Beatty and Penn make ‘Mickey One’ an arty nightmare

May 22, 2013 By 1 Comment

By Mike Wilmington and Film Noir Blonde

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and  pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK 

“Mickey One” (1965, Arthur Penn). Friday, May 24, 12:30 a.m.  (9:30 p.m.)

In “Mickey One,” Warren Beatty plays a Chicago comic who has angered the mob.

The man on the run in “Mickey One,” Arthur Penn’s and Warren Beatty’s nightmare of a 1965 neo-noir, is a Chicago standup comedian  trapped in an urban world of disorientation and fear. It’s one of Beatty’s most offbeat roles: a smart-ass hipster Lenny Bruce type who’s  gotten on the mob’s list for  a transgression  that he doesn’t remember (that possibly doesn’t even exist) and now feels himself in danger every time he walks out on stage. Mickey is a prototypical film noir outsider, lost in the big city night, in a darkness interrupted by neon guideposts to Hell.

Donna Michelle

Around the terrified comedian is a gallery of bizarre characters who might have been assembled for some noirish Wonderland:  Hurd Hatfield (who once played Dorian Gray) as a devious club owner, Franchot Tone as Mickey’s elderly mentor, Alexandra Stewart as the girl who loves him (maybe), Playboy Playmate-of-the-Year Donna Michelle as the babe of babes, Teddy Hart as Mickey’s pint-size agent-manager, Jeff Corey as a club guy, and Kamatari Fujiwara (who was one of the two squabbling peasants in  Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress”) as a conceptual artist.

This neglected film, written by Alan M. Surgal, is one of the artiest and most experimental of all ‘60s black-and-white neo-noirs. And though Surgal’s script is pretentious to a fault, “Mickey One” is beautifully made, a classic of ‘60s razzle-dazzle film technique – often more reminiscent of  early ‘60s foreign art film style than anything out of the Hollywood mainstream.

The movie was stunningly photographed by Ghislain Cloquet, who shot some of the French film masterpieces of Alain Resnais (“Night and Fog”) and Robert Bresson (“Au Hasard Balthazar”).  And the picture has one of the finest jazz scores in the movies, written and orchestrated by Eddie Sauter and improvised by saxophone genius Stan Getz.

One thing “Mickey One” doesn’t have is funny jokes. Mickey’s act couldn’t make a hyena laugh. But maybe that’s the point. The next time Penn and Beatty got together, it was to make “Bonnie and Clyde“ (1967), which does have funny jokes, as well as  violence and beauty. Here, the director and his star may fail, but they fail grandly, with ambition, daring, style and images that stay in your head.

Wednesday, May 22

3:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m.): “The Blue Gardenia” (1953, Fritz Lang), Working girl Anne Baxter lets her guard down and gets mixed up in the murder of slimy Raymond Burr. (As the girls in “Chicago” say, “He had it coming.”)  The rest of the lineup includes Ann Sothern, Nat King Cole and George “Superman” Reeves. Not Lang’s best, but you won’t want to miss it anyway.

10:30 p.m. (7:30 p.m.): “The Outfit” (1973, John Flynn).  Here’s another adaptation of one of Donald Westlake’s (alias “Richard Stark’s”) ultra-hard-boiled “Parker” novels – the series that inspired “Point Blank.” This time, Robert Duvall plays the “Parker” character, and just as unstoppably as Lee Marvin did. Out to avenge his brother, aided (maybe) by Karen Black and Joe Don Baker, Duvall is up against villain Robert Ryan. The  stellar noir cast includes Timothy Carey, Marie Windsor, Jane Greer, Richard Jaeckel, Sheree North and Elisha Cook, Jr. The movie is underrated too. You’ll be surprised at how good it is – unless you look over that cast list again.

Saturday, May 25

4:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m.)  “Foreign Correspondent” (1940, Alfred Hitchcock). With Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, and George Sanders. Reviewed on FNB February 20, 2013.

Tuesday, May 28

8 p.m. (5 p.n.): “Hard Times” (1975, Walter Hill). Charles Bronson, James Coburn and the illicit world of back-alley, bare-knuckle fighting during the American Depression. (Bronson is the boxer, Coburn his manager.)  With Jill Ireland and Strother Martin. Tough stuff.

10 p.m. (7 p.m.): “Bullitt” (1968, Peter Yates). With Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Duvall. Reviewed on FNB October 27, 2012.

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The Noir File: Wilder’s dark favorite is an American nightmare

May 15, 2013 By 1 Comment

By Mike Wilmington and Film Noir Blonde

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

“Ace in the Hole” (1951, Billy Wilder). Friday, May 17, 8 p.m. (5 p.m.).

Kirk Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a star reporter exiled from his big-city paper.

In the Golden Age of Hollywood and film noir, no one was better than Kirk Douglas at playing anti heroes, heels and villains. In movies like “Champion,” “The Bad and the Beautiful,” “I Walk Alone” and “Out of the Past,” he channeled the amoral climber who knifes you with a smile, or steps on almost everyone on his way to the top. The best (or worst) of all Douglas’s movie heels is Chuck Tatum in Billy Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole” – a slick-operator star newspaper reporter who messes up, gets exiled from his big-city paper and is now stuck in Albuquerque, N.M., in a desert dead-end.

When Chuck learns of a local miner named Leo Mimosa trapped in a cave-in in a Native American holy area, he sees a chance to ratchet up the drama and revive his career. A master manipulator, Chuck talks Leo and his rescuers into taking a longer, more dangerous escape route, then plays the story to the hilt, planning to sell it to the big outlets back east. With Leo’s life on the line and the clock ticking, this master of hype and hoopla turns the story into a circus and the circus into a nightmare.

A master manipulator, Chuck ratchets up the drama in an effort to revive his career.

Chuck Tatum, brought to stinging life by Douglas, was the brainchild of Billy Wilder, who had just dissolved his decades-long writing partnership with Charles Brackett after their hit, “Sunset Blvd.” Walter Newman, who later wrote “The Man with the Golden Arm” and “Cat Ballou,” was one of Wilder’s new co-writers and, though they never collaborated again, Wilder must have liked some of what they did.

Many times, Wilder cited “Ace in the Hole” as one of his favorites among his films, “the runt of my litter” as he affectionately called it. The runt is one of the darkest of all Wilder’s films: a portrait of American society, culture and media, a ruthless exposé of Tatum and his fellow opportunists.

The more conservative Brackett (who had refused to work with Wilder on “Double Indemnity”) had been something of a brake on Billy’s cynicism, which is fully unleashed here. Perhaps Brackett had a point. Many critics and audiences in 1951 didn’t much care for the acrid darkness and lacerating social indictment of Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole,” which was such a flop that it had to be pulled and re-released as “The Big Carnival.”

It didn’t come to be regarded as a classic of American cinema and social criticism until years later. Maybe the picture was just too noir for ’50s moviegoers. But it’s not too noir for us.

Friday, May 17

3 p.m. (12 p.m.): “Where Danger Lives” (1953, John Farrow). Love on the run, with infatuated Bob Mitchum falling for dangerous Faith Domergue, and the two of them heading for Mexico. A standard but engrossing “femme fatale” noir, from the director of “The Big Clock.”

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Ace in the Hole” (1951, Billy Wilder). See PICK OF THE WEEK.

2 a.m. (11 p.m.): “Our Man in Havana” (1960, Carol Reed). The third of the three film thriller collaborations between writer Graham Greene and director Carol Reed. (The others are “The Third Man” and “The Fallen Idol.”) It’s also the least admired by critics, and the team’s only comedy, with Alec Guinness playing a British vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba inexplicably involved in a batty spy intrigue. The crack cast also includes Maureen O’Hara, Ralph Richardson, Ernie Kovacs, Noel Coward and Burl Ives.

Joan Crawford and Cliff Robertson star in “Autumn Leaves.”

4 a.m. (1 a.m.): “Autumn Leaves” (1956, Robert Aldrich.) With Joan Crawford, Cliff Robertson and Vera Miles. Reviewed on FNB December 4, 2012.

Sunday, May 19

12 p.m. (9 p.m.): “Johnny O’Clock” (1947, Robert Rossen). Rossen’s directorial debut: a solid noir with a gambling backdrop and a vintage tough Dick Powell performance.

6 p.m. (3 p.m.): “Leave Her to Heaven” (1945, John M. Stahl). With Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain and Vincent Price. Reviewed on FNB April 18, 2013.

3 p.m. (12 p.m.): “Night Must Fall” (1937, Richard Thorpe). Emlyn Williams’ famed suspense play about a seductive young psycho (Robert Montgomery) and his rich lady target (Dame May Whitty) is given a plush MGM treatment. With Rosalind Russell. [Read more...]

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‘Sightseers’ is more arduous slog than absurd journey

May 10, 2013 By 2 Comments

Sightseers/2012/IFC Films/89 min.

British horror director Ben Wheatley’s new film “Sightseers” has a brilliant comic premise: A frumpy couple takes a caravan holiday in Northern England to enjoy a little romance, see some historic sights and do a bit of writing. Chris (Steve Oram) is a wannabe author and Tina (Alice Lowe) is his muse, natch.

This idyll is inevitably interrupted by pesky people, i. e. fellow tourists, who grate on the pair’s nerves. After accidentally running down a loutish litterbug, Chris and Tina figure they might as well do away with other pests, posers and partiers.

Chris and Tina shift easily from annoying to absurdly amoral. And this dark setup is potentially entertaining – most of us have a story about obnoxious people we’ve met while traveling and really wish we hadn’t. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t find “Sightseers” very funny, mainly because the script (by Oram and Lowe) seems clumsy, and Chris and Tina’s clichéd relationship is overly manipulated.

I can’t escape the feeling that Wheatley, whose last film was “Kill List,” another tale of unpleasant people doing ghastly deeds, infuses his films with a sense of spontaneity, creepy atmosphere, a snide hipster vibe and not a whole lot else.

That said, I did enjoy the film’s final twist. If you find yourself in a misanthropic frame of mind, this movie could be a trip worth taking.

“Sightseers” opens today at Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema in New York and at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre in West LA.

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The Noir File: Widmark is unforgettable as Tommy Udo

May 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

By Mike Wilmington and Film Noir Blonde

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

Grinning gangster Tommy Udo was a career-defining role for Richard Widmark.

“Kiss of Death” (1947, dir. Henry Hathaway). Tuesday, May 14; 8 p.m. (5 p.m.). One of the most memorable, and scariest, of all film noir villains is Tommy Udo from “Kiss of Death,” as played by the young Richard Widmark. Tommy was a constantly grinning, giggling gunman with a pale, thin, deadly-looking face, topped by a trim fedora – a face and a chuckle that carried the promise of cold-blooded murder.

In “Kiss of Death” – another of director Henry Hathaway’s semi-true crime movies, this time co-scripted by the great Ben Hecht – Victor Mature plays Nick Bianco, an ex-crook trying to go straight, for his sweet wife Nettie (Coleen Gray). To escape his past, Nick becomes a mole recruited by the cops (including Brian Donlevy and Karl Malden) to infiltrate Udo’s mob and get the goods on this gangster. Udo falls for his new mob-mate, giggling, like a ton of bricks. Obviously, something very bad will happen when this psychopathic hood discovers that his new gun buddy is a traitor.

“Kiss of Death” is a classic, vintage Hollywood crime thriller, one of the film noirs that everyone has to see – to savor Hecht’s smart script and Hathaway’s taut direction, and to enjoy the terrific work of the entire killer cast and company. But mostly, you have to see it for Widmark. His Tommy Udo is an impersonation of pure evil so right-on that it almost freezes your blood to watch and hear him – and so convincing that a real-life member of the Mob, the notorious killer “Crazy Joey” Gallo, patterned his entire public personality after Widmark’s performance.

“Crazy Joey” Gallo

The role made Widmark a star, and, though he tried never to repeat it, and played mostly good guys for the rest of his career, he could never really get away from Tommy Udo and his pale, cold eyes, and what James Agee called his “falsetto baby talk, laced with tittering laughs.”

Tommy Udo is the last guy in the world you want to have his eye on you, the last guy whose laugh you want to hear on a dark street. And he’s the last guy you want to see standing behind a sick old lady, in a wheelchair, at the top of a staircase. Giggling.

Friday, May 10

6 a.m. (3 a.m.): “The Informer” (1935, John Ford). With Victor McLaglen, Preston Foster and Heather Angel. Reviewed on FNB December 12, 2012.

11 p.m. (8 p.m.): “Under Capricorn” (1949, Alfred Hitchcock). With Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten and Margaret Leighton. Reviewed on FNB November 17, 2012. [Read more...]

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French thriller ‘In the House’ opens intimate, mysterious doors

April 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment

In the House/2012/Mandarin Cinéma, Cohen Media Group/ 105 min.

“In the House,” a new thriller by François Ozon, made me think of this quotation from Alfred Hitchcock: “I’m a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.”

In Ozon’s story-within-a-story film, there are two writers – a 16-year-old student named Claude (Ernst Umhauer), precocious and a bit of a pretty boy, and jaded, middle-aged Germain (Fabrice Luchini). With one poorly received novel under his belt, Germain now teaches in a French high school and struggles to endure his students’ mediocre essays.

But his passion for teaching is reignited when he reads some of Claude’s writing –personal, thoughtful and fresh – and certainly far more promising than the work his classmates produce. Germain shares his enthusiasm with his wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) when he brings the assignments home at the end of the day and discusses them with her.

Claude has picked a provocative topic: a voyeuristic account of a classmate’s everyday home life, cozy and comfy, unlike Claude’s apparently more deprived situation. By tutoring Rapha (Bastien Ughetto), Claude gains up-close access to the family, observing their seeming contentment as well as sensing the underlying frustrations of Rapha’s sexy and mysterious mom (Emmanuelle Seigner) and his easygoing, jocular dad (Denis Ménochet).

Against his better judgment, Germain encourages and evaluates Claude’s literary efforts, even though he knows it is a risky experiment. Germain lectures him on the process of writing, the purpose of literature. As Claude’s creative muscle builds, the line between reality and fantasy is blurred, and the stakes are gradually, dangerously raised for all the players in this riveting domestic drama.

I am always curious about the work of director-writer François Ozon, perhaps most famous for “Potiche,” “Swimming Pool,” and “8 Women.” He has an easy touch with bold subject matter, a knack for humor (whether deadpan, dark or absurd) and a talent for making well paced, well acted thrillers that reflect his inventive, sometime s cheeky, vision while paying subtle homage to old-school suspense masters like Hitchcock, Henri-Georges Clouzot and Claude Chabrol.

Where Ozon falters slightly with “In the House” is in the movie’s visuals. Perhaps because it’s based on Juan Mayorga’s play, “The Boy in the Last Row,” Ozon’s version feels a bit too theatrical and stagebound. That said, telling the tales are terrific actors (Luchini, Scott Thomas and Seigner in particular). And, driving the suspense, Claude’s true motivation remains intriguingly elusive throughout.

“In the House” opened Friday in New York and LA at the Landmark.

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The Noir File: Gene Tierney is the deadliest of femmes fatales in ‘Leave Her to Heaven’

April 18, 2013 By 4 Comments

By Mike Wilmington and Film Noir Blonde

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir and neo-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

Gene Tierney exudes cool menace in “Leave Her to Heaven.”

“Leave Her to Heaven” (1945, John M. Stahl). Monday, April 22, 10 p.m. (7 p.m.).

What’s the most important thing a woman can give to a man? Staggering beauty, brains and breeding? Check, check, check. Sanity, however, does not always make the list, at least in the case of Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) and Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde), the principal characters in “Leave Her to Heaven.” The two meet on a train and marry, tad hastily. Richard soon discovers that beneath his wife’s exquisite surface is a green-eyed monster with murder on her mind.

John M. Stahl’s stylish adaptation of Ben Ames Williams’ best-selling novel of romance and suspense is one of the most unusual of all ’40’s film noirs. For one thing, it isn’t photographed in expressionistic black and white, but in gorgeous color, all the better to set off Tieney’s delicate beauty and that of Jeanne Crain, the gal Richard mistakenly didn’t marry. It takes place not in the city, but in a pastoral lake home, surrounded by green trees and blue sky. Ellen comes from an affluent family; Richard is a writer.

Still, “Leave Her to Heaven” does boast a classic film noir plot and one of the supreme movie femme fatales who’s not the person you want standing behind you on a high staircase, with no witnesses. (With Vincent Price.)

James Dean

Friday, April 19

1:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m.): “Blackboard Jungle” (1955, Richard Brooks). A movie/pop culture trail-blazer, adapted by writer-director Brooks (“In Cold Blood”) from Evan Hunter’s novel of New York City juvenile delinquency. Glenn Ford is the dedicated new teacher, Anne Francis is his supportive wife, Louis Calhern is the faculty snob and Richard Kiley is the enthusiastic fellow teacher who gets his vintage jazz record collection smashed by his students. Among the juveniles, a stellar bunch, Vic Morrow is the bad kid, Sidney Poitier is the good kid and Paul Mazursky is a creepy little hood. The credits song was the smashing debut of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock.”

3:15 p.m. (12:15 p.m.): “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955, Nicholas Ray). James Dean became the movies’ all-time romantic teen-age icon when he pulled on his red jacket and played a confused knife-wielding kid named Jim Stark in this lyrical and violent drama of high school crime in the L. A. suburbs. Natalie Wood as Judy and Sal Mineo as Plato make up the rest of the movie’s main threesome of outsiders, the teen hoods include Corey Allen as Buzz, Dennis Hooper as Moose and Jim Backus is the father whom Jim wants to stand up for him. In 1955, Nick Ray’s most famous film was adored by American teenagers and by French intellectual cinephiles and cineastes. It still plays like a fever dream of movie love and violence.

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “His Girl Friday” (1940, Howard Hawks). With Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell and Ralph Bellamy.

Saturday, April 20

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Freaks” (1932, Tod Browning). With Olga Baclanova, Harry Earles and Wallace Ford.

Jessica Rabbit

Sunday, April 21

10 a.m. (7 a.m.); “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988, Robert Zemeckis & Richard Williams). If Raymond Chandler and Chuck Jones had ever sat down together over a few beers, this is what they might have come up with: a fantastic amalgam of classic private eye mystery and brilliant razzle-dazzle Looney Tunes cartoonery – undoubtedly the greatest animated film noir feature ever made. The movie creates an alternate world and a different 1947 Los Angeles, where humans and cartoons co-exist.

Most of the noir detective story archetypes are here – the tough shamus (Bob Hoskins as Eddie Valiant), the murder suspect (Charles Fleischer as long-eared fugitive Roger Rabbit), the femme fatale (Kathleen Turner as cartoon bombshell Jessica Rabbit), the suspicious boss (Stubby Kaye as studio head Marvin Acme) and the formidable lawman (Christopher Lloyd as Judge Doom).

These characters then wonderfully rub elbows with the royalty of cartoondom: the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Betty Boop. The live action and animated stuff are expertly blended and the result is classic neo-noir for the nostalgic and the young at heart. It’s an absolute detecto-delight.

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Neo-noirs now playing: ‘Trance,’ ‘The Company You Keep,’ ‘Room 237,’ ‘The Place Beyond the Pines,’ ‘Spring Breakers’

April 5, 2013 By 2 Comments

By Michael Wilmington and Film Noir Blonde

The Noir City film fest starts tonight at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Additionally, Joanna Lancaster, Susie Lancaster, actor Ed Lauter and author James Naremore will attend tonight’s screening of a new print of “Sweet Smell of Success” at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood.

And in case you’re more of a full-color fan, there are a several interesting neo-noir titles opening this weekend and currently playing in Los Angeles theaters. (Check your local listings for showtimes.)

Trance/2013/Fox Searchlight Pictures/101 min.

Danny Boyle’s new movie “Trance” begins with the theft of a world-famous painting (Francisco Goya’s spooky “Witches in the Air”) from a London auction in mid-sale. It continues through all kinds of slick neo-noir alleys and crannies of bloody gangsterism and psychological mystery, and ends with an unraveling that twists and turns, and changes a lot of what went before.

What seems to be happening at first is a clockwork heist of the painting, complete with smoke bombs and switcheroos, by a brutal but stylish gang led by the fashionable Frank (French star Vincent Cassel). One of the auction house’s employees, Simon (James McAvoy), tries to save the painting by encasing and running off with it. (Or does he?). And he’s stopped and cracked on the head by Frank. (Or is he?)

Soon we discover that Simon is part of the caper, that the painting has now disappeared and that, because of the head-crack, Simon hasn’t the foggiest where it is. So Frank hires a luscious and oh-so-smart American hypnotherapist named Elizabeth (played by Rosario Dawson), to unlock the priceless secret in Simon’s mind, which she confidently tries to do. (Or does she?)

Boyle is rejoined here by his first screenwriter John Hodge (of “Shallow Grave” and “Trainspotting”), along with Joe Ahearne, who wrote (and directed) the 2001 TV film, also called “Trance,” on which this “Trance” is based. Like “Shallow Grave,” there’s a touch of meanness about the movie along with a roller-coaster speed, which can slightly discombobulate and even alienate you, while still giving you a dependably thrilling ride.

The actors are all top-chop and compellingly neo-noirish, including the hypnotic Dawson, the spellbound McAvoy, all the heavies and especially Cassel. The film, shot by Boyle’s usual camera-mate Anthony Dod Mantle, is full of glowing colors, helter-skelter action, pungent villains and sumptuous sights – the most sumptuous of which is the beautiful and brainy Ms. Dawson. As they said in the heyday of ’40s noir when a real femme fatale walked by, hubba hubba.

The Company You Keep/2012/Sony Pictures Classics/125 min.

“The Company You Keep,” a political thriller based on a Neil Gordon novel, is Robert Redford’s ninth film as a director and his first as both actor and director since 2007’s “Lions for Lambs.” Contemplative, nostalgic and insightful, “Company” satisfies, despite being a little short on suspense.

He plays Jim Grant, a public-interest lawyer and single father, who lives a quiet life in a suburb of Albany, New York. Grant’s peaceful existence is shaken up when an ambitious reporter named Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) reveals that Grant is a former Weather Underground activist wanted for murder.

Grant must leave his daughter behind as he leaves Albany to find the person who can clear his name. As Grant backtracks through his past associations and across the country, he’s pursued by the FBI and by Shepard, eagerly digging for more details to use in his next story. Grant has more than one secret, natch.

The tension isn’t as strong as it needs to be in a thriller and the denouement, in Michigan’s upper peninsula, seems a bit tacked on – something we’ve seen many times before. But, for me, those were minor quibbles. Redford creates an unforgettable mood of wistfulness and regret, of love lost and found.

He elicits memorable performances from an outstanding cast, which includes Julie Christie, Sam Elliott, Brendan Gleeson, Terrence Howard, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick, Brit Marling, Stanley Tucci, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper and Susan Sarandon. Shot by Adriano Goldman, the naturalistic cinematography and striking compositions serve the story well.

“Dissent can be dicey,” says Sarandon’s character. In “Company,” Redford takes a nuanced look at a dicey chapter of American history.

Room 237/2012/IFC Midnight/102 min.

No matter how many times you’ve seen Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980), it’s unlikely you’ve delved into its subtext and symbols, and dissected its meaning(s) to the extent that the talking heads have in a new doc called “Room 237.”

Director Rodney Ascher puts the spotlight on die-hard fan/theorists who have spent years studying this mesmerizing, iconic yet flawed film starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd.

These fans (ordinary folk as opposed to industry-insiders, authors, academics or other experts) offer extensive and elaborate arguments for their interpretations, which range from the movie being a metaphor for genocide to proof that Kubrick faked the Apollo moon landings footage.

You may walk out believing none of the theories, but the energy, enthusiasm and imagination of these diligent decoders is great fun from start to finish.

The Place Beyond the Pines/2012/Focus Features/140 min.

“The Place Beyond the Pines” is the Iroquois Indian phrase for Schenectady, New York. Schenectady is where this madly ambitious neo-noir – about father and sons, motorcycles and bank robberies, and tragic destiny – takes place and where the movie was shot, super-documentary style, by director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine”) and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (“Hunger” and “Shame”).

Watching the collision between an outlaw and a cop, and its aftermath, is often riveting. The cast, an unusually good one, is topped by Ryan Gosling (as a carnival motorcyclist turned bank robber) and Bradley Cooper (as the cop). Eva Mendes, Rose Byrne and Ray Liotta are supporting players.

It’s a terrific-looking film. Cianfrance and Bobbitt shot the movie in a kind of coldly sunny blur of metallic speed and near-constant movement that starts out with a five-minute-long tracking shot.

“The Place behind the Pines,” unlike most big-star Hollywood vehicles, is something the people involved obviously cared about, that they wanted to be great. And it had a chance. The problem is the third act, which is by far the weakest. The dramatic devices are too easy to spot, the resolution too pat and some of the scenes too hard to swallow.

Spring Breakers/2012/A24/94 min.

Harmony Korine’s movies – up to and including his latest, “Spring Breakers” – are mostly outlaw pictures and weirdo comedies about people who don’t want to grow up, or shouldn’t have to: kids, crooks, artists. “Spring Breakers” is about four college girls who take off for collegiate revels in Tampa, Fla., and begin to descend into Hell.

It may be the apotheosis or culmination of all the Korines: a picture that starts off, as many have noted, like an arty “Girls Gone Wild” video, inflated to Hieronymus Boschian or Pieter Brughelian beach party proportions, and ends up doing a riff on the Al Pacino-Brian De Palma 1983 “Scarface,” mashed up into “Charlie’s Angels” gone homicidal.

It’s a sometimes fascinatingly dumb movie, about fascinatingly dumb people doing fascinatingly dumb things. The story makes absolutely no sense. But some of “Spring Breakers” is great – namely the shimmering, sun struck , stunning cinematography (part of the movie was shot quasi-verité at an actual spring break) by Belgian/French maestro Benoit Debie. And there’s the amazingly entertaining gangsta-pranksta performance by James Franco. His brain-fried hip-hop-druggie, Alien, who calls his bed an art piece and plays piano and AK47s, is a triumph of charismatic dopiness and rebel posturing.

The ending is beyond ridiculous and not funny enough to save things. The four femme stars (Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) could have used better parts and better lines, but what the hell? The movie’s credibility vanishes after the restaurant robbery scene anyway, which is shot flashily, in a “Gun Crazy”-style single take.”

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The Noir File: Marilyn, Jack and Tony: Still the best threesome in Billy Wilder’s classic ‘Some Like It Hot’

February 27, 2013 By 2 Comments

By Michael Wilmington & Film Noir Blonde

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir, sort of noir and pre-noir on cable TV. All movies below are from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon star in this noir comedy.

“Some Like It Hot” (1959, Billy Wilder). Saturday, March 2, 1:15 p.m. (10:15 a.m.)

The place: Chicago. The color: a film noirish black and white. The caliber: 45. The proof: 90. The time: 1929, the Capone Era and the Roaring Twenties, roaring their loudest. We’re watching “Some Like It Hot” and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are playing Joe and Jerry: two talented but threadbare Chicago jazz musicians working in a speak-easy fronted as a funeral parlor. Joe, who plays saxophone, is a smoothie and a champ ladies’ man. Jerry is your classic Jack Lemmon schnook, with a couple of kinks thrown in.

Curtis and Monroe on the beach, filmed at San Diego’s  Hotel del Coronado.

After getting tossed out of their speak-easy band jobs by a police raid and accidentally witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (ordered by their ex-employer, George Raft as natty gangster Spats Colombo), they flee to Miami. They’re chased by the gangsters and the cops (Pat O’Brien as Detective Mulligan) but the guys are disguised as Josephine and Daphne, musicians in an all-female jazz orchestra.

The star of Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators, songbird and ukulele player Sugar Kane, is the Marilyn Monroe of our dreams. Sugar has a weakness for saxophone players. Josephine and Daphne have a weakness, period. Director Billy Wilder, who made lots of gay jokes in his time, deliberately keeps his two cross-dressing stars straight.

Read the full review here.

Wednesday, Feb. 27

10 p.m. (7 p.m.): “The Third Man” (1949, Carol Reed). With Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews, Neo Noir Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Noir File: Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray star in the all-time great film noir: ‘Double Indemnity’

February 20, 2013 By 2 Comments

By Michael Wilmington & Film Noir Blonde

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir, sort of noir and pre-noir on cable TV. All movies below are from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck) figures that having Walter (Fred MacMurray) get rid of her husband will be far more cost-effective than hiring a divorce lawyer.

“Double Indemnity” (1944, Billy Wilder). Thursday, Feb. 21, 8 p.m. (5 p.m.).

She’s got a plan, she just needs a man. And that’s a welcome challenge for a femme fatale, especially one with an ankle bracelet.

In Billy Wilder’s film noir masterpiece, “Double Indemnity,” from 1944 Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) wants out of her marriage to rich, grumpy oldster, Mr. Dietrichson (Tom Powers). For Phyllis, seducing a new guy to help make hubs disappear is so much more cost-effective than hiring a divorce lawyer. A smart insurance man is even better. Along comes Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) trying to sell a policy, just as Phyllis finishes a session of sunbathing, wearing an ankle bracelet and not much more. That’s about as much bait as Walter needs. Read the full FNB review here.

Thursday, Feb. 21

3:45 p.m. (12:45 pm): “The Long Voyage Home” (1940, John Ford). Superb film noir cinematography by the matchless Gregg Toland (“Citizen Kane”) graces this dark, moody John Ford-Dudley Nichols adaptation of four of Eugene O’Neill’s great, gloomy sea plays. The themes and mood are noir too. With Thomas Mitchell, Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, Mildred Natwick and John Wayne – who always called “The Long Voyage Home” one of his favorite films.

5:45 p.m. (2:45 p.m.): “Foreign Correspondent” (1940, Alfred Hitchcock). After “Rebecca,” his Oscar-winning 1940 American debut, Alfred Hitchcock’s second Hollywood movie was more truly Hitchcockian. It’s an ingeniously crafted spy melodrama, scripted by Charles Bennett, Joan Harrison and (uncredited) Ben Hecht. Joel McCrea plays a foreign correspondent who gets enmeshed in pre-WW2 intrigue; co-starring Laraine Day, George Sanders, Edmund Gwenn and Robert Benchley. This very anti-Nazi picture was intended to encourage the U.S.’s entrance into the war, to help rescue Hitch’s British countrymen, and it probably did. It’s also a corking Hitchcock spy thriller in the “39 Steps”-”Lady Vanishes” tradition.

Saturday, Feb. 23

1:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m.): “Anatomy of a Murder” (1959, Otto Preminger). With James Stewart, Lee Remick and Ben Gazzara. Reviewed in FNB March 14, 2012

“On the Waterfront” won eight Oscars.

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “On the Waterfront” (1954, Elia Kazan). One of the great ’50s American social dramas is also one of the great ’50s film noirs, with director Elia Kazan, screenwriter Budd Schulberg and cinematographer Boris Kaufman giving us a two-fisted, beautifully shot and acted drama of a corrupt labor union gang. The star is Marlon Brando, as the slightly punchy, fight-scarred ex-boxer and dockworker Terry Malloy (Brando’s greatest performance), whose brother Charley (Rod Steiger) is a mouthpiece for the crooked union run by mobster Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). Terry has to decide whether he’ll rat out all the rats to a government investigating committee – exposing the thugs who killed the dockworker father of Edie (Eva Marie Saint) with whom Terry has fallen in love.

All the actors above were nominated for Oscars. (Brando and Saint won, along with Kazan, Schulberg, composer Leonard Bernstein and the movie). Also a nominee was supporting actor Karl Malden as the fighting pro-worker priest, Father Barry. And, in addition to the film’s many prizes, several generations of actors all wanted passionately to be like Brando and to play a scene like the one in “On the Waterfront,” acted with Steiger in a taxicab, where Terry says, heart-rendingly: “Charley, Charley, you don’t understand, I coulda had class….I coulda been a contender.” They never matched that scene, and neither did Brando.

10 p.m. (7 p.m.): “The Harder They Fall” (1956, Mark Robson). Humphrey Bogart’s last movie, and a good one. He’s a respected sports reporter turned unrespectable publicist, hired by a crooked boxing promoter (Rod Steiger) to bilk the public and exploit a huge but naive and ill-skilled South American boxer, Toro Moreno (Mike Lane). Based on a book by boxing aficionado Budd Schulberg.

Jack Nicholson

4:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m.): “The Last Detail” (1973, Hal Ashby). Jack Nicholson gave one of his best performances as “Bad Ass” Buddusky, an astonishingly foul-mouthed and cynical Navy lifer who pulls guard duty and has to escort a hapless Navy thief named Meadows (Randy Quaid) to eight years of hard time at Leavenworth. Bad Ass decides (unwisely) to let the kid live a little along the way. One of director Hal Ashby’s best movies, and one of Robert (“Chinatown”) Towne’s greatest scripts, adapted from a novel by Navy man Darryl Ponicsan.

Sunday, Feb. 24

2:30 a.m. (11:30 p.m.): “Midnight Express” (1978, Alan Parker). Oliver Stone wrote the no-punches-pulled screenplay for this searing Alan Parker-directed biographical thriller about real-life American tourist/smuggler Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) and his hellish times in a Turkish prison. With John Hurt and frequent jailbird (in this column at least) Randy Quaid.

Filed Under: Classic Noir Reviews, Neo Noir Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Stylish, seductive ‘Side Effects’ intrigues, doesn’t fully satisfy

February 8, 2013 By 2 Comments

Side Effects/2012/Open Road/106 mins.

Steven Soderbergh’s provocative new thriller, “Side Effects” is drawing much buzz. Glossy, intelligent and compelling, with an A-list cast, it’s part mystery, part exposé, part strangely subdued melodrama that’s played out among good-looking, affluent people, all of whom are in some way affected by the use of prescription medicine. “One pill can change your life,” says the movie’s tagline.

The movie opens with a shot of a New York apartment building; inside one unit is a bloody crime scene. Then we flashback several months before to another pivotal moment – the flat’s owners Emily and Martin Taylor (Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum) are reunited after Martin is released from a four-year prison sentence he received for insider trading. The two try to rebuild their lives, but it’s an uphill struggle.

Emily suffers from depression and, after a failed suicide attempt, she agrees to take an antidepressant prescribed by a kind, ambitious doctor named Jonathan Banks (Jude Law). When her symptoms don’t improve, Dr. Banks suggests a new drug, one that turns out to have dire results for the Taylors as well as for Banks and his wife (Vinessa Shaw).

And as Emily grapples with the consequences of committing a crime she doesn’t remember, Banks probes ever more obsessively into her past, specifically her psychiatric treatment by Dr. Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones), icy and ultra-competent with an answer for everything.

Though at times “Side Effects” is a little hard to follow and perhaps awkwardly plotted, it’s well directed and never boring. There’s a lot going on and the powerful final twist upends everything we thought we knew about the principals.

“I wanted to write a noir-style thriller that took the audience in and spun it around, like ‘Double Indemnity’ or ‘Body Heat,’ set in the world of psychopharmacology,” says screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (“Contagion”).

Enjoyment of the movie may hinge on this factor: knowledge of these superficially interesting characters never develops into caring about them – they’re not sympathetic nor are they entertaining in their badness. For me, that made a difference – Rooney Mara’s character in particular struck me as more than a little odious, a woman with zero redeeming features.

Also, the insistently low-key emotional tone (almost as if the film itself had popped a Prozac) feels unsatisfying, given the high stakes of the story. But perhaps that was exactly Soderbergh’s intent. In a society that places a premium on quick fixes, instant answers and easy panaceas, it stands to reason that we’re comfortably numb more than often than we like to acknowledge.

“Side Effects” opens today nationwide.

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