.
> JULY 2020! Most of us are still alive! Well that’s something…
(All ratings are on a 5 star scale. Note that a classic only becomes a classic after a decade or more.)
(Titles in purple have been expanded for Flix Pix columns.)
> This month I evaluate the following 21 feature films:
LIFE DURING WARTIME (2010)****
RANCHO NOTORIOUS (1952)****
INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION (1970)*****
ACE IN THE HOLE (1951)*****
GIRL WITH GREEN EYES (1964)***+
BLOOD ON THE MOON (1948)****
NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT (2010)****+
THE PAWNBROKER (1964)*****
DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY (1967)****
ON THE TOWN (1949)****+
HAVING A WILD WEEKEND (1965)***+
THE WRONG MISSY (2020)**+
BOMBSHELL (2019)***+
RICHARD JEWELL (2019)****
MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S (1969)****
THE VIOLENT MEN (1955)****
THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1974)*****
A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (2019)***+
HARRIET (2019)***+
WALK ON THE WILD SIDE (1962)****
DOWN IN THE DELTA (1998)****
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
LIFE DURING WARTIME (2010) ****
> This Todd Solondz gem really kicks ass on so many levels.
. LIFE DURING WARTIME is a family/relationship drama with a wicked sense of humor. It begins with a dynamite scene that is both so funny and so tragic, and never really lets up. Betty Boop voiced Shirley Henderson (HARRY POTTER) and Michael Kenneth Williams (Boardwalk Empire) are a couple of lovers sitting at a restaurant table, crying their eyes out over their anniversary. But despite their protestations to the contrary, these do not appear to be happy tears. We discover why, when the waitress arrives and recognizes Williams as a sick puppy the instant she hears his familiar voice- the voice of a telephone pervert.
. Henderson, a trained thespian whose talent outsizes her diminutive body, is ‘Joy’- an ironic character name if I’ve ever heard one. In addition to her man-troubles, Joy detests her job and has to put up with her dead boyfriend’s horny ghost haunting her at inopportune times. (A jarringly unusual role for Paul Rubens AKA “Pee Wee Herman”!) Her very different sisters are played by Allison Janney as ‘Trish’ and Ally Sheedy as ‘Helen’, and both crush the comedy beneath the pain. To complicate matters, Trish has a very sick husband, who has been serving time for pedophilia (Ciarán Hinds in an excellent turn), he has been released after chemical castration, and seeks out his now grown son, seeking a rapprochement he can never have.
. Solondz makes quirky, character-driven dramadies that consistently push the limits and confound expectations. He often focuses on dark realities and finds unlikely humor where no other filmmaker would find it. In the process, he often makes us feel guilty for laughing, forcing us to think as well as react.
– That, I’ll bet Solondz would argue- is the entire point!
RANCHO NOTORIOUS (1952) ****
> Fritz Lang makes a western! Huzzah! I love westerns and I love the films of Fritz Lang.
. Despite an unbelievably horrible opening song that just made me want to cringe away to nothing, I was not disappointed.
. I first noticed Arthur Kennedy as the journalist in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, where he gave a very deft performance. I don’t recall ever seeing him in a lead before, but he pulls it off here, giving an intense performance as Vern Haskell, whose beautiful domestic life is shattered when the woman he loves is raped and murdered in a robbery. A trauma like that can change a fellow. Life becomes about revenge now, and nothing more.
. He gets a clue from the lips of a dying man that leads him to the ranch hideout of a den of thieves, run with an iron fist by flamboyant and dangerous saloon chanteuse Marlene Dietrich! Vern cleverly ingratiates himself with Dietrich’s outlaw lover Mel Ferrer, then makes himself indispensable to her, until he can follow the one lead he still has to find his fiancée’s killer: the broach he wears, which was a gift Vern gave to the murdered woman.
. Kennedy, Ferrer and Dietrich are all really good here. The storytelling works to a fever-pitch and the story delivers in the end.
– I love westerns… when they are as good as RANCHO NOTORIOUS!
INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION (1970) *****
> This stellar Italian film begins with the single best opening line I have ever heard in any movie: A sexy siren coos to her lover:
“So- how are you going to kill me tonight?”
. Eventually, it makes perfect sense.
. This title won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 1970. I can see why! This INVESTIGATION is 5-star gold. It tells the cautionary tale of an unctuous, self-important police inspector who considers himself above and beyond the law. The man is a bully, with the soul of a fascist. To test his theory that he is so untouchable to the grasp of justice that he could get away with murder… he attempts just that. After pretending to murder his lover many times over, and posing her to simulate real crime scene photos, he stops playing the murderer and becomes one. Afterward, he purposefully plants damning clues everywhere, but his peers fail to see them as “evidence”. Naturally, they turn to him to solve the crime he committed!
. The more damning the accumulating evidence grows, the more absurdly he denies it. None of the cops working under him would dare even entertain the possibility that such a powerful man was behind the crime, so they overlook his lame excuses and obvious evidence tampering. What if their suspicions were incorrect? That would mean an abrupt, ignominious end to their law enforcement careers. Better to keep silent, and keep your job.
. Gian Maria Volonté, the actor in the center of it all, gives a chillingly entitled performance, as a modern Mussolini beyond accountability, who can reduce suspects to quivering jelly with the fury of his fierce willpower. But eventually, this lack of accountability begins to get to the murderous inspector. It’s just not right, that he should be completely above suspicion, simply because of his unquestioned station in life. He begins to want to get caught. After all, it reflects so poorly on the machinery of Italian justice that even with obvious clues scattered underfoot, his inspectors can’t see the forest for the trees. In the end, he challenges the competence and integrity of the Italian police, and practically begs them to get a fuckin’ clue.
– This film is just greatness. It could be the most satisfying Italian film I have ever seen, outside of Fellini.
ACE IN THE HOLE (1951) *****
> I have been looking for Billy Wilder’s very dark, cynical take on the depravity of the media since I projected it to a film class at Cal Arts in 1978.
(At the time, it was called THE BIG CARNIVAL- a representative, but perhaps less illuminative title than ACE IN THE HOLE.)
. I suspect this was the first film I saw that did not portray the press as the selfless heroes of democracy, but more as craven, self-serving egoists who are so eager to find the next sensational scoop that they aren’t above fabricating titillating details, or prolonging a crisis to increase their time in the spotlight. (The original version of THE FRONT PAGE certainly showed this side of the picture, but I only saw that recently.)
. This film is as cynical as films get. A craven, intense, entitled Kirk Douglas plays an amoral newspaperman, who has fallen far from the pinnacle of his heyday writing for prestigious big city newspapers. He stumbles upon a killer human-interest story: “MAN TRAPPED ALONE IN MINE CAVE-IN!”, and swoops to make the emergency his to exploit, with predictably tragic results. Douglas is so terrible here, he’s great. As things spiral more and more out of control, it becomes apparent that everything about this media circus is a shitshow.
. I imagine Donald Trump sees every journalist doing his job as just as vile as Douglas is here. The good news is, that however corrupting the world of commercial journalism is, there are still real reporters who really care about sharing the facts- not some fantasy of “alternate facts”. These may be the only people standing between us and dictatorship right now.
. Billy Wilder called this his favorite of the films he helmed. I get that. It’s every bit as good as I remembered it, and certainly a world more substantial than SOME LIKE IT HOT for instance, or THE APARTMENT.
– But what a dark, dismal view Wilder must have had of humanity!
GIRL WITH GREEN EYES (1964) ***+
> This British May-December romance feels remarkably sophisticated for 1964, certainly when it comes to the subject of extra-marital sex.
. But I guess London was already swingin’ in ’64! The pill had become available only a couple years before, kickstarting the sexual revolution.
. Country girl Kate (a fetchingly vulnerable Rita Tushingham- Lara’s daughter in DOCTOR ZHIVAGO), moves to Dublin Ireland to find her way in life. She shares a Georgian flat with a girlfriend from her days at the convent boarding school, a giggly fun-seeking Lynn Redgrave. (I recognize the building from my many trips there!) On a trip into the Irish countryside Kate chances to meet Eugene, an intellectual writer, and gentrified man of leisure, whose sophistication dazzles her. (Played by off-puttingly grumpy Peter “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Finch.) Their relationship is a scandal in her devoutly Catholic family, who have convinced themselves the older man is some kind of monster, when the girl with green eyes was at least equally responsible.
. It’s a sensitive, well-photographed, well-acted, well-scripted look at the natural arc of this kind of love affair. If time allows, there inevitably comes a point where their differing stages in the parade of life becomes a divisive issue. Oh man, have I been there…
– GIRL WITH GREEN EYES is sweet and sad. Like life.
BLOOD ON THE MOON (1948) ****
> Another western about a mercenary with a conscience. Seems like there were a million of ‘em!
. In this noir/western from Robert Wise, doe-eyed Robert Mitchum plays a cowhand who has seen better days. ‘Garry’ gets a bead on a job from his old mate ‘Tate’ (THE MUSIC MAN Robert Preston), but soon learns it’s not quite the gig he expected. He thinks he’s going to help settle a dispute over grazing land, but finds himself a pawn in a plot to cheat a fellow rancher out of his entire herd. That just don’t sit too well with a man like Garry. He may be the fastest gun any man has ever seen, but he’s not willing to be anybody’s hired gunslinger- especially when the target of the mischief has a spitfire of a daughter like Barbara Bel Geddes. When it’s time to choose between helping his old chum do a wicked thing, or standing up for the rights of the innocent- well Garry’s not a man you want to find yourself on the wrong end of a gun with.
. I may just have under-rated this. I dig them, but I think I’m getting “western fatigue” because I’ve delved so deeply into the genre over the last few years. Mitchum has a quiet power in this film. Geddes is fetching and feisty in her Annie Oakley garb. And this Robert Preston is a whole shitload more malevolent than professor Harold Hill in THE MUSIC MAN!
– Four enthusiastic stars.
NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT (2010) ****+
> I remember noticing this title at the top of the heap in the good old days of A Critical Consensus– meaning it was the best reviewed film in release at that moment.
. It scored a 9.2, if I remember correctly. Anything rated above 8.0 was rare indeed. Those titles represented universal praise and a complete lack of serious criticism. The reviews were ecstatic- and now I see why.
. This Chilean documentary is an odd chimera. It begins as a beautiful, transcendent look at the complex of giant telescopes the Germans left behind in Chile’s Atacama Desert, offering an exceptionally clear-eyed vantage for stargazing. But this barren land shares a story with one of the darkest chapters in Latin American history- the butchering of his own people by strongarm General Augusto Pinochet. During his bloody regime, almost 32,000 citizens were tortured, and as many as 3000 souls were summarily rounded up and killed for political advantage. The “mothers of the disappeared” still comb the parched sand of the Atacama, looking for bits of human remains, mummified by the driest environment on Earth.
. Native son Patricio Guzmán has created an alternatingly ravishing and somber film that meditates on big cosmic questions of who we are and how we got here with the lens of as telescope, but also examines the terrible legacy of Pinochet’s murderous dictatorship through the lens of a forensic microscope. The film exists in the place where archeology and astronomy intersect.
. In both cases, Chileans turn to science looking for answers to questions that are probably unanswerable. Mass graves have yielded remains for some families. Many will wait forever for the closure of understanding. Countless bodies were rumored to be dug out of the unforgiving desert and thrown into the sea, to cover the killer’s tracks. When you first see these watery-eyed revenants combing through the desert floor for pieces of their butchered loved ones, it seems not only the saddest sight imaginable, but also the most futile. Amazingly- they look for shards of bone… they find shards of bone!
. NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT is an horrific testament to the vast scale of the carnage that the Chilean people seem unable or unwilling to fully confront. Denial doesn’t work. It doesn’t change anything.
– Those shards of loved ones’ bones are still there.
THE PAWNBROKER (1964) *****
> I remember watching this on broadcast television when I was just a kid, really. I’m guessing the year was 1969 or ’70, and it was among the very first unabashedly “adult” films I tried to set through.
. I didn’t “get” much of it, because at the time (shamefully!) I doubt I knew anything at all about the Holocaust of the Jewish people. I do remember how freaking INTENSE the movie seemed, and how horrifically tortured Rod Steiger’s pawnbroker seemed to be. Not ready for the film, I packed it away for later, but it stayed in my subconscious for decades, like a sharp burr needling itself deeper and deeper into my scalp until it was irremovable, having become a part of my brain.
. In what may be Sidney Lumet’s best film and Steiger’s best performance, this film feels both dated and current: dated in its approach and racial stereotypes, current in the lingering cultural divides and systemic racism it portrays so searingly.
. Steiger’s ‘Sol Nazerman’ was a Jewish professor in Germany, living a truly happy life in the countryside with his extended family, until one day his whole world crumbled with the arrival of Nazi soldiers. Sol and his family were carted off to a concentration camp, and by the end of the war, Sol was the only one left. Witnessing their abuse and murder instilled a crippling survivor’s guilt he can never quite get beyond.
. Now, Sol owns a pawnshop in a poor, mostly Black East Harlem neighborhood. It’s a two-man operation, run by Sol and his Puerto Rican helper Jesus. Played by a sympathetic, but badly clichéd Jaime Sánchez, Jesus has big aspirations but is trapped in the limited prospects for immigrants in a culture that both welcomes and shuns them. (They are welcome to work for low wages- providing they “know their place”.) What Jesus does not know, is that Sol may own the business, but it stays afloat as a money laundering enterprise for local kingpin Brock Peters. (Always loved this actor and his rich, sonorous voice!) And as long as Sol plays ball with this powerful crime baron, his house of cards can stay intact- as can the nice suburban house he keeps on Long Island.
. But Sol is a desperately alienated man- a man so at war with his own emotions and memories (which recur in horrible flashbacks), that he is incapable of simple human intercourse. When Jesus reaches out to his employer, who he sees as his “teacher”, Sol insists that humans are shit. He vehemently lectures the young man that only thing that matters in life is money. This could be interpreted as an egregious Jewish stereotype. I am more inclined to believe that Sol retreated to the material world because everybody he ever loved was ripped away from him. If you can’t relate to humans, what is left but the material world?
. Sol’s diatribe has a terrible effect on impressionable Jesus, who is striving mightily to get ahead in a legit way, without returning to the mistakes of his past, living on the wrong side of the law with some hoodlum friends who apply constant pressure for him to return to the fold. These petty thieves are led by another very fine Black actor of his generation, Raymond St. Jacques- who was the first dark face to be a regular on a western, in TV’s Rawhide. (I once saw St. Jacques do Shakespeare live. As You Like It. He was great!) Jesus knows there’s $5000 cash in Sol’s safe, and the more Sol pushes him away, the more tempting it is to get the old gang together and clean it out
. In another egregious stereotype, Sol could be viewed as a merciless usurer, taking advantage of a vulnerable population and relieving of them of their “priceless heirlooms” for pennies on the dollar. But that’s what pawnshops do, isn’t it? This is the reason they exist- the niche they fill in a system that keeps people penurious and tenuous. The series of customers that come through are a heartbreaking lot. Particularly Marketa Kimbrell as an obviously pregnant woman, abandoned and forced to pawn her engagement ring to survive another day. Sol shatters all her illusions in one dismissive word: “Glass.”
. Fine Afro-Cuban actor Juano Hernandez is absolutely wonderful, in an unforgettable cameo as a lonely man who hawks items at Sol’s pawnshop- not for the money, but for the companionship. He knows Sol is an educated, well-read man, and he thinks of himself as an intellectual himself, eager for some meaningful conversation. But Sol is a solid wall. He has no patience for humans seeking the solace of other humans. What’s the point? All humans are shit. It is jarringly heart-rending when the man runs out of personal items to pawn, and he realizes that, without business to transact, Sol has no interest in ever seeing him again.
. Things finally come to a head when Sol refuses to sign some paperwork to enable the money-laundering scheme to proceed. He knows it could cost him his life. So what? Humans are shit. He is shit. Let Peters’ henchmen kill him. They would be doing him a favor.
. I hope I didn’t give you the impression this is a cheerful film. It’s not. THE PAWNBROKER is one of the most somber dramas I have ever seen. Outside of flashbacks of a happy summer day with his murdered family, Steiger smiles all of once in the entire film. The viewer smiles a total of zero times. Sol’s obvious PTSD is so tragic, his rejection of other people so rigid and heartless, that he is hard to watch. It’s a major tribute to the skills of Rod Steiger that we remain interested in a man who is so at war with his own soul, even when he is completely unlovable and unsympathetic. Steiger was nominated for the award that year, but Lee Marvin took it home for his wonderful dual-roles in CAT BALLOU. I get that. Marvin was wonderful. But Steiger was robbed. My guess is that Sol Nazerman and THE PAWNBROKER were just too unrelentingly bleak to reward with such a populist prize.
. There is much more to discuss here, like the question of the portrayals of Jesus and his adoring Black girlfriend who wants to make a future with him. Naturally, she’s a prostitute. It is so easy to judge this 1964 film by 2020 standards. But that’s not fair or righteous. In adapting the book for the screen, I am sure Lumet’s heart was in the right place, despite the blind spots of the time he made the film in. Look at the serious actors of color he cast. These people are not lightweights. There is another way to look at this portrayal of a Black hooker in Harlem: This was not a character we saw much of in films from the mid-60’s and before. There were Black hookers in Harlem in this era. Lots of ‘em! The economics of racism forced many women to believing that selling their bodies was the only serious money-making option open to them. And her depiction here is not caricatured or judgmental. Like Jesus, she is a marginalized person trying to make it in the word the best she can.
. Now, the Jewish stereotypes here- I am not really equipped to deal with. As a gentile, I am too ignorant on the subject to offer an informed or enlightened opinion. I can only say that making Sol- of all things, a pawnbroker, plays into the money-grubbing stereotype often propagated against Jews. The book may shed some light on this choice. I can also opine, that the heartless, pitiless nature of Sol did not seem related to his faith in any way to me. It seemed a clear case of what was once called a “nervous breakdown”, then called “shell-shocked”, and now called “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”. It’s all there in the scene where Sol purposefully injures himself to elicit some real human feeling. Sol is not dysfunctional because he is a Jew, he is dysfunctional as a result of the horrific, unendurable trauma inflicted upon him, because of a culture that allowed anti-Semitism to become national policy.
– If made today, THE PAWNBROKER might be a very different movie. Still, it’s a truly great film partly because of these flaws, that can generate so much thoughtful debate, even 46 years after the fact!
DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY (1967) ****
1967? Writer-director Jim McBride’s deadpan mocumentary spoof of pretentious cinema verité documentaries feels light years ahead of its time for 1967! David Holzman is a troubled young man who becomes obsessed with somehow making sense of his life by using newly available media to record nearly every waking moment in a kind of evolving film-diary. David practically lives behind the lens, and the people in his life aren’t too crazy about it. We watch his friendships crack under the strain and his main squeeze, tired of being an “object” for David to film instead of his living, breathing girlfriend- walks out of his life. Obsessed, he stalks her with his ever-ready camera. But it doesn’t stop there. Eavesdropping on other people’s lives becomes intoxicating to him, and in the end, DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY doesn’t turn out anything like he hoped and expected it would. Life… is a messy thing.
ON THE TOWN (1949) ****+
> With fun tunes from lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green and additional score by Leonard Bernstein, this is a near classic Hollywood musical that I first saw on stage.
. That catchy opening song entered my ears and never left:
“New York, New York! A wonderful town
The park is up and The Battery’s down
The people ride in a hole in the ground
New York, New York! It’s a hell of a town!”
. Three sailors disembark in the port of New York at dawn, determined to wring every drop of life out of their 24-hour shore leave. Gee, they are a swell crew! Gene Kelly is ‘Gabe’, Jules Munshin is lanky ‘Ozzie’ and Frank Sinatra is ‘Chip’, who, with outdated guidebook in hand, is determined to drag his mates to every sight the fabled city has to offer. Gabey and Ozzie? Not so much. They want to get their hands (and presumably some other choice bodily parts), on some patriotic dames who like a man in uniform. Enter cab driver Betty Garrett, “Miss Turnstiles” postergirl Vera-Ellen, and sexy scientist Ann Miller, as romantic foils for our boys in white.
. Doesn’t seem like I am giving anything away by revealing that when their shore leave is up… it’s up. Dawn will bring tearful goodbyes dockside, as a whole new crop of sailors goes on shore-leave, recreating the opening scene again at the end, to show the endless cycle. Kinda brilliant conceit, that.
. There is so much to love about this musical. Some songs shine, and when Ann Miller is hoofing it- look out boys! Even with Gene Kelly onscreen, you can’t take your eyes off her. The problem is the filler. It’s uneven. Some numbers are curiously lackluster. It’s dated enough that it will always have to be a “period piece” now. Professional nerdette Alice Pierce (Bewitched! Hazel! Alfred Hitchcock! Donna Reed! Dobie Gillis! The Real McCoys! The Twilight Zone!), who made a career playing (as IMDB so colorfully puts it:) “slight, chinless, parrot-faced, squawky-voiced, post-nasal drip killjoys who could draw laughs with a mere sniffle, gulp, or stare” has what must have been the crowning glory of her fun career as a character actress, when she gets to dance in a musical number with the great Gene Kelly. She is just dancing on air.
– But then, Gene made every dance partner feel that way, didn’t he?
HAVING A WILD WEEKEND (1965) ***+
> I tried to watch a similar film called MRS. BROWN, YOU HAVE A LOVELY DAUGHTER…
. That musical was a vehicle for the Brit pop sensation Herman’s Hermits, but just could not sustain interest, despite all the great tunes that band recorded. It was all just so veddy, veddy English, and did not speak to me at all, despite my nostalgia for the gentler era at the beginnings of the Beatlemania cultural and musical revolution. HAVING A WILD WEEKEND occupied that same space, only it was a vehicle for The Dave Clark Five- supposedly a group that rivaled the Beatles for attention in Britain at the time, but I think it’s a fuckin’ lie. (I remember seeing a trailer for a Dave Clark Five concert film before a matinee at the time, and thinking “Who the hell are they?”) Where Herman’s lads were playing themselves forming a band, these pale Beatles-substitutes were playing stuntmen- all living together in one giant flat just like The Beatles in HELP, while working on an ad campaign to get Brits to eat more meat.
. On a whim, Dave takes to the road with the celebrated model at the center of it all, setting off a media frenzy when it is suggested she has been “kidnapped”. They go on the lam from celebrity, into the English countryside in search of a lark, and encounter various interesting people along the way, on their way to visit a deserted “island” the wealthy model is thinking of buying. It’s all fun and games until they hit the end of the road, and can escape responsibility no longer.
– Did not expect this to actually be about anything- but it was. It had content. No wonder! It was the great John Boorman’s first feature.
– Surprising fun, unlike those Hermits of Herman’s.
THE WRONG MISSY (2020) **+
> This crass, over-the-top Netflix hit is still a rude delight of sorts, thanks to google-eyed leading crazy Lauren Lapkus, the female Jim Carrey of 2020.
. David Spade plays the straight man that he used play opposite Chris Farley. It’s the story of a mortifying mix-up:
. While on the road, Spade meets a gorgeous woman who seems to be his ideal mate. Giving into mutual attraction, they make out in the airport toilet. When he wants to make his old girlfriend jealous, he texts his new beauty pageant winning paramour, inviting her to join him on a business retreat at a fancy resort in Hawaii. Great news! She agrees to meet him there! Only one little SNAFU:
. His sexy new woman shares a name with an absolutely disastrous date of a few weeks before. Both are named Melissa. Both call themselves “Missy”… You can see where this is going. The wrong Missy shows up- not the ripe babe but the unhinged lunatic.
. Will Spade end up eventually falling for this wrong Missy?
. Is there air? Does the earth exist? Are you reading this? THE WRONG MISSY is silly, not consistently funny, often just dumb. But we begin to see wild, uncontained Missy through Spade’s eyes, falling a little in love with her ourselves…
– From a safe distance!
BOMBSHELL (2019) ***+
> I always took it on faith that Roger Ailes, the corpulent himbo behind Faux “News”, was a real piece of human excrement…
. After seeing this tart, potent indictment, that no longer needs to be an article of faith.
. This film potently illustrates the way power corrupts and perverts human relationships. Jay Roach capably tells the story of the courageous Fox anchors who refused to be victimized by the corpulent beast who enabled their careers. Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie play Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson, and a third fictional character called Kayla Pospisil, who was added as a composite to personify the stories of others who eventually came forward. Also fabricated to serve the same storytelling purpose, a gay co-worker played by Kate McKinnon, who is eager to keep her sexual identity a secret from everyone at work except Kayla- the “nice Christian girl” she has an affair with.
. Vile sexual predator Ailes, is played by a perfectly transformed John Lithgow, who gives his usual wonderful performance with one caveat: his voice is so distinctive, so familiar to me now that I kept seeing Roger Ailes but hearing John Lithgow. This kept pulling me out of the reality, so I was watching Lithgow’s performance more than just experiencing his scenes. Allison Janney has a small part here, but she goes the other way, totally transforming her voice, bringing herself to the role, rather than bringing the role to herself. Mark Duplass is here too, as is Holland Taylor, Richard Kind and an impossibly grizzled Malcolm McDowell just nailing Rupert Murdoch.
. I quite enjoyed this look inside the Murdoch hate machine. (Considering my political views, part of this may have been simple schadenfreude. I took great pleasure is seeing that corpulent turd pay the price for his offensive actions.) While it was major fun to see look-alike actors play people like Geraldo Rivera, Bill O’Reilly and Jeanine Pirro, BOMBSHELL is a cold affair. Even with all the fireworks, these are reserved, calculating people. Nobody is very sympathetic except for Robbie and McKinnon, who come off a lot more human than the others.
. My biggest take-away from the movie? Margot Robbie is no mere pretty face. Here, Robbie generates a vulnerability and a potent emotional reality that (ironically!) grounded the fictional character more in reality than the real-life characters.
– Someday, this stunning Australian will be delivering an acceptance speech for Best Actress. Good on her.
RICHARD JEWELL (2019) ****
> I may be less than thrilled with Clint Eastwood’s politics, but at 90 years old, no one can argue that he is not one of our greatest living directors.
. The man who had an awkward conversation with an empty chair representing Barack Obama, seems to have a jaundiced view of the unchecked power of both the press and the F.B.I. Based on the arguments he puts forward in this fine picture, Eastwood has a point.
. This is the rather sad story of security guard Richard Jewell, the man who saved lives in Atlanta’s 1996 Centennial Park bombing, by thinking and acting fast when he spotted a suspicious backpack stuffed under a bench- then was summarily accused and found guilty of the crime by the public rush to judgement, via an inside story, leaked to the press. It’s a potent true story, told in a spare, straightforward way that immediately gets to the heart of the matter.
. The fine cast includes Paul Walter Hauser (DA 5 BLOODS), as Richard, Kathy Bates as his loving mother, Sam Rockwell as his seat-of-the-pants lawyer, John Hamm as a rigid, myopic F.B.I. agent, and Olivia Wilde as Kathy Scruggs, the journalist who leaked the misleading fact that Richard had become a suspect.
. Objectively, this suspicion made sense. Richard fit the profile to a “T”: lonely, single man, living with his mother, an outsider who fancied a career in law enforcement, but compiled a record of inappropriate overreach as a campus security guard. The problem is- things in this world are often not as they appear to be. Sure, Richard looked guilty. The simple fact is, that he was not. Eventually, as poor Richard lived his life under a public cloud of suspicion, another man confessed to the crime. Even then, Hamm’s unyielding G-Man refuses to let go of his deluded “certainty” that Richard was culpable. (Shades of Donald tRump and his vendetta against the Central park Five…) I remembered that Richard was cleared of the crime, shortly before his untimely death at 44, but I wonder how many other viewers knew this, going in. It is a perverse thing, that lurid allegations of wrongdoing are often splashed across the nation’s headlines, but when a person’s name is cleared, the retraction appears in small print on page 35. Wrongdoing is a “story” where editors seem to believe exoneration is not. Once a person’s good name has been unjustly tarnished in the court of public opinion, that reputation is never quite the same.
. There is some fascinating controversy here. (What is a Clint Eastwood film without controversy?) Clint’s script indicated that real-life reporter Kathy Scruggs used her body to procure the leak, sleeping with Hamm’s F.B.I. mannequin to loosen his lips about the investigation. Apparently, although it is an effective storytelling device, there is scant evidence of this, and Ms. Scruggs feels her ethical standards and good name have been impugned without cause… just the way Richard Jewell’s were.
– Some real irony there!
MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S (1969) ****
> I have not seen many Éric Rohmer films, but it’s clearer and clearer that he was quite a deft filmmaker with real style.
. Nor have I been exposed much to perennial French leading man Jean-Louis Trintignant, outside of his great performances in THREE COLOURS: RED and AMOUR. (I guess I saw him in “Z”, but I don’t remember much about that Costa-Gavras film. I see he was featured in one of my very favorite films of all time: CITY OF LOST CHILDREN, but only his voice.) Here, the celebrated French leading man plays a fellow who sees himself as a devout Catholic, following a strict moral code, despite his many lapses in following Church doctrine. For these, he always has a convenient excuse. Apparently Catholic dogma is pliable for him. He twists it to suit his behavior at any given moment. It is this cognitively dissonant hypocrisy that makes his character interesting.
. Spotting a lovely woman in the pews one Sunday, he becomes obsessed with the idea that he will certainly marry her one day. No wonder. She is played by the winsome beauty Marie-Christine Barrault, one of the beautiful women Woody Allen liked to cast as his unlikely love interests, in her case in STARDUST MEMORIES. In the meantime, a chance encounter with an old school chum threatens to upset his perfect moral order, when he insists they go see his unreachable love Maud, played by sly, sexy Françoise Fabian, who always seems to have more on her mind than her lips betray. His old pal carries a torch for Maud, but she won’t have him in her bed. Eventually, the friend leaves, but Jean-Louis stays, for one of those deep, revealing, unexpected late-night bull sessions that it is sometimes easier to have with strangers than close friends.
. The early part of this film is pretty boring actually. Lots of talk about philosophy does not make for an involving movie. But once the central conceit kicks in, the film resembles no other film so much as Louis Malle’s sparkling MY DINNER WITH ANDRE. Their talk about love, philosophy, values and religion is fascinating to eavesdrop on. When it’s finally time for bed, and Maud invites him under the covers, Jean-Louis is mightily conflicted. Sure, he’s willing to have affairs… with nice, Catholic girls. Maud certainly does not fit this narrow category. And what about the true focus of his heart’s desires? Will Jean-Louis ever find the courage to walk up to her and say hello, and perhaps fulfill his marital fantasies?
. Loved the ending of this film, that flashes-forward to reveal the outcomes of these central questions.
. No, MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S is not MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, but it’s quite a delight in its own right, once Rohmer dispenses with the obtuse religious philosophy.
– Stick with it. The story resonates for anyone who has ever had his heart dented or toyed with.
THE VIOLENT MEN (1955) ****
> Oh no, Kevin! Not another western?!
. Yup. Another western. Is it an addiction? This one has so much going for it. Glenn Ford, Edward G. Robinson, Brian Keith and Barbara Stanwyck were big stars in their time, and judging by this film, that made sense. They are all terrific here, in this story about the classic confrontation of the American frontier, once those pesky Indians were confidently disposed of: cattleman vs. rancher.
. Ford is the man at the center of it all: a Union war hero turned rancher, turned lover. His sweetheart is eager to get out of Nowheresville, convincing him to sell the ranch and start a new life in the populous east. We see what he doesn’t: that he is little more than a vehicle for her to fulfill that dream of escape. All this plays out against a background of armed conflict. Robinson is a ruthless cattle baron, bent on forcing all his neighboring ranchers to sell to him, so that one day, he will own the entire valley. His henchmen are an awful, amoral lot, not above shooting a man in the back to fulfill this dream of dominance.
. Naturally, this being a western and Ford being the hero, he is a quietly moral man who just wants to stay above the fray, close up shop and start that new life with his fair-weather fiancée, but keeps being inexorably drawn into an inevitable conflict forced onto him by the actions of bad men.
. But even Robinson’s all-powerful cattleman has his problems. Disabled by gunfire in his stalemate with the neighbors he is trying to evict, he leans heavily on his brother Cole (a mustached Brian Keith), who is secretly carrying on an affair with his Robinson’s wife, played by Stanwyck at her most selfish and despicable. This dynamic places the cattle rancher’s conflict with Ford in a whole new light, potentially turning the mortal enemies into unlikely allies.
– Yup, westerns rock. THE VIOLENT MEN certainly does!
THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1974) *****
> Holy sacred cow Batman!
. I saw this Spanish lunacy in an art house theatre once in 1975, as part of a Buñuel double feature. At 17 or 18 years old, I’m sure I had no friggin’ idea what the hell I was witnessing. Watching it now, 46 years later, at 63 years old, I can only wonder why it didn’t leave a deeper impression. (No doubt, I was very, very stoned when I saw it in El Lay!) I do remember that the other half of the bill left a much bigger impression. I just hated every minute of THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL. Rich fucks who are unable to leave a party for no obvious reason- then, after a tortuous 90 minutes, suddenly, they can? There is a word for this plot: BORING. Undoubtedly, I was ready for neither film, developmentally. Certainly, I didn’t know how to fully embrace Surrealism at the time. A few short years later, I would be writing surrealist poetry.
. The title “Phantom of Liberty” references the Commie Manifesto, though all that escapes me. Never actually read the document. The film seems like an almost randomly connected series of brief pieces skewering Brunel’s usual subjects: anything held sacred or taboo by bourgeois society- primarily sex, religion and class.
. It begins in the distant past and ends up in the seventies- the era that produced this whacky flick. Often the episodes are stories, being told by a character (often without resolution), sometimes they result from chance encounters, the action abandoning one character to follow a new character. Sometimes it’s hilarious. Sometimes it’s a crashing bore. I’m certain I got a whole lot more of the humor this time ‘round, understanding much better what was being lampooned, and why. The plot wouldn’t make any sense if I tried to explain it to you, but here goes nuthin’:
~A creepy man in the playground gives innocent children photos that both offend and titillate the parents, which turn out to be postcards of French architecture.
~A man cannot sleep, because a rooster, and then an emu struts through his bedroom, as well as a postman on a bicycle with a letter to deliver.
~A child goes “missing” even though everyone can plainly see her there- they just don’t want to admit it.
~A couple attend a “dinner party” where the group sits genteelly on toilets around a table, talking about feces while presumably, producing it, then sneaking off to the private shameful act of eating.
~A sniper is found guilty of mass murder, sentenced to die, then released as an untouchable celebrity.
~A nice couple invite a nurse and some monks into their suite for a nightcap and surprise sadomasochistic exhibition.
~A young man has an incestuous affair with his aunt- an old virgin with the body of a beautiful young woman.
~A police captain goes to dig up his long-dead sister, after getting a phone call from her at the mausoleum. She is remembered playing piano naked in a flashback.
~A soldier robs another crypt for a little good clean necrophilia…
. You know- the usual stuff. How do you evaluate a Surrealist vision objectively? Can’t be done! Shouldn’t be attempted. Gotta just take THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY for what it is, boring bits and all:
– A singular masterpiece of the absurd.
A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (2019) ***+
> Someday, “Rogersism” will be a religion.
. This lovely film is less a biography of the iconic gentle-man, than a story about the way meeting him softened and mellowed a skeptical, cynical, journalist. “Lloyd Vogel” is a fictional stand-in for real-life investigative journalist Ton Junod, a reporter for Esquire Magazine who was more known for hit pieces than character profiles. Lloyd is understandably convinced that “Mr. Rogers” the low-key children’s TV stalwart, is all an act. It had to be! Nobody is that nice. it is so much fun to see his incredulity when he actually meets the man, and finds that the Mr. Rogers in cardigan sweater in the TV neighborhood is Fred Rodgers himself- no more, no less. It was a rare case of “what you see is what you get”.
. Rogers genuinely cared about the people he met, memorizing important details about their lives: their birthdates, the names of the people in their families, their struggles and joys. When a man who sees it as his mission in life to heal the broken, meets a fractured man like Lloyd, it becomes a contest of wills. Will Lloyd continue to hold on to the pain and trauma that holds him back in life, or will he eventually give-in to Fred’s relentless empathy, and allow another human being into his darkest places?
. Matthew Rhys (now spearheading the latest iteration of Perry Mason on teevee), is solid in the role. We believe both his emotional scar tissue and his eventual transformation. He performs some very subtle but potent acting gymnastics using his face alone. Still, it is hard for the actor to escape the deep shadow of Tom Hanks inhabiting Fred Rogers, who is once again transformed, once-again giving a perfect performance in a part that seemed destined for him. His Best Actor nomination was well deserved, as usual. (I saw Hanks on a talk show talking about the challenge of playing this man. Fred was a a very… slow… talker. He took his time to consider his responses. Hanks had a terrible time slowing down enough to match the reality of the man. Nobody talks like that! He kept worrying that he would lose the viewer to boredom. Needless to say, this did not happen in a single frame.)
. Christine Lahti is here as well- just barely, as is Chris Cooper in top form as Vogel’s estranged father, an alcoholic serial-cheater who did so much damage by abandoning the family when Lloyd was still a child. He has the nerve to suddenly reappear in Lloyd’s life, seeking to make amends before the sands in his quickly-emptying hourglass run out. (Why does this story ring so true? This is practically my story! My own alcoholic father suddenly reappeared after a decade of estrangement, also seeking redemption.) At first Lloyd will have none of it. He would rather kill his father than make amends with him.
– But under the influence of Fred Rogers’ steady moral compass, redemption and rapprochement may just be possible, if very, very painful.
HARRIET (2019) ***+
> Yow! Harriet Tubman was a BADASS!
. Bet you didn’t know that to this day, Tubman was the only woman to lead a brigade of United States soldiers into battle.
. Best Actress nominee Cynthia Erivo is very good in making the transition from a browbeaten slave to empowered liberator and eventual Civil War commander.
. This earnest, good but less than satisfying biopic of the great American is marred by three cases of overt speechifying. Cue the too-manipulative music and tee-up the stirring monologue! These wooden moments pulled me right out of the otherwise compelling narrative, when I suddenly perceived actors delivering lines instead of characters telling their truths. Without these lapses HARRIET would have been a much more effective film.
. I do dig the genre. American history is rife with great stories just waiting to be revived and reinterpreted for new generations. Tubman’s story is certainly one of them. But HARRIET does not feel like the definitive Tubman film. This courageous woman led hundreds of slaves on dangerous treks to freedom, in what came to be known as the “Underground Railroad”, a plot I was really looking forward to seeing explored. Yet this part of her story feels truncated, abbreviated. We never learn much about the mechanics of the smuggling operation. It’s a disappointment.
– What’s here is good. I wanted more.
WALK ON THE WILD SIDE (1962) ****
> The opening and closing credits Saul Bass created for this Edward Dmytryk film could not have better presaged the sensational melodrama to come.
. They feature a slinky black cat on the prowl through the city and getting into a fight with a white cat, a perfect metaphor for the female characters who drive the story. Elmer Bernstein’s score is equally impressive.
. It is the rough-and-tumble 1930’s. Folks are still hurting from the Great Depression. Dove Linkhorn (great name!), is a working-class Joe from Texas, played by an intense Laurence Harvey. Drifter Dove hits the road in search of the woman who left his heart stranded and aching- a winsome, ennui-drenched waif named Hallie- played by French fashion model Capucine, known for comic turns in WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT? and THE PINK PANTHER. En route, he meets tough, independent Kitty Twist (another killer name!), played by a perky young Jane Fonda at the peak of her sex appeal. Both are making their way to New Orleans, and since it’s not safe for a gorgeous free-spirit to travel alone, and she makes much better hitchhiking bait, they join forces for the journey.
. Their paths diverge for a while, as Dove settles into a job working for a Mexican restauranteur, played by a lovely, compelling, compassionate Anne Baxter, while searching for his lost ladylove. Naturally, she gradually falls in love with him, as he grows increasingly despondent, and begins to drink heavily. What Dove does not know- could never suspect- is that in order to survive such desperate times, Hallie has become a prostitute in a high-class whorehouse. She is being groomed as a protégé by hard-as-nails madam Jo- Barbara Stanwyck at her most lethal and menacing. When Dove tries to rescue her from that life of exploitation and self-destruction, Jo turns to any dirty trick she can devise to thwart their romance- from blackmail to violence.
. WALK ON THE WILD SIDE is a lurid, overheated landscape of big themes and big emotions. Is redemption possible for a “fallen” woman? Is love enough? Is there any real justice in the world? Harvey, Baxter and Stanwyck and Fonda have never been better. Harvey shows what a well-trained actor he was, Baxter was so sympathetic we could just feel her every emotion, Stanwyck was as formidable and immovable as a mountain, and Jane Fonda was impossibly sensual. What a babe! No wonder I fell in love with her at nine years old when I saw her play CAT BALLOU.
. Capucine on the other hand is a cold, dead fish. Her lack of acting chops were apparently a big source of contention on the set. Harvey detested her. She is certainly the weak link in the chain. Too bad she occupied such a central role.
– Otherwise, pretty damn good for melodrama!
DOWN IN THE DELTA (1998) ****
Did you know that among her other great accomplishments, the brilliant Maya Angelou directed a feature film? Me neither! And judging by the outcome, she was a pretty good at it. This is a family drama about a Black clan fleeing the violent neighborhoods of Chicago to live in rural Mississippi with their gruff but tender uncle Earl. Alfre Woodard is very good as Loretta, a mess of a woman, trying to close the door on drug addiction and the demons of her past. Sure, it’s a bit formulaic, but Angelou crafted a warm-hearted film that faces some tough realities with grace. I teared-up several times, so I must have cared about these characters enough to feel only empathy for their struggles. DOWN IN THE DELTA has a palpable sense of locale and a score by Herbie Hancock! It’s a shame the great American dame only made this one film. Seems like everything Angelou touched turned to gold, once the horror of her days of abuse, and her years as a mute were behind her.
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One so-so comedy and 20 good films. July was another great film month! Thanks for joining the journey. Until September, I bid you:
Vive Cinema, ye Gods on Earth!
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© Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast, 2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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