The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) – F. E. Feist

Solid noir that sees San Francisco Police Detective Lee J. Cobb making a fatal error when he catches his rich girlfriend (Jane Wyatt) shoot her (second) husband (who was sneaking into their house pretending to be a burglar but with the intention to kill her) – instead of taking her in, he covers up the crime.  Enter John Dall, playing Cobb’s younger brother, who has just been promoted to detective himself and is eager to solve the crime to which he has been assigned. So, he intrepidly uncovers all the clues that Cobb accidentally left behind when disposing of the body (at the airport) and therefore gradually closes in on his brother who tries his best to throw him off the trail, even if he doesn’t want to hurt Dall’s career.  It’s complicated but pretty standard fare.  But it does end in a nicely shot final stand-off at Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

Cry Terror! (1958)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Cry Terror! (1958) – A. L. Stone

As the movie begins, we learn that a bomb has been planted on a plane with the plotters demanding a fortune to stop it from detonating. Evidence quickly points to TV repairman James Mason. However, it turns out that he was tricked into making the bomb that Rod Steiger, Angie Dickinson, and Jack Klugman have subsequently smuggled onto the plane. In order to keep Mason from talking, the trio of bad guys kidnap him, his wife (Inger Stevens) and young daughter.  Neville Brand plays a particularly loathsome heavy who stands guard over them. Stevens is sent to collect the pay-off from the airline company with Steiger threatening to kill her daughter if she tips off the police.  Of course, the police are hard at work trying to solve the case at the same time.  Filmed on location in New York (including a climactic scene in the subway tunnels), this is a fast moving, often raw and adult, thriller with good performances throughout.  Perhaps it is all much ado about nothing but the film, as directed by Andrew L. Stone, excels at ratcheting up the tension.  

 

Shinkansen Daibakuha (1975)

Shinkansen Daibakuha (1975) – J. Satô

All of the disaster movie clichés are on full display in this 150-minute “bomb on a train” Seventies drama from Japan.  The plot was famously adapted for Speed (1994) starring Keanu Reeves, but here the train can’t slow down below 80 km/hr or the dynamite will explode.  It has been planted by Ken Takakura, a small factory owner who has been driven to bankruptcy and divorce by a larger corporation. He’s joined by a group of others who are disadvantaged by Japan’s economic and social changes (a kid who can’t find work, a former terrorist/activist) – there are a number of flashbacks that explain how the group came together. Takakura is from the hard cool school where acting involves not doing much, just looking tough, often while smoking a cigarette, reflecting. Apparently, all or most of this backstory was cut-out for an international version of the film that just focused on the train action which cuts between the engineer/driver (Sonny Chiba), frantic passengers (including a lady about to give birth and lots of people late for appointments), the shinkansen control centre (all 70s tech with flashing lights and ancient monitors), and the police headquarters (where the leadership team investigates leads to try to identify the bombers).  Takakura wants a cool US $5 million in a silver suitcase but there are several failed attempts to get it to him and then even when the money is paid off, there is additional trouble getting the bomb’s whereabouts and the instructions for how to dismantle it from Takakura to the people on the train.  Whatever can go wrong, does go wrong.  Yet with all the frantic plotting to keep the suspense going, this still feels like an epic TV episode (with an awesome jazz funk soundtrack) and that’s not unlike comfort food, albeit from Japan.

 

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (2022)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (2022) – M. Cousins

Film critic Mark Cousins (creator of The Story of Film TV series, 2011) typically narrates the documentaries (that he writes and directs) in his lilting Belfast accent, relaying his unique insights and film analysis over clips from the relevant films.  But here, tackling the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Cousins instead has professional mimic Alistair McGowan narrate the film as if the voiceover were delivered by the Master of Suspense himself.  This is peculiar, even off-putting (when Hitch talks about mobile phones and screentime), but works as a conceit that allows Cousins to suggest certain motivations on the part of Hitch, motivations that allow Cousins to impose some thematic unity across diverse films.  The themes (organised into chapters) include Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfillment, and Height.  These sorts of analyses (of the kind you often find on youtube) are fun – and its great to see all of the parallels across Hitchcock’s films – but as a whole the themes don’t add up to anything deeper, even if they are imagined to come from the horse’s mouth (not always believably). Hitchcock’s films do lend themselves to analysis, a seemingly endless wellspring, so it’s great to see Cousins manage to provide a novel take on this well-trodden ground.

 

The House of the Seven Gables (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The House of the Seven Gables (1940) – J. May

Shades of the gothic horrors that Vincent Price would do with Roger Corman decades later.  It is always great to see Price (and also George Sanders) but this should have been pushed a bit harder over the top into the kind of horror Universal was already known for.  Although I read the novel so long ago, wikipedia tells me that Nathaniel Hawthorne's plot is much corrupted here.

 

The Conspirators (1944)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Conspirators (1944) – J. Negulesco

Sure, it echoes Casablanca, with a number of shared cast members and similar plotline, but even if it's empty at the centre, it makes all the right moves and therefore I found it an easy and enjoyable entertainment.

 

The Teachers’ Lounge (2023)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Teachers’ Lounge (2023) – I. Çatak

One of those films that aims to put viewers in the middle of a moral quandary and then tightens the screws by ensuring that all possible viewpoints have some credibility. Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) is a Polish teacher who is new to a German school, teaching sixth grade.  When a rash of thefts takes place, the school leadership takes a heavy-handed approach to discovering the culprit which involves pressuring class leaders to dob in their classmates and even frisking students. Carla clearly disapproves but when she is the target of a theft herself things quickly spiral out-of-control and she finds herself spurned by both students and teachers. Benesch is solid in the lead role as the slightly paranoid and unsure teacher (who is otherwise caring and conscientious toward her students).  Director Ilker Çatak manages the tension exceptionally well (and seems to want to say something about the difficulties of managing a multicultural classroom/society), but the film falters at the final gate, leaving many loose ends untied.  Perhaps that sort of open ending plays well for the art house crowd but letting the plot unspool for another twenty or so minutes may have provided a bit more satisfaction (as it is, the ending teeters on the edge of plausibility, at least for me). Nevertheless, for most of its runtime, The Teacher’s Lounge was extremely gripping.