New Year, New You: Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948)

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When I was thinking of what theme I should do for January, my wife was the first to come up with the New Year concept. Originally she suggested road trip movies. New Year means trying to make changes in your life, and sometimes that means leaving the place you’ve been stuck in. I liked that idea but wasn’t sure I could do enough road trip movies to make it through the month.

But I do think you can encompass travel into my larger theme of New Year, New You. Now, we are going to stretch it a little further and suggest any movie where the people are traveling somewhere even if they don’t experience much growth along the way.

I love road trip movies. I love movies set on trains even more. I love train travel in general. I have ridden a lot of trains all over Europe and Asia; it is a wonderful way to travel. As much as I love to drive, it is very nice to ride the rails and not have to worry about anything. Trains are so much more enjoyable than planes. You have more legroom. You can get up and walk about. And the scenery is often much more beautiful.

There are lots of different types of movies set on and around trains. I love a good mystery or thriller set aboard a train. Trains are enclosed spaces, so the killer (or thief, or whatever) only has so many places to hide. But there are usually many cars so that you aren’t just stuck in one room. And the train is traveling, which allows for different scenery and different passengers to come and go, and the ever present possibility that someone could jump.

An important diary is stolen from the Paris Embassy by Zurta (Albert Lieven) and Valya (Jean Kent). They hand it to a man called Poole (Alan Wheatley) who is supposed to usher it to a designated rendezvous point. Instead, he runs to the Orient Express with intentions to sell it to the highest bidder. The diary is said to contain information that in the wrong hands would lead to yet another world war.

Zurta and Valya learn of Poole’s deception and board the train. It departs for Trieste. To complicate matters, Zurta is wanted by the authorities in Trieste and must depart before they arrive there.

They don’t exactly know where Poole is on the train; he’s doing a good job of staying low, and they can’t make a show of looking for him because they had every intention of using the diary themselves.

Mixed in with all of this espionage is a big bag of characters having their own side stories. Usually this kind of film has lots of these types of characters, but their screen time is minimized. They exist to give the film color, to give the setting some realism. But here they are given ample opportunity to be on screen. Numerous, what would normally be side characters, are given time to have fully drawn stories. Our leads often feel like supporting parts.

There is a young GI looking for some birds to chat up and winds up in a car with a British ornithologist. A boorish Brit spends all his time with the train’s renowned chef trying to teach him how to cook dull dishes. A businessman takes a woman with him who is decidedly not his wife in hopes of an affair, but fate keeps intervening and keeping them apart. Etc. and so forth.

Poole bribes a porter to get a private room where he hides the diary. But then he’s kicked out because that room was reserved by a very prominent and rich writer. He’s then sat with a French detective, Inspector Jolif (Paul Dupuis). Eventually, the diary will be found, and someone (or someones) will find themselves dead. It is Inspector Jolif who will have to put everything together. But even then the film doesn’t bother itself too much with that angle.

I sound like I’m complaining, but I’m absolutely not. I enjoyed this crazy cast of characters and each of their stories. I would have enjoyed it more if they’d spent just a little more time on the thriller aspects, but mostly this film is a lot of fun.

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

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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.

International Settlement (1938)

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One of the things I love about going through my old reviews is that I find films that I had forgotten I’d ever even watched. I don’t remember this film at all. I certainly don’t remember writing a review of it. Yet here we are and here it is.

The funniest thing about this review of this B-movie thriller is that I apparently didn’t know who George Sanders was ten years ago. He’s become one of my favorite actors, yet apparently I didn’t recognize him. How crazy that is to me now.

Now Watching: No Way Out (1987)

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No Way Out (1987)
Directed by: Roger Donaldson
Starring: Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young, Will Patton

Synopsis: Navy Lt. Tom Farrell meets a young woman, Susan Atwell, and they share a passionate fling. Farrell then finds out that his superior, Defense Secretary David Brice, is also romantically involved with Atwell. When the young woman turns up dead, Farrell is put in charge of the murder investigation. He begins to uncover shocking clues about the case, but when details of his encounter with Susan surface, he becomes a suspect as well.

Rating: 8/10

My little experiment to get more readers was a total bust. Turns out I’m terrible at posting regularly. I just don’t have it in me to be that guy, and the little extra I did post saw no improvement in my numbers.

Maybe they would if I pushed a little harder and did it for a little longer. I don’t know. I don’t really care. I’ll spend some more time thinking about what comes next. It seems logical to do more reviewing on Letterboxed or writing for Cinema Sentries, as that would definitely get me more eyeballs. But I love this little site, and it is hard to let that go. So, I’m gonna write when I want to write, post when I want to post. If people read it, great, and if not, well, that’s their loss.

Based on the novel The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing (which was also the basis of a pretty terrific little film noir of the same name made in 1948), No Way Out turns it into a political thriller with some neo-noir/erotic thriller tendencies.

Kevin Costner and Sean Young’s scenes together are steamy and playful, and you think the film is going to go one way, and then it goes another. Once she is out of the picture, it turns from its noir background to more of a straightforward thriller. There are a surprising number of scenes of just Costner walking angrily about the Pentagon, trying to keep everyone from knowing that the man they are looking for is actually him. And it totally works.

Hackman’s character has a lot more nuance than these things usually allow, making Will Patton’s lackey to Hackman’s Secretary of Defense character the true villain.

There are a couple of good chase scenes, and a lot of ridiculous techno nonsense (a large part of the plot revolves around them taking a nearly destroyed Polaroid photo negative and using computers to slowly render it into a readable image). The actors are all good, and I found it quite thrilling.

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974) Blu-ray Review

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As a kid I knew Walter Matthau from silly comedies like Grumpy Old Men and The Odd Couple, it was only later in life that realized he was a very fine actor indeed. He generally stayed in the comedic lane, but once in a while, he’d take on something more dramatic.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a terrifically taut little thriller about some dudes hijacking a New York Subway car. Matthau plays a transit cop trying to catch them. It is a wonderful encapsulation of New York in the 1970s.

You can read my full review here.

Weak Spot (1975) Blu-ray Review

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Weak Spot is a film that is difficult to explain or sum up. I reviewed it for Cinema Sentries a little over a month ago. I’ve been meaning to link to that review in these pages. I’ve literally queued it up at least four different times. But each time I’ve stared at this blank page not knowing how to write this little summary to get you interested enough to click over and read my review.

It is a French-Italian-German coproduction based on a Greek novel. It takes place in an unnamed location that is under totalitarian rule. It follows a man who may or may not be a subversive who is caught possibly passing a secret message onto another subversive. He is very casually taken to the capital city for questions by police who don’t seem all that interested in their jobs.

It is full of ridiculous situations played totally straight. It is confusing and weird and rather delightful.

I recommend watching it. I hope this intrigues you enough to click on this link and read my full review.

Se7en (1995) 4K UHD Review

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As I mentioned in this week’s Pick of the Week I’m a big fan of David Fincher’s Se7en. What’s astonishing is that this was just his second feature film. He’d made numerous music videos before entering the world of movies, so he knew his way around a set and behind a camera. But his first feature film, Alien3, was a disaster. The studio constantly interfered, the box office was disappointing and critics mostly hated it (there has since been a “Director’s Cut” of sorts and it’s actually pretty good).

My point is that it is something of a small miracle he was able to make another film at all, that he made something so audacious, so freaking good as Se7en is a testament to Fincher’s confidence and vision so early in his career.

They just released a nice 4k UHD version of the film and it looks amazing. You can read my full review here.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Girl in the Pool (2024)

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Tom (Freddie Prinze, Jr) lives in a nice house in the suburbs. He’s got a beautiful wife (Monica Potter) and a couple of teenage kids. On paper, he’s got it all together. So, why is he so unhappy? In an early scene, we’ll see him on the phone with a friend and Tom asks, “Am I a good person?” We’ll quickly learn the answer to that question.

No. No he is not a good person.

Tom is having an affair with a much younger woman (Gabrielle Haugh). On his birthday he slips off work a little early and she comes over for a little fun in the pool. But they have an argument over whether or not he’ll ever leave his wife, and what her husband would do if he found out about them. Before too long she finds herself dead and he finds himself hiding her body in a pool cubby.

Before he can do anything else a bunch of people come over for a surprise birthday party.

We see the events with the mistress in choppy flashbacks. The film is coy about exactly what happened to her and why. In the present Tom slowly goes mad having to deal with a myriad of party guests, his spiteful father-in-law (Kevin Pollak), and a wife who increasingly thinks something is up.

That’s a good plot and it could be either a truly entertaining thriller or a very dark satiric comedy, but unfortunately, it is neither. Mostly it is just bland.

The thing is Tom is kind of an asshole. One of the first things we know about him is that he’s cheating on his wife with a girl who is his daughter’s age. He doesn’t seem to know half the people invited to his own birthday party and the ones he does know he doesn’t seem to like (and most of those are bros he works with). He’s hapless and sad. He’s the kind of guy who keeps thinking he has a plan to solve all his problems, but he can’t actually come up with anything other than yell at everybody.

But he’s not the kind of asshole you can love either. This isn’t Walter White or Tony Soprano – horrible people who we, if not identify with at least we can love to watch.

Every character in this film is kind of awful if I’m being honest. His friends are obnoxious, and his father-in-law is actively hateful. Even his wife and kids come off as disinterested.

You can make a great film filled with terrible people – Goodfellas comes immediately to mind. But I just never cared about any of these people, especially Tom. I never cared who killed the girl, or why he was hiding the body. I didn’t care if he got caught. So there was no real tension or interest.

Freddie Prinze, Jr. is one of a slew of actors including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard, Josh Hartnett, and Jennifer Love Hewitt who were huge in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But unlike those other actors, I never liked Freddie Prinze, Jr. I never thought he was a good actor. But his low-key woodenness works for him here. The rest of the cast is fine as well, so I think it is the script and direction that just didn’t work for me.

Bring Out the Perverts: What Have They Done To Your Daughters? (1974)

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Italian Cinema was dominated by two genres in the 1970s – the Poliziotteschi and the Giallo. The Poliziotteschi was a particular type of crime drama that is noted for its gritty, down-and-dirty take on police work featuring loads of violence and action sequences, highlighted by corruption at the highest levels. Gialli were murder mysteries featuring graphic violence, hyper-stylization, overt sexuality, and wild soundtracks.

What Have They Done To Your Daughters? is an interesting blending of both genres. Plotwise it is very Poliziotteschi as it follows the police as they try to catch a killer and are then pulled into a child prostitution ring with ties to the upper echelon of the city’s political sphere. Stylistically it is mostly gritty like a Poliziotteschi, and it features a couple of terrific chase sequences, but it also has a few stylish Giallo-esque moments.

There is also a black-gloved, motorcycle helmet-wearing, hatched-yielding psycho going around hacking people to death, and a few moments of sleaze where the camera lingers on naked female bodies (one of which is supposed to be a 15-year-old girl – the actress is of age – which makes it particularly gross).

I cover the basic details of the plot in my old review of the Arrow Video Blu-ray release (which you can read at Cinema Sentries) so I’ll skip them in this write-up.

I mostly really dug the film this go-around. I think I enjoyed the Poliziotteschi elements more than the Giallo. The story is good, the investigative elements are interesting, and the action sequences are top-notch. It is not unusual for this type of crime drama to dive into underage sex rings, but it still grosses me out, especially now that I have a young daughter. And this film gets a bit skeevy in that area.

I did dig the hatched-wielding killer, but like, why is he running around in a motorcycle helmet (other than the film keeping us from seeing his face I mean)? It is especially weird since the cops figure out who he is fairly early in the film (it is the guys who hired him that remain a mystery).

Overall, a very enjoyable cinematic experience.

Single White Female (1992)

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One of the things I enjoy about not having a movie theme on some months is that it allows me to follow random rabbit holes for a little while. Friday night I watched Subservience a film in which Megan Fox plays a sexy robot maid who wreaks havoc on a traditional suburban home.

Numerous people noted that its plot was similar to The Hand that Rocks the Cradle in which Rebecca DeMornay plays a sexy nanny who wreaks havoc on a traditional suburban home.

This in turn led me to Single White Female in which Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a sexy roommate who wreaks havoc on an almost traditional New York City home.

It is by far the trashiest of the three films and the most fun.

Allie Jones (Bridget Fonda) is a young, hip New Yorker who runs a start-up software company and lives in a swanky rent-controlled apartment with her fiancee Sam (Steven Weber). Late one night the phone rings and it is Sam’s ex-wife. At first, he doesn’t answer the phone letting the answering machine get it. As she starts ranting and raving he answers, but by then the machine has picked her up on speakerphone. When she berates Sam for not answering her calls even after they slept together recently, Allie flips out and kicks him out.

Now she needs a roommate. After a few interviews, she lands on Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who is a bit shy, and quite a bit weird, but she seems nice. At first, they get along quite well and it seems like everything is going to work out. And then, of course, they don’t.

Hedy is a manipulator. She constantly maneuvers situations to turn herself into Allie’s best friend while turning all others against her. At the same time, she is turning herself into an Allie clone. She borrows her clothes and then purchases exact copies. Then she gets a similar haircut. The two actresses look similar enough that there are times when it is difficult to tell them apart.

When Sam reenters the pictures Hedy gets crazy.

This is a film full of crazy. And gratuitous nudity. And a gay best friend. And a sexual assault by Stephen Tobolowsky. And a murder through the eye with a high heel.

It is so trashy and so much fun. It is best watched with a couple of hilarious, drunken friends.