Now film noir is by definition dark and cynical, but 1955’s Kiss Me Deadly is downright pissed off and nasty. Ralph Meeker stars as LA private eye Mike Hammer in this delightfully lowbrow film noir, based on a Mickey Spillane novel. Much of the fun comes from the menacing nuclear glow of the briefcase that is the film’s MacGuffin.
On his indieWIRE blog, Peter Bogdanovich writes that Robert Aldrich hated Spillane’s pulp so much that he concluded the screenplay with nuclear annihilation.
In the subversive 1984 cult classic Repo Man, the glowing briefcase reappears in the truck of a repossessed sedan.
The Criterion Collection has just released its DVD of Kiss Me Deadly.
On June 18, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting this 1934 screwball comedy, which holds up as well today as it did 77 years ago. A flamboyantly narcissistic Broadway producer (John Barrymore) has fallen on hard times and hops a transcontinental train to persuade his former star (Carole Lombard), now an A-list movie star, to headline his new venture. Barrymore’s shameless self-entitlement and hyper dramatic neediness makes for one of the funniest performances in the movies.
Well, they have ambulance chasers in Argentina, too, and that seamy world is the setting for this dark and violent noirish thriller. Ricardo Darin (The Secrets of Their Eyes, Nine Queens) stars as a suspended lawyer running insurance scams. (I think of Darin as the Argentine Joe Mantegna.) Set in the gloom of urban nighttime emergency rooms and funeral homes, it’s a love story between the lawyer and an equally troubled doctor (Martina Gusman), nestled into a crime thriller.
The story is as cynical and dark as it comes. The handheld camera keeps it out of the noir category, but the story is as hard-bitten as Kiss Me Deadly or any of the really nasty noirs. The violence is realistic, and there’s lots of it – I had never seen anyone beaten to death with a file drawer before. If you like dark and edgy (and I do), this is the film for you.
The top picks this week are Incendies, Midnight in Paris and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I’m still urging people to see the searing drama Incendies, the year’s best film so far. Upon their mother’s death, a young man and woman learn for the first time of their father and their brother and journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets. As they bumble around Lebanon, we see the mother’s experience in flashbacks. We learn before they do that their lives were created – literally – by the violence of the Lebanese civil war.
Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years. Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.
Don’t miss Cave of Forgotten Dreams while it can be seen in 3D; Werner Herzog explores the amazing 30,000 year old Chauvet cave paintings.
13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.
In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best. The Hangover Part 2 is just not original enough, and, consequently, not funny enough.
I haven’t yet seen Beginners or The Trip, which open this weekend with very strong buzz. You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick is one of the best movies from last year, True Grit.
Movies on TV this week include the brilliant Buster Keaton masterpiece The General on TCM.
Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, Blood Simple, No Country for Old Men) have brought us the splendid Old West story of Mattie Ross, a girl of unrelenting resolve and moxie played by 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld in a breakthrough performance. Without her performance, the movie could not have been the success that it is, and Steinfeld has no problem standing up to the likes of Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin and Matt Damon. Mattie’s merciless smarts and resourcefulness become clear in her negotiations with prairie mogul Col. Stonehill (magnificently played by Dakin Matthews).
Jeff Bridges is perfect as the hilarious, oft-besotted and frequently lethal Rooster Cogburn. Damon, Brolin and the rest of the cast are excellent, especially Matthews and Barry Pepper.
This film is made from the same source material as, but is not a remake of, the 1969 John Wayne oater (a movie that I particularly dislike). The 1969 film is burdened by a hammy effort by Wayne, the miscast and undertalented Kim Darby (playing a 14-year-old at 22) and Glenn Campbell.
The film opens (without title credits) with the old hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, signaling that the Coen Brothers will play True Grit absolutely straight within the traditional Western genre – no ironic winks at the audience.
The top picks this week are Incendies, Midnight in Paris and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I’m still urging people to see the searing drama Incendies, the year’s best film so far. Upon their mother’s death, a young man and woman learn for the first time of their father and their brother and journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets. As they bumble around Lebanon, we see the mother’s experience in flashbacks. We learn before they do that their lives were created – literally – by the violence of the Lebanese civil war.
Woody Allen’s sweet and smart Midnight in Paris is his best comedy in twenty-five years. Owen Wilson accompanies fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where she is intrigued by pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, leaving Wilson to explore midnight Paris and time travel back to the Paris of the Lost Generation.
Don’t miss Cave of Forgotten Dreams while it can be seen in 3D; Werner Herzog explores the amazing 30,000 year old Chauvet cave paintings.
13 Assassins is brilliantly staged and photographed, and is one of the best recent action films; an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to hack their way through a psychotically sadistic noble’s 200 bodyguards.
In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best. Meek’s Cutoff is a disappointing misfire.
On June 10, we’ll get a chance to see The Tree of Life. Every ten years Terrence Malick directs a film that critics call a masterpiece: Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World. At Cannes, audiences found The Tree of Life at once visually stunning, confusing, brilliant, trippy, profound and self-important. Brad Pitt plays a 1950s Waco dad who is both caring and brutishly domineering. Sean Penn plays his grown up Baby Boomer son reflecting on his childhood (without much dialogue). From the music in the trailer, you can tell that this movie takes itself very seriously.
Also releasing June 10 is Beginners. Ewan McGregor’s dad (Christopher Plummer) has just died, shortly after coming out of the closet. As if this weren’t enough to deal with, McGregor is a depressive anyway. But then he meets Melanie Laurent (and they meet cute). Directed by Mike Mills (Thumbsucker).
On the same weekend, we’ll also have The Trip, a reportedly very funny movie in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take a foodie road trip through the north of England. Along the way, they snidely battle each other with their impressions of Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Woody Allen, Al Pacino and the like.
The next weekend, June 17, we have Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times. This contender for the year’s best documentary is a peek inside modern journalism at a troubling time.
With Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen has made his best movie since 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters. It’s a funny and wistful exploration of the nostalgia for living in another time and place – all set in the most sumptuously photographed contemporary Paris.
Successful but disenchanted screenwriter and would be novelist Owen Wilson accompanies his mismatched fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where he fantasizes about living in the artistically fertile Paris of the 1920s. Indeed, at midnight, he happens upon a portal to that era, and finds himself hanging out with the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein. He meets Marion Cotillard, a 1920s gal who is herself nostalgic for the 1890s.
Midnight in Paris shines because of the perfectly crafted dialogue. McAdams’ every instinct is cringingly wrong for Wilson. She is enraptured by the pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, who couldn’t be more insufferable.
As usual, Allen has attracted an excellent cast. Owen Wilson rises to the material and gives one of his best performances. Corey Stoll is hilarious as Hemingway and Adrien Brody even funnier as Salvador Dali. Cotillard is luminous.
It’s not news that the French love Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris) or that Terrence Malick can make a beautiful, profound and confusing film (The Tree of Life). And we’ll get to see Midnight in Paris for ourselves this weekend and The Tree of Life in a couple of weeks. But I’m especially looking forward to four more films screened at the festival: The Artist, Drive, The Kid with a Bike and Polisse.
The film that captured the most fans at Cannes is The Artist, a mostly silent film about a silent film star at the advent of talking pictures. By all accounts, it’s a visually and emotionally satisfying film. The French actor Jean Dujardin won Cannes’ best actor award; John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller also appear. The Artist will be released in the US by The Weinstein Company.
Drive is an action movie starring Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver by day, criminal getaway driver by night. It’s getting attention for the emotionally vacant character played by Gosling and the stylishness of the car chases and violence. Drive will be released in the US in September by FilmDistrict.
The Kid with a Bike is the latest from the Belgian Bardennes brothers, two of my favorite film makers (The Son, Rosetta). a 12-year-old boy wants to find the father who dumped him at a children’s home, but meets a woman who becomes his de fact foster mom. The Kid with the Bike will be released in the US by Sundance Selects.
Polisse is a reputedly riveting French police procedural about the child protective services unit. It stars an ensemble cast led by Karin Viard (Paris, Potiche, Time Out). Polisse will be released in the US by IFC Films.
Director Takeshi Miike’s take on the samurai movie is the best contribution to the genre since Kurosawa. Brilliantly staged and photographed, this is one of the best recent action films in any language or setting.
It’s a familiar set-up: an honorable samurai must assemble and lead a team of thirteen to kill a psychotically sadistic noble. But first they must hack their way through the bad guy’s 200 bodyguards. What sets 13 Assassins apart is the inventively booby-trapped town and the frenzied pace of the climactic battle. It even has exploding boars!
Kôji Yakusho, a veteran with 72 acting credits, gives an impressive performance as the lead assassin. You may remember him from Shall We Dance? or Babel.
Now film noir is by definition dark and cynical, but 1955’s Kiss Me Deadly is downright pissed off and nasty. Ralph Meeker stars as LA private eye Mike Hammer in this delightfully lowbrow film noir, based on a Mickey Spillane novel. Much of the fun comes from the menacing nuclear glow of the briefcase that is the film’s MacGuffin.
