Saturday, March 31, 2018

Corner Shot

Cornered/Desperate (1945) is a great double bill - but I'm only going to talk about Desperate.

It stars Steve Brodie and Audrie Long as a truck driver and his wife getting ready to celebrate their one-year anniversary. An old friend calls and offers Brodie a quick job for a lot of money, so he tells his wife to hold dinner. Of course, it turns out to be a robbery, and one of the heisters kills a cop.

Brodie tells the police, and they get the shooter. But he is the younger brother of gang leader Raymond Burr. Burr threatens Brodie's wife if he doesn't go the police, confess to the killing, and get his brother out of danger. Amazingly, Brodie collects his wife immediately and they go on the lam, running from Burr and the law.

The rest of the movie is them running from town to town, working on farms or in garages. Long is pregnant, and soon they have a kid. It's a good life in clean-living Middle America, but they are always looking over their shoulders and moving on. This reminds me a bit of the middle of They Live By Night (although not so doomed). A solid noir.

Cornered stars Dick Powell as a Canadian pilot who has just been released from a German POW camp after the war. He finds out that his French girlfriend from the Underground was killed by a traitor, and sets off to get revenge. But I'm sorry to say that we watched this after Desperate, and we fell asleep pretty quickly. I'll just say that it looked great, really grim and compelling. And I think they ended up in Argentina, but that might have been part of a dream...

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Training Camp

As I understand it, opinions on Murder on the Orient Express (2017) are mixed. Some found it a fun, engaging ride, others couldn't stand the mustache. We enjoyed the movie - and loved the mustache.

The movie stars its director, Kenneth Branagh, as the great Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. We meet him at breakfast in Jerusalem, trying to find two perfectly matched soft-boiled eggs for breakfast. This Poirot is not just fussy, but a bit OC. He then goes on to solve a mystery that has Jerusalem in a religious tizzy, with a cute little button involving his cane.

He is about to head home, when he runs into a playboy friend, Tom Bateman. Bateman is the disgraced son of the owner of the Orient Express, charged with keeping the customers happy and never coming home. He gets Poirot a first-class berth on the train, and they head for Paris.

The train has an interesting batch of passengers, including Daisy Ridley, Penelope Cruz, Josh Gad, Judy Dench, Derek Jacobi, Willem Dafoe... These Agatha Christie movies should have star-studded casts, and this one doesn't disappoint. They have various roles and personalities, and probably secrets as well, but I didn't do too well figuring them out. Johnny Depp, however, plays a creepy criminal, and shortly, the Victim.

I assume we all know the ending, although Ms. Spenser didn't. It was funny, because she did know the joke from Red Dwarf, "I think they all did it." But I didn't really get the full mechanics of the plot. We see a lot of things happen on the night of the incident - people running around, clocks that may or may not be accurate, a stabbing, etc. We learn about some of them, but some are just dropped. It's like they assume we're not paying that close attention. And in my case, we're not.

What I am paying attention to is the look, the style of the thing. That's the other thing you want in these movies, along with stars: luxury. There are hats, frocks and suits, crystal, brass and mahogany, and champagne. There is jazz music. Some of it is filmed straight, some with almost delirious surrealism. That alone is enough to get me to watch.

But the mustache! I don't know if I can describe it. It starts out as an Imperial, I think - a handlebar mustache with a sort of soul patch beneath the lower lip. But the mustache develops wings, a kind of secondary mustache extending out on the cheeks, and it is just marvelous.

So for me, this is a great movie for watching, not so great for thinking about. This is too bad, because the best part of an Agatha Christie is the clockwork of the mechanism, and seeing it all put together. So, not the greatest adaptation, but points for the mustache.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Triple Horror

Because I'm so far behind in my blogging, I'm going to combine three loosely related movies into one post: Monster movies with a focus on first responders.

First, Grabbers (2012). It takes place on the peaceful, isolated Irish isle of Eirann. A policeman is going on vacation, and bright go-getter Ruth Bradley will be taking his place. Her partner is drunk slacker Richard Coyle, which pleases neither of them - she is too perky for his taster, and he smells bad. Meanwhile, a (drunk) fisherman has pulled up something weird in one of his crab traps. He takes it home to keep it in his tub, but it attacks him.

It's nice to get to see the monster early on. This one is kind of cute - all tentacly and blobby. Our drunk manages to fend it off, and we soon decide that these creatures (because you better believe there's more than one) can't handle alcohol, and are poisoned when they try to drink the blood of the inebriated.

So our mismatched pair of police come up with a plan: a lock-in at the local (a lock-in is where a pub locks the patrons in after last call, and keeps serving). The twist is that Bradley, who had never been drunk, will have to achieve a high blood alcohol level, while her drunk partner Coyle will stay sober to act as a level head.

This is a funny movie, what with all the drink-related shenanigans - and they are perfectly aware of the relation between drunkenness and Irishness. Coyle, who has a reason for his drinking and manages do keep free of it when needed is interesting, but Bradley is a blast once she gets going.

Finally, this is the movie that made me realize: The best movie monsters are cute. Cuddly, tentacled cthuloids - got to love them.

Speaking of cute monsters: Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007). It starts a little confusingly, with a Predator spaceship and a few Aliens (who confusingly have absorbed Predator DNA and look kind of Predish) crash in a remote Colorado town (Gunnison, where I had a nice sandwich once). A hunter and his son are soon eaten. Meanwhile, Steven Pasquale arrives back in town, after getting out of prison. He gets a ride from the sheriff, John Ortiz. Everyone is trying to get him back together with his old girlfriend. We also meet Pasquale's brother, a guy who has been raising a daughter while his wife is deployed in Iraq, the wife, a waitress at the diner, some bullies... It's a lot to take in.

The Aliens start to facehug, the Pred starts tracking them, there's a tense scene at the school pool (shades of It Follows). Again, our focus is on the sheriff and the ex-con. They get in contact with the Army, who promise to evacuate them from the town square (infested by Aliens). They prefer to use the hospital's medivac copter to get out. Hey, maybe the hospital was planning to use that!

This wasn't all that bad - it was interesting to see how they isolated the town. But the action tended to be kind of choppy and hard to follow, and all the interpersonal drama, which is the backdrop to all the action, was kind of boring. A surprisingly small and generic entry into the AvP canon.

30 Days of Night (2007) has a cute gimmick: Vampires isolate a town in Alaska, where the night in winter lasts thirty days. After some mysterious setup, we meet Sheriff Josh Hartnett, who finds out that his ex-wife is in town. She is a fire dept. inspector and is stuck until the sun comes up in thirty days.  Then the vampires come.

In some ways, this is a fine horror movie. In other ways, it ticked me off. Again, there was the drama around the horror, which didn't seem to fresh, especially after the other two movies. Second, it seemed like the vampires should have destroyed everyone in the first week (or been destroyed by then). I was shocked that they lasted the entire thirty days. More shocked by that than the twist ending...

So, three horror movies that take place in an isolated town, with an awkward romance involving sheriffs, police, or firefighters (or some combo). The only one I really liked was Grabbers - partly because it was funny, partly because it seemed fresh.

Maybe mostly because of the cute cthuloids.

Monday, March 26, 2018

Once Upon a Pair of Wheels

Wow, somehow I forgot to blog Baby Driver (2017) when I saw it last year! How could that have happened? It was one of the best movies of the year!

It stars Adam Driver - wait, no. It stars Ansel Elgort as Baby. We meet him driving getaway for a heist. Like in Drive, he works with headphones on, and his choice of travellin' music is the trashy, high-energy "Bell Bottoms" by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. We find out that he is working for Kevin Spacey (eww), and he has tinnitus - he wears the headphones to keep the ringing in his ears down to a comfortable level.

In between jobs, Baby meets a waitress in a diner, Lily James. They bond over his name and all the songs that feature it - like "B-A-B-Y" by Carla Thomas. Soon, Baby is dreaming of dropping everything and just running away, once he has paid the debt to Spacey that keeps him tied to the life of crime.

As a regular heist movie, this is pretty fun. Baby is an interesting character, retiring behind his headphones and limited hearing. He lives with his foster father, a deaf black man played by CJ Jones, a deaf actor. The gangs that Spacey puts together are interesting, including Flea, Jon Berhthal, Jamie Foxx, and John Hamm, as well as Hamm's killer wife, Eiza Gonzalez.

But the best part is the action - director Edgar Wright cuts the action to the music. For instance, in a shoot out, every gunshot is right on a drumbeat, so the guns become a percussion section. Since the music is also great (some thrash, some alt-rock, some R&B, and "Radar Love"), this makes for a fun, propulsive movie.

There are some Wrightian touches, like long single-take shots of someone walking through city streets, while signs and graffiti echo the lyrics of the sound track. That's just for fun. So is the rest of the film.

Show Byz

Byzantium (2013) is an odd and beautiful vampire film directed by Neil Jordan. It reminded me a lot of Let the Right One In.

It starts with Saoirse Ronan leaving a journal entry where an old man can find it. They talk, and she goes back to his room and sucks his blood - for he was old and ready to die. Meanwhile, her mum, Gemma Arterton, is working as a stripper when she is attacked by another vampire, who she dispatches and burns. It is time for the pair to move on.

They land in a dumpy seaside town where Arterton goes on the game. She picks up a sad shlub whose mother owned an old hotel, the Byzantium. Arterton convinces him to let her turn it into a brothel, to the disgust of young (though unaging), sensitive Ronan. She has been wandering around town, playing pianos, and enrolling in school because a nice young man (Caleb Landry Jones) has caught her attention.

We get the history of these undead women in flashbacks - Arterton was a simple winkle girl, selling shellfish by the seashore, when sailor Sam Riley starts to take an interest. Unfortunately, so does brutal captain Jonny Lee Miller. Miller takes her to a brothel, rapes her and leaves her. When Riley comes back from voyaging, he has been turned to a vampire, and that sets off the chain of events that leaves Arterton and her eventual daughter turned as well.

The method of turning is peculiar - on an Irish island, there is a stone beehive hut by a waterfall. When you enter... Oh, why spoil it.

The stories converge when the men who despoiled Arterton, now vampires, come after her and Ronan. There are some great action scenes, but that's not really what this movie is all about. For a "horror" movie, there's very little horror. There is a lot about Arterton's eternal life as a prostitute, which seems to be the only job she knows or cares for. But the part I was most taken with was Ronan - just her face, her quietness, her prickly relationship with her mother and her young man - who, it turns out, is dying of leukemia.

So, if you like art-house horror, you should love this.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Ocean's Seven-Eleven

Logan Lucky (2017) is Steven Soderbergh's answer to his own Ocean movies. It's a heist movie, but instead of a casino, they are pushing over a NASCAR race. Also, they are hicks. Also, it doesn't really hang together.

Channing Tatum is Jimmy Logan, a good man from West Virginia who loses his job driving excavating equipment. His brother is Adam Driver, a bartender who lost his arm in the war, who believes that the Logan's are all cursed. Tatum has a plan to rob the cash from a NASCAR race using the tunnels that he has been digging at work. But first, they'll need to get safecracker Daniel Craig out of prison to help.

Now, your reaction to this movie is going to hinge on how you react to Craig's attempt at a West Virginia accent. It isn't so much that it's bad - sometimes it sounds all right. But it wanders all over the place, to the point where it makes it his own thing. It's just his character - a crazy hard-ass cracker who has to watch his sodium intake.

Meanwhile, Driver is a moody conspiracy nut from a mumble-core indie and Tatum is just a solid, stand-up man of the soil, who loves his preteen beauty pageant obsessed daughter, and wants to do right by his ex-wife (Katie Holms), even though she's now married to a rich (?) used car salesman.

There's a lot going on in this movie, some of it meaningless, some of it paying off. For instance, the Logan's have a sister (Riley Keough) who drives really fast. No real pay off. The gang runs afoul an obnoxious NASCAR driver (Seth McFarlane with a British accent), and there are some funny scenes, but nothing that affects the plot. In fact, NASCAR is barely in the movie, except for a few montages. But the beauty pageant, where Tatum's daughter brings down the house with her rendition of "West Virginia", acts as an alibi. It totally fools goofy FBI agents Hilary Swank and Macon Blair (who show up at the end, as if from another movie).

Still, I have to say I enjoyed this movie greatly. It was funny, it moved right along, and it had a great soundtrack. It reminded me of Baby Driver that way, although it wasn't quite cut to the beat. Also, it was mountain music, not rock, funk, and soul. (Also, did I forget to blog Baby Driver?)

So, if you like goofy heist films, and don't care if there's a steady tone, or point, or accents, this might be for you.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

The Postman

Jour De Fete (1949) is what Jacques Tati was doing before M. Hulot. His character here is the postman of a small French village - the same village getting ready for their festival. He doesn't wear Hulot's raincoat and pipe. He has a Snub Pollard moustache instead. Also, he lacks Hulot's bemused bon ami - here he is self-important and grumpy. But this is still a Jacques Tati movie.

The "plot" is ostensibly that Tati, as the postman, sees a movie about the speed and efficiency of American mail delivery, and is inspired - even though he delivers on a rickety old bicycle. But this doesn't start until well after the midpoint of the movie. The story winds its way around the village, taking its own sweet time, like the postman. He has a tendency to stop and get involved with everything, like the erection of a flagpole in the town square. He also tends to leave these projects in ruins. The folks in town think he's a bit of a nut, and bait him, or maybe that's just their way. They play the old shoe-polish-on-the-binocular-black-eye trick on him (and let him wear the black eye for two days). They get him drunk when he should be delivering mail. And they show him the movie that sets off the last half.

But this is all conveyed with typical Tatian reserve. Some jokes are just observations - successive travelers along a road batting at the air hints at a bee or mosquito - then the postman rides by and crashes trying to swat it. Not a big gag, but sweet.

But I do miss the positivity of M. Hulot. While JdF has the same understated humor of his other movies, it is a bit grumpier, like the postman.

In conclusion, a good companion to The Young Girls of Rochefort?

Served Hot

You Got Served (2004) may be the first of the type of urban dance movies we've been watching. It might also be the most random. Great dancing though.

Omarion Grandberry and Marques Houston are in one of the best street dance teams around. They compete at warehouse dance-offs MCed by Steve Harvey. They make a little money, but always need more - they are saving for a recording studio, for some reason (I don't think either makes music). They get challenged (served) by a crew lead by some lame rich white kids, with $5,000 on the line. But they rich crew got one of their dancers to defect, and now they know all of their moves, so they lose more money than they can afford.

To make it up, they do some drug courier work. Meanwhile, Omarion is falling for Houston's cute sister, Jennifer Freeman. During one of their secret dates, she turns his cellphone off, so he doesn't get the message that they need to make a delivery. Houston goes it alone and gets beaten and robbed. Now he needs a lot more money - but it also breaks up the crew, because Grandberry and Houston are on the outs.

When one of the kids who liked to tag along gets killed in a drive-by (like they always do), the gang gets back together for the Big Bounce dance-off, with a big cash prize and a chance to dance in a Li'l Kim video.

Most of the plotty stuff is either silly, cliche, or inconsequential (like the defector - we never find out what happens to him). The drama of the story never seems to get mirrored on the dance floor. I actually thought they might be using different actors in the dances and the rest, but no, these are some of the finest b-boy and b-girl dancers around. The dances are very hot, with a lot of aggression and flair. But I don't feel like they really link up with the drama off the floor, except for who is winning or losing.

I may be getting close to my limit on these movies, unless someone steps up and makes one that really stands out.

Sunday, March 11, 2018

If You Want to Ride

Ride the Pink Horse (1947) is an oddball desert noir that I've been wanting to watch for a long time. It turned out to be better, and possibly wackier, than I had hoped.

It was directed by and stars Robert Montgomery, who pulls up in a Southwestern desert town called San Pablo, but is clearly Santa Fe. In fact, he asks directions to La Fonda, and one of the native girls, Wanda Hendrix takes him there.

Short digression - My father had a matchbook from La Fonda. We've stayed there. We've drunk in their lobby and bought Zuni fetishes in their Indian Shop. We could tell this was filmed on location - I don't know why they didn't just call it Santa Fe.

Robert Montgomery is looking for local big shot Fred Clark (tall, bald guy with a mustache - you'll recognize him). But first he has to get through Clark's glamorous society girlfriend Andrea King and sly, mousy FBI man Art Smith, who thinks Montgomery might have some dirt on Clark.

But Montgomery has allies: mainly one Thomas Gomez, who operates the carousel in the plaza. After they get drunk together, Gomez lets him sleep in the little box by the carousel, where no one would think to look. Also, little Wanda Hendrix who has been following him around awestruck, like he's the most beautiful gringo she has ever seen. She's just a little Indian girl who's never been to the big city, and he even bought her a ride on the carousel (the pink horse, which explains the title). She doesn't look much like an Indian (maybe I could believe Mexican), but she is radiantly beautiful. She later married Audie Murphy, which didn't work out so well.

Montgomery is a little different in this one - he isn't suave, he's rough and coarse, with a whiny Brooklyn accent. He is an Army veteran, definitely enlisted. Of course, he treats Hendrix like dirt. He's pretty racist - he doesn't even call her Pocahontas, he calls her Sitting Bull.

As a directory, Montgomery has an offbeat style. This isn't as wild as Lady in the Lake (shot from the stars POV, so you only see him in the mirror), but it has it's moments. At one point, our hero is beaten into amnesia, and you see him repeat the steps he took at the start of the movie. It's a nicely surreal touch. There's another scene where the bad guys are threatening Gomez while he's operating the carousel, while the kids on the ride watch, terrified.

But my favorite part is all the Santa Fe locations. If you've ever been, check this out.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Call Me Herman

If your like us, sometimes you just want a rollicking sea tale, a story of tall ships and strong men. So we watched In the Heart of the Sea (2015). Somehow, this movie, directed by Ron Howard, escaped our notice completely when it came out, but as soon as we saw it in a preview, we had to see it.

It starts with Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) interviewing Owen Chase (Brendan Gleeson), the last survivor of the whaler Essex. The man is traumatized, and refuses to talk, but finally breaks down. As a young man (Chris Hemsworth), he was a top harpooner, expecting to be given his own ship for the next voyage. Instead, he is made Mate under Captain Pollard (Benjamin Walker). Chase is brash and self-made, Pollard is inexperienced but well-connected. They clash right off.

They aren't taking any whales in the Atlantic, so they head for the Pacific, where they find a large pod, including a whale of a size they haven't seen before. They try to harpoon him, but he staves the ship in and sinks it. Not the whaling boats, but the Essex itself.

So they are left adrift, tiny whaling boats in the great Pacific Ocean. And worse, it looks like the whale is following them.

As you probably figured out, this is the real-life story that in real life inspired Moby-Dick. It's a great yarn, even if only as historically faithful as you might expect. Hemsworth is heroic, although his American accent is a little slippery - hey, I don't know how we were supposed talk back then. Tom Holland has a nice role as cabin boy, who everyone is trying to protect.

But the best parts are the ships and the sea, and the grueling time at sea. The actors were put on starvation rations to give them the look, and it worked.

So if you like a good old fashioned yarn, like, say, Master and Commander, this might be for you.

Monday, March 5, 2018

Dick Movie

The conventional wisdom on Dick Tracy (1990) has always been that it was a grotesque misfire. Then I started reading and hearing that it was a cult classic, well worth a watch. So, we cued it up.

It stars Warren Beatty, which makes sense because, like Dick, he's kind of a stiff. At least, that's what I think - I haven't seen a lot of his movies. I think of him as the handsome kid in Dobie Gillis. He lives in a brightly colored, artificial world. His best girl is Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly), who wishes he'd settle down and marry her. After a date at a diner, they pick up a little brat called "The Kid", who Tracy keeps leaving with people.

This kid had previously been a witness to a major hit, when Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino!?!) starts to consolidate his control over the gangs. In the funnies, Tracy's villains usually have some distinctive deformity, and these crooks follow that tradition. There is a lot of facial appliances going on. Pacino has huge hands and face, and gets off lightly.

He has a girlfriend, a chantoozy named Breathless Malone, played by one Madonna. She has a couple of numbers in the film, and you know? She's great. I'm not a big fan of her own music, but she has a great Roaring 20's look and sound when she wants too. The songs are mostly Stephen Sondheim, also not one of my favorites, but here, it works. Of course, she's after Tracy - is it heartbreak for Tess Trueheart?

In the end, my opinion of this is mixed. Yes, it is colorful, atmospheric, and very true to the comic. It is visually striking. The cast is amazing - Dustin Hoffman, in a small but choice role as Mumbles, unrecognizable under the makeup. Then there's Pacino, who gets several unhinged monologues. And Madonna is pretty great too.

But it is also pretty shaggy, with a plot that's all over the place. The makeup effects are so extreme that some of the characters look more like papier mache puppet heads than people. And Beatty, who directed as well as starred, is the blank void at the center. There isn't a lot you can do with a pure straight-shooter like Tracy.

In conclusion, see it because it's weird and silly. If it turns out that you enjoy it unironically, it's a win.