Whirlpool (1949)

☆ ☆ ☆

Whirlpool (1949) – O. Preminger

In the end, it’s ludicrous – but in some ways that’s what makes this film noir from Otto Preminger good.  Gene Tierney is a kleptomaniac hiding the fact from her psychoanalyst husband, Richard Conte (badly miscast).  Slick and evil hypnotist/astrologer Jose Ferrer finds her out and offers to treat her, by which he means control her and make her do his bidding.  About halfway through there is a murder, but Ferrer, the obvious suspect, has an alibi – he’s in the hospital for a gall bladder operation.  Police Detective Charles Bickford (gruff but lovable) is on the case but doesn’t believe for a minute that you could hypnotize yourself not to feel pain.  Perhaps the film would have succeeded more if Preminger just cranked it up to 11 and let the weird melodrama take over? As it stands, you aren’t quite sure whether the events shown are meant to be believable to the audience or not.  Poor Gene Tierney may have seen echoes of her own real life in this character, as she may have been hiding mental illness and alcoholism from her public just as her character hides her own inner troubles from others.  However, Ferrer is the only one to really capitalize on the bizarreness here, playing his vile charmer to the hilt.  Preminger’s other noirs are better (Fallen Angel, Where the Sidewalk Ends).

  

Asylum (1972)

☆ ☆ ½

Asylum (1972) – R. W. Baker

One of many portmanteau films from Amicus (an also-ran competitor for Hammer in England back in the 1960s and 1970s) but not a patch on the great original horror anthology, Dead of Night (1945) from Britain’s Ealing Studios.  These films always have a framing device to hold their separate stories together and Asylum’s conceit is that a young psychiatrist visiting the titular institution needs to decide which of the patients is actually the head clinician, now an inmate.  The missing doctor could be male or female, young or old.  The four stories are told in flashback by the various patients and suggest why they went insane.  A couple of the stories are quite spooky.  The first, in which a husband kills his wife and cuts her up into pieces that then come back to attack him and his mistress/the patient, is eerie enough.  So, too, is the third where young Charlotte Rampling is “assisted” by Britt Ekland in dealing with her domineering brother and her addiction to pills.  There are other stars here too (Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom) but their stories are less spooky if not without a creepy moment or two.  Of course, there is a “trick” ending to bring things together again.  Amicus made six or seven of these anthologies and really they aren’t a bad way to spend your Halloween, which was always going to be a mixed bag of tricks and treats anyway.  

Carol (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆

Carol (2015) – T. Haynes

Stately and slow drama from Todd Haynes, set in the early 1950s and looking gorgeous.  It is in fact an exquisitely realized “coming of age” story or perhaps I should say a “coming out” story except the two women here are only barely out of the closet and even so they experience a world of stigma and discrimination.  Cate Blanchett transforms herself (again) and provides a subtle portrait of a wealthy older woman who risks losing her four-year-old daughter in order to live an authentic life and to love who she wants.  Rooney Mara is the younger woman awakening to the possibility of same sex attraction. The script provides breathing room for the development of their affair but it does move very slowly, probably too slowly.  The fact that the law allowed a “morality clause” to be used to prevent LGBT parents to have custody of their own children is shocking but it is downplayed here in favour of the relationship dynamics.  Haynes has often been seen in the light of his fondness for Douglas Sirk (similarly to Rainer Werner Fassbinder) but here he seems to avoid the amplified melodrama of these masters, perhaps to make certain the characters and issues are treated seriously and not with any distortion or campiness. From an autobiographical tale by Patricia Highsmith.

  

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) – R. Linklater

Linklater calls this a “spiritual sequel” to Dazed and Confused (1993) and others note that it picks up just where Boyhood (2014) left off, as a kid starts his first year of college.  True that.  Here we have another crop of unknowns (mostly), starring as college baseball players (though we rarely see them play), living in a frat house environment and acting basically as you would expect young men freed from parental authority might act.  The time is Fall 1980 and Linklater brings the period music, clothes, and attitudes.  It’s part nostalgia and it’s part philosophical exploration of male competitiveness – and a whole lot of seemingly authentic talk (indeed there are only a few bum notes in the script).  Linklater is really a master director at this point and he is able to create real characters who we feel warm towards – there are no “bad” characters here, despite some rivalries and some at whom he affectionately pokes some fun.  But this is a dude’s film about dudes who are always on the prowl for girls, although it doesn’t feel exploitative like a Porky’s variation would – again this is Linklater’s talent to bring some humanity to the reality.  The central character, Jake, played by Blake Jenner, is perhaps the dullest of the lot but he’s also the nicest guy, perhaps signalling Linklater’s own values.  It is what it is – lighter fare with a ingénue cast – but entertaining all the way through.

The Forbidden Room (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Forbidden Room (2015) – G. Maddin

I wanted to love this and on one level, I really do.  Guy Maddin’s latest is a triumph of style over substance, perhaps his most eye-popping feature yet.  The screen bubbles and melts and exudes raw colour in a variety of cinematic fashions (silent, old technicolor, sixties schlock, etc.).  Things are typically outlandish, silly, and sometimes gruesome or sexy.  The high concept here is that Maddin decided to recreate some lost films based on surviving descriptions or scripts alone, films that Maddin himself really wanted to see (but obviously could not).  After all, he is also a film historian of sorts (with interesting pieces in Film Comment that I am half-remembering now).  So, 4, 5, or 6 films have been sliced and diced and welded together to make a deranged feature film (apparently to secure funding that the shorts could not).  The result is largely incoherent as a sum of parts but there are so many wild vibrant moments across the 2 hours – and thinking of this as an experimental film really helps matters.  Probably though it is not for the uninitiated and there are other easier entry points to Maddin’s oeuvre (My Winnipeg, 2007, is my favourite thus far, of those I have seen).   But really, just wow. 

The Producers (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Producers (1968) – M. Brooks

Apparently shocking at the time of its release but sadly Mel Brooks’ comedy has lost its ability to shock…or perhaps I am unshockable at present.  But with the magic of the mind, you (or I) can imagine what it must have been like to be stunned by comedy making fun of Hitler (although Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be (1942) did take a very funny stab at the Nazis concurrently with WWII – later remade by Brooks himself).  The result isn’t laugh out loud funny, the way that Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles can be, but it has some charm, even if there are some dated jokes and sexism.  I watched this (for the first time) to commemorate Gene Wilder’s death – I salute him – he has a way with gestures and underplaying the comedy that contrasts well with Zero Mostel’s brasher moves.  They play the titular producers who determine that securing one million dollars in investments for a cheap Broadway play destined to flop on the first night will leave them sitting pretty and flying down to Rio.  Choosing “Springtime for Hitler” seems to be the perfect choice (acknowledged to be in bad taste) but alas the comedy plays well for the masses – and so much so that Brooks was able to create a Broadway show and then a movie remake in recent years.  There’s enough here to enjoy but I confess to being underwhelmed compared to my expectations.

  

Weiner (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ 

Weiner (2016) – J. Kriegman & E. Steinberg

I guess I needed to expose myself to even more political self-immolation. Or perhaps expose isn’t the right word in this context.  And that’s the sort of joke you get in this documentary about Anthony Weiner, former congressman from New York and subsequent mayoral candidate for the Big Apple. In a frankly unbelievable performance (made available to us because Weiner himself allowed the filmmakers access to his life), the candidate bravely continues his campaign despite apparently having an ongoing sexting habit.  So, viewers get to bear witness to his strange unwillingness to stay out of the public eye despite widespread derision – is it masochism? Narcissism? He seems to be self-aware enough about people’s opinions (perhaps unlike a certain presidential candidate).  The filmmakers keep things lively for 90 minutes, despite the scandal hitting in the first half-hour; they focus the “plot” in on the tension between Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, who is in fact vice-chair of Hillary’s presidential campaign (and they announced their separation just this month after yet more sexting).  But ultimately, we don’t really get inside of Weiner, nor Abedin, and we don’t know whether this is a tragedy because of his really solid ideas (he seems to be a fighter for the middle class) or a farce because of his unsuitability for office.  The filmmakers don’t really take sides.  So, it’s a bit like watching a trainwreck as you pass by in your car without ever learning enough about how or why it happened…