Results tagged “movie” from Pathophilia
I'm not sure how Jean-Pierre Melville does it, but the director is somehow able to build tension and emotion in the most unhurried series of shots. Part of his success lies in the faces of his actors, including Lino Ventura and Simon Signoret, who have the intangible ability to engage while doing very little. But Melville also capitalizes on his actors' gifts by thoughtfully sewing together still, or very nearly still, frames to authenticate a moment. Case in point is one scene in Army of Shadows (1969), a stark, uncompromising story of French Resistance leaders, in which two thrown-together "patriots" on a bench conspire silently, or nearly so, to kill their German guard and escape a Gestapo interrogation.
Winter's Bone (2010): An unusual KBF recommendation, solely because the movie is still in theaters. Winner of this year's Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Winter's Bone, based on the novel of the same name, is the story of a poverty-level teenager in the Ozarks, who searches for her meth-producing, bail-jumping father, while sustaining a fragile, nuclear family.
Inevitable comparisons are to be made with the superior Frozen River of 2008 (another Sundance winner), which was carried with greater skill by a truly exceptional (and considerably more mature) leading actress (Melissa Leo). But Winter's Bone is still worth the price of theater admission, even if one is to endure the likely distraction of popcorn munchers. In fact, consider your crude company part of the Sensorama experience.
In addition to Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role (who's probably getting more adulation than she deserves for her performance), Winter's Bone features veteran supporting actor John Hawkes of "Deadwood" fame and a nearly unrecognizable Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer of "Twin Peaks") in a very bit part.
Bob le Flambeur (1956): Another notable film of the disaffected criminal subculture from Jean-Pierre Melville, director of the similarly themed Le Cercle Rouge and Classe Tous Risque. When Bob, an inveterate gambler, suffers an extended streak of bad luck, he recruits a small group of friends to crack open a casino safe. But in the immediate buildup to the heist, Bob gets sidetracked by his addiction...with ironic results. French actor Roger Duchesne, as Bob, carries the film with perfect platinum coolness.
In 1971, Pentagon insider Daniel Ellsberg leaked a top-secret study, aka the Pentagon Papers, to the press. The mammoth document demonstrated the high-level, systematic deceit of multiple administrations to escalate the war in Vietnam, and the press predictably gobbled it up. Ellsberg's treacherous act and its aftermath were chronicled on film in last year's Academy Award-nominated The Most Dangerous Man in America, which is now on DVD.
And while the documentary isn't particularly original in its execution or perspective on Ellsberg's derring-do, it does show (perhaps inadvertently) just how compromised a character must become before he can morph into a historic whistleblower. Think of the initially Koolaid-guzzling characters of Big Tobacco's Jeffrey Wigand and, to a lesser extent, ADM's Mark Whitacre, but on much more expansive stage in a much more explosive era, and you've got an idea of what Ellsberg was and is all about. The steeper the slide into moral ambiguity, the more dramatic the atonement and, god knows, the lengthier the proselytizing.
And if you want to see Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wrestle with his role in the Vietnam War, watch the life-sucking The Fog of War (2004).
On Saturday. No good excuses.
To watch The Heiress (1949), based on the play of the same name, which is based on the Henry James novel Washington Square, is to engage in an exercise of contrasts. To wit:
- Contrast the dowdy Catherine (Olivia de Havilland) with her father's ideal of womanhood: Catherine's socially accomplished, dead mother.
- Contrast the overt contempt of Catherine's father for Catherine with the cloaked abuse of Catherine's suitor, Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift).
- Contrast de Havilland's old-school mugging with Clift's subtler method acting.*
- Contrast Catherine's restrictive 19th-century bun with Morris's bon-vivant locks.
- And so on...
It's also worth noting that more contrasts are possible by watching the deftly filmed Washington Square of 1997, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh as Catherine, Albert Finney as Catherine's father, and Ben Chaplin as Morris. Leigh, in particular, adds several effective layers to Catherine's developing character that are absent from de Havilland's two- or three-note execution.
* de Havilland wins, if only because mugging is so hard to ignore.
The White Ribbon (2009): Oh those Germans. Or Austrians. Whatever. And their frivolity. Not.
In austere and exquisitely still frames of retrofitted black and white, director Michael Haneke unfolds his story of anonymous evil deeds in a farm village on the cusp of World War I. Cryptically narrated in retrospect by the town's sympathetic, if ineffectual, schoolteacher (who's not even sure he's remembering correctly), the story reveals the stark brutality of paternal figures, suggesting that the perpetrator is an adult. But the innocence of the town's oppressed children cannot be assumed. Brutal adults can bear brutal children.
To celebrate BP's sealing of the Macondo well,* jump into the big, black tarry pit of oil-company litigation by watching Crude. The 2009 documentary by Joe Berlinger is an account of a the sticky, interminable class-action suit brought by Ecuadorians against Texaco (now owned by Chevron). Predictably, and primarily because we're considering a documentary here, it is a very plaintiff-friendly account of the protracted and ongoing legal proceedings that are anything but clear-cut. Just perform a search of the Google News archives with "Chevron" and "Ecuador," and you'll get an idea of how really, really complicated things are.
The story relayed in Crude, however, is comparatively straightforward—and deceptively simple. It begins when Texaco discovered oil in the area of Nueva Loja in northeastern Ecuador in the 1960s. In conjunction with Ecuador's national oil company, Petroecuador, Texaco launched full-scale production in the 1970s by thoroughly mining the area. As was oil business as usual, the massive amounts of drilling waste were disposed in superficial pits—which the resident Ecuadorians claim tainted their drinking and bathing water (obtained from nearby streams and rivers) and caused multiple ailments, including cancer. The plaintiffs are asking for $27 billion.
The corporate side of the story, which Berlinger does reveal, however impersonally, is that Texaco transferred ownership of the oil field and its production to Petroecuador in 1990 and spent millions cleaning up the waste pits under the direction of the Ecuadorian government. According to Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001, the Ecuadorian government released Texaco of any liability once the waste pits were cleaned up to the government's satisfaction. Chevron also denies that there is an increased risk of cancer or cancer-related death in Nueva Loja residents, when compared with their countrymen.
Featured in the plaintiffs' David-versus-Goliath cause (as it is billed repeatedly in the movie) is a young, modest Ecuadorian lawyer, Pablo Fajardo, who is aided by a tenacious or insufferable (depending on your viewpoint) American lawyer, Steven Donziger. Donziger is a world-class grandstander (at least when the camera's rolling) and a seeker of high-level publicity (either for himself or the suit, it's not always clear). On a few occasions, Berlinger shows the frustration or outright umbrage that Donziger's constant 8-cylinder attitude produces in his adversaries and, at least on one occasion, his Ecuadorian allies.
Donziger becomes the means by which Fajardo is featured in a very sympathetic Vanity Fair article, which becomes the springboard for introducing Fajardo and his cause to the new Ecuadorian president, Rafeal Correra, and Trudy Styler, wife of Sting. Berlinger does gets a nod for including a segment in which Styler visits an unidentifed Ecuadorian tar pit (the reponsibility of which, mind you—Texaco or Petroecuador—is completely unclear). In the segment, the publicity-minded Donziger pulls Styler aside and tells her to mention "Texaco" as much as possible on film. Whether it is the intention of Berlinger (and what does that matter anyway?), the viewer hopes that Donziger will not pollute the simple Fajardo with Western celebrity. Thanks to Donziger's publicity efforts, Fajardo ended up hanging out with Sting at the 2007 Live Earth concert and was honored with CNN's Hero Award and the Goldman Prize.**
What Crude ultimately prompts (besides repugnance for Donziger) are a number of questions that attempt to flush out a more even-handed and accurate account of the events that led to and inform this litigation. Namely...
- Do Ecuadorian residents of Nuevo Lajo, in fact, have an increased incidence of disease generally and cancer specifically? The pathetic, heart-wrenching cases presented in Crude shouldn't be sufficient for evidentiary purposes (but they probably will be). According to a PubMed search, there are a number of medical articles suggesting that the Nuevo Lajo Ecuadorians are at greater risk of certain diseases, but these positive studies are also authored by the same Ecuadorian investigators and apparently haven't been replicated by independent sources.
- If Neuvo Lajo citizens have an increased incidence of certain diseases, can they be linked to chemicals leaching from the remaining, uncleaned waste pits?
- If so, who created or has responsibility for these waste pits? Chevron or Petroecuador? (It is undisputed in Crude that Petroecuador has a dismal environmental record.)
- Can a fair trial be conducted in Ecuador, where judicial and political corruption seems to be the norm instead of the exception? While judicial corruption is highlighted briefly in Crude (and to the plaintiffs' advantage), more widespread charges have been made by Chevron against a court-appointed expert, the formerly presiding judge, and Donziger himself. (Although Crude revealed that the presiding judge was removed from the case, Berlinger did not explain why.)
- If the plaintiffs prevail in their suit, who gets the money? Crude hints that much of the cash will go to attorneys (eg, the Philadelophia firm of Kohn Swift and Graft, which is funding the plaintiffs) and the Ecuadorian government.
N.B.--No matter how unduly influenced Styler may have been by the bulldozing Donziger to believe that Texaco/Chevron is responsible for the current mess in Nuevo Lajo, it is to her (and Sting's) credit that their organization supplied local families with rain-water cisterns--which the Ecuadorian government is apparently unwilling or unable to do.
* However temporary.
** It should be noted that Donziger approached Berlinger to make Crude, although this fact is only revealed in recent news coverage of the suit.
I'll forgo this week's obvious recommendation: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009), which was just released on DVD. The movie is undeniably engaging. (What serial-killer tale isn't?) But the story, at least as executed on film, simply isn't good enough or clever enough or sufficiently well executed to justify or sustain several explicitly violent scenes and images, most of which are sexually brutal.
Instead this week's KBF is Panic in the Streets (1950) from director Elia Kazan.
After an unidentified murder victim shows up in the coroner's office with pneumonic plague, a government health officer (Richard Widmark) and a police captain (Paul Douglas) reluctantly pair up to thwart an epidemic. Their ultimate task: to find the victim's killer (or killers), who might spread the disease or die of it.
Because this is an Elia Kazan joint, character dynamics approach the importance of plot, and several new actors—namely Walter Jack Palance, Zero Mostel, and Barbara Bel Geddes—get to flaunt their emotive talents.
One brief, callous and self-serving act in particular (which is perpetrated by Palance's character) is all the more shocking and effective because the movie (unlike The Girl...) doesn't repeatedly assault the viewer with technicolor carnage.
On the heels of the absolutely wonderful I Know Where I'm Going (1945), another film from The Archers.
Britain's second most-beloved movie of all time (if one film poll is to be believed), A Matter of Life and Death (1946) was finally (finally) pounded out on DVD last year. David Niven is a WW2 pilot who attempts to avert a certain, imminent death while falling in love with an American radio dispatcher (Kim Hunter). Like Heaven Can Wait (both versions) and The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), A Matter of Life and Death concerns the fanciful struggle between the desire to continue an earthly existence, with all its ephemeral virtues, and the demands of mortality, the gods, or whatever you want to call it.
The distinctiveness of this movie lies in its juxtaposition of a black-and-white afterlife against a very technicolor existence on Earth (in a wry homage to The Wizard of Oz); the adherence to intricacies of British jurisprudence (even in the afterlife); and the attempt to weave in a neurologic disorder* (somewhat dubiously, I might add) to explain Niven's visions of his afterlife courier, an executed French aristocrat. The courier, or Conductor, as he is called, has got to be one of the most bizarre filmic oddities around, both visually and in personality—even by the very liberal standards of eighteenth-century French nobility.
* Chronic, adhesive arachnoiditis due to a previous head injury.
Killer's Kiss (1955): Stanley Kubrick deserves full credit or blame for nearly everything in this low-budget noir with neorealistic tendencies.* Waiting for a train out of the Big Bad Apple, a washed-up boxer (Jamie Smith) contemplates his brief relationship with a taxi dancer (Irene Kane) and her oppressive boss (Frank Silvera).
The final scene between boxer and villain (which presumably takes place somewhere near the Garment District) evokes the climax in The Lady From Shanghai (1947), with female mannequins substituting for mirrors. It's clear here that Kubrick was in love with the compositional possibilities.
* Given the on-site filming.
Jamie Smith and mannequins in still from Killer's Kiss.
Ball of Fire (1941): Screenwriter Billy Wilder anticipates the urban dictionary in this sublime meeting of a mob-connected singer (Barbara Stanwyck), a monkish grammarian (Gary Cooper), and his 7 professorial mates. There's so much that's great in this movie, it's hard to keep up: Wilder's dizzying dialogue; Stanwyck's and Cooper's effortless timing; DP Toland's camera magic*; director Howard Hawks's typical break-neck pacing; and...ladies and gentlemen, Gene Krupa on the drums!
* One dazzling gem: Toland captures Stanwyck's reflection in a nightclub table while Gene Krupa plays "Drum Boogie" with matchsticks.
Classe Tous Risques (1960): Rough translation, Weigh All Risks (but released in the United States with the very noirish title, The Big Risk).
The end of the road for Abel Davos (Lino Ventura), a career thief with 2 young sons, is told in a cinematic nexus of hard-boiled noir, existentialism, and lingering ideas of social responsibility. Put that in yer film-class paper.
The Naked City (1948): It'd be hard to believe that "Law & Order"'s Dick Wolf didn't get some kind of distant inspiration from director Jules Dassin (Rififi) and this homocide story, which was filmed entirely on location in New York City. The rapport between the very Irish Barry Fitzgerald (Going My Way), as the lead detective, and the boyish Don Taylor (Father of the Bride), as his green partner, lends a surprisingly light-hearted style to what is otherwise technically defined as a noir flick.
Murder by Contract (1958): Defined as noir, but heavily neorealistic or, even, New Wave in style—especially given the threadbare guitar score. A film hybrid in the spirit of a less frenzied Blast of Silence, with the low-budget creepiness of The Honeymoon Killers.
Claude (Vince Edwards—yes, Ben Casey) is a resolute* hit man whose dedication to job completion is shaken by a tough assignment: offing a protected female witness in a high-profile court case. It's not that he minds killing a woman, per se, he just finds it logistically difficult: women don't stand still; they're not dependable, he complains.
* But gun eschewing!
Vince Edwards prepares to kill in a still from Murder by Contract.
Eli Wallach's performance as a psychopathic killer is the first reason to watch The Lineup (1958), Don Seigel's cinematic take on the "Dragnet"-like TV show of the same name. The second reason is the hilarious dual commentary from the ever-informative Eddie Muller and the decidedly non-PC James Ellroy.* The third is the functional San Francisco travelogue provided by Seigel's on-site filming.
* Provided in the volume 1 set of Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics.
Still from The Lineup, with Eli Wallach (right).
Lady in the Lake (1947): A unique (and I mean "unique," not just distinctive) adaptation of another Raymond Chandler-Philip Marlowe story of the same name. Director and star Robert Montgomery creates a sometimes dizzying, and always amusing, movie by shooting the detective story primarily from Marlowe's first-person perspective.* Try not to laugh out loud when cigarette smoke comes from your/Marlowe's/the camera's direction.
With a mugging Audrey Totter (The Set-Up) as Marlowe's editor and client and a young Lloyd Nolan as an underhanded cop.
* Montgomery also tosses in the occasional, creative mirror shot.
Intermission
(2003): I believe that Colin Farrell and America got off on the wrong foot. The actor's bad-boy antics could hardly be excused by his clumsy work in Spielberg's Minority Report (2002) or Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004). Dude should have adhered to his Irish roots if In Bruges (2008) and Intermission are any indication. Farrell is vastly better in both Irish films than in any Hollywood vehicle to date.* And he proves himself to be, not a leading man, but an exceptional ensemble player—particularly in Intermission, a 9-plus character jumble of what goes down whan a young couple breaks up.* With the possible exception of Crazy Heart.
The Informant (2009): Steven Soderbergh's farcical take on the price-fixing scandal of the Archer Daniels Midland company and whistleblower Mark Whitacre would have been a whole lot better (and funnier) without the overbearing score by Marvin Hamlisch. (Marvin to viewers: Yes, yes, audience! This is comical! And this here! And oh yes, this, also!) Too bad: It detracts from a really compelling character study and some fine performances by virtually every cast member, including Damon, Scott Bakula, and that "Talk Soup" guy, Joe McHale.
That Hamilton Woman (1941): Winston Churchill reportedly saw this heavily embellished weepie about Lord Nelson (Laurence Olivier) and his striking mistress, Lady Hamilton (Vivien Leigh), more than 80 times. Must have been on Betamax.
The closing line, ostensibly written by Walter Reisch or playwright R. C. Sheriff, is a kicker.
The Long Goodbye (1973): Robert Altman's take on film noir and Raymond Chandler, with all the signature amorphousness of a Robert Altman movie. Chandler's story from the 1950s, however, takes place in the 70s—with Elliott Gould, perpetually suited and chain-smoking, as the throwback PI Philip Marlowe in sunny, EST-loving Los Angeles.
Altman's love of overlapping dialogue, extraneous audio, and distracting visuals is in full bloom, as Marlowe investigates the apparent suicide of a buddy whose wife was just murdered. Renowned DP Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) effectively contrasts dark, cool interiors with blinding beachscapes in numerous single shots, and underachiever John Williams takes partial credit for the title song, which is heard repeatedly in various incarnations—like torch cabaret, uptempo jazz, and Mexican funeral march.
Featuring Sterling Hayden, Henry Gibson, and a mute Governator in an uncredited bit role.
Accepting the KBF duty this week is KTG. Take it away, KTG.
Franklyn (2008): Go for the otherwordly cover art. Stay for the 4 seemingly disconnected storylines that eventually form a tidy, if slightly blood-spattered, bow.
This Brindie (that's Brit-indie) features Ryan Phillippe as a steampunk vigilante, Bernard Hill as a tormented father, and Eva Green* as a suicidal performance artist. Put that in your rolled-up, overwrought screenplay and smoke it. Meanwhile Sam Riley plays a jilted lover who stumbles into the middle of...things.
* You remember her as the Bond girl in Casino Royale (2006).
Born to Kill (1947): There's something about a strapping, murderous sociopath that's simply irresistible. Must be the "strapping" part.
In this Robert Wise joint, San Francisco socialite Helen Brent (played by Claire Trevor, the undisputed Queen of Noir) appreciates more than physical attributes in the low-rent Sam Wild* (played by big, bad Lawrence Tierney). This homme fatale, who is to become (gasp!) Helen's brother-in-law, has got one helluva thrilling, rudderless soul.
Other than smoke like a chimney, what's a horny, morally conflicted gal to do?
Featuring exceptional supporting performances by Walter Slezak (an unctuous PI), Elisha Cook, Jr (Sam's officious sidekick), and Esther Howard (a beer-loving landlady). The DVD offers expert commentary from the ever-amusing and informative Eddie Muller and a few audio clips from the director himself.
N.B. While Ben Affleck may have a passing resemblance to Lawrence Tierney, at least as far as the movie poster is concerned, there is a world of difference between the two when it comes to screen presence.
* Wild. Get it? Get it?
On the basis of his success with The Manchurian Candidate (1962), director John Frankenheimer was able to assemble a similar behind-the scenes crew for another B&W political thriller, Seven Days in May (1964). This time, however, Rod Serling (not George Axelrod) penned the highly effective screenplay.
The movie, based on a popular novel of the same name, is the story of an attempted military coup in the United States, spearheaded by the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Burt Lancaster). The planned coup is in response to a nuclear disarmament treaty signed by an unpopular President (Fredric March). Kirk Douglas plays Lancaster's right-hand military man, who alerts the Administration to his boss's overthrow plot.
The soul-searching dialog, as noted by Frankenheimer in the DVD commentary, is pure Serling:
General Scott (Lancaster): You're a night crawler, Colonel. A peddler. You sell information. Are you sufficiently up on your Bible to know who Judas was?
Colonel Casey (Douglas): I suggest you read that letter, sir. It's from the President.
General Scott: I asked you a question.
Colonel Casey (hesitantly): Are you ordering me to answer, sir?
General Scott (angrily): I am!
Colonel Casey (calmy, stoically): Yes, I know who Judas was. He was a man I worked for and admired...until he disgraced the four stars on his uniform.
(1948): Underappreciated noir from director Anthony Mann,* with moody voiceover narration from Claire Trevor, the Queen of Noir. A northern California setting provides the fog.
The story: Homme fatale Joe (Dennis O'Keefe) takes the prison rap for a crime boss, Rick (Raymond Burr), who owes Joe 50 Gs. Rick then sets up a prison escape for Joe, while relying on the odds that he'll get caught. But Joe escapes the police dragnet with the aid of his lovesick BFF (Trevor) and the reluctant cover of a pretty legal aid.
Despite the caliber of the film, the transfer to DVD (Classic Media) provides the bare minimum. Not even a subtitle option to catch every last drop of juicy screenplay—let alone any deserving commentary.
* Of noir and western fame.
(1969): It just goes to show you that a shoestring budget doesn't prevent the creation of really interesting shots. Director Leonard Castle and DP Oliver Wood are largely responsible for the look, sound, and feel of this black-and-white docudrama of 2 real-life lovers, Martha Beck and Ray Fernandez. The zaftig nurse and her Latin gigolo, played completely unapologetically by Stephanie Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco, became notorious in the 1940s for murdering a string of lovelorn women.
The DVD interview with Castle, a composer by training and profession, is mandatory.
Movie poster from Wikipedia reproduced under fair use law.
So what is Hobson's choice? The answer depends on which Hobson you're talking about.
District 9 (2009): On their visit to planet Earth, crustacean-like aliens don't hover over Manhattan or Chicago but stop, instead, at Johannesburg, where they are ultimately subjected to a lengthy and cruel apartheid (with evidently little interest from the international community). When the aliens' living conditions become too distasteful for even South Africans, the government—with the logistical efforts of a lackey official, Wikus Van De Merwe—begins their removal to a new camp.
District 9 is, more or less, a character study of the callous and self-serving Van De Merwe, who is made watchable by the curiously named South African actor, Sharlto Copley. But the story is also a very graphic union of depravity, violence, and technology, and its quick telling relies on easily recognized elements from a number of dystopic sci-fi stories, namely "V," Mad Max, The Fly, Aliens, and (God help us) Enemy Mine.
While District 9 isn't Best Picture material, despite its nomination, it is distressingly memorable.
I Soliti Ignoti (1958), aka Persons Unknown or Big Deal on Madonna Street: If this farcical heist movie doesn't make you shrug, wave your hands, and argue in gibberish Italian with the nearest person, I don't know what will.
Marcello Mastroianni plays just one of several incompetent, demonstrative, thieving wannabes.
The usual nod and thanks to KTG.
The Conversation (1974): Come on. It's been how many years since you've seen this movie? Rediscover what a national treasure Gene Hackman is. It's also one of Coppola's best, and I'm including The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II.
For my part, I've watched this film, about a wiretapper with a Catholic conscience, more times than I care to admit outside a group of drooling cinephiles: There's the pulling of focus to complement audio lapses; the showing of character (Hackman picking up sidewalk trash to emphasize his character's fastidiousness); the best dream sequence on film; the confession (play close attention to the developing mismatch between the audio and Hackman's lips*); tech geeks cutting loose; the wry nod to Psycho in the hotel bathroom; John Cazale (fer Christ's sake!); a fetal Harrison Ford; the surveillance camera-like closing. Yes. YES. YES!
* This guy's so wound up he can't even tell his deepest secret to a priest in a confessional.
Pickup on South Street (1953): Cops trailing a va-voom courier of government microfilm (Jean Peters) are diverted to a subway pickpocket (Richard Widmark), who unknowingly steals it. The pickpocket then has to contend with prying visits from the courier, the cops, and loathsome pinko sympathizers at his waterfront shack.
Other than asking, "What's the moral compass of a petty thief?" the movie raises this question: "Where exactly was there a waterfront shack in Manhattan?"
N.B.--The movie also features the incomparable Thelma Ritter as a tie peddler and professional CI. Her pre-demise monologue is something, bitches.
The latest in potentially cloying medical movies, which I avoid like they're pandemic H1N1, is the newly released Extraordinary Measures, starring the dramatically limited Harrison Ford* and the doughy, but generally likeable, Brendan Fraser. The story, at least on its surface, is reminiscent of 1992's Lorenzo's Oil, in which parents labor valiantly against the rigid medical community (or in the case of EM, the pharmaceutical industry) to find a cure for their children's very rare afflictions.**
Because I'm as likely to see this movie as I am the what-they-show-in-hell Patch Adams, there will be no review based on actual viewing. Instead I rely on the consumer services of critics from major US newspapers.
The reviews, like the movie itself, are more or less predictable. The overarching theme: EM is cable TV, but just with Harrison Ford.
From Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune: "[Y]ou can find more provocative medical crises on TV every week of the year, albeit without this film's headliners." "The big confrontations between Fraser and Ford...feel strangely rote...they are, in fact, written and performed at Emmy-highlights-reel pitch." Two stars.
James Verniere of the Boston Herald: "If I had a nickel for every time Ford's craggy-faced, grumpy old man growls 'Get out of my lab' at someone in the film I'd have a dollar." But Verniere calls the cast, especially the supporting actors, "Extraordinary."
Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: "[S]lack, well-meaning disease-of-the-week drama of the sort one might encounter on the Hallmark Channel." Rickey likes Ford (he's "a gas") but finds Fraser "stiff and visibly uncomfortable."
Robert Butler, Miami Herald: "'Measures' is competent enough. However, it's not the least bit inspired...[I]t feels as if it has been carefully assembled not to reveal some truth so much as to push certain dramatic buttons for its audience."
Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: "[A] sort of uplifting drama that neither touches the heart nor tests the brain—a film that wouldn't make the Showtime...or HBO quality cut." Sharkey says that Ford does a "credible job" but implies that Fraser is out of his league. (And if the league standard is Harrison Ford, for God's sake, change careers.)
A. O. Scott of The New York Times is, perhaps, the most gracious: While he finds a paradox in a "movie about a medical breakthrough" that "is not especially eager to break new ground of its own," Scott says the film delivers an education about the process of medical research. "This is the main reason that 'Extraordinary Measures'...rises above some of its made-for-TV trappings."
* The last and only time I found Harrison Ford interesting in a dramatic role (and it was a bit part) was in The Conversation.
** In Lorenzo's Oil, the disease was adrenoleukodystrophy; in Extraordinary Measures, Pompe disease. The major difference between these 2 stories is that the treatment developed in EM, Myozyme (alglucosidase alfa; Genzyme), is FDA approved.
An earnest-looking Brendan Fraser and a gruff-looking Harrison Ford in a still from Extraordinary Measures.
Green for Danger
(1946): Interesting title for a black-and-white whodunit.An off-beat inspector from Scotland Yard (Alistair Sim)* investigates the surgical death of a postman and the murder of an OR nurse at a remote English hospital. The suspects are soon limited to 5 overdramatic medical personnel—2 of whom deliver a priceless over-the-top sequence of mad laughter, followed by face slap, followed by hysterical sobbing.
* Think precursor to Columbo.
The usual HT to KTG.
An Enemy of the People (1966): Oh, the days when television tried to deliver serious drama to the masses. One example is the NET Playhouse production of Henrik Ibsen's "En Folkefiende," as adapted by Arthur Miller and forever captured on charming black-and-white videotape.
In the Victorian-era play, fraternal conflict escalates to extremes over the purity of the local spring baths, a major attraction of a small Norwegian town. One brother, a physician, tries to warn the citizens of bacterial contamination; the other brother, the town's mayor, uses his political influence to convince the villagers otherwise—at the expense of his brother's reputation and safety.
With Philip Bosco and James Daly as the brothers. Other, potentially recognizable actors include Kate Reid and James Olson (both of The Andromeda Strain) and James Daly's son, Timothy (of "Wings" and "Private Practice").
The Racket (1951): Howard Hughes remakes his 1928 film of the same name, which was based on Capone-inspired play. (Unfortunately the earlier film, which is reportedly better, is not on DVD.) Certain aspects of the reworked plot don't make much sense, as commentator Eddie Muller (whose encyclopedic knowledge of film noir is just scary) admits; and Robert Mitchum pretty much phones it in as an incorruptible police captain. But Robert Ryan, as a snarly thug and the captain's longtime nemesis, is in usual top form. With an extremely laconic William Conrad as a corrupt cop and the husky-voiced Lizabeth Scott as a "tommy" "canary." Directed by, well, a number of people.
P.S. All physicians will have fun randomly quoting this line from Ryan's bully of a character: "Blow, shyster!"
The Asphalt Jungle (1950): Longing to buy back his family's Kentucky horse farm, a "hooligan" (Sterling Hayden) joins a team-driven jewel heist in San Francisco. What could possibly go wrong?
With James Whitmore, a vulnerable Jean Hagen (Singin' in the Rain), and a young Marilyn Monroe. Directed by John Huston.
Perennial HT: KTG
Addendum: Well I thought it was San Francisco (maybe I recognized some exterior shots). But the movie apparently takes place in some nameless Midwestern city.
Murder, My Sweet (1944): Hungry for clients, private dick Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) gets tangled up in two seemingly disconnected investigations. Based on Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely.
You won't find harder-boiled flashback narration. To wit:
I just found out all over again how big this city is. My feet hurt. And my mind felt like a plumber's handkerchief.
I don't get the simile either; but the phrase sounds oh-so-noirishly right.
HT: KTG
The Wages of Fear
, or Le salaire de la peur (1953): One of 2 signature movies from Henri-Georges Clouzot. (The other is Diabolique.)Stuck in a South American shit-hole, 4 ex-pats vie for a highly lucrative job of trucking nitroglycerin for an exploitive American oil company. After a very leisurely European start, the pace intensifies as the freelance truckers haul the explosive over roads that are actually worse than the Illinois Tollway system. With Yves Montand.
N.B. William Friedkin directed the not-so-iconic 1977 remake, Sorcerer.
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (2008): A simplistic, but still engaging, account of a(n) historic football game between the unbeaten teams of Harvard and Yale in 1968.
Spearheaded almost exclusively (or at least apparently almost exclusively) by Harvard grad Kevin Rafferty (The Atomic Cafe), the documentary cuts simply between quaint archival game footage and current head-shot interviews of the seminal players—nearly all of whom are sufficiently articulate and suitably reflective. They are Ivy League grads, after all. Moreover, they attended school when proper emphasis could be placed on the components of "student-athlete."
A surprising exception is actor Tommy Lee Jones, former Harvard offensive tackle, who is something short of reticent in his interviews. But one of the most entertaining participants, perhaps inadvertently so, is former Yale linebacker Mike Bouscaren, who evidently likes to remember himself as the team enforcer. Bouscaren's amusing attempt to take credit for inuring Ray Hornblower, Harvard's star halfback, reminds us: Before you brag, know what's on film.
A Blueprint for Murder* (1953): Slumming it in a B-movie thriller, Joseph Cotton, as Whitney Cameron, suspects his nearly perfect sister-in-law (Jean Peters) of murdering his niece with strychnine (which is affectedly pronounced STRICK-nin by every cast member). Cameron then plots to save his young nephew from the same assumed fate. With Gary Merrill (All About Eve) and a plucky Catherine McLeod as the husband-and-wife team who feed Cameron's suspicions.
* At Amazon, the DVD of the movie is coupled with Man in the Attic (1954) starring Jack Palance, an uninspired remake of The Lodger (1944).
Poster image from Wikipedia reproduced under fair-use law.
HT: Once again, KTG.
Criss Cross (1947): More noir with Lancaster. And about as complicated as noir gets—which is pretty complicated.
The paripatetic Steve (Burt Lancaster) returns to Los Angeles, where he pursues his gorgeous ex-wife Anna (Yvonne De Carlo, aka Mrs. Munster), who's hooked up with Slim Dundee,* the local mob boss. But Anna is inconstant in love...or in deciding her best option.
P.S. Check out De Carlo's dance partner in the Round-up Bar.
* I just wanted to write out that name, 'cause it's so goofy.
To Die For (1995): A very wicked satire from director Gus Van Sant and screenwriter Buck Owens Henry (jeez, what was I thinking?); loosely based on the sad life of Pamela Smart, who recruited her teenage lover to murder her husband in 1990.
Nicole Kidman, as the Smart-ish character, is outstanding in many a truth-y, cringe-worthy scene. Case in point: Her aborted seduction of a cable-access news producer, played by Wayne Knight. But the high school kids—depicted by then-unknowns Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck, and Alison Folland—are the undisputed models of verisimilitude in this flick.
