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I forgot the opening line.

By Studio and or Graphic Artist - Can be obtained from film's distributor., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61253230

The Peanut Butter Falcon - (2019)

This is one of those films for me where the final scene upset the apple cart, making it harder for me to encapsulate the whole thing with an easy rating to send it down a river with. I'd enjoyed the first 99.9% of the movie, and got onboard after watching Shia LaBeouf in Honey Boy, noticing just how good his performance was in that which tempered a natural hatred I have for him (and any film he might appear in.) The whole premise of his struggling fisherman coming across a guy with Down's Syndrome who has escaped from his care center and bonding with him sounds like it might be a little too sweet, but their journey on the water (and off) is well handled. I really got into it. There's added context with Zack Gottsagen, who has had other film roles with what has to be a career limiting disability, playing Zak as a wrestling lover wanting to connect with his personal hero, the Salt Water Redneck who is played by Thomas Haden Church - an actor I'm always happy to see. Then we get one of those abrupt endings, which felt like the movie version of speed reading the final stretch. 20 minutes of movie in 2 minutes. That left me a little cold, but overall I really enjoyed watching The Peanut Butter Falcon last night.

6/10
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6.5/10


It was OK. There's too much to keep track of in the MCU now. Too many universes, too many characters, too many ultimate ontological boundaries / foundations that are tossed away in the next installment (like Infinity Stones deposited into a bureaucrat's desk).

This film was running ahead of itself like a JJ Abrams film (action running just faster than the plot holes
WARNING: "Secrets!!!" spoilers below
EX: Why doesn't Wands just let America send her the 'verse of her choice? Well, Wanda's kids might get sick despite her ridiculous magical powers, so "No!" she will have to kill America and take all the power for herself.
). Big, dumb, and fast. Hmm, we need to do a little expo/mutual understanding by having our new friends share memories. How might we do that?

I love Bruce Campbell and the Evil Dead nods. But this felt more like watching a Disney+ installment or The Boys than a Marvel film of the highest caliber.





The Shrink Next Door (2021)

So going through my Apple trial we come across an eight episode miniseries called The Shrink Next Door. It tells the story of a pair of jewish men that starts in 1982 and runs through to 2021. What I'm seeing from these Apple shows is that some of them would have been better suited as movies and less as TV series as the story is somewhat padded.

This is an interesting performance from Will Ferrell, he kind of shoots for the fences in a dramatic role but he misses the mark. Paul Rudd's character is more the focus of the story and has more interesting parts to his character, but we only get glimpses of his mental problems. It's one of those series that doesn't dive deep enough into the mental issues, the crimes, or the psychology but instead gives the actors room to play around.

The series is very much a mixed bag, the humor pretty much falls flat but the dark moments are really good. This is a film that touches on the aftermath of the abuse which you don't really see in most films/TV series. The showrunner tried to walk a fine line and failed which keeps this from being a classic. Still I enjoyed it




Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.

9 Bullets (Gigi Gaston, 2022)
5/10
Murder on Diamond Row (William K. Howard, 1937)
6/10
Bedtime Story (Ralph Levy, 1964)
+ 6.5/10
X (Ti West, 2022)
+ 6/10

Mia Goth has reasons to be upset when her crew films a porno in remote Texas in 1979 on the property of an eccentric elderly couple. Typical mixture of the director's social commentary, longueurs and gore.
Robin Hood of El Dorado (William A. Wellman, 1936)
6/10
The Space Between (Rachel Winter, 2021)
5/10
The Treasure of Pancho Villa (George Sherman, 1955)
5.5/10
Juarez (William Dieterle, 1939)
7/10

Vice President Alejandro Uradi (Joseph Calleia) and President Benito Juárez (Paul Muni) work together and apart while Archduke Maximilian von Habsburg (Brian Aherne) has control of Mexico in the 1860s.
Great Freedom (Sebastian Meise, 2021)
6/10
A Cowgirl's Song (Timothy Armstrong, 2022)
5/10
Clouds Over Europe AKA Q Planes (Tim Whelan, 1939)
6/10
Howl's Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)
7+/10

The walking castle of a cursed wizard holds the key to happiness for another cursee, this time a girl. Expansive fantasy world created by Miyazaki and one of his best.
The Devil You Know (Charles Murray, 2022)
5/10
Time Piece (Jim Henson, 1965)
7/10
Puzzle of a Downfall Child (Jerry Schatzberg, 1970)
5/10
Along for the Ride (Atiq Rahimi, 2022)
6/10

Strait-laced high scnool graduate Emma Pasarow tries to loosen up with the help of a seemingly more playful Belmont Cameli. Through their experiences and those of her friends and family, the summer proves more meaningful.
Whirlpool (José Ramón Larraz, 1970)
5/10
The Big Shot (Ralph F. Murphy, 1931)
6/10
Stigma (José Ramón Larraz, 1980)
5/10
Explorer: The Last Tepui (Renan Ozturk & Taylor Freesolo Rees, 2022)
6.5/10

80-year-old scientist Bruce Means takes an expedition with some of the greatest, most-daring climbers in the world [here with Alex Honnold] to try to catalogue as many unknown species as he can on his final trip to the tepuis of the Guyana Shield.
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A Quiet Place Part II - Not as fresh or mind-bending as the first one because you basically know what's coming. But if you liked that one I don't see how you wouldn't like this. Krasinski still does a pretty good job with it. The part I didn't really get was why
WARNING: spoilers below
Regan (Millicent Simmonds) was so hostile towards Emmett (Cillian Murphy)? At one point she vehemently declares, "You're nothing like him!" referring to her father Lee (John Krasinski). But outside of one previous scene their characters had very little interaction. Nothing that would explain her enmity. It seemed like something that might have been lost during editing.
Anyway, still worth watching.

80/100




A Quiet Place Part II - Not as fresh or mind-bending as the first one because you basically know what's coming. But if you liked that one I don't see how you wouldn't like this. Krasinski still does a pretty good job with it. The part I didn't really get was why
WARNING: spoilers below
Regan (Millicent Simmonds) was so hostile towards Emmett (Cillian Murphy)? At one point she vehemently declares, "You're nothing like him!" referring to her father Lee (John Krasinski). But outside of one previous scene their characters had very little interaction. Nothing that would explain her enmity. It seemed like something that might have been lost during editing.
Anyway, still worth watching.

80/100

One wonders how many plot holes are created in the editing bay, especially when there are too many cooks with notes.




A Quiet Place Part II - Not as fresh or mind-bending as the first one because you basically know what's coming. But if you liked that one I don't see how you wouldn't like this. Krasinski still does a pretty good job with it. The part I didn't really get was why
WARNING: spoilers below
Regan (Millicent Simmonds) was so hostile towards Emmett (Cillian Murphy)? At one point she vehemently declares, "You're nothing like him!" referring to her father Lee (John Krasinski). But outside of one previous scene their characters had very little interaction. Nothing that would explain her enmity. It seemed like something that might have been lost during editing.
Anyway, still worth watching.

80/100
I liked it a little more than you did, but agree with most of what you've said.



I forgot the opening line.
Got busy yesterday, and managed to round up the last two Best Picture nominees from the 2021 Oscars, meaning I've seen them all now...


By http://www.impawards.com/2020/mank.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65643316

Mank - (2020)

Well, this was an easy watch which must mean I enjoyed it a great deal - it looked lovely and if not for Anthony Hopkins, then Gary Oldman would have been a shoo-in for Best Actor. You know how the Academy loves biographical performances. It's good to go off and learn the true story of Herman Mankiewicz's involvement in Citizen Kane, for there's a great deal of departure from the truth in the film, but in a way I admire the movie more for that, because of the necessity of doing so to make a great narrative that builds character and drama. Orson Welles though, is probably turning in his grave. One more thing - watching this really made me want to see Citizen Kane again.

8/10


By Netflix - can be retrieved from the distributor, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65307685

The Trial of the Chicago 7 - (2020)

This was the best film I watched yesterday, out of 4 Oscar nominated films (that included one winner) - I came away from Chicago 10 distinctly unimpressed, but watching that and reading up really prepared me for this film, which abounds in fantastic performances and tells an interesting true story about repression, state violence, politics, rebellion and power. Frank Langella, Mark Rylance, John Carroll Lynch, Sacha Baron Cohen and Eddie Redmayne were all in top form, and I can't forget Michael Keaton and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (with apologies to others) - just a great ensemble. Fantastic screenplay - which ended up losing to Promising Young Woman. Enjoyed this heaps - and then some.

9/10

Despite those two ratings, I regard The Father as the most worthy of 2021's eight nominated films for Best Picture. Judas and the Black Messiah and Promising Young Woman were really good.


By CineMaterial, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59741016

Green Book - (2018)

I saw this at a cinema with a friend in 2019, just days before it won Best Picture - the day also happened to be my birthday, and it also happened to occur on the day when I last ever spoke to my mother before she passed away. Watching it yesterday, I felt almost exactly the same as I thought watching it back then - it's an average, okay movie. It fits in amongst the 100s of films that were okay in 2019, but to rank it as the best film of the year seems very odd. My friend enjoyed it a lot though. It gets an 8.2/10 on the IMDb, which seems manifestly too high.

7/10

Out of the eight nominees for Best Picture at the 2019 Oscars, I still haven't seen Black Panther. Choosing a winner from the nominees is indeed a pickle. It wasn't the greatest year for nominees. I'd pick The Favourite as head and shoulders above the rest and easily my favourite among them. Roma and BlacKkKlansman were really good as well.


Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69285599

Don't Look Up - (2021)

Okay, on to this year's nominees. I pretty much knew what to expect from Don't Look Up, and yes, it does shove an obvious message right down your throat, but that doesn't make for unsalvageable film - this one giving Leonardo DiCaprio a bit of range, and having an amusing tone throughout (it never got to the stage where I'd actually laugh, but I don't think it was that kind of film.) It was pretty polarizing here when it first came out, with people either loving or hating it - I thought it was pretty decent, but nowhere near worthy of an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. My last "apocalyptic space-debris collision" movie was 2020's Greenland, and this was definitely a step-up from that, which makes me think that a lighter tone makes the subject all the more horrifying.

7/10



Tonight, it's The Mothman Prophecies, vaguely based on true incidents that happened in the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966. Richard Gere plays John Keel, the widowed John Kline, the widowed Washington Post reporter to encounters the author of a non-fiction book about the town where people repeatedly saw a humanoid with large wings and glowing red eyes and also received strange phone calls. The sightings continued until 1967 when the bridge into town collapsed, killing dozens. That's the true part. In the movie, those many witnesses and sightings are condensed partially into one unfortunate character played by Will Patton who is tortured by what he sees. Sightings also continue in the movie until the tragic bridge collapse.

The movie is a quiet pot-boiler with a slow build. The town's chief of police, played by Laura Linney, takes part in the investigation of the sightings, along with Gere's character. Tension builds because you know something is going to happen in this crypto-zoology drama. Eventually it does.

I like this one. It has that slow build and a loomingly ominous gloom. All of the characters are decent people, not stereotypes, so the drama is completely believable. It's minimal on FX, but focuses on the human drama in this dark situation. Everybody in this little town is stressed, none of it makes any sense to any of them and something is going to happen. Clues also abound, but none of those make any sense either. None of it looks good.




You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
I watched two movies today that are basically the same movie, except one is a drama and the other is a comedy that was based on that drama. The movies are Zero Hour! (1957) and Airplane! (1980).

Both movies have the same plot, and even some of the same dialogue. An ex-war pilot who was traumatized by his past has to try to land a commercial airplane after both the pilot and copilot, as well as some of the passengers, get sick from food poisoning.

Zero Hour! is the original drama, and it's very good, but because the movies are so similar, and also because I've seen Airplane! so many times over the years, my mind was filling in some of the comedy and momentarily taking me away from the drama during some scenes. If you haven't seen Airplane! yet, I highly recommend watching Zero Hour! first.

On the other hand, now that I've seen the original movie Zero Hour!, I can appreciate the brilliance of Airplane! even more than before. The first time I saw Airplane! many years ago, I thought it was a great movie, but to see the original drama and realize how they turned it around and made such a funny movie from it, raises it up to a whole new level.
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It was kinda fun actually. I'd give it a solid 7/10.
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ONE EARTH
(2020, Pennes)



"There is but one Earth, tiny and fragile, and one must get 100,000 miles away to appreciate fully one's good fortune in living on it." --Michael Collins

The above quote comes from Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins. It is not on this short film, but it is perhaps what inspired its title and theme. As part of Earth Day last month, I wanted to check a film about the environment and stumbled upon this very brief short. It lasts less than 5 minutes, but its content is both gorgeous and saddening.

Created by French musician Romain Pennes, the short film is composed of a series of drone and aerial shots of different places of Earth. It opens with the lush and colorful vegetation of a forest, the vast and rocky terrains of a mountain range, and the crashing waves on a shore, but gradually moves on to show human intervention in our nature landscapes. From logging and farming to urban development, it quickly devolves into overpopulation and pollution.

The shots, which comes from various sources, are neatly shot and breathtaking; and even though there's no narration, I love the "story" it tells through its progression of images. It makes us think of how careless our treatment of this one Earth has often been, as if there was no tomorrow. Maybe Pennes didn't go as far above as Collins, but the hundreds of feet he did, surely made me appreciate and feel for our Earth.

Grade: N/A
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The Satanic Rites of Dracula -


This late entry in Hammer's Dracula series is one of its best and I’m not just saying that because its poor reception lowered my expectations. For one, I appreciate its ambition for how it incorporates the evils and taboos of its era. These include the obvious one of devil worship to one you'd be surprised would end up in this series: the likely Watergate-influenced paranoia regarding the intentions of the very powerful. The major complaint I've read about this movie is that it trades the series' Gothic appeal for those found in the typical James Bond movie. While I too appreciate the aesthetic that dominated the series before its jump to the 1970s, it's not like it does away with it entirely, and the spy elements never rang false or as an attempt at pandering. It helps that Peter Cushing's Van Helsing is once again along for the ride, and the class and professionalism the actor provides even elevates scenes he's not in. As for Lee, he gets to do more, not to mention more interesting work than he has in the last few movies, and his chemistry with Cushing has not lost its luster. The scene in a corporate building where Lee attempts a Romanian accent is a peculiar highlight of the series, not just this entry. With that said, Dracula's evil plan in this one, while also a product of its era, does seem a bit out of character for the villain. Not to spoil it too much, but it's hard to believe Dracula would not want to live forever. The movie still exceeded my expectations, so much so that it made me wish there had been a '70s London trilogy.



Victim of The Night

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Fan-Service


"It’s a Frankenmovie, a blockbuster sewn together from pieces of other films, comic books, and TV shows and given life with the electricity of a Marvel budget." -rogerebert.com

Sigh.
I don't usually "rate" movies but I got to thinking a lot about how I even possibly could rate this deeply challenged "film". Challenged, unfortunately, from the core of its being and fought for at the fringes by its director and stars and a few really fun bits.
Or is it the opposite, were those latter three challenging the Death Of The MCU... and losing, but spectacularly.
Yeah, I think it might be that.
Make no mistake, from an actual, ya know, movie point of view, this is a pretty bad film. Most of the emotional conflict of the film is extremely simple and one-note and is actually mostly played out in previous films, with this movie being more like the third act of several other movies, which are constantly being referenced.
The dialogue is just abysmal, continuing a recent Marvel trend bucked only by No Way Home. Marvel decided about 5 or 6 movies ago that the only dialogue there needs to be in films is one of the following four items:
1. Explaining what is happening.
2. Explaining why it's happening.
3. Somebody say something quippy.
4. Somebody say something that sounds cool.
And they're usually failing these days at the fourth one.
Marvel has completely abandoned the kind of heart that made the whole machine run. They still give the characters motivations but they are always really simple, really quickly described by someone, and then really quickly resolved. Nobody ever says anything that's truly moving anymore and none of the relationship-building that existed in most of Phases 1-3 remains.
It's sad because they get such good actors. But let's be honest, they get them so they can put them on the posters. Why did Angelina Jolie, a truly great actor, need to be in Eternals? That role could have been played by a no-name or B-lister and no-one would have been the wiser. I mean, Olsen, who is an enormously talented actor, has to work so damn hard here to keep this movie watchable. Wait, maybe that's why they cast these great actors, because you have to be a f*cking master of your craft to make these recent Marvel movies feel like there's any soul to them at all.
Let me touch on just a couple of other negatives and then I will be positive for a minute.
Marvel's second greatest failure in some of Phase 3 and all of Phase 4 (except Spidey) is the way they pace and edit their films. The movies rush along so quickly that you have no time to care about anything before another CGI battle is dumped over your head. Camera movements are too fast (almost certainly sped up in post because I don't think helicopters even fly that fast), rushing you into scenes with establishing shots you barely get to look at before they're gone, then crucial dialogue scenes are abridged to only the words the audience must hear in order to follow into the next set-piece. Emotional moments are cut jarringly short so that nothing ever lands and the audience has to work really, really hard to care about characters they are supposed to love (Wanda, in this case).
This actually began in The Winter Soldier but didn't really take off until Captain Marvel. At this rate, I think Marvel will actually cut out dialogue altogether sometime during Phase 5.
Another really distracting bummer is the increasingly poor CGI in Marvel films. Again, starting right about Captain Marvel, you started seeing CGI that looks ten or some people have even said 15-20 years old. This was never more evident than in Shang-Chi, the third act of which honestly looks like a movie from the late 90s or early 00s or something that should have been DTV, and it's nearly as bad in Eternals as well. As someone who used to defend the MCU, I'm almost embarrassed for them how bad large sections of their film look. The CGI in the opening 15 minutes of Multiverse Of Madness aren't quite as bad as Shang-Chi but every bit as bad as Eternals. Which is to say, terrible.
Finally, the fan-service in this is just brutal. So many constant references to other MCU films, famous comics, popular characters, and in this one even constant winks by the director to... himself?
A good example is
WARNING: "kinda spoilery, though mostly in the trailer" spoilers below
The Illuminati section of the film, which I was very excited about and then realized after I saw it was completely unnecessary to the film. Those of you who have seen it, just run the movie quickly back through your head but cut out the entire Illuminati sequence. Is the movie changed in any way? The film had already shown that Wanda was more powerful than Doctor Strange, Wong, and an entire army of sorcerers combined. So that wasn't the reason. They'd already shown that she would torture and kill so that wasn't the point.
What was the point? The point was to sell tickets. They actually wasted one of the most interesting ideas in the history of Marvel comics to do ten minutes of fan-service that amounted to nothing.
And that, folks is where the ten minutes of dialogue and character-building that this movie needed to even be worthy of the top half of MCU films or to even really be called a "film" rather than a content-exercise (or profit-machine) went. It went to crap like that.

Ok, given all that, it shouldn't be hard for me to rate it, right? I should just say this was terrible and move on.
But the movie actually offers a lot of excitement and fun when you're not either cringing, rolling your eyes, or feeling exasperated. It's fairly exciting for a flimsy-as-hell plot. Raimi is given more latitude than I think anyone even expected and he really makes some of these scenes cook. It is true that there is a real Horror element to this film and it plays really nicely. Some of the things that happen are genuinely, truly imaginative and I found myself grinning in spite of myself (actually in spite of the rest of the movie).
And let's just say it, Olsen, not Cumberbatch, carries this film. While he does his job well, he is simply not the new Tony Stark no matter how much Marvel tries to make him that. And Xochitl Gomez is actually very good as what might have been an interesting new hero, but she's given so little emotional time on-screen, just saying things that get us from sequence to the next.
No, it is Olsen who is the star of this movie and when she's on-screen, even when the dialogue she has to deliver is excruciatingly wooden and expository and tone-deaf, she manages to make things exciting.
In all, I initially feel like the film ends up being like a 5 or a 5.5, held up entirely by some really awesome fantasy-action scenes and Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch.
If I were judging the movie as an actual, ya know, movie though, man, I'm not sure what number I think would be too low.



LOL, apparently they don’t.
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Society ennobler, last seen in Medici's Florence
Stealing Beauty (1996)

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

This is my second view of the film. Seen many years ago, I needed a re-watch.

Movie full of beautiful aromas. The great Bertolucci masterfully turns Liv Tyler into a flower that magically flies through the scenes. I needed more screen time with Jeremy Irons.

(8/10)

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Beau Geste - 1939 version directed by William Wellman. It's a romanticized adventure featuring three brothers, Michael "Beau" Geste (Gary Cooper), Digby (Preston Foster) and John (Ray Milland). They're orphans adopted by Lady Patricia Brandon (Heather Thatcher). Fifteen years pass and the household is running out of money thanks to the gamblings debts of Aunt Patricia's husband.

She makes plans to sell the families valuable "Blue Water" sapphire but it's promptly stolen with Beau taking the rap. He runs away and joins the French Foreign Legion and Digby quickly follows. John soon joins his brothers and they're placed under the command of the cruel and autocratic Sergeant Markoff (Brian Donlevy).

The story is told in flashback but it's well set up and really adds to the overall mystery and quixotic aspects of the tale. This is the kind of story people used to read to their child at bedtime. It's full of heroism and sacrifice and the type of bond that only brothers share. It might be considered old fashioned but it's certainly doesn't come off the least bit dated. I think that's mostly due to the wonderful cast. I'm glad I finally watched this.

90/100




Dark City (1950)

Stars: Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Dean Jagger, Viveca Lindfors, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Ed Begley, Don Defore, and Mike Mazurki.
Director: William Dieterle, DP: Victor Milner, Score: Franz Waxman. Paramount PIctures.

I was surprised that, with all the heavyweights involved in this noir, the end product was rather mediocre. Veterans Dieterle, Milner, and Waxman evidently could not overcome the average screenplay, despite the fact that the story sounds good on paper.

A bookie joint is busted by the police. The owner (Heston) decides to set up private poker games to fleece unsuspecting players. One businessman (Defore) gets set up, and ends up losing a $5000 check that wasn't his. He subsequently commits suicide. The guys in the poker game start getting murdered. Turns out the businessman's brother (Mazurki) is avenging his brother's death. Heston's girlfriend (L. Scott), a chanteuse, is trying to convince Heston to take their relationship more seriously, but he doesn't want to settle down. Heston subsequently goes looking for Mazurki, and the story winds down from there.

There were several faults in the screenplay. There was too much film showing Scott performing songs, for no real reason. The story could have been structured better.

Still, it was absorbing to see Heston in his first appearance (and starring) in a feature motion picture. His action showed nuance, and he had plenty of charisma. Likewise Dean Jagger gave a first rate performance as the police chief.

Of note were Jack Webb and Harry Morgan, who of course later co-starred in the long running TV series Dragnet. It was peculiar seeing Webb as a slime ball. He actually had some chops. If you've never seen Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), he was excellent in it. Morgan has been in a million of them. He also had an excellent run as Col. Sherman T. Potter in the TV series, MASH ('74-'83).

And it's worth mentioning that the title was used in the titles for at least two marvelous books on film noir: Eddie Muller's superb Dark City: the Lost World of Film Noir; and Spencer Selby's Dark City, the Film Noir.

This is a picture worth watching for the actors. Otherwise it has the feel of a "B" crime drama.

Doc's rating: 6/10
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Victim of The Night

Dark City (1950)

Stars: Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Dean Jagger, Viveca Lindfors, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Ed Begley, Don Defore, and Mike Mazurki.
Director: William Dieterle, DP: Victor Milner, Score: Franz Waxman. Paramount PIctures.

I was surprised that, with all the heavyweights involved in this noir, that the end product was rather mediocre. Veterans Dieterle, Milner, and Waxman evidently could not overcome the average screenplay, despite the fact that the story sounds good on paper.

A bookie joint is busted by the police. The owner (Heston) decides to set up private poker games to fleece unsuspecting players. One businessman (Defore) gets set up, and ends up losing a $5000 check that wasn't his. He subsequently commits suicide. The guys in the poker game start getting murdered. Turns out the businessman's brother (Mazurki) is avenging his brother's death. Heston's girlfriend (L. Scott), a chanteuse, is trying to convince Heston to take their relationship more seriously, but he doesn't want to settle down. Heston subsequently goes looking for Mazurki, and the story winds down from there.

There were several faults in the screenplay. There was too much film showing Scott performing songs, for no real reason. The story could have been structured better.

Still, it was absorbing to see Heston in his first appearance (and starring) in a feature motion picture. His action showed nuance, and he had plenty of charisma. Likewise Dean Jagger gave a first rate performance as the police chief.

Of note were Jack Webb and Harry Morgan, who of course later co-starred in the long running TV series Dragnet. It was peculiar seeing Webb as a slime ball. He actually had some chops. If you've never seen Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), he was excellent in it. Morgan has been in a million of them. He also had an excellent run as Col. William T. Potter in the TV series, MASH ('74-'83).

And it's worth mentioning that the title was used in the titles for at least two marvelous books on film noir: Eddie Muller's superb Dark City: the Lost World of Film Noir; and Spencer Selby's Dark City, the Film Noir.

This is a picture worth watching for the actors. Otherwise it has the feel of a "B" crime drama.

Doc's rating: 6/10
Sherman T. Potter, Doc. I know you knew that but I had to mention it.