Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang,1952)
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Western film noir, shot in color, creates a unique atmosphere, but it's often too unique for its own good. Still, it's worth a peek to see how the story plays out involving mysterious cowboy Vern (Arthur Kennedy) who comes to the remote criminal hideout of Chuck-a-Luck, run by Altar (Marlene Dietrich). Vern has just busted out from jail Altar's lover Frenchy (Mel Ferrer), but as soon as they arrive, Vern becomes suspicious of some of the other outlaws there. There are a few visual flourishes but they are sometimes offset by weird acting and staging. Even so, this is definitely a cult flick.
Genghis Khan (Henry Levin,1965)
This flick is OK for little kids and undemanding action fans, but it plays out slightly better if you watch it for camp value. Omar Sharif plays Genghis Khan and Stephen Boyd is his archrival in trying to unite the Mongols. Then you have James Mason and Robert Morley both playing Chinese (!) characters. It's not bad enough to be a hoot but it's not really good enough to waste two hours on. There is a bit of spectacle here and there but it's mostly of the cardboard variety.
The Changeling (PeterMedak,1980)
This is one of the many supernatural thrillers which came out in the wake of
The Exorcist, and it's a pretty good ghost story. Composer George C.Scott loses his wife and daughter in a freak accident and tries to get away from things in an enormous house which turns out to be haunted. He decides to try to exorcise his personal demons by finding out what happened in that house. The film is often low-key and quiet, but eventually it uses loud sound effects almost as well as the classic
The Haunting (1963). The flick also has the scariest wheelchair in film history to go along with its other pleasures and mysteries.
The Swan (Charles Vidor,1956)
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This is mostly a low-key romantic comedy which works because of the charm and contrast of the three central charactersand actors: Grace Kelly as a beautiful "ice" princess who has no experience at love or romance, Alec Guinness as a stuffy Crown Prince who's looking for a wife, and Louis Jourdan as a tutor who's in love with Kelly and releases her hidden passions one night. The supporting cast (Estelle Windwood, Brian Aherne, Jesse Royce Landis, Agnes Moorehead) also contributes some laughs, but sometimes the film's simplicity seems to be swamped by the elaborate sets, costumes and the widescreen film process which makes a rather simple play get lost a bit on the big screen.
The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)
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Classic Hitchcock flick, the best one from his pre-Hollywood era, still has the joys of an archetypal mystery thriller laced with dark humor. It's not so much what happens but how it does which brings so much pleasure, and if my rating seems a bit low, it's probably because I've just seen it so many times, and it's been ripped off incessantly down through the years. It still has all the classic elements in place and has us pulling for the young woman (Margaret Lockwood) who knows that an old lady has disappeared from a train but nobody else claims to have seen her. At least young Michael Redgrave agrees to help her get to the bottom of things, and there's an almost rogues' gallery of supporting characters, including Charters (Basil Radford) and Caldicott (Naunton Wayne) who turned up in a few later British thrillers.
Secretary (Steven Shainberg, 2002)
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This is a pretty unique flick and I like it enough to probably give it
, but I can understand that some others might find it boring, uncomfortable and just plain weird. The subject matteri involves mental illness, self-abuse, dominant/submissive working and sexual relationships, harrassment, loneliness, and other serious subjects, but I find the film's saving grace the fact that even though it takes awhile to get there, it's actually a comedy! James Spader's vocal intonations and pauses are actually very funny, especially if you think of him as a younger version of William Shatner. Maggie Gyllenhaal is charming and brave as she's subjected to various strange, demeaning incidents but comes to find love within them. She's also brave in that she gets completely naked in the film. This is one I'm sure will divide people but it'll probably draw some kind of reaction from everyone.
La femme infidèle (Claude Chabrol,1969)
Chabrol creates another film where things are seemingly uneventful, but with that title, you already know what the "plot" is going to be, so what's left is to see how he tweaks his own form of Hitchcockian suspense here in the story of a seemingly happily-married couple (Stéphane Audran and Michel Bouquet). The husband notices a change in his wife's affections and her timetable which involves going into Paris every other day, so he hires a private detective who confirms the worst which is that she sees the same man (Maurice Ronet) on all her visits and she stays about two hours inside his flat each time he sees him. From here on, we watch the husband visit the lover and see how it all plays out from there on. This is one of the stronger Chabrol films in that it isn't as enigmatic as many of his others. We all see what happens and come to understand what it all means for everyone involved.
Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan,1947)
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Although this film talked about some taboos at the time, it probably won't strike some as anything too daring anymore, but even so, it was a little shocking for Sarah to hear the "N-word" here as well as a few other racial epithets. The film is still surprisingly entertaining and suspenseful though because it's very well-constructed-and-acted. Gregory Peck and John Garfield seem totally committed to their roles as a journalist posing as a Jew to find out about anti-Semitism and his best friend, a Jew. The female roles are all well-handled too, including Peck's girlfriend (Dorothy McGuire), his mom (Anne Revere), his Jewish secretary (June Havoc) and the fashion editor (Celeste Holm) who has her eyes on and cap set for Peck. Young Dean Stockwell contributes a nice turn too as Peck's son. Some people see this film as weaker and more "white bread" than a similar film the same year, (
Crossfire), while others don't like Kazan any more because of his involvement with HUAC, but looking at the film in isolation, it's still good and builds in power as it moves along.
Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)
I'll admit that I don't know anything about the graphic novel, but I'm not "reviewing" the novel. I can't explain it to you, but something about the beginning of the movie completely rubbed me the wrong way. The montage over the opening credits seemed to lavish a lot of money and F/X to explain to me that I was in an alternate universe, but I usually take all movies as an alternate universe. When the credits ended, I was already rebelling against it, thinking it was much ado about nothing, and trust me, I never have these kind of thoughts for movies of most any kind after about 10 minutes. Anyway, then the film started to actually introduce the characters and I found them to be completely uninvolving, so I scrunched down in my seat a bit and decided it was going to be a long haul of a movie.
Eventually, I got used to the characters, even if I never cared about most of them, but the film played out with some fun acknowledgements to the old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials, especially in the heroes' uniforms and modes of transportation (the "Archie"). On the other hand, the non-hero sides (the more human) of the characters didn't really strike me as interesting enough to be the focus of a movie, no matter how many there were and how many versions of them there were. However, Snyder's style and seeming love of the material did make the second half of the film play out more entertaining to me, so it's a mixed bag but a
. I'm going to shut up about it now because I'm just spinning my wheels.
War and Peace (King Vidor,1956)
This three-and-one-half-hour version recreates the novel in a sort of Cliffs Notes style. All the highlights are there, so the film is entertaining, although it has none of the dazzling spectacle and cinematic invention of Sergei Bondarchuk's massive 1967 Russian version which is one of the best films ever made. Of the huge cast, Audrey Hepburn stands out as Natasha, but that really is the best-written, juiciest role. Henry Fonda does a good job as the awkward Pierre although he seems to be miscast. Mel Ferrer is fine as Prince Andrei, although he's always going to be the least-emotional of the three characters and therefore the most enigmatically-incomplete. Director Vidor does film the balls, battle scenes and the torching of Moscow well, but the film just never quite ignites enough to turn it from something competent to something inspiring. I recommend it but I certainly think you should see the Bondarchuk version (discussed
here briefly) instead.
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. And for the chutzpah of attempting to mix thrills and ethical distillations in the first place.
) would have made a much better fist of Fear & Loathing.
