Review: Super 8

Abrams and Spielberg team up to bring an adventure about scary monsters and precocious tweens. You can guess who brought what.

For those too young to remember, before comic book movies and other geek culture dominated summer release schedules a blockbuster’s pedigree was based largely on its stars and sometimes also the director and producers involved. For about fifteen years or so, roughly between 1982′s E.T. and 1997′s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s name on a project was pretty much a license to print cash. Long on adventure and what a less jaded era called “wonder” but also cynically sentimental and patronizing towards the “magic” of youthful exuberance, Spielberg’s directorial work – E.T., the first Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade – routinely provided an idealized vision of childhood for the latchkey generation.

So it’s probably no wonder that Super 8 takes place in early summer 1979, a period that’s come to symbolize an age of low-tech innocence in much the same way that the 1950s did for the 1980′s. Spielberg as producer is well matched with J.J. Abrams, a writer/director who doesn’t mind suspending spectacle for the sake of character development. But their collaboration is less a union of strengths so much as a blending of weaknesses, making the finished film an uneven, prolonged struggle with itself. To call it a bad film is perhaps besides the point, because it never really aspires to anything besides diversionary entertainment. Except it often fails to provide that.

Set in the Springsteenesque town of Lillian, Ohio, the story focuses on tween Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) and his sheriff’s deputy father (Kyle Chandler), struggling with the death of Joe’s mother at the local steel mill. The two are not close, but with the beginning of summer Joe finds a creative outlet for his grief helping overbearing buddy Charles (Riley Griffiths) complete his homemade zombie film for a local film competition. Complications arise when Charles casts local dream girl Alice (Elle Fanning) in a crucial role. Alice’s alcoholic father, it seems, is indirectly responsible for the death of Joe’s mother. Joe and Alice are fascinated by one another through guilt and grief, and their friendship – forbidden by Joe’s dad as well as Alice’s (Ron Eldard) – coalesces into the bulk of the film’s emotional substance.

Courtney and Fanning are both very good actors, and backed by old pros like Chandler and Eldard it’s almost a shame that the film won’t be an engaging character piece about these simple, sympathetic victims. Yet, despite, and nevertheless, the filming of Charles’ 8-millimeter saga captures a spectacular freight train-truck collision that frees something the Air Force was transporting across country; stranger still, the truck was driven into the train on purpose by their science teacher (Glynn Turman). In short order a series of strange events plague the town – machinery disappears, all the dogs head for the hinterlands, people start vanishing. The Air Force, led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich) obviously knows something but won’t share information with local officials. When the mysterious presence grabs the town’s sheriff, Joe’s father tries to hold things together while solving the mystery.

The strange events increase, growing more violent and more dependant on special effects. Joe and the gang realize, thanks to purloined evidence from the teacher’s storage locker, that the creature they see only dimly in the footage from their wrecked camera is the prisoner of the military, an alien crash-landed on Earth in the 1950s and held prisoner ever since. As the Air Force evacuates the town and steps up its attempts to recapture the alien, Joe embarks on a mission to save Alice from its subterranean lair.

The resolutions to both stories will feel familiar to anyone who grew up with Spielberg’s films and their legions of reruns on cable. Joe’s empathy allows him to reach an entente with the monstrous alien, saving Alice’s life even while the arrogance of the adults around them cements their downfall. The kids’ fathers reconcile their differences in short order (too short, really, given their source) and the alien gets to go home thanks to a spaceship cobbled together from all those stolen appliances.

The film’s getting a lot of press about Abrams paying “homage” to Spielberg’s 80s work, but the combined effect doesn’t feel so much like tribute as parenthetical citation. A nod to Close Encounters of the Third Kind here, an oblique reference to Jaws there, and of course a tureen full of The Goonies (of which Spielberg was Executive Producer, possibly a nebulous title except the film bears so many of his hallmarks). Yet all the little details don’t serve to move the story or the characters forward but instead hang from it like tinsel. Scenes drag on or fall short before reaching their payoff, and often hammy acting by the kids only compounds the problem.

The first act, past the lovely prologue involving the funeral of Joe’s mother, goes on much longer than it should, and falls short of establishing the children’s’ personalities before the creature is set loose. The second act, by comparison, contains most of the suspense but often feels disorganized and uncertain of its priorities. For as much as Abrams is willing to pause action to let his characters breathe – and he does in a heartbreaking sequence involving Alice and Joe watching home movies of Joe’s mother – the action when it happens fails to engage on anything but the most superficial level. He also relies on too many tropes he’s used before: the contraband film strip, the underground bunkers, the renegade scientists all recall Lost too much by half, and not in a way that invites favorable comparison.

For as good as Courtney and Fanning are, less so are Riley Griffiths and Ryan Lee as Charles the filmmaker and Cary the pyromaniac. But their characters are little more than stock types, meant to occupy space and provide comic relief, as are Gabriel Basso and Zach Mills as the gang’s third string. Emmerich is a sublime character actor who deserves better roles than Nelec, a villain who would twirl his mustache if he had one.

The ending is about what you ‘d expect, sentimental and superficially brave without excpecting any real emotional engagement from the audience. Spielberg’s films, after all, always made sure their stories ended tidily for everyone, character and viewer alike. Actually, this time the audience can stick around to see Charles’ completed zombie saga in all its goofy, patchwork glory. At several minutes in length it’s a nice after-dinner mint for the rest of the film, even if it’s maybe not as charming as Abrams and Spielberg think.

- Michael Kabel

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Updated: Seven Lesser Known Comic Book Adaptations

Not every comic-to-screen leap was a blockbuster success.

The comic book movie gold rush is in full swing. This summer no less than four of the studios’ tentpole releases draw inspiration from comics, and speculation and surveillance of upcoming projects including Christopher Nolan’s third Batman film and Joss Whedon’s The Avengers routinely fuel top-of-the update online news. Meanwhile Nolan and Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot, The Man of Steel, continues to announce unexpected and enviable casting decisions.

This image has nothing to do with the article. Its just too strange not to share.

Hollywood has gone to the comics well time and time again since the genre first gained notoriety in the early 1940s, most often for low- or mid-budget fare aimed at children and teens. And for every attempt that hit its box office or audience reception target, there are probably three adaptations that tanked, fell victim to restrictive budgets, or just couldn’t garner enough public interest to build a devoted cult fan base.

We’re sure a few of the following are sentimental favorites to forgiving fans of their respective inspirations. (We like The Flash TV series.) Some aren’t bad, considering their limited resources, and some had unrealized potential. And one or two are terrible. But they’re all from comic books, for better or worse.

Sable (TV series) Premiered November 1987; lasted seven episodes. Based on the First Comics series by longtime Green Arrow writer-artist Mike Grell, Sable followed the exploits of freelance mercenary Jon Sable (Lewis Van Bergen) who worked days as an author of children’s books. Rene Russo, very early in her career, played his girlfriend Eden Kendall.

The clip below shows its noirish promise, even if the show’s “alpha dog adventurer helps client of the week” conceit seems kinda passe now.

Steel (Movie) Released August 15, 1997; total U.S. box office: $1.7 million. In his own DC Comics series and in the Justice League comics and cartoon, Steel is a brilliant engineer and inventor who dedicates himself to defending good after Superman saves his life. So what better “actor” to convey such intellectual and moral strength than human marketing platform Shaquille O’Neal? Judd Nelson played the bad guy, while Richard Roundtree (Shaft) appeared as Uncle Joe.

Though admittedly the film carried a modest $16 million budget, “Shaq Steel” still looks as if he swallowed an electromagnet and walked through a junkyard:

Dr. Strange (TV movie) Premiered September 6, 1978. Clad in a snaredrum-tight Disco perm and piles of gold jewelry, New York psychiatrist Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten) trains to be Earth’s new “Sorcerer Supreme” and rescue a young woman from the evil sorceress Morgan LeFay (Arrested Development’s Jessica Walter).

Intended as the pilot to a television series that never happened, the telefilm featured Marvel Comics’ honcho Stan Lee as a consultant.

Supergirl (Movie) Released November 21, 1984; total U.S. Box Office: $15 million. For years the poster child for misbegotten comic adaptations, Supergirl was rushed into production after the success of the first two Superman films but struggled for distribution after Superman III flopped. Nevertheless, expanded versions released on DVD have clarified its choppily-edited story and somewhat repaired its reputation.

Peter O’Toole, Mia Farrow, and Faye Dunaway make the supporting cast pretty top-heavy, while underused 80s actress Helen Slater (Ruthless People) makes her debut as super-cousin Kara Zor-El.

Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV Movie) Premiered May 26, 1998. A decade before Samuel L. Jackson’s turns in Iron Man and Iron Man 2, David Haselhoff starred in this low-budget TV movie about Marvel Comics’ Man from U.N.C.L.E. riff Nick Fury. The superspy and his former love Valentine Fontaine (Lisa Rinna) take on rival organization HYDRA for possession of a deadly virus. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight scribe David Goyer wrote the script.

The Hoff plays the hyper-macho Fury as… The Hoff with an eyepatch. Watch how S.H.I.E.L.D.’s flying headquarters looks like a basement steam room somewhere. (actual video begins about 23 seconds into clip.)

The Flash (TV Series) Premiered September 20, 1990; lasted 21 episodes. CBS brought the Scarlet Speedster to the small screen apparently motivated by the runaway success of Batman the year before. A TV movie pilot got the family friendly series off and running, but constant schedule shifts and pre-emptions for Gulf War news coverage kept it from building an audience.

Still, The Flash’s (John Wesley Shipp) costume has aged well, as have the special effects. The script quality suffered as the season wore on, however, though fan favorite guests stars like Mark Hamill, Tim Thomerson and Jeffrey Combs frequently livened things up. The series is even collected in a no-frills DVD package.

Captain America (TV movie) Premiered January 19, 1979. An attempt to update the character for the Evil Kenievel/motorcycle years of the 70s, this adaptation featured the original Captain America’s son trying to stop terrorists from detonating a hydrogen bomb on Phoenix, Arizona.

There’s almost nothing about the clip below that doesn’t feel dated, especially the ersatz Cap’s costume and the long, loving takes of motorcycle stunts. A sequel TV movie, released just eleven months later, offered a comparatively more comics-accurate uniform and included Christopher Lee as its villain.

Marvel Studios’ Thor opens nationwide this Friday.

- Michael Kabel

Here We Are Now! Entertain Us!

Seven unsung films from the first half of the 1990s, our generation’s gilded age.

The 90s were so great, even Mike Myers was cool.

To paraphrase an old cliché about the 1960s, if you can remember the 90s you probably wish you were still there. Described as “the best of times” by at least one historian, it was a decade of unheralded prosperity and at times tremendous naiveté. It was also often much darker than that, an era whose popular culture was at times strangled by the superficial, obsessed with appearances, and in many ways the foundation of today’s cynical approach to nonthreatening, non-challenging entertainment pablum. Find a problem with mass culture today and it probably began in the 90s, including not least of which this damned Internet fad.

For film enthusiasts and scholars, the decade was a treasure trove. The burgeoning indie film movement had yet to become the big business it’s mutated into now, and the major studios were still willing to take occasional chances on risky projects such as Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King (1991) and Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas (1995). New directing talent such as Quentin Tarantino, James Gray, and David Fincher all began their careers, while many of the veteran filmmakers and stars of the 70s continued putting out quality work.

The following seven films were released between 1991 and 1995, more or less the heyday of marketing strategies aimed squarely at the then so-called Generation X, though this list is not limited purely to films aimed at that demographic. Rather, it’s meant to cast a spotlight on the lesser known but no less noteworthy films of the time, so more famous works – i.e. Pulp Fiction, Reality Bites and its platoon of imitators, The Shawshank Redemption – here suffer a small case of benign neglect.

Ruby In Paradise (1993): Among the earliest darlings of Sundance, this low-budget, low-volume drama about a Tennessee woman (Ashley Judd, in her breakout role) fleeing an abusive husband for the relative beauty of off-season Panama City, Florida won raves for its emotional honesty and realistic characterizations. Defying the modern female protagonist stereotype, Judd’s Ruby is not wise beyond her years, spunky, or even whimsical. She’s complex, clever, and curious – qualities harder to demonstrate on film, though Judd nails her performance. She’s overdue for a comeback, and it’s time this film got a DVD re-release.

By the way, that’s indie directing savant Todd Field (In The Bedroom) as Ruby’s motorcycle-riding suitor.

Rush (1991): Remember Eric Clapton’s comeback hit
“Tears In Heaven”? It was actually composed as the theme to this bleak based-on-truth drama about undercover Texas narcotics detectives (Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh) falling in love and getting hooked on smack while trying to bust a local drug kingpin (Gregg Allman). Eventually, the strung out pair resort to falsifying evidence to close the case. Not a cheerful film to watch by any means, more in keeping with the gritty cop films of the 1970s than the fast-talking wiseguys that comprised much of 90s crime cinema.

Patric was for many years a popular choice to play Jim Morrison – a role that eventually went to Val Kilmer in Oliver Stone’s clumsy The Doors (1992). The trailer above shows his uncanny resemblance to the dead singer in full effect.

Single White Female (1992): Leigh starred or co-starred in no less than ten films between 1991 and 95, so it was probably only a matter of time before she crossed paths with the era’s similarly prolific Bridget Fonda. That teaming came in Barbet Shroeder’s (Reversal of Fortune) psycho roommate thriller Single White Female. Playing with equal mean-spirited glee on Fatal Attraction-inspired genre expectations as well as Fonda’s and Leigh’s respective good girl and vamp screen images, it nevertheless falls apart near the end, when some unconvincing psychobabble tries to redeem the preceding tawdry fun. Still, it’s a great pastiche of the era’s twentysomething angst and vapid sense of entitled security.

We love that trailer. It’s virtually a time capsule, including voiceover work (like many of the trailers in this piece) by the late, great Don LaFontaine.

Bob Roberts (1992): Tim Robbins’ creative output  dwindled in the last decade, and as a result his ballsy body of work from the late 80s and early 90s is slowly getting forgotten. Robbins wrote and directed this caustic, tortuously prescient mockumentary about a charmingly evil Senatorial candidate who wraps his neo-Nazi dogma in Bob Dylanesque folk songs and faux-rebellious swagger. No less than Gore Vidal portrays Roberts’ hapless opponent Brickley Paiste, a character based in part on Senator Ted Kennedy. Much of the film was improvised and drawn from both This Is Spinal Tap and the Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back, weaving social and political commentary together with a wry assassination and conspiracy subplot. The finished product kept period audiences guessing and will keep current viewers ruefully shaking their heads.

Spoiler alert: the film concludes with Roberts winning the election with 52 percent of the vote.

Dazed & Confused (1993): A sensation among critics who were just old enough by the mid-90s to remember what high school was like in the mid-70s, Richard Linklater’s nostalgic but honest look back at the summer of 1976 remains a mellow bowl of fun. And much like its spiritual ancestor Fast Times At Ridgemont High, the film served as finishing school for the decade’s indie film mainstays, including Parker Posey, Adam Goldberg, Rory Cochrane, Joey Lauren Adams and Nicky Katt, as well as featured appearances by bound-for-mainstream stars Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, and Matthew McConaughey.

More about mood and setting than character or plot, the film remains merely a fun diversion, though its slacker aspirations never pretend to anything greater.

Kalifornia (1993): Stone’s Natural Born Killers got all the attention in the decade’s “serial killers hit the open road” sweepstakes, all but eclipsing this slow-boiling thriller directed by Dominic Sena (Swordfish). A pre-X-Files David Duchovny and Michelle Forbes play urbanite intellectuals (he’s writing a book on serial killers) who pick up redneck serial killer Brad Pitt and his girlfriend Juliette Lewis while visiting famous murder sites cross-country.

The film is deliberately 70s-esque in its approach to its subject matter and showcasing realistic characterizations – probably why the more simplistic Killers got all the public adulation.

Forbes has all but locked up her Emmy nomination after only three episodes of AMC’s The Killing. Why she wasn’t a bigger star back then we’ll never comprehend.

Strange Days (1995): Exploiting the decade’s pre-millennial tension, Kathryn Bigelow’s taut near-future suspenser cast Ralph Fiennes as the awesomely named Lenny Nero, an ex-cop turned dealer in illicit virtual reality videos. Stuck with a tape showing a powerful rapper/social reformer (Glenn Plummer) assassinated by the LAPD as the city explodes in millennial partying, Nero tries to use the tape as leverage in getting back the singer ex-girlfriend (Lewis again) who dumped him years before, ruining his life.

Even if the virtual reality angle is woefully outdated by now, Bigelow’s expert mood construction as well as ace acting by Fiennes, Angela Bassett and others – including Vincent D’Onofrio and William Fichtner as the last cops in the world you want pulling you over – make the film unmissable, even a troubled decade-and-a-half later.

Later this week we’ll return to the era of the early 90s and explore some of the worst films of that period. In the meantime, please post your own additions to this list in the comments section.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: The Mechanic

Statham and Foster spin their wheels in the remake of a Seventies crime genre favorite.

A decade ago, around the time of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven remake, someone involved with the film (maybe the director himself) said you can more easily remake a mediocre film than you can a well-made one. It’s a good theory: presumably the audience is more forgiving of mistakes made in the retrofitting of the story material, and at the same time possibly more eager to embrace improvements. American culture is proudly all about the upgrade, and for better or worse consumers are predisposed by tradition to equate the new with the improved, whether the connection is true or not.

The target audience of director Simon West’s The Mechanic, a thunderous and messy remake of the little but fondly remembered 1972 Charles Bronson actioner of the same name, won’t give a shit if the film improves or denigrates its predecessor. Why should they? Within the narrow scope of shoot-em-up action films it’s neither remarkable nor terrible, and largely indistinguishable from star Jason Statham’s franchise of Transporter adventures. If you like those films, here’s more of the same.

Statham takes over Bronson’s role as Arthur Bishop, a contract hitman employed by an international company that contracts assassinations, murders, and vengeance killings to its stable of operatives. The organization permits no lapses in judgment or mistakes in assignments, giving their hitmen specific directives. As Bishop explains, some killings need to be staged to resemble accidents and some need to send a clear message; both kinds seem to require meticulous planning and preparation, including the opening set piece execution of a vaguely defined South American millionaire. Bishop kills the man under in his tightly guarded mansion and then stages an unnecessarily elaborate escape.

Returning to his New Orleans base of operations, he meets with his mentor and friend McKenna (Donald Sutherland) but shortly thereafter learns the company has marked the older man for termination. A company executive (Tony Goldwyn) tells Bishop that McKenna sold information about a mission, resulting in the deaths of several operatives. Bishop reluctantly agrees to execute McKenna himself, carrying out the hit but staging the event to look like a carjacking.

Mulling over his guilt, Bishop is reunited with McKenna’s estranged son Stephen (Ben Foster), a ‘neer-do-well with a bad temper and, thanks to his father’s death, an aimless well of rage. Bishop stops Stephen from executing a small time criminal and agrees to train him as an assassin, a regimen that includes buying a chihuahua and loafing around an Uptown coffee shop.

The revelation of those instructions’ hidden purpose, along with the final triple-cross conclusion, offer the only true – if moderate – surprises of the film. The rest is go-through-the-motions shoot-em-up, albeit motions handsomely and engagingly staged by West and his stunt team. Statham has done this enough now to make it look easy, and the gunfights have a kinetic brutality to them that’s reminiscent – most likely deliberately so – of the early films of John Woo.

Wikipedia tells us the critics reviewing the 1972 version noted both the “father-son” rivalry between Bishop and Stephen and also a “latent homosexual bond.” West and this latest version don’t bother with infusing the 2011 version with a murky subtext. The script lets the two men keep their thoughts to themselves tough-guy style; even when Stephen willfully disobeys instructions Bishop is slow to criticize, and their final confrontation outside a gas station is played with a minimum of pathos. It’s a lucky thing Statham and Foster have the laconic acting tradition to fall back upon – watching them open up might prove embarrassing.

As for the performances as they are, as noted above Statham is by now an old hand at this. Foster, though improved since his dreadful performance in 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma, doesn’t often do more than smirk or act cocky when on-camera. His mugging, meant to telegraph detached, contemptuous cool, comes off as bratty next to Statham’s reserved-to-the-point- of-boredom swagger. Swedish actress Mini Anden gets the only substantive female part, playing Bishop’s prostitute love interest; their sex scene early in the film is a textbook example of “gratuitous nudity.” (I’m guessing her character is a prostitute, though she sometimes acts like a girlfriend; Bishop gives her money and she doesn’t know his name.)

After two weeks the film has enjoyed only middling box office, though to be fair the planet’s biggest football game did keep that aforementioned target audience home its second weekend of release. Statham will certainly make more action movies, and Foster seems a durable screen presence already. The Mechanic isn’t a bad film: it’s not a disappointment or travesty to the original, and it’s not a good film or improvement either. It’s just in the middle all the way around, until the last five minutes when things get very hairy and very unpredictable all at once. Once the film appears on DVD, skip to the best part and watch those first.

- Michael Kabel

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Noir Cinema: Somewhere In The Night

 Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film noir dreamscape is a frustrating, haunting mystery of identity.

Released near the beginning of film noir’s postwar golden age, 1946′s Somewhere In The Night includes a lot of the elements that would eventually help to identify, if not exactly define, noir as a genre: the embittered and spiritually lost war veteran protagonist, his torch singer with a heart of gold love interest, the shifty criminals with murky motives and odd personalities, the sexpot femme fatale with a heart of money. Adding to the noir atmosphere, director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (A Letter To Three Wives) meticulously directs the film with an eye for the intimate, giving each scene a sense of cloistered self-containment that helps describe the protagonist’s senses of isolation. While not exactly essential noir viewing as a result of some serious story flaws, it’s still a mesmerizing viewing experience and a potent example of the genre’s potential for psychological exploration.

The film begins as Army soldier George Taylor (John Hodiak) lies in a battlefront medical tent, reeling from a concussion and with his face covered in bandages. With no memory of his life previous to waking up, in time he finds the only clues to his identity are his army discharge papers and an unsigned note written from someone who hates him. Taylor follows the note to Los Angeles, searching for his previous life – effectively searching for himself. An early break comes in the form of a checked suitcase found at a railway station. The case contains a gun and a note from a “friend” named Larry Cravat, directing Taylor to a bank account containing five thousand dollars.

Taylor goes to the bank but is met with suspicion by its employees. After another dead-end in a men’s steam room, he finds himself pursued through a swanky basement nightclub and cornered in the dressing room of singer Christy Smith (Nancy Guild). Later, following a kidnapping and beating by thugs employed by the mysterious thief and occultist Anzelmo (Fritz Kortner), a creaky plot contrivance leaves him dazed and injured at Smith’s door. She nurses him back to health, falling in love with him in the process.

Together the two pursue fringe-like clues to Taylor’s identity and the whereabouts of the vanished Cravat, despite the machinations of Anzelmo and a tawdry con woman (Margo Woode) who may or may not have known Taylor in his previous life. Eager to help the vulnerable Taylor, Smith enlists the help of her boss and potential suitor (Richard Conte), who in turn brings in a homicide lieutenant (Lloyd Nolan) who’s a lot smarter than he lets on. The lieutenant tells Taylor that his “friend” Cravat was in possession of stolen Nazi funds when he disappeared three years previous – the same time Taylor joined the service. Taylor and the lieutenant both begin to suspect him of Cravat’s murder, escalating the desperation in uncovering Taylor’s true identity. (The solution ultimately bears a strong resemblance to a similar revelation in Alan Parker’s 1984 horror noir Angel Heart.)

Mankiewicz shrewdly bends the noir aesthetic towards establishing a vague and mysterious air around even the simplest locations, giving the film a dreamlike quality that eerily conveys Taylor’s growing paranoia and self-loathing. But the complicated and rambling plot is freighted with diversions and vignettes that, while dramatically effective, don’t always serve to move the story forward. One scene in particular, in which Taylor confronts the daughter of a potential witness to Cravat’s crimes, is achingly acted and beautifully shot but nevertheless slows the movie’s momentum to a crawl. And the film is dialogue-heavy to a fault, with characters reeling off whole paragraphs even in the most mundane conversations. Conversely, the script has an annoying habit of never having characters answer a direct question with candor, lengthening the time needed to bring facts to light while working too hard to sustain suspense.

More troubling, at least regarding the script – adapted from Marvin Borowsky’s story by Mankiewicz and several others, including legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg and equally legendary British author/playwright W. Somerset Maugham – are the voids that leave vital information unanswered. Because the film is chiefly Taylor’s journey, the story most often takes pains to establish each step along his way. Yet how he came into possession of the search-igniting claim ticket is left unexplained, while the rapid growth of Smith’s affections is left underdeveloped and somewhat superfluous as a result. Such details feel important in retrospect, and unfortunately a second viewing doesn’t fill in their sizeable blanks.

Despite those failings the cast is hardworking, committed, and effective. Hodiak, sweating bullets throughout, conveys his character’s mounting panic while still retaining a sense of determination and composure – an ideal example of the relentlessness common to noir protagonists. Making her debut appearance with wardrobe and makeup apparently crafted to make her resemble Lauren Bacall as much as possible, Guild is sweet and convincing despite some corny dialogue of the “Can’t you see I’m nuts for the guy?” variety. (She and Kortner reteamed the following year in another noir, The Brasher Doubloon, an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The High Window.)

Richard Conte, still several years from headlining Jules Dassin’s masterful Thieves’ Highway, is underused as a foil and friend to Taylor’s respective romance and quest, appearing in only a few scenes. Finally, Woode’s radar blip of a career is puzzling given her sweet/predatory smile and crackling screen sexuality. Her character’s affected sophistication, communicated chiefly through sprinkling French expressions into her come-hither game with Taylor, gives the film both edge and a strange sense of resonant sadness. Nobody is who they seem to be somewhere in the night, but nobody is who they want to be, either.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: The Girl Who Played With Fire

Dull, formulaic import thriller now available on DVD and Blu-Ray.



There’s a long-standing pretension among American audiences, largely unsaid, that films imported from Europe possess an innate superiority to their homemade counterparts. Maybe that’s true, and The Girl Who Played With Fire is the exception that proves the rule. Far from art or even good crime cinema (the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive), it’s instead a particularly pungent rehashing of some pretty familiar genre clichés, piled high with unmitigated sexism and a cruel streak a mile wide. Densely plotted and manacled by leaden acting from its two blandly cryptic leads, it’s an only sometimes interesting stack of plot twists and turns, each one circling a story idea that’s never quite addressed in the time or space it deserves. It’s also seldom entertaining to watch, thanks to almost artless directing and strictly utilitarian production design that feels not quite real enough to carry off a realistic tone.

Picking up where The Girl With Dragon Tattoo left off, emotionally battered computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is living in the Caribbean, still attempting to come to grips with the horrific sexual abuse inflicted on her by her guardian Bjurman (Peter Andersson) as well as by violent events within a traumatic childhood. Returning to Sweden, she learns that a freelance journalist and his researcher girlfriend have been murdered, shortly after the journalist sold a series of articles exposing a sex trafficking ring with ties to the Swedish government.

Providing plot complications with only a minimum of contrivance, the journalist was working for Millennium, the magazine operated by Salander’s former confederate and lover Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist). Salander’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon, thanks to a visit she paid Bjurman upon her return. Of course the police suspect her, pursuing her with narrow-minded if myopic determination after Bjurman too is discovered dead. Meanwhile Salander’s kickboxing girlfriend (Yasmine Garbi) is kidnapped by towering white-haired brute Neidermann (Micke Spreitz), whom Salander has previously surveiled in Bjurman’s company. An attempted rescue by Salander’s boxing coach gets them both thrown into a barn that the brute lights on fire, though they escape with only moderate difficulty.

There’s an additional storyline regarding Salander’s search for the accurate progress reports Bjurman compiled on her mental condition, not the doctored statements she’d coerced him into sending to the Swedish government. Niedermann dispatches two bikers (themselves straight out of central casting) to intercept her. The meeting allows Salander the opportunity to fire a gun and apply a taser to one of the rape-happy biker’s testicles. As in many other scenes, Salander applies the violence without emotion other than a vague snarl, dispassionate in her vengeance to a degree that’s almost lifeless. It’s typical of the film’s attitudes that no one onscreen seems surprised or excited by anyone’s malevolence.

Ultimately, Salander follows the assorted crimes and sex trafficking ring to aged Soviet defector Zalachenko (Georgi Staykov) with whom she has a deep and troubled past; Zalachenko is her father, and the same man she set on fire after he sexually assaulted her mother. Now scarred and almost cartoonishly evil, after belittling her rape at Bjurman’s hands Zalachenko orders Niedermann to kill her. She’s shot several times and then buried alive, leading to a plot twist so incredible it snaps suspended disbelief: a small-framed girl, shot several times and bleeding, digs herself out of a grave after apparently spending several minutes underground, without suffocating. Such is the herculean strength of the film’s surly anti-heroine.

Swedish television director Daniel Alfredson adapts Larsson’s densely plotted novel with little sense of rising tension or mounting suspense, so that each scene plays out more or less at the same leaden pitch. Salander or Blomkvist brood about something, or get pissed off, with little growing feeling. With a 129 minute runtime, that flatline stretches to the horizon and back again. Screenwriter Jonas Frykberg’s adaptation of Larsson’s novel is so baldly episodic that at times the events possess a curious detachment from one another, with the third-act dovetailing that should propel the film towards its climax instead feeling only random and breathless. At its center stands Rapace, all wide eyes and focused yet shallow intensity, but she can’t manage to imbue complexity to Salander’s personality: because the script (and presumably its source novel) only defines her by her trauma, there’s little to work with by way of character building except rage and pain. Few real people are so uncomplicated, and rarer still are successful fictional characters so simplistic.

What the film lacks in structure and staging it wants to make up for with violence and spectacle; if only its dreary, disingenuous worldview allowed for anything other than shock and misanthropy. Heterosexual sex involves rape or bondage, or carries such superficial emotion as to be meaningless; Salander’s night with her girlfriend is a casual fling on the living room floor, presented not much differently than similar episodes encountered in porn. Niedermann suffers from a condition called congenital analgesia: he literally cannot feel pain, while Zalachenko’s scalp is a hideous swirl of contracture scars. They are fierce antagonists for Salander’s wounded determination, but their scenes together are shrill and void of emotion, especially towards the film’s climax, which collapses under its too-numerous similarities to a stock-grade slasher flick.

There’s a worthwhile, if not exactly refined, story buried under the bile that clutters The Girl Who Played With Fire. But the long atrocity exhibition presented within keeps that story tangled up in its fascination not with the causes or aftermath of inhumanity but rather by the spectacle of such acts taking place; the film positively wallows in violence, particularly sexual violence. Whatever failures and laziness debilitate American films, Hollywood at least doesn’t have a monopoly on the exploitation of barbarity or on the leering, voyeuristic depiction of the same.

- 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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TV Reviews: The Event, Hawaii Five-0

Considering the quality and ratings of two of the fall season’s most extravagant new series

For whatever its flaws and shortcomings, or even its enduring commitment to garbage, the fall 2010 season has at least offered more variety among its new shows than probably any other in recent years. With the major networks rededicating themselves, somewhat, to scripted dramas and comedies while once-juggernaut reality fare like Survivor and American Idol continue to show their age, broadcast TV may finally be rising to the saber-rattling that cable networks including TNT and USA have threatened for years.

As a representative sample of the dozens of new shows, we watched the first two episodes of The Event and Hawaii Five-0, serial dramas with virtually nothing in common except that they air on Monday nights, albeit in different time slots and on different networks. The two series seemed to start and develop in opposite directions between their first and second episodes, one getting much better, the other showing signs of fatigue already.

NBC’s The Event, with its myriad of murky conspiracies and guess-what-this-means clues, is fairly naked in its ambition to capture the audiences previously entertained by Lost and 24. The pilot episode, “I Haven’t Told  You Everything,” was oddly paced and sometimes hard to follow, thanks to a tiered succession of flashback sequences that established some of the overarching narrative’s (apparently very well thought out) back story. Some of the multiple storylines introduced in the first hour include: a college student (Jason Ritter) attempting to stop a plane hijacking connected to the kidnapping of his girlfriend (Sarah Roemer); the President (Blair Underwood) wrestling with freeing 97 political prisoners despite the wishes of his CIA chief (Zeljko Ivanek); a government agent (Ian Anthony Dale) with ties to the prisoners working to stop the same hijacking.

Despite putting so many balls in the air, show creator/writer Nick Wauters managed to bring everything together, as far as he could for one episode of a multi-part episodic, with a climax that was both unsettling and audacious by virtue of its 9/11 overtones. The expansive cast of TV veterans (this must be Ivanek’s 4,000th role as a government creep) settled into their parts easily, and relative newcomer Jason Ritter was compelling and charismatic as the everyman getting in way over his head for no reason he deserved.

If the first episode was only good, the second (titled “To Keep Us Safe”) stomped on the gas pedal, answering many of the questions raised by the pilot but prodding many more (often simultaneously). Most importantly, the episode revealed the nature of the prisoner’s identities and why the government would take desperate measures to contain them. SPOILERS. It seems the United States has kept close to a hundred extraterrestrials prisoner in Alaska since World War II; the aliens are led, after a fashion, by a pacifist (Laura Innes, getting past ER‘s Kerry Weaver at long last) who’s kept them more or less cooperative. But now a second group of aliens, more militant and resentful of the imprisonment, has begun working to free them, starting with an attempt on the President’s life. Double agents and intrigue are already piling on top of one another, with plot twists that, for once, don’t feel numbingly familiar. The first two episodes should probably have aired together, either as a movie or double feature, in order to make the strongest impression on audiences; we can’t help but feel the combined punch would’ve created bigger shockwaves through the entertainment media.

If The Event is so far occasionally original, and bold but uneven, the heavily publicized remake of Hawaii Five-0 is just the opposite: though polished and confident, it’s too reminiscent by half of established CBS cop dramas – most notably CSI: Miami – and already indulging in some of the hoariest television drama clichés from, ironically, the 1970s and possibly before. The cumulative effect, by and large, is a sleek confection of sex, sunshine, and easily digestible storylines occupied by attractive, affable performers. It’s the definition of safe television, but for older audiences or those wishing for a diversion it’s likely just the thing for its Mondays at 10 timeslot.

Upgraded and tuned up for the 21st Century, the update remakes semi-iconic TV cop Steve McGarrett as a Navy Intelligence counterterrorism expert (played now by Australian heartthrob Alex O’Loughlin) recruited by Hawaii’s governor (Jean Smart) to head an anti-crime task force. McGarrett assembles his team from the fringes of local law enforcement, including New Jersey transplant Danny Williams (Scott Caan), ex-cop Chin Ho Kelley (Daniel Dae Kim) and surfer-police cadet Kona “Kono” Kalakaua (Grace Park). In the pilot they track down the terrorist (James Marsters) responsible for killing McGarrett’s father; in the second episode, “Ohana,” they fight Eastern European gangsters for control of a NSA programmer’s cyber-macguffin. In both cases, the plots are streamlined, simple, and largely free of the complicated moral entanglement that’s been the benchmark of non-CBS cop shows for years now.

Show creators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Fringe, Alias) keep the emphasis on bright colors, splashy stunts, and expensive-looking action sequences that are fun as long as you’re actually watching them. The cast is still feeling their way around one another, but O’Loughlin and Caan already have a Butch-Sundance chemistry that makes for some of the show’s most entertaining moments. Caan is doing the heavy-lifting in building that chemsitry, however. O’Loughlin is effortlessly charismatic but so far his McGarrett lacks the intensity that Jack Lord brought to the role in 1968, and at times he seems outshined by Caan’s blustering blue-collar charm. Kim and Park, as the junior partners in the team, haven’t had enough non-action screen time to flesh out their roles past stock types. It’s also a little strange that the 36-year old Park plays the rookie on the squad, her character written with plenty of earnest neophyte resolve.

Which indicates, in turn, the problems of the past the show seems interested in repeating. Too many clichés lurk in the corners of the scripts: in two weeks the team has saved the islands from two separate Dastardly Threats: terrorists one week and a European crime syndicate the next, effectively saving the entire archiepelago once per week. Kelly and Kalakaua, the team’s two ethnic characters, remain largely in supportive, backup roles for the investigations and in action sequences. Maybe smaller, less ornate cases might allow all the actors room to work if they’re to match the action’s bombast; otherwise the big villains-small character depth model recalls the superficiality of 70s and 80s ensemble shows including the The A-Team and T.J. Hooker, and not in a good way.

Finally, for better and for worse the show looks like a CSI: franchise, with swirling images of the Honolulu cityscape used after commercial breaks and interiors filled with blue and orange color palettes and giant plasma screens. As the CSI: franchise enters its second decade, the network is likely thinking of life and tentpole attractions past that trio of show’s eventual sunset. If Hawaii Five-0 is the first of that new generation,it’s only fair that it have its own look. The promo below implies as much, even while celebrating the CSI: visual formula.

According to ratings tracker website TV By The Numbers, the show lost 10% of its pilot audience during its second week to draw an audience of 12.7 million viewers. The Event‘s second episode drew approximately 9 million people, an almost 20% attrition from its pilot.

- Michael Kabel and Jennifer Vasil

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Patricia Neal: 1926 – 2010

Academy Award, Tony, and Golden Globe-winning actress passes away at age 84.

Actress Patricia Neal, who won an academy award for her role as the aging housekeeper Alma Brown in the 1963 drama Hud, died Sunday of lung cancer at her home in Martha’s Vineyard. She was 84.

A versatile and accomplished stage and screen actress, Neal appeared in several film classics including The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), A Face In The Crowd (1957), and Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961). Born in Kentucky but raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, Neal studied acting at Northwestern University before moving to New York. A 1946 Tony Award win for her turn in Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest launched her film career, with a breakthrough performance opposite Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead arriving in 1949.

In 1971 Neal won a Golden Globe for her performance as Olivia Walton in the television movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story. A critical and ratings success, the telefilm served as a pilot for the television series The Waltons, though she did not reprise her role for the series.

Neal’s personal life was tempestuous and often wracked by tragedy: following a doomed, adulterous romance with Cooper, she wed British author Roald Dahl in 1953, though their 30-year marriage was marked by the death of one child and the severe injury of another. A series of strokes sustained while pregnant in 1965 left her comatose for three weeks, though she ultimately delivered a healthy baby girl.

In 1978 Ford Sanders Regional Medical Center in Knoxville dedicated the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center in recognition of her advocacy for stroke victims. Neal published her autobiography, As I Am, in 1988. Her final film appearance, in the drama Flying By, was released last year. Our sincerest condolences to her family and friends.

Miscellaneous Debris, May 2010 Edition

The end of another month means our monthly roundup of news and analysis miscellany. 

Well, that was May 2010, and as far as films go it was distinctly underwhelming, with the television landscape not looking an awful lot better. The biggest releases of the month both disappointed, with neither Iron Man 2 or Robin Hood meeting the promise that their predecessors or creative talent suggested. With three new large-scale films - Prince of Persia, George Romero’s Survival of the Dead, and the already dated-looking Sex And The City 2 slamming into multiplexes this week there’s no doubt the summer season is upon us. (We remember when the Memorial Day weekend was the starter. Like the holiday season, summer comes a little earlier every year now.) 

At the end of every month we roundup some news, information, and analysis that we never got around to giving our complete blogging attention. They’re listed below, in no particular order of importance. 

 1. What exactly was so disappointing about Iron Man 2, or for that matter Robin Hood? Both films look superb “on paper,” and the spectacles inherent in their concepts alone promised at least diversionary thrills. In retrospect, now that the buzz around both films has dissipated, we think Iron Man 2 suffered from a surplus of corporate enthusiasm. With too many new characters – the film desperately wants audiences to demand Black Widow and War Machine spinoffs – too many storylines and too little time for character development, the whole effort feels in retrospect like clanging, top-heavy overkill. 

Robin Hood, meanwhile, seemed entirely the answer to a question nobody asked. Glum, excessively violent, and sometimes almost misanthropic, it was a new look at a character that most audiences possibly weren’t thinking needed a  gritty treatment. On the other hand, it may age better than Iron Man 2, growing a respecting fan base with DVD and cable showings.  

No future: FlashForward

 2. The ratings deathmatch between FlashForward and V, ABC’s two sci-fi franchise hopes once touted as the heirs apparent to Lost, came to an end with V getting the second season greenlight and FlashForward airing its season finale May 27. Ratings analysts had speculated that the network would renew one – and only one – series, and a modest late season bump in V‘s ratings let it edge ahead. We’re not going to armchair showrun either series, but FlashForward had potential it deferred too long; V needs to turn the heat up on most of its plotlines and jettison at least two characters if it has a chance of growing a larger audience. Now comes news that ABC may revive Alias, which seems like a knee-jerk reaction to losing Lost. 

3. On the far other end of the television series lifespan graph, Law & Order is also cancelled after a mere twenty – count ‘em, twenty – seasons. By way of perspective, the people born the year it debuted are in college now. (Unfortunately, it falls just a single season short of the longest-running drama series record still held by Gunsmoke.) Its cancellation might be something else to blame on the Jay Leno debacle: had NBC not shuffled everything to accommodate Leno’s 10 PM time slot, Law & Order might have held on to a larger audience as more people could actually find it on the schedule. All is not lost, however. Franchise mastermind Dick Wolf plans to explore other avenues for the show to continue, including a two-hour TV movie as a last resort. Meanwhile NBC plans to trot out Law & Order: Los Angeles this fall.

We miss seeing Bridget Fonda.

 4. Quentin Tarantino’s most accomplished but least appreciated film is on track for the prequel treatment. Writer-director Daniel Schechter (Goodbye Baby) has adapted Elmore Leonard’s novel The Switch, which featured several of the characters that later appeared in Rum Punch, the novel Tarantino reworked into Jackie Brown. Specifically, The Switch relates an early crime adventure of Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara, the roles played in Jackie Brown by, respectively, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert DeNiro. Tarantino reportedly won’t be involved in the project, which is tentatively scheduled for a 2011 release. The search for a director and cast is currently underway. 

5. We’ve eagerly, obsessively collected and even suggested ways to build your own, and this July 13 Warner Bros resumes their Film Noir Classics box set collection with a new four-disc set. Volume 5 includes eight films, a slight downgrade from Volume 4, which boasted ten, but also showcases lesser-known works from noir auteurs including Anthony Mann and Robert Fleischer. The charmingly noirish titles include Cornered, Desperate, Backfire, and Crime In The Streets. 

Continuing the noiry excitement, two weeks later Paramount Pictures releases its own trio of offerings, including the William Holden-Barry Fitzgerald noirish thriller Union Station, the Charlton Heston-starring Dark City, and the Alan Ladd vehicle Appointment With Danger. 

6. At the risk of jumping to conclusions, Criterion may release their edition of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line if a bare-bones preorder page at Amazon.com proves to be correct. Based on the novel by James Jones, author of From Here To Eternity (and featuring many of the same characters, albeit renamed), the film structured the events of World War II’s Guadalcanal campaign into a series of vignettes about the men fighting it, taking in every human emotion and failing along the grueling way. 

Upon its 1998 release the film was unfairly ignored by a public that preferred the more simplistic jingoism of Saving Private Ryan (released earlier that year) or felt leery of its sorrowful, meditative tone. Nevertheless, Malick’s eye for arresting imagery didn’t dull one bit after an almost twenty year hiatus; the trailer alone is more picturesque than most films. 

 

Here's looking at you, kid.

7. Finally, we want to invite you to post your feedback. In a weird inverse ratio, the number of comments posted to our site has dropped off even while our traffic has steadily grown. Discussion being the root of understanding, we’d like to hear your own ideas, especially about some of the more obscure material we blog about. If you’re just posting a comment to build links, however, don’t waste your time. We delete those immediately, without approval.

Next week we’ll be back with a review of Prince of Persia. Have a good Memorial Day weekend and remember to stay safe on the roads.

- Michael Kabel

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