Everyone's got an addiction - mine, like many people's, is Netflix. My queue is stuffed to saturation, my day revolves around making time to watch a movie and keep my queue moving, and I've become overly familiar with the pickup times at my local mailboxes – but there's a silver lining: a cornucopia of reviews.
The reviews are broken up into three sections by their starred rating: 5 stars, 3 to 4.5, and 0 to 2.5. Movies that make my Top Ten or Top Twenty are marked as such. There's also a hall of shame -– the Bottom Ten.
THREE STARS
Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
Keir Dullea (of 2001), Carol Lynley, Laurence Olivier and Noel Coward star in Otto Preminger’s dank melodrama about a missing child and a hysterical mother. Not a particularly good movie, but the savory Olivier hams it up and Coward, along with a host of British actors in cameo roles, make it worth a once-over.
Elevator to the Gallows (1958)
Jeanne Moreau stars as an adulterous murderess in this French film noir, the first directorial effort from Louis Malle. It’s like Godard’s Breathless fleshed out with a good plot and realistic characters and is much superior to that overrated “masterpiece”. Maurice Ronet co-stars as Moreau’s patsy of a boyfriend and Jean Wall is her rich but unwanted husband. The plot mechanics twist around an elaborate murder plot that goes without a hitch – except for that wayward elevator. Miles Davis composed and performed the score. The one drawback to the movie is a long sequence that features Moreau wandering through a glitteringly noctural Paris while she mutters inanities about love. It’s really silly and quite out of place in what is otherwise a trim little thriller.
Peyton Place (1957)
Lana Turner stars in this Technicolor soap opera, based on the best-selling novel of the same name. Risqué for its time, Peyton Place now seems rather talky and stiff. Youthful co-stars Hope Lange and Diane Varsi bring some zip to the proceedings, but it’s still a long slog.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Walter Matthau stars in this gritty thriller about a subway car hijacked by a gang of go-for-broke criminals led by Robert Shaw and including a youthful Hector Elizondo and the perennial Martin Balsam. Matthau leavens the somewhat repulsive goings-on with his patented brand of hang-dog cynical humor. The movie is fascinating for its glimpse of a much different New York City. One of Quentin Tarantino’s many sources for Reservoir Dogs; the Pelham hijackers are code-named Mr. Blue, Mr. Pink, etc.
3.5 STARS
Barbra Streisand: The Television Specials
My Name is Barbra and A Happening in Central Park are the clear winners in this package and are essential viewing for all Barbraphiles. Both specials show Streisand at her singular best. Color Me Barbra is campy fun, but the other two segments are only sporadically entertaining. The whole package charts the evolution of Streisand from an affected but powerful performer to glossy Hollywood royalty.
The Deep End (2001)
Tilda Swinton and Goran Visnjic star in this remake of genius director Max Ophuls’ The Reckless Moment (1949). Swinton is the mother desperate to save her gay teenage son from a possible murder charge and Visnjic is the morally confused blackmailer on her trail. Swinton uses her remarkably ascetic and powerful screen presence as a hermetic weapon; she doesn’t engage with others so much as plow them over or bounce off them. The Deep End was filmed around Lake Tahoe and co-stars Jonathan Tucker as the son and Josh Lucas as the dead guy.
Divorce, Italian Style (1961)
This acerbically plotted, highly amusing comedy stars Marcello Mastroianni as a beleagured husband who wants to divorce his wife and marry his lovely and much younger girlfriend. Mastroianni’s finely tuned performance as a hangdog roué caught in a comic web of lust and murder is memorable.
I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)
Tom Tryon and Gloria Talbott star as newlyweds whose honeymoon is interrupted by a body-snatching monster in this 1958 low budgeter. More like film noir than sci fi and part of the paranoiac tradition that includes Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Blade Runner, Married displays a cynical intelligence about societal mores that make it a distinctive addition to the genre.
Swimming Pool, France (2003)
Fans of Patricia Highsmith’s glowering suspense stories will enjoy this sun-kissed twister. Charlotte Rampling plays a repressed mystery writer who goes on vacation to the South of France and gets a lot more than a nice tan. Voluptuous Ludivine Sagnier co-stars as the fly in the ointment. Rampling’s witty performance is the polar opposite of her melancholic turn in Under the Sand, also directed by François Ozon.
Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse (1996)
Everything you always wanted to know about… George Balanchine and dancer Suzanne Farrell’s professional and personal relationship. If you’re interested in ballet history, this is a must-see. The footage of Farrell in performance is revelatory.
The World of Henry Orient (1964)
The eccentric but affecting tale of two footloose adolescent girls in pursuit of rakish, dimwitted classical pianist Henry Orient (Peter Sellars). Angela Lansbury and Paula Prentiss co-star and both turn in distinctive performances, Lansbury’s a close cousin to her malevolent turn in The Manchurian Candidate. Henry Orient might be billed as a comedy, but its bitter view of the machinations surrounding romantic love give the film a distinctively melancholic tang.
FOUR STARS
Contempt (Le Mepris) (1963)
Godard’s Cinemascope essay on the perils of filmmaking stars Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance and fabled director Fritz Lang as himself. Contempt is fascinating and infuriating, beautiful and boring, sincere and cynical. Filled with references to classical mythology, his own films and his personal life, it’s catnip for serious-minded filmgoers. For the rest of us, even if much of the film seems tedious, the beauties on display – Bardot, Rome, Capri – are entertaining. The most brazen sequence in the movie is a twenty-minute long argument between Bardot and Piccoli that’s shot within one small room in real time. It’s like being trapped in someone else’s marital disarray and is a most disquieting experience, itchily, uncomfortably entertaining. Contempt justifies Godard’s exalted reputation as a rebel genius much more than any of his other films. Based on a novel by Alberto Moravia.
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger star as a black Philadelphia cop and a small-town Southern sheriff involved in solving a murder. Heat hasn’t dated as message movies are wont to do; it still carries an emotional punch. Both lead actors are excellent (Steiger won an Oscar) and Lee Grant, as the victim’s wife, makes her few minutes of screen time really count. The cinematography by legendary Haskell Wexler is both beautiful and dramatically pungent. Wunderkind director Hal Ashby was the film editor.
Jazz on a Summer's Day (1960)
An enchanting record of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, cherishable not just for capturing jazz immortals – Thelonious Monk, George Shearing, Gerry Mulligan, Big Maybelle, Louis Armstrong, among others – in their prime but also for its luxuriously tactile record of a sensuous East Coast summer. The peak of the movie is a wackily behatted Anita O’Day giving the performance of a lifetime – hers, yours and mine. If you need a summer vacation or have the wintertime blues, watch this movie for an instant cure.
The Long Goodbye (1973)
One of the highly overrated Robert Altman’s few good films. Raymond Chandler’s 1954 novel – his best and a true American classic – is updated to the 1970s. Elliott Gould stars as a hapless post-hippie version of gumshoe Philip Marlowe, Sterling Hayden turns in a monumental performance as a deranged alcoholic, and Frigidaire-cool blonde Nina Van Pallandt is the femme fatale. Also stars Mark Rydell as a vicious thug and Jim Bouton as Marlowe’s erstwhile friend.
Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
Top-notch British sci-fi/horror from the late 60s, Quatermass is the story of a London subway excavation that unearths remnants of Martian civilization on earth. The results are predictably dire, but the film’s suggestiveness and simple but terrifying effects make it a very special movie. Highly recommended.
4.5 STARS
Caballe: Beyond Music (2003)
A documentary about Montserrat Caballé, the Spanish opera singer and one of the great stars of classical music. Caballé is almost impossibly endearing, with a winsomeness that belies her magnificence. Performance films and interviews with her family and operatic compatriots give a good sense of her prodigious talent and the regard with which she is held. The only drawback to the film – it ends. There’s no such thing as too much Montsi.
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)
Another Pressburger/Powell success. Wendy Hiller stars as a headstrong young woman on her way to her wedding on a remote Hebrides island. Her obstinacy in the face of nature’s unwillingness to accommodate her plans causes havoc for all. A delightful, very relaxed adult comedy.
It's a Gift (1934)
W.C. Fields at his considerable best. The shambolic, almost surreal plot lets Fields and his cohorts (including Fields’ infantile nemesis Baby LeRoy) make unforgettable comic hay. Essential viewing for fans of American comedy.
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Hitchcock demonstrates both his mastery of the spy film genre and his genius in transforming its basics into an experience uniquely thrilling and comic. Dame May Whitty is the disappearing lady, Margaret Lockwood is the suspicious fellow passenger, and Michael Redgrave (father of Vanessa and Lynn) the foppish folklorist who helps Lockwood uncover the truth. The character actors who give the film its distinctive tang include Paul Lukas, Googie Withers, and most especially Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford as two cricket-obsessed passengers. Most of the action takes place on a train trip across unnamed but hostile European countries and the tone of the film clearly reflects a late 1930s anxiety about war.
Petulia (1968)
The ineffable Julie Christie stars as Petulia, a young woman with a bad husband in gorgeous rich boy Richard Chamberlain and an adulterous yen for George C. Scott’s divorced doctor. Christie is in her prime both as an actress and a great beauty, and Scott is hammily effective as the bewildered object of her affections. The last shot of Christie will haunt you. Shirley Knight and Joseph Cotton are also on handto give notable performances, and Janis Joplin performs in an early party sequence. The movie is worth watching just for its late 60s San Francisco setting, exquisitely photographed by Nicolas Roeg (soon to turn to directing himself). Richard Lester directed.
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