-
Tumultuous Times
For reasons both professional and personal, it’s been a hell of a busy post-Memorial Day week. Nonetheless, I’ve managed to get quite a bit of writing done, including reviews for this weekend’s Vaughniston rom-com The Break-Up and next Friday’s surefire Pixar blockbuster Cars. My advice? Opt for your local arthouse during the next two weeks,…
-
Mutant Memorial Day
It appears the mutants have taken over, as Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand has reportedly enjoyed the most profitable opening weekend of the year. Which doesn’t, however, change the fact that it’s by far the weakest entry in the Marvel Comics-based franchise. X-Men: The Last Stand (Slant magazine) For more positive reviews, check below,…
-
The Funeral (1996): B
With The Funeral, Abel Ferrara revisits many of his trademark obsessions – madness, honor, duty, loyalty, sexual dysfunction, and Catholic guilt and repentance – via the flashback-heavy story of the funeral of communist gangster Johnny Tempio (Vincent Gallo) at the house of his mob boss brother Ray (Christopher Walken). It’s a psychologically strung-out tale stuffed…
-
A Prairie Home Companion (2006): B+
Even a minor Robert Altman effort is superior to most current moviemakers’ finest works, a fact confirmed by A Prairie Home Companion, the director’s touching (if a tad slight) musical-comedy tale of the (fictional) final performance of NPR stalwart Garrison Keillor’s titular stagebound radio show. Like Keillor, Altman is a born storyteller with a fundamental…
-
The Killer is Loose (1956): B+
War vet Leon “Foggy” Poole (Wendell Corey, masking malevolence underneath meekness) plans a bank heist that goes awry; during the ensuing attempt to arrest him, detective Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotton) accidentally kills Poole’s wife. Years later, Poole escapes prison, intent on exacting tit-for-tat revenge by killing Wagner’s spouse (Rhonda Fleming). Budd Boetticher’s The Killer is…
-
Crime Wave (1954): B+
His plans for a straight-and-narrow life undone by three escaped convicts (including Charles Bronson, né Charles Buchinsky) who appear on his doorstep in need of a hideout, ex-con Steve Lacy (Gene Nelson) finds himself at the center of a tug-of-war between his former criminal compadres and Sterling Hayden’s determined detective in André De Toth’s neorealist…
-
Da Vinci Dreck
Despite being destined to make a gazillion dollars, The Da Vinci Code sucks – no surprise for anyone who’s read Dan Brown’s lousy novel or seen any of Ron Howard’s lame movies. Too bad that this weekend’s other films range from so-so (Over the Hedge) to predictably embarrassing (See No Evil). Out Today: The Da…
-
Dangerous Game (1993): B+
Flippantly derided upon its initial release as an indulgent failure, Abel Ferrara’s Dangerous Game (aka Snake Eyes) is the director’s most overtly Godard-ian effort, an examination of filmmaking and family – and their intrinsic relationship – that self-consciously revels in ambiguity, contradiction and artifice. It’s also, one might add, one of his most rewardingly challenging…
-
My Name is Julia Ross (1945): B+
Joseph H. Lewis delivers Hitchcockian suspense and some menacing Gothic ambiance with My Name is Julia Ross, a paranoia-drenched tale of conspiratorial deceit and madness set in an ominous seaside mansion. Nina Foch’s titular out-of-work heroine, having seemingly missed her opportunity for a life of comfort and leisure when she allowed engaged housemate Dennis (Roland…
-
The Dark Past (1948): C
Tediously trudging through Oedipal territory, Rudolph Maté’s The Dark Past is yet another of the era’s barely tolerable advertisements for Freudian psychoanalysis that’s undone by a heaping of dramatically inert exposition. Escaped convict Al Walker (William Holden) takes a family hostage, only to discover that the man of the house, Dr. Andrew Collins (Lee J.…
