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Stop Making Sense (1984)
Too good to miss
I rented this disk from netflix by what process of selection I forgot and almost did not play it. I expected "talking head" interviews. I thought it would be a talking head film about the Talking Heads. I also do not readily mix with music videos. So I was pleasantly surprised when I played the disk I found it was all music, no talk. I suddenly realized what a huge Talking Heads fan I have been all along.
Talking Heads came along for me mostly on radio and here I see that every single song which they sing here was a smash hit. It is wall to wall music. By "they" I am thinking mostly (exclusively) of the scrumptious Tina Wheymouth, everyone's perfect, clean and dainty high school crush.
David Byrne alone by himself got me to thinking any natural singing talent must be inconsequential compared to the energy that goes into it. It is the drive to produce which is remarkable. The ectomorphic Byrne really puts his entire nervous system into the song and with video we see as well as hear it. The choreography is as amazing as the music. Byrne is a sort of magician.
If you like Talking Heads music to start with, you will love this film. This will be a disk you wish to own as part of your music collection.
As for making sense, it almost does, leaving me a bit worried about what I might be getting into, should the lights come up. Such are the dangers of listening to rock n roll.
Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)
There are Burglars Singing in the Cellar!
First of all, this is not a circus picture with Edgar Bergen. The title is completely misleading. Instead, this is a great domestic comedy, but in this particular film, filled with that unique Fields' irony, Fields rises to the level of social commentary. I don't know where you could find a more accurate depiction of everyday life in that period. Details like the social attitudes associated with employment as well as the marriage mores of the time. It is partly the blatantness of Wolfingers situation that makes it so funny. But after all, if his wife is perpetually squirming in anguish and total dependency, who asked him to marry a high-strung actress type? It doesn't seem like they are on the same page. The mores of today would not make a marriage and then consummate it eventually. Maybe I am getting too Freudian in thinking she could be quenched. But probably he enjoys the attention. For Mrs. Wolfinger is nothing if not attentive.
Fields does not neglect to remind us of the constant manifestation of Progressivism, which arrests him while ignoring the criminals. The upper class are all Dry, except, perhaps, in practice. Fields liberty ends when they walk in the door. Although it is always they who are marginalized. Five dollars a month for this?
However, the ending is a happy one with concrete signs of romantic progress.
Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)
High Class Talent Show.
This is a Cavalcade of Stars ( the storyline production of which is the pretext for the show) an inside look at showbiz. which is all great. With Bogart and Garfield doing extemporaneous drama, it is every bit like a TV variety show. The effect is very modern and the talent all top notch. Edie Cantor, even after familiarity during the Fifties seems bizarre as ever. Cantor dances like a magician and/or juggler. When he starts clapping and dancing like a seal, it is really all him. Quite a display. And it could be said to be pretty much the Edie Cantor Show. The songs in this particular flick hold up really well. It is still entertaining and it is history as well.
This film is a great little entertainer and carries you along all the way to The End in first class spirits. The War plays almost no part in the story.
Black Legion (1937)
Youthful Bogart, Juvenile Plot
Assuming you are a Bogart fan you will enjoy this unexpected glimpse into his character's deep past. Toothy and gushing, not far from the Bowery Boys (they wear jagged beanies like Jughead), yet he is already a successful family man with the astounding O'Brien-Moore.
It is a worker's paradise, yet he gets sucked in to a violent secret society designed to further the good of WASPS like himself. So now at last you see Bogart playing the Fascist! Or the film's interpretation of what Fascism really is. Of course it is not altogether ridiculous but it is really no more than a Boston Blackie action film, typical of the time.
It is good though, very entertaining film. You will see images of Bogart which are entirely uncharacteristic.
Hard Candy (2005)
Clever but ultimately boring.
The entire story hangs on the unusual appearance of Ellen Page as Haley. Not only does she look like a physically immature 14-year-old, but in the beginning footage there is not even any trace of gender about her. Los Angeles photographers may be Los Angeles photographers but even so, it is difficult not to resent his interest in her.
However, all that changes--in the bat of an eye--when she reveals her true personality, which is largely a fully developed man-hating Feminist. Where once I was critical of him now I felt supportive. The girl is a monster and the film now assumes the familiar form of a horror film, the horror of a psychopathic 14-year-old girl. It is this ability to work the audience both ways that I call clever.
In other terms, such as character development it is simply ridiculous. In fact the entire shibboleth of child sexual abuse founders on the fact (unrecognizable to parents) that a teenage girl is not a child. In the initial footage she is a child but she grows up fast and now what she chiefly needs is a good F-ing to bring her into line with humanity.
But this man is unable to pull it off and instead loses his nuts. I was rooting for an ending where he becomes her willing houseboy. Instead, sans nuts, he still is able to summon up a man's strength.
This is not a bad movie, but I found it boring in the end. I watched it twice but skipped the ending the second time. As this world goes, this is a pretty good flick.
The Big Year (2011)
Birds, and the Men who fly to them.
This is a very pleasant, amusing film. And the fact that the entire focus of attention is on birds gave me a chuckle that lasted throughout the film. Of course the birds themselves are members of the cast, mostly in cameo roles.
But the thing about the birder culture is how seriously it is taken by birders. The way it works is a birder gets a line on a bird sighting and drops everything to fly to the locale, no matter how distant. Bird watching on a jet set scale. Competing to break the world records for bird species sightings per calendar year is called "having a big year." This is something very close to the ego of the bird watcher and is invested with an importance of the most personal degree. Of course, having a big year only goes beyond presumption when and if the record is broken. This makes it perilous for the ego.
Apart from these humorous angles, the film is also a very nice travelogue. Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Steve Martin make a great cast.
Sirocco (1951)
Bogart B Movie
I would even say less than B if it were not Bogart. For Bogart fans, there is a certain amount of satisfaction, but it is hard to avoid criticism.
With Prohibition past and even WW11 gone, idealism is a short commodity and Bogart himself isn't getting any younger either, so that the character of Harry Smith is not the mingled wheeler-dealer and idealist of earlier Bogart, but seemingly closer to a vulgarian pig like so many others, wooing with blatant appeal to material goods. This is like Bogart without Bogart. In fact, Harry Smith is too tired looking to really make a foreign land seem romantic for that matter.
Also a dramatic mess is Lee J Cobb. Maybe it is just the hang of his uniform but he is not set up so much to be a tragic figure as an unappealing one. His act of self-sacrifice is nauseating rather than ennobling.
Then there is Violette, responsive to Bogart's materialistic approach. Marta Toren is so beautiful I am surprised she isn't more famous.
And I think this must have been the film Woody Allen saw when he started mocking the trench coat. Cobb and Bogart both look a little too solid in them.
Finally, the set is a little bit superficial. Fezes and shots of Byzantine copper ware practically covers it. Abbott and Costello might come around a corner any minute.
In sum I say, as a potential film to watch, it is interesting, in a nihilistic sort of way. It only lacks poetic justice.
Straw Dogs (2011)
Brings Authenticity to Action
This is an action film of the genre in which city people are confronted with the horror of the rural culture. But here great pains are gone to to make the "rednecks" plausible, even in the right. Thus when David walks out of a sermon he has to have it pointed out to him he is being impolite.
The other pivotal point is when he comes out from his perpetual pajama party with her to request the workmen start their job on the roof at an hour to conform with his private life. One conforms the other way when one's roof is being worked on. If necessary, one moves out while the work is going on. Charlie is quite justified in being contemptuous. (Of course, you also have to ask what kind of a fool would allow this particular roofer--with extreme cutaway sleeves and perfectly upholstered ass--to do the job in the first place?)
Disrespect leads to violation. She is raped by Charlie and his buddy goes in for good measure. What took place is a total subversion of this family. This is a church going community, but then there is takes place beneath the surface.
The film leaves no question she was in no way complicit in the rape. Yet she did have this question in her mind about how David stacks up against these men, what David would do if he had to? Well, she finds out and it is an all-out war from all angles.
Much is made of legal rights when he is defending the (as we already know, guilty) man. It is an animation of liberal defense of the accused in general.
A most remarkable performance is James Wood as an embodiment of the old school vindictive justice and practically everything else hard-headed. The younger men are cool. It is the elder who is the most brash, with his incongruous vacationers hat. He is full of violence. And yet at all times he stands for justice and family values--for his family.
This film gives you a view of what takes place off scene in the child weddings of the Jerry Springer Show. It does not develop without a life-death struggle. This movie drives it home these people can be dangerous.
Anyway, this film is head and shoulders above the typical mindless action film.
Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Surprising Comic Treatment
The entire story grows out of the do good idealism of young married Karin, which expresses itself through the ultra-conventional venue of her brother-in-law, a reclusive loner. She takes an interest in her husband's brother. She literally tackles his isolation. She and her husband are people finding the words to be kind, compassionate human beings. They are very aggressive about it. And so he is induced to come to dinner.
There is a surprise, however, in that he brings a girl friend, so to speak--but she is a dummy. He literally brings a life size puppet to which he is relating emotionally as if she were a girl friend.
Ultimately the couple accommodate this behavior and ultimately so does the entire community ( although the clergy puts up minor resistance).
One of the ironies of this bizarre situation is that to a certain extent it seems to not really matter that much that she is not human. She fulfills much of the role by simply being there. It is a very existential insight. To an extent we are all empty heads much of the time.
At one point, alone in a moment of intimacy between man and doll, it seemed imminent that the life-like mannequin would burst into life on film, at least in fantasy. But the film maker is stricter than that. No such fantasy is provided.
What does happen is he begins to develop a wandering eye--towards the undergarment comforts of a real woman.
This is a very amusing tale about people who have unlimited indulgence for abnormal behavior. A mountain is not made out of a mole hill. And in the end all is well.
À propos de Nice (1930)
Vigo's greatest work?
Jean Vigo is an unaccountably obscure master. His L'Atalante, a full length feature film is astoundingly good, although I found the use of bohemian theater props and the medieval Jean-Phlippe less original than Vigo's other work. The film Taris is a remarkable tribute to water on film. Water itself is represented in a way that transcends time, like Sargeant or Hokusai. The water of 1930 lives on film.
But as to Vigo's greatest film, I say it was his first, A propos de Nice. This is a travel-documentary but it is also living history. The nearest comparison would be Mr. Hulot's Holiday. Much has been made about Vigo's division of the film into the rich and the poor, but really it is no more than a flourish. What is overwhelming is Vigo's eye itself. Nothing seems staged. It is life in the raw.
One outstanding part of the film deals with can-can. Here we see what the can-can really is. Not the formalized line dancing of Pig Allee, but simply the gyrations of little girls still gyrating.
None of us will ever be able to visit Nice in 1930, but A propos de Nice gives us a window. The excitement of life is there for us.
Submarine (2010)
Dark & Uninspiring
Anyone wanting to get this story would probably do better to read the book. It is a coming of age story with some additional interest in the relationships of the older generation. But the production is defective in several specific ways. 1) The photography is too dark. The film includes a few extremely artistic shots, but the work-a-day shots are often too long when they should be tight. And
2) The sound quality is poor, especially when everyone is swallowing their words. Only the voice over is clear enough to follow with ease.
These two factors taken together make following the story a chore.
3) The main character's face is leaden. I have seen comparison's of his appearance to Rushmore, the film, which is quite true. Rushmore was another film I found uninspired. And like Rushmore, I found it failed with just a blank look and bangs to win much identification with the character. However, unlike Rushmore, this character is not merely an ego.
All this is probably supposed to pass as nouveau vague--but falls short.
Still, the film did have some authenticity about the childlike relationship at the time of virginity. That was there, but as I said, through a glass darkly. I would rather have plenty of light to see and crystal-clear dialog.
Everything Must Go (2010)
Ironic Masterpiece.
Will Ferrell has a very cozy place within the suburban middle-class. His characters are born into it so they know the ropes.
In Everything Must Go this place is challenged with megaton brutality when in the same day he is fired from his job (due to irresponsible drinking), and simultaneously his ex-wife has won possession of the house, removing his possessions to the lawn and leaving for a holiday. What he knows enough to avoid is going with the flow of events--which would carry him to transient housing and on into obscurity. Instead, what he does is coincident with a simpler practicality. He stands guard over his material possessions which are now out in public. In this way he begins living on the lawn while conducting a lawn sale 24/7. This serves not only to sell his goods but perhaps more important an excuse for the police to tolerate his continued presence in the neighborhood. As a taxpayer and former neighbor, he prevails with the police to give him temporary reprieve to conduct his yard sale. None of the neighbors object. He has made himself into a Happening in the neighborhood.
On the business side of his new life, he has made a street deal with a young boy who happens to be interested in everyone else's business, to supervise the sale. This frees him up to become involved with his neighbors.
Crucial to the outcome is Ferrell's certain knowledge that it is not what you know but who you marry. Whether as a brother, a husband or just a neighbor he has instant acceptability. His casual suburban attitude carries him along to new love and the answer to his financial woes. All without leaving his lawn.
This is a low-key type of humor dealing with a potentially unfunny subject. The message is not to validate calamity. Maintains humor and entertainment value throughout.
Topsy-Turvy (1999)
Intellectual Treasure Trove.
A departure from Director Mike Leigh's usual less snooty subjects, this historical comedy is an entirely different facet of his intellectual sensibility.
The story recounts an historical spat between Gilbert & Sullivan. Unlike most historical films which are content to offer little more than costume, Leigh cleverly turns our preconception about the Victorian Age on its head. Thus, while Victorian society at large may have been staid, Gilbert & Sullivan & company are quite fast. This is a much more sophisticated interpretation of Victorian history. recognizing contradictions. But this is only one minor example of what is going on. Much more could be said about this film, pending further viewing. In this way, by brilliant innovations, he brings the characters to life for us as real people, larger than the historical context, not stock figures.
But while they are not merely Victorians, nevertheless they are Victorians and there are insights into that historical condition as well. Very charming was an incident with an actress changing from stage costume to street clothes. To all appearances, she is dressing in reverse. The requirements of the street are vastly complicated, involving multiple undergarments and contrivances and great labor, much greater than the
costume.
Much of the material involves backstage views of rehearsals, giving us a feeling for theater-life then as well as theatre-life in general. While we are considering the life and character of the cast, we are incidentally enjoying many complete excerpts from actual Gilbert & Sullivan.
Running 2 hours and 40 minutes, this is a film which requires enough composure on the part of the viewer to sit back and absorb a vast pageant of sights and ideas. You might want to be sure you are in a receptive frame of mind and have 2 hours and 40 minutes to spare. Quite an amazing movie.
A Horrible Way to Die (2010)
Dark, Flawed Jewel
This film deserves high marks for the all-important mood making. The integration of music and sound, infernal or merely funereal, and sometimes reaching up into the natural (police sirens) makes the presence of evil constantly there even when just driving along an empty road.
The dementia in this film is not merely the efforts of a single mad man but the hellish world where abductions, torture, rape and murder are accepted. And it does this realistically.
In this type of film there are always the moments of normalcy contrasted with the evil. But here, the only normalcy is in AA meetings which are themself like the reflective upward facing surface of Hell. This fills the whole film with a feeling of pity and despair.
But the film has a fatal flaw. The plot is unfollowable. Also, owing to the dark nature of the exposure, it was not always easy to identify characters. This is further exasperated by the awkward use of flash back. So that while I saw the beautiful naked woman dead in the tub--and it was a disturbing image--I could not say whether it was the same woman in later scenes clothed and still alive--or whether it was a serial killing. I certainly had no bearings at all. The film shows promise but results are defective.
Arthur (2011)
Anachronistic Character Sketch.
In the sixties there were many cinematic attempts to focus on weird character, like Morgan or A Thousand Clowns. Arthur belongs in this group. And I think it would have been a better film if it stuck to that time period. Then top hats on hippies had sparkle, but now it seems like an embarrassment, so needy. But Arthur is not then but now.
Secondly, I think he is a little too obnoxious, a kind of even less likable Tiny Tim. I didn't find him a sympathetic character.
Still, it is a generally watchable film, it does take you efficiently along for the ride. None of these movies really had much of a message anyway.
Mars Needs Moms (2011)
Strictly Kid's Stuff
My only reservation about this near-to-lifelike animation is that it should be rated Children's rather than Family. The title is clever but wit is absent from the film itself. Instead there is a lot of senseless chases & cliffhangers & confrontations until we get to the end. In short kid's animated cartoon fare.
However there is a great deal of beauty in the execution of the graphics, wonderful to behold in itself--Disney style.
It has another thing rescuing it from the dustbin: Joan Cusack. She has only become more endearing on the screen as time goes on. And here, with her digitized 18-year-old Mom body, she is irresistible. During the part of the film where she is separated from him, I felt a great loss as well, since she is so angelically simple.
Parents accompanying their children will not be at all dissatisfied with the film, but if you were expecting adult material (even if PG) that you don't get.
Prison of Secrets (1997)
Not half bad tale of courage
Although it is very much a made for TV drama it hits the spot in several ways. True to the genre scant detail is lavished on fleshing out the character of the family which is given as average & normal. The Mother gets imprisoned for embezzlement. She thought it was just creative finance. She can't be a criminal!
Inside the womens prison, conditions call for a clean-up both as a civic project and her own self-protection. "This place is Hell."
Stephanie Zimbbalist is a nice face to watch and so the story goes down smoothly. The prison guards (I didn't even know there were male guards in female prisons) are chronically brutal in all the classical ways. You know: "One hand washes the other?" Rape, even murder if need be--all the traits of the inferior man. So not too much to think about in that department. There are plenty of confrontations and cliff-hangers.
One particular inmate adds a remarkable character portrayal to the film and that is Finona. Initially this William Bendix-like brute of a woman simply takes whatever is yours and at the slightest objection slams her fist into your face. However, circumstances favor an alliance and throughout the film the camera discovers the better side and the true beauty in this stout woman. She, like the other women inmates is not Gay, at least not obsessively so. I am thinking the plot was pretty lucky on that point. But perhaps true that they could all be appealed to as women, although spine was not easy to find among any of them.
When lady Senator Green tours the facility, an unfunny Jewish woman in a power suit the corruption of the place is blown wide. open.
The Great Buck Howard (2008)
Meaningful & well-crafted.
I got this film as a recommendation by Leonard Maltin and I was not disappointed. The story is about a well-worn mentalist act and his hired assistant. Besides all the show biz superficialities, Buck Howard has a serious agenda as a professional showman. His assistant (Colin Hanks) and even the assistant's father (Tom Hanks) are mostly blown away by Buck Howard as some sort of historic curiosity. Buck is petty at times but he has reasons for all of his moves. He has no personal life. His act is what he is. The question is whether he can get the support services he needs from insolent youth.
Val (Emily Blunt) asks him for a chance as his publicist and immediately pushes her luck by asking for the time of his assistant, the nubile Colin Hanks. While bedding Hanks she makes no secret of her contempt for Buck--"a face I'd like to punch."
In the running question about the isolated Buck's sexuality, she skirts the subject very insensitively during some social drinking together. She is all about rubbing his nose in it whatever it is.
In short, generational resentment. But one of the ironies of the story is that even while the voice over (which is of course Colin Hank's) plays like a requiem to an old soldier, the reality is that forecasts of Buck's downfall fail time and again. But they beat against him like the waves.
The Dilemma (2011)
Just Ain't Funny
This film has just one thing going for it: Jennifer Connelly. It really seems a shame to waste what might be her peak moments of beauty in this lengthy unfunny flick.
Considering that Vaughn and James are comedians this film doesn't even try to be funny. The premise is a buddy has found out his friend is being cheated on and determines to bring this to light. First he confronts the cheating fiancée with some unfunny vindictiveness, demanding she confess or be told on. However, the revelation is stalled and remains so for the duration of the film.
Instead of humor The Dilemma turns out to be more a slice of life. It is almost as if the possibly neurotic private lives of the comedians had come to the forefront and displaced all humor. When their potential clients find them tumbling on the floor it is a spectacle but nothing humorous about it. During the scenes where the two comic heads are side by side they look like Siamese Twins but it is grotesque, not funny. All thing taken together, it resembles a couple of potato heads from Queens who lucked into some classy women and take themselves seriously.
Other Men's Women (1930)
Window into the 30's.
This film is very interesting in several ways. One is the working class railroad setting. The film opens with a scene at the EATS lunchroom. The manner in which they relate to their jobs and to their fellow employees seems authentic. The male-female banter does too. The film conjures up a version of working class Eden, where there is not really much of anything to go wrong.
The melodrama centers on a love triangle between a best friend and the friend's young wife. Preliminary to his overtures, he takes some roughhouse liberties, poking her and rustling her up in a brotherly way which one could not get away with today. The romance never goes beyond a confession of love. This part is pretty dated but familiar ground nevertheless. In addition, Lilly's manner is so saccharine and inhibited that it is dated in this respect. Ultimately, although with due regrets all around, the husband, already blinded, conveniently loses his life in a railroad accident and the lovers destined to be together, end up that way. Even though we may think it was only a few heart-felt sighs. But side by side with this naive interaction, there is the gritty realism based on the power of the railroad machinery.
This film made me feel I had a real window into the 30's. Including the fact the first waitress is none too comely. And Joan Blondell at that stage in he career just about put the floo in floosie. Enjoy it!
The Door in the Floor (2004)
Raw but enlightened drama
The central act in this movie is a married woman's dalliance with a 15-year-old boy. Kim Bassinger is a woman who looks convincingly like she could be capable of this or something like this.She is action. By way of explanation, she throws herself into this escapade in reaction to the death of their daughter. The relationship is shown in a selfishness which resigns everything, as her philosopher husband points out. She is literally riding a 15-year-old boy, having an exclusively carnal relationship with someone impossibly young for her. Her husband dispassionately makes plans for a divorce, while maintaining civil relations with the boy. But for nothing is this sexual coupling going to stop before it exhausts itself. So flagrant is it that the boy brags to another woman he has 60 lays under his belt which must be in the course of weeks or a month. So careless that a young child inadvertently walks in on it.
There are various interesting facets to the story such as the husbands assurance to the boy he will never be left in a room with the young daughter, regardless of what he is getting away with with the wife. And of course Elle Fanning is a story in herself. So that we happily participate in her preciousness.
About the only reservation I had was Jeff Bridges either because of previous casting or as he acts it, comes across as too Southern for a role like this. Obviously, the events could occur to a Southerner, but his accent is an annoying incongruity. But this is in no way a serious detraction.
Letters to Juliet (2010)
Tuscany with Schmoozing & Ego Stroking.
This film is watchable mainly for its soothing scenery and European charm. There is one major problem which is the unlikeability of the heroine, Sophie. She is beautiful but she does not appear to be too bright or sensitive. But the film requires us to believe she is both. For example, when she feels her intelligence is being challenged she states: "Please, I had a double-major at Brown, with a minor in Latin."
The story revolves around her discovery of The Juliette Secretaries, a circle of ladies who answer love-lost letters directed at Julliette Capulet. This is an intriguing story element. She finds a letter written 50 years ago and the lady recipient of the letter and she labor long to discover the former lover in present life. Actually it sounds in relating it almost like a comic premise while in the film everything is deadly serious.
Along with the search ( he has a very common name) there is seemingly boundless ego stroking and just blatant pleasantry between Sophie and the older woman. It begins to seem almost decadent, the vineyards, the intimacy, I can assure the ladies it approaches eternity. In this movie everyone practically inhales each other. (The one exception is the natural and carefree aspiring-restaurateur fiancée, the only really likable one in the film. You will wonder why she is not really youthful enough to make it with him?)
This heroine looks like a hussy and it never left me at any turn. Then, back in the US of A, blimey if they don't show a shot of The New Yorker magazine offices, where we are to believe she flogs her story about the letter and the romance, etc. Believable that The New Yorker would buy such a story, yes, but not from her. The sight of New York jarred me with the full realization of what I was supposed to swallow. She is more Survivors than New Yorker.
The other thing was that when Himself rides up on horseback, Master of his own estate/vineyard, he looks relatively too young to be hanging it up in this asexual relationship. Yet he marries her. They might at least have shown him expressing some wistful thoughts. Instead all is rhapsody. It might have been more believable if he flirted with Seyfried herself, with or without the older woman's approval. That would be a little too much of a threat to her generation gap.
Vanessa Redgrave is the saving grace of this film. She is probably as much a people pleaser in real life as in the film. As I said, inhale each other. Not that long ago Ms Redgrave was more beautiful by a mile than the current heroine, who more resembles Goldie Hawn, but, even so, Regrave's characters never claimed they were from The New Yorker, that I can remember.
Across the Pacific (1942)
Dharma Bum Bogart.
Bogart, fresh from a dishonorable discharge (in which we participate cinematically) is not however disqualified from the world, and is soon on a ship to South America. Along the way he discovers that his shipmates, behind their appearances, are all financed by dubious relations with the Japanese. Bogart himself is on the verge of negotiating a little of the sweet action.
This is the next film after The Maltese Falcon but it is not a classic. Where exactly it falls short is difficult to say but I think the various intrigues lack interest value. I would have to watch it over again at least once to catch the exact details of each.
What it does have is great historical contemporaneity. Pearl Harbor is never mentioned and it is not clear that it has even happened yet in the film. But it really does make the story pop historically.
Also interesting that after Pearl Harbor, Hollywood did not turn to a Mr. Roberts type but continued with the downbeat, variously scrupled Bogie. Of course, Bogart turns out to be an honorable man, on his terms.
So all in all, I think it has lots to offer. Highly recommended.
Poison Ivy: The Secret Society (2008)
Cheap worthless trash.
Entirely predictable tale about a country girl who goes to college only to find that a secret society ( sorority) is enacting murder on campus with impunity. From the point of her arrival to the climactic cat fight with the leader of the "Ivy Society," she spends her time dating an instructor's glib, overconfident and basically spineless son, Blake. Nor does the flick ever take the trouble to debunk him. He performs a role like a male lead in a porn film and nothing more is required of him.
Blake is sexing her as well as the villain. Notably, each sex act in this made for TV saga includes naked breasts and is accompanied by the same jungle drum music. Both women conduct themselves in bed aggressively exactly as you would expect a sex worker to perform, country girl or no.
When she hands the Ivy Society over to the police, she returns home for the summer to the boy she left behind, whom she promises a lifetime of her sexual favors. God grant that she not give him an STD. Decidedly non-collegiate attitudes. Cheap, cheap, cheap.
Pretty Bird (2008)
Quirky Comedy
This is another quirky independent film, this one about a pair of business-oriented dreamers who are all attitude and no substance. The great idea is a working rocket belt, something neither of them know anything about. What they have instead is an abundance of business models, motivational pep talks and winning slogans.
For the actual rocket belt they succeed in hiring an actual unemployed rocket scientist who begins to develop a prototype.
Much of the humor is Gogolesque, treading a fine line between absurdity and apparent success. They are successful in raising money from dreamers like themselves. There is a broad satirical implication that "the money people" are a class apart requiring to be spoon fed a certain business formula unrelated to reality. Nevertheless, the project is satisfyingly rejected by the big-time investors, summarily dismissing it as needing "more science".
The film is thus very amusing from the outset and I was prepared for more amusing developments. But the story takes some unfunny turns. The rocket belt becomes the focus of in-fighting which is carried almost to the point of bloodshed. This turn of plot probably because it is based on a true story.
The film turns into one focusing on male bonding or the lack of it. The two original entrepreneurs are best friends with a bond that supersedes anything, including reason. The third partner, the rocket scientist, engages with the two to gain recognition, but in the long run the original promoter is implacable. At issue is the prototype rocket belt itself which he has hidden. You aren't supposed to ask the seemingly reasonable question why the scientist, who is the only one who knows how the thing works, doesn't just build a second prototype--maybe this time one capable of better than the 30 seconds flight time.
So much is this an all-male film that what might otherwise have been a romance developing between the original promoter and Kirsten Wiig's character is simply dropped, as if for lack of interest.
It all adds up to a flick which starts out very funny and is worth watching to the end, but with a little let-down so far as humor is concerned.