Miscellaneous Debris, October 2010 Edition

It’s the end of the month. This is what we do.

October wasn’t much of a month for movies, not counting The Social Network - known to millions of lazy people as “The Facebook Movie” or the kinda cool, “Grumpy Old Hitmen” vibe of Red. The month included quite a few box office disappointments, however, most of which look like under-cooked prestige pictures dumped before the holiday season: Life As We Know It, Secretariat, and especially Hereafter are all still playing, yet none of them are lighting up cash registers or critics’ polls.

With the winter movie season just around the corner – and more intriguing movies set to start arriving at a pretty brisk pace – here’s the news that caught our eye this month, presented in no particular order of importance.

We don't have a season two photo: Community

1. The television networks are at this moment braced for the onset of November sweeps, the crucial period in which the nets determine their ad rates for the coming new year. Virtually by tradition, shows pull out all the stops to garner viewers, with even the most established shows growing to great – often absurd lengths – to build their audiences. NBC in particular needs to pull a rabbit out of its hat, since virtually none of its new shows this year have become bona fide ratings hits.

If you’re not watching the peacock’s Community, the best comedy currently on network television, you’re only hurting yourself. Years from now, you’ll want to tell people you watched it when it was still on. Don’t make yourself a liar.

An answer: No Riddler in third Batman film

2. The third installments of trilogies are seldom the best – just ask fans of Star Wars, The Bourne Identity, The Terminator or (if any still exist) The Matrix. Yet if any franchise could break that glass ceiling, it’s likely Christopher Nolan’s Batman series. This week the director gave the L.A. Times’ Hero Complex blog some tantalizing bits about the third film: it will be titled The Dark Knight Rises and include many returning characters from the first two films. Further, it will not be shot in 3-D, and it will not include The Riddler as an antagonist.

The Riddler, a kind of road show Joker who teased Batman with elaborately cryptic crimes, was portrayed by two previous actors: Frank Gorshin had the part in the 1960s television series, and Jim Carey chewed up the scenery as mastermind E. Nigma in 1995′s Batman Forever. By the way, Nolan has already scotched rumors that bad guy Mr. Freeze will appear, either. Still, there are plenty of villains left from which to choose.

3. In more immediate comic book news, Entertainment Weekly unveils Chris Evans as Captain America in their latest issue, displaying the more military-cut uniform and gear the hero has taken to wearing in recent years. Evans, for his part, looks the part; we were skeptical of his ability to pull off a role we felt for years belonged to Mark Valley, but the physical transformation is unmistakable, and after seeing The Losers we’re willing to believe he can give the patriotic hero a human dimension.

The film opens next July, and whether it’s great or terrible it likely won’t be worse than several of the character’s previous transitions to film and television. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe how low the bar is currently set.

Brand new Bilbo: Freeman

4. After several years in which it seemed Guillermo Del Toro would helm the Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit, New Line announced two weeks ago that Peter Jackson, who produced and directed the trilogy, will now direct the tw0-part spinoff. Both films will be shot in 3-D, with production set to start next February. Martin Freeman (Hot Fuzz) will play the younger, feistier Bilbo Baggins (played in the trilogy by Ian Holm.)

Jackson was originally set to serve as executive producer on the films, but stepped in following Del Toro’s departure. We’re all for his taking over, even if his post-LOTR projects, including King Kong and The Lovely Bones, haven’t exactly proven impressive.

Now to explain The Hobbit‘s story with music, here’s Leonard Nimoy:

5. It’s strange to say this after thinking otherwise for most of our lives, but we wouldn’t trade places with Eric Stoltz right now. The 25th anniversary home video releases of the Back To the Future trilogy include featurettes explaining why the young Stoltz, originally cast as Marty McFly, was replaced after five weeks by Michael J. Fox – in short, because he wasn’t funny enough. As if that weren’t bad enough, Stoltz’s current project, the Syfy-produced Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica, was just pulled from the network’s schedule for lack of ratings.

The clip below includes footage from his work on Back to the Future:

Keep your chin up, Mr. Stoltz.

6. Another, less famous relic of the 80s also celebrated its silver anniversary as Rock & Rule arrived on Blu-Ray and DVD at the end of September. Set in a postapocalyptic society in which evolved household pets have replaced people, the story centers around a struggling rock band brought into the machinations of a satanic rock star (with the awesome, probably legally actionable name Mok Swagger) intent on raising a demon to Earth.

The soundtrack includes original songs by Iggy Pop, Deborah Harry, Lou Reed, and Earth, Wind, and Fire, with Paul LeMat and Catherine O’Hara also supplying vocal talent. Produced by Nelvana – the studio responsible for the Star Wars spinoffs Droids and Ewoks - the film nevertheless belongs in the same 80s adult cartoon subgenre that includes Heavy Metal and Watership Down.

An example (and a recent review here)

7. We’re fascinated by the Vault Collection on Turner Classic Movies’ website, which features DVD releases of lesser known films from Warner Brothers, Universal, and RKO studios available on a press-upon-request basis. The WB collection is especially impressive, with hundreds of movies and television shows available from throughout the studio’s history. Even the prices, by and large, remain reasonable, if sometimes perhaps unrealistic. Good stuff for the film buff looking for that maddeningly hard to find DVD, especially with the holidays coming.

8. Finally, we want to end by promising to update more often with more content. Our staff has been pulled in several different directions by various careers and other responsibilities, but it hurts to see the blog languish with a dearth of material (even as our audience grows thanks to some basic SEO techniques deployed in various locations.) Anyway, we’ll be back next week with both some fresh material and a reprise of our drubbing of The Girl Who Played With Fire. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Reviews: The Fallen Sparrow, Castle On The Hudson

Two lesser known films starring undersung noir heavyweight John Garfield

In a better world John Garfield would be better and more warmly remembered than he remains to modern audiences. An actor of both intensity and risk in an age of Hollywood where such virtues seldom paid off, his electrifying screen presence – part iconoclast, part everyman, part unrepentant hood – directly presaged and influenced later bad boy leading men including Jack Nicholson and  Al Pacino, and later (and especially) Mickey Rourke and Nicholas Cage.

Though first coming to widespread media attention before World War II in the 1938 melodrama Four Daughters, with the war’s end Garfield’s career went into overdrive, with more and bigger screen appearances in better films including The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), and We Were Strangers (1949). Yet as with so many of his contemporaries, his work during and immediately before the war years remains scattershot and varied, with hidden gems nestled alongside less-accomplished efforts that perhaps haven’t remained remembered for good reason.

1940′s prison drama Castle On The Hudson offers a good example of such mid-level filmmaking. Directed by Anatole Litvak from a script based on Lewis E. Lawes’ memoir 20,000 Years In Sing Sing (adapted once already, in a 1932 Spencer Tracy vehicle of the same name), the routine plot and somewhat formulaic characterizations drag the film down even while Garfield’s intensity struggles to boost it above the average.  Garfield isn’t alone in turning in a solid performance, which also helps, but like the convicts they play the standout performances are outnumbered and outgunned by the take-no-chances script.

Up and coming gangster Tommy Gordon (Garfield) stages a payroll robbery in which a security guard is accidentally killed. Given a muffed defense by his reptilian attorney (Jerome Cowan), he’s sent to prison expecting a short, comfortable stay courtesy of the gang bosses. But warden Walter Long (Pat O’Brien) won’t stand for it, setting fire to the bearer bonds offered as payoff and sending Gordon to three months in solitary. Gordon sweats out the time alone, going half-crazy but relenting to the prison’s absolute authority; it’s up to Garfield to convey this without chewing the scenery, which he does capably.

Gordon later, and somewhat inexplicably, earns a grudging respect for the tough-but-fair warden after a breakout attempt by a college-educated inmate (Burgess Meredith) ends in disaster. Whether because the scenes have been imitated so many times since, or because each scene is a virtual photocopying of the earlier Tracy version, the breakout and its eventual playout have a rote feel to them, with little to generate suspense besides the tenacious commitment of the actors. It’s also typical of the script’s morality that Burgess’ character’s breakout is motivated by a desire to help his wife give birth. (The rigors of jail aren’t enough to gain sympathy; something homier, it seems, was necessary for the audience to go along.)

When Gordon learns that his girlfriend (Anne Sheridan) lies near death after a fall from a car, he’s given an “honor furlough” by Long to visit her for one day. “I’ll come back if it means the chair,” Gordon tells the warden, but a confrontation with his lawyer (whose advances caused the girlfriend’s fall) leaves Gordon in an airtight frame for murder. The rest of the plot circles around efforts to free him before he’s sent to the electric chair, with all the hand-wringing melodrama that that plot twist can muster.

Garfield brings his effortlessly swaggering confidence, making what might have been a shrill tyro into something at once charismatic and foolish. Guinn “Big Boy” Williams, best known for his work in Westerns, is appealing as a lunkheaded con also headed for the electric chair, and Meredith especially overachieves as the wild-eyed jailbreak mastermind; he almost keeps up with Garfield, though not quite, and his death sequence drives the film’s most suspenseful moments.

Still, they’re evenly balanced by the blandness of O’Brien and Sheridan’s solemnly pious turns, and by an ending seemingly inspired more by running out of film than a conclusion of story. In more daring hands the film might have amounted to more, though perhaps not quite, and making a contentious statement was the last thing on its mind, anyway. Litvak and Garfield re-teamed the following year, on the far superior Out of the Fog.

Garfield’s films improved steadily over the next several years, with starring roles in The Sea Wolf and Tortilla Flat giving his filmography  literary credibility while adventures like Flowing Gold and Dangerously They Live accentuated his action star bankability. 1943′s The Fallen Sparrow combined the two sides of his career into an uneven if often thrilling showcase for his fluorishing dramatic chops.

Following years in a fascist prison camp in Spain, John McKittrick (Garfield) comes to New York to investigate the death of a police detective childhood friend. The friend helped him escape the Nazis, it seems, even if McKittrick is still severely rattled by years of sensory deprivation and torture. Returning to the elite social circles he knew before his service (a clumsy bit of backstory splicing explains that McKittrick’s father was a tough cop who got rich), he exploits his old friends’ sympathy to cozy up to the wheelchair-bound refugee Dr. Skaas (Walter Slezak) who’s preparing a study on modern torture methods. A series of plot twists allows McKittrick to suspect the doctor figured prominently in his friend’s death. 

As his investigation unfolds McKitrick finds he’s still pursued by his old captors for information they never managed to break out of him, and that his old society friends – including his friend’s cousin (Martha O’Driscoll) and his ex-girlfriend (Patricia Morrison) may be in league with enemy agents. Complicating events more (as all that weren’t enough), he finds himself increasingly drawn to a storekeeper (Maureen O’Hara) who may be a shill for the enemy agents or possibly an agent herself.

Helmed by prolific silent movie director Richard Wallace, the film often bears the texture and frenetic energy of that earlier format, especially in a gripping scene in which McKittrick’s barely managed PTSD returns with a vengeance. Garfield, again, acts the hell out of the scene without going overboard, and Wallace’s juxtaposition of images raises the paranoia several notches above what was likely considered sufficient at the time. Slezak is also terrifying as the doctor who’s more voyeur than observer into the world of cruelty, and O’Hara is spiderlike in her equal parts flirtation and menace.

The script is based on a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, and like her better known In A Lonely Place (adapted by Nicholas Ray in 1950) issues of sexual identity and reliance on substance abuse both figure heavily into the characterizations’ subtext. McKittrick responds to the doctor’s descriptions of torture with effeminate body flourishes and gesticulations, and remains too quick to retreat into drunken fogs to compensate for his self-doubt. Meanwhile Skaas’ feigned infirmity is an unsubtle cue for concealed sexual domination that, once revealed, leaves the hapless McKittrick frozen in terror. O’Hara, her hair pulled tautly back to reveal her masculine facial structure, makes an effectively predatory foil for Garfield’s roiling emotions, calm when he’s emotional and wavering whenever he grows determined.

Ultimately, Wallace can’t find a balancing point between all that text and subtext, and much of the third act – in which everything ought to get stripped away to its essence, as Ray did in his own Hughes adaptation - is short-changed in favor of resolutions that abet the war effort. McKittrick gets his nerve back on the turn of a dime, returning at the end of the film to assist his old brigade’s re-formation. Skaas is dispatched handily, and O’Hara’s spy is taken into unimpeachable police custody. It’s a clean conclusion for a film that couldn’t get too dirty but does its best anyway, with Garfield the first one fearlessly wading into the psychological mire.

- Michael Kabel

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Our Fall and Winter Preview 2010

Looking ahead to seven coming attractions in the coming weeks.

Every year about this time the movie industry starts rolling out their prestige pictures, the films they hope will gain them the acclaim and pursuant bragging rights that come from winning all the awards doled out around the first of the year (and helping them in the race to the Academy Awards, to boot.) The fall and winter seasons tends to cater to a more adult audience than the summer season, as well, with more fare for grown-ups taking their bows in multiplexes as well as the indie cinemas. Even the action films tend to offer more complex plots, with more mature stars.

The following seven films represent the coming attractions that caught our eye the most. There are dozens of more films premiering – and some look better than others, of course – but these are the ones we thought most worth ballyhooing.

Hereafter (opens wide release Oct 22.) – A triptych of stories dealing with death, the afterlife, and the meaning of both: a factory worker (Matt Damon) can reluctantly speak to the dead but has since abandoned the flashy media career that came with it; a television journalist (Cecile DeFrance) and her daughter are caught up in a cataclysmic tsunami; a young boy in London witnesses the death of his twin brother (George McLaren). All three stories converge at the end, as the characters unite.

The film opened in limited release last week, and response from the mainstream press has been uncharacteristically tepid compared to most of Clint Eastwood’s directing efforts.

The trailer reminds us, for no good reason, of last summer’s problematic Inception; we wonder how much this film’s debut played in Universal’s decision to push back The Adjustment Bureau, another reality-warping, Damon-starring melodrama, from September until next March.

Unstoppable (opens nationwide November 12) As an unmanned, half-mile long train loaded with combustible and poisonous materials threatens to destroy the city located in its path, a railroad engineer (Denzel Washington) and conductor (Chris Pine) race to intercept it and dismantle its engine.

The film marks Washington’s sixth collaboration with director Tony Scott; their last effort together, a remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, didn’t exactly set the world on fire in 2009. Nevertheless, Pine is an engaging and promising new talent and the concept is richer this time around, with far more water cooler potential. Too bad the poster looks like a direct-to-DVD jacket cover.

The plot is loosely based on a 2001 true story, though in reality the runaway train achieved speeds of only about 47 miles an hour. Crews slowed the train down to about eleven MPH, at which time a conductor jogged alongside, hopped aboard, and shut down the engines.

The Next Three Days (Opens nationwide November 19) – When his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is falsely imprisoned for murder, a college professor (Russell Crowe) plans her escape with help from a convict (Liam Neeson) who successfully staged his own jailbreak. Determined despite his inexperience, the professor goes through with the break-out even while his mistakes make the city close in around his family. Brian Dennehy, Olivia Wilde, and Daniel Stern co-star.

Directed by Paul Haggis (Crash), the film remakes the 2007 French festival hit Pour Elle. The American version moves the action to Pittsburgh, no doubt taking advantage of the city’s intricate layout and complex infrastructure.



The film seems intriguing for no apparent reason than it’s the kind of big-star attraction we keep wishing Hollywood would start making again (the vampires and super-heroes are getting old.) After years of less-than-satisyfing work, Crowe is overdue to lead something that shows his still-considerable everyman chops. Banks was seemingly in every movie released in 2008 but hasn’t worn out her welcome yet.

Casino Jack (Opens December 1) – Based on the true-life story of lobbyist Jack Abramoff (Kevin Spacey), who was convicted in 2006 for massive fraud, conspiracy, and tax evasion in a far-reaching investigation that also jailed a U.S. Congressman and nine other lobbyists and congressional staffers. A legend among lobbyists and influence peddlers, Abramoff spent millions on hotels, vacations, and other incentives in order to curry political favors on behalf of his clients.

Directed by George Hickenlooper, the film co-stars Barry Pepper, Jon Lovitz and Kelly Preston, though of course the focus is on Spacey in full-tilt megalomaniac mode as the flashy Abramoff. Hickenlooper’s 2001 effort The Man From Elysian Fields was a quiet triumph of intelligence and grace, though expect more bombast given the subject matter and.. well, just by Spacey’s participation, really.

The public gave a resounding “meh” in response to last summer’s similarly smart/caustic Middle Men, so who knows how they’ll embrace this one. And because you can’t make these things up, Abramoff will be released from prison just three days before the film’s release.

The Company Men (Opens nationwide December 10) – a drama taking aim at the Great Recession, this ensemble piece centers around an executive (Ben Affleck) forced to work construction for his brother-in-law after his six-figure salary corporate position is downsized; Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper also appear as men on different rungs of the corporate ladder similarly affected by the new economic realities. 

Television producer John Wells (Southland, ER) directs his own script, which from the trailer below looks earnest possibly to a fault. Given the subject matter, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Some media outlets still list the film’s October 22 release date, even though a recent postponement moved its berth back to December 10. Sadly, the economy likely won’t be any better seven weeks from now, either.

Tron: Legacy (Opens nationwide December 17) – Though not by design a film for grown-ups, it’s pointless not to expect thirtysomething Gen X’ers to check out this long-awaited upgrade to one of the 80′s seminal films. Set in the present day, the son (Garrett Hedlund) of the world’s most brilliant game developer (Jeff Bridges) remains haunted by his father’s disappearance. Traveling to the abandoned Flynn’s Arcade, he enters a virtual world and joins his father on a quest to overthrow CLU 2, its despotic master control program.

Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner both reprise their roles from the 1982 Disney original, with Olivia Wilde and Michael Sheen appearing as new additions to the digital universe. Everything else is familiar to fans of the original but made new again by the intervening three decades of special effects innovation.

CGI maestro Joseph Kosinski makes his debut directing effort, but as with the original the characters and story are probably only half the fun. Props to Bridges and Boxleitner for coming back, too.

True Grit (Opens nationwide December 25) – Speaking of Bridges (we’re doing that a lot lately, it seems), he headlines the Coen Brothers’ remake of the 1969 John Wayne classic about a young girl (Hailee Steinfeld) who enlists an alcoholic marshal (Bridges) to find the outlaw who killed her father (Josh Brolin). Damon plays the Texas Ranger who accompanies them.

Wayne, probably no one’s idea of a great thespian, won the Best Actor statue for his performance in the original. This new version has Oscarbait written all over it, so expect nominations for Bridges (again) and likely for Steinfeld as well:

The Coens have for our money been in something of a slump over the last decade, with more misses (The Ladykillers, Burn After Reading) than bull’s-eyes thanks in part to a troubling mean streak that seems to grow with each successive film. On the other hand, their first effort with Bridges has become something of a cultural phenomenon, and their previous effort with Brolin did win Best Picture.

- Michael Kabel

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The Criminal Career of Jeff Bridges

Looking back at the great actor’s brief tenure as a neo-noir leading man, 1981-1986.

Bridges in the mid-80s

Jeff Bridges has made dozens of movies throughout his forty-year career, but beginning in 1981 he took a brief and frequent detour into leading roles in neo-noir thrillers, making five films in the then-burgeoning subgenre in as many years before leaving it alone, never to entirely return.

He was, in many ways, the right man for the job. Film noir found a renewed appreciation in the 1980s just as Bridges’ career was at a crossroads: having appeared in large-scale misfires including the notorious flops Heaven’s Gate and King Kong, the smaller character pieces offered by more modestly-budgeted productions provided a return to low-key but meatier parts, roles reminiscent of his work in The Last Picture Show and Fat City that had won him critical and audience acclaim earlier in the decade. The more adult subject matter, to a degree, would at the same time enable him to shed the youthful, cocky screen persona he’d deployed in, among other works, The Last American Hero and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.

Unfortunately, none of the neo-noir are exceptionally good. Many are undercooked, still others flawed seemingly from jump, while one or two are perhaps simply mediocre. Yet Bridges is excellent in all of them, bringing more to the part than audiences could expect while helping smooth out several of the film’s often-sizeable rough spots. They’re listed in chronological order below, with video where available.

Cutter’s Way (1981) – Bridges’ first screen appearance after Heaven’s Gate wants to be the 1980s version of Chinatown; until it largely falls apart in the last ten minutes it sometimes comes awfully damn close. 

Gigolo/hustler Richard Bone (Bridges) witnesses a shadowy figure dumping the body of a young woman into a trash can. When he tells his friend Cutter (John Heard) what he saw, Cutter devises a plan to both blackmail and catch the town patriarch (Stephen Elliott) they believe responsible. Bone is skeptical, as is Cutter’s world-weary wife Mo (Lisa Eichorn), but they are pulled along by the charismatic force of Cutter’s outrage - a fury built out of his own contempt for the system that sent him to lose and arm, leg, and eye in Vietnam (represented in the film by the sleepy, cozy California suburb of Santa Barbara.) and has left him to fend for himself ever since. Cutter knows the fences around mansions are meant to keep he and Bone out, but not what to do about it, and his rage sends all three towards self-destruction.  

Bridges’ performance is restless, edgy, and bored, typical of the restive energy he would bring to his heavier dramatic work through the decade and a persuasive counterpoint to Heard’s volatility. In the clip below Bone can’t stand still even while coaxing cash out of his country club housewife clientele:

A hit on the festival circuit, the film ultimately failed to turn a profit for United Artists, thanks in part to a muddled marketing campaign.

Against All Odds (1984) – If Hollywood consciously attempted to resuscitate classical film noir’s texture and moods within modern film, remaking Jacques Tourneur’s seminal 1947 noir masterpiece Out of the Past must have seemed a can’t-miss means of doing it. Reworking the original script into a modern setting, the films casts Bridges as Terry Brogan, an aging pro football quarterback sent by gambler friend Jake Wise (James Woods) to retrieve girlfriend Jessie Wyler (Rachel Ward), who stole his money before fleeing to Mexico. Brogan finds the girl but falls in love with her instead, and the two accidentally kill the teammate (Alex Karras) sent to backstop Brogan’s search.

Wyler flees back to America and to Wise, leaving a hapless and broken-hearted Brogan to follow close behind. But director Taylor Hackford (The Devil’s Advocate) and co-screenwriter William S. Gilmore rearrange too much of Daniel Mainwaring’s original script, especially the maze-like second and breathless final acts; the result is a remake that’s dull and hollow by its conclusion where it should be sophisticated and grim. Bridges is restless and self-loathing again in a close similarity to his turn as Bone, but with greater assertiveness and dread.

The film was for many years probably most famous for its hit theme song by Phil Collins, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

Jagged Edge (1985) – The decade was also the time of a fascination with the legal system and the power of the law, but Joe Eszterhas’ script frames the story’s whodunnit not around Bridges’ bereaved husband Jack Forrester but on his female defense attorney Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close). Barnes defends Forrester for the murder of his wife while falling in love with him and beating the complicated legal tactics of a district attorney  (Peter Coyote) using the case to build political capital (Eszterhas would blend the same mixture of crime, sex and gender politics with greater raunch – and box office success – in 1992′s Basic Instinct). Sex and secrets come in pretty close order as the trial progresses, with a well-staged third act twist that’s since become reused to the point of cliché.

Bridges has seldom played the villain, and here that screen image as the scruffy but ultimately sympathetic male works to set up the twist with potent results. He’s also deft in summoning chemistry with Close, never the industry’s warmest actress, while keeping his true motivations obscure enough to continue the suspense ably structured by director Richard Marquand (Star Wars Episode VI – Return of the Jedi).

(The clip below is very low-quality, and it’s presented here with the maxim “something is better than nothing” in mind.) 

8 Million Ways To Die (1986) – The sole film adaption of mystery author Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder novels is an only sporadically entertaining muddle of the author’s unique characterization, cop genre topes given the then-popular Miami Vice treatment, and too much studio interference from the beginning to end of its troubled production.

Alchoholic cop-turned-private-investigator Matt Scudder (Bridges) finds himself coaxed into bodyguarding a high-class prostitute (Alexandra Paul) more or less in the employ of drug deal Angel Moldonado (Andy Garcia). When she’s violently murdered despite his efforts, Scudder retreats into a blackout drunk  that leaves him in the county detox ward. Emerging shaken but determined for revenge, Scudder tries to infiltrate Moldonado’s gang with partial help from the prostitute’s madam/friend Sarah (Rosanna Arquette) and a reformed crook (Randy Brooks) who hates Moldonado past all reason.

As we’ve said before, the film is momentarily redeemed by a gripping set piece involving Arquette as hostage, a pyramid of highly flammable cocaine, and the runaway testosterone circling them. (The clip below is very, very NSFW.)

Bridges does right by Scudder’s snarling dedication to his ethics, while Garcia (in an early starring role) and Arquette are frightening and comely in their respective parts. The film also marked the last screen credit for semi-legendary 70s director Hal Ashby (Harold & Maude, Shampoo).

The Morning After (1986) – revisiting the alcoholic ex-cop character type in fact if not in name, Bridges appears as a sympathetic harbor to Jane Fonda’s panicked woman on the run. Having awoken from a blackout drunk beside a dead body and running from what she feels sure is an impending police arrest, Fonda’s washed-up actress character crosses paths with Bridges at the airport. She can’t remember how she knows the dead man or where she met him, but won’t take any chances in the meantime until she can remember.

Quintessentially New York director Sidney Lumet is an odd choice to direct a murder story that luxuriates in its sunny Los Angeles setting, but he frames the characters’ loneliness by making shrewd use of the block-like uniformity of California bungalows and lookalike apartment buildings. Such visual treats can’t overcome a script filled with plot holes and gaps in logic, but it can’t derail the comfortable, plausible chemistry Bridges and Fonda bring to their parts.

And though both leads drew critical praise, the Academy was typically capricious: Fonda was awarded a nomination for her performance (her seventh) while Bridges went unnoticed. Three years later, following the box office disappointments Nadine and Tucker: The Man and His Dream, he appeared in The Fabulous Baker Boys, playing the talented but undisciplined jazz pianist opposite Michelle Pfeiffer and his brother Beau. The performance is considered some of his finest work.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: Splice

Muddled, flawed genetic engineering horror flick comes to DVD and Blu-Ray this week.

Until its last fifteen minutes, director and co-writer Vincenzo Natali’s Canadian import Splice is a film that tempts you to think more of it than it deserves. It is believably shot and its concept is patiently and clearly established, with scientific jargon as well as character positioning accomplished deftly and with a minimum of prolonged explanation. Like much of the best science fiction, the concept is plausible enough that only a little suspension of disbelief is necessary, and it’s topically relevant to an area of contemporary ongoing debate. Natali won praise for his Byzantine 1997 thriller Cube, and here he’s equipped with two solid leads, Oscar winner Adrien Brody and the underseen Sarah Polley. With such promise, the disappointment that comes from its ultimate retreat into boilerplate horror movie tropes becomes that much more disappointing. There’s an intelligent idea for a film hidden in here, but like its creature’s humanity that promise remains unrealized and fitfully under-developed.

Elsa (Polley) and Clive (Brody) are vaguely hispterish lovers and research scientists working for a big pharmaceutical corporation, developing proteins that will help in the creation of new medications. As scientists, they’ve got a pretty cushy life, with the company funding their “Nucleic Exchange Research and Development” laboratory (the lab’s acronym is a pretty good indication of the film’s idea of humor.) As a couple, they’ve hit a snag: he wants kids, she’d rather have a bigger apartment. At work they’ve already created simple new lifeforms, but when the corporation cuts their research funding in favor of more profitable applications, Elsa decides to take gene-splicing to its next level rather than “sift through pig shit” in search of helpful chemicals. She and Clive fuse human DNA to the gene sequences they’ve already perfected, creating the hybrid that in time Elsa names “Dren.”

Unsettlingly childlike, both in its innocence and fickleness, Dren ages at a rapid rate, needing frequent immersions in water to accommodate its amphibious lungs. Elsa and Clive keep it safe in their lab, later converting a storage closet into a nursery and then moving her to Elsa’s derelict family farm. But the move triggers Elsa’s deep psychological scars, received at the hands of a cruel mother, and those wounds percolate once her own maternal instincts kick in. As Dren matures Elsa assumes her own mother’s parenting flaws, including caprice and almost casual cruelty, that help to alienate Dren even further from human behavior. Meanwhile Clive, indecisive and confused, wrestles with the reality of their creation while fighting a growing attraction to the increasingly sexual Dren (played in her adult form by Delphine Chaneac).

Natali’s script, written with Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor, tries to address several levels of story but never manages to reconcile any of them. It squanders time on the mechanics of Elsa and Clive’s relationship that might be better spent explaining Dren’s reactions to the world around her, and devotes long minutes to a set piece involving Clive and Elsa’s other creations that serves no purpose except to put gore upon the screen. The screenplay also suffers from the clumsy fault of assuming the audience understands genetic engineering concepts but lacks basic emotional intuition; in at least two instances a character explains the badly obvious with dialogue, as when Clive moans, “I wish things could go back to the way they were” during a rueful argument with Elsa. Meanwhile Dren grows increasingly frustrated and unstable following a botched seduction of Clive that’s as unnecessarily explicit as it is bizarre. To save their relationship and themselves, Clive and Elsa resolve to end Dren’s life early, picking up the plot and carrying it forward.

Which leads to those final fifteen minutes, which include every plot contrivance you’ve seen in most horror genre exercises as well as a rape that serves primarily to establish the film’s pseudo-twist denouement. Dren turns evil, because horror films need a monster or killer in the snowy, eerily-lit woods, and the couple’s boss and Clive’s brother show up, under the thinnest of pretenses, to serve as tension-building cannon fodder. The rationale for Dren’s increased aggression is simplistic and a bit reductive besides. Genre fans might not mind the plot contortions so much, as they move it into position to serve up the meat-and-potatoes climax. Other audiences, intrigued enough by the cast and concept to give the film a chance, might find themselves annoyed and feel too a little had.

There are any number of horror and science-fiction films that deal with the consequences of genetic manipulation and cloning. Splice reminds you of at least one other, better film when early on the word “gattaca” or something close to it flashes across a display monitor. This film, had it been willing to plunge into its ideas instead of building something ultimately formulaic around them, might have achieved something noteworthy, or least created a successful combination of its two directions. Ultimately, it’s less than the sum of its parts.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, September 2010 Edition

Our monthly (or so) roundup of news miscellany. 

There are only so many hours in the day, and only so many of them can go to blogging. Over time, newsworthy items build up and bits of information worth commenting about accumulate. Once a month or so this round-up of such bits and pieces tries to “clear the decks” before the next month in film begins. 

Sometimes carving out a whole blog post about such items is harder than it might seem. September was a slow month, and just in the last couple of days the news was pretty sad. 

1. First and most importantly: legendary film and television actor Tony Curtis passed away September 29, of heart trouble. The epitome of 1950′s Hollywood class throughout his sixty-year career, Curtis made his major screen debut in the 1949 classic film noir Criss Cross and ended it with 2008′s David & Fatima, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” that lobbied for Arab-Israeli peace. His other classic film roles include The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Some Like It Hot (1958), The Defiant Ones (1959), and Sparticus (1960). 

It’s very possible that without him this blog might not exist. The 1990s television documentary series Hollywood Babylon was an introduction into the mystery and lore of the movies and their history, with each episode always elegantly and compassionately hosted by Mr. Curtis. Our most sincere condolences to his family and friends. Everyone else should head over to Empire Online, to read their 2001 interview in which Curtis comes boldly clean about his tumultuous career. 

This poster is ugly. Watch the show anyway.

 2. Barely two or three weeks into the new fall television season and already shows are getting cancelled. Fox’s Lone Star, despite glowing reviews, received cellar-dwelling ratings and got its walking papers after two weeks. Meanwhile NBC’s Outlaw and Undercovers aren’t doing so well, nor are ABC’s The Whole Truth and My Generation. CBS has plenty to smile about, thanks to strong premieres from its established shows amid solid debuts of Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods. 

Shows inevitably get lost in the shuffle of so many premieres, and some are often victim to bad marketing (The plan for Outlaw, for example, seemed to consist simply of ads announcing “Hey look! It’s Jimmy Smits!”) FX’s Terriers, one of the better shows on cable, is also the victim of  the most head-scratchingly misbegotten - yet pervasive – promotional schemes in recent memory. A good show that’s getting better, fans of Justified and the late, lamented Life will definitely want to check it out. 

One theory, anyway: Caine

 3. The movie itself was a letdown on several levels, including not least of which the satisfaction quotient of its conclusion. For those still puzzling over what the final and last shot meant for Leonardo DiCaprio’s beleaguered dream raider Dominic Cobb, Inception co-star Michael Caine recently provided BBC Radio with his own theory regarding its opaque ending. In a nutshell, Mr. Caine thinks Cobb is reunited with his family in the real world, not just in the dream dimension. 

Talia al Ghul

 4. In less ambiguous news, Inception creator Christopher Nolan confirmed this week what everybody in the world already suspected: There will be a third Batman film. No word yet on who the bad guy(s) will be, but we’ve got plenty of ideas on villains he and screenwriter Jonathan Nolan might use. Our hope is for Talia al Ghul, the daughter of Batman Begins nemesis Ra’s al Ghul, and hopefully the mercenary Deathstroke thrown in for bad measure. 

5. Now that we’ve got our Criterion edition copy of The Thin Red Line it’s time to start heckling them to publish something else we want. Actually, they’re sort of ahead of us: Between now and the end of November the label will release expanded and restored editions of Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 breakthrough masterpiece Paths of Glory, Charles Laughton’s noir paean to German Expressionism The Night of the Hunter, and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, the great auteur’s swan song for his Little Tramp persona. 

The Night of the Hunter is one of those works of genius you view and then let your brain spend hours trying to process. Consider the clip below: 

Criterion’s complete schedule of upcoming releases can be found here.

6. Is there such a thing as too many alien invasion movies? We’re tempted to say no, especially when considering Skyline, the second directorial effort from special effects team the Brothers Strause. Los Angeles serves as the alien’s beachhead this time around, with flying saucers vacuuming residents inside their cargo bays for a sinister purpose while releasing biomechanical hunters to search for escapees (flying saucers over Hollywood – Ed Wood would be proud.)

The eclectic cast includes Eric Balfour, David Zayas, Donald Faison, Scottie Thompson and Brittany Daniel. The film is currently scheduled for a November 12 release.

7. There’s something to said for putting your money where your mouth is: Waiting for “Superman”, the new documentary about the current devastation in American public schools, includes a special incentive for audiences: each ticket purchased contains a gift code that buyers can use to donate fifteen dollars to the classroom of their choice.

As controversial a film as you might imagine, the documentary by director Davis Guggenheim follows several students through the educational system, allegedly exposing its systemic failures and shortcomings. The film’s official site includes a place to pledge to attend a screening as well as information about the donation process.

Having slowly expanded into new markets all summer, the film opens nationwide October 8.

8. Finally, we want to wish a happy birthday to the Internet Movie Database, which celebrates twenty years online this week. (We didn’t realize the Internet was twenty years old, either.) As daily visitors to the site for more than eleven of those years, we can’t imagine moviegoing without it, even as we strain to remember how we kept track of films at all before finding it. We also can’t count how many films we’ve discovered because of it.

IMDB is for our money the Internet at its best, even if we’re not quite comfortable yet with its recent layout redesign. That just means we’re getting older, too.

We’ll be back next week. Thank you for reading.

-Michael Kabel

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