Top Five (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆

Top Five (2014) – C. Rock

Chris Rock is an engaging performer and he seems like he must be a nice guy.  I haven’t really been following his career.  This is the third feature film he has directed.  He plays what you would have to assume is a version of himself, a famous comedian trying to branch out into more serious pursuits being interviewed by the New York Times.  There is now a genre of these types of movies that blend reality and fiction, a genre that can be pretty fascinating and funny -- as in Tristam Shandy (2005) with Steve Coogan -- but which can also include horror shows like Jerry Springer’s The Ringmaster (1998).  Rock’s film is somewhere in the middle. Rosario Dawson plays the Times reporter (and potential love interest) and their tete-a-tete ranges all over the place, covering alcoholism/sobriety, film criticism, reality TV vs. reality, and more.  There are some “blue” moments (as in sexually explicit) and there is some raw language (no surprise) – but the general tone is affectionate and sensitive.  The movie mostly succeeds as it ambles amiably along but it feels like we have been here before.   

A Shot in the Dark (1964)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Shot in the Dark (1964) – B. Edwards

Peter Sellers is back as Inspector Clouseau in this sequel to The Pink Panther that now revolves around him.  He is called in to solve a murder in the mansion of rich George Sanders, presumably committed by Elke Sommer who is caught more-or-less red-handed.  However, Clouseau believes she is innocent, probably for no good reason.  As you would expect, there is heaps of slapstick and awkward moments.  Burt Kwouk plays Clouseau’s butler, ready to attack him (for training purposes) at any moment.  Herbert Lom is Commissioner Dreyfus, Clouseau’s commanding officer, cracking up with every Clouseau accident that occurs but unable to bring himself to remove Clouseau from the case.  Although there is a mystery plot – and all the suspects are brought together into one room at the end for Clouseau to announce the murderer – there is actually no real plot to speak of.  Instead, we just get some great set-ups for laughs (particularly, the nudist colony scene), where perhaps my anticipation sometimes outweighed the actual jokes.  Still this is better than the first film.

Twins of Evil (1971)

☆ ☆ ½

Twins of Evil (1971) – J. Hough

70’s Hammer film that sees Peter Cushing still chasing vampires – only this time he is a puritanical witchfinder who burns poor women at the stake when they are suspected of evil.  Unfortunately for him, he is soon visited by twin nieces who attract the attention of the wicked Count Karnstein.  Naturally, before long, one of them is a vampire and Cushing must defeat the correct twin without getting confused.  Although decked out in the usual Hammer atmospherics, the film plods a bit, leers a lot, and doesn’t really seem exciting or even scary until the final minutes when the vampires are dispatched.  Kathleen Byron (a favorite of Powell and Pressburger’s) is here in a support role as Cushing’s wife, doing her best to maintain her dignity. Probably not worth your time when there is much better Hammer horror out there.

Police Tactics (1974)

☆ ☆ ☆

Police Tactics (1974) – K. Fukasaku

More of the same in the 4^th film in Kinji Fukasaku’s five film Yakuza Papers series – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  At this point in the program, the narrated exposition at the start of the film is pretty long and it only just manages to detail the characters and action from Proxy War (the third film).  It might come as no surprise that, although some of the main yakuza bosses are back (primarily cool Bunta Sugawara as Hirono but also his rivals Takeda, Yamamori and Uchimoto), they sometimes get lost among the violent antics of the younger generation of yakuza and by the end of the film they are all sidelined.  It’s hard to keep the betrayals straight. One wonders what will happen in the 5^th and final film, when everyone’s in jail. Fukasaku maintains the same punchy style here, syncopated with freeze frames and horns.  When yakuza die, we finally find out their names and which family they belonged to in a flash of onscreen text.  If any of this is a true story, Hiroshima couldn’t have been a safe place to live.  Not the place to start the series, naturally. 

  

Illegal (1955)

☆ ☆ ☆

Illegal (1955) – L. Allen

With his charisma alone, Edward G. Robinson holds this film together despite the presence of a few familiar faces (Jayne Mansfield, Edward Platt, Albert Dekker). Apparently he was on the B-List after his run-in with HUAC and therefore relegated to some florid fare.  Nevertheless, the film is pretty enjoyable, as Robinson turns from the winningest D. A. in history to mob mouthpiece after accidentally convicting an innocent man.  He resorts to some excellent shock tactics in the courtroom.  But of course, things eventually turn sour and he’s stuck in the middle when his ex-aide is arrested for murder and the only way to save her is to betray the gang.  Not the cream of the noir crop but it ain’t bad either.  

The Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) – O. Assayas

It’s all talk, largely between Juliette Binoche, an aging actress confronted with age, and Kristen Stewart, as her personal assistant.  The talk can be fascinating (as when the film’s themes tend to break out into the open) or it can be banal (as when the leads deal with contracts, movie offers, and tabloid journalists).  Director Olivier Assayas tried this formula once before in Irma Vep (1996), where Maggie Cheung entered the world of French cinema and we saw the personal relationships in that world from behind the scenes but with an outsider’s viewpoint.  That film is better and takes more exciting risks but The Clouds of Sils Maria also shows Assayas’ planning and control, despite his willingness to dash from here to there often without tying things up with a nice bow.  The relationship between Binoche and Stewart is reflective of (or interwoven with) the script of a play that Binoche has been hired to star in, a play that was her first big break in which she earlier played the younger assertive role against an older vulnerable partner in a lesbian relationship.  Now she must play the older part.  So, we are lost with her in the realms of memory and identity but just as in real life, the film doesn’t really dwell on such things long enough for it to become painful. But the Alps look nice.

The Pink Panther (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Pink Panther (1963) – B. Edwards

It should come as no surprise that Peter Sellers steals this movie with his bumbling and ridiculous Inspector Clouseau. However, director Blake Edwards probably didn’t realize what a comic goldmine he had on his hands (yet) and he lets the movie drift into dullness in long scenes with David Niven and Claudia Cardinale (who play the jewel thief and the jewel owner, respectively).  Robert Wagner is along for the ride as Niven’s nephew, also aiming to be a jewel thief.  Somehow, the plot also involves Clouseau’s wife (played by French actress, Capuchine) as one of the thieves – which is confusing since to my recollection, she isn’t mentioned in any of the numerous sequels to this film, most of which feature Sellers in the lead role (some sadly released after his death made up of outtakes and found footage).  I suspect that there was originally no real plan to follow this up and the quirky Inspector was a small supporting character that Sellers took every license to expand. If only this movie were shorter and his presence more central – Clouseau doesn’t even catch the thief, even accidentally!  

Number 17 (1932)

☆ ☆ ½

Number 17 (1932) – A. Hitchcock

Through the murk of both picture and soundtrack, it is still possible to make out that this is an Alfred Hitchcock film.  Sort of.  The problem is that the Master seems unfocused.  He uses montage as well as he ever did – to create a spoof of “the old dark house” genre, for example – but then he leaves characters standing around in a group talking for what seems like eons.  This may be a result of the transition to sound that meant that actors needed to hover under or around hidden microphones – but Hitch had already demonstrated that he could be clever with sound (e.g., Blackmail, 1929).  Instead, the root cause of the problem is probably the underlying play based on misrepresentation and confusion of identities amongst criminals and detectives involved in the theft of a necklace.  I was confused too. Leon M. Lion is along for cockney comic relief but the major attraction is a finale which sees a bus and train rush pell-mell toward the Thames (I think) with cops on one and robbers on the other until they barrel into a ferry and the denouement begins.  Unfortunately, the whole thing is so clearly a set of models that suspension of disbelief is impossible.  But undoubtedly Hitch didn’t care; fortunately, his best pictures were still ahead of him.

Jezebel (1938)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Jezebel (1938) – W. Wyler

I guess it should come as no surprise that a film set in the Antebellum American South (1850’s) seems misogynistic, with the male (and older female) characters always trying to keep headstrong Bette Davis in her place.  But one wonders whether this also played into the stereotypes and preferences of some of the 1938 audience (and perhaps how it is received today).  Of course, Davis excelled at this sort of selfish petulant bad girl and another reading of the film is that she simply wasn’t fair to her fiancé, Henry Fonda, in trying to dominate him and the backlash against her is a personal (not sexist) matter.  Davis is gleefully awful until the melodramatic yellow-fever focused ending where her efforts to redeem herself (in the eyes of whom?) seem yet another attempt to be close and take control of Fonda, even though his heart belongs to someone else.  Wyler’s direction is perfect and the whole damn thing is lavish, even if today it reads as a prelude to Gone With The Wind (hello Southern clichés!).

These Are The Damned (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

These Are The Damned (1963) – J. Losey

Odd blend of social drama (in which an American ex-pat pursues a young British girl but gets harassed by her brother and his band of “teddy boys”) and science fiction (in which they stumble into an underground cave where a scientist has been raising children from birth contacting them only through a video screen). It doesn’t entirely coalesce but around halfway through things started to become interesting – of course, the earlier uncomfortable social dynamics are probably more consistent with director Joseph Losey’s other output (especially when he started working with Pinter).  However, I was there primarily for the sci-fi in Hammerscope this time and it doesn’t really disappoint – perhaps it feels even weirder (these cold-as-ice children and their predicament) because it’s crammed uneasily into another picture.  But such is/was the world where the nuclear threat was inserted surreally into everyone’s daily existence (see also Peter Watkins’ The War Game, filmed around the same time in Britain).  Worth a look.  

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

☆ ☆ ½

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) – C. Lamont

Speaking of cartoonish…!  The last of the comedy duo’s many movies for Universal finds them meeting yet another one of the studio’s classic monsters (although a cut-rate version here, for sure).  Not much has changed, as the two are still bumbling idiots; Lou more so than Bud, of course – but the latter still cooks up the plans that never work, mostly because the former creates trouble wherever he goes.  Marie Windsor (a film noir favourite) is on hand as a bad girl after Klaris the mummy’s medallion – which Lou has accidentally swallowed.  As you do.  The mummy has a cult and a cult leader and they also need the medallion.  Naturally, the mummy is also alive and on the prowl.  Things get rather silly, riffing on all things Egypt (rope trick, snake charming, hidden tombs, OK that’s it).  Some might say it’s all too stupid, but I was amused.  For the kind of guy who is only going to watch one Abbott and Costello movie a decade, this was perfectly acceptable.

Youth of the Beast (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Youth of the Beast (1963) – S. Suzuki

No doubt Seijun Suzuki intended this noirish drama to be confusing from the start, but this put me offside for a while.  You see, there is a double suicide (or is it a murder?) right at the start (in black and white) and then, unrelatedly, we start following (in colour) Joe Shishido, a ruthless gangster (emulating the classic masterless ronin samurai), who makes trouble for, and gets himself hired by, a family of yakuza.  Then Joe begins to play one gang of yakuza off another, playing both sides, if you will, and gradually, we discover (in an offhand way) more about his background.  The plot slowly falls together even as Joe resolves it for us (by solving the murder, of course).  Director Suzuki seems more interested in creating garishly coloured backdrops for unusually framed shots than the plot, really.  So, let’s just say things are off-kilter most of the time and also in-your-face with sex, drugs, and violence – but all of this is pretty cartoonish.  An odd fish (but typical of this director).