World War I . First , Lorre offs the wrong man , some poor British ninny who just happens to have a German wife and has lost a suspicious button . Robert Young meanwhile has shown up as an American gadabout , flirting with Gielgud's mock wife , Carrol . The trio of assassins continues on the track of the genuine German spy , though with less zeal , now that they've thrown an innocent man off a mountaintop . The real spy turns out to be Young . In a spectacularly cheesy model train crash , Young dies after shooting Lorre , and Gielgud and Carrol are on their way to a real marriage . You wouldn't need second sight to recognize this as a Hitchcock movie but you'd have to examine it with a bit of care . There are one or two shots in which the camera dollies in for a closeup of a printed message or some other small object . The usual tourist's eye view of the location is used - - Switzerland , mountain climbing , a chocolate factory . Madeleine Carrol is a pleasant-looking blonde . And of course there is the train . Gielgud provides the stiff upper lip , inexpressive as ever , that he would later lend to his colorful character roles as butlers or whatnot . Robert Young is blandly acceptable , both as giddy suitor and sneering villain . Peter Lorre has to be seen and heard to be believed . In dark makeup and curly hair , his oily skin glistening , he speaks with an accent that is impossible to pin down , hovering somewhere between his native German and generic " Latin . " You know what Chico Marx was to vaudeville Italian ? Well that was closer to a real accent than anything Lorre comes up with here . Speaking of the Marx Brothers , Lorre has Harpo's simple approach to seducing attractive women too . When he sees one , he bares his fangs and hustles after her at a run . When irritated , he's given to tearing toilet paper off the roll and flinging it around in festoons . The film is likable in its own unpretentious way , although the DVD I watched ( part of the AH Signature Collection ) was so crummy I was unable to read more than half of the mysterious printed messages that come to Gielgud's attention . |
441,960 | 819,382 | 41,968 | 5 | Taut Little Melodrama . | Sensible but dull husband Arther Kennedy and domineering demanding wife Lizabeth Scott are driving through the California night to a party in their convertible . She doesn't want to go , although they've promised to show up , and she nags him until he turns around and heads back to L . A . A car passes them in the opposite direction and , evidently mistaking them for someone else , the driver tosses a bag with sixty large into their back seat . They pull over to examine this unexpected gift . Now , sixty thousand dollars was a lot of money when this movie was shot . Today , of course , I tip the barber half that much , but it certainly stirs up Lizabeth Scott's acquisitive instinct . Her dim bulb of a husband argues that they'd better take it to the police and they argue and a gun goes off and , well , the money winds up in a locker at Union Station and he winds up at the bottom of West Lake . From then on , the trajectory of the story follows the template of Murphy's Law - - if anything can go wrong , it will . Here is Lizabeth Scott with all that stash and nothing to account for except a missing husband , in whom the police show a distinct lack of interest . But then Dan Duryea shows up at her apartment , claiming he's from " the detective bureau " and is simply checking on a convertible with plates similar to hers . Duryea , never a good guy , is the man the money was destined for and it doesn't take him long to twig . He bats her around a little , or threatens to . ( He's always doing that . ) And he more or less becomes her partner when she tells him the truth , but only after he has coerced her into being more " friendly " towards him . Other characters enter the story - - Kristine Miller , who is Kennedy's sister and is the most appealing character in the film , and Don DeFore , who is the brother of Lizabeth Scott's previous husband , whom Scott drove to suicide . Everybody and his brother seems to know what's going on - - except the cops who interpret everything in the simplest possible way so as to avoid any tedious paperwork . It ends with all the loose ends tied up in a ritzy Mexican hotel . I was certainly glad when Lizabeth Scott met her end , otherwise she'd be spending the rest of her life in fancy Mexican hotels instead of the dumps I've stayed in with windows overlooking an alley strewn with crumpled toilet paper and broken beer bottles . The direction by Byron Haskin is only functional but the script , by Roy Huggins , is nice and tight . Very little time is wasted . If the story has innumerable twists and the dialog has little sparkle , there still are a couple of good lines , most of them given to Don DeFore . Scott , though , when she first meets Duryea , asks , " What do I call you , other than stupid ? " ( That's not bad . ) And Duryea tells her , " Don't ever change , Tiger . I wouldn't like you with a heart . " All pretty hard-boiled , as is the story itself . I could never get with Lizabeth Scott as an actress . Dan Duryea is a parody of himself , his skinniness padded out with broad-shouldered , loose-flowing , double-breasted suits . And Don Defore , looking a little chubby and good-naturedly goofy , really belongs in light romantic comedies . But the mystery sweeps you along . We don't find out until more than half-way through where the money came from . And we don't find out what Don Defore is doing in the movie until the final few minutes . Overall the movie has about as much originality as the title - - " Too Late For Tears " . I mean , did someone actually have to think that up ? Or did they just pick it out of a shoe box ? An engaging divertimento if you have time on your hands . |
442,091 | 819,382 | 41,983 | 5 | No-Nonsense Crime Drama . | Lloyd Bridges had a face made for the camera , full of smooth , bony planes , a clean forehead , all dominated by a couple of deep-set eyes that seemed to glimmer in the shadows of his brows . And he had , throughout his career , the quick , nervous energy of a small predator , maybe a ferret . Even in the ripeness of his age , in the Hot Shot movies where he was a comic admiral . He made some decent movies but never achieved major stardom . Even here , in a relatively low-budget drama about counterfeiting and the Secret Service , he is a central figure but only a quasi-star . The police deliberately allow Bridges to escape from the slams in hopes that he will lead the Secret Service , personified mostly by John Hoyt , to the people who now are beginning to grind out money that is " queer " on plates that Bridges used to own . The escape was engineered because the Secret Service knows that Bridges has no place to go except to his ex girl friend in L . A . They have accordingly bugged her apartment and insinuated an undercover agent into her life . Hoyt is the undercover agent who allows himself to be sucked into funding a plan to produce the queer money . The specific idea to to capture Bridges and his accomplices the moment the money changes hands . That may be a little confusing , I know , but the plot is a little complicated . And besides , my mind couldn't quite wrap itself around John Hoyt as a serious undercover agent of social control . I kept seeing him as the three-armed Martian in a " Twilight Zone " episode . That image sometimes became a bit blurry and Hoyt would appear in a toga as one of the conspiratorial Senators from MGM's " Julius Caesar . " Anyway , the plot zooms forward as if self propelled . There are fist fights , shoot outs . Before the end , Bridges is back in the slams . Hoyt tells the desk sergeant , " Let's keep this quiet . Book him under another name . " Desk Sergeant : " How does ' Briggs ' sound " ? Hoyt : " As good as any . " Desk Sergeant : " It's my mother-in-law's name . I just wanted to see what it looks like on a police blotter . " That's about the only example of witty dialog in the movie . Almost all the rest is spare and functional , along the lines of Bridges ' , " If anybody gets hurt , it ain't gonna be me cause I got the gun . Just remember to get this heap started when you see me comin ' . " It's not a bad movie , just a routine one . Richard Fleischer directed a number of small-budget dramas like this before going on to bigger and better things like " Doctor Doolittle . " Well - - bigger , anyway . Want to see a funny movie about counterfeiting ? Try " Mister 880 . " A more sophisticated movie about counterfeiting ? " To Live and Die in L . A . " |
443,317 | 819,382 | 41,958 | 5 | Proletarian Noir . | I understand Jules Dassin was more or less driven to work in Europe by the HUAC investigations . If he was a Commie you'd never be able to tell from this film , which fits right smack into the frame established by the Warner Brothers ' working-class films of the 1930s - - " Manpower , " " Tiger Shark , " " They Drive By Night , " and a dozen others . " They Drive By Night , " was written actually by the same writer as " Thieves ' Highway , " Besserides , a Greek-American from California's central valley , a truck driver by training . Dassin has directed this piece about relatively small-time skulduggery and double crosses efficiently , and he has a good cast . Richard Conte is more animated than usual . Lee J . Cobb is a kind of Johnny Friendly who runs a big but crooked fruit stand . Barbara Lawrence is beautiful , as a model should be , and is as tall as a giraffe . Valentina Cortese has a thoroughly novel role - - a whore with a heart of gold . Her acting isn't exactly subtle . Maybe she had trouble with the language . But she's magnetic , perhaps because she's given some of the best lines in the film and is a more complex character than most of the others . Maybe too it has something to do with her appearance . She's not a beautiful woman . Her face is long , and her nose almost equally long . It's not a Roman nose either . It's Milanese . She has tiny shoulders and very little neck so that she seems hunched over most of the time . But her eyes are exquisite if they are considered individually , as they must be because each is unique and each looks in a different direction . Yes , I think that's her secret . The eyes have it . The story is out of a B movie . The good guys are good and the bad guys are bad . There are some characters in between - - Millard Mitchell , Cortese , Conte , and two mostly comedic hot-shots - - who may not be entirely dishonorable but are capable of being bent by the drive for money and revenge . The B-movie budget shows , alas , and there's a tacked-on ending in which a cop shakes his finger in our faces and warns us that just because we've been wronged , that doesn't mean we can go around taking the law into our own hands . The scene was written and directed by Darryl F . Zanuck without Dassin's knowledge . Watching this engaging but no-more-than adequate film , one wonders what could have been done with an A-movie budget . A little more time ( shooting took about one month ) , more money , more thoughtful casting , more polish on the script . It might have been better than good enough . |
442,205 | 819,382 | 38,937 | 5 | Only a Mild Shock | Vincent Price , at a time when his career in expensive features was beginning to slide , is a psychiatrist who murders his wife for the love of another woman , Lynn Bari . Price carts the body off in a trunk and dumps it on the rocks to simulate an accident . But the murder has been witnessed by a woman across the courtyard , Anabel Shaw , a delicate looking creature who is expecting the immediate return of her husband , a POW for two years . The husband , Frank Latimore , walks into the hotel room late at night to find Shaw sitting on the " divan " in a state of shock , staring wide-eyed and speechless at the wall . Quick - - off to the private sanatorium of the best shock specialist on the West Coast , who happens to be Vincent Price . What a conundrum ! Price and Bari know that Shaw has seen the murder . If she recovers from the state of shock , she'll blab it all over the place for sure . The only way out is to start her on a course of insulin shock therapy and , during the fourth and final trial , give her enough of an overdose to knock her off . That ought to keep that would-be blabbermouth quiet . This B-grade crime drama is confused in some ways . The writers seem to have known next to nothing about post-traumatic stress disorder or its treatment . And there are multiple ways of getting around the problem without murdering the helpless Shaw . It doesn't start off as a very promising film . The original murder is handled tactfully and isn't enough to send anyone into tonic immobility . Price bops his wife over the head off screen , for crying out loud . But then I found myself gradually drawn into the story , curious about it , rather than gripped by it . I don't know what Price's wife looked like but Lynn Bari is nothing special , unless she and Price conjured up some more than usually exotic stuff when the two of them were not in the presence of the camera . Furthermore , Lynn Bari's role is that of Lady MacBeth , constantly urging Price on to increasingly nefarious deeds . But the pair show absolutely no electricity on screen , so Price's crime passionelle is less than believable . Price is a peculiar actor . He started off in supporting roles in big-budget movies , his mellifluous baritone enriching every film he was in . But he had an even better flair for the comedic than for the dramatic , as in the hilarious " Champagne for Caesar . " Later in his career he was able to blend the two talents in the outrageous rip-offs of Poe and , most notably , in the thoroughly enjoyable " Theater of Blood . " Lynn Bari has the vivacity of a tree stump . Reed Hadley shows up as a polite but too-nosy detective . His face may be oddly configured in some respects but his voice , like Price's , is memorable - - reassuring and authoritative . In the end , Price saves his soul but is captured and , presumably , sent to the gas chamber because of medical ethics and the Hippocratic oath , which begins , " First , do no harm to the movie . " |
442,958 | 819,382 | 35,114 | 5 | Okay , who's the canary ? | This is a minor motion picture . MGM has put together a fairly simple story of a good German-American who takes the place of his evil twin , who is the German Counsel and runs a spy ring . The good German ( Conrad Veidt ) worms his way into the nest of evildoers , exposes all of them , is betrayed by a pet canary , and allows himself to be taken back to Berlin for punishment in order to save his girl friend . If the plot sounds implausible , that's because it is . There are some solid supporting players ( Ray Teal , Moroni Olsen , Marc Lawrence , Martin Kosleck ) but Veidt is no one's idea of a romantic lover . Not with that pinched face and those thin lips that seem to have been painted dark , as if he were a madman who just stepped out of somebody's cabinet . He does the long-haired , bespectacled , pipe-smoking good twin adequately , but his evil twin seems much more natural . Anne Ayars speaks in a way that seems to have been endemic to women in the 1940s . There has definitely been a change in women's supersegmentals . Contemporary women are rapidly losing their vowels , so that " sure " becomes " shr " , which is actually Chinese . I've kind of made fun of the movie but I enjoyed it . It's in black and white , the score is no more than functional , and Jules Dassin has directed unpretentiously . It's not gripping so much as reassuring somehow . It's nice to contemplate a movie made during a time before movies became " films " , before there were movie critics ( except James Agee , who was a Franciscan fool ) , before movies could be entertaining without being blockbusters and costing a zillion dollars . When you watch this , you can almost smell popcorn . |
442,554 | 819,382 | 26,121 | 5 | Being rich is better . | Rather standard working-class drama of the sort that Warner Brothers was turning out , though with more emphasis on the issue of unions and union-breaking than was usual . The usual stalwart support is present , such as Ward Bond and even Akim Tamirov . Maybe part of the reason it doesn't have more impact on viewers these days is that the working class audience , living on the edge of poverty , doesn't really exist as a social consideration anymore . The people who made this movie and the audience who lived this kind of life are now all dead . Far fewer people know what existence was like when it was constantly overcast by the threat of imminent poverty . In the Great Depression , during which the generation described by Tom Brokaw in his book " The Greatest Generation " grew up , unions were still controversial and there was a good deal of violence involved in the development of collective bargaining . Goons might bash in your head . A union organizer might be ( and at least in one case was ) castrated and murdered . And a miner might blow up a mine . One third of the nation was unemployed and there was no Social Security or Unemployment Benefits . Well , no time for a history lesson here . And it's just as well because I know practically nothing of the history of industrial relations . Considering it as a film , I can only echo what another reviewer , " Howdymax " , in still another of his unusually perspicacious comments , has already said . The movie is Dreck . Try to think of it as an historical artifact , like a Leni Lenape tomahawk or a Roman coin . It's no longer useful but it's oddly fascinating to see and handle . That may help you get past Mr . Paul Muni's outrageous overacting . If he could do it , he would chew up not only the scenery but the walls of the mine shaft , the Miner's Bar , his supporting players , the script , the director , the camera , and the viewer . |
442,362 | 819,382 | 120,338 | 5 | Expensive wreck . | I've always enjoyed the British version , " A Night to Remember , " based on Walter Lord's popular book . Yes , it's black and white , and a bit dated , but it's a straightforward telling of an awesome disaster . The 1953 Hollywood version was a boring soap opera which was set aboard the Titanic simply so that some exciting and dramatic scenes could be tacked on at the end . This one is more like the Hollywood version , only with a budget extended to the power of n . What a wreck ! In some shots the ship doesn't seem the size of a man-made artifact at all . It seems impossibly huge , twenty leagues long . When the stern rises into the air and a figure falls from the fantail , the figure dwindles down toward the sea which seems a million miles away , and vanishes except for a minuscule white spot marking its splash point . The Titanic in this movie is colossal , stupendous , magnificent , gargantuan , or - - in a word - - titanic . Before the f / x-resplendent climax we endure a romance between a lower-class handsome young man and a pretty , rich young lady . Now , few people realize this , but this is the first cinematic exploration of the theme of True Love overcoming Class Distinctions . Yes , it's true . Love conquers all and you can be sure that threepence or so will be no more than grist for its mill . The film's full of stereotypical character and they're not worth going into . Well , one example - - the wealthy coward who tries to buy his way into a lifeboat . More examples . ( There are so many . ) Here are the two lovers clinging to the flagstaff as they plung into the see . " This is where we first met ! " , she says breathlessly . Earlier the couple find a brand new automobile in the cargo . He leaps into the driver's seat and beeps the ancient horn gaily , as in a Walt Disney movie . She sits elegantly in the coach . " Where to ? " he asks . " Take me to the stars ! , " she chirps . There's a subplot involving a stolen jewel , straight out of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes movies . Basically this is a megabuck special effects extravaganza built around a B-movie script . So much is lost . Like the irony of the California , sitting a few miles away , watching and misinterpreting the Titanic's distress rockets . The piling up of personal telegrams that kept the radio officer too busy to tend to the ice warnings . The Titanic disaster was an interesting lesson in sociology though , factually speaking . Women and children only , right ? Very gentlemanly . Very Edwardian . And most of the women in first class passage were in fact saved . A far lesser proportion of women and kids in second class were saved , and only a handful from third class . You can actually MEASURE the relative impact of social class , gender , and age . I don't want to make this film sound like the catastrophe that the Titanic's first voyage was . If you liked , say , " Pearl Harbor , " you'll probably like this . It has pretty much the same structure . There's something else that occurred to me while watching this though . When should we just leave the real Titanic alone ? Some years ago , Telly Savalas was featured in a TV program called something like , " Treasures from the Titanic , " in which he displayed and described items retrieved from the wreck and the surrounding sea floor . Savalas gave his best imitation of a carnival barker . You know , smiling , holding up a boot for the camera , pronouncing , " This was somebody's shoe . Imagine . Someone wearing this shoe as the stately liner made its final descent . " The disarticulated carcass of the Titanic is a giant necropolis , filled with human remains and , who knows ? , ghosts . It's a burial ground of sorts . Should we really go searching among the bodies for watches and gold teeth ? |
443,432 | 819,382 | 85,678 | 5 | Harmless , old-fashioned comic adventure . | I'm not sure why Tom Selleck's career as a leading man stalled when it did . I'm told he's handsome . And he has that cracked Jimmy-Stewart voice . In interviews he seems bright and articulate . He doesn't do a bang-up job in this light-hearted zap number but who could ? All he's called upon to do is act drunk once in a while , and if he doesn't do as good a job as John Wayne did in " True Grit , " well , maybe it's because Wayne has had so much more practice . Oh , and Selleck is also given lines like , " Surely , the great Suleman the Exquisite would not harm a small servant of his grateful guest . " Something like that , anyway . Selleck did a fine job as Dwight D . Eisenhower in a recent TV movie - - " Ten Days to D-Day , " perhaps it was . The plot here - - self-indulgent pretty socialite hires handsome drunken pilot and his mechanic side kick to fly around most of Asia to find her missing father before she's disinherited - - is pretty familiar stuff . Runaway socialites and canny pilots . I keep thinking of Jimmy Cagney and Barbara Stanwyk lost in the desert . The photography is a bit gloomy but the locations are unusual and the action and comedy balance each other nicely . There's even a dogfight , which the slower , heavier two-seater with its single Lewis machine gun would surely have lost against the more nimble single-seater with its two machine guns . The reason the clumsier airplane wins is that it is flown by Tom Selleck , whereas the superior machine is flown by a stereotyped square-jawed blond German with no sense of humor . The music is lush and romantic . The scenery rolling . The old airplanes fun to watch as they sputter along or flop over in hammerhead stalls . The dialog sort of lumbers along in the same way , without enough funny lines or wisecracks . Still , it's not offensive in any way . The kids will probably enjoy it . Maybe they will even learn a little something about Buddhism , such as that a world religion by that name exists . Not a gem , but not bad . |
442,300 | 819,382 | 106,912 | 5 | Unassuming UFO Abduction Flick . | In 1975 five guys were driving through the desolate forests of Arizona and one of them seems to have been killed or kidnapped by a giant pulsing orange UFO . The others take off and return in a hurry to town and don't report the incident . When they finally do , everyone else in the little community of Snowflake thinks that they killed Travis Walton ( D . B . Sweeney ) and left his body up there somewhere . Even the state's criminal investigator ( James Garner ) is skeptical . One or two thorough police searches of the area turn up nothing - - not the crater that the loggers claim was created by the UFO - - but no body either . Young Travis is missing for five days and nights , dressed only in denims , in the mountains where the temperature drops into the 20s ( F ) . When he turns up , he's naked , incoherent , bewhiskered , and looks slightly used . He tells his friends who , once again , delay reporting the return of the dead Walton . Later Walton , in a flashback , informs the authorities that he spent the missing time aboard a kind of space ship ( the decor of which closely resembles that of the crashed one in " Alien " ) , where he was covered by a kind of giant condom by wrinkled , pinkish crew members . The results of the polygraph tests are inconclusive , one of Walton's friends having walked out in the middle of his . ( He was hiding a criminal record . ) There has been considerable dissension among the five loggers , though the reasons are vague , and the movie ends on a note of uncertainty . The chief logger ( Robert Patrick , Agent Doggonit in " The X Files " ) and Walton visit the site of the incident a few years later . Walton has always blamed the others for leaving him behind and scurrying off . But now the two estranged friends make up , smile , and drive away from the site in peace . It doesn't really click for some reason . Except for James Garner , who is his reliable self , full of folk wisdom and common sense , the performances aren't very good , and they need to be , because the script wanders around from here to there , sometimes passing beyond implausible into positively dubious . Must ALL the townspeople glare at Patrick and the others - - in the café ? At the town hall meeting in the church ? And the film has surprisingly little in the way of sense of place , of local color . There is no vastness in this vast wilderness . The interiors of the working-class homes look like generic working-class " homes " . And the script is so weak it leaves us in doubt about what's going on with the polygraph tests . The dialog , even when delivered believably , lacks sparkle and tag lines . On the other hand , a lot of effort evidently went into Walton's experiences aboard the space ship . I don't know whether " Alien " ( 1979 ) was such a good influence on space ships or not . Before " Alien " all space ships were shiny , metallic , high-tech , impeccably clean and full of right angles . Since " Alien " they all look like something cobbled together out of Play-Do by a demented five-year-old kid , then poked full of holes , and squirted with organic honey . And why all this stuff about the horrifying experience anyway ? Val Lewton discovered that sometimes the scariest things of all are those that you don't see . They'd have been better off throwing that money into the script and the cast and coming up with an effective psychological drama and mystery . I can see a neat little film coming out of it . As it is , we're more or less forced into going along with Travis Walton's spectacular story , unless the detailed flashback is lying , as well as the five loggers . Were Walton and the others pulling a hoax for whatever reason ? Who knows . Walton must have made some money out of it - - he wrote a detailed book about the event and he's co-writer on this movie . That doesn't mean it didn't happen , of course . There is simply too much evidence from credible people that SOMETHING is going on , something entirely non-paradigmatic , and we don't have the slightest idea what it is . It's a stretch to think that aliens are behind it , but if they are , I have a suggestion for our extra-terrestrial visitors . Next time you decide to pluck somebody up and take him for a long ride into outer space , don't choose some redneck nobodies in boots and cowboy hats , with names like Lamar Oakum and Dwight ( " Big Bobbie " ) Thumm . Drop in on Washington , DC , and make off with a politician . Take your pick . Keep him as long as you like . |
442,470 | 819,382 | 47,679 | 5 | Why Won't They Believe Me ! | Stanwyck is a painter who spots a murder taking place across the courtyard of her high rise . The murderer is the suave George Sanders , a distinguished historian and author . She calls the police , in the person of Gary Merrill , but do you think Merrill and his boys believe her ? Not for a moment . They go so far as to examine Sanders ' apartment and car without finding " a scrap of evidence . " I found this startling . The proper metric for " evidence " is not " the scrap . " I was able to exhale with relief half an hour later when Merrill reverted to the more appropriate measurement , the " shred " of evidence . Whew . A close call . For a moment the script had taken on the sheen of originality . Sanders , who is of course a real murderer , is the soul of civility and reason with the authorities . But Stanwyck becomes more and more alarmed . Sanders introduces the notion of her being mentally ill , so he begins to doubt her own sanity . And , at night , Sanders creeps into her apartment and types threatening notes to himself on HER typewriter . He presents the notes to the police , most reluctantly , but , after all , his life may be in danger from this deranged woman with the idee fixe . When she ' brought in and confronted the the notes , she can't remember writing them . ( Because she DIDN'T write them . ) Gary Merrill has come to like her but must now stand aside as the Captain , Ray Shannon , decides to send her to a mental hospital for observation . He has no authority to do that , by the way , at least not anymore . She has a fit of gibbering hysterics at the police station . At the hospital she's interviewed by hostile shrinks and must live with stereotyped kooks . There are more troubles until , finally , she visits Sanders in his apartment and he tells her the truth . Yes , of course he killed that tart . What good was she to anyone ? He himself was bored with her . To top it off , he begins to shout epigrams about " when the time comes " - - in German . ( The writers have not forgotten or forgiven World War II . ) Sanders tries to throw her out the window . He's already typed her suicide note on her typewriter . The police having stumbled upon evidence linking Sanders to the murder victim , show up just as Stanwyck is escaping the apartment . She runs off down the city streets , followed by Sanders and , behind him , Merrill and a dozen cops . Stanwyck pauses once in a while to grab a stranger by the lapels and scream , " Help me ! They're trying to kill me ! " She climbs to the top of a tall building being constructed , with the murderous Sanders in hot pursuit . I won't spell out the details of the climax except to say that it is not a tragic ending . Stanwyck is okay , a little more animated perhaps than in some of the other films she made around this time . Merrill is professional and has a reassuring baritone . Sanders is his usual impeccable cad self in most scenes but I wish he could have avoided that Nazi rant and losing his cool during a fist fight at the end . He's not the type . I don't know why this film is interpreted as some sort of product of a patriarchal society . The helpless witness to a murder is a cliché , but it's not gender specific . Jimmy Stewart was in the same boat in " Rear Window . " He couldn't convince the police either . ( There weren't enough shreds of evidence . ) And the scene in which the oleaginous villain sounds perfectly reasonable while the innocent accused goes all to pieces and starts screaming with indecipherable rage isn't gender specific either . Jack Lemon went to pieces at a critical moment in " The China Syndrome . " And Mathew Modine went berserk trying to explain things to the police in " Pacific Heights . " It's a well-established cliché . On the other hand , there is a general tendency for women to be portrayed as helpless victims whom no one believes . Call it " the suffering victim " fantasy . The LMN network is full of movies with titles like , " Please Don't Take My Baby . " The corresponding male fantasy is that of the conquering hero . Pick any film on the Action Network for an example . " Rambo : First Blood " is a good one to start with . It has to be that way . It's Nature's design . Can you imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger having witnessed a murder and no one believing him and his being sent to a mental hospital and threatened with defenestration by George Sanders ? |
441,625 | 819,382 | 106,918 | 5 | Nice performances , clotted plot | You really can't fault any of the performers here . Tom Cruise has a boyish high-school handsomeness and an unthinkingly naive demeanor to go with it . Jeanne Triplehorn has big dark soulful eyes and does and says what she's supposed to . But the lesser actors are the more interesting . And they are here in droves . Gene Hackman , the late What's-his-name Viterelli ( I can only think of him as " Jelly " in " Analyze This " ) , Holly Hunter looking sexy and sassy , a hypomanic Gary Busey who , when capable of it , really delivers , Paul Sorvino who underplays ( honest ) , Hal Holbrook and Wilfred Brimley being nasty , poor Tobin Bell as the albino who must have played a dozen hit men and mass murderers by now , Ed Harris now with a completely shaved head , Terry Kinney as the pale blond nice guy who conceals his demons , and Steven Hill as a ruthless FBI man . The performances and the locations make this worth a dekko . This ought to be Sidney Pollack's turf alright - - corruption in a law firm and illegal activities by the authorities , the kind of polluted panorama that he often finds appealing . But somehow it doesn't come off . I haven't read John Grisham's book but it's hard to believe the plot could be as complicated as this movie . There were times when I was completely lost , especially towards the end when the firm begins to unravel and the chases and breathless phone calls start . Probably the most interesting character's is Gene Hackman's crooked but very human lawyer . His scenes with Tripplehorn are really quite good , his hesitations , awkward silences , embarrassed chuckles , and vapid smiles . His last scene with her , as he lies half drugged in bed , is outstanding . The ending is hard to swallow . Cruise gives the Feds just enough legal information to put the bad guys away for several years , based on the fact that the firm overbilled its clients and used the post office to do it , which is a federal offense . A clever move on the part of Cruise but I had a hard time visualizing these murdering wealthy perps doing any jail time . I mean , for what ? For sending a client a bill that charged too much ? That would put my plumber in jail , my doctor , my shrink , and a strange porno web site that I once unwittingly subscribed to - - but these guys ? Nope . Even if they were convicted , I see Dershowitz handling the appeal |
443,410 | 819,382 | 28,358 | 5 | The universe or nothing . Which will it be ? | The fantasy about the evolution of Western Civilization over the course of several generations , beginning in 1936 . England seems to be at peace . Then , out of nowhere , a ruinous war that wrecks everything , followed by an epidemic that , like the Black Death , winnows the population . As the disease dissipates , we're taken to Everytown in England , now run by a pompous dictator , Ralph Richardson , who is making war against " the hill people . " There is no petrol , no medicine , no chemists , no books , no nothing , except there seem to be plenty of weapons and bullets . Into this raggedy populace comes aviator Raymond Massey . He lands in town , claiming that he represents an organization call Wings Over the World . Richardson , sneering but wary , promptly puts him in a dungeon and disregards Massey's warning - - " Others know where I am and they will come . " Well , they DO come apace . A fleet of large black multi-engine airplanes with open decks like the cruise ships of yore . They brush away the obsolete local air defense and drop " peace gas . " It knocks everybody out but kills no one . Wings Over the World brings prosperity to the people of England . Cities are rebuilt , there is plenty of food , and science charges ahead . Soon , the society , now led by Massey's grandson , is ready to shoot a young couple to the moon . After that ? Who knows . Enter one of the artisans who has constructed the great Cretanesque marble statues of Everytown and Everywhere , Sir Cedric Hardwicke . He's disturbed by this notion of Science with a capital S . Let's stop this nonsense and go back to the old days . Weren't we just as happy then ? And this space business . Ridiculous . Maybe H . G . Welles had just digested Hegel or something . Every time there is an idea , it generates its own opposition . From Ralph Richardson's blind opposition to progress , we move to Hardwicke's opposition to blind progress . Hardwicke musters his troops and they charge the " electric gun " which is about to SHOOT a bullet with a couple of people in it to the moon . KaBoom . Science , in the person of one of Raymond Massey's avatars , wins . He stands with a pal in an observatory , pointing out the magic bullet on its way to a lunar landing , smiling and satisfied . We can never go back to the ways of yesteryear . " The universe or nothing . Which will it be ? " Compared to Welles , I consider myself a mental midget but it seems to me he's a little confused here . Science , as I know it , endorses no values except scientific integrity . It's a useful tool for finding out things , but it doesn't tell you what to find out , or what to do with what you find out . Yes , Darwin was a scientist but so was Lysenko . Alfred Nobel , a man of peace , invented dynamite , a weapon he thought so destructive that it would put an end to war . Science makes progress of a certain kind possible , but if we want to decide what KIND of progress , we have to look elsewhere , into the more arguable corners of philosophy . Speaking of that , Welles , and the film based on his story , bring up a lot of social issues for at least a brief treatment , but religion is nowhere to be seen . That's Welles for you . |
442,083 | 819,382 | 38,988 | 5 | Pedestrian Romantic Melodrama | When the film was released , the adverts referred to it as " The Strange Love of ( whisper her name ) Martha Ivers . " That gives you a pretty good indication of the target audience - - snoops and gossips . Actually , the movie is rather better than that , but not that much better . Sam Masterson ( Van Heflin ) returns to his home town of Iverstown after an absence of 17 or 18 years to find that his teen-aged girl friend , Martha Ivers ( Barbara Stanwyk ) has married the nerdish Walter O'Neil . Martha is now the powerful owner of the local factory . ( It's an indication of the care that has gone into the writing that we never have any idea of what the factory makes . ) Walter ( Kirk Douglas ) is still an alcoholic weakling and Stanwyk orders him around like a flunky . As kids , the three of them were involved in the accidental death of Martha's mean old aunt ( Judith Anderson ) and years later , with Martha now pushing him , Douglas as the local District Attorney sees to it that an innocent man is convicted of the crime and hanged . Stanwyk has inherited the factory and glories in her wealth and power , but Douglas , though he loves her , has never been able to forgive himself for his part in what is now two deaths . This is the mess that Van Heflin stumbles into . It's a long time being established . Nothing much happens for the first forty minutes or so , except that the cynical but basically good-hearted Heflin picks up Lizabeth Scott , she of the husky contrabass voice , perpetual pout , and coarse demeanor . But Scott is of no particular importance to the plot except to act as Heflin's conscience . That conscience is tested when he runs into his old friends Stanwyk and Douglas . The first thing Stanwyk does after shaking hands with Heflin is to put moves on him , which he fends off . Douglas hears about this and hires four or five goons to kidnap Heflin and rearrange his face . Then Stanwyk and Douglas , wondering what Heflin is sticking around town for , conclude that he is there to blackmail them for the crime they committed when they were teens . They ask him how much he wants . Then it begins to get really confusing because Heflin appears to accommodate himself to their assumptions , finally asking Stanwyk for half ownership in the factory . To her , it sounds like a pretty good idea . She and Heflin could go far - - if only they could somehow get rid of that drunken husband of hers . And that's all we hear of the blackmail business . It's never mentioned again . Stanwyk throws herself on Heflin once more and this time succeeds . At least we assume she succeeds . They're out in the woods and he grabs her and smothers her with kisses . The camera cuts to her hand dropping a flaming faggot into the camp fire . Dissolve . The fire is reduced to smoldering ashes . ( This was directed by Lewis Milestone , who should have stuck to war movies . ) There is a final confrontation between the three of them . Douglas drunkenly spills the beans on Stanwyk . Beans that Heflin has previously been unaware of . In disgust , Heflin leaves the two of them and stalks out into the night , calling them both " sick . " What keeps the movie interesting is the acting . The three principals are quite good . Interesting to see Kirk Douglas playing a wuss . Another few years and Van Heflin would have been cast as the drunk ( cf . , " Madame Bovary " and " The Three Musketeers " ) and Douglas would have been the tough skeptical gambler . Stanwyk , too , gives a good performance although why she was cast so often as the treacherous sex pot is beyond me . The role calls for an actress who can ooze heat , whereas Stanwyk's presence suggests a desk calculator . It's not so terrible a movie . It's not insulting to the audience . It's just rather dull , especially the first hour or so , during which nothing happens that would be of importance to any audience except one composed chiefly of snoops and gossips . |
443,575 | 819,382 | 23,955 | 5 | Too much caster oil . | John Ford and Will Rogers made three movies together in the mid 1930s . " Steamboat Round the Bend " is a broad comedy dealing with what Joseph Campbell called " creative mythology " - - the need to overthrow old myths in favor of more recent ones . " Judge Priest " showed Will Rogers as an easygoing magistrate with a casual approach to the law and a serious approach to fishing . " Doctor Bull " is probably the least of the three . Rogers is a small-town doctor who we see ministering to his many patients , curbing a typhoid epidemic , curing a paralyzed young man , seeing to it that young girls " in trouble " are properly married , and courting a local widow . If it doesn't succeed - - and it doesn't - - it's because Ford and the writers couldn't decide what kind of story this was supposed to be and , chiefly , because Will Rogers is miscast . Rogers began as a stand-up one-man show , twirling a lasso , commenting with gentle and homespun wit on politics . Some of his comments have entered the national Bartlet's . " I never met a man I didn't like . " " All I know is what I read in the newspapers . " The character of Doctor Bull is not laid back and although Rogers still shuffles and mumbles , the story is more of a medical drama than anything else . Bull is not sentimental or tender . He's gruff , often angry and insulting . It's like fitting a round peg into a square hole . The medical aspects don't work either . The premarital pregnancies are only intimated , not spelled out . Bull cures the paralyzed kid with an injection of serum that seemed to cure a similarly paralyzed cow . ( It's treated as a triumph for Bull . ) Nobody involved seemed to care much about the kind of medicine that Bull practiced . He's always being accused of being old fashioned , among other gossip , and in fact he does seem out of it . When he's successful , it's because he seems lucky rather than innovative . Doctor Bovary had more sense . On the whole , the film lacks much of Ford's usual humor , his grasp of character . It's as if everyone were having a good time rather than putting effort into a weak screenplay . Still , it's nostalgic . Doctors don't make house calls with their black bags anymore . It makes sense , of course . A doctor whose training was expensive , time consuming , and demanding , can find better things to do with his time than drive around from house to house with his bag . If , instead , the patients come to him at his office , he's able to use his time exclusively in practicing medicine . Max Weber called this the " rationalization of labor . " It cuts wasted time . When the paralyzed guy discovers feeling in his legs again , I'm extremely glad that Ford didn't put us through one of those , " Look ! I can WALK ! " scenes . But there should have been more oomph in the picture somewhere . |
442,977 | 819,382 | 116,508 | 5 | Kind of complicated , atmospheric crime thriller . | Nice shots of the bayou under the opening credits . Unspoiled rivers , pristine swamps , oaks draped with Spanish moss . It all looks rather promising . I guess you can still find such subtle but majestic littorals , maybe along route 90 around Houma , but from most highways in southern Lousiana all you see is oily swamp water with derricks planted in it . Beer cans and garbage and , quien sabe ? , corpses floating in the murk . The movie's kind of like that too . The location shooting is just fine . Everyone sweats up a storm in the heat and humidity and it's no wonder that they head for the gin rickeys with all that ice . New Orleans is exposed in all its funkiness . The French Quarter is more or less avoided , but we get to see the lesser neighborhoods , now drowned and empty of human life in the wake of Katrina . There are the shotgun houses of the poor , the stripper bars playing bluesy music . The streetcars travel not through the Garden District but through ordinary residential streets . Beautiful in its own rotting way , almost phosphorescent with corruption . Outside the city there are bait shops that rent boats and sell tackle . One of these is run by Alec Baldwin , ex cop , recovering alcoholic . The story isn't very much , when you come right down to it . Hard to follow at times but not really captivating and absolutely mainstream genre . Baldwin has a marvelously normal family , including a stolen adopted girl , but is accidentally involved in some shenanigans I couldn't quite follow , something about smuggling , which draws the attention of the mob . Baldwin doesn't seem to actually DO anything that threatens their presence but they surround his house one lightning-filled night and do his loving and courageous wife ( Kelly Lynch ) . The rest of the plot is a revenge story , with Baldwin tracking down the killers one by one . There are some good action scenes , a chase across the rooftops , a battle on a streetcar . All the action is done in slow motion so you get a chance to savor it - - the crashing crashing cars , the catapulting bodies , the muzzle flashes brilliantly lighting up the interiors of dark houses . PS : Mister Director , can we have a moratorium on slow-motion deaths ? It's more than a cliché ; it's positively decadent by now . Let's get together and blame Sam Pekinpah , okay ? I thought the conclusion was pretty well done . After his wife is blasted to shreds by shotguns , an attractive young blonde - - and old friend - - moves into his house in the woods and comforts him ( nonsexually ) . They once were quite close . Now - - see - - Baldwin's wife is gone , and he's got this little Latina girl that he's adopted , but there's a big hole in the nuclear family . ( In other words , the guy needs a wife . ) A conventional script calls for him to overcome his grief and fall in love with the comforting and loving blonde babe . But no . When he makes clear that he holds his wife's memory sacred , the blonde leaves him a note and takes off , realizing he's not ready to get on with his life , as they say . The last scene has Baldwin in his house , gazing lovingly at his sleeping little girl , then falling on his back beside her . Sensing his presence she twists over and puts her arms around his chest , and he places his hand over hers and stares at the ceiling . It is not a cheap shot . It's a brief but genuinely tender scene . De rest ob dat movie be kind of filet gumbo in da bayou . |
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