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mossgrymk
Favorite genres: noirs, westerns, war films, family dramas, black comedies, chick flics, workplace dramas, social satire
Least Favorite genres: silent films, musicals, sci fi, horror, inspirational stuff
Included is my directorial aesthetic:
Great director...a person who over a long period has a strong visual sense, good pacing, and a deep understanding of human behavior. (i.e. Sofia Coppola)
Good director...Has two of the three or has all three but has not had a long enough career (i.e. Claudia Weill)
Ok director...Has one of the three or has none of them but is consistently entertaining (i.e. Nancy Myers)
Bad director...Has one or none of the three and is usually a bore (i.e. Dorothy Arzner )
Reviews
Overlord (1975)
overlord
Somewhere between the patriotism and sentimentality of "Mrs. Miniiver" and the utter bleakness and hopelessness of this 1975 offering lies the truth about Britain's experience in WW2. Say "Dunkirk" which, without undue nationalistic gush or anti war cynicism, managed to be both stirring and depressing, in equal measure.
This film takes a docu drama approach, with thirty per cent of it stock footage, and like most docu dramas it ends up being rather unsatisfying, watered down versions of both genres. And it strikes me that foreshadowing the main character's death in the very beginning is exactly the wrong approach for director and co scenarist Stuart Cooper to take. It renders the character's actual death on D Day not only anti climactic but unaffecting, as well.
On the plus side I admired the restrained, quiet tone of the love story as well as the restrained, quiet performance of Brian Stirner in the lead. Wonder why he didn't have a bigger career. B minus.
Ennio (2021)
ennio
Let me join with the vast majority of my fellow IMDBers in praising both the subject of this bio doc as well as the doc itself. Morricone was at the absolute pinnacle of artistry, no doubt of that. He could do magesterial ("The Mission"), stirring ("1900"), dystopian ("Once Upon A Time In The West"), stirring plus dystopian ("Burn"). And if you wanted heartbreak, well, he could do that, too ("Once Upon A Time In America"). The only film composers who even come close to the guy, in my opinion, are his fellow countryman, Nino Rota, and Elmer Bernstein. Should have easily won three legit Oscars but I'm sure he was fine with one legit and one honorary apology. And that the legit came AFTER the honorary/lifetime is just one more example of why Morricone belongs in the amazing category.
As for this film, it is quite good. Not as good as the composer himself, but engaging and extremely informative. There are a lot of talking heads but most are thoughtful and intelligent, not least of all Morricone. And there are generous swatches of the classic film scores along with diverting songs and dance numbers so that the talk does not drown out the music. Paradoxically, I was worried at first that the doc was focusing too much on the music at the expense of the subject's personality but once we get to Morricone's relations with the film industry a most interesting combination of seriousness, modesty, stubborn-ness, integrity and occasional lapses from integrity emerge. I do agree with the previous reviewer who said the last fifteen minutes or so drown us in a sea of accolades. I would also add that the first twenty are a bit on the slow and overly musicological side. So at least thirty five minutes should have been snipped from this two and a half hour work. Aside from that, however, I have no serious gripes. B plus.
The Gunfighter (1950)
the gunfighter
The aging shootist who wants to give it up but cannot because of his fame is one of the Western genres most oft told tales. I can think of at least five "Gunsmoke" episodes that deal with it, just off the top of my head, as well as John Wayne's final film and, of course, "Shane". And while I yield to no one in my admiration for the classic TV series (just check out my moniker) and Don Siegel's great film, if not the over rated George Stevens work, I think this may be Hollywood's finest handling of the Imprisoned By Notoreity theme to be set in the Old West.
It is a somber but fast moving film with the literal passage of time rendered much more subtly and effectively than, say, "High Noon" or "3:10 To Yuma". The screenplay by William Bowers and William Sellers is excellent with fine, terse dialogue, a lack of speechifying or moralizing and atttention paid to a host of subsidiary characters from barbershop loafers to a nervous deputy to an unctuous bartender to a ladies committee of decency so that the town of Cayenne (love the irony of a spicy name for a somewhat bland community) comes fully alive. And Arthur Miller's wonderfully noir-ish cinematography emphasizes the basic darkness of Jimmy Ringo, a man whose time is both literally and figuratively running out. Playing him, Gregory Peck captures the pathos of someone who has chosen empty fame over substance and now must pay the price. With his weary, hang dog body language and doleful, dead eyes that only come fully alive in a brief scene with his son Peck delivers a quite moving, powerful performance, certainly one of his top five, in my opinion. Ably supporting him are Millard Mitchell as, basically, Ringo's opposite (choosing substance over fame), Karl Malden in a very early role as the barkeep, Skip Homeier as the paragon of all obnoxious, bar room punks, and Anthony Ross as the skittish deputy.
A couple problems. Director Henry King's expert pacing falters a bit in the last fifteen minutes. We certainly do not need two dressings down of Homeier, one by Peck, which is efffective, the other by Mitchell, which isn't. And one wishes for a better actress than Helen Westcott especially in the lone, very key scene between her and Peck. Otherwise, this is a great Western. A minus.
Scott Joplin (1977)
scott joplin
Whenever I try to conjure the zeitgeist of America during the time of Teddy Roosevelt, (a favorite pastime among US history buffs), it is this guy's beguiling, sad yet jaunty music that I hear and not Sousa's bombast. In other words, Joplin was a certified genius and certainly deserved better from Motown than this cheap, tinny, Universal back lot production with the Hollywood Hills in the background of shots purporting to be Sedalia Missouri, which was relatively flat last time I checked, and snow so fake it looks like director Jeremy Kagan sent a gopher out to a party store on Lankershim Ave with orders to scour the Yuletide aisle.
Perhaps the film's biggest sin, though, is its relative dearth of attention to ragtime music which Joplin is acknowledged to have fathered. Not only, as a previous reviewer noted, are none of Joplin's compositions played all the way through but in the key scene when Joplin's friend and sometimes creative collaborator, Louis Chauvin, is dying, (of the same syphillis that would kill Joplin), what music do they choose to honor him with?...the blues! Which Joplin had absolutely nothing to do with birthing! I'll be kind to Kagan here and pin the blame for this story abomination on scenarist Christopher Knopf.
So, a not very satisfying life story of the King of Ragtime. I will say, however, that Billy Dee Williams delivers one of his better acting jobs in the title role, managing to capture the aura of melancholy, warmth and formality that comes through in Joplin's music. Clifton Davis is also quite good as Chauvin. With his less disciplined, more fun loving persona he is a nice contrast with Williams' seriousness. Acting beyond these two is fairly "meh" with the most unusual and unwelcome sight of Art Carney kind of phoning it in as music publisher and Joplin patron/friend/ adversary, John Stark. Although, considering that Carney is given a lot of the script's stiff, declamatory "Can't you see what a genius we have here!" dialogue, maybe it's Knopf on the horn. C plus.
Wild Rovers (1971)
wild rovers
I've read many times about how this film was re cut and ruined by MGM execs Jim Aubrey and Douglas Netter to the point where its director, Blake Edwards, not only disavowed it but, ten years later, made a film, "SOB", which viciously trashed Aubrey, if not Netter (wonder how ol Doug managed to avoid Edwards' wrath. Fellow Malibuian, perhaps? But I digress). So I fully expected to join the many reviewers below who cordially detest this sole Edwards foray into the cowpoke genre.
Expect again! Darn good Western, if way too long and, at times, too slow. It's got all the requisite elements for a good movie. You care about the two main characters and bemoan their sad fates, and the actors who play them, William Holden and Ryan O'Neal, deliver strong if not career defining performances. There are good supporting turns from Karl Malden as a tough cattle baron, Leora Dana as his long suffering wife, Tom Skerritt and Joe Don Baker as his sons (Baker has the best line in the film when he dolefully intones, "What can you do when you're born into the wrong family?") Moses Gunn as a none too friendly horse trader and Lynn Carlin as a very practical banker's spouse. Action scenes, and there are several, are well handled and the Southern Utah location cinematography is awesome.
The film's got some definite problems beyond its excessive length. Perhaps the biggest is writer/director Edwards' inability to weave the Holden/O'Neal story with the Malden and Sons story so that they often feel like two separate, different films awkwardly co-existing rather than what they should be, two halves of the same thematic whole.
Oh and Jerry Goldsmith's score, as usual, drowns you in schmaltz, in this case Western schmaltz.
Bottom line: This Edwards film supposedly ruined by Aubrey/Netter is actually better than the Edwards film that skewers the suits. Give it a B.
Biruma no tategoto (1956)
the burmese harp
Powerful, if slow moving, and relentlessly allegorical anti war film. The problem I have with allegorical works, be they movies, plays or novels, is that the characters, being more symbols than living, breathing characters with living, breathing quirks and contradictions, tend toward the stiff and humorless. And with the partial exception of the lone woman in this film, a subtly wry old crone, that is the case here.
What redeems the film and gives it its force is director Kon Ichikawa's imagery and use of music. Aided by his cinematographer Minoru Yokoyama, Ichikawa has many shots that are arresting and that linger in the mind. The most visceral, of course, are the killing fields through which the soldier turned monk Mizushima must pass in order to attain inner peace but for me the most affecting is the shot, from behind, of Mizushima, twin parrots perched on each shoulder, playing "No Place Like Home" on the eponymous musical instrument, child acolyte by his side and Japanese prisoners, behind barbed wire, listening, one hopes attentively and not just sentimentally, to the plaintive song. Which brings me to Ichikawa's use of music, mentioned by several previous reviewers. It is brilliant in its ability to convey the themes of humanity and brotherhood that are at the heart of this eminently good hearted work. In fact, the score is so striking that at times it reminds me of a John Ford film. And where I come from that is high praise, indeed. B plus.
Bad for Each Other (1953)
bad for each other
If, like me, you watched this movie on Noir Alley, despite its not being a noir but rather a melodrama with Liz Scott, and taped it, then I recommend you do what I shoulda done, namely fast forward to Eddie's closing remarks on co scenarist and author of the novel upon which the movie was based, Horace McCoy. And after you have listened to this sad epitath to Hollywood insecurity, delivered in Eddie's signature doleful but sympathetic tones, then hit the delete button because this is sure one awful film! As the previous reviewer states, the dialogue from McCoy and Irving Wallace (kind of Horace M's oppsite, a best selling writer who never fooled himself into thinking he was an artist) truly sucks with every Hippocratic, noble doctor cliche stiffly and pompously spoken by Chuck Heston. As for Irving Rapper's direction it just kind of slogs along with one scene after another that features the misery of making money as opposed to the glories of treating black lung disease alternating with dull love scenes with an uncharacteristically bland Liz Scott and even duller exchanges about medical ethics between Chuck's idealistic but cynical doc and Dianne Foster's idealistic and resolutely non cynical (read humorless) nurse. And if you're still awake after so much idealism there is the predictible, mine cave in scene ending. But that is far too little and far too late. C minus.
Men in War (1957)
men in war
Ah, the Korean War. That ambivalent, ambiguous halfway point between The Greatest Generation and "Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?". Somewhere between flag waving and "Hell no, we won't go!" Certainly, in American history it is not depicted as one of our Good Wars (are there any besides WW2, the American Revolution and the North's side in the Civil War?). Nor is it described as one of our morally dubious, idiotic aggressions like The Mexican War, Vietnam and Iraq/Afganistan.
Hollywood's views about the Korean conflict tend to mirror the above attitude. It is almost as if there is a sign above the director's chair that reads "Check all patriotic effusions before shooting". And so we tend to get bleak, harsh, cynical, and dark works such as "MASH', "Pork Chop Hill"," "Steel Helmet" and this offering from director Anthony Mann, in my opinion the finest of the lot.
It is an extremely intense hour and fifty minutes that feels shorter, thanks to Mann's seamless pacing, with nothing close to a lull that would allow the viewer to catch their breath, and a fine, terse screenplay from blacklisted Ben Maddow. There is bravery but no heroism since one cannot have the latter without flag waving and, as alluded to above, there is none of that. The central conflict is not between the U. S. soldiers and the North Koreans but rather between Aldo Ray's racist, sadistic sergeant and Robert Ryan's somewhat more humanistic but, mostly, wearily pessmisstic lieutenant. Both of these fine actors are at the top of their games and the scenes of their struggle are utterly riveting. It is finally resolved but not in a way that gives the viewer much hope for the future of humanity. Just Ryan intoning "This war will never end". No wonder the U. S. Army very quickly withdrew its cooperation. The Army brass' loss, though, is our gain as this powerful work has been re-discovered and is now rightfully considered one of Mann's best. Give it an A.
PS...Great eerie cinematography from Ernest Haller that can be described as Twilight/Battle Zone.
Challengers (2024)
challengers
Unlike the previous reviewer I kinda liked the homo erotic relationship between the two guys. What I did not particularly enjoy was the crude sexism of director Luca Guadagnino and scenarist Justin Kuritzkes as they clearly place the blame for the demise of said relationship upon the evil, Machiavellian shoulders of tennis femme fatale, Zendaya. Such caricaturing only serves to make the entire story somewhat silly (albeit, at times entertaingly so). Not that a plot that asks us to believe that a star tennis player on the level, presumably, of a Federer would suddenly decide to recoup his career playing in...The New Rochelle Challenge!...needs any help in the jejune department.
The film tends to be better when it's quieter. Certain scenes, like a literally hungry tennis bum bumming a sandwich from a kindly lady at the New Rochelle registrtation desk or Zendaya, sitting forlornly under a tree and coming to terms with the end of her playing career while the folk ballad "The Water Is Wide" plays in the background (corny, but effective), shows Guadagnino's warmth and sensitivity.
Unfortunately, there are too many scenes, such as sex in a wind blown parking lot to the accompaniment of drum music, and the final scene which features an annoying, unconvincing, tacked on happy ending, that display the director's penchant for bombast and over wrought-ness. And Kuritzke's musings about competition, put into the mouths of the three lead actors, are fairly banal.
Performances are good, though. Zendaya may be a caricature but she's a sexy, sassy one. And Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor are quite engaging, especially in their early scenes. Beyond these three, however, the acting pickings get pretty slim with a distinct dearth of interesting subsidiary characters, usually a reliable indicator of a mediocre screenplay. But, as mentioned above, there are other signs of that. C plus.
The Sunshine Boys (1975)
sunshine boys
Walter Matthau is a brilliant actor and a decent comic. George Burns is the exact opposite. So, between them you are in consistently risible, occasionally touching and sometimes quite sad hands in this, my favorite Neil Simon film adaptation. It's, basically, "The Odd Couple" for geezers but with a distinctively darker edge, the later due mostly to Matthau's performance as a terminally angry, lonely old man raging against the world and especially his former comedic partner. Meanwhile, most of the laughs are provided by Burns who is funny pretty much every time he opens his mouth. There's a distinct drop off in quality and yuks when these two are not on screen together and Herb Ross' direction is one step above traffic cop (although David Walsh's cinematography is evocative of both the Jersey burbs and the upper west side)) but I defy you to keep a straight face, especially when Burns and his air tight timing are wedded to Simon's inspired quips. Give it a B.
House of Bamboo (1955)
house of bamboo
Maybe because it was the first Hollywood movie to be shot in Japan post WW2, or maybe because DP Joe MacDonald is under rated, or maybe a bit of both, this is Sam Fuller's most visually striking film, in my opinion. Some of the outdoor shots of Tokyo in winter, with patches of snow on the ground and city dwellers bundled up and seeming to rush through the not yet completely built up from the war urban landscape have a most evocative quality as do the subdued, blue lit interiors wherein reside the lovers, played by Robert Stack and Shirley Yamaguchi, seeking shelter from the outdoor realities.
Which is a perfect segway to what is wrong with this film, namely too much Bob Stack and not nearly enough Robert Ryan, especially in the rather slow first half. Stack is a most unremarkable actor who, except when he worked with Sirk, rarely rose above the pretty boy level. Here he tries to shed that young star burden by talking in ersatz Bogie/Holden tones and wearing a Bogie/Holden suit but the effort is a bit too obvious and most unconvincing. Yamaguchi is better, although at times a bit too gushy/weepy, but Stack tends to drag her down and their love scenes are quite dull. Once Stack's character successfully infiltrates Ryan's gang of ex military, now current thieves/hoodlums the pace picks up and the film feels on much more solid ground. Ryan is great, as usual, playing a complete and utter psycho/scumbag. His one scene with Yamaguchi has the menace and tension that the early scenes with Stack and her can only fake. And playing the jealous of Stack sidekick of Ryan to homo erotic perfection is Cameron Mitchell. His Marat like death while taking a bath is one of two great action pieces in the film, the other, of course, being the wonderful rooftop, amusement park, police chase with Ryan's evil figure weaving in and out of clumps of baloon waving, presumably innocent children. Give it a B.
Bez konca (1985)
no end
...and not much of a beginning or middle, either. Is it just me or is TCM Imports, under Alicia Malone, grimly determined to show every single heavy, stolid, dull, depressing film from Mr. Kieslowski? Just one solid, grey, bleak, enervating shroud until I finally cried "wystarczajaco" right around the time Antec's lovely, grieving widow, for reasons best known to Kieslowski and herself, decides to sleep with a random English dude she picks up in a bar. If I were a cynical sort I'd say that the dour Pole had a commercial side to his foreboding personality as I'm sure the sight of Grazyna Szapolowska's luscious bod did not exactly discourage ticket sales. God knows, you need something to quicken the ol pulse as you watch this bloodless bunch, cigarettes stuck firmly in their mugs, stare into the abyss, weep, occasionally crack a bitter joke and stare some more. For awhile, I was hoping that there would be some courtroom drama since the plot seemed to involve a lawyer trying to free a political prisoner. But at the film's halfway mark nary a judge, jury or executioner were to be found. Unless, of course, you see Kieslowski as the hangman of all that is dramatically compelling. C plus.
'Jûsangô taihisen' yori: Sono gosôsha o nerae (1960)
take aim at the police van
Kinda reminded me of another foreign homage to American noir/crime drama shown a couple months ago on Noir Alley, "Le Samurai", in its gripping action scenes and high speed train-like pacing from director Seijun Suzuki and haunting, twilight cinematography from DP Shigeyoshi Mine combined with cardboard characters and a very silly story best described as Women Sex Slaves Meets King Lear. The difference between Suzuki's film and Jean Pierre Melville's is that while the Japanese director's characters tend toward the cardboard and melodramatic Gallic director Melville's folks are cardboard and oh so cool. Both fall far short of the ambiguous, lost, morally pliable people we see in the best Hollywood noirs. Give it a B minus.
Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)
two weeks in another town (i.e. Rome)
I see where critics are trying to elevate this entertaining but flawed film from Vincente Minnelli into the "near masterpiece ruined by evil studio boss" category. I will have none of it (although they seem to have gained a convert in TCM's Alicia Malone). Even granting that MGM head Joseph Vogel cut out fifteen minutes, those minutes were mostly from the Decadent Party scene at film's end and, in my opinion, Vogel or, better yet, Minnelli, should have jettisoned it entirely since what is onscreen is, frankly, embarrassing, kind of a bad Saturday Night Live parody of Fellini/Antonioni immorality. As for the rest of the film, it is an unworthy successor or homage or whatever you want to call it to "Bad And The Beautiful" which is at its poorest in the writing and acting. Charles Schnee's dialogue, so sharp and insightful in the earlier classic, tends toward the overblown and cliche here and the performances, all of which were either very good or great in "B/B", can be summed up as: Eddie Robinson And Pray For Rain. Especially awful is Cyd Charisse but not far behind are Dahlia Lavi, Claire Trevor, George Hamilton (no great shock there) and, at times, like in the awful orgy scene, Kirk Douglas whose sole means of expressing anguish is to glower. Or scream so loudly you can't hear what he's saying (not such a bad thing, come to think of it).
So why do I call this movie entertaining but flawed rather than just flawed? Simple. Despite all the faults listed above, along with a few I haven't listed like overscoring from David Raksin and not enough scenes with Robinson and Douglas together, which are the best in the picture, you keep watching and, miracle of miracles, are not bored. At least I wasn't. And the reason why is not hard to fathom. It is Minnelli, the maestro of late 50s/early 60s lurid and morally corrupt. Call it neo noir if you like or dark melodrama which at times even makes you think, it is not easy to do without inducing ennui and no once does it better than Vincente (well, except maybe Sirk). B minus.
PS...Considerably aiding Minnelli is Milton Krasner's lush cinematography.
Wind Across the Everglades (1958)
wind across the everglades
And so the environmentalist shall lie down with the swamp rat under the shelter of Protest. Such, at least, is my takeaway from the best scene in this flawed but interesting 1958 Nicholas Ray film where the Man From The Audubon Society and the King Of The Crackers are drunkenly united in their dislike of modern, urban civilization and, in so doing, anticipate the 1960s counter culture by at least eight years.
It's fashionable in film circles to disparage this Ray work and cast as the villain producer/writer Budd Schulberg who fired his Genius Director toward the end of shooting and took his place behind the camera. I somewhat subscribe to this view although with the fairly large caveat that The Genius was injesting heroin at the time, a rather significant detail the auteurists tend to omit. Whoever is to blame, there is no getting around the fact that large swaths of the film involving the early settlement of Miami and the love affair between Christopher Plummer and Chana Eden are as dull as a Marlins double header and that Burl Ives' performance is over the top pretty much throughout rather than in just certain parts of the film that Schulberg may have helmed. So let's give it a generous B minus for the Great Protest as well as other good red neck stuff like the elemental fight for sleeping quarters and the Everglades floozies who Ives so admires.
PS...I notice that Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter, who did the music, did not get a credit. Anti Schulberg Protest?
PSS...An early Peter Falk performance does not make a strong impression. Gypsy Rose Lee, however, does, especially from the neck down.
The Geisha Boy (1958)
geisha boy
First, let's list the three good things about this poker faced "comedy":
1) Suzanne Pleshette launching an indelible career
2) Your 1958 Los Angeles Dodgers! (Ist year in my hometown)
3) It's not as racist as I expected.
Otherwise, it's a massive dose of unfunny from Jerry Lewis and Frank Tashlin, both of whom are revered by the French. In Lewis' case you may want to cut them some slack since he did direct at least one near comic masterpiece ("Nutty Professor") but their adoration of Tashlin is really hard to fathom. The guy made just one comedic clunker after another. And comedic directors can't hide behind auteur theory BS like "thematic consistency" or "a strong directorial personality". At some point they have to deliver the yucks. And on that score Tashlin falls woefully short. At his best, say in"Rock Hunter", there are a few moments of genuine hilarity but typically, as here, there are fewer laughs than a random episode of "My Little Margie". And the big, visual comic scenes, like the bunny rabbit schtick, just lie there and rot in the non risible sun. Solid C.
Tokyo Joe (1949)
tokyo joe
Yet another feeble attempt to rip off the atmo of "Casablanca", made all the more more pathetic because that film's star's newly minted production company, ironically set up to give him better roles than he was getting at the studios, is doing the ripping off.
Just a tired, unengaging job all around. Bogie is uncharacteristically listless as if realizing that this is not going to redound to his artistic credit, (although it did make money). Florence Marley is a poor man's Garbo and a very poor man's substitute for Bergman. As is "These Foolish Things" (an apt metaphor for the movie) to "As Time Goes By". The one good thing that came out of this dreary exercise is the revival of Sessue Hayakawa's career. Oh, and that bomber jacket Bogie's wearing has it all over LL Bean. C minus.
The Scalphunters (1968)
the scalphunters
Westerns and broad comedy don't mix. I know what you're gonna say, "What about 'Blazing Saddles'"? Exception thast proves the rule because Mel Brooks is a comic genius. Otherwise, broad comedy and Westerns don't mix. Ever try to watch re-runs of "F Troop"? The comic relief scenes in John Ford's Westerns are invariably his weakest. And "Cat Ballou", when viewed today, is a bore.
All of which is to say that this Sydney Pollack offering is highly resistible.
By the way, what is it with Pollack and Westerns? Either he's way too waggish, as here, or too friggin somber, as in "Jeremiah Johnson". Good thing he decided to mostly work in the urban comedy/drama genres.
The late mid career voluptuousness of Shelley Winters is fun to gaze upon, though.
Ren xiao yao (2002)
unknown pleasures
Normally, I'm not a big fan of these Life Sucks kind of films, a sub genre that finds its purest expression in the work of Chantal Akerman and Mike Figgis. However, I will make a semi exception here because I was fascinated that this thing was actually allowed to exist seeing that in addition to being a Life Sucks film it is also a Communist China Sucks film that is shot in the Peoples Republic and that country does not exactly win tolerance awards. So kudos to director Jia Zhangke for courage, if not optimism.
Otherwise, it's pretty bleak stuff. How bleak? Well, let's just say that the general attitude of its characters can be summed up in the words of one of them when he opines that thirty years of life in Datong is sufficient. And what is remarkable about this statement is that this character actually strung a coherent sentence together. Most of the film is composed of long silences and non communication among its various disaffected folks. I realize that this Ozu wannabe stuff is deliberate and intended to reinforce the film's themes of alienation and listlessness. Instead, as many previous reviewers have noted, it reinforces another trope, that of dullness. C plus.
Follow Me Quietly (1949)
follow me quietly
Fairly effective police procedural slash noir. Lots of good scenes, images and performances, courtesy of director Richard Fleischer, cinematographer William De Grasse and the cast. Let's list a few, shall we?
1) The dying speech/flashback of the newspaper editor
2) The uber disturbing scene with the Judge dummy and the real thing in the cop's office on a rainy night (in fact, the use of the rain motif throughout)
3) The emotionally devastated husband of one of the judge's victims (usually spousal breakdown scenes in police procedurals are an excuse for bad acting. Not from Paul Guilfoyle here)
4) Jeff Corey's relaxed, sardonic turn as the number two inverstigator
5) The scene where we first see The Judge's face, which has an eerie, back lot surrealism.
6) The final chase through the Great Urban Gasworks (outdoes Antonioni in "Red Dust", in my opinion)
Pulling against the above good stuff is a flat, rather superficial screenplay from lillie Hayward that does not sufficiently plumb the depths of the chief investigator's emotional instability and flat, rather superficial acting from William Lundigan and Gale Patrick. I also could have done without the story hole wherein the judge turns uncharacteristically stupid and leaves a magazine he's reading behind at a murder site so that the movie can wrap up in under an hour.
I did, however, like Hayward (or Fleischer's) decision not to have Ms. Patrick be one of the Judge's intended victims. Tasking a mediocre actress with such a a scene could only have ended badly. B minus.
Crime School (1938)
crime school
In general, I'm not a big Dead End Kids fan. Their first film, appropriately titled "Ded End" and considerably aided by a good screenplay by Lillian Hellman from Sidney Kingsley's play and direction from William Weyler, is powerful but their other stuff can all be gathered under a banner that reads: The Jets Do It Better. The only member with a distinct personality and look is Leo Gorcey (call it Cagney Lite) while the others all meld into one sneering, Brooklyn accented, dark haired juvy. And one wearies of the constant "So's your old man!" schtick that constitutes their dialogue.
As for Bogie, he's pretty much wasted when he's asked, as here, to play a conventional good guy. And Gale Page is a most unremarkable actress. As is Lewis Seiler as a director and Crane Wilbur and Vincent Sherman as scenarists (although Sherman could occasionally rise to the directing occasion, especially with Crawford). Solid C.
Hatari! (1962)
hatari
This is another of those fairly entertaining Hollywood films, like "Moonfleet", "Forty Guns" and the complete ouevre of Jerry Lewis, that French cineastes, for god knows what esoteric, Gallic reasons, have elevated into the critical stratosphere. Jean Luc Godard, perhaps exhibiting his first signs of mental decline, proclaimed it the best film of 1962! To my admittedly crude, savage, Yank sensibilities it is a pleasant enough two and a half hours that rises above the mediocrity line in the animal chase scenes, especially when the animal being pursued is a rhino and falls back down to it in the scenes where humans are interacting by themselves. Certainly, it would have been better with a half hour jettisoned and if I were the surgeon/editor the first to go would be the very lame ass comedy with elephants, Red Buttons and ostriches. And I think I would have tried to come up with a better leading lady than Elsa Martinelli who is definitely hot but whose acting ability is about on a par with Capucine and whose accent is twice as annoying (Every time she said "pockets", I winced). Still, this is a Howard Hawks film so, in addition to the great outdoor action, you have a couple memorable indoor scenes, as well, like the exchanges between The Duke and Hardy Kruger where Hawks' eternal theme of male bonding seems to be at its best and most subtle, and the playing of Stephen Foster, as interpreted by Martinelli and Buttons, on the piano/harmonica. B minus.
China Doll (1958)
china doll
This penultimate film from Frank Borzage, made in his mid sixties, is very much a slow moving, sad, bleak old man's film. But then again I'm a geezer myself (albeit not, I fancy, a bleak or sad one) so I can definitely relate. And, unlike the previous reviewer, I think Victor Mature is the best thing about it since his general mien is slow moving, lugubrious and hopeless and, apart from his bad attempts at playing a drunk (agree with the previous reviewer there), perfectly embodies the director's overall tone. Less good is the film's leading lady, Li Lihua, not because she is a poor actress (apparently she was the recipient of the award for best actress in Chinese language films) but because Borzage and his scenarists, Thomas Kelly and James Nablo, fail to provide her with anything beyond the submissive, saintly stereotyped Good Asian Woman role. And the stories and characters beyond Mature and Lihua are, with the partial exception of Ward Bond's chess playing priest, rather dull. I especially disliked the streotyped Cute, Precocious "I shine your shoes, GI" Asian Kid. So, let's give it a very generous B minus for being the last interesting film from a great director.
PS...I want one of those bomber jackets with the map of China on the back.
The King and Four Queens (1956)
king and four queens
Clark Gable's only foray into producing (along with Jane Russell and her hubby, Bob Waterfield) is pretty disappointing, especially for a Raoul Walsh western. There are several reasons for this. Certainly an uncompelling story and characters must figure prominently into the overall sense of dismay. And the notable lack of fast paced, tense action, a Walsh staple, certainly helps to drag things down. For me, though, it's the plain and simple truth that it's extremely hard for a fifty six year old leading man, even the great Gable, who looks more like sixty five to be credible as a chick magnet, especially when said chicks are all at least twenty years his junior, and look it, that is the main reason this movie fizzles out. Indeed, the only things that linger in the mind are Jo Van Fleet's fine portrayal of a tired, bitter mom, Jean Willes' doing a good Mercedes McCambridge imitation and that totally weird, Aaron Copeland-like squaredance /ballet, sans piano. Walsh meets David Lynch? Kind of. Give it a C.
Fort Massacre (1958)
fort massacre
Sure is weird seeing Joel McCrea playing a sociopathic racist, huh? Kinda like Lee Van Cleef as the Pope or Barbra Streisand doing a homicidal nanny. It is a credit to McCrea's acting chops that not only does he pull it off but he's darn near as good as Robert Taylor's similarly unexpected, but effective, study in anti Native American prejudice in "The Last Hunt", made two years earlier. (Both performances and films fall short of The Duke in "Searchers", of course, but that's not really a fair criticism considering the greatness of Ford's masterwork).
Aside from McCrea several of the supporting players stand out. Forrest Tucker is quite good as kind of a darker Victor McLaglen as is veteran noir character actor Robert Osterloh as a Cavalry Everyman, (the kind of role James Whitmore would have had if this thing were a war film, instead of a Western). And it's good to see Western stalwart Denver Pyle affectingly play perhaps the most humane member of this rather dodgy cavalry company. Less good are John Russell and Susan Cabot, although it's hard to tell if they're just bad actors or if they're saddled with the most pretentious lines of the film's often stiff, soap boxy cum philosophical dialogue. Indeed, if it were not for the numerous scenes of Moral Breast Beating that only serve to slow the movie down I'd rate this Joseph Newman film considerably higher than I do, which is a generous B minus, mostly for Joel.