Gideon58's Reviews

LaRoy, Texas
Fans of the Cohen Brothers will have a head start with 2023's LaRoy, Texas, an intricate and loopy black comedy that requires complete attention, providing rewards that I will try not to reveal through spoilers.

Ray is the milquetoast co-owner of a hardware store with his older brother, Junior. Ray meets a wanna be private detective named Skip who provides proof to Ray that his wife, a shrewish former beauty queen named Stacy-Lynn, is having an affair. Instead of confronting her about it, Ray is so devastated by the news that he decides he's going to commit suicide. He's sitting in a parking lot about to put the gun to his temple when a guy jumps into the passenger side of his car, throws a pile of cash at him and an address and asks him if he can still kill someone by tomorrow because it's time sensitive. Ray's about to explain that he's not a hitman until the guy implies that he's a wimp and Ray says he'll take care of it.

To reveal anymore of what happens would be wrong, because this is one of those movies that morphs into a giant jigsaw puzzle that doesn't exactly put itself together at lightening speed but is peppered with such interesting and pathetic, three dimensional characters that the viewer can't help but empathize with a couple of them, especially this poor schlub Ray, whose pain about learning of his wife's infidelity is palatable. It's obvious from the second that he learns the truth that he would have been perfectly happy living the rest of his life without knowing about it. Ray's pain is compounded when we get to know Stacy-Lynn, who is a tramp so not worthy of his love.

Of course, there's another side of the story because not long after Ray agrees to do this, the real hitman shows up, looking for his payday and his pursuant of Ray is relentlessly unapologetic and in the center of it all, we have this amateur detective in complete denial about his amateur status, most likely a police academy reject because it is established early on that the local police like messing with him. They are observed having his car impounded and vandalized, making the man look like an idiot. We begin to empathize with him as much as we do with Ray. And the pleasant surprise of this film, is that we do see change in these guys in terms of self esteem, even if everything doesn't end up wrapped in a perfect bow.

Director and screenwriter Shane Atkinson is relatively inexperienced but he shows some real promise here as a filmmaker. John Margaro, who was so good last year in the Oscar-nominated Past Lives gives a star making performance as Ray as does the always watchable Steve Zahn as the fake private eye, Megan Stevenson as the pathetic Stacy-Lynn and Dylan Baker who channels Steve Buscemi in his chilling interpretation of a hitman. It sags a little in the middle, but there's more good here than bad.

I Can Get it For You Wholesale
An effervescent performance by Susan Hayward in the starring role makes a slightly predictable, but still compelling little melodrama called I Can Get it For You Wholesale worth a look.

The 1951 film features Hayward as Harriet Boyd, a model at a large Manhattan fashion house, though her real passion is to be a fashion designer. She has even submitted her designs as the work of a male designer to get them seen. The opportunity to start her business with her own designs credited to her comes up when a salesman (Dan Dailey) and a dressmaker (Sam Jaffe) agree to go into business together. Things begin to go off the rails when a wealthy department store owner (George Sanders) is entranced by Harriet and agrees to sponsor her fashion empire, but has no interest in her partners.

Based on a novel by Jerome Weidman, this is the story of a woman trying to compete in man's world, not an uncommon thing in the 1950's, even though the setting is the world of women's fashion. Even more important, this film is focused around a working woman, something you didn't see too much of during the 1950's. This was also a woman who had no problem with stepping over a few people to get what she wanted and then is observed selling herself to get what she wanted, though she doesn't see it. Nor does she seem to see that she is in love with her salesman/partner.

Director Michael Gordon (Pillow Talk)) keeps things moving at a nice pace and had a strong cast to work with, Having already earned two Best Actress nominations, Hayward commands the screen here in a tailor-made role for the bold screen presence she has always been. Love the scene near the beginning of the film where she is trying to get money out of her sister and fakes a phone call pretending that the funding for her project has fallen through. She also manages to create chemistry with both Dailey and Sanders.

I've always felt Dailey was one of the most underrated actors from the era and proves that he can command the screen without his tap shoes. Sanders, fresh off his Oscar win for All About Eve is effective in a similar role, though this guy isn't quite as manipulative as Addison DeWitt. Jaffe, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Asphalt Jungle, but lost the award to Sanders, is lovely as the dressmaker. A Hollywood veteran that I've seen on television for years named Marvin Kaplan has a major role here and eternal classic movie grumpy old man Charles Lane can be glimpsed here as well. The movie was actually turned into a Broadway musical in 1962 that was the Broadway debut of a young singer named Barbra Streisand playing a secretary named Miss Marmelstein.

Dying of the Light
Another deliciously unhinged performance from Nicolas Cage makes a 2014 action thriller called Dying of the Light worth a look.

Paul Schrader, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Taxi Driver wrote and directed this intense if improbable drama which features Cage playing Evan Lake, a semi-retired CIA agent who has contracted a specialized strain of Alzheimers that doesn't deter him when he receives intel regarding the location of a terrorist who tortured him 22 years ago. And because he is dying too, the CIA won't assist Lake in tracking the man down, but a disgraced junior agent, played by the late Anton Yelchin, does offer assistance and they are both off to Bucharest to find the guy.

Schrader surprises with a story that springs from a much larger canvas than we are expected from him. Schrader usually concentrates on more intimate yet equally intense character studies like Travis Bickle or Nick Nolte's tortured protagonist in Affliction but the straight 007 route is something new for Schrader, not to mention there are logistical and timeline inconsistencies here that make this whole thing a little hard to. As the film opens, we see Cage being tortured with no attempt to make him look younger, but we're supposed to believe that 22 years pass as he is now observed struggling with Alzheimers and lecturing future agents about how America is so screwed up since 9/11, not to mention that his superiors are trying to force him to retire. So we're supposed to accept Nicolas playing a character who has to be in his late 60's . at the least, flying to another country with little back up and no plan to get even with a terrorist.

It was also hard to believe that, even if they didn't want Lake to do this, once they learned what he was planning, that they would have offered some sort of assistance, but once Lake is off to Bucharest, the CIA is not heard from for the rest of the film. They weren't even concerned about the younger agent who agreed to help Lake. It was very troubling that the CIA showed no concern for what these guys were doing, even though we hear Lake being told early on in the film that "We take care of our down".

Schrader was provided a big budget for this and he utilizes it effectively, but the absurdities of the story just made it all kind of difficult to invest in. Cage does offer a bombastic performance in the starring role that demands attention (though , if the truth be told, even back in 2014, Cage was getting a little too long in the tooth for action heroes like this one) and he gets surprisingly solid support from Yelchin, who again reminds us of what a loss to the industry his death was.