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Anon (2018)
Don't play poker with Anon
According to the poet Rilke, we each live in a room, sometimes it is large, sometimes small. Some of us know only a corner of that room, a place to sit, a place to walk back and forth, a spot on the wall, a ceiling light bulb to be replaced, while others know every inch of their room and may have even added a picture or two to the wall and opened the window.
But what if we were invited to somebody else's room?
This outrageously beautiful picture asks the question: What if we could crash that room without an invitation...and mess with it?
Not quite the future, not quite an alternative world, Anon's universe is both drab and alluring, where everyone is telepathic, but some might also be psychopathic.
The mind game here is "catch me if you can." And it's for keeps.
A special note: Amir Mokri's cinematography takes an interesting science fiction movie into another dimension, turning drabness and sterility into a special beauty.
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948)
A semi-documentary that's a sensational surprise
1948's Walk a Crooked Mile bursts out of the stale post-war semi-documentary format to become an absorbing espionage drama, thanks to:
*Carefully rationed, no-nonsense writing (screenplay by George Bruce; story by longtime veteran Bertram Milhauser (over 60 film treatments in 50 years!);
*Sharp and spare direction (by the versatile Gordon Douglas - said to be the only person to direct both Elvis and Sinatra). Filming took less than a month;
* Watchful camera (cinematography by George Robinson), and enchanting location work in the beautiful San Francisco of nearly three-quarters of a century ago;
* Unobtrusive acting by leads Dennis O'Keefe as an FBI agent and Louis Heyward as his Scotland Yard counterpart;
* Enough angles and twists to keep you guessing to the very last frame;
*And shrewd bit-casting (with an unexpected throat-catching moment lasting less than 20 seconds that you will remember for a long time , from veteran ...and uncredited... actress Tamara Shane - Moma Yoelson in The Jolson Story (1946) and Jolson Sings Again (1949) and Mrs Akim Tamiroff in real life -- as The Landlady).
All this cinematic professionalism produces so much edge and vitality that a virtually unheralded, almost forgotten 1948 Cold War Feds 'n Reds potboiler is transformed into a surprisingly compelling action movie, complete with smart detective work, a rats' nest of sneering villains (look for a hirsute, almost svelte and quite nasty Raymond Burr), unexpectedly tense car chases and really noisy Thompson sub-machine guns.
The crafty script doesn't pull at its leash, begging for attention, but instead remains in the background, a steadily ticking clock mechanism -- or perhaps a time bomb -- pushing the nail-biting action forward, with twists and turns at every corner.
Using the documentary style format complete with the stentorian baritone of Reed Hadley, indispensable voice-of-God in the "official" crime dramas of the time, this Columbia Pictures black-and-white feature zeroes in on one of the most disquieting aspects of the Cold War: theft of nuclear secrets.
Atomic plants worry about two kinds of leak: radiation and security. In the fictional Southern California research lab of Walk A Crooked Mile, it's a security leak that has the FBI's Geiger Counters ticking away madly. Vital secrets are being stolen by an unnamed foreign power. (Soviet Russia is never named, but there are plenty of "comrades" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" speeches bandied around by un-American conspirators as to leave no question just which Pravda-subscribing Great Bear is after our Atomic Honey. Besides, villain Raymond Burr is wearing a goatee just like Lenin's!)
Because of the international ramifications of the thievery, the FBI (Dennis O'Keefe) and Scotland Yard (Louis Hayward) join forces to try and catch the red crooks.
Unique among FBI films of the period, the "Chief" is never seen or heard: J. Edgar Hoover is never even mentioned! Indeed, the producer, Edward Small, had had no cooperation from the agency, and Director Hoover had even written a letter to the New York Times complaining that the movie had not been sanctioned by the Bureau. (Reportedly, Walk a Crooked Mile had been originally titled FBI vs Scotland Yard but this was changed at Mr. Hoover's request.)
Despite this official hands-off policy, there is an air of authenticity about the proceedings as the sleuths employ the latest technology in an attempt to uncover the spy ring. The technology may seem to be on a kids' chemistry set level to our sophisticated eyes three-quarters of a century later, but the agents from the FBI and Scotland Yard use their brains as well - and this display of sharp wits is a nice change from the robotic by-the-numbers G-Man tales of the time. And lots of unexpected curves along this crooked mile keep you guessing for every minute of a wild ride.
A good spy thriller, with astute detective work neatly balanced by the occasional bout of violent action.
Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (1983)
Down these mean streets every Marlowe fan should go
This self-assured and sinister version of the Marlowe canon was as good as it gets. Keeping closer to the original Raymond Chandler stories than most earlier attempts, it's both entertaining and evocative, romantic and raucous., complex and at times even comic.
Powers Boothe is a hulking tough guy as Philip Marlowe...no nonsense at all. And that's how it should be. His rendition of the beautiful and brutal Raymond Chandler prose may not be as smoky and sardonic as, say, that of the sleepily self-confident Robert Mitchum, but it's authentic and natural.
This is probably how a real -- and honest -- private eye in the LA of the period must have been -- rock-solid, shrewd, and quick with his fists; skirting around and always aware of the corruption and bent morals of that particular time and place, but never part of it....a sworn Knight of the Round Table.
Beautifully rendered, the episodes in this 1983 series have a distinctive, well-polished look to them -- Marlowe moves mostly among the moneyed set (who else could afford his exorbitant $25 a day fee?) and can play suave very nicely...if need be.
Needless to say, the women all would make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window...
The Ice House (1997)
Highest quality acting, directing and writing
Would you have cast the Daniel Craig of The Ice House as James Bond? Craig's acting in this British TV mystery is of such a high caliber and the role he plays is so anti-Bond, you would have had to have been a truly gifted casting director with a crystal ball to have envisioned Det.-Sgt. McCloughlin as 007.
In The Ice House, Craig is a decidedly unheroic copper who will drink anything with an alcoholic content. He is also a brilliant detective -- not the Sherlock Holmes type -- but an indefatigable bloodhound.
The Ice House is definitely not a warm, cozy Midsomer Murders type of mystery. It explores the darkest reaches of the human soul. It chills while it thrills. And yet it is intensely watchable, even enjoyable. (Some of the dialogue is laugh-out funny. And some of it is quite blue.)
:Part of its attraction may be the level of the writing. The symbolism of the Ice House becomes apparent early on, but doesn't call attention to itself. Indeed, it adds to the cold passion and frozen emotions that coat each frame of this film like frost on a window in deepest winter.
At whatever level you choose to watch The Ice House -- as an intelligent, traditional British murder mystery; as a complex love story; as wry social commentary; or as carefully wrought fiction and acting in a setting as multifaceted as an ice crystal -- keep your eyes on the very cool Mr Craig.
A Night to Remember (1942)
Is the old dark house on Gay Street haunted?
Wise-cracking cab-drivers who say "Thank you" for a 75-cents fare and gum-chewing waitresses bringing customers the $1.25 specials in a stable-themed Greenwich Village restaurant are clues that tell you that you're in the movieland of the '40s.
"A Night to Remember" is a screwball comedy/murder mystery made for a tired audience looking for not much more than a 90-minute break from war news. They got their quarter's worth. The leads are young and beguiling; the plot is nicely knotty; the dialogue is fast and furious; the humor is basic and wholesome; the styles, quaint though they may be to our jaundiced eyes, are up-to-the-minute (more fedoras than at a hat-makers convention; and most of the men sport identical little moustaches, making them at times indistinguishable); and the pratfalls are frequent and farcical.
But there's something more going on here.
The sun never seems to shine on narrow and twisting Gay Street in Gotham's Greenwich Village, at least at No. 13 - a dark and brooding walkup brownstone where every apartment apparently comes with hot and cold running terror and a corpse next door.
At least that what Brian Aherne and Loretta Young, as an attractive young couple just looking for a nice place to live, are about to find out in "A Night to Remember."...which offers up a scream about every three minutes.
In this rowdy comedy mystery, the body count gets higher while the laughs keep adding up. Aherne and Young, as an addled and rattled husband and wife, can't even turn around in their apartment without something or somebody sinister dropping in.
Brian Aherne, a mystery novelist without a clue, and a stunning Loretta Young, who gets frightened very easily and shrieks rather nicely, have to pick their way through very menacing goings-on before they can settle in. But they find very quickly that they can't trust anybody in their new home, where your neighbor might well be as disturbing as a creaking floorboard at midnight or as quiet as somebody (or something) breathing heavily outside your door. What's worse is that a grumpy police inspector, played here by Sidney Toler (don't expect any quaint sayings), trusts neither Aherne nor Young.
As the young couple quickly discover, there are a great many secrets in this strange house, and the unnerving characters (played by a virtual graveyard shift of talented performers, including Jeff Donnell, Lee Patrick, Blanche Yurka and Gale Sondergaard) who show up at odd places and odd times aren't the sort of folks who share.
"A Night to Remember" may be forgettable, but it definitely is watchable and enjoyable. Director Richard Wallace keeps the suspense dialed on high. And veteran cinematographer Joseph Walker has a way of making a banister or a backyard or even a bathtub look like something from "House Baleful." (Forget about film noir. This is film dire!)
Bonus: Look for Brian Aherne's hilarious misadventures in a treacherous kitchen, where even an ordinary oven can turn into The Fiery Fiend From Hell. As you'll find out with delight, stalwart but suave Brian Aherne (some called him "the poor man's Errol Flynn") actually had a surprising gift for slapstick! And Loretta's later reputation for a sweet elegance is foreshadowed here. (No calm serenity here, though. That would come later.) Already a 25-year veteran of the movies, with more than EIGHTY films under her belt, the 30-year-old beauty easily matches Aherne for double takes and popped eyes and flapping hands and frozen stares and stammered warnings. And she's definitely a far better screamer.
The Fat Man (1951)
Biggest PI in radio moves gracefully to Hollywood
William Castle is today mostly remembered for his clever exploitative gimmicks, which made horror films like "Macabre," "House on Haunted Hill," "The Tingler," etc., both terrifying and fun.
But he started out making movies in another tradition—noir. Without gimmicks.
In 1951's low-budget "The Fat Man," made for Universal, Castle borrows from another medium, taking a popular radio mystery program and transforming a broadcast melodrama into an exciting yet droll movie thriller, with unexpected pleasures.
His lead, the basso profundo J. Scott Smart, is exceptionally good in his role as Brad Runyon, alias The Fat Man, a private detective who is not your average PI. Brad is a well-spoken, well-read, pleasure- loving, sweet-tempered, middle-aged, 270-lb mountain of a man wearing a quirky moustache right out of a Nineteenth-Century daguerreotype.
However, The Fat Man is neither a hog nor a dunce. J Scott Smart's full and fine performance turns an unconventional private eye into a charming and intelligent investigator who is much cleverer than anyone else around him. (He's also tough when need be, packing a snub-nosed .32, and even graceful when the occasion calls for it, wowing with his agile and bouncy, if pachydermic dance steps.)
After her employer is found dead, dental nurse Jayne Meadows (in real life, married to pioneering late night TV host Steve Allen) seeks out the food-loving Fat Man, who, in an entertaining intro, is showing a collection – a mélange, if you will -- of a great many chefs how to not spoil the broth.
Certain dental records are missing, and the nurse believes this may have something to do with the dentist's death. (Meadows plays the dental nurse with sympathy and with more than a little sadness.)
The unusual details of the dentist's death and his nurse's obvious distress hit a nerve, and The Fat Man takes on the case for nothing! (Always interested in filling himself, he just can't brush off such a toothy puzzle.)
The trail of the missing dental X-Rays leads Private Eye Runyon from New York City to California -- and to an ex-con, nicely played by a young Rock Hudson.
A sensible professional, Runyon works closely with the police, who cooperate courteously, if warily. Detective Lt. Stark, well-acted by Jerome Cowan, who himself a decade earlier had played Sam Spade's doomed partner in "The Maltese Falcon," treats him as a colleague, a refreshing change from the usual movie thriller adversarial relationship of PI vs. police.
However, another movie tradition, the great sleuth's assistant who is dumber than a pound of wet liver, is still upheld. In a nicely comic turn, Clinton Sundberg handles the chores this chowderhead is saddled with a sweet enthusiasm, submitting to all sorts of indignities with a cheerful grace. Take note that nowhere in this movie does he get a salary check or even a tip.
But The Fat Man has more to worry about than meeting a payroll. He has to sift through a couple more murders, outsmart a den of thieves, figure out the answers to an unsolved half-million-dollar armored car heist involving a posse of rent-a-cops, and face a mysterious, rather scary pratfall of clowns. (In much more than the usual gratuitous guest-star appearance, famous clown Emmett Kelly pops up here in a fully-realized three-dimensional portrayal. He even speaks – and well, at that!)
The plump private eye is put on the trail of a night-club entertainer played by the sultry Julie London, who possesses a valuable secret. Vulnerable under her veneer of hardness, the sensual beauty, who, in real life, was married to TV cop Jack Webb, sends Runyon in the right direction, leading eventually to an exciting show-down which is both scary and surrealistic.
Cameraman Irving Glassberg (celebrated for being one of the discoverers of Clint Eastwood) allocates his limited budget prudently, nourishing the film's noirishness with skill and finesse. His intelligent camera moves restlessly across patterned floors, picking up random gleams from the polished glass and metal of an elegant hotel lobby late at night, the few humans abroad seen as ominous shadows.
A circus subtheme effectively adds still another dimension to the film. At one point, for instance, the Fat Man rents a British two- seat sports car -- an MG or a Morgan -- that looks like it may be too tiny for a five-year-old, let alone a behemoth like himself. As he shoehorns himself into the tiny car, which isn't much more than a roller skate with a motor, you can practically hear it groan. The camera mercifully looks away, before we learn how he manages to squeeze out of it.
In another telling, even unsettling scene, what looks to be a whole platoon of bank guards in black SS-like uniforms tumble out of an armored truck, like one of those teeny-weeny circus clown cars that can hold an entire sideshow of grease-painted circus clowns plus their painted poodles and made-up monkeys plus a lifetime supply of inflated balloons .
Filmed only a few years after the Second World War, in crisp black and white, "The Fat Man," though an unpretentious B movie that sort of got lost in the crowd, is a rich chowder of admirable acting and appealing directorial details. Without gimmicks.
Puppet on a Chain (1971)
Action Drama in Dutch Setting Isn't Too Cheesy; Some Parts Gouda Be Good
If you don't expect too much from "Puppet on a Chain," you can spend an enjoyable session watching a nearly half-century-old bam- bam-wham- wham adventure movie set in beautiful Amsterdam.
The story, cobbled from a book by Alaistair MacLean, once one of the most popular novelists working the global-thriller gold mine ("The Guns of Navarone," "The Satan Bug," "Ice Station Zebra,"), involves a narcotics gang working out of Holland, and the good guys bent on stopping them.
If "Puppet on a Chain" has any claim to fame, it's because of its heart-pounding epochal speed-boat chase through Dutch canals. Beautifully set up, daringly acted by supremely skilled stuntmen and superbly photographed, it's one of the most exciting high-motion chase scenes in movie history.
The rest of the movie involves a heavily layered story about dolls, Bibles, and ingenious ways of making the hero's life miserable and painful. Aside from the veteran American actor Alexander Knox ("Wilson") and a dependably hissable villain (Vladek Shaybel, a familiar Bond baddie, most notably the Czech chess grandmaster, "SPECTRE Number 5," in the 1963 "From Russia with Love") the acting is solidly second-rate and the undistinguished dialogue just a means of nudging the story forward.
The hero, a US agent, is stolidly if unexpectedly portrayed by a Swedish actor, Sven-Bertil Taube (who was much better decades later in the Swedish film, "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," as Henrick Vanger). Don't look for Bond girls here – just an assemblage of wan actresses, all looking curiously like Addams Family cousins in their dark-haired pallor, mouthing dull repartee.
Good points include the aforesaid speedboat chase, beautiful cinematography in good color, Piero Piccioni's appealing score, some funny headgear, and a sometimes original look at the seamy underbelly of The Netherlands, including prostitutes, graffiti and some wildly complicated drug smuggling operations.
All this doesn't stop director Geoffrey Reeve and cinematographer Jack Hildyard from having some fun, notably in photographing a) a naughty and messy floor show, and later, b) a prudish and precise folk dance – the vigilant moviegoer might enjoy comparing the two.
"Puppet on a Chain," for all its obvious influence on Bond movies, has somehow always hidden under the radar, and never been given its just due as a progenitor of the international thriller genre, although moviegoers have time and again been pleasantly surprised at the unpredictable morsels hidden within its bland Dutch cheese offering.
The Third Visitor (1951)
A 90-minute puzzler, well worth watching
The Third Visitor moves along at a fair-paced clip , with acting honors to Sonia Dresdel – a singular actress whose unusual angular features and raven-like manner clutch and hold the camera's attention. (She played the hissable Mrs. Baines in The Fallen Idol (1948). One critic said that she had "a real power to take an audience by the wrist and give them the works. She had terrific personality and was terribly underused and misused. She would have been the Lady Macbeth of all Lady Macbeths.")
Mr. Richard Carling (Karel Stepanek), a superior sort of gent who had apparently graduated with honors from some Central European school of sneering, has various people, including an American gangster and a mysterious woman, call on him one evening at his isolated mansion. The next day a corpse, identified as his, is discovered, and a police detective (Drew Middleton), an Inspector Japp/Lestrade clone, complete with bushy mustache, rumpled raincoat and a carefully cultivated vagueness, goes nosing around to find the killer. He bumps heads with the sort of characters who inhabited British melodramas of the '40s and '50s, including the witch-like Steffy Millington (Sonia Dresdel) and her daffy hubby, Bill Millington (Colin Gordon), a couple with an unexpected supply of light-hearted Noel Cowardish banter; a sour-looking blonde, Vera Kurton (Eleanor Summerfield), and her pleasantly bland husband, Jack Kurton (Hubert Gregg), who exchange salvos rather than words; and a weirdo with the charisma of a talking fungus (Michael Martin Harvey). These folks scuttle in and out of view for an hour and a half, dropping clues for the industrious Inspector to scoop up and make sense of. Chaired skillfully by the incredible Maurice Elvey, who directed nearly 200 British films between 1913 and 1957, The Third Visitor is a remarkably satisfying little crime drama with a plot that twists and turns, keeping you guessing right to the neatly unexpected finale. Filmed in black and white, in the austere setting of post- war Britain (some of the scenery would seem to have been borrowed from the original stage play), it's a semi noir, wholly crafty 90- minute mystery masterpiece, all the more satisfying because I had never heard of it.
Cover Her Face (1985)
A New Look at The Book
In this video adaptation of P. D. James' first Dalgleish mystery, "Cover Her Face," many liberties were taken. These apparently were done to convert a leisurely "County" mystery to a fast-moving TV miniseries.
While many fans of P. D. James find the changes disruptive and not true to the original, it must be said that this introductory video adaptation proved successful enough to warrant more Dalgleish mysteries being filmed.
The story is essentially a character study of a young woman and her effect on a number of assorted personalities, ranging from a housekeeper-cook to a young physician.
It's set in an England that is already fading from the memory -- big stately homes, church fetes, horse-riding gentry. vicars out of Anthony Trollope...and no cell-phones.
Roy Marsden plays Adam Dagleish, who, in this story, has been promoted from Chief Inspector to Chief Superintendent, which would seem to be a rather exalted New Scotland Yard rank for a detective concerned with only one mystery, rather than the half-dozen or so at one time that a real policeman-executive on that level would be working. He has but one assistant, whose function is primarily to take suspects into custody. The local police are fawning and ever so grateful for the great man's presence. Questioning of witnesses and suspects is casual and low- key and rarely confrontational.
The actor Roy Marsden, quiet and cool, would seem, at first glance, to be an odd choice to play a police detective. But he was a good choice for the role.
His character as Dalgleish is diffident, soft-spoken, observant, intellectual -- a poet, no less. But he is a super-smart sleuth who can be tough if the circumstances so warrant.
The pacing of this story, though speeded up for TV, can still seem excruciatingly slow at times, but stick with it. Superb acting makes it all worth while.
Diplomatic Courier (1952)
Fast-paced Iron Curtain thriller offers an early look at some future stars
Tyrone Power is a diplomatic courier for the US State Department who gets into more trouble than he bargained for.
Always a very good if under-rated actor,in "Diplomatic Courier" Tyrone Power shows a tough shrewdness that's more gritty private eye than State Department protocol calls for.
The movie, in beautifully photographed black-and-white, never lets up its rapid pace. It's the sort of impeccably produced Hollywood movie that is absolutely professional, from the smart direction of Henry Hathaway to the breathtaking cinematography by Lucien Ballard.
As a diplomatic courier, Power thinks himself as just "a postman." But when he's called upon to make a special delivery, things begin happening and fast.
For starters, he finds himself in the sights of not one, but two beautiful women --{Patricia Neal and Hildegard Neff -- who both deliver terrific and intelligent performances.)
Much of the action takes place on one of those international trains equipped with piercing air horns and whistles, with lots of hopping between compartments. There is also the requisite plush hotel and nightclub with a weird variety act, and packs of sinister Eastern European-accented characters up to no good.
With all of this, there is a marvelous bonus: four future stars appear in "Diplomatic Courier," and you might want to look for them: Michael Ansara...Charles Bronson... Lee Marvin ... and Karl Malden. Bronson, Ansara and Marvin have tiny roles -- Bronson (Buchinsky here) and Ansara are in and out in seconds -- but Karl Malden actually steals the movie as a Sgt. Bilko-type US Army non-com who knows the ropes.
In all, "Diplomatic Courier" is a nice surprise, especially if you like to watch for new stars on the horizon.
Partners in Crime: The Affair of the Pink Pearl (1983)
A different and delightful Agatha Christie – a British Nick & Nora!
The light-hearted crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford was created by Agatha Christie, perhaps as a counterweight to the graver Hercules Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries. Christie's grandson has said that her grandmother meant the Tommy and Tuppence stories as somewhat autobiographical , reflecting her happy life as the wife of Col. Christie, her first husband.
These two cheerful detectives are as smart as the other Christie 'tecs, but with a youthful flair that sets them apart.
As played by James Warwick and Francesca Annis, they might remind you of Nick and Nora Charles from "The Thin Man" series --- they have some of the same dash and wit, even if in a different setting. In 1983's "The Affair of the Pink Pearl", one of the British TV "Partners in Crime" series based on Tommy and Tuppence's adventures, they solve a cute little puzzle, while having a little fun.
It's all very light and well-done. The two stars are able farceurs and can keep up with each other in the rapid-fire dialogue. (Francesca Annis is perhaps too beautiful for the part – her looks steal every scene she's in.)
A little bit of TV history. One of the roles is played – and very well indeed -- by the British actress Lynda La Plante, who went on to greater fame as the writer of the remarkable "Prime Suspect" series, which starred Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison, detective extraordinaire.
Seven Dials Mystery (1981)
Delightful Agatha Christie: A very proper mashup of Nancy Drew and Clue!
Sly vixen that she was, Agatha Christie had other arrows in her quiver besides her usual crew of detectives.
For instance, "The Seven Dials Mystery" is a beautiful filmed production set among the magnificent houses of the great if not so good between the two World Wars, far from the tranquil world of Miss Marple.
There is no middle-aged Belgian detective or village busybody here, but a pert girl with impeccable breeding and a nose for adventure.
In "The Seven Dials Mystery," originally written in 1929, and produced as a British TV film in 1981 (directed by long-time "NCIS" director Tony Wharmby) , Christie's sleuth is a young noblewoman named Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent (Cheryl Campbell) . Just a few years older than Nancy Drew, this delightful daughter of a marquess (Sir John Gielgud!) engages in some very clever (and very dangerous) detective work.
Set in a gorgeous old pile, and involving a whole House of Lords of wealthy aristocrats, including several very rich and (sigh!) very stupid gilded youth, "The Seven Dials Mystery" has plot enough for a dozen mystery movies.
During the day, Bright Young Things screaming, "By Jove!" and "I say!" play away the hours. But as mysterious gunshots ring out at night, to the grim accompaniment of ancient clocks tolling away the hours, the bodies begin to add up.
As the cute "Bundle" Brent tries to figure out what's going on, Dame Agatha adds still more layers of mystery to the puzzle, and what started out as almost a day trip to the Fun House becomes a terrifying excursion into the unknown.
Along for the ride is the great Sir John Gielgud, in a charming, often hilarious performance as an eccentric peer of the realm (he easily steals every scene he's in), and the marvelous Harry Andrews, as, of course, a Detective-Superintendent from Scotland Yard.
Christie doesn't let you off lightly, and there are nuances and subtleties that you might miss on your first viewing. So watch "Seven Dials Mystery" over and over, and don't look at the clock while the movie's playing, because Dame Agatha has a surprise for you every minute of the film.
Skyfall (2012)
A traditional folktale for the ages ...and for all ages
The Bond movies transcend the Bond books, in the same way "Casablanca" transcended a so-so play that never made it to Broadway: "They All Came to Rick's." Where Ian Fleming ground out snobbish and often silly stories in imitation of a rather nasty and racist writer, "Sapper" McNeile, the Bond films have created their own magic. Not all the movies have been great, of course. But in a half- century, a surprisingly number of them have achieved greatness. One of them is "Skyfall." It takes the by-now familiar ideas and themes ("tropes" in critic- talk) of beyond-the-pale arch-villain, technology bent to evil purposes, scenic tours of the world's most photogenic spots, scenic tours of the world's most photogenic women, noise and gadgetry, a preposterous plot/scheme/conspiracy, and a secret agent with the skill sets of Hercules, Horatio Hornblower, Sir Galahad, Michael Strogoff, Courier of the Czar (check him out) and Mr. Spock ... and conjures up a breathtaking world of action and entertainment -- a circus with a theme, or trope, if you will. But best of all, it uses an extremely able cast to tell an adult story. Yes, adult! By now the whole world knows that Judi Dench is one of the greatest actors living today. Here, she shows us why. This is not the "M" of 10-second tirades, or an exasperated school- marm. In "Skyfall," "M" is a three-dimensional person. Dench's scenes will probably be studied in acting classes for some time to come. Daniel Craig finally comes to grips with the Bond character, and, in so doing, creates a believable James Bond who is really capable of the derring-do that's part of his job description, yet maintains a very touching humanity. He harks back to the proletarian roughneck of Sean Connery, a type today's British Intelligence and SAS are more likely to employ than aristocratic dilettantes (although the latter did prove their worth in leading charges against machine guns in World War I, armed with nothing but a swagger stick and a Webley Mk VI revolver.) All this could not have been made possible without cinematographer Roger Deakins and director Sam Mendes. They've made a Bond film that's watchable. That you must watch.
Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders (2016)
Boredom Without Borders
About all this spin off shares with the original Criminal Minds is the nutty but enjoyable concept of a tech-geek back at the ranch pressing a lot of keys to instantly come up with answers.
There are two main problems with this show.
The biggest problem is Gary Sinise, a reptilian-like veteran actor who has not aged well and who lacks energy, warmth or personality.
The other main problem is the show's concept of having the FBI throw its weight around on a global level. It's insulting and inaccurate. It also makes for a very dull program, with all the tension and excitement of a visiting group of US commercial attachés pitching a trade agreement with locals who couldn't care less.
This is the second attempted spin-off of Criminal Minds, a wonderful program that was both disturbing and entertaining, besides being an intriguing exercise in group dynamics. Let us hope that, if there is a third attempt to spin off Criminal Minds, it returns to its roots.
Damien: Omen II (1978)
Unreal, but never false.
From Lee Grant to Lance Henricksen, the acting in this film is remarkable. It's really a pleasure when professionals like this take their work seriously, even in the unfairly maligned horror genre, and don't look upon it as just an easy paycheck.
There are three levels of horror in Damien: Omen II. First of all, the scary images. You don't take your eyes off the film and yet you want to close your eyes, as the blood flows in gobbets. (There is also a raven that can put you off all members of the crow family for life.)
The second dimension is internal, as the characters try to come to terms with what is happening around them. A stupendous cast of some of Hollywood's finest, most serious actors deliver really good performances -- it's just amazing watching them.
The third dimension is supernatural, metaphysical, religious. There's no getting around it. The film is about the Anti-Christ, and you better freshen up on your theology. (Even Old Beezelbub's son gets to carrying around a Bible in this movie to do a little inventory of sins and wickedness.)
Add Jerry Goldsmith's truly wonderful score and you've got a genre flick that's really a major motion picture.
Nothing Sacred (1937)
NOTHING SACRED is Still an Insane Punch-and-Judy Show
The 1937 screwball comedy NOTHING SACRED is determined not to let you catch your breath, not for one nanosecond. As fast as an avalanche rolling down on you at racing car speed, it's like nothing you may have seen before. There's nothing subtle about NOTHING SACRED.
Starring the gorgeous Carole Lombard, whose aristocratic beauty didn't quite hide a mischievous and wicked sense of humor and a stopwatch sense of timing, NOTHING SACRED purports to be the story of Hazel Flagg, a small-town woman who is dying of radium poisoning – a hilarious premise, you must admit.
But nothing is as it seems in NOTHING SACRED. Hazel is dying of boredom, not radium poisoning, and to get out of town and go to town, as it were. she seizes upon a seedy Manhattan newspaperman's wretched attempt to redeem his reputation after a silly hoax goes awry. As cynical as a pawnbroker being offered the crown jewels of England by a ragged hobo, the reporter, played by Fredric March, sees corruption and self-aggrandizement everywhere, but especially in his own profession. He also sees Hazel as his way back to grace and brings her to Gotham.
As manipulative as Lady Macbeth, though much cuter, Hazel takes New York City by storm. She becomes a two-week wonder. She gets a key to the city; flashbulbs pop everywhere she goes; teary-eyed sob-sisters weep over her gallantry and courage; and newspapers devote their front-pages to her – the whole nine yards of instant celebrity-hood.
But master screenwriter Ben Hecht's intention is much more devious than an open-mouthed recounting of still another flash-in-the-pan. With hilarious effect, he peels away the pretensions of doctors, politicians, do-gooders and, especially, the newspaper business. You don't dare turn away for a second during Hazel's wild romp. Everybody speaks with a forked tongue here – quickly, hilariously, deceitfully and colorfully. (Ben Hecht's command of contemporary slang of the '30s is something splendidiferous, if not spanglorious.)
Filmed in an early Technicolor process, the available prints of NOTHING SACRED have not aged well: with New York City coming across as a sort of muddy Land of Oz (The skyscrapers look good, though.) Costumes are outlandish, major sets are tasteless, even vulgar – doubtlessly on purpose, and – this is a surprise in a major studio's product – editing is a bit slipshod (a small-town doctor's office has a high cathedral-like ceiling, with an overlooked set of studio Klieg lights popping up in one scene (at approx 13:44 into the film), only to disappear in the next (15:00). Director William Wellman, himself a World War I fighter pilot, also spends an inordinate amount of time on aerial shots, which, though offering a fascinating glimpse of the city as it was eighty years ago, don't exactly push along the plot.
All this, curiously enough, serves the film writer's intention rather well, turning the movie into a form of not-quite-human puppet show. The opening credits may have had this in mind, giving this away with an odd and eerie display of frightening doll caricatures of the cast.
Oscar Levant's lush music, with the additional help of Alfred Newman and Max Steiner, and Raymond Scott's Quintette, punctuates the movie with a sophisticated richness that never intrudes.
The cast included some well-known names of the time, not all of them credited: Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly, Frank Fay, boxer Maxie Rosenbloom, Margaret Hamilton, Billy Barty (as the kid who bites Fredric March's leg – don't ask!), Jinx Falkenburg, Hedda Hopper, Aileen Pringle, Hattie McDaniel, Leonid Kinskey, and, as one of a quartet of rather weird German medical specialists, Yale drama professor Monty (THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER) Woolley.
A lot of other talent was called in for this brief 73-minute movie, including the uncredited writing of David O. Selznick, Moss Hart, Sidney Howard, George S. Kaufman, Ring Lardner, Jr. and Budd Schulberg, among others. (Scenarist Ben Hecht took only two weeks to write the script – he was said to be the fastest as well as the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood – and Messrs. Selznick and Wellman may have felt the need for some additional polishing. While Ben Hecht was a much-honored scriptwriter – he wrote over 70 movies, was nominated for six Oscars, and won two, including the first Oscar ever for Original Screenplay, for UNDERWORLD, 1927 – his scripts, to the Hollywood moguls, still were nothing sacred.)
Charley Varrick (1973)
Walter Matthau is so ba-a-d he's good!
This movie is a bloodbath and demolition derby that makes a Quentin Tarantino film look like THE SOUND OF MUSIC. People get shot, tortured,blown-up.
There are perhaps only two good people in the entire movie. Walter Matthau is not one of them. He is as amoral as they come. And yet CHARLEY VARRICK, for all its grimness, and taut suspense, is a feel-good movie.
It's actually delightful...
It's all because of Walter Matthau. He was a master in showing intelligence. That rumbled face, odd posture and shambling walk masterfully conveyed the warning -- Beware: Brain At Work!
Walter Matthau made thinking and planning very interesting, even sexy.
And the good news is that he's even better here than in his other masterpiece of mixed-up morality, HOPSCOTCH. (Both films feature little old airplanes -- Hollywood's homage to NORTH BY NORTHWEST?)
There are other ingredients to this action-packed movie that give it its special charm. Beautifully photographed and directed, extremely well-acted (look especially for a chilling performance by Joe Don Baker), engrossing plot, funny dialog, and above all, Walter Matthau.
It's almost a half-century old, yet CHARLEY VARRICK is still as fresh as a budding daisy over a new grave.
Make every effort to see CHARLEY VARRICK as soon as possible. Why postpone pleasure?
Desert Saints (2002)
There's a menacing critter roaming the desert -- a deadly scorpion with a sting ... an 8.5" .357 Colt Python Magnum
A surprisingly entertaining movie , "Desert Saints" offers a subtle yet scary Kiefer Sutherland as a refined and resourceful hit man who fastidiously buries his kill in the desert as neatly as a teacher erasing a problem from a whiteboard. It also has more twists and turns than a sidewinder going after a kangaroo rat.
Sutherland, who, by this time, could do this part in cruise control, instead turns in an edgy, sympathetic three-dimensional performance that's full-blooded while remaining cold-blooded.
Come along for the ride as professional assassin Arthur Banks (Kiefer Sutherland) picks up hitchhiking Bennie Harper (Melora Walters-- "Magnolia"), a well-built waif with an interestingly irregular profile and a childishness that is not at all naïve.
The car's a bit crowded because there are two more passengers -- Temptation and Treachery. This pair of backseat drivers are going to have a lot to say about how this very bumpy ride along the country's most arid landscape is going to end.
On the trail of the murderous Mr. Banks is the FBI, in the person of the always welcome Jamey Sheridan (Capt. Deakins in "Law & Order -- Criminal Intent" and the very frightening good ol' boy from Hell in the TV miniseries made from Stephen King's "The Stand") as Special Agent George Scanlon, a cop with a grudge and a long memory. Riding shotgun with him is Agent Donna Marbury ( Leslie Stefanson -- 1999's "The General's Daughter"), whose violet-blue eyes see much more than she's telling.
In his first film as director, long-time assistant director Richard Greenberg ("Jumpin' Jack Flash") , also credited as the writer, doesn't let up the tension for a minute and his outstanding cast never let him down. Some very nice acting, crisp, often funny dialogue, and jump-out-of-your-skin goings-on make "Desert Saints" an oasis in the too-often barren terrain of made-for-TV thrillers.
Michael Shayne: Private Detective (1940)
Lloyd Nolan's "Michael Shayne" Is Smart As a Whip, Fast With A Quip and Takes No Lip: What a Pip!
"Michael Shayne Private Detective" (1940), is an unexpected charmer: a delightful hardboiled private eye movie that will have you chuckling to the very last frame while trying to figure out the murderer before Mike Shayne (Lloyd Nolan) does.
Starring that thoroughly likable no-nonsense pro, Lloyd Nolan ( who appeared in the first seven of a dozen Shayne movies), and set in the last peaceful days before World War II, "Michael Shayne Private Detective" – the first in the series -- is an enjoyable gift box of welcome surprises: a period piece where the cars are both boxy and racy, men's suits are double-breasted and boxy, and the private eyes think best when they're boxed in.
Private detective Shayne, broke as usual, suddenly gets a juicy assignment. All he has to do is nursemaid a spoiled rich girl (Marjorie Weaver), who has the gambling bug and all the wrong friends. Mike's attempt to show her a lesson backfires, and suddenly he's the chief suspect in a murder.
A little thing like that's not going to stop Mike Shayne. Ingenious and inventive, fast-thinking and fast-talking, he has to dodge the cops while finding the real murderer. And now he's acquired a zany assistant, a proper old lady with a surprising taste for blood.
Aunt Olivia: It was the great piano mystery. The body was found under the piano, his throat was strangled with piano wires, the soft pedal was found embedded in his neck, and somebody had completely severed the head from the body. He was dead!
Michael Shayne: (dryly) Oh, suicide, hmmm?
Mike's proficient with both a riposte and a pistol. ("Hey, that brooch is as phony as a mother-in-law's kiss!") And he's not bad with badinage.
Cop: When are you gonna start talking straight?
Mike: Not until my attorney gets out of law school!
Shayne may have a quip for every question; but he's also sentimental, full of malarkey and blarney, whimsical, perpetually broke and a sucker for a pretty face.
Add a batch of odd characters played by a superb supporting cast: Douglas Dumbrille, Elizabeth Patterson, George Meeker, Walter Abel and Irving Bacon; and you've got a screwball comedy with smooth ensemble acting, an ample supply of corpses and a solution that actually makes sense.
An appreciation of Lloyd Nolan: "The actor who was generally credited with 'A' performances in a decade-long series of 'B' films became so good, in fact, that he permitted himself the luxury of turning down work, a privilege that ordinarily falls to far better known stars." -- The Los Angeles Times.
Noose (1948)
Fast-paced postwar British crime comedy captivates with a spunky and stunning Carole Landis and a Machiavellian, motor-mouth mobster
Although visiting American actress Carole Landis gets top billing in the 1948 British crime thriller, "The Silk Noose" (AKA "The Noose"), it's the much underrated English actor, Nigel Patrick ("The League of Gentlemen," "The Sound Barrier," "Raintree County") who steals this movie.
From his very first appearance yelping cheerful insults into a telephone, Nigel Patrick takes command of this unusual British crime feature, as a flip and glib Cockney gangster who is part conniving Phil Silvers (think "Sgt. Bilko"), part sleazy Michael Palin (think suavely snide East End hoodlum Luigi Vercotti in "Monty Python"), and part fast-talking James Cagney (think "One, Two, Three") .
So wacky and so unexpected and so hilarious is Patrick's maniacal insincerity that you may drum your fingers impatiently during the few scenes that he's not on camera being cheerfully devious -- however action-packed some of those scenes may be. (There is considerable action in "The Silk Noose," some of it nail-biting -- this, after all, is a near-noir crime story with an alarming body count -- but on the whole it's comic-book roughhousing, best captioned by "Pow!" " Bam!" and "Oomph!")
Written by Richard Llewellyn ("How Green Was My Valley," "None But the Lonely Heart"), "The Silk Noose" homes in on "spivs," British racketeers of the late 1940s , grown fat on wartime black market profits, and now still doing their bit for Britain by blithely counterfeiting, smuggling, and, for all we know, loitering and littering. (It may take you back to Jules Dassin's more earnest, better-known "Night and the City," with Richard Widmark, which came along two years later.)
In this particular case, the local don, Sugiani (Joseph Calleia), prefers to perform his perfidy out of a posh Soho nightclub that features très chic chanteuses and très cher champagne. Looking like a Satanic Cesar Romero, Maltese-American actor Joseph Calleia cheerfully overacts, shaking his part until it cries "Basta!" Both sinister and jovial at the same time, Calleia's gangster could be seen as a stand-in for Mussolini – posturing, threatening and begging for adoration simultaneously.
Make no mistake, for all his charm and over-the-top grand opera posturing, Sugiani can be a very dangerous man, particularly when issuing orders to his very own Heinrich Himmler, a spine-chilling personal assassin known as "Barber" (the great Dickensian character actor, Hay Petrie), an unctuous, leering Claude Rains-clone who scuttles around a bleak London like a human cockroach, using a silk stocking ("the noose") as his preferred means of dispatch.
Nigel Patrick's Bar Gorman is Sugiani's right-hand man and/or partner. He could also be a stand-in for Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, particularly when barking orders over his huge desktop intercom or trying to wheedle favorable newspaper publicity. The relationship of the two crooks is complicated, and at times the two suddenly snarl at each other like strange dogs passing on the street, then as quickly make up. It's an insane partnership made in Hell, and the two men, continuously on edge, are a fascinating team, blending affinity, iniquity and irrationality.
Into this hidey-hole of Axis-style moray eels merrily steps the Dior-dressed figure of Carole Landis, an American fashion editor working for a London newspaper (don't ask). Dressed to the nines in every shot, Landis, as a brash and beautiful career girl, puts across a delightful sassiness as she investigates a grisly London murder that isn't getting the attention she feels it deserves.
As expected, the trail leads to the bad, bad Sugiani, but, surrounded by his thuggish hirelings, he's apparently invulnerable. However, in a twist reminiscent of the creepy Peter Lorre classic, "M", the muscle-bound laborers of London's docks and markets are enrolled in a vigilante lynch mob, the lumpenproletariat out to take back their streets, and a rousing if unconvincing version of class warfare breaks out as the forces of Good, wearing football jerseys, battle the forces of Evil, in dinner jackets.
With all this, "The Silk Noose" would still be just another dated British "spiv" movie -- though with a few comedic grace notes -- but for Nigel Patrick's virtuoso performance and these three significant particulars :
1. Stanley Holloway, the beloved Alfred P. Doolittle of "My Fair Lady," plays a very well-dressed Scotland Yard inspector who may be on the take, and does it up well. He has a surprisingly commanding presence as a top cop and uses his authoritative voice to get your attention and hold it.
2. The director was Edmond Gréville, who had apprenticed with the legendary Frenchman Abel Gance ("Napoleon") . Besides pacing the movie with fast rhythmic editing, he offers up a boutique of superimposed images, extreme close-ups, artistic camera angles and surprising staging, so you don't dare blink for missing some exciting shot or experimental exposure. (For instance, he shoots one nightclub scene through the multifaceted glass top of a perfume bottle -- giving it the vertiginous viewpoint of a drunken housefly.) There's also an unexpected degree of eroticism, which marked many of the films of this half-French half-British director.
3. "The Silk Noose" was to be the next-to-the-last movie of the tragic Carole Landis, who had died by the time of the film's release in August 1948. A delightful actress with unrealized potential, she had worn herself out with endless USO tours: she had traveled more than 100,000 miles during the war, had spent more time visiting troops than any other actress, and had even caught a nasty case of malaria. By the time she killed herself at the age of 29, she had been married five times. Under still mysterious circumstances, her body was discovered by her married boyfriend, actor Rex Harrison , who, almost two decades later, was to appear with Stanley Holloway in " My Fair Lady", a triumph for them both.
Harry Brown (2009)
Violent, visceral, vigilante, vengeance viewing –in other words, a Feel Good movie about taking down the bad guys
Harry Brown (Michael Caine), an aging chess-playing widower, lives by himself in a deteriorating low-income London housing project, a vast Soviet-like expanse of ugly crumbling gray-brown concrete block- towers of depressing apartments, sterile walkways, uninviting communal spaces and shadowy underpasses terrorized by violent young drug peddlers. Too dreary to be called Hell, it's really a form of limbo where drab, sad people try to get through another day without too much grief, scurrying past each other with just a nod and a word, because to dawdle here is to invite an encounter with pain, or worse. We are no longer in England's green and pleasant land, but a nasty place that is disintegrating and rotting.
In fact, the housing project most closely resembles a prison, its tenants kept cut off from the rest of society. It's hard to travel to and from this bad place. It sits alone, as quarantined as a radioactive test site.
As isolated as the other tenants, Harry minds his own business, keeps to himself. Aside from a pint and a game of chess in the local pub, he has little to do with his neighbors, even ignoring the occasional scream in the night. He keeps a wary eye on the scum around him, but steers clear of them. After all, he is a quiet old man.
But after a gang of punks murder his one friend in the world, his chess partner (David Bradley, the grumpy Hogwarts caretaker Argus Filch from the Harry Potter franchise), Harry takes things into his own hands - - old hands which have never quite lost their very special skill.
For withdrawn and soft-spoken old Harry is in reality a retired and heavily decorated NCO in the Royal Marines. There is no nice way to put it: Harry Brown is a resourceful and remorseless angel of death.
After a number of dealers are found floating in their own gore, a smart but somewhat brittle detective inspector, played by Emily Mortimer, focuses on Harry as the murderer. She sees revenge as the motive. But her bosses are not eager to spotlight a vengeance killing which might give self-help ideas to a public under siege.
Instead they throw police resources into halting an imaginary gang war. A massive night-time riot in the housing project results in a pitched and amazingly confused gun battle, with a plot bombshell or two thrown in to stir the pot further.
Now "Harry Brown" could be enjoyed as your standard-issue vigilante slaughter fest/vengeance-killer thriller, and on that bloodthirsty level it does grab you by the throat and forces you to total and horrified concentration as the body count gets higher. You'll be cheering the right side, of course. The bad guys are loathsome and frightening and do horrible things to helpless people. No socially redeeming qualities at all.
Make no mistake: for all of Caine's nuanced acting, a riveting soundtrack and the camera's documentary-like surveillance, director Daniel Barber has composed a neatly deranged movie in the Charles Bronson/Clint Eastwood tradition of heavy caliber do-it-yourself cesspool cleaning.
In the grand tradition of revenge thrillers, one of the movie's most ominous lines is delivered by Caine as a grandfatherly admonition that becomes the last word in terror: "You failed to maintain your weapon."
But "Harry Brown" is more than a day trip to the Carnage Carnival.
It's a master class in film acting. And this moves the movie several notches up, from a murder spree to a must-see.
Caine, an awesome actor whose talent and range from "Alfie" to "Zulu" and beyond have magically kept expanding and deepening, brings a touching dignity to the role of old codger Harry Brown. There's another side to this senior citizen as well -- a coiled- spring watchfulness that, when it suddenly turns into brute action, leaves you both gasping and cheering. The violence may take you off guard, but it does play fair. Upon reflection, you'll realize the safety valve was ready to pop, even if you couldn't read the signs. Michael Caine hides nothing from you.
"The camera catches everything you do, so don't be afraid to play things subtly." (Sir Michael Caine)
Watch the way Caine tells you that Harry Brown is lonely. He moves quietly through his little apartment, taking great care to clean up after eating his miserable little meals. Mostly, though, he just sits, waiting. And it tears your heart out, as you realize just alone he is.
"Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser." (Sir Michael Caine)
Through a restrained build-up of his character, Caine keeps the movie from turning into a geriatric version of "Death Wish," or even his own iconic "Get Carter," a template for revenge thrillers. Harry does what he does because that's who he is. Pummeled by life, rejected and dejected, he still has internal resources that he can call upon, even though they may be cruel and terrible.
"Harry Brown" may not be especially socially significant, but it does have a lesson for you to take away: Don't leave a bag of guns around for some sweet old guy to stumble over. Somebody might get hurt.
Wolf (1994)
A howling good werewolf movie, with Jack Nicholson as The Child of the Night
"He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive."
That, of course, is a description of a wild dog from the menagerie of San Francisco's great storyteller Jack London. But it can also be a successful book editor in today's wolf-eat-wolf world of big- time book publishing.
In Mike Nichols' enchanted 1994 movie, Wolf, we meet a failing book editor, Jack Nicholson, who, sorry to say, would rather purr than bark. Because he's a goat staked out for the kill, meek and mild Jack is about to succumb to the claw and fang of the monsters around him -- not the gibbering ogres that hide behind bookshelves in editorial offices, and come out at night to hide author contracts, mix-up manuscripts and insert misspellings and inaccuracies in freshly proof-read books – but assassins who can kill a career with an e-mail or fax.
In his case, Nicholson has two creatures to deal with: the jackal- like James Spader, as vicious and as smiling a villain as one might find in a Grimm's fairy tale or an MBA executive program, and the nightmarish Christopher Plummer, the nastiest and most treacherous boss since Genghis Khan, the sort of corpse-eating, bone-crunching sneak who gives hyenas a bad name. Both actors are at the top of their game, and it's a delight to watch them work their nastiness.
Fortunately for the Nicholson character, he gets bitten by a werewolf, and we all know what that means, kiddies.
Like one of Jack London's canines on the prowl: "He became quicker of movement... swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with iron like muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel more ferocious, and more intelligent."
All this without having to spend a minute on a tread mill or give up steak ("I said bloody rare!") . Sometimes there is justice in this world.
As if this wasn't enough of a bonus for getting nibbled by a werewolf, he falls in love with a dirty-minded Little Red Riding Hood, the toothsome Michelle Pfeiffer. And his ill-wishers soon find out they've bitten off more than they can chew.
Ingenious Mike Nichols has trapped the old werewolf legends – as told in the Universal Pictures Lon Chaney movies – and given them a new, giggle-filled twist.
But if you have a feeling that we're not in tranquil Transylvania any more, you're right. This is New York City, where the pointy skyscrapers look like fangs against the midnight sky, and a chill wind at the stroke of 12 can suddenly come howling down Broadway. Even so, a newly minted werewolf in Gotham has appointments to keep and rivals to slay. And to do the job properly, he's now armed with useful new office skills, like the ability to hear whispered workplace gossip blocks away and a sensitive nose that tells him who's been sipping tequila at the breakfast table.
However, he can't be a 9-to-fiver forever. A wolf-man needs to make time for fun, like one of Jack London's animal heroes: "But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called -- called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come."
As you might expect, evening is chow-down time in the Big Apple. But what happens in Central Park stays in Central Park, minus a hand or two.
Blending chills, kills and giggles, Mike Nichols has created a marvelous tale for our time. And with the wondrous Jack Nicholson, who can be both blithe and bloodcurdling at the same instant, he has a creature any monster-maker would be proud of. Glorious special effects, great ensemble acting, and laugh-out-loud wit – the sort of insightful and caustic comments that over the years Mike Nichols rewarded us with, like so many jalapeño-flavored candy bars -- make Wolf an engaging fable for grownups ... but one that you might not want to view just before bed-time; especially if you sleep with an open window with the moon shining down.
(A tip of the old Davy Crockett coonskin cap to perennial best- seller Jack London, an acute observer of wild animals and wild writers, whose century-old canine heroes would do very well in modern Manhattan ... if it ever came down to the crunch.)
Murder on the Campus (1933)
A Body in the Belfry Drives the Cops Batty
When the carillon in a college bell-tower starts pealing mysteriously, a corpse is discovered amid the bells, and a beautiful coed/nightclub singer (Shirley Grey) is accused of murder. It's up to ace reporter Bill Bartlett (Charles Starrett, later to become known as The Durango Kid) to solve the mystery of the Murder on the Campus and find the real murderer. As a bonus, this sprightly 1933 mystery, Murder on The Campus (AKA On The Stroke of Nine in the UK), directed by film veteran Richard Thorpe, offers up a delightful performance by J. Farrell MacDonald, who plays a not-so-tough police captain. He steals the show from the two nominal stars of the movie, which is rather easy to do, given their embarrassing lack of talent. Two other pros, Dewey Robinson and Edward Van Sloan (better known for his roles in Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy), also help keep the movie on an even keel. This movie was one of a series ground out by Chesterfield Studios, a now-forgotten movie-maker which was soon to be absorbed into Republic Pictures, the company built by Herbert W. Yates on the remains of six Poverty Row movie studios which owed his film processing lab large sums. However, during its brief stay with us, Chesterfield, originally a silent- screen studio, gave movie audiences a number of fast-moving detective B talkies, including Murder on the Campus. This 73-minute movie played fair with the audience, and though it can be picked apart for its cheap sets and ham-fisted editing, does have a good script and some funny dialog. And it gives you a chance to see the charming talent of J. Farrell MacDonald, carefully honed in three-hundred-and twenty-five films, including 25 by John Ford and 7 by Preston Sturges.
Midsomer Murders (1997)
A witty satire of country ways. Bring your Barbour. It's apt to be raining....blood!
"It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside." -- The Copper Beeches, A. Conan Doyle
Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Barnaby, a hedgehog rather than a fox, amiably plods along, dodging falling bodies until the last 10 minutes, when he neatly sums up everything and reads their rights to The Least Likely Suspect.
Marked by tongue-in-cheek escapades amidst breathtaking landscapes, "Midsomer Murders" is almost Swiftian in its satire. Set in a rural England that for the most part vanished decades ago save for real estate adverts and mail order catalogues, absent of people of color or limited finances, this detective series is an amiable, sometimes hilarious tour of the village-as-charnel house. Blessed with some of Britain's best actors, "Midsomer Murders" is perfectly constructed to attract a major share of the TV audience with a few extra bob, women in their 40s and older. Rarely has a TV show featured so many astonishingly attractive "older women," silver foxes with a gleeful light in their eyes. Rich in glorious interiors, pubs crammed with hearty yeomen and wicked vicars, a fleet of must-have vehicles, and wondrous winding lanes with a mass-murderer just beyond the trees, "Midsomer Massacres" (AKA "Murders"), proves that homicide can be good clean fun when committed in the fresh air of the English countryside.
Scott & Bailey (2011)
The Daughters of Jane Tennison
At a time when it seems that every TV detective program offers over- the-top-heroics, impossibly good-looking characters, exaggerated Sherlock Holmesian deductions, and smug repartee, this British production comes as a wonderful surprise -- a superbly acted cop show, portraying tough, wise investigators picking through the detritus and debris of human life and trying to keep it all together until the end of their shift.
Although the show is named for the two partners, the dynamic detective duo who have been essential to all cop shows since "Dragnet," it's really a three-person team, since Detective Constables Scott & Bailey are shepherded by a been-there, done-that boss who keeps them from straying too far from the flock.
As a bonus, their patch is grand, gritty and grimy Manchester, where you have to strain sometimes to understand the dialect, but it's worth the work for the condensed wit and wisdom you mine.
You won't be satisfied with watching a single episode, but try to view no more than three at a single sitting, so you'll have something to look forward to next time.
Oh, by the way: the three alpha cops here are all female, so let's call it Womanchester.