Dogs Bark

Years From Then - - Tea And Sympathy (1956, USA, 122 min) - - 30 October 2020

Strongly recommended. When I first watched Tea And Sympathy - - 40-something years ago - - I was not kind. Judith Butler was still a teenager and the word “queer” hadn’t migrated from the locker room to the college syllabus. This also predated my fascination with the Hollywood Production Code and how it forced directors like Vincente Minnelli (Some Came Running) to inventively juggle sexuality and gender in ways anticipating current theory. All three brilliant leads inherited from scripter Robert Anderson’s (The Nun's Story) play a queer dilemma. The straight, but feminine, student, Tom (John Kerr, South Pacific) and the closeted, hyper-masculine housemaster (Leif Erickson, The High Chaparral) both crave Deborah Kerr's (From Here to Eternity) sympathy . . . herself conflicted by unacceptable longing. The Code forced Minnelli to be less fluid than the play and while occasionally descending into stereotype, he portrayed gender, sexuality and desire in ways now accepted by psychologists as self-evident.

Car Wheels On A Gravel Road - - Detour (1945, USA, B/W, 68 min) - - 26 October 2020

Recommended. Multiple viewings of Detour suggests that its ambiguous repute is reasonable. The film shows its on-the-cheap production values and the plot is laughable. So why do some people call Detour the ultimate film noir? Perhaps we might question, instead . . . the criteria. One might ask if the plot of D.O.A is any less contrived. Have you ever met anyone that spoke like Fred Mac Murray in Double Indemnity or Rita Hayworth in Gilda? The difference in these three movies is the potential for redemption - - and easier audience identification - - in their protagonists. There’s little chance for redemption in Tom Neal’s (I Shot Billy the Kid) whiny Al Roberts and Ann Savage (Satan's Cradle) unapologetically earns her stage name in every scene. If we think of noir as visual pulp, Detour is the squeezed rind of an old lime, tossed into the corner of a lonely alley. By that standard . . . it’s priceless.

A Real Nobody - - Plein Soleil [Purple Noon](1960, France, Color, 118 min) - - 17 October 2020

Recommended. Lately, French noir has been a compulsion. Thus, it behooves to examine the Gallic turn on the ultimate noir protagonist, Tom Ripley.  The Talented Mr. Ripley always seemed a European story, despite being written by Texan, Patricia Highsmith (Strangers On A Train). It’s a tale of class, more accurately, déclassé . . . a nouvelle flotsam. Thus, it’s ironic that René Clément (Forbidden Games) - - famously trashed by Truffaut and the new wave - - helmed it. The camera work of Henri Decaë (The 400 Blows) and score, Nino Rota (The Godfather), are great. My only gripe is the ending, which deserts both Highsmith and truth. This was Alain Delon’s (Le Samourai) breakout and brilliant role. It’s testimony to Mr. Ripley’s lovely ambivalence that nothing is taken away from Matt Damon’s (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Dennis Hopper’s (The American Friend), or John Malkovich’s (Ripley’s Game) equally brilliant interpretations. This is noir, baby; rules don’t apply.

Suzie Noma (All This I Know) - - Rafiki (2018, Kenya, Color, 83 min) - - 14 October 2020

Recommended.  Director Wanuri Kahiu (From a Whisper) claims that her mission is to show the world that Africa is not the continent of misery that it’s sometimes represented. She calls her genre Afrobubblegum. Yet her movies never quite achieve that level of thoughtlessness. She claims to have simply intended a fluffy first love story in Rafiki. Yeah . . . it’s set between two girls in the famously homophobic society of Kenya where the heroines can be beaten with impunity for just kissing in the back of a derelict Volkswagen bus. Nevertheless, this lovely movie floats on the downy performances of newcomers Samantha Mugatsia and Sheila Munyiva. The photography (Christopher Wessels, IJspaard) and the all-African, all-female score are lyrical.  It was banned in Kenya, not for any Western-style, Penthouse, lezbo love scenes, but because the girls are not punished by fate for their sins. Lordy, this world is buggered up.

Going, Going . . . - - Ram Dass, Fierce Grace (2001, USA, Color, 93 min) - - 6 October 2020

Recommended. - - This is a simple and straight-forward documentary on the life of Baba Ram Das (Ram Dass, Going Home) - - aka, Dr. Richard Alpert - - the American spiritual teacher and psychologist. The drama is in the life of Ram Das. His book, Be Here Now, has inspired millions of Eastern and New Age religious practitioners since its publication in 1971. In the first section of the movie and book, Ram Das details his early dissatisfaction with academic success, his co-experimentation with Timothy Leary of LSD and human consciousness, and his subsequent discipleship under Hindu guru, Maharaj-ji. From these experiences Ram Das fashioned his unique blend of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Then . . . he suffered a stroke. The final section of the film shows his adaptation to the difficult physical and mental challenges of illness. Mickey Lemle (The Other Side of the Moon) paints an engaging and emotionally moving portrait of Ram Das

Free At Last - - The Virgin Suicides (1999, USA, Color, 97 min) - - 30 September 2020

Strongly recommended. Like its box office, I did not give immediate respect to Sofia Coppola’s (Lost In Translation), now cult-status, adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides debut novel, The Virgin Suicides. We were wrong and I now consider this movie brilliant . . . a wonderful example of a modern-day folklore. While the novel seemed to look through of the gaze of the neighborhood boys, Coppola seems more concerned with their focal point, the five diaphanous, Lisbon sisters but without revealing any of their Venusian mystery. Using a dreamy, slow motion camera and a post-Interview-With-The-Vampire, Kirsten Dunst, Coppola signals that actual teenage suicide is not the point. Rather, it is the suicide of damsel-dom that the girls commit . . . breaking the hearts of peeper and parent alike. Screened after twenty years of fatherhood results in a richer understanding of the feelings of the senior Lisbons, subtlety crafted by James Woods (Casino) and Kathleen Turner (Body Heat).