Together is the Pick of the Week

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I’m mildly obsessed with Alison Brie, and I don’t know why. I loved her on Community. I enjoyed her in that one season of Glow I watched (nothing wrong with the show; I just got distracted and never got around to watching the rest). I’ve seen her in various other things that were fine. But she’s been in a million other things that I’ve not watched. Honestly, I don’t think she’s that great of an actress – she’s fine, but not amazing. And she chooses a lot of projects that I have no interest in. But still, I like her. She feels like an actress from another era. She would have been huge in the 1980s.

What I do really love about her is that she seems to have shied away from really big projects. Like the Lego Movie was probably the most mainstream thing she’s ever done, and that was a relatively small part. For years now she’s worked in smaller, more independent films (and some ridiculous animated TV shows) rather than try to climb the ladder to super fame. I appreciate when an artist is happy doing what they want instead of always trying to be famous.

I know very little about Together. It stars Brie and her husband, Dave Franco. It is a horror movie about a married couple who move to the country and are attacked by some kind of supernatural presence. Apparently, this means their bodies start to meld together. The few images I’ve seen show their lips stuck together, stretching outwards. I love a good body horror picture, and I appreciate that Brie continues to make weird films that won’t appeal to everyone.

Also out this week that looks interesting:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: 50th Anniversary 4K UHD: Milos Forman’s Oscar winning film is based on a Ken Kesey novel. Jack Nicholson stars as a brash rebel sent to a mental institution where he rallies the patients against the tyrannical Nurse Ratched. I’ve not seen this in years, but I’m looking forward to catching it in UHD.

Burden of Dreams 4K UHD: In 1979, Werner Herzog took a film crew deep into the Amazonian rain forest to make Fitzcarraldo, a film about a man determined to move a steamship over a mountain. Herzog being Herzog, he decided that rather than use special effects, his film crew would literally move a steamship over a mountain. The film was plagued by setbacks, including accidents, poor weather, Klaus Kinski acting horrible, and an actual native attack. All this was documented by Les Blank in his documentary Burden of Dreams. It is one of the greatest making-of movies ever made. Criterion has the release.

The Howling 4K UHD: One of the great werewolf movies gets a nice Steelbook from Shout Factory.

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale/The Ultimate Legacy Collection: I stopped watching this historical drama somewhere in Season Four, I think. It is one of those shows that I loved for a while, and then it all became a bit too much. But it was a huge hit and it chugged a long for several more seasons and a few movies. They just released what they are promising to be the final movie, and as such, they’ve also produced a big boxed set of everything.

The Luc Besson Collection: Luc Besson is a director who has made some great films (Leon: The Professional, La Femme Nikita) and some utter garbage (The Messenger The Story of Joan of Arc). The garbage turned me off enough that I stopped paying him much attention. This boxed set includes Le Dernier Combat, Atlantis, Angel-A, Subway, The Big Blue, La Femme Nikita, Léon: The Professional, The Fifth Element, and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.

Caught Stealing 4K UHD: This Darren Aronofsky film about a regular guy trying to survive amidst the criminal underbelly of 1990s New York kind of came and went without much fan fare. I’m looking forward to catching up with it.

The Naked Gun: This remake of the popular 1980s-1990s film series got surprisingly good reviews and did pretty well at the box office. I loved the original films, but I tend to no longer like super silly comedies in my old age. But I’ll probably give it a shot for old times sake.

Creepshow: The Complete Series: I don’t think I ever watched this series, but I did enjoy the two films as a kid. It is an anthology horror series hosted by a creepy ghoul.

The Mask 4K UHD: Arrow Video gives this comedy that finds Jim Carrey at the height of his powers the UHD treatment.

Freakier Friday: Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan return in this legacy sequel to a remake of the 1976 Disney classic. This time it’s a quadruple swap with Lohan’s character’s daughter and soon-to-be stepdaughter swapping alongside the Curtis and Lohan characters. Hilarity, no doubt, will ensue.

Noirvember: Cairo Station (1958)

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Cairo Station is a film that’s been popping up in my feeds and suggestion lists for a while now. The story sounded interesting, and that black and white poster with the train running above a man and woman covered in oil is a good one, but something about it kept making me put off watching it. Somehow, I think the fact that it was an Egyptian film put me off of it. That’s weird because I’m a fan of foreign films; I dedicate an entire month to them in February. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Egyptian film. I’m not super familiar with Middle Eastern or African cinema either.

I want to know more about their culture and cinema, but it also feels a little daunting to dive in. It feels a little like work, and I’m lazy, so I put it off. But finally this week I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did, as it turned out to be a terrific film.

It is a little slow in the going. For the first fifteen minutes or so, it sets up its stories and its characters. I almost turned it off around then. I couldn’t quite get a grip on it. It is a film full of people. It lives at the titular train station, and it follows the hustle and bustle of numerous people working there. The main focus is on Qinawi (Youssef Chahine, who also cowrote and directed the picture), a poverty-stricken young man with a lame foot. He becomes obsessed with Hannuma (Hind Rostom), a beautiful young woman who sells cold drinks to train passengers. She’s engaged to Abu Siri (Farid Shawqi), a robust, fiery man who is attempting to organize all the train workers into a union.

There is a lot of politics in the film. It deals with these poor workers trying to survive. But because it is set at a train station, we get glimpses of all sorts of classes. It is a microcosm of Egypt at this time. I think, in part, this is why it took me a minute to climb into the film. In some ways the film is universal; the working class struggles everywhere, but in other ways it is a very Egyptian film, set in a very particular moment in their history.

Qinawi’s obsession with Hannuma is sexual in nature. His handicap and poverty cause him to be mocked by most women. But while his lame foot makes it difficult for him to get around, he’s still a man in the prime of his life. He still has desires. Hannuma is beautiful and boisterous, full of life. She’s flirty and sexual. She’s also nice to Qinawi, which makes him think he has a chance. That goes into some dark territory, which I won’t spoil, and it makes Qinawi more of an anti-hero than a sympathetic character.

It is shot like a classic noir with stark black and white photography emphasizing the shadows and grit of the train station. It feels like a politically tinged melodrama with sharp edges. It may have taken me a long while to finally watch the film, and it took me a little while to get into it, but once it had me in its clutches I sank right in.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Memoir of a Murderer (2017)

memoir of a murderer

My father has Alzheimer’s. It is early stages yet, so things are mostly okay. He sometimes forgets things that he’s just done, or other little details, but he always knows where he is and who I am. His father had it as well, and I watched Grandpa go through its entire course. It was awful. He often didn’t know who his wife or his children were. He’d forget where he was and what he was doing. He started hoarding money. It is an awful, awful disease.

As it turns out, it can also be a pretty good twist in a South Korean thriller.

Byeong-soo (Sul Kyung-gu) killed his father when he was a teenager. The father was a horrible man who often beat Byeong-soo and his sister. When the cops never came to get him, Byeong-soo began to believe the murder was justified. And then he began thinking maybe other murders would be justified. He became an avenging angel, murdering anyone he felt deserved it.

The years rolled by, and the bodies piled up. But then he had an accident, and it did something to him. Dementia came next, and a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. He often has blackouts, and his memory is not so good. He stopsed killing and becomes a model citizen and loving father.

His daughter, Eun-hee (Kim Seol-hyun), knows nothing of his past. She cares for him and gives him a little microrecorder that he can use to record everything he does in a day. This, she thinks, will help his memory.

One day he gets into a fender bender with a man named Min Tae-joo (Kim Nam-gil). This causes Min Tae-joo’s trunk to pop open. There is something wrapped in plastic inside, and blood is dripping to the road. Min Tae-joo says it is a deer he hit earlier, but Byeong-soo recognizes human blood when he sees it and the cold look in Min Tae-joo’s eyes. This man, he knows, is a killer. More than that, he knows he must be the man who has been killing young women in his province. Three bodies have already shown up.

Ah, but Min Tae-joo also recognizes a killer when he sees one and decides to play a game. He discovers Byeong-soo has a daughter and begins to woo her. He sneaks into his house and reads his journal. Suddenly it is serial killer versus serial killer, except one of them can’t remember who he is half the time.

The film never really manages to rise above that pulp plot. The dementia angle adds some interesting twists. It creates a sort of unreliable narrator. The film is told through Byeong-soo’s point of view, so sometimes we’ll see something happen, and then he’ll question whether or not it was real, thus making us wonder the same thing. But it is also used a few too many times as a plot device. Beyong-soo will come close to killing Min Tae-joo, but then his eye will twitch (the film’s indication that he’s having an episode), and he’ll get away.

It mostly plays his Alzheimer’s as a plot device, as something to add an edge to the proceedings. We get a feel for how it affects Eun-hee, and there is a cop friend of Byeong-soo who reacts with astonishment whenever he either cannot remember him or he actually does. I can’t really complain that the film doesn’t spend a lot of time with the emotionality of dealing with that disease, as I’m not sure if I’d be able to take it. And it isn’t that it’s handled poorly here, but this is definitely not a feel about that disease and its effects on both those who have it and those that must take care of them.

Min Tae-joo is a fairly generic villain. He’s your typical basic cable serial killer. He is a cop in this one, so that’s interesting, except the film doesn’t really delve very deeply into that angle. Sul Kyung-gu is excellent as our anti-hero, and the film remains quite entertaining and thrilling. The final fight scene is well staged, and I mostly dug the entire film. But it’s never anything more than you expect.

Blackout Noir: Black Angel (1946)

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A man goes to see his ex-wife on their anniversary. She refuses to see him. She has the doorman turn him away. She still refuses even when he’s sent up a fancy brooch. As he’s walking out, another man comes into the hotel asking to see the woman. He’s let up with no problem. The first man goes to a bar and gets drunk. Later, a third man comes to the hotel and is let up to see the woman. He finds her lying on the floor dead. While there he hears someone sneak out. He notices that the brooch she was holding in her hand when he first came in is now missing.

Black Angel was directed by Roy William Neill, who is best known for directing most of the Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone. It is a loose adaptation of a novel of the same name by Cornell Woolrich. I was twenty minutes into it before I realized I had seen it before.

The first man is called Martin Blair, and he’s played by Dan Duryea. The guy who found her dead is Kirk Bennett (John Phillips), he’s a married man who was having an affair with the dead lady. But things turned sour, and she was blackmailing him to conceal the affair. The cops figure that’s the motive and arrest him. He’s convicted and sentenced to die in the gas chamber.

Kirk’s wife, Catherine (June Vincent), believes her husband to be innocent and starts her own investigation into the matter. She’ll eventually connect with Martin, and he’ll tell her about the second guy, the one he saw entering the dead woman’s room. That guy is Marko, and he’s played by Peter Lorre, so you automatically know he did it. Catherine and Martin know he did it, too, but they have to prove it. They figure that proof is in a safe inside his upstairs office at the club he owns. They get a gig there as a lounge act.

It is all nicely done, and there are a couple of good and tense scenes with Peter Lorre, but it never quite connected with me. This was Duryea’s first starring role, and he’s good in it. He’s a washout and a drunk who finally sobers up when he meets Catherine. Finding her husband’s killer gives him purpose, and he naturally falls in love with her, which gives him even more purpose. But she’s still in love with her husband. That creates a bit of drama. Peter Lorre is always good, but he’s not given a lot to work with here.

It is a fine movie and worth watching if you are a fan of film noir.

Errol Flynn Collection (The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, Santa Fe Trail, Edge of Darkness, Objective Burma, Adventures of Don Juan) Blu-ray Review

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When I was a kid in the 1980s, I listened to The Beatles and Jerry Lee Lewis, and I watched shows like The Monkees and Father Knows Best. I knew who Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre were. I had at least a cursory knowledge of artists who were popular decades before I was born.

I often wonder if kids today have that same sort of knowledge. It isn’t fair to expect teenagers today to know who The Beatles are, or Bogart. They existed not a couple of decades before teenagers today were born, but more than half a century ago. But do they know Nirvana and Alanis Morissette, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Demi Moore? Maybe. I see kids wearing Nirvana shirts all the time, and we’ve shown my daughter lots of films from the 1980s.

I don’t know if any of this is important. I do know that I love classic cinema, and I’m always thrilled to see old films get nice new releases. I did know who Errol Flynn was as a kid, but until this set came out I’d only seen one or two of his movies. I really enjoyed getting to know him better. You can read my full review of the set here.

Joan Crawford Collection (Grand Hotel, The Damned Don’t Cry, Possessed, The Women) Blu-ray Review

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DVD collecting is a fun, but frustrating hobby. Frustrating because movies come in so many different cases. There are DVDs, Blu-rays, and 4K UHD formats. There are boxed sets, special editions, steelbooks, anniversary sets, and more. It is hard to keep up. I write a weekly column about new releases, and I can’t keep up with everything.

I want to own a physical copy of my favorite films. That’s the first consideration. But then I want the best quality copy, so maybe I need to upgrade to Blu-ray or 4K. But as a collector, I also like fancy sets with gifts like posters, lobby cards, and boxes that I can show off. Then I have to consider the special features like commentaries, interviews, etc. It can get overwhelming and expensive trying to get the best stuff.

There is also shelf space to consider. I have half a dozen bookcases filled to the brim with DVDs and an increasingly large stack of unsorted things I don’t have the space for. I’ve come to love little boxed sets of several movies. You have to be careful with them because sometimes the quality is poor and all too often the cases are cheap, but a good set gives you lots of movies with good quality, lots of extras but keeps the space down to a minimum.

I really enjoyed this set of Joan Crawford movies, as you can see from my review over at Cinema Sentries.

Now Watching: The Maltese Falcon (1941)

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The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Directed and written by John Huston
Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre

San Francisco private detective Sam Spade takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette, with the stakes rising after his partner is murdered.

Rating: 9/10

An absolute classic. I love this film. I’ve seen it many times. I’m hoping to do a Top Five Bogart in Film Noir list this month, so I’m watching as many of those as I can. This is often considered the very first film noir, and it is one of the very best. I don’t really have the bandwidth right now to do a full review, but since I watched it, I wanted to at least mention it.

It was the first film directed by John Huston and the first film Sydney Greenstreet ever played in. It made Bogart a star and set the template for untold detective stories to come. It is a terrific film and I higly recommend it.

Hard Boiled 4K UHD is the Pick of the Week

hard boiled

October was an incredible month for new releases. We will most likely get even more great stuff in a few weeks as Christmas gets a little closer, but this week is a little slim. My pick is a nice looking set of John Woo’s seminal action flick Hard Boiled, but there are also 4K releases of a Sean Connery sci-fi adventure, a classic 1980s teen comedy, and a not so amazing John Carpenter vampire movie. Click here to read all about it.

Midnight (1934)

midnight movie poster

I’m thinking about doing a Top Five noir films starring Humphrey Bogart, so I did a little searching. The trouble with film noir is there are no real clear definitions. Unlike westerns or action films, the dividing lines between, say, a crime thriller and a film noir are pretty nebulous. So I wanted to make a list of all the noirs Bogart had starred in. One of the sites I found mentioned this film, so I gave it a watch.

I definitely would not call it a noir, so I’m not counting it for Noirvember, but I thought I’d talk about it a little bit anyway. Bogart was originally credited in eighth place, but the film was rereleased in 1949 as Call It Murder, after he’d become a star, and he then received top billing.

It is more of a morality play than a film noir or even a good movie. A woman kills her husband and is caught and convicted for it. There is speculation she’ll get off as she’s a woman and it was a crime of passion, but the foreman of the jury, Edward Weldon (OP Heggie), pushes for a guilty verdict and gets it. She’s sentenced to die.

There is some publicity and public support for the convicted woman, including from Weldon’s daughter, Stella (Sidney Fox.) She met Gar Boni (Bogart) at the trial, and in the ensuing weeks she’s fallen in love. I think he had some connection to the convicted girl, but I’m honestly not sure. He definitely is supportive of her not dying and convinces Stella to feel the same.

Anyway, the bulk of the film takes place on the day of the execution. Friends and family have gathered at Weldon’s house, and they spend a lot of time talking about the trial. He is unmoved. He stands by his decision to convict and notes that it was not his decision that she get the death penalty, but that is the law.

Before the film ends, something will happen to challenge that idea. I won’t spoil it, but you’ll probably figure it out before it actually happens. I know I did. There isn’t much to the filmmaking. It very much feels like a filmed play, which is pretty much what it is. There is no style to it. Nothing opens it up cinematically. They don’t even use a musical score, which is really weird. Music really does add so much to a film like this.

Bogart’s role is small but pivotal. He’s fine in it, but not particularly memorable. At this point in his career, he was playing a lot of heavies who were a long way from getting top billing. He’s really the only reason to watch this. Otherwise it would have been completely forgotten (and it’s hardly remembered despite his presence).

It’s funny because I have this idea of doing what I call “Now Watching” articles. The idea of those being that sometimes I watch a film but don’t really want to do a full review of it, but I would like to at least mention the watching. So I post the title of the film, the director and stars, and then a little synopsis. My review is typically just a couple of paragraphs, and then I’m done. It is a fun, fast way of keeping track of my movie watching while also reminding me of what I thought.

I had intended this to be one of those, and then I just kept writing. So I guess I’m calling this a full review 🙂

Blackout Noir: The Blue Gardenia (1953)

blue gardenia poster

Three women live together in a ridiculously large apartment. Seriously, there is a kitchen, a bathroom, and this massive living area, but no bedrooms. The ladies all sleep on pull-out-style beds in the gigantic living room. A room that could have easily been converted into at least a couple of bedrooms. I think the film wants us to believe these ladies aren’t rich; they can only afford a studio apartment for the three of them. But it also needs to block them in interesting ways. The three of them need to be filmed in different spaces and not be all crowded together. So we get this gigantic living space.

Sorry, that kind of thing drives me a little crazy. Now where was I?

Oh yes, these three women – Crystal (Ann Southern), Sally (Jeff Donnell), and Norah (Anne Baxter)—all work for a telephone company as operators. They have varying relationships with men. Crystal is dating her ex-husband (because when they were married, he had all the faults of a husband, but now that they’re just dating, he has all the perks of a boyfriend). Sally mostly stays home reading detective novels, (but when the phone rings, she announces – “If that’s for me, I’m in! No matter who it is.”) Norah is in love with a man stationed in Korea.

All three are constantly hit on by Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr), a skeezy pinup girl artist, who tries his luck with any and all girls. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t care who he makes it with as long as he’s making it with someone.

When Norah gets a letter from her boyfriend telling her he’s met someone else, she agrees to go out with Harry. He takes her to the titular restaurant and plies her with drinks. She has a good time, and he takes her home. Before he can make his moves, she passes out on the couch. But he’s not the type of guy to let a little blackout rob him of a good time. She wakes up enough to fight him off. She picks up a fireplace poker, and…the film fades to black. The next morning she finds herself in bed with no memory of what happened. He doesn’t wake up at all. He’s found dead by the maid.

The rest of the film finds Norah trying to figure out just what happened, all the time thinking she must have killed him. This probably counts as a spoiler, but about 40 minutes into the film, I turned to my wife and said, “I don’t think she killed him.” Norah is just too nice. She’s too good of a girl to have killed a man like that. And the fact that the film faded to black before we ever saw her strike a blow made me think there must have been someone else.

At some point Casey May (Richard Conte) enters the picture. He’s a journalist chasing the story. After writing a few front-page stories (and here’s another point of contention for me – all the front pages on his newspaper are just headlines printed in massive type; there are no pictures, no actual story, just headlines. What a waste of space.) But I’m digressing again. Where was I? Oh yes, after writing a few front-page stories, he needs a new angle and decides to write an open letter to “An Unknown Murderess,” where he asks her to turn herself in to him and promises the paper will pay for her defense (as long as she gives him an exclusive interview).

She’ll eventually call him, and naturally there will be a romance angle that enters the picture. The film concludes abruptly and all too neatly. It is rare that I complain about a film being too short, but this one really could have used an extra half hour. I mentioned earlier about how I thought she didn’t do it; I could have gotten behind Casey and Norah doing a little investigating trying to find out who the real murderer was. Instead they just throw a solution at us and roll credits. It’s too bad too, because up until then I was really enjoying the film.