Author Archives: 4 Star Films

Unknown's avatar

About 4 Star Films

I am a film critic and historian preserving a love of good movies. Check out my blog, 4 Star Films, and follow me on Twitter @FourStarFilmFan or Letterboxd. Thank you for reading!

Hour of The Gun (1967): James Garner and Jason Robards

Posted on by
5

The story is as old as the mythology of the West. You cannot avoid tales of Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881 and the famed Gunfight at The O.K. Corral. John Ford covered the events most famously in My Darling Clementine headlined by Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, and Walter Brennan in the title roles.

A generation later, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas teamed up to do their version. And the lineage runs a lot wider and deeper than this. It leaves one to wonder how many ways you can retell the same story with the same central characters.

Director John Sturges answers the question almost immediately by doing away with the one scene that this whole mythology effectively hinges on. The movie opens with the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which feels more like a glorified street fight, done in seconds, with Clanton standing by and unharmed by the events at hand. Whether it plays more to the timber of actual history or not, it sets a precedent and recontextualizes everything we must relearn about these legendary figures of the West.

The men who play them are more than up to the task because of what they bring to the characterizations. Their names should be familiar. James Garner. Jason Robards. Robert Ryan. They are featured prominently in the title credits like figures on the marquee.

There might be some questions of where the movie might possibly go from here because it quickly disposes of its most “climactic moment,” underwhelming or not. Still, there manages to be a story built off the foundations of this inciting incident.

It becomes part courtroom drama momentarily, then it’s a town-wide conspiracy against the Earp brothers, and it finally turns deadly when they are ambushed with shotguns in the dead of night. The bloody gunfights and surreptitious ambushes are quickly deliberated over in the very same courtroom. There’s a kind of legal impasse.

Ryan always managed to be a fine villain, and it’s no different here. He plays Clanton as a shrewd businessman with most of the town on his payroll including sheriffs, public prosecutors, and a bevy of wanted gunmen (including a young Jon Voight). Though he never pulls the trigger himself, he has many minions in his pocket prepared to do his bidding. It’s a lot more convenient since he has the money to spend.

Hour of the Gun also feels like a western straddling two generations. Garner and Robards represent it well. Garner’s Maverick and to some extent his Local Sheriff put a different spin on the western genre as a kind of anti-western star, at least compared to the James Arness or Chuck Connors archetypes.

And Jason Robards, who only a year later would find his way into Sergio Leone’s epic spaghetti opera Once Upon a Time in The West, is equally adept in such an environment. He can be rugged and tough but not without a kind of wry sense of humor and intuition. We like them both for who they are. First, as performers and then as two of the West’s most prominent figures: Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday respectively.

Lucien Ballard was a Hollywood veteran with saddlebags full of movie credits including many entries shooting his wife and leading lady Merle Oberon. Jerry Goldsmith takes on scoring duties with work that observes the purview of the West while reminding us of his crucial role in future New Hollywood and blockbuster hits.

It’s curious how the movie hews closer to history, and it looks to dispel myth and tell a version of the tale that feels more like a procedural. In some ways, it is a more modern expression of the western, though John Sturges is not in the Eastwood, Peckinpah, or even Leone school.

He was actually the very same man who helmed The Gunfight at The O.K. Corral with Lancaster and Douglas. But this is hardly a reworking in the way Howard Hawks remade Rio Bravo multiple times. Rather it feels like Sturges is intent on telling the tale with different terms more to his liking.

Initially, it builds off the legacy of The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape where there’s something honest and sure about its telling, but it’s not gun shy. There’s still a sense of violence and ambiguity in other ways. Because hypocrisy exists in a world where as long as men have warrants and badges or they are fighting wars, killing is legalized. In all other contexts, it’s not permissible.

It becomes so easy to bend the rules either in service of good and often in the service of evil. Hour of The Gun ultimately is quick to distance itself from the comfortable morality of earlier westerns. This too is a bridge to its future brethren in the genre.

Doc is the man who ultimately assembles the troops; it’s a sequence we know well and somehow Sturges’s best films always captured this brand of male camaraderie — the kind of scenes that little boys of a certain generation aspired to. Getting together with their friends to fight the baddies. There’s still a sense of good fun and the kind of innocent naivete the western used to breed. Though it never amounts to anything.

It all comes down to Wyatt Earp and his personal vendettas. Garner shows a ferocity and a simmering rage that’s rare in him or at least he hides it well often through down-home charm or a coward’s prerogative. Here he’s driven by a sense of justice for the deaths of his brothers. He’s not squeamish when it comes to searching it out either.

The ending could not be a further departure from its predecessors. It feels like the dilapidated, windswept ruins and facades in pictures like Vera Cruz or Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid where the classic western modality goes to die in some sense.

Wyatt finally completes his search for Clayton and comes face-to-face with the man who was so very hard to find. Doc and some bandits stand by testily as Earp flips his badge to his friend, signaling this is a personal action not enacted under the letter of the law.

It’s a quick, unsentimental climax, but it stays true to the opening depiction of the O.K. Corral. I would not hasten to say it’s realistic as much as it gives a more murky and unembellished version of the story. Still, whether he meant to or not, Sturges effectively revises one of the most quoted American myths adding yet another complicating footnote to how we come to understand it. All other things considered, from the imagery to this commitment to a raw account of history, Garner and Robards are still the ones who make the picture.

3.5/5 Stars

The Tall Men (1955)

Posted on by
1

We open in Montana 1866 with the Allison brothers (Clark Gable and Cameron Mitchell), two former Confederate soldiers, leaving behind the “heartbreak memory of Gettysburg” for the promise of wealth in California. But first they must traverse frostbitten exteriors.

It’s no picnic as they join forces with Robert Ryan and face a treacherous trail overtaken by blizzard conditions. It chills your bones just watching them wade through the snow, fighting against the icy landscape.

When Jane Russel gets into the picture, the story and the dialogue start to pick up. She always had a way with words — and meeting in a snowstorm has a way of bringing folks together — she’s quickly trading repartee with first Gable and then Mitchell. Ryan just sits by and lets them have at it.

Gable and Russell end up in a cabin together out of the cold. It’s not quite the “Walls of Jericho,” but as Gable cooks up some meat over the fire, and she warms her feet on his back with a few playful kicks, the moment becomes the highlight of the picture thus far. We understand and appreciate the human connection unfolding before us going beyond dialogue or plot points even the nature outside. It’s about two people connecting with one another in a movie but also as individual performers.

In fact, I liked it all very much until I realized I was being imposed upon by a story and a plot. The characters are forced apart and spend the night pouting in their separate corners. It feels like a cheap rom-com ploy in a movie that might have been about something far more gripping and substantive. Instead, it becomes a feeble excuse to inject some amount of tension into the picture.

Sadly, it’s never able to reignite the same alluring lightheartedness of their opening introduction. They’re too busy trying to be distraught with one another to make time for much fun. In this way, Raoul Walsh is not Howard Hawks.

Ryan is frankly subdued if fairly determined with what he wants, be it cattle driving, making money, or charming the women he keeps company with. In his own quiet, self-assured way, he’s out for status and remains the envy of every other man. He can never be mistaken for a villain or even a real rival for Gable. They never play it that way. Even when his hot-headed brother, played by Mitchell gets belligerent, Gable’s quick to defuse the situation.

There’s also little push or purpose to the ensuing cattle drive as it is more of a conduit for the romantic tension, and it hardly seems to be enough to carry the weight of such a lengthy picture. Jane Russell is given ample opportunity to sing, bathe herself, and remove her stockings for the camera. Whatever the contemporary audience might have clamored for, it’s a sorry use for her talents and adds very little to the film.

They do indeed run tall in this movie. What the title fails to mention is how each man is pretty old, past the prime of a cowboy, and so we’re asked to let it slide. It’s almost laughable that Cameron Mitchell is meant to be a youthful hothead. Instead, it feels like he’s caught in a state of arrested development. It could be worse.

So while there’s a desire to see the mythos of the West played out in front of us on a grandiose scale, the movie never quite manages the whole package. Walsh is a consummate professional, and he makes the images as grand and as resplendent as he knows how with all the resources availed him. And yet the narrative itself — the sinew that makes up the story — never hits a lasting resonance. One exception might be a thrilling standoff with some Kansas extortionists.

Alas, there isn’t very much more to appreciate on the journey. It does feel like a sizeable waste of talent even as the film itself has vistas well worth our time.  It is a pity because I couldn’t think of a better way to draw up a western than enlisting the help of Clark Gable, Jane Russell, and Robert Ryan at the height (or even the trough) of their powers. Surely they were deserving of a bit more consideration.

3/5 Stars

The Law and Jake Wade (1958): Robert Taylor and Richard Widmark

Posted on by
Reply

It’s initially intriguing to have a western pairing of Robert Taylor and Richard Widmark, rather like what we get out of Warlock from Henry Fonda and Widmark the year after. My estimation of the dashing ’30s matinee idol has refined over time as he matured into such worthwhile westerns as The Devil’s Doorway, Westward The Women, and even Saddle the Wind.

Here again, Taylor holds the mantle as the inscrutable, no-nonsense lead and Widmark falls back into his role as a merciless reprobate, prone to all sorts of aggression. What’s more, there’s something delightfully skeezy about his voice. He slips into it so seamlessly playing a kindred of Tommy Udo or any of his more reprehensible characters.

The premise is set up immediately with a brazen jailbreak — one man comes in for his pal — and then they shoot their way out of town toward freedom. However, it quickly becomes more complicated. Jake Wade (Taylor) and Clint Hollister (Widmark) are not so much friends as former acquaintances.

This is merely an act of reciprocation because when they raided the Yankees during the Civil War, they formed an uneasy alliance, out of necessity, before eventually parting ways. If they don’t entirely hate each other’s guts, then at the very least they’re deeply mistrustful.

It’s even more curious when Jake returns to his current life. He’s a town’s marshall. How do you make sense of him? In one moment he commits a brazen act of jailbreak, and yet in another, he sits behind a desk in a decent, sleepy town holding a position of repute. Here the noir element is made evident — the way a dark past always comes back to haunt the protagonist and the life he’s tried to make for himself.

In the meantime, the imagery and more specifically the snow-covered mountains are an awesome backdrop and something only the western landscape affords. Jake also is keeping company with a pretty gal. Patricia Owens reminds me a bit of Julie London, mousier but deeply sensible. Her requests make sense, but her man can’t tell her his misgivings without dredging up unwanted memories.

Because Widmark is the force out of his past he can never totally get rid of. We wonder why he pulled him out of prison. It might come down to some moral prerogative, but it feels a lot like letting the monkey out of the cage so it can end up on your back again.

The old gang moves in and Taylor is taken prisoner with the sole purpose of leading them back to a cache of gold pieces he buried in some forsaken town years before. The journey is long and arduous and the callous Clint makes his old partner do it with his hands tied behind his back. He’ll give him a horse, but he doesn’t trust him with more. If you give him an inch, there’s no telling what will happen.

Deforrest Kelly never quite does it for me as one of the heavies — though he’s quite a psychotic hulk in Warlock. Of all the sidekicks, Henry Silva has real umbrage and a chip on his shoulder, coming off smug and vaguely dangerous.

However, in its best moments, it really becomes a fitting inverse of The Naked Spur held aloft by the two central performances dueling it out. The bad guy is the one holding the reins and dictating the story while our hero and his girlfriend are under his watchful eye as they go on the hunt for the buried treasure. The tension rides with them every moment of their trek.

When Widmark skirts off to catch the Native scouts that bode trouble, there’s a fear something will be lost in the movie. We stay back with the others as they wait it out in the ghost town, and it feels mostly stagnant. The dynamic brought by Taylor opposite Widmark is momentarily relinquished.

In its wake, there’s a run-of-the-mill shoot ’em-up Indian barrage. I couldn’t help but compare it with the shootout in Man of the West also preoccupied with a ghost town. However, whereas that film has Gary Cooper and a mythos about it like a knowing predecessor to Sergio Leone’s stylized showdowns, Jake Wade feels mostly unspectacular. It’s a shame because the film packages together a handful of worthwhile performances and tangible menace in fits and starts.

3/5 Stars

Time Limit (1957) Directed by Karl Malden

Posted on by
Reply

Time Limit sounds like it should be the title of a syndicated TV program or at least a game show in the heyday of family entertainment. It is not. The themes are heavy, and there’s a weight behind the picture that means something. And in spite of the clunky title, it bears testament to the main players both behind and in front of the camera.

Like his acting compatriot, Marlon Brando, Karl Malden only ever directed one full feature-length picture. Here it is before us, and you can see his sensibilities in it if only because it does stand for something. There is a purpose to it.

Although we never even see the inside of the courtroom, it still reminded me nominally of Man in The Middle with Robert Mitchum solely due to the scale. They both seem to rely on performance and actors who are up to the task.

Time Limit hones in on an investigation into a potential court-martial of a major who looks to have caved to Communist ideology and committed acts of treason against his men and his country in a North Korean POW camp.

Richard Widmark, as the producer and one of the primary architects, is the anchor of the movie as the primary officer — a clear-minded Colonel — called upon to compile the details of the case.

But it is really Richard Basehart with the most complicated, ever-shifting role. It’s easy to sleep on him because of his stint in Europe, and he was never intent on being a movie star. And yet over a serpentine career, he left a trail of memorable noir (He Walked by Night, Tension), arthouse classics (La Strada), and mostly forgotten dramas like Reign of Terror or Fourteen Hours.

Because Time Limit functions mostly as a character piece albeit laced with flashbacks and ratcheted with tension. The ensemble itself is made up of a handful of others. General Connors is the Colonel’s immediate superior, and he’s pushing for a quick court-martial. He doesn’t want the boys to suffer through any more trauma. Although he’s not a totally unlikeable fellow, he does have a very concrete way of thinking. It’s abrasive, to say the least.

If you’ve read me before, you know I have a soft spot for Martin Basalm, and it started with movies like 12 Angry Men and Psycho and steadily built over time. He’s just so versatile while never losing his personal DNA as a performer.

Time Limit finds him on the more irksome spectrum as a busybody rat fink, who always has a way of divulging information to interested parties, much to Widmark’s displeasure. But for every tattletale by Sergeant Baker, there’s a supreme act of loyalty by the faithful and whipsmart corporal Jean Evans (Dolores Michaels). If we were to codify the movie purely between good and bad, she is one of the movie’s unsung heroes.

But they must also have witnesses — people with first-hand knowledge of the case — both personal and otherwise. An almost unrecognizable Rip Torn is a clean-cut, fresh-faced member of the unit who was there in the POW camp when the Major turned. Mrs. Cargil (June Lockhart) has a much different point of view because she still can’t believe the debilitating change that has come over her husband. It’s not like him. Something else is going on under the surface.

The score rages too much for my liking, but for what it is Time Limit plays quite well. The General starts breathing down Edwards’ neck — with personal interest invested — his son was one of those killed in the camp. It certainly cannot be discounted. Then, there are these very particular repetitions in the many testimonies (describing factors like acute dysentery). Something does not add up because everything lines up almost too perfectly.

More than anything, it does feel like Malden makes his actors look good. I’m thinking of a particular scene where Widmark is absent. Balsam leads Basehart into the office to wait but then prepares to ambush him and give him a piece of his mind. Michaels makes sure she is present to moderate, but first Balsam leans over his superior in his chair. Then, the close-ups cut back and forth between him and Ms. Evans as they have at it.

The tension in the sequence is palpable because the scene is blocked and covered in such a way that we feel the entire essence of what is going on. The visuals not only augment the performances but also the emotions underlying the sequence.

Winston Churchill is cited as saying, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. Widmark turns these words on their head because he says, “Truth can be more rotten, more vicious, and destructive than any lie.” Within the context of this move, he’s right.

Like Act of Violence, it becomes a film of making sense of a clouded past under circumstances the offenders are not proud of. The General invokes an unbreakable code for all his men — even his son — a code that must be adhered to with unswerving resolve. It’s a graceless proposition that no one can stand up to. Because for the hundreds of days men are heroes, there’s always going to be a few where they falter.

The question remains how do we canonize others? Is it at their most cowardly and despicable or at their very best? For those paying attention, the irony in the General’s final convictions should not be lost on us, “The Code is our Bible, and I thank God for it.”

If you’ll allow me one final digression, a book that’s pierced me to the core is Silence by Shusaku Endo. It is about Catholic priests, not soldiers, but they face a similar conundrum: the desire to attain some sort of martyrdom. However, what if someone is forced to face the ultimate ignominy instead? Each must struggle and make peace with a world that will openly disdain them, and that is a tough pill to take for any person.

3.5/5 Stars

Backlash (1956): Donna Reed and Richard Widmark

Posted on by
Reply

Only in a western could we meet our protagonists in a sand trap known as Gila Valley. It says everything you need to know about the Arizona landscape, and then the sweeping Technicolor tones say a bit more.

Richard Widmark is easy enough to place as an enigmatic figure. There’s a glint in his eyes, and we know from his pedigree he’s capable of playing shifty. The true pleasure is watching Donna Reed — because she becomes very much his equal — another sturdy customer with her own personal agenda.

It feels so very unaccustomed for the woman who played Mary Bailey and anchored her own family comedy. Then, again, the edges of From Here to Eternity are not too far in the past. It’s hard to forget what she did there across from Monty Clift.

The movie gets its legs when a man takes a shot at Jim Slater (Widmark) from the rocky crags above. He thinks he’s been a mark. The woman, Karyl Orton, was trying to play him, and he nearly fell for it. Leaving her behind, he scurries to the rockface to have it out with his enemy on the high ground.

Backlash is a constant exhibition in deciphering characters’ intentions. Because as an audience we are thrown into the action and asked to follow what’s going on. She’s searching for some gold, and he asks us to believe his interests are purely in his father who disappeared in the territory.

Although it’s adapted from source material, it does feel reminiscent of some of Borden Chase’s other patented efforts with a craggy showdown reminiscent of Winchester 73′ (1950). Thematically, John Sturges’s turn as director also proves a decent facsimile of some of Mann’s best westerns where the blending of psychological duress, perturbing imagery, and in-your-face action strings out the story into a taut state of tension.

It’s easy to become genuinely immersed in the first act with a fleeing stagecoach looking to cut across the open plains with Indians in hot pursuit. As they fall back, they’re forced to hold down an isolated trading post against the onslaught of marauders.

Unfortunately, all this buildup feels a bit too convenient. Because Slater searches for a seasoned soldier named Lake (Barton MacLane), who was a part of the detail that found the dead bodies that were left behind in an earlier massacre. In serendipitous Hollywood fashion, the old man keels over from a battle wound, just before divulging the remnants of what he remembers of a “6th man.” Surely he is the key to the movie, and Slater has been propelled forward.

If we can stop for a moment to acknowledge them, Backlash has a couple doozy bits of casting with the normally maniacal heavy Jack Lambert playing a sniveling Indian trader. Then, Harry Morgan, in a role reversal, takes on the role of a squat, no-nonsense heavy out to hunt Slater with his big brother. Because Slater killed their sibling.

But if there was any doubt in the red-hot chemistry of our primary stars, it sizzles while Reed brandishes a knife to cauterize the gunman’s most recent injury. It is a movie moment made for the big screen audience if there ever was such a thing. This smoldering passion and growing relationship are nearly enough to salvage the picture in its slower ebbs as they continue their search for answers.

In the end, they split the thread pretty thin between the two of them. It can only go one of two ways. Either the man he’s looking to find is her long-lost husband, a corrupt man, or it’s his own father — a man he’s never known a thing about. We must wait to discover the answer.

But the factions in the buildup are interesting. Our protagonists meet a man named Major Carson (Roy Roberts), who runs a local ranch. He seems like a pragmatic, sensible sort of fellow, and he’s got a range war on his hands thanks to a man named Bonniwell (John Mcintire).

One hotheaded sharpshooter (William Campbell) goes turncoat, and there are still thugs looking for Slater to gun him down in an act of retribution. The local sheriff (Robert Foulk) aims to remain impartial in all of this while still maintaining some manner of civility. He’s not concerned with private vendettas, only some semblance of local law and order. Widmark quickly gets tossed into the jailhouse, effectively sidelining him and leaving him incapable of exerting any influence on either side.

I won’t spell out the final act because that’s part of the fun of the picture, watching it unfold. There’s a dog-eat-dog mentality; it’s about family, but it never stops being a picture founded on Richard Widmark and Donna Reed. If you’re curious about seeing them together, that’s a good enough reason as any to invest in this western from an often underrated craftsman.

3.5/5 Stars

Colbert and MacMurray: Gilded Lily, Take a Letter Darling, Egg and I

Posted on by
Reply

One of my latest ventures was to view a handful of romantic comedies of the ’30s and ’40s, many with screwball elements, and you could not broach this territory without eventually crossing paths with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. They starred in 7 films together throughout the decade and also paired opposite some of the most prominent stars of the era (including Clark Gable and Carole Lombard).

Here are three of their movies, two that star both of them, and one with Fred MacMurray in the lead with another worthy romantic partner:

The Gilded Lily (1935)

It opens on a park bench with MacMurray and Colbert chewing the fat as they share a bag of popcorn. What it does is create this instant familiarity going far beyond the bounds of the film as we’re thrown into their relationship that feels more platonic than romantic.

Thus, it’s not so much about the build-up to a prototypical relationship but the chafing that comes with their differing feelings. He has the hots for her. She loves him as a friend but still seems to be looking for her prince charming.

Prince Charming comes in the form of Ray Milland, a rich British aristocrat who’s come to America incognito. You can immediately imagine the complications arising from the fact Peter (MacMurray) is a nosy newshound and the other man has a secret to hide. They’re still to be cast as true romantic rivals and there’s already a tense undercurrent between them.

Meanwhile, Marilyn finds herself having to choose between two men as Lord Charles (Milland) promises a life of cultured sophistication. But Peter is always there, her ever-faithful confidante, and he’s also not going down without a fight.

He churns up the news mills to turn her into a household celebrity and the whole world seems to know her name. Even Charles is tickled by her world-class notoriety, but this is only a paltry imitation. If it’s not evident already, she needs a man who wisecracks, buys her popcorn, and wants to love all of her, whether she’s a big shot or not.

I’m still a bit smitten by the movie’s public bench premise because it allows our stars to do what they do best: laugh at the world together. No one can break their bond, and it teases out new contours to the Colbert-MacMurray partnership.

3.5/5 Stars

Take a Letter Darling (1942)

Although he does have a devoted following, Mitchell Leisen still does feel like a mostly unheralded director in broader circles. Take a Letter Darling is another modest feather in his cap, and it has numerous charms.

The gender norm-bending premise was actually quite intriguing for the era and MacMurray and Russell are more than up to the task of sparring in and out of the office. She’s a high-powered businesswoman who enlists a male secretary who can help her land her deals. He has a very important job: keeping jealous wives satisfied as she trades shop talk with their husbands.

There’s an obvious level of emasculation to the part, and MacMurray is more than game for it as he becomes the laughingstock of the secretarial peanut gallery. You see, he’s MacGregor’s fourth man and she’s running out of options. Still, it’s a lucrative way to bankroll his true passion: painting.

If Claudette Colbert was in fact originally earmarked for the part, I think I’m still partial to Russell in this particular role. I just find her brand of delivery perfectly metered for any kind of antagonistic comedy. And there’s a sense it builds on the kind of workplace dynamics she stirred up with such legendary fervor with Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, between quizzical glances and whipsmart repartee.

I will admit that Take a Letter Darling loses some of its comic edge when it turns saccharine, and the inevitable romance materializes. Until this point, the movie uses its premise to mine a plethora of laughs only to peter out as it makes Russell shed her authoritative business acumen for warm, fuzzy feelings.

However, while the final act can’t quite maintain the same level of comic tenacity, it also doesn’t whimper out as much as I was expecting. Yes, MacGregor wants her man back, but in typical Russell fashion, she crosses paths with him out on the road and comes armed with pebbles. She’s not going down without a fight, and she won’t totally acquiesce. It’s against her nature.

I feel like womanhood, especially in the ’50s, is glazed with this perceived antiquated patina, but watching the likes of Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Arthur, or even Irene Dunne during the ’30s and ’40s, provides a more nuanced landscape. It wasn’t all marriage and motherhood. They managed to grapple with the lives of modern working women in numerous ways. While Take A Letter Darling is no unsung masterpiece, it’s still easy enough to extend the recommendation.

3.5/5 Stars

Egg and I (1947)

Egg and I is based on a popular real-life memoir by Betty MacDonald, but for anyone who doesn’t remember it, it’s easy to pitch it as the original Green Acres — a Hollywoodized version of Grant Wood’s American Gothic. The fact it began with source material explains Claudette Colbert’s conspicuous introduction to the audience.

Otherwise, much of the movie is forged through comedy of the situation much like the wacky ’60s comedy with mostly mild and goofy trifles to contend with. The long-standing screen chemistry of Fred MacMurray and Colbert anchors the movie as its most imperative asset.

They’ve bought themselves a dilapidated house that’s riddled with leaks during the first rain. And once they’ve hunkered into their new home, next come the daily rituals that come with tending to a farm, and its livestock. They have lots to get used to. However, there’s also the local anthropological element.

Before the “Rural Purge” in the early ’70s, in deference to more urban entertainment, Hollywood has long mined comedy out of eccentric country bumpkins. Egg and I was no different introducing audiences to the first incarnation of Ma and Pa Kettle who became a bit of a low-budget institution in their own right with Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbridge.

One of the representative moments involves the local hoedown where men of all shapes, sizes, and dancing styles whirl Colbert around the dance floor, leaving her feet sore and her ears talked off. However, her greatest concerns are the advances of a local beauty (Louis Albritton), who her husband must do business with. She’s worried it’s a bit more than business, but if you watch him look at her, it does feel a bit silly.

I found the movie to be a bit too long and a tad more twee than it was gripping. Especially because Green Acres had numerous episodes and seasons to engage with analogous themes and character tropes to greater effect.

However, there are a few rewarding moments. It’s easy to recall the almost deceptively moving solidarity when the whole town bands together to loan the couple resources after a devastating fire obliterates their livelihood. For all their flaws, it’s a reminder of the close ties of small communities, and it makes Egg and I easy to root for even if it is mostly light-hearted recreation.

3/5 Stars

1930s Screwball: Love is News, Double Wedding, Young in Heart

Posted on by
Reply

I normally try to focus on a theme to better curate my viewing. This post will encapsulate 3 films whose primary players don’t have much in common. However, if you wanted a loose point of connection, all three are comedies from 1937-38.

It all happened when I was on the lookout for some underrated screwball comedies and though some of them are more innately screwball, I was pleasantly surprised by what they had to offer. If you haven’t seen them already, consider this a hearty recommendation to check out some underrated films:

Love is News

Love is News (1937):

Although it traverses the same worlds of pictures like The Front Page, Platinum Blonde, and Libeled Lady, there’s something rather lustrous about getting Tyrone Power in his first headlining role with his leading lady being such a fine rival as Loretta Young.

In the 1930s the prevalence of newspaper movies makes them a workplace subgenre all their own. Love is News is made by this sense of good-natured ribbing and antagonism found end-to-end. In the office, Tyrone Power and Don Ameche feud incessantly, always buzzing the intercom to pull one another off the payroll. And this comic fodder continues when Steve Leyton (Power) finagles a scoop from the “Tin Can Heiress” (Young), sidestepping all the red tape and effectively gaining her confidence.

The piece de resistance is (no, not George Sanders playing a jilted French lover), but the fact the heiress hatches her own scheme as an act of revenge. She calls in a story to say she and Leyton are to be married!! She’s used to the publicity hounds, but he is pummeled by his newfound notoriety without a moment’s peace.

What makes the movie is the kind of rambunctious reunion you would expect given such a scenario. A podunk Judge (Slim Summerville), with a jailhouse falling apart at the hinges, locks them both up: She receives a speeding violation, and he’s apprehended in the middle of grabbing, err “stealing” her vanity case.

By now the last place he wants to be is stuck right next to her — anything else would do — but she orchestrates everything just so. There’s an exuberance because now the game is afoot as Young playacts her way to her desirable conclusion.

Even if the enemy-to-lover romantic arc is something we see so often, it’s the leads who make it spark, and there’s enough chaos to make it more than palatable. I couldn’t help thinking about how bright-eyed Power and Young both feel at this point in their careers, and it gives a kinetic vitality to their chemistry.

3.5/5 Stars

Double Wedding (1937)

Double Wedding feels like it banks on all the best characteristics of William Powell. He’s witty, at times churlish and juvenile, but boy does it make for goofy, ever-contentious comedy. This was one of his prevailing gifts as a film actor. We have a fine time messing about with him, and he never quite relinquishes his charm.

I’ve previously mentioned how I’m partial to The Thin Man movies because it plays off the amenable chemistry of Powell and Myrna Loy; not on their antagonism. It’s more about their repartee as comedic and matrimonial equals than it is watching them quarrel and make up.

But enemy-to-love arcs must cast Loy in some other way. In movies like Double Marriage or I Love You Again (1940), she must seem unreasonable from the outset or at least chafe against the wisecracking good humor of Powell.

In this story, she’s the fastidious businesswoman and older sister, who effectively runs her younger sister Irene’s life. It makes her an easy target for Charles Lodge, a man who’s probably a bit slap-happy and far too bohemian for the ’30s, living out of a trailer and putting on his own stage productions.

He scorns this kind of buttoned-up oppression and though Irene and her wet-noodle of a fiancee are charmed by his influence, they’re also not brave enough to stand up to Margrit. It’s so easy to sink back into tedium as she begins to set about planning their future wedding.

Powell feels like the lynchpin of the movie as he rebuffs Irene’s newfound advances, tries to help the dreary Hugo reclaim his manhood, even as he tries to woo Margrit under the most unconventional circumstances. It hardly seems material that the title gives something away. It feels like more of a signpost for us to aim for.

The escalated chaos of the finale exceeded my expectations as folks crowd in and around Powell’s mobile home for the wedding proceedings overseen by the ever-handy Donald Meek. It just keeps on going and going, but then again, I should expect nothing less from a Powell/Loy comedy. John Beal and Edgar Kennedy are other personal standouts to keep an eye out for.

3.5/5 Stars

Young in Heart (1938)

Without any preconceived knowledge of Young in Heart, it actually positions itself with an intriguing premise. It’s built out of a family ensemble of con artists who are always looking for ways to get ahead with varying degrees of success.

Their esteemed patriarch and matriarch are played by Roland Young and Billie Burke respectively. Father is constantly ingratiating himself as a distinguished Colonel who fought with the Bengal Lancers. The grown kids (Janet Gaynor and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) are out on the prowl for eligible suitors, who also happen to be loaded. The French Rivera has more than a few prospects though the authorities are especially vigilant.

The whole movie comes into its own after they’re unceremoniously kicked out of the country and then stuck aboard a train trying to figure out their next angle. George-Anne (Gaynor) meets a kindly old lady, “Miss Fortune,” who has her own compartment. She gladly shares it to stave off her loneliness and the family is quick to oblige. She’s just another mark they can perform for.

She welcomes them into her home, glad to have the company, and they realize if they’re nice to her, she could very easily credit them in her will. For modern audiences, it has the ring of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite albeit without the social commentary. Instead, this family secretly unearths their soft hearts finding that as they model goodness, they find it suffusing throughout their lives.

The Colonel becomes a revered car salesman of “Flying Wombats” to the wealthy.  Richard stumbles into an engineering firm because of the pretty girl behind the desk (Paulette Goddard) and soon learns the edifying nature of an honest day’s work. They also fall in love.

If we see the progression from a mile away, it’s still a pleasure to watch this family evolve in front of us, and it feels like each member gets their individual moments to shine. Gaynor feels like the undisputed focal point, and though I don’t necessarily buy her in a skeevy role, we like her already, which is half the battle.

Young and Burke might be known for a single role each (in Topper and The Wizard of Oz), but they always can be counted on with a highly specific brand of comic eccentricity. There’s something wonderful about watching their charms bubble over. Although we could have easily had a Fairbanks-Goddard rom-com on its own, it might have been a bit bland. The ensemble brings the best out in everyone.

3.5/5 Stars

Autumn Leaves (1956): Cliff Robertson and Joan Crawford

Posted on by
4

You might not immediately connect Joan Crawford and Nat King Cole, but his brand of velvet crooning provides a fine backdrop (and namesake) for Autumn Leaves. It presents the consummate leading lady with a lighter more congenial personality — the kind of Joan Crawford who seems easier to connect with.

She’s known for her typing speed, working from home before it was en vogue, and banging out manuscripts for thankful clients. Although she leads a solitary existence alone, she’s buddy-buddy with her landlady and seems generally contented with life. When she goes out to a show or dinner, she’s comfortable going alone — it doesn’t feel foreign to her — and she enjoys her time in solitude.

There’s a moment in Autumn Leaves as Crawford sits in an audience, the lights go out so the spotlight is only on her, and the pianist on the stage takes her back into her memories. It felt so reminiscent of a scene in Penny Serenade where music, whether live or on vinyl somehow fills up the human heart and carries with it so many easily-tapped emotions.

“Autumn Leaves” feels less like a gimmick to cash in on the season’s newest love song, and it starts to pervade and then slowly suffuse throughout the entire movie until it becomes the tactful accent to almost every scene of the ensuing romance.

Because this all feels like a prelude. We have yet to meet our other primary player. Cliff Robertson was from the east coast and an actor forged out of his training at the Actor’s Studio. He’s still fresh-faced and Autumn Leaves was his second truly substantial movie role after the movie adaptation of Picnic with William Holden.

When he steps into the bustling restaurant and eyes Milly in the one booth with an extra seat, he makes his way over. There’s a disarming approachability about him. It starts to melt the ice and break down the barriers between him and his new acquaintance. Partially because there’s no threat to him though he’s still good-looking. Rather you feel like you can get to know the guy and like him. And she does.

They spend time together, going out more and even taking day trips. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, and yet I hesitate to use these terms because it makes it sound mercenary. In the most innocent ways, they just enjoy one another’s company, and it shows.

The former Army veteran shows off his beach body on one outing chasing Milly into the waves. He feels like a movie creation. Can Joan Crawford have her own version of a 1950s manic pixie dream boy? But this is only a momentary suggestion. He becomes more of a person in the ensuing scenes. When she prods him about his old girlfriends, he shrugs them off. “Young people are too young for me,” he says.

If they do seem like an odd couple, they aren’t totally unprecedented. Because while loneliness is not a foundational reason to get married, it’s true we need each other. Burt believes that sometimes you meet someone and you know; they provide something you are lacking. I’m reluctant to say they complete you. Still, maybe with someone else’s hand to hold, it makes the world just a little less lonely and the pain a little less galling. Milly loves him and after minor reservation, falls into his arms for better or for worse.

They have a bit of marital bliss below the border, and yet something starts happening. Burt lets bits of his biography slip. All very matter-of-factly and there’s nothing guileful about it; it feels innocent enough, but she begins to realize they don’t match up. First his hometown, then his military service, and there are other discrepancies.


Then, Vera Miles shows up on her doorstep as a manifestation of all her sinking fears about Burt. His insinuating father (Lorne Green) is next to appear. There was a time when the movie could have easily been Joan Crawford’s Middle of The Night. Instead, she becomes devastated by the newfound revelations about her husband, and then must become protectorate shielding her love from the unfeeling world all but ready to exacerbate his condition.

She’s ready to battle for him. If it’s not righteous anger then it’s certainly indignant anger. She sees people for who they really are and calls them on it. Whatever Burt’s shortcomings, he has everyday, common decency. Her maledictions against the character of others might seem excessive (“Your filthy souls are too evil for hell itself”), and yet she’s not entirely wrong. If nothing else, she’s lashing out as a defense mechanism.

However, she’s also caught in the most excruciating of conundrums — one of those scenarios where it seems you are required to do something against your nature out of the deepest sense of sacrificial love, even if it’s not perceived as such. Her deepest longings are for Burt to be born again — that he might live a new, better life than he had before. It leaves the door open for another outcome. It’s very possible if he overcomes his illness, he might come out on the other side as a man who wouldn’t need her anymore. It’s either keep him for herself or watch him return to a happy, normal life (without her).

In the meantime, Burt isn’t getting better. In fact, his circumstances are far worse, and so Crawford is stirred to action. One of the film’s more pronounced shots is of Crawford as she reaches for the phone and resolves to make the fateful call. The low angle makes her loom large in the frame, not so much in a threatening way, but expressing just how much magnitude this moment is imbued with. Her eyes flicker slightly, this way and that, before she speaks into the receiver. There is no turning back.

Whether it’s purely a credit to the scenario, the direction, or the winsomeness of Crawford, I’ve never felt so devastated for her before. She’s put through the emotional wringer, not from noir tension or antagonism, but the kind of burden cutting deep and breaking your heart in the most tender of ways. She’s rarely been more sympathetic and her fortitude is easy to admire.

The final moments are quick, but that is not to say they aren’t pregnant with meaning. The couple is reunited, and I will leave the rest up to you to experience. Robertson and Crawford make the movie work, and this whole story hangs in the balance of their rapport. They weather both the mundane and the melodrama together. It’s pleasantly captivating watching them.

4/5 Stars

Sudden Fear (1952): Joan Crawford in Peril

Posted on by
1

I had no prior knowledge of what Sudden Fear was about, and I was relatively taken aback to see a film set during a stage rehearsal. You have your lead actor in the middle of a passionate soliloquy. This is Jack Palance getting a go at a more substantial role. Then, there’s the writer and authoritative creative mind behind his current material: Myra Hudson (Joan Crawford).

They are immediately at odds because she proposes to give him the axe and being the artistic force that she is, she makes the decision stick. He’s not her idea of a true romantic lead. This level of occupational animosity feels like a portent for something to come — what it is exactly we don’t know yet.

It starts out fairly innocuous when the writer and actor reunite. It’s quite by chance. They get awfully chummy on a train to San Francisco cutting through the awkwardness to play poker and share a drink together. The story trades the New York atmosphere for the West coast and with new geography comes new developments in their story together.

Her rejection of his casting was nothing personal, and she grows fond of him. He in turn gets brought into her life little by little. One moment in her office, he’s caught up in the swells of her poetry and speaks it back to her through a fancy dictaphone.

Crawford’s reaction shots are evocative, on the verge of something as if she’s just about ready to run over to him for an embrace. She’s been moved, but the dividing line between reality and fiction, or at least stage acting, is not something a writer should so easily confuse. Still, emotions get muddled.

What follows are interludes of pure ebullient joy appropriate for a budding couple. It’s hard to describe but amid all of this, there is also a mild sense of unease. The feeling is perfectly encapsulated by the moment when the newlyweds trek down to the water’s edge together only for the man to say just how dangerous the drop below looks to him. It’s something for us to put away for later consideration.

It seems apropos that the introduction of Gloria Grahame would almost instantly act as an augur of total noir. Suddenly, the movie has its twist toward the shady and undesirable. It’s the shift one waits for and relishes just the same. And this is just the beginning.

Some part of me wants to proclaim Sudden Fear the crowning achievement of the woman in peril subgenre or at least the greatest of the San Francisco iterations, though there are others like House on Telegraph Hill (I’m conveniently leaving Vertigo out since it’s mostly from the male perspective). Regardless, it has to do with laying the dramatic groundwork as well as fully utilizing the reputation preceding Joan Crawford.

Because Grahame and the scorned Palance not only know each other, they have a history, and Myra Hudson is a part of their plans. However, it hinges on the dramatic irony. Their target finds out what’s going on.

Voices amplified and booming out into the open space sends her back peddling against the walls in sheer horror. It’s her slice of domestic bliss being totally annihilated in one instant. Then in her distress, she loses her one shred of definitive evidence. From there we’re sucked into her dilemma as all rationality quickly evaporates. We don’t have time to care.

Obviously, everything in the movie is between actors; this is not reality. However, it’s intriguing to think about how the level of performance shifts. Palace is playing an actor, but then Crawford finds out his true intentions, now she must put on a performance of her own and so they are both playing parts within the movie to satisfy one another. The question remains who will break first in this charade. Because it must end at some point.

If you care about spoilers, my discussion of Sudden Fear might be a letdown, but for me, it feels like a picture wrought with tension more than relying on secret keeping. This is how we can make sense of it and appreciate all its mechanisms working on us as an audience. It’s so important for these women in peril movies that there is some level of identification or at least empathy for our lead. In this case, Crawford.

The whole ordeal weighs on her because she’s not trained to be an actor, and yet she takes to her role whether it’s snooping around an apartment or touching up her penmanship. Her final performance is almost as premeditated as any crime might be, and there’s some pleasure in watching it play out.

There are an array of these subtle intricacies executed in front of us for our viewing pleasure. A brief glance. A note left in a glove. The emblematic shot is the shadow of a clock hand swinging like a metronome across Crawford’s incomparable face. There’s an inevitability of what’s coming next…

I’ll double down on my early championing of Sudden Fear as a superlative woman in peril movie. However, my reasoning developed a new layer. What makes this movie particularly thrilling is not the fact Crawford is set up solely as a victim. Actresses whom I admire like Joan Fontaine, Barbara Stanwyck, Audrey Hepburn, and Grace Kelly all faced similar fates in the movies.

The difference here is how Crawford takes matters into her own hands, not just in a last-ditch struggle for survival or a convenient turn of events. She’s prepared to end others just as coolly as they wanted to end her. I’m not sure if it’s believable, but it’s a stunning transformation nonetheless. We must also recognize this is not really who she is. Her core humanity is made very plain.

Only after the fact with some space do we recognize the vortex of this entire story. There are no policemen or your typical authoritative experts. No helpers. Bruce Bennett and Virginia Huston are no use (even future P.I. Mike Connors is negligible).

It’s really a cat-and-mouse game with three characters and no innocent bystanders. Sudden Fear feels lean and gaunt because the thrills are directed very intensely and there’s not a lot of expositional fluff. That’s what the introduction was for. In the end, it’s pure noir drama with a kind of blistering doom.

4/5 Stars

More Film Review of 2022

Posted on by
2

I watched so many films in preparation for award voting, I almost forgot I had written other capsule reviews at the end of last year. As this year’s award cycle comes to an end, I thought I might as well share my thoughts on some of 2022’s other releases.

Elvis

Elvis is a schizophrenic biopic full of decadence and a giant performance from Austin Butler. He’s cast as an atomic individual with gyrating hips and supernatural energy imbibed by Black spirituals – the Holy Spirit as transcendent superpower. Likewise, homage is paid to inspirations like B.B. King and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and a bit like The Great Gatsby, Baz Luhrmann develops this cultural collage with the nostalgia given a contemporary facelift via Eminem and Doja Cat. The cradle-to-grave blueprint almost feels too monumental with the biggest leap coming between Elvis’s enlistment in the military in 1958 to his cultural nadir in 1968.

I’m intrigued by the decision to frame the story through Colonel Powers, though I didn’t entirely appreciate the execution. Tom Hanks seems to pull us out of the movie in a disconcerting way. The images themselves can feel plastic albeit underpinned by Butler’s sympathetic moodiness. Somehow this seems to work well, and he goes for it in all manner of ways from the vocals, to the costuming and the fluctuating register of his voice. 

I have one primary qualm: although we tear through so much territory with Luhrman’s quintessential panache, we get very little time to actually appreciate these characters, nay, even get to know them. Elvis and Priscilla share a few solitary scenes of heartbreak and tenderness. Still, the rest of the movie feels more like an aesthetically pleasing clip show or montage projecting the aura of Elvis. Because he was such a gargantuan figure. The film gets that right.

But it never demystifies him in a way where we can get to know him and fully empathize. The most gripping moment might be right at the end when Butler fades out, and we suddenly realize we are looking at the real Elvis in his last performance of “Unchained Melody.” He gasps for air, he looks like an incoherent wreck on stage, and yet when he starts to belt out his song, we are reminded he was touched by something sublime. Perhaps Luhrmann wasn’t far off the mark after all.

Women Talking

Women Talking has a powerful theme at its core – a noble theme – and it takes it on with quietude and immense consideration. It is based on Miriam Toews’s novel dealing with a Mennonite enclave in the aftermath of a revelation: the men in their religious colony have been drugging and raping the women, and attributing it to the supernatural. The title somehow makes an implicit suggestion: men should be slow to speak and quick to listen – at least quicker than we normally are. And Sarah Polley creates this arena for all sorts of personalities and viewpoints to chafe against one another. It can be painful, but there’s also some catharsis found in this space up in a dimly lit grain silo. 

Although its tone is different, the nature of the material reminded me of last year’s Mass. These are self-contained dramas; they could have easily been performed on the stage instead of celluloid, and yet the breadth of the performances wields immense power. If you run down the gamut of Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jesse Buckley, et al, there are innumerable emotions – piousness, vengeance, and hurt. There is no easy way to parse through the trauma.

In one scene, a young girl questions the excommunicated man, August (Ben Whishaw), if his family was cast out because his mother questioned God. He makes a distinction: She did not question God; she questioned the power and the rules made in the name of God. These are the accoutrements Kierkegaard might have labeled Christendom, and many of them are rancorous having nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Aesthetically I’m still trying to parse through its washed-out color palette, and while I understand what it’s trying to accomplish, somehow it detracts from the film. It’s not just ugliness for uglinesses sake, but it feels like a visual faux pas or at least a missed opportunity. In Women Talking a sense of scenery and landscape comes out most in the final minutes as we recognize we are watching an exodus to a land they do not know. The resplendent scoring does leave a sense of anticipation and hopefulness in a film offering very little optimism otherwise. 

Nope

“I will cast abominable filth at you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle” – Nahum 3:6

The meta-irony of the movie should not be lost on us. Jordan Peele has created a spectacle movie about our collective obsession with spectacle. I’m certainly not the first to notice, but it’s telling he names his sibling duo OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer). He effectively weaves together allusions to OJ Simpson’s trial and car chase with the Emerald City out of Frank Baum’s beloved fantasy. Somewhere in the mix, we’ve found the perfect cultural touchstones for what we end up witnessing.

But the best part of Poole’s films is how he gives us what we desire as an audience with the genre expectations and still, he finds time to grapple with deeper thematic ideas. It morphs into a kind of Sci-Fi revisionist western as OJ looks to maintain his father’s Hollywood stunt riding and horse business under mysterious circumstances. Poole grafts them into history – including the images of Edward Muybridge – even as he begins to redefine images of Blacks in the West, if not necessarily the representation of the western in cinema itself. Still, if you look closely, you’ll quickly spy the very intentional posters of Duel at Diablo and Buck and The Preacher, two westerns both starring Sidney Poitier, in a genre that otherwise lacked black heroes. 

The movie’s horrors come at the cost of gut-wrenching voyeurism over gruesome tragedy, and I appreciate how the director creates an entire matrix for his story to swim in with a history paralleling our own. He also recognizes the imperative need for pervasive tension and not just jump scares. In fact, it can almost be said the film is slow in patches, although it’s all about creating this world. It involves a child star-turned-family attraction man (Steven Yeun) and a tech whiz who works at the now-defunct Fry’s electronics. It’s big and ambitious, and yes, a bit messy, but somehow all these disparate pieces build something in front of us.

Leave it to Poole to conjure up a predatory UFO using our rubbernecking against us. We are inundated with wreckage and upheaval that comes at the cost of our collective obsessions. So Nope serves up the writer-director’s genre thrills while never shirking the broader social commentary.  It’s this combination making his movies into what can only feel like cultural events. Only the audience can determine if he’s feeding into the spectacle machine or not and how you would like to respond to it. A faceless spectacle seeker chides OJ to make a name for himself, and it’s difficult not to hear this as an evocation of babel. It feels almost like the temptation on the flip side of the oracle in Nahum. Because we make a spectacle out of everything: TV show tragedies, carnival attractions, and certainly UFOs. 

Everything Everywhere All At Once

I was hesitant about The Daniels thanks to their pedigree gleaned from twerking music videos and Swiss Army Man trailers. Still, they have grounded their outrageous proclivities in something I can appreciate, and EEAAO is their broadest film yet by its very design. In a generation swimming with multiverse movies, this outrageous creative tandem has conceived their own spin with a choose-your-own-adventure of a different sort starring a Chinese-American immigrant family front and center. 

As Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and James Hong are framed in an elevator together, I recognized this is the movie I always wanted to see and never get the chance to as a kid. It feels like a kind of much-awaited wish fulfillment within the Asian community: A beloved star taking on a role initially envisioned for Jackie Chan only to lend her own heartfelt and butt-kicking presence. A former child star who disappeared from in front of the screen thanks to the dearth of roles only to make a triumphant return. And a journeyman, utterly ubiquitous icon who finally garnered his due. And here they all are together cast as a family of genuine action heroes. And yet within these parameters of the family unit and what that means within this very specific context. We have stories like Crazy Rich Asians or The Farewell, and I continue to yearn for more and more of them.

What the Daniels bring to this space is an inexhaustible imagination taking creativity to its zenith with its share of gross-out scatological humor. Their sensibilities are not always to my liking, but it is a tall order to be all things to all people even with the aid of a multiverse. The movie pings through time and space with a wacky abandon flinging our heroine Evelyn into all sorts of circumstances before becoming an existential meditation on life. We only have one life left to lead: This one.

Family turmoil sends her spiraling and The Daniels evoke the impending nihilism with two rocks sitting next to the edge of the abyss, then pinatas swinging without self-determination, or finally a scribbled drawing without defined form or context. Surely the world is collapsing around us. But I can’t get away from this cast and how happy I am to see them together and how they fight mightily for some kind of solace and personal restitution. Because this is the film’s battle – a battle familiar to any of us with family. My final thought is only to consider the film’s sense of language and even how the end credits are written out with each actor’s family characters (along with the English). I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before. Movie aside, these small recognitions feel like mini revelations. 

Till

“I keep asking myself why is this happening. Why did he take my child from me? What am I supposed to do?”

There’s something classical in Chinonye Chukwu’s techniques. For anyone familiar with the killing of Emmett Till, it could be a gruesome story, and yet in the moments where she could go for the visceral jugular, she goes for tact and a level of forbearance. Tension and the ache that comes with our own imaginations and the empathy welling up inside of our hearts are more than enough. In fact, it’s probably more potent.

In making it a mother’s story about Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler), it doesn’t strip away any of the power or detract from the focus. Instead, it’s made supremely evident Mamie has such a stalwart moral constitution and an unwavering faith. Her son’s horrific death at the hands of southern racists was not something to cripple her. Instead, she carried his mantle with bravery so the whole world might be opened up to the despicable hate still festering in American society. What’s more, Emmett’s funeral – honoring an irrepressible boy lost far too soon – was met with the resoluteness of the old hymn: “It is Well with my Soul.” It could easily sound like religious folly unless you have a deeper understanding like Mamie about what her purpose was. 

Sadly, it’s hard for the film to climax after the egregious moments surrounding Emmett’s death, with a court case that feels all but inevitable in its conclusions. Still, the closest thing to a revelation might be when Mamie turns and sees the image of her son in the flesh smiling in front of her again. To her, this was not wishful thinking but a galvanizing belief that she would one day see her boy again. I don’t know any other way you could move forward and keep from being inconsolable. There must be a groaning even a yearning that the aberrant hatred of this world is not the final word. Justice will ultimately roll down, and she vowed to fight for it on this side of eternity until she saw her boy again.

Emily The Criminal 

If you’re a 20-something saddled with debt or trying to make a go of it in a gig-driven economy, Emily The Criminal might hit home. It’s centered on an L.A. that does seem to exist under the surface and still somehow exhibits a very specific milieu riffing off the focused austerity of someone like Michael Mann. 

It’s a modern-day neo-noir in a sense as we watch a young working professional live two parallel lives leading her deeper and deeper into one of the dark underbellies of the city. Although she aspires to be an artist, Emily currently works for a catering service, and when a coworker gives her a tantalizing tip – $200 for an easy hour of work, it sends her on her dramatic journey. For all those with fond memories of Aubrey Plaza as the misanthropic Parks and Rec intern, she upends expectations once again driven by a sense of listlessness and desperation. The world of credit card fraud mills and dummy shoppers is so tantalizing to the outside observer and depending upon your station in life, it’s a hop, skip, and a jump away from our own experiences. 

The romance between Emily and her general enabler and guide Youcef (Theo Rossi) feels like one of the most unlikely pairings of the year and still, it works to feed the film’s drama and lend it an emotional credibility. Because it feels like the film teeters perilously on the precipice of easy stereotypes, and yet it somehow comes out intact. Like all great neo-noir films, there is a grittiness to the picture where we feel and sense the danger; it is tactile and yet we can’t bear to look away because it has a grip on us.

I recall Christopher Nolan’s advice about finding ways to hide your budget with the weapons you use. Guns are pretty important for a crime picture, but they also come with their own production pitfalls. Nolan used hammers in his debut, and to that point, I’ve never seen Exacto knives and tasers used to such stirring effect as they are in this picture. They act as a practical extension of the world and the everyday menace ever-present. Plaza continues to show her abilities and no doubt will earn a new following from those who never conceived her as this kind of crime hero. She’s good and somehow her reputation for darkly comic sensibilities is given an even more incisive edge. What’s more, it looks to be just the beginning. 

RRR

At first, RRR seemed like a package of shoddy pyrotechnics, CGI, and over-embellishment, but about an hour in I began to rethink these cursory perceptions. There’s a sense that S. S. Rajamouli is effectively rejuvenating the epic biopic with newfound energy in a way Hollywood hasn’t managed for some time. Perhaps we’ve been too afraid to try with Marvel acting as such a comforting security blanket for the industry coffers.

Still, RRR, one of the priciest Indian productions ever, has gone for the fences and proved itself to be a lucrative international sensation without quite caving to the lowest common denominator. It maintains its own very specific identity as a Tollywood film albeit dressed up with all the aforementioned action and special effects. But out on the dance floor with our two heroes leading the charge with “Naatu Naatu” and a host of women in 1920s ballroom dress, there’s something dynamic and alive about how brash and rambunctious it is tearing through conventions. 

I’m by no means an expert on this cinematic space. Until recently I didn’t know there was a Tollywood to go with Bollywood; I’ve seen Lagaan, some of the films by Ray, and a few others. What’s excellent about RRR is that you don’t need a specific pedigree. You just have to open up your arms and enjoy what it has to offer. I found myself initially unmoved and bored with the tedium of its swooping and exploding action.

I can get this from the western shores of Hollywood. And it’s easy to acknowledge these characters are hardly realistic, and yet our own industry sustains itself on a steady diet of comic book characters so it seems quite unobliging not to welcome two more onto the world stage. Beem and Raju are capable heroes, and they work as an exercise in contrast – not only as physical specimens but also with their personal histories and how they manifest in their interlocking journeys.

The opening and climax of the film feel overwrought with action spectacle, and it wasn’t of particular interest. It’s for those with their popcorn looking for this kind of thrill. I was much more compelled by the middle of the picture with Beem bursting into the British compound and having to face his brother now cast as his utter antagonist. Because not only does he exhibit a Robin Hood-like daring, going into the enemy’s midst, but we can also sense the import of each of their arcs.

Initially, it’s about their growing relationship and the tension because their secret is separating these two friends. But then it becomes physical, and it’s impossible to untangle the action from the emotion.  Because at its very best RRR is able to speak into our universal longings for brotherhood and seeking out justice in a world often dominated by violence and blatant disregard for the vulnerable. Folk heroes like these somehow tap into our deepest longings since they are capable of doing everything we long to do but can’t.

Marcel The Shell with Shoes On

As a PBS-bred kid, there’s kind of a no-frills stability and general integrity coming with the name PBS. And although 60 Minutes had its lightning rods, there’s something almost solace-like about how it features in this snail-sized story. Marcel The Shell is the kind of benevolent content we need more of in our news stream. I use content because this is the parlance of the new millennium as we have the proliferation of stimuli trying to capture our eyeballs and constantly vying for our attention. Watching Marcel the little Youtube sensation my sister introduced to over a decade ago feels like a bit of a marvel. The brainchild of Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp feels positively quaint by today’s standards, and it reflects how rapidly internet years speed by. 

If I’m honest, I’m not sure if there’s enough here for a feature, and yet…I’m not angry because in bringing Marcel to the fore again, we get a quiet meditation on the simpler things in life. As Slate becomes the little guy’s mouthpiece, the faux documentary gives us innumerable fresh pearls of wisdom. For instance, an audience is not a community. One feels vulgar the other involves personal investment. Likewise, by some obscure paradox, Marcel notes it’s easiest to rest when you have a party in your home and you go upstairs to a quiet room knowing there are people around you. As a raging introvert who acknowledges my need for people, I know this to be true.

Lesley Stahl feels like one of the unsung stars of the year and Isabella Rossellini is the consummate professional. How a film about a pretend shell with googly eyes could become one of the year’s most heartfelt explorations of losing loved ones is beyond me. But with “Amazing Grace” playing in the background and the methodical rhythms of the movie, it offered a lot more than I was expecting. Sometimes the unassuming packages become all the more meaningful.