Dogs Bark

The Buck, The Bed, And The Bottle - - The Naked Kiss (1964) - - 30 August 2009

Recommended. It’s hard to describe in morning light the astonishing, fundamentally demented nature of The Naked Kiss, Sam Fuller’s story of a bad girl gone right, but the infection will fester long after the credits roll. I particularly loved the crippled children singing “Mommy Dear,” all in their little pirate costumes. The scene starts off sickeningly sweet but as it drones on a creeping dementia begins that clearly foreshadows the brutality yet to come. Like this other headcase (see below), I found the song to be the heart of Fuller’s madness. The Naked Kiss envisions not a woman’s liberation from the oppression of society, as frequently opined, but a license to enter a perverted fantasy of dark female rage, a sort of Mommy the Barbarian.  Three separate times, Kelly (Constance Towers) savagely attacks other characters; she kills with a single blow.  Not since Aliens have we seen such a bad mutha.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FFF7msIQ6g

Thank Heaven For Little Girls - - The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009) - - 25 August 2009

Recommended. However, if, like most paid film reviewers, you focused on its illogic or couldn’t get past repressed memories of pedophilia, you’re just fine. You just need (SPOILER ALERT) to re-explore the concept of . . . the metaphor.  The Time Traveler’s Wife, adapted by Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost, Jacob’s Ladder) from the clever, thoughtful book by Audrey Niffenegger, visualizes her analogy of romance as an ever-looping cycle past the snoring lump sharing your bed and back to the lonely kid who first imagined a someday soul mate. All within the solitary confinement of a finite life. That’s why time travel is absurd. It unravels existence like a cheap bedspread. Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams (The Notebook) are a bit too pretty to serve their characters but they do a decent job, assisted by director Robert Schwenke. But if you really do hate this movie, just switch the DVD with a Letterman re-run and you’ll feel much better.   

Present, Imperfect, Tense - - Entre Les Murs [The Class] (2008) - - 23 August 2009

Recommended. So we have François Bégaudeau, a Parisian teacher writing a screenplay from his book starring himself as a teacher. Directed by Laurent Cantet, The Class is a curious but highly effective film, representing a year of a junior-high French class. The characters are played by non-actor students and directed in a improv style.  This creates a wonderfully authentic feel for the perils of teaching, not just in lower-class, multicultural Paris, but anywhere. The dramatic crisis arises as Bégaudeau’s loose and honest pedigogy goes horribly awry. He smartly concludes the story without a neat resolution - - only a student’s heart-breaking confession. Some children will always be left behind.  I liked that Bégaudeau was teaching French, the bastion subject of old-school Gallic pride. “No one talks like that,” one student resentfully supplies early on, and from there the struggle teeters between the Ancien and Euro-African-Arab-Asian Régimes. It’s a troubling new world.    

Pretty Boy Warren - - Dillinger (1973) - - 13 August 2009

Recommended. The year was 1973. John Ford had just died. Bonnie And Clyde was a six-year-old classic. The Wild Bunch had revived the career of tough guys, Warren Oates and Ben Johnson. And brand New Hollywood madman John Milius had just signed with American International to make a gangster exploitation film about two of the toughest, real tough guys in history.  These are the facts, ma’am, behind Dillinger, the second retell of the 1930’s pursuit of John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, an Baby Face Nelson by FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis.  As Purvis, Johnson gives a near-perfect performance, fully utilizing his 70s, post-Ford, Oscar-winning persona. Warren Oates plays Dillinger with equal gusto and surprising restraint. Oates was so rarely offered complex roles. Perhaps he saw a chance to develop a subtler character than past work.  Harry Dean Stanton, Geoff Lewis, and a maniacal Richard Dreyfus round out the delightful cast.   

Print The Legend - - My Darling Clementine (1946) - - 8 August 2009

Recommended. Seeing this movie again, after the release of the Cosmatos/Russell movie Tombstone, I have to say, like Darryl F. Zanuck, I was disappointed.  This picture is considered by many smart people to be John Ford at his best. Despite this, the script is a complete bastardization of the real gunfight at OK Corral. See an excellent discussion of the actual story on the AMC website.  Added to this is the spectacular miscasting of Victor Mature and Linda Darnell. One wonders how John Carradine, fresh off Ford’s The Grapes Of Wrath, would have done Doc Holliday? And when will Doc’s real girl, ‘Big-Nose’ Kate Elder, get her due? It’s ironic that Ford’s career-long fascination with the socialization of the West is better served by historical fact. But the many legendary Ford-perfect scenes, including Henry Fonda’s chair juggle, a great square-dance sequence, and long shots of geographically-incorrect Monument Valley, can’t be dismissed. 

Poisson, Sans Boisson, Est Poison - - In The Electric Mist (2009) - - 30 July 2009

Not recommended. The best stories of James Lee Burke, like Tony Hillerman, are only casually concerned with the opening murder.  The killing is just a way to get their detective (Dave Robicheaux, for Burke) off his rear. The real mystery for both of these writers is the cultural geography of the tale. Sadly, this does not normally translate well into film and In The Electric Mist is another well-meaning failure.  A French director (Bertrand Tavernier), Tommy Lee Jones as Robicheaux, Polish screenwriters (Jerzy and Mary Olson-Kromolowski) . . . not even a great supporting cast (Levon Helm, Kelly Macdonald, James Gammon, Pruitt Taylor Vince) can save this - - and incidentally, John Goodman - - from caricature. Oddly, they couldn’t even nail the score despite assists by Buddy Guy and Cajun musicologist Ann Savoy.  To be fair, this wasn’t the longer director’s cut, but fat ain’t gonna turn a buzzard to a goose, tu connai?