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Category Archives: Films

Movie reviews and musings

Perfume Stinks To High Heaven

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer runs a hellish 2+ hours. Two hours of watching a wan, skinny young man planning and executing women so he can capture their scent in a jar. I’m not kidding about this.

Perfume? I think not.This 2006 direct-to-video project features Alan Rickman, who is completely wasted in a small role, and Dustin Hoffman wrestling with a dodgy Italian accent. The film has no suspense, but does treat us to long boring stretches of watching the lead actor peer uncharismatically into the camera. I didn’t read the book, but I have to think that it was better than this snooze fest. Avoid at all costs even if you like Alan Rickman as much as I do (a lot). This just isn’t worth it.

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Ratatouille Is The Rat’s Whiskers

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

You don’t have to be a Pixar fan to love Ratatouille, a charming comedy from writer/director Brad Bird. Of course the animation is excellent, but the voice actors bring to life the story of a Parisian rat who dreams of becoming a great chef.

Along the way, our hero confronts the opposition of his family and the human aversion to rats in the kitchen. It all unfolds delightfully with comedy arising from character as much as situation.

A particular stand-out is Peter O’Toole as food critic Anton Ego, perhaps the most fearsome critic in cinema history. Take the kids to Ratatouille, and, if you don’t have kids, take yourself.

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Back From Eternity

Thursday, July 12, 2007

The Plot: A plane carrying nine passengers crashes in the jungle among head hunters. Once the plane is patched up, only five of them can return.

The Exposition: We are s-l-o-w-l-y introduced to the main characters before they are stuffed into the ill-fated plane. They include: Rena, a hooker played by Anita Ekberg, a killer, played by Rod Steiger, and a little boy.  Robert Ryan plays the booze soaked captain.

During a painful layover we get exposition from the characters. The killer offers a graphic description on how heads are shrunk. The little boy wanders about.

The Crash: More of a gentle sliding, really.

Survival: The women are given the task of cooking, while the men form “work groups,” chopping wood. Eventually, they begin to repair the plane, using “rudimentary”welding to fix a cracked cylinder. (Hey, that’s even better the professor’s work on Gilligan’s Island.)

Escape: As the drums of the headhunters draw closer, they pile on the plane. Unfortunately, it can’t get off the ground and they must sacrifice some of the passengers.

That’s the entire film really, if you don’t count the preposterous ending. This film is a limp template for modern disaster movies, but that doesn’t mean you have to torture yourself by watching it. I did it for you and it cost me a lot.

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Girls In Chains

Thursday, July 5, 2007

In 1942’s Girls In Chains, gangster Johnny Moon is cleared of an unspecified charge by a jury. The judge chastises them harshly, taking away their jury privileges! No!

In a bewildering twist, Johnny’s sister-in-law, Miss Martin, takes a job teaching at a women’s correctional facility. Girls in chains! Well, not exactly. To be honest, there isn’t a single chained woman in this film. Just an assortment of shoplifters and “lady hobos” who are exhausted from doing too much laundry.

Miss Martin fights tirelessly for reform, not knowing that the screws are in Johnny Moon’s back pocket. It’s a tough break, and I’m very sorry to report that I spent over an hour of my life watching it slowly unfold. It’s hard to imagine anything more boring than this film. Do not watch if you are tired or value your will to live.

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Grand Central Murder: Tough Guys and Sassy Broads

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

When you get a phone call saying “Death and me are just around the corner, waiting for you,” you naturally run into a dark alley. Or you do, if you are about to be murdered in the whodunit Grand Central Murder from 1942.

The victim makes it to a train car, where she is killed. Enter guys in hats talking tough. Private Eye Rocky Custer, played by Van Heflin, is keen to solve the case. Soon the car is stocked with suspects, each with an ironclad alibi.

The men go about poking each other in the chest saying “Get it? Get it?” The women file their nails and do other girly things. All of the characters are oddly chatty, considering that this is a murder investigation.

The deceased’s maid brings some context into the din with her sassy narrative. The flashbacks follow her story of a conniving woman who took advantage of rich men and went running into alleys.

When suspicions are cast on one of the men, the presiding cop asks Van Helflin, “You don’t really think he done it, do you? At this point, I raided the cupboards.

Back on the job with a box of Triscuits, I watched them interrogate suspect after suspect. As one thug drew a gun, I began to think about mild cheese.

In the end, the mystery was solved and, sadly, the sluggishly executed noir conventions were upstaged by a wheel of gouda.

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The Great Depression Gets Really Depressing: Double Harness

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

After watching her younger sister readying for her wedding, spinster Joan (Ann Harding) concludes that  a well born woman who can’t paint, play music or write has only one career option: live through a man. Double Harness,  from 1933, follows her depressing logic. Eventually, she ensnares a young playboy played by Dick Powell who plays a shipping heir with an allergy to work.  How she traps him is a bit of a wonder, considering that she is duller than chalk and looks as though she’s been drained of blood.

Shortly after the nuptials, Powell announces that he prefers his freedom to marriage to Joan, who is by this time smitten and determined win him over. Meanwhile, her equally cold blooded sister borrows money from anyone who will keep her in “chiffon panties,” including a cad who puts a condition on it. Sample dialogue:

“$1000? I’ll let you have it.”
“Any strings?”
“Naturally.”

Double Harness was thought to be a “lost film.” After an hour and a half of watching women humiliating themselves and men acting like stooges, I wished it would have stayed lost.

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The Driver’s Seat

Friday, June 8, 2007

In 1971, Muriel Spark wrote The Driver’s Seat, a slim marvel of a book examining the reasons why a disturbed young woman seeks to be murdered. In time, the film rights were sold to morons.

The film stars an aging Elizabeth Taylor in the lead role. Her portrayal suggests heavy sedation, with freak periods of screeching unreasonableness.  She is Lise, a nihilistic vaguely European woman looking for a “boyfriend” while on  vacation. Not so unusual, unless you consider that her idea of a boyfriend is a murderous psychopath.

The film retains the basic plot, but unlike the book, it leaves the viewer awash in lurid twists and sleaze.  It serves up realistic scenes of attempted rape with alarming regularity. Unlike the book, it presents these scenes with gritty realism. I wanted to shower after the first one.

In a scene not in the book, Lise is subjected to a cavity search by airline security, terrorists in the concourse and a cameo by Andy Warhol. Can you blame her for wanting to check out?

If this all weren’t bad enough, it features an annoying jazz piano score and has the affrontary of using some of Sparks’ original dialogue. Out of context of its jumpy, idiosyncratic universe it is rendered ridiculous.

The film clumsily juxtaposes scenes of the story in real time with scenes of people being interrogated about her murder. This is not a spoiler- it is spelled out that she will be killed early on. This has shock value in the book, but in this mess of a film, it’s just one more depressing detail.

This is not a film so bad that it’s good. It’s just bad. My advice? Don’t wait for the movie, see the book.

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The Perils of Insomnia: When Bad Movies Happen To Good People

Thursday, May 31, 2007

What can one reasonably expect of a film that starts with Peter Lawford being shot in the ass by a fellow hunter? If you haven’t asked yourself that question you probably haven’t been held hostage by your cable service at 2 Am.  The film? 1952’s You And Me, featuring a love triangle so wobbly it challenges high school geometry. At its limp corners: Lawford, Jane Greer and Gig Young.

After the first shot is fired, wealthy and eligible Tony Brown is taken to the hospital. There he is not coddled, and thus bitterly announces that he is canceling his late father’s endowment to the hospital. In the fray, beautiful young nurse Katie loses her job. Horrors!

The handsome and serious young doctor benefiting from the endowment encourages Katie to seduce the wounded playboy.

Is it probable that both men find the fetching young Katie irresistible? Is it possible that she will choose the virtuous doctor? Who can say? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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Sleazy, Yet Beguiling

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The BeguiledTwenty years before Kathy Bates was swinging an ax at James Caan, Clint Eastwood braved the wrath of  sexually overheated teachers and students at a Confederate girls’ school in The Beguiled.

Eastwood plays a Yankee soldier who lands wounded near the school’s gate.  The girls take him in with the intention of handing him over to Confederate soldiers, but he manages to charm the bloomers off of them. Ahem. 

Eastwood eventually gets his comeuppance, but not before he unleashes a flurry of pheromones. This film is pure smut of the variety usually relegated to romance novels. It transfixed me when I was 11,  so I watched it again last night to see what had held my interest. 

The first 15 minutes covers pedophilia, incest and rape. As the story unfolds, it shows two girls kissing. Granted, this was in a dream sequence – probably the only way to get it past the censors in 1971. I’m amazed it made it past my mother, who allowed me to watch this astonishingly cheesy libido fest. She was probably too stunned to send me to bed.

I think I might have enjoyed it almost as much the second time around. But don’t tell anyone.

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A Monster Only A Mother Could Love

Thursday, May 17, 2007

The Host Movie PosterThe Host is a Korean horror/monster film featuring a creature that looks like sushi gone wrong. The movie shifts  in tone from a satire pointed at the U.S. government to slapstick involving the central characters:  a dysfunctional family trying desperately to outsmart the fishy menace terrorizing its city.

This is a terrifically entertaining and genuinely suspenseful film, despite its goofy monster.  There were dark elements that would not have been acceptable in a formulaic Hollywood film.  This is fearless film-making that deserves a wider audience.  Available on DVD now.

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