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Victim of The Night




Mystery Street - This is a bona fide trailblazer on several fronts. First off is the lead character being Hispanic and secondly he isn't playing a gigolo or a bullfighter. In this case it's Peter Morales (Ricardo Montalban), a Detective Lieutenant with the Massachusetts State Police. The movie does cheat a little by making him Portuguese, which I suppose was to make it more palatable to movie goers in 1950. The other innovative plot component is the integration of Forensic science decades before it became such a wildly popular piece of pop culture.

Morales is assigned the case when skeletal remains are discovered on a beach. In a prologue the remains are shown to be Vivian Heldon, a bar girl who had ended up pregnant by her married lover and was attempting to blackmail him. In order to confront her lover in person she ends up stealing the car of Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson), a guy she picks up at her place of work. She is then promptly shot and killed by her unidentified paramour. Shanway lies and reports it had been stolen from in front of the hospital where his wife had just suffered a miscarriage. The police quickly turn their attention towards him as a person of interest.

Morales consults with forensics specialist Dr. McAdoo (Bruce Bennett) at Harvard Medical School to try and find out as much as possible about the bones. McAdoo proves to be invaluable and soon determines the gender, approximate age and the victims expectant condition. In the meantime the dead woman's avaricious landlady, Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester) has withheld valuable information from the police regarding the identity of the wealthy and married killer in order to try and cash in.

This was very much a police procedural with each step of the investigation laid out methodically. McAdoo's insights into the case might be considered commonplace these days but in 1950 this was cutting edge stuff. It all adds up to a fascinating noir mystery with a superlative cast and a charismatic and self-possessed protagonist in Montalban's Pete Morales.

90/100
Yeah ya right!



Sliding Doors (1998)



I ought to take a look at this. Don’t think I’ve ever seen it though I’ve heard of it.
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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.





Not as good as I remember it, but that’s ok.

Did any of these people have a job? Why did Carrie keep coming to England? For what purpose?





My Fair Lady, 1964

Eliza (Audrey Hepburn) is a poor flower-girl on the streets of London, who one day comes to the attention of phonetics specialist Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). In conversation with new friend Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White), Higgins brags that he could transform Eliza into a lady just with the power of refining her language. The two butt heads as Higgins is determined to pass Eliza off as upper class in even the most elite society.

Sometimes a film leaves me feeling so torn--with both extreme love and extreme loathing for elements of it--and this is exactly such a case.

There are so many amazing strengths to this film. The costume design is absolutely amazing, and it pairs with set decoration that equally sumptuous. The outfits are breathtaking, and my favorite sequence by far was the one that takes place at a racetrack, where the use of black and white in both the costuming and the set took on almost an abstract quality. There is an open, theatrical quality to the sets, and at times the film looks more like a painting than a moving picture. When you add in some excellent choreography and staging--such as the wealthy people watching the horse race with absolutely no emotion--it feels truly next level.

The music is also really solid. At last, I know where the tune "With a little bit" that has haunted my brain for 30 years came from. Many of the songs are very memorable, and I have to give props for some of the more bold slant rhymes, like rhyming "Budapest" and "ruder pest".

The story itself, from Shaw's play and something I've also seen in Pygmalion, is engaging. It raises a lot of interesting questions about social hierarchy and how elements of someone's life outside of their control--like the way they have learned to speak--can have a tremendous impact on their outlook in life. The film keenly observes the way that Eliza becomes stranded between two worlds as she takes on the appearance of someone raised in wealth but doesn't have the life experience. One of the best parts of the film (well, the play and also the earlier film) is when Eliza has a mannered conversation with some wealthy race attendees . . . but ends up delivering a story of the death of her drunken aunt, remarking repeatedly on the mysterious disappearance of said aunt's new straw hat.

There were two things that really dinged the film for me, one was more minor, but one was much more significant.

The more minor complaint was that I just wasn't into the speak-singing that Harrison did through the whole film. I can see this totally not bothering many people, but it just sort of irked me every time.

But the bigger complaint, and one that kind of soured the film for me, was the way that it revises Shaw's ending to the story. Now, I've already been through this particular mourning, because Pygmalion did the exact same thing. And would a major big-budget production have the guts to actually show a woman exiting an unhealthy relationship? Of course not! He really loves her, guys! Or, I mean, he's "gotten used to her face."

It's just trash, I'm sorry but it is. Eliza, in the final act of the film, is finally able to stand up to Higgins--the man who has verbally and physically abused her--and then he pulls the incredibly manipulative tactic of saying "Oh, well now that you've stood up for yourself I find you attractive!". She QUITE RIGHTLY smiles at him in derision and walks out on him. . . . for an hour or so. The entire point of the character arc for Eliza is that she finally achieves autonomy, having both the drive and now the socially-acceptable exterior to survive on her own. But the film is afraid to let her have this autonomy for more than about 10 minutes of run time. What only makes it all worse is that Eliza has a very nice suitor (a young Jeremy Brett, SWOON!) who, you know, isn't 20 years older than she is. Her vision is to work in a flower shop and be married to him and it's such an act of cowardice that the film has to pull a hard right turn from this ending.

Eliza comes back to him because . . . ? The film makes a big to-do about how sad Higgins is that Eliza is gone, but he is actively disrespectful toward her. (His argument that he's disrespectful to everyone and thus practices equality falls incredibly flat for me, especially when it seems that he never says anything derogatory to many of the other characters but unendingly calls Eliza "baggage" or a "hussy" or a "crushed cabbage leaf"). His song about how we wishes women were more like men is just baffling. It's increasingly clear that he wants Eliza around because he's used to her and she's a part of his routine that makes his life easier. I found all of his remarks to and about her in the last act deeply unromantic, and I felt increasingly annoyed knowing that the hand of the Hollywood studio was going to send her right back into his arms. Yes, this was three paragraphs about how much I hate the ending, but for me it is a tremendous fail and it sinks the last 20 minutes.

If the film had the guts to stick with the original ending, this would probably be a near perfect score for me. But as it neuters one of the most powerful dynamics of the play, it's relegated to "eh" status for me. I can't imagine watching it again.




I forgot the opening line.

By 20th Century Fox - Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52043733

A Cure for Wellness - (2016)

I enjoyed watching A Cure for Wellness but I didn't walk away from it thinking I'd seen a really great film. It doesn't come close to The Ring as far as Gore Verbinski horror goes, but it has plenty of visual flourish and hooks you in with it's 200 year-old set-up story of a wealthy baron keeping his bloodline alive by marrying his ill sister, renouncing the church and performing medical experiments on the peasants. The peasants ended up getting their revenge, and the property of the old baron has been re-defined as a 'Wellness Spa' where clients only seem to get sicker and sicker but never leave. Business whizz-kid Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) is sent to retrieve a colleague, but ends up stuck there himself. A mysterious young girl and constant swarms of eels (and the occasional moose) set him on a course to discover what the hell is going on there. Depending on your outlook, the inventive shots that keep on creeping up will either draw too much attention to themselves or make things more interesting. Or both. I thought that perhaps the film gave too much away by it's conclusion - the mystery was my main source of enjoyment - but this is certainly watchable without being terrifying. With DeHaan looking a bit like a poor-man's Leonardo DiCaprio, you get a feel during the whole film that you're watching Shutter Island in an alternate universe.

7/10
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Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)



Yup def, thought it was a nice watch dehaans was great. Has he done any other good flicks?
Well, a lot of people liked Chronicle...



On Sunday evening, November 28th, and on Wednesday evening, December 1st, I attended both evening screenings of the 60th Anniversary screening of the original 1961 film version of West Side Story in a theatre in Boston, MA, which is a stone's throw from where I live. The movie was shown on a huge, wide screen, the print was absolutely pristine, and the soundtrack super! It was so refreshing, that I give my whole experience, and that of my friends who came to see the movie with me, a ten rating. Excellent evenings! I was so happy!
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Power Of The Dog- 9/10

Nice movie but the twist at the end was very predictable







SF = Z



[Snooze Factor Ratings]:
Z = didn't nod off at all
Zz = nearly nodded off but managed to stay alert
Zzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed
Zzzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed but nodded off again at the same point and therefore needed to go back a number of times before I got through it...
Zzzzz = nodded off and missed some or the rest of the film but was not interested enough to go back over it



God Told Me To, 1976 (A)

A thriller that opens with a man shooting dozens of civilians from a water tower, claiming God told him to. The movie follows a detective's quest to make sense of the event, and a succession of other events that all seem related to it.

Great movie. A sort of fast-paced slow-burn thriller, if you will. Things keep happening, with next to no downtime. Every minute is put to use. It's difficult to talk about it without spoiling anything, but I would definitely recommend it.