Reviews

This film rarity was the last film directed by Tod Browning, who directed Dracula (1931) and FREAKS (1932) as well as several Lon Chaney films. Sadly it turns out to be a surprisingly conventional murder mystery. The main character, played by Robert Young, is an inventor of illusions for stage magician and in his spare time he is a debunker of fake spiritualist mediums. Browning, who used real circus freaks for FREAKS, did not bother to use real stage illusions from the magicians. Instead he uses obvious camera tricks or card tricks in which he plants convenient cards in the performers hands. Fans of Universal horror films of the 30s and 40s will enjoy seeing many familiar faces including Henry Hull of THE WEREWOLF OF London, Gloria Holden of Dracula'S DAUGHTER, and Frank Craven of SON OF Dracula. Also playing is William Demarest and Eddie Acuff. In the end the film really does not work because someone who uses a disguise is just not very well disguised. Rating: 0 on the -4 to +4 scale or 4/10

MONEYBALL

(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: Brad Pitt plays the general manager of the

cash-strapped Oakland As who ignores his scouts and

turns to the recommendations of an inexperienced

statistician to hire a winning team. In spite of

strong opposition the statistical approach proves to

be a phenomenal success for the team. Jonah Hill

plays the odd mathematician and Philip Seymour Hoffman

is very good as an uncooperative manager with fears of

his own. Bennett Miller of CAPOTE direct Steven

Zaillian's and Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of Michael

Lewis's book MONEYBALL: THE ART OF WINNING AN UNFAIR

GAME. There are lots of films about baseball and only

a handful of films about mathematics--even fewer showing

mathematics in a favorable light. It is surprising to

get such an entertaining film that combines both.

Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

Our world is awash in numbers. We collect and can have available all kinds of statistics. What is difficult is collecting and understanding all the numbers, learning lessons from them, and then deciding if the lessons can be trusted. I read a review of the book SUPER CRUNCHERS by Ian Ayers. It told how Orley Ashenfelter used a statistical approach called regression analysis to predict the quality of certain wines. He determined that he could collect three numbers: average growing season temperature, winter rainfall, and harvest rainfall, and from them simply generating a number that would be expected quality of wines. There are wine experts who use very subjective approaches and a great deal of experience to predict wine quality. They laughed at Ashenfelter's simplistic approach. But a simple mathematical formula turned out to be a better predictor than trusted experts with years of experience at predicting wine quality.

If that story sounds oddly familiar, it is almost exactly what happened when Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team realized he did not have the budget to hire new and promising players or even to hold on to the better players whom he already had. Instead he hired Paul DePodesta who was a Harvard graduate who applied statistics to hiring a team. In MONEYBALL Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) hires Yale graduate Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill with a name change from DePodesta) to pick unrecognized candidates. And the story of MONEYBALL is very much like what played out with the wine predictions.

The scouts were paid well for their gut reactions of who would and would not be good players for the team to hire. They criticize the new statistical approach to selecting new players. And initially that approach does not work at all. The problem, however, is not in the statistics but in the lack of faith in the mathematics by the manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman, who unexpectedly seems like he was made for the grouchy role). The statistical approach to baseball (elsewhere the approach has been named "sabermetrics") makes everyone feel a little insecure, and they resist it. When Beane seems more interested in Brand's assessment than that of his scouts, one can see why they are insecure. But even Hoffman's Howe finds his career riding on Beane and Brand's radical ideas. And what happens is the story of MONEYBALL.

One arguably bad touch is the use of relatively short and stocky Jonah Hill for the statistician. Apparently director Bennett Miller was exploiting a stereotype of what the public expected a statistician would look like. In fact, the real Paul DePodesta resembles Guy Pearce and is quite unlike Jonah Hill. Admittedly Pitt and Hill do play reasonably well off each other as opposites, but the pairing is cinema, not reality. There is some drama to Hill's portrayal of a man who loves a game that he is clearly not physically suited to play. Unlikely as it seems the man still manages through mathematical skills to make himself an important figure in baseball history. It is nice to see Robin Wright in a small role as Beane's ex-wife. Pitt gives a solid performance. Miller seems to have a natural directing style if a little uneven at times. He will occasionally have realistic overlapping dialog, but does not use it uniformly.

MONEYBALL is a true story about a cash-strapped baseball team that was able to intelligently become a winning team on limited resources. Maybe that makes it a perfect film for these times of failing economy. I rate MONEYBALL a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.

RANGO

(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: A pet chameleon falls from a truck in the

middle of the Nevada desert. He soon finds his way

to the dying Western town of Dirt where his bragging

and his lucky defeat of a predatory hawk make him the

town's new sheriff. Sadly, the town is drying up for

shortage of water. In the best Western tradition

Sheriff Rango sets out to save the town. Sight gags,

film references, jokes, action, and just plain funny

storytelling follow as thick as a hail of bullets.

Director Gore Verbinski shows his animation direction

of John Logan's script is as good as his live-action

direction on films like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN.

This is a smart, hip comedy that works for adults and

youngsters alike. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10

RANGO is a "funny animals" sort of animated film, but the writing and situations are funny enough that it might turn out to be one of the best animated films of the year.

In a world like ours (but where intelligent talking animals live side-by-side with humans) the chameleon who comes to be called Rango (voiced by Johnny Depp) would like to be an actor. He dreams of a life in front of a camera. Then his habitat terrarium rolls off the back of a truck and he finds himself stranded in the dry Mojave Desert. He wanders into the animal-run frontier town of Dirt. Swaggering into the saloon he tries to play the part of a Western tough guy. He brags that he killed a gang of seven outlaws with a single bullet. In a fight with predatory hawk Rango lucks out and kills the hawk. The townspeople now believe his bragging and want Rango as their new sheriff--failing to tell Rango that his predecessors named to that job may have lived to regret it ... or not.

But Rango probably won't have his job long. Dirt has some real problems. Rango comes to the town just as Dirt is parceling out to its citizenry the last few days of water. When the water source dies the town will soon follow it, and that day is less than a week away. Meanwhile the mayor (Ned Beatty) of the town seems to still have big plans. He tells Rango that who controls the water controls everything.

Okay, let me digress here. This is what THE INCREDIBLES called "monologing." It is a major weakness in the writing. This statement is the key to everything that is happening in the town. In his anxiousness to make sure the viewer knows what is going on writer John Logan has the mayor saying exactly the wrong thing to the new sheriff. It is not hard for the viewer to figure out who the villain has to be just by his appearance. This is virtually a confession before Rango even knows there is chicanery going on. And part of the chicanery is the stealing of the plot of CHINATOWN. Another part is the counterfeiting of a cameo appearance that had me fooled. Timothy Olyphant does a spot-on impression of another famous actor. I found completely convincing, and I am generally good with voices.

There were several familiar actors voicing major roles. Besides Depp, Beatty, and Olyphant, there was Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Steven Root, Harry Dean Stanton, and Ray Winstone. Animation directors seem to feel the public needs familiar voices to appreciate the characters. I frankly doubt that most viewers pick up on all these voices. Admittedly some of these are very good actors. But the film industry is full of good and deserving actors who are out of work. I personally think that it is bad for a successful actor to accept a voice-only role that could go to an actor less successful.

It is good that animated films are starting to be considered acceptable for adults with or without children to see. Some of the best writing is going into animated films. I often find myself in theaters seeing animated films where my wife and I are the only party without children present. Good writing should be savored and appreciated and there was really even too much good writing for anyone--adult or child--to take in on one viewing.

Smart, crafty, hip, and full of wit, RANGO may be one of the best films of the year, animated or live action. I rate it a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.

Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1192628/

What others are saying: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rango-2011/

Mark R. Leeper

Copyright 2011 Mark R. Leeper

The only two loosely-connected episodes of the third season of DANGER MAN put together to make a feature film, mostly for television.

KIROSHI loses most of the atmosphere of the series when it goes to color. Color probably increased production value so the style changed to exploit the popularity of James Bond films. It lost much of its subtlety. The writing is actually very bad with plot elements seemingly borrowed from Bond films and perhaps MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. Patrick McGoohan did well to leave the series. The fighting is unconvincing and the villains are a little too much on the a cross between Bond and Fu Manchu. The stage-bound production is even more obvious in color.

It is just a lukewarm, stagy, comic-book-like spy adventure.

One could do an entire feature film on this subject. The story is a police procedural with a police detective who is fighting (or perhaps not fighting) his depression. It is really more about his depression than it is about the police case. That does not leave a lot of time for the police story. It is mostly just there because who would be all that interested if it was just a story about a depressed punch press operator? Seven minutes is just too brief to develop either theme. This is a good start, particularly for a viewer who had a particular interest in the subject of depression. I could almost see this being expanded into a film like INSOMNIA, but there is too little to tell here.

Capsule: A whale vertebrate found in Toronto? How did it get there? This film is a history of man and whale as the filmmaker searches for how the bone got where it was found. While the film seems mostly aimed at visitors to the Royal Ontario Museum, there is more than enough of interest along the way. The documentary seems a little more like a disorganized scrapbook than a real narrative, but it is an interesting scrapbook. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

Documentary filmmaker Peter Lynch goes on a quest for the origin of a whale bone, a vertebrate, originally found in Toronto. Found on April 14, 1988 in Toronto on dry land, it ended in the Royal Ontario Museum where Lynch found it and decided to go on a quest to find how a whale bone could get to Toronto. His quest turns into a study of the history and study of the relationship of man and whale.

He talks about the history and lore of displaying whales and whale skeletons in sideshows and in Barnum's museum. In that museum live whales were put on display and were killed by being put in fresh water. They were replaced and given brine. Then when the museum caught fire the brine was used to fight the fire and the whales burned to death.

Lynch gives us a description of various breeds of whale. He talks about Moby Dick in book and on screen. I have a few nits to pick with the film. Lynch narrates in a near monotone dropping his voice at the end of each sentence. The material is engaging enough but his delivery sabotages his efforts. At one point he says the early history of Toronto is mostly unknown. What does that mean? The history of Toronto yesterday is mostly unknown. Lynch goes everywhere carrying a plastic cast of the vertebrate, regardless of whether it would be useful. Carrying it he looked like Diogenes with his lantern. He hopes to find a matching vertebrate to identify the species. Lynch explores all sorts of possibilities for how the bone could have gotten to Toronto including the possibility of "redlighting," or thrown as waste from a carnival train.

In the end he still has only theories to explain the strange discovery. Bones, Lynch concludes, last beyond our lives and live a life of their own after we are gone.

This is a slow and sentimental mood piece, the story of a love affair between a man and a woman in Italy before World War II. The man we discover is married with a child. The woman has some secrets in her past. But they enjoy each other's company. If that does not sound like a lot of plot, there is a little more to the film but not much. This is not the kind of film where the viewer can expect a lot to happen. This is a film for people who enjoy seeing attractive lovers together and who like to listen to the romantic strains of an orchestral score with a lot of stringed instruments. It is a sad BRIEF ENCOUNTER sort of film except that the encounter is not really brief.

Even more so than FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, screen versions of Stevenson's THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE are based on other screen versions of the same story. There is no evidence anyone has gone back to see what was in the original story (or even what its title was). This version assumes that Jekyll does not change physically, but only mentally. John Hannah is particularly uninteresting in the role of the schizoid doctor. Major characters are invented and thrown into the plot. With all this liberty to invent Martyn Hesford should have been able to improve on the story, but does not. The period feel is weak as if insufficient research and checking was done. (Jekyll refers to "Sir Danvers," not "Sir Henry.")

DEADLY RECRUITS is an unusual and unexpectedly intelligent spy thriller made for British television. A motorcycle accident leads two government agents to investigate a series of disappearances from among the best and brightest students at Oxford University. The case takes some unexpected twists. The plot can be a little hard to follow at times and requires careful attention as well as a nodding acquaintance with British slang on occasions. There is also some nice dry English wit. The cast is good, particularly Michael Culver, a familiar face from films including THUNDERBALL and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Terence Stamp plays a most irritating government agent. Also look for Art Malik as a student.

This is not a remake and it is not a sequel. It is more a play on the ideas of Wells and of the 1960 film. The movie seems a little slight and rushed, but it is not at all bad as a short science fiction story. With a little too much digital effects it will become dated, but it is still worth the trip for science fiction fans. In the late 19th Century and American scientist invents a time machine in an attempt to modify the past. In spite of his being able to get to the past, he cannot alter anything of substance. Instead he explores the future and finds that it has undergone the same split of humanity that Wells predicted, Eloi and Morlocks. (The time traveler is apparently not familiar with The Time Machine, but a sort of digital librarian he meets is.) This is not a great SF film, but it was a lot better than I was expecting.

At the time this film was made, vampires were almost always slow and hypnotic. This was really the first vampire film that treated them as swift and animalistic. That made this film surprisingly effective. It was even more surprising since it was originally supposed to be a pornographic vampire film called THE LOVES OF COUNT IORGA. It is flawed, but I still think it is the most effective vampire film I have ever seen. And I have seen quite a few.

A British agent tries to infiltrate the IRA to find an assassin and capture him before he himself is found out. I keep trying to get people to watch this film. This is the best treatment I have seen about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the causes and the futility. Both the British and the IRA are intelligent, and we see the reasons each side does what it does. The tension is very well handled. The film PATRIOT GAMES pays tribute by borrowing some of the music, but it does not match the quality of the storytelling.

This film really combines elements of THE HAUNTING, THE UNINVITED, and THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE with a lot of special effects. Director Jan de Bont does a lot of things wrong that Robert Wise did right in the 1963 version, but he still manages to make this a fairly good ghost story. A very great deal of the credit should go to Eugenio Zanetti, the production designer who created the beautifully imposing look of Hill House.