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Reviews
Carancho (2010)
a folie a deux
One thing that works in this movie is the chemistry between Sosa and Lujan, a discredited lawyer and a drug-addicted emergency room doctor with a self-destructive personality. The picture comes close to the Warner Bros. B-picture genre of the 40s, with the exception that there is no on-screen moral center. Lujan, played by Martina Gusman, quickly moves over to the dark side. Cynically, her drug addiction feels like an after-thought added by one of the writers to explain her compulsions, that go so quickly out of control. Her attraction for Sosi comes out of left field, and the drug addiction is probably an attempt to justify this, but seems over the top and unnecessarily to stack the deck against her. In any case, her habit should have been introduced earlier. The lawyer, Sosa, played by Ricardo Darin, is nasty. He goes after Lujan's assailant with uncontrolled violence and rage --far different than Bardem's understated emotional turmoil in 'Biutiful,' in a similar situation. Finally, why the incomprehensible deus-ex-machina ending? The filmmakers had a more interesting setup than I think they knew how to develop.
Kynodontas (2009)
Lick my shoulder, please..
A far reach from the Jules Dassin/Melinda Mercouri comedies of a generation ago, this erotic horror comedy shows a dark side of rural Greece, with a Hitchcockian logic that works within its own framework and makes it a candidate for a re-make, someday, tying up a few loose ends. The insane world the parents create for their teenage family falls apart when the daughters discover sex, the trade-off that buys them into the new world being a jar of hair jell. The father is suavely insane, but his wife goes along and if anything, she is further beyond the pale than he. One hopes for the girls' canines (dogteeth), to appear, with their prophesy of escape. In one scene, the younger girl's primal dancing suggests a much earlier Greek paganism, and her mother has to calm her down. In general, though, the games the family plays have a disconcertingly modern if not innocuous feel. George Cosmatos wrote a script about a crazy family in a similar setting, ending with their hacking each other to death. This film doesn't go that far. You are aware of an underlying sense of doom, and the lingering shot of the father's Mercedes, his having disappeared through the door of the factory to his day job, as if things were normal, is a good visual for its unanswered questions.
La vida útil (2010)
poetry in renewal
Profused with South American melancholia, the setup for this short film is a club dedicated to 'classical' film, with radio lectures on Eisenstein and live, in-theater translations (into Spanish), of classics, Von Stroheim's 'Greed,' for example. With the demise of the club, after some 20 years, the somber yet not unattractive manager must face his own options. And, as he steps out, he creates his own film. The irony in the picture is expressed in an amazing 'spontaneous' lecture the manager gives to a classroom of law students, opportunistically posing as their substitute professor. He touches on the ubiquity of illusion and 'lying' in life-- 'reality' vrs. metaphor, or in this case, film. The character of the manager is no Astaire when he dances, and there's no Minnelli behind the camera, but we get the picture, and when he connects with the girl, he goes to the movies. A reference in the credits to Mark Twain as the inspiration for the work; the minimalist writing and direction stay focused, the editing is good and the film stays with you. Worth seeing.
The Beginning or the End (1947)
bombs away
The idea for this film was brought to the studio(MGM) by Donna Reed, whose high school science teacher had written to her about the secret WW11atomic bomb research project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Later, Donna and her husband, Tony Owen, received a $50,000 finders fee for this contribution. Always a contentious project, cooperation came from the army, including General Groves, manager of the Manhattan Project and from top scientists including J. Robert Oppenheimer, at Berkeley, and Albert Einstein, at Princeton. President Truman knew about the film and met with the producer. The script went through a lengthy development with columnist/screenwriter Bob Considine, and Clark Gable was originally in mind for the Robert Walker part. The Tom Drake scene, scattering a "going-critical mass" with his unprotected hand, is based on an actual incident, and the scientist who did it at the Chicago research lab (and possibly saved a good section of the city), died as a result.
Not successful at the box office, the studio rationalized the picture was too soon after the war and too realistic: audiences were not able to assimilate a story about nuclear energy in the late '40s, they were terrified of the bomb, of radiation fallout; pictures of Hiroshima were still in the news..
The film walks a fine line between fact and fiction (it received an Academy Award nomination for best documentary), but how effective was softening a docu-drama with a fictionalized love story?. The atomic "pile" was constructed on a sound stage, and the shots of the B-29 formation seem an appropriate metaphor for the film's subtext, the power of the nascent military/industrial relationship... moving forcefully ahead into the unknown.
They Were Expendable (1945)
a longer way from eternity to here
Donna Reed's performance as a nurse on Corregador is more nuanced and sincere, with solid chemistry between her and John Wayne, than hers as a prostitute in "From Here to Eternity," opposite method-actor Montgomery Clift ("
a long way from here to eternity, a longer way from eternity to here." was part of her acceptance speech when she received the Oscar, perhaps awarded as an apology... for Fred Zinnemann's casting her as a prostitute... six years later at the Pantages Theater.) In "They Were Expendable," Wayne's energy plays off Robert Montgomery's authority, and with John Ford, Wayne's usual wise-ass demeanor is under control, effectively making this a buddy picture but one of great subtlety and pathos: the storyline tracks the U.S.Navy's retreat from the Philippines, leaving many crew members to face what became the Bataan death march
The attack sequences of the PT boats going up against Japanese cruisers are unbelievable, matching up Ford's eye for spectacle with anything he did later in Monument Valley. That this film did not do particularly well at the box-office suggests that it came too late, released in early 1946... that audiences had already plunged into superficiality and were interested in a new reality, not to be reminded of a vulnerable recent past.
This Man's Navy (1945)
Bunny Comes Home
Bunny Comes Home 'This Man's Navy' deserves more credit than it gets, a clever script by Borden Chase, directed by 'Wild Bill' Wellman, the film has just the right feel for early post WW11 euphoria and goodwill, and none of the blind terror that came into play few years later. Produced in 1944, the Japanese defeated, the battle scenes a little déjà vu, Tom Drake's melancholy attraction for radiant young Jan Clayton has solid chemistry, plays real and validates Drake's career at Metro. The following year Jan opened on Broadway in 'Carousel.' Wally Beery, a little bleary-eyed, boasts to an always incredulous Jimmy Gleason
his memories an improvement over reality, and give Beery a Ulysses-like shadow to play against. The Navy LTA (Lighter Than Air) shots are authentic, photographed at Tustin and Lakehurst, and the P-38 squadron is out of March AFB. Lot 3 doubled for India, and Bunny's U-turn
Bunny Comes Home
gives back to Beery an authentic slice of his past, something he had wanted to believe was true
then, the future we spin into again is fantastical
now on a grander scale, a newly designed Navy LTA with launch capabilities for a reconnaissance plane
how expensive, blissfully optimistic
still, "You got to believe in it, that's the way you make things come true
"
A Lady Without Passport (1950)
meant serious...
It almost feels "A Lady Without Passport" shot today could be a comedy: John Hodiak playing half the film with a Cuban accent, Hedy Lamarr, the ice-cold Jewish princess often seeming not the least bit interested... but, it's meant serious and has a solid feel. Not badly directed by Benny Lewis' brother, Joseph, shot mostly on Lot 3 doubling for pre-Castro Havana, S. Florida and the Everglades (the swamp buggy was authentic, the café sequence, a set), the location work with doubles in Florida and Cuba cuts smoothly with principal photography, though the miniature work is a little choppy. David Raksin's atonal score pulls together the films dark 50s moods of terror and careful optimism.
Um Filme Falado (2003)
unintended consequences
On a small cruise ship, Leonor Silveira, playing a young attractive school teacher traveling with her daughter, points out and comments on sites as they retrace Vasco da Gama's year-long voyage from Lisbon to India some five hundred years earlier -- this time sailing through the Mediterranean Sea and Suez. The obsequious captain, played by John Malkovitch, at the same time he is entertaining three successful European business woman, played by Catherine Deneuve, Stefania Sandrelli and Irene Pappas, who recount their life experiences in their own languages, intrudes unwantedly on the teacher and daughter... and won't be deterred. Turning to the daughter after the mother rejects him, the story veers into tragedy. Pappas sings beautifully and Sandrelli is the Ava Gardner of Italian cinema.
The Cassandra Crossing (1976)
a flawed effort
Ava Gardner, playing against a long-haired version of Martin Sheen, seems more natural and much more interesting than Sophia Loren, who is ten years younger and heavily featured. Loren, married to producer Carlo Ponti, plays against Richard Harris, and their acting styles are diametrically opposed -- as well as their accents. Not a lot of ADR in the film, and much of the production dialogue -- particularly with La Loren and Harris, is virtually incomprehensible.
George (Yorgo) Cosmatos's direction is first-rate, particularly the helicopter shots (which he was very proud of); but the film can't get past a rambling script that feels like a first draft and sloppy post production. The film is about 20 minutes too long.