Reviews

With any other actress in the lead role of a spinster English teacher in a small Pennsylvania town The English Teacher may have flopped entirely on its own misshapen face, but under the devices of Juliann Moore nerdy Linda Sinclair shows us a lot about how best intentions can cause the worst outcomes and teach us so much about life.

Teaching high-school English in Kingston, PA Linda Sinclair (Julianne Moore) is a judgmental customer when it comes to dating. At 45, and unmarried she views every potential mate with a harsh grading system much like the one she uses in her class room where students are delighted by her firm but supportive guidance. When former star pupil Jason Sherwood (Michael Angarano) comes to town disheartened from his labors in New York to become a playwright, Linda attempts to show her students and surly Jason what it's like to see creative writing fleshed out. Linda pushes the young writers play into production at the high school much to the chagrin of his father Dr. Tom Sherwood (Greg Kinnear) who wants his son to become a lawyer. When Linda and Jason sleep together the event shakes the English teacher out of her well-constructed cocoon and when the student body gets wind of the affair, Linda discovers that she must come out of her shell completely to save her job, save the show, and rebuild her own self respect.

They say that the best comedies are terrible things that happen to other people. When we see poor Julianne Moore's hopeless romantic Linda Sinclair's life tumble our initial reaction is thwarted by a cavalcade of events that progressively erode into a tragedy except for the fact that her character loves every aspect of what is happening to her because it fuels a deep-seated need for drama in her sheltered world.

The filmmakers have a host of support actors led by the stalwart Nathan Lane as the wise and sensitive drama teacher Carl Kapinas (whose name all the students purposely mispronounce to make it sound dirty) and Lily Collins, Norbert Leo Butz, Jessica Hecht, Charlie Saxton and others. Watching Jason's play in rehearsal offers some of the most hilarious moments in the film, and anyone who has been in high school productions, or community theatre for that matter will see some of their friends here.

The films overall subversive nature is off-putting for anyone really thinking about what the screenwriters Dan Chariton, and Stacy Chariton are putting out there. On the one hand they have their story narrated by an unseen Narrator presented by Fiona Shaw whose voice like the goddess of English Literature reminds us of the correct direction of the tale as it unfolds. This traditional and romantic viewpoint is undermined by the real-life events of a young playwright attempting to have his own writer's voice heard. The clashes of these two realities coalesce into an unusual parable about male and female relationships as unattainable in the post-modern world.

The overall idea that our public literature classes are producing staid and packaged pseudo intellectuals is addressed by the suggestive Narrator of the story being essentially shut out as Linda finds the right man for her. This is high comedy, something we smile at as the screen fades and anyone who has been in high school will feel the effects of the banal questioning from teachers after we have read A Tale of Two Cities, begging us to understand the idea of self-sacrifice.

Play It Again, Sam from 1972 marks the beginning of Woody Allen's filmmaking career, and essentially sets the mold for what would become the "Woody Allen" style, a self-conscious review of the filmmaker's view of the world, and essentially a monologue with other characters filling in to voice arguments so the filmmaker can elucidate.

Allan Felix (Woody Allen) is a film critic living in San Francisco recently divorced from his wife and trying to restart his social life by dating again. Allen suffers from extreme moments of insecurity and delusions of grandeur. His best friends, married couple Linda (Diane Keaton) and Dick (Tony Roberts) try to introduce Allen to some eligible women but none of them really like him. When he cerebrally conjures the spirit of Humphrey Bogart (Jerry Lacy) to call on a catalogue of techniques from classic films he's appeared in Allen finally breaks through his block. After spending time with Linda, Allen falls in love with her and takes her to bed only to realize just as in Casablanca, a noble act transcends the physical act of lovemaking.

There were earlier films. Take the Money and Run in 1969, Bananas in 1971, and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex in 1972 all had the Woody Allen touch, exhibiting his particular comedic style in writing and performing but Play It Again, Sam touched on a core issue that virtually everyone experienced. With the Oscar awarded to Annie Hall in 1977 Allen had clearly managed to create a whole new film genre based on self-reflection and the heralding of the little guy in society.

Woody Allen himself tries a little too hard in this flick, laying out the slapstick in consummate Charlie Chaplin style in visual gags that are funny, but overload the film with too much physicality. Allen's real talent is his ability at voicing humorous perceptions of life in pithy terms and applying it to the most mundane social activity in real affective ways.

Even his grandest failures come across as the most heartfelt attempts to unveil truth about the human condition. Woody Allen would return to retool some parts of his thematic material in 1985 in the film The Purple Rose of Cairo in which a character falls into the world of an old movie so deeply that she bonds with a character from the film and he is released into the real world. It's a fascinating idea and maybe one for the romantic in all of us, possibly too "old school" for the average viewer who is more sophisticated than one in the 70s.

As directed by Herbert Ross, Play it Again, Sam feels smoothed over a little too much, relying on comic business to carry the narrative. Woody Allen had previously proved his merriment mettle in Bananas, Don't Drink the Water, Take the Money and Run, and a host of hired-gun gigs for TV and film. The strength of Woody's stories is that the point of view is always from the fractured mentality of the main character.

Perhaps one of a special hybrid of western-noir adventure The Naked Spur effectively blends genres to deliver a satisfying story that resonates long after the final scene. From the start we wonder what's up in this mysterious western as Stewart's Kemp sneaks up on a prospector camped out in the Colorado Mountains. That the man doing the sneaking is everyman James Stewart whom we've come to identify with in so many films as that sort of man who is in trouble. Here in this film it is his emotional psych that is being troubled as he appears to be criminal in his actions.

When Howard Kemp (James Stewart) approaches a secluded plateau in pursuit of a criminal he employs the aid of prospector Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell) and dishonorable soldier Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker) to help him capture accused killer Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) and bring him in to justice. Vandergroat was arrested for shooting an unarmed man and has fled with virginal Lina Patch (Janet Leigh) in tow. It seems that Kemp and Vandergroat has a past history and when the criminal lets out that a reward is offer for him the other men step up for a piece of the take. It seems that when Kemp went off to fight the Civil War and left his home and property in the hands of his fiancé, she sold it and left with the profits, and the reward will get his land back. Vandergroat works to get the others to go against Kemp, and as the odds turn a head to head confrontation becomes inevitable.

The script keeps us in the dark about Kemp's purpose and when we hear Vandergroat spill the beans about the reward it serves to cast doubt on the supposed accusations about who's guilty. This particularly "noir" touch is what gives the film its troubling core.. Stewart is a man who is keeping a secret and his motivating the others to aid him in his scheme supports the modern idea that the difference between good people and bad is the quality of their corrupt ethical values.

The shadow of guilt that shifts between Kemp to Vandergroat as other characters are swayed by the lure of wealth transforms the ad hoc community to a distrustful one. This dark vision of the world is something screenwriter Sam Rolfe may have been honing his skill set for his later work on the TV show Have Gun will Travel about a cowboy detective dressed in black who did dirty investigative work in the old West.

This noir bleakness is the single item that bonds the men in this film, a common denominator as all the men become desirous of the reward, and of the virginal Lina. As the only woman in the narrative Janet Leigh's Lina Patch is a character that carries the double weight of virgin, and fallen woman and as the tensions shift between characters, her own value changes as property of either the good man on a tainted mission, or the bad man voicing the truth about his actions. It was Leigh's first real film role, and a testament to her abilities at expressing the emotional changes that pull the character through the story.

The film, however noir in its design, still delivers a great Hollywood ending that redeems both the lead character and manages to reaffirm the basic value of love, faith, and community. This is one of the things that James Stewart always brought to a movie, and in his post-Army days as he was returning to active work as an actor, it was an interesting mellowing of his basic persona that was present in early comedies. Perhaps it was the 52-mission flight record he logged in when flying in the Air Corp and experiencing the first-hand understanding of the fragile barrier between life and death that developed him into such a fine actor in his later career.

If you return to this tale after a first-viewing experience, the filmmakers have succeeded in their goal. It is a treat.

This clear "message" movie begins with a hep jazzy score and a blackboard with inspiring socially-concerned words written across it as lead actress Jean Moorland and other women enter and make dismissive gestures as to the value of the epithets.

When the film shifts to a court room with character actor as Judge handing down a lesson sentence to the parents we know we're in that fuzzy land of Ed Wood whose flat-footed aesthetic has now become legend and imitated for its value in what it can say about its subject as well as what it says about the source of the story it tells.

Rich kid Paula Parkins (Jean Moorhead) and her gang of tough high school women friends spend their days and nights committing crimes, and getting away with it because she uses her parents car and fences stolen goods though and underground source. When not stealing they terrorize the citizenry with extremes like raping young men, and indulge in heavy petting parties at their parents house. When a local closet communist hires the girls to vandalize a high school police are tipped off and guns are fired. Paula finds herself in jail, pregnant from a one-night stand and her parents are left with the blame.

The film was a modest money maker on the B circuit and one can only owe this to the titillating title and all-women cast involved in dastardly deeds against society. This may have been the closest Ed Wood came to monetary success, having written the script for the film.

Many of the subversive ideas and themes can be ascertained in how the lead women refer to each other with men's names, making their rape of a young man all the more subversive. Writer Ed Wood was no dummy when it came to reusing successful formats. He later retooled the screenplay for Fugitive Girls which morphed into Five Loose Women in 1974.

This 'midnight' movie from 1964 rates high on the sleaze factor, and aside from the inept scripting and bad acting, director Joe Sarno manages to give us something interesting in some of the camera framing and some of the ideas in the story. If you can stay awake past the mind-numbingly slow exposition and get to the nub of the story the movie does gain momentum, albeit to a muddled climax.

In a small New England town Geraldine Lewis (Audrey Campbell) becomes bored when her workaholic husband ignores her and she gets interested in other men, and begins taking extramarital afternoon trysts with a neighborhood friend and another man. Her daughter Kathy (Alice Linville), just beginning to understand her feelings about personal relationships comes home early from school one day to discover her mother in a clinch. Shocked and confused Kathy confides to neighbor Yvette Tallman (Dyanne Thorne) and the older woman seduces the young girl. Yvette and her incestuous brother Lou (W.B. Parker) initiate and organize a neighborhood sex-swap ring and Geraldine and others are lured in but danger is imminent when under-age Kathy is brought in too.

This is Dyanne Thorne's first film, after which she went on to other cult faves like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, and other sleaze-founded films. Thorne will delight the male viewer s her character is a voluptuous coquette who seduces men and women for whatever she wants. Not an actress Thorne manages to present to the camera two emotive states seducing and just plain nothing. As a support co-star she could've been better with a better script, maybe.

The real actress is Judy Young who plays Kathy. Her performance is muted, substantial, and detailed and she shows the viewer the real soul of the film. It is too bed that this actress never got a real break. The best thing she was able to accomplish is a guest-starring role on Welcome Back Kotter.

The film does have some good moments. Cinematography by James J. Markos and camera work is good even though lighting is laughable. The way actors move in and out of frame restricts the viewer from gaining all the information and his bit of creativity allows a more dynamic connection with the story.

There's bad (I'm not talking Andy Warhol's Bad, which utilizes style to make statements about bad movies like these), and then there's really bad, and ultimately it comes down to a matter of taste, and how a filmmaker uncovers his subject.

Director Joe Sarno cleverly understands the basic urge of the viewer and slowly reveals more and more of the relationships that develop within his narrative. This keeps this otherwise vapid piece of filmmaking afloat as the essential prurient interest that exist in all of us is satisfied as characters undress, and the flat-footed development of the plot moves toward its dénouement.

Static camera set-ups transfer a mind-numbing presentation from all the actors because the basic plasticity of the medium is not being used to make their performances and the subject matter better. The static camera does actually work well in some scenes in which the characters appear as vacant uninspired ciphers lost in a world of banality and seeking the only activity they can understand which will give their lives meaning.

The inability of the camera to move from its base reflects the inability if the characters to move within their own social levels. Sarno handles the stasis of his well-done black and white cinematography having characters enter into rooms with deep focus, and moving within the limited frame. The feeling of claustrophobia permeates scenes as sometimes as a many as six characters are boxed into the frame in medium close up further translating the idea of inertia weighing on this community.

This inert existence that is the world of the film has interesting moments of humor. When Mona and Les plan a night of love-making and Les falls asleep Mona shrieks and slaps him awake, and then storms away insulted. This is funny stuff and it appears that if director Sarno had been more aware of this natural inclination he could have made one great comic film is the vein of the kind of films John Waters or even Andy Warhol was making in the 60s.

By the time John Huston made Fat City in 1972 his glory as one of the finest directors in Hollywood was fading. But this character study put him back up on top of the A list with the new breed of filmmakers of the period who were essentially going against the political core of the established movie-making industry.

In Stockton California ex-boxer Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) takes a job as a day laborer to make ends meet and takes a break to go to the gym for a workout. When he meets young Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges) and spars with him he is impressed with his natural boxing abilities. Tully sends Ernie to meet his former manager who takes the young boxer into his care for training. When Tully isn't working he hangs out in bars talking of his return to the ring. He meets Oma (Susan Tyrrell) in a bar and moves in with her and returns to his manager to train for another fight. Meanwhile Ernie settles down with a pregnant wife and continues to pursue his boxing and support his family. Through all the trials and tribulations each man learns that the value of his own life is a culmination of hard-earned small victories.

The film is a study in the balance of styles, and characters, sometimes opposites, but always comparing one with another. Stacy Keach's washed up boxer Billy Tully is balanced against eager, youthful Jeff Bridges as Ernie Munger and in this comparison the filmmakers make a simple statement of how choices of occupations not only determine a man's character, but his fate as well.

The women figures in the film are also designed around a symbolic fulcrum. The world weary Oma as played by Susan Tyrell could be the future or the opposite of Candy Clark's innocence loving Faye. Oma is resentful and intoxicated, whereas Faye is enlightened by her new-found knowledge of the relationship that can occur between man and woman.

Each veteran boxer is introduced to the viewer lying down and coming to life as if resurrected from the dead. We first meet Tully rolling over in bed just looking for a light for his cigarette, and as he continues moving about into the world, gives up and just moves out of his rented room. Later we are introduced to the pro boxer, Sixto Rodriguez's Lucero moving up from a prone position to take some unidentified medication and appearing in the bathroom with medical troubles.

Aside from the open-ended existentialism of the narrative, the cinematography by Conrad L. Hall which captures the natural light and urban landscape of the skid row area of Stockton Californiais worth the visit to this film. Many scenes of dialogue-less action feature merely the visual content of the world of small dreams and broken hopes.

The look of the film recalls in many ways the canvasses of Edward Hopper with whole areas of light dedicated to details of the landscape and its weight on solitary human figures residing within the frame. Hall's work can be seen in classics such as Cool Hand Luke from 1967, the Oscar-winning films Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid from 1969, American Beauty from 1999, and the graphic-novel adaptation Road to Perdition from 2002. Hall is one of only six cinematographers to have his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

The film was based on the boxing novel Fat City (1969) by Leonard Gardner, who penned the script for the movie. Virtually all the shooting was on location in a part of the skid row section of Stockton that doesn't exist anymore. Thus this movie is partly an historical document of the city and what it looked like before progress paved the way for a new highway and torn down many of the buildings.

This film is one to return to again for the excellent direction, the great substantial acting and the beautiful cinematography. Cherish it as one of John Huston's best works.

A study in drug abuse like Reefer Madness, Girl Gang emphasizes the sleazy aspects associated with like-minded juveniles who find themselves corrupted by marijuana, and Heroin and delivers a mish mash of gratuitous exploitation.

In an isolated apartment on the wrong side of the tracks June (Joanne Arnold) hangs out with her friends who come there to buy "weed" cigarettes, marijuana, from Joe (Timothy Farrell) who runs a business of selling Heroin to school kids and getting them addicted so they will pull crimes for him. Joe keeps a disbarred alcoholic physician Doc (Harry Keaton) on hand to help with assisting the school kids with clean injections. Joe secures a job for June with a local merchant in order to support her mounting heroin habit. June begins selling sexual favors, and when she is caught stealing money from a business Joe and Doc come forward to blackmail the man into silence. When Joe sends June and some others out to rob a local gas station, a girl gets shot and the police close in on the drug-infested apartment.

It's too bad that, given the resources, the movie could not have been better. Judging by the mise-en-scene, the budget for the film looks to be about as good as it was for Detour nine years earlier. The major difference being that Detour has a strong central character and a strong story arc that carries the viewer from the opening through to the end, whereas Girl Gang never seems to focus on the right thing, first having a girl-gang robbery, which introduces us to drug dealer Joe, which leads us to June, but since June is our main character it only makes sense for us to learn about her and where she comes from and why she has ended up at Joe's apartment. Since we never know why June does what she does we have nothing to care about in the character and her downfall doesn't mean anything to us.

Part of this is the charismatic screen persona of leads Tom Neal and Ann Savage in Detour. Not to take away from the relative merits of Joanne Arnold, and Timothy Farrell, but they were not A-listers nor were they strong actors, although Farrell did have a stronger presence than the eye-candy Arnold. To be honest Arnold was cast because they had a great body and this vehicle was to sell from the male gaze that was seeking cheap visual thrills from her presence on screen.

Arnoldhad done the Playboy spread in 1954 and the producers must have thought they had a sure box-office with her in the movie. She's beautiful to look at but seeing her in motion in the movies it's clear she is not an actress. Her face never registers a glimmer of thought and the lack of her characters progression in the film makes it a flat gratuitous thing.

Exploitation is the key word with this flick with many scenes including degrading actions of the women being mistreated by the male guards of the camp. There are more than a few shots of female nudity with female prisoners in the showers, and the obligatory 'cat fight' with women mixing it up in the pressure-cooker of the prison, along with good scenes of women shooting automatic weapons, everything to make Quinton Tarantino tingle with delight.

In a Philippine night club a buxom torch singer Blossom (Pam Grier) works the crowd until her accompanist Django (Sid Haig) whips out a machine gun and the two rob the patrons. When patrons shoot back and Police close in Django narrowly escapes with a beautiful hostage Terry (Anitra Ford) whom he abandons because he touts his criminal actions as a support of a political revolution, and because she is considered the plaything of all the dignitaries of the country and below his respect. Terry is arrested by Police as an accomplice of the robbers and because of her high-profile relationship to government officials she is packed off to a women's prison in the countryside and Django learns from his band of criminals that they plan to overthrow the prison and kidnap the women so they can have happy families. Blossom and Django infiltrate the prison and plan an escape that enables Terry to lead the captive women to freedom but at a high cost.

One might argue that without director Jack Hill the actress Pam Grier might never have reached stardom. Hill was on a roll in the early 1970s, starting with Isle of the Snake People, and The Incredible Invasion, both in 1971. He followed with The Big Doll House in 1971 and the break-through for Pam Grier, The Big Bird Cage in 1972. The "Blaxploitation" hits Coffy (1973), and Foxy Brown (1974) put Grier on the map as the new representative of the black American urban persona that was taking on the rampant crime of the big city and eliminating them for the safety of the innocents living everywhere.

The most intentionally humorous moments in the flick, playing the delicate balance between comedy of manners and adventure, come from Sid Haig who clearly gets it. He plays every scene with a wink and a nod to the camera not unlike what Alan Hale used to do on the TV show Gilligan's Island. This lifts the film up from real bathos as the jokes all center on sex and the relationships between men and women.

Anitra Ford is the central character in this film despite the fact that Pam Grier gets top billing. This probably because it was basically Grier's vehicle and with her hot looks and her ethnicity she was the selling point for the flick- every male wanted to see this woman in all her voluptuous glory on the big screen.

Anitra Ford is the polar opposite of Grier in physical attributes and acting. To say that Ford underplays her part is an understatement – she is easily the most somnambulistic of actresses, with never any tension in her body or voice. She is ostensibly the sympathetic character in the movie and the one the audience is led to identify with. Ford is NOT an actress and the camera loves her.

The Big Bird Cage is definitely one of the purest examples of 70s film genres that pushes the envelope in terms of female nudity. It's no wonder that Tarantino mines the decade for all its banality and kitsch pseudo humor.

Jayne Mansfield's break-through in the film business came in the form of The Girl Can't Help It, less of a narrative film than a platform for a roster of top rock and roll musicians to showcase their acts and introduce the blonde bombshell as a sizzling new glamour-girl icon.

Faded talent agent Tom Miller (Tom Ewell) spends most nights soaking up free drinks and attempts to muster enough interest in the new rock and roll music to get back into the big time. When ex-con and gangster Marty 'Fats' Murdock (Edmond O'Brien) comes forth with an offer to make his girl friend Jerri Jordan (Jayne Mansfield) a singing star Miller scoffs at the idea. Experienced Miller is wise enough to know real talent and doesn't sense it with Jerri. Murdock entices Miller with a fat bankroll and Miller moves forward with promoting Jerri. But Jerri doesn't want a singing career. She's a home body and really just wants to marry a good man and settle down to raise a family. Managing to produce a hit record with a song that Murdock himself composed Jerri becomes a star, and Murdock becomes the target for a rival gangster with a vested interest in the music business. As bullets begin flying Jerri and Miller discover their love for each other and hope they can survive success.

Mansfield doesn't so much act in the movie as moves through it. By the time she made it to The Girl Can't Help It she was known as a model with a double digit atomic-powered figure, and had bleached her dark hair blonde like another celebrity icon Marilyn Monroe.

Mansfield was marketed as the alternative Monroe, but in a concentrated version. Her physical dimensions were more appealing to the obsessed American male, her screen persona was more vacantly 'blonde', and her personal life was checkered by heightened controversy with numerous husbands and a litter of children.

This flick moves along with the broad exposition and delivery of a bad Las Vegas act with plenty of corny jokes and rough humor to keep the flat-footed narrative buoyant. Clunky jokes about Mansfield's body, gangsters, rock and roll, and talent management are set up and delivered well by the trio of leads Tom Ewell, Jayne Mansfield, and Edmond O'Brien.

Adapted from Garson Kanin's novel "Do Re Mi" by director Frank Tashlin and Herbert Baker the narrative takes up about sixty percent of the movie. The rest of the film is an interesting document of the musical talents of the day. Ray Anthony, Fats Domino, The Platters, Little Richard, Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps, the Treniers, Eddie Fontaine, Abbey Lincoln and Eddie Cochran all appear as themselves in musical showcases during sequences as Tom shepherds Jerri through the entertainment landscape of the day.

Director Frank Tashlin cut his teeth directing cartoons, and the way he helms this flick shows it. The funny moments of male obsession as characters react to Mansfield are juvenile to say the least but the way he captures the musical talent is well done. The sequences are not very authentic as the Hollywood sound stages are all dressed in candy-colored details to brighten up the vapid story line. However the music is all authentic with all the performers coming across as intriguing charismatic talents.

One sequence in particular comes across with a special eeriness when the imaginary incarnation of Julie London sings "Cry Me A River" to a drunken Tom who had supposedly discovered the singer but lost her due to his alcohol abuse. This regret-driven hallucination is goofily presented but with Tom Ewell in the male role playing against the haunting voice of London it takes on substantial weight in the over-lit comedic world of the film.

Edmond O'Brien comes on a little too heavy as the ex-con gangster Marty 'Fats' Murdock who is bankrolling Jerri's entry into the music business. O'Brien doesn't delivery lines so much as he pounds them into the face of the viewer. This is in keeping with the character, and it offsets the more nuanced performance of Ewell and straight delivery of Mansfield, but at times it would be great to see him with a lighter touch.

You'll get some fun out of an initial viewing of this one. Don't expect it to change your life. On the DVD there is also a nice biography about Jayne Mansfield that will illuminate and enlighten, and is better than the feature in some ways.

Every time Alec Baldwin appears on screen in this flick in some gnarly moment immersed in emotional conflict between his ex-wife Meryl Streep and children there's always slightly bitter-sweet feelings in the viewer because we're reminded of his real-life domestic issues between him and his real ex-wife Kim Bassinger and their child which were made so public when the power couple officially broke up.

Successful restaurant owner Jane Adler (Meryl Streep) is saddened as her three children have all moved out and when her ex-husband attorney Jake Adler (Alec Baldwin) approaches her for a romantic reconnecting she must reevaluate their differences and possible new beginning. Jake's current trophy wife Agness (LakeBell) is pressuring Jake for another child, and sensitive architect Adam Schaffer (Steve Martin) begins a relationship with Jane. As Jake and Jane go through numerous sexual exploits they begin to understand themselves better and their differences and when it seems there is no hope for the future, they realize just what they mean to each other.

These are fleeting nano-moments as Baldwin manages to anchor this movie in ways that allow the mediocre writing to soar. His character never comes off as some obnoxious attorney but rather as a needy sincere professional approaching his golden years. His argument to Streep's Jane at one point is solid when he claims that they are in the perfect place in their lives to make it work between them, since the children are moved out and they can finally spend time with each other without distraction.

The who-cares attitude we get from the picture is infused by the antics of the lead characters Jake and Jane and the overt way that the script insists on hitting the clichéd high points in the narrative and the feel-good gee, what-if concept of two successful middle-aged people having an affair since one of them has divorce and married a trophy wife.

Even the script is pastry thin. Writer/director Nancy Meyers wisely hands the material over to a stalwart cast Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, John Krasinski, and Lake Bell and although the real comedic heavy lifting is managed by Baldwin, his partner Meryl Streep shows her particular comedic side as a lonely successful business woman and mother in her fifties who hasn't dated in years.

Writer/director Nancy Meyers relates the entire commerce between men and women to food, and in particular to how food, and drink bond couples and families. When Jake and Jane reconnect it occurs during a mistaken meal together that they stumble on, opening the door to a night of renewed coupling. When Jane turns it on to win over Adam's affection an extensive sequence involves their preparing chocolate croissants which brings their love together.

Jane's core problem with her relationships is that it is defined by her handling of food, and by extension her male partners are insulated by how they redefine meals and other consumables. After a night of getting high and dancing Jane drags Adam back to her factory and in essence puts him to work before making love to him using the food as a conduit. When Jane agrees to a nightly tryst with Jake she temps him with a voiced menu including his favorite chocolate cake, and when Jake stands her up.

The core issues with Jane's inability to connect with men is reflected in her own inability to connect honestly with her own feelings, so when she urgently tracks down her analyst and asks him to tell it's okay to have an affair with her married husband, she is relived when he merely suggest that she "let it go" and explore what she feels about Jake.

The movie also stacks the deck with some characters coming across with little sympathy. LakeBell's trophy wife Agness is a no-nonsense single mother who lacks little soft points. She orders Jake around and has him going to a fertility lab every other day so they can have a child of their own. It is a shame that Agness isn't given more sympathetic moments. She is introduced as a snake charmer who harangues Jake through several scenes and only manages to get one humanizing moment when she looks at Jake and sees his love for Jane.

Agness's young son from a previous marriage Emjay Anthony's Pedro is an undisciplined terror, and Jake is helpless and unmotivated to rein him in. In one small scene the Gestapo-type cross examination that Pedro lays on Jake will make any single mother rethink her home-schooling techniques.

If you have gone through a divorce, or even had a break up, and even if you're not in a mid-life love affair, you'll have a fun time watching Baldwin, Streep and all the others in this bedroom farce, which delivers some real poignancy at the end.

It's unfortunate for us Postmoderns that Raymond Chandler didn't write more prolifically or within a wider scope of genre style. "The Long Goodbye" is one of his best works.

If you know the Chandler novel and are familiar with the Noir Film style this movie will make you feel like a pig in slop! What is this world, this seemingly bright, sunny, happy land peopled by human ciphers in advanced states of ethical and moral erosion?

The cast is an excellent line up of some of the finest actors with the best credits: Elliot Gould stars as a slouching, sloppy Phillip Marlowe, with Sterling Hayden as Roger Wade, the lesser known Nina Van Pallandt as Eileen Wade, and the equally proficient Mark Rydell as Marty Augustine.

As with many other Altman films there is also a support cast of known actors who add characteristics and color to the film. Because Robert Altman bases much of his production on actor improvisation, sometimes the passing wave of recognizable faces of the unspoken cast creates much of the pleasure in his films. This film also has Henry Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vince Palmieri, Jack Riley, Tammy Shaw, and Helen Mirren.

Altman eschews the classic Noir imagery in his story and attaches it only to character traits for his lead persona Marlowe. The detective's activities include a plethora of the genre accoutrements. For instance Marlowe chain smokes through every possible scene, just like the old movies; he drives an old 1930s automobile that sticks out in the streamlined 1970s California urban landscape; he wears a jacket and tie, and mutters the line "It's okay with me", seemingly as a reaffirmation that the corrupt world he is investigating will not tarnish his errant-knight capabilities.

Altman has referred to this film as "Rip Van Marlowe", a re-imagination of the story of "The Long Goodbye" as if Marlowe had been asleep for 30 years, awakening in Los Angeles in the early 70s. The concept is so California New Age-y Post-Neo-Noir that it requires the viewer know the detective genre and its conventions well to get the humor Altman is pushing. It is a push because the film seems filled with unthreatening everyday activity.

The point that Terry Lennox may have killed his wife and committed suicide seems so like just another news item that the Police shuffle it away by slapping a solution on it to avoid more investigative man-hours on the case.

Marlowe's personal code that will not allow him to believe that someone he considers a friend could be a murderer also compels him to know the Truth. It is this personal integrity that he exchanges with those in the world, and it transcends money or sex or just about anything else. Marlowe cares as little about the $5000 thousand dollar bill he receives from Terry Lennox, as he does about losing the one dollar bill he loses to Terry from gambling.

The film is slow going however if the viewer is not hip to Altman's perspective and his attitude of how Noir sensibilities fit into postmodern mindset. Altman utilizes few of the classic Noir imagery for his film; in fact his characters' moral universe is normal for the day. What Altman does is turn the Noir convention inside out to show how the perception of the conceit has no strength today, regardless of how individual moral codes like Marlowe's are paramount to the character.

There is no real Noir for Robert Altman because the worlds moral system has become too forgiving, and the moral code that detectives like Marlowe have lived by in the past is so archaic it's like driving a 1940s automobile on the streets of present-day Los Angeles. Elliot Gould's Marlowe drives around the city in an old museum piece of a car, clearly identifying his place in the history of things.

The film is quite literate in the way it presents to us a seeker of Truth embodied in the 'Detective'. In the Chandler novel "The Long Goodbye" Phillip Marlowe recalls his involvement with an ex-war veteran Terry Lennox and the ultimate search for him by a gangster who believes Lennox has taken his money, and by a whacked-out Psychologist/Quack. It's a story of how a character gets away with murder, and how it seems justified given the personality of the victim.

Chandler always wrote about the underneath of things. He may write about innocent characters but they are sure to have a streak of corruptness to them, just enough to veer all the other good stuff in their personalities toward some distinction that will satisfy them in a perverse manner, but will also be their downfall. Terry Lennox is just such a character. He has a war record, a scarred face, money, and a lifestyle that doesn't require working a regular job.

Those of us who feel that film serves as a temporary portal for our imaginations, and who are familiar with the detective genre watch with amusement at Altman's draining of Chandler's prose, and also the inverting of Film Noir. There's no Noir left in Altman's Los Angeles, and to top it off his adaptation of one of the best Chandler novels challenges our sense of cinematic story-telling technique.

Terry Lennox was supposed to get away with it, and Chandler's point is that no one gets away with it, but Chandler painted a character so unapproachable, so unrealistic, that no one would identify with him. Terry Lennox lives in that rarefied world of seeming means- he has money to cushion his moving through society.

It's said that James Stewart's deal for a profit percentage over Screen Actors Guild salary to perform in Winchester '73 was the only way director Anthony Mann's movie could have been made. Given Stewart's low popularity rating after a stint in the Army and the lack of viewer interest in the Western genre the venture was a long shot at best.

That it set a precedence for James Stewart, and the "working actor", something that remains today as stars (actually their agents) negotiate their talent for appearances in features, the deal Stewart struck with director Anthony Mann paved the way for a revival of the Western genre as well as reestablishing the actor as a palpable talent.

A shooting contest in Dodge City attracts Lin McAdam (James Stewart) as the prize is a "one of a thousand" Winchester circa 1873, a special edition repeater rifle. When Lin bumps into Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally) an old grudge is rekindled and is aggravated by the two being the finalist in the shooting match for the treasured Winchester rifle. Lin wins, barely, but Dutch steals the rifle and flees across the desert as Lin peruses as the real reason for their hatred of each other emerges. Lin and his partner High-Spade (Millard Mitchell) stop to help Lola Manners (Shelley Winters), and realize that the rifle has slipped into the hands of killer Waco Johnny Dean (Dan Duryea), and back again into the hands of Dutch. Good confronts evil as Lin and Dutch face off in a fiery revenge match with only one man sure to emerge triumphant.

Aesthetically Winchester '73 as a revenge tale has a few flaws that limit its accessibility for the average viewer. The plot is couched in a story of mystery that is only revealed obliquely through characters talking to each other with the viewer learning simultaneously why the conflict between Lin and Dutch is so intense. This way of telling the story allows Mann to dwell on the "competitive" nature between the lead characters in the shooting contest for the famed Winchester rifle and allows the gun to serve double duty as a central metaphoric element in the movie.

Cinematographer William Daniels shot the film in a high-contrast black and white, and the jagged western terrain serves as a hearty counterpoint to underline the emotions of the characters. Daniels was nominated for an Oscar for a few films including the one in which he photographed Greta Garbo, Flesh and the Devil. He finally won his Oscar in 1949 for his work on Jules Dassin's noir classic The Naked City in 1948. Daniels captures the world of the film in ways that stick with you long after the screen fades.

To call Winchester '73 a landmark film is an understatement. The overwhelming success of the revisionist view of the Western initiated four more collaborations from Mann with his alter ego Stewart in the lead, including The Naked Spur in 1953. Robert L. Richards and Borden Chase adapted a story by Stuart N. Lake into a script that allows director Anthony Mann to utilize the exterior camera setups to reflect James Stewart's inner angst as he attempts to avenge a past injustice of Stephen McNally.

The ultimate hook in the film is how the prized rifle keeps falling into the hands of first one, then another character with James Stewart's character just missing. It's the kind of thing that keeps us on the edge of our seat- we feel cheated that the gun has been stolen from its rightful owner, and then we feel frustrated as again and again the thing is scooped up by another admirer.

The ending may leave you with ambivalence regarding the motivations of those deemed as good in the movie, and the ultimate future of the community they help to found, and this seems as vital to audience today looking at a film from the brink of the Cold War. It's still a rough ride, and thrilling to boot.

There's so much of Woody Allen that is "old school" that as his career moves into golden age (the director is in his 80s), his technique only seems more hip and contemporary than most new kids on the block. Blue Jasmine is a polished and well-developed film, clearly the product of a veteran filmmaker, meaning that the seams never show.

After Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) breaks up with her wealthy Wall Street husband Hal (Alec Baldwin) and her exemplary lifestyle is reduced to nothingness after lawyers and the federal government takes her own wealth she moves to San Francisco to live with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and rebuild her life. Having to relearn how to make a living, Jasmine confronts old demons with her sister and discovers truths about those she held close in the past.

There are glitches in Allen's movie, but the performance of Cate Blanchett in the lead role exhibits little problems, and it is her Jasmine that speaks so clearly to the audience and through her that we understand all the problems of our own little ball of personal and worldly troubles.

Woody Allen is one of the few writers who write excellently for women, allowing his female characters to stand equal to, and at times tower over, the male characters in his movies. This is partly because both men and women in the Woody Allen universe are susceptible to the urban angst of merely confronting the daily compromises of living an absurd existence. On many levels Allen consistently reexamines the same themes that Albert Camus, and Anton Chekov, and even Jack Kerouac examined.

Allen's transplanting his character from Manhattan to San Francisco speaks volumes about how the wandering lost soul can be as neurotic on the West coast as in the North Eastern states. Blue Jasmine touches on many things that hit us hard- familial loyalty, love, success, the personal value of self-respect and even in an oblique way, politics, and the eroding nature of money on the individual.

The 2014 Academy has nominated Cate Blanchett for an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, and this is no mean feat. Blachett positively devours the scenery in every frame she appears in, and mouthing Allen's words, words we've heard so many time before coming from so many different actors, she makes the cookie-cutter script of Woody Allen sound all new.

With Blanchett's Jasmine carrying the force of the film, we understand her predicament through extended monologues to other characters and to herself, through flashbacks, and accompanied by vintage blues recordings of Bessie Smith, we see into our own soul.

This is one film that does not hold back on stripping away the tissue of myth that post-modern man lives by. It has always seemed that Allen's intention was to get to the heart of the problem by his characters consistently rationalizing why and how the world demands things of them that they are neither prepared nor willing to admit. Blue Jasmine will leave you with a chilling example of what that unexamined world can be.

Episodic and sad, The Panic in Needle Park as a pitiful slice-of-life character study stands out amongst the other drug films of the 70s in its nuanced unfolding narrative of two hapless New York addicts and their ability to survive and stick together under the weight of Police tensions and their own faults.

The excellent Kitty Winn is outstanding in the role of the sensitive artist Helen, who falls in love with Al Pacino's drug-addicted, petty criminal Bobby. Winn won the award at Cannes that year for her performance, and looking today, it's still as edgy as it was back in 1971. Pacino pretty much over-plays his part as the antagonist, and functions to support Winn's presence in the film.

Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne based their script for the film on James Mills's reportage that was based on a photo spread about a drug-addicted couple that spent their days in Needle Park between pilfering and hustling for their next fix. The films gritty subject matter never sinks to the scatological, but rather, in the prose of Didion, and Dunne retains an elegiac sense.

Director Jerry Schatzberg never allows the truth of images to become fuzzy, sticking to a clear documentary-like capturing of action. The camera lingers on characters injecting heroin after preparing the drug, and the images could function as a how-to video in some instances. The complete absence of any music track to indicate to the viewer what they should feel allows a deep sense of truth to burn through the screen.

This is the film that Francis Ford Coppola showed to Paramount to convince them that Al Pacino was suitable for the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather. And in retrospect we can see that Pacino possesses a strength that is core to his persona, and certainly something that Coppola relied on to carry the central character of his film.

This is not Pacino's best performance but his overbearing screen presence counters Winn's subtle nuanced creation of a woman eroding into human detritus. The film also captures much of the spirit of New York of the early 1970s, when the use of drugs was a relatively unsophisticated activity, very different from much of the condoned abuse that is tolerated today.

Watch this film for excellent examples of film performances, and techniques that really don't exist anymore with the present crop of performers coming out of the acting schools. Winn retired too early after Panic brought her accolades, and Pacino continues to work on stage and in film, as his is the kind of acting that can be consider the finest of the period.

The Westerner, low on the special effects list still delivers such a satisfying punch, with a story that is complicated by character-driven plot turns, that the overall effect is one of real history. Based on the actual existence of at least one character Judge Roy Ben, the movie weaves together a fabric of fiction and history at once based on the myth of the West, while countering it to allow the viewer into a tale that fulfills every expectation.

In his saloon in the town of Vinegaroon, Texas Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan) holds court and proclaims himself the only law west of the Pecos. When Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) is brought before him for judgment on a horse stealing charge it appears that the good-natured drifter will be hanged by the judge. When Cole notices the many images of the famed performer Lilly Langtry around the saloon he begins spinning a tale of his friendship with the woman, intriguing the judge and causing a suspended sentence to be handed down on the agreement t that Cole will give the judge a lock of the woman's hair that he has hidden in El Paso. The judge develops a strange admiration for Cole and the men become friendly until a local homesteader Jane Ellen Mathews (Doris Davenport) comes to the judge to complain of his hanging one of her hands. It seems the aggression between the cattlemen, which Judge Ben supports, and the homesteaders is bubbling over and Jane and her father who have a small farm are being pushed out. When Bean initiates a fire that destroys Jane's farm and kills her father Cole gets an arrest warrant and has himself deputized to arrest the judge, but a shoot-out erupts ending in tragedy.

Much has been said of Gary Cooper's quiet, subtle acting technique and here it is in great form, but the real prize is Walter Brenan who plays the real-life Judge Bean with a host of idiosyncrasies that completely humanize the legendary figure. It becomes clear that the judge is abusing his power as a law enforcer in order to bilk money from those who are brought before him, but Brenan justifies all his character's motivations, and even when the motives are less than pure, we still can't help but find him lovable.

The film takes fetishism to unreliable heights for a film from the 40s. The supposed lock of hair belonging to Lilly Langtry that Cole uses as leverage to escape sentencing is played against hold so much obsessive power of Judge Bean that Brennan positively drools over the talisman in the scene when Cooper's Cole hands it over to him. This is strange and new for a western and adds to the list of lore about the legendary judge that history has risen to mythic levels.

As the love interest in the movie we know from the get-go that Cole and Jane represent the hope for the future in the ugly rough western land. And much of the earned success of the films characters will be at the expense of land, property, and loyalties. This sacrificing of the characters basic desires for something else, something with more valuable long-term effects leaves the films finale with a tainted sense of hope.

The film runs a little long for one from 1940, and this is due to the way that director William Wyler works to allow the characters to tell their story and shape the film. If you fell at times that the plot drags, you will surely be drawn to how the actors are sculpting the tale. It's one you will return to again to see the great perfs from Walter Brennan and Gary Cooper.

With an old-school style and a pacing that never lets up the tension Haywire is a throbbing showcase for its lead star mixed Martial Arts fighter Gina Carano as operative-for-hire Mallory Kane. Right from the opening scene we know we're in a store for a special kind of action flick. This woman does all her own stunts and you're likely to be watching a second time through just to enjoy every punch of every smash cut of the movie.

Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) is one of the best operatives the government has. She's positively ruthless in her efficiency, always taking care of loose ends to ensure the success of missions. When hired to save a kidnapped journalist, she is alerted when he ends up dead and she becomes a target for elimination. Managing to dispatch the assassins who approach her, and befriending agency suit Alex Coblenz (Michael Douglas) she works her way up the food chain to the one who put the finger on her.

Looking back I remember my fascination with the old Avengers British TV show form the 60s and my secret thrill at watching Diana Rigg's Emma Peel lower the kibosh on some underestimating bad guy. I think every man thought that having a beautiful leather-clad beauty kick their brains in was the ultimate thrill. There's a lot of that same currency here as director Steven Soderburgh lovingly follows Carano through action territory.

There is a missing element in the movie that would lift it to a higher level. Carano never goes up against another female fighter and this would add considerable range and depth to the flick. There are also some stumbles in Carano's acting movements. She's not an actor, and Soderburgh smartly constructs scenes so that the woman can rely on primal emotional responses. Her character is a contract killer and the movie sticks to character interactions that emphasize the cold and calculating business of killing.

What Soderburgh's film smartly does is recall the feeling of the movies from the 70s and 80s that were essentially exposes on the secret kill squads that worked Cuba, and European soil in the name of Democracy. Soderburgh even goes so far as to create a visual palette that recalls the look of the super-35 MM film stock, and the available-lighting technique that was used during the day.

Soderburgh also allows the film to float off without resolving too resolutely to close the narrative. He's an intelligent director, and respects the brain power of the viewer enough to let us watch and put the pieces together on our own. Along the way he gives us some great action set-ups with Carano doing all her own stunts.

The Criterion Collection has reissued this classic European film noir, long considered one of the classics of existential French films tipping a hat at the American genre.

Alain Delon stars, as Jeff Costello is an assassin who lives a solitary life with no friends. Costello begins his new assignment stealing a car, obtaining new license plates and a gun from his associate. He then drives to a nightclub at night and shoots the owner, accidentally being seen by the club pianist Valerie (Cathy Rosier). The police pick up Costello and with the investigation led by a determined Police Inspector (Francois Perier), subject him and many others to a line up. Costello is released because he has set up an alibi with Jan Lagrange (Natalie Delon), and also because Valerie lies and states that she did not see him. When Costello goes to collect his money for killing the club owner, his employer attempts to kill him. Police Inspector (Francois Perier) puts together a team of undercover cops to trail Costello through the Paris Metro, an underground labyrinth where Costello escapes. Costello thus seeks to get paid for his killing job and get revenge on the shadowy businessman who hired him, and stay one step ahead of the police Inspector but makes a decision that brings about surprising results.

This beautiful 103-minute feature from 1967, re-issued print from Criterion features a fine interview with director Jean-Pierre Melville, and a real insight to his view of cinema. The DVD also has interviews with Alain Delon, Natalie Delon, Francois Perier, and Cathy Rosier and their feelings about the film.

The outstanding element to this film is the level of pure cinema, wherein the cinematography and editing tell so much about the main character without dialogue. Alain Delon in the lead role tells us volumes about his character's needs, and given this use of his method is particular to this European interpretation of the American film Noir genre, he is a perfect fit for this role.

Director Melville utilized his studio for nearly all of the interior shots, and many of the set windows clearly reveal a processed backdrop. With the staged production values the film works because this reminds the audience that the theme of isolation is a key element in this French interpretation of the American Noir genre.

The key metaphor of the caged bird, singing all the while, is a traditional touch that I feel most film theory dispenses with today. When Le Samourai was made film was still considered part of a literate culture, especially in France, where even today the Cannes Film Festival heralds the work of director such as the Coen Brothers for Miller's Crossing.

The film is ostensibly a philosophical thesis beginning with the long static shot of a reclining assassin, Jeff Costello (Alain Delon) smoking in bed with the light of day coming in his cheap hotel room windows. As the rain seems to be falling even through the sunlight, a caged bird chirps away as a motto comes across the screen about the solitary mission of Le Samourai.

The film stays with Costello for nearly all of the action. Much of what we learn from the film is through purely visual information. Director Melville relies on the sophistication of the viewer to follow the editing and fill in all the open spots.

Consider the way Delon's Costello relates to his caged bird, a symbol of the protagonist's own captured soul. Melville utilizes classic cinematic structure to build his theme. We see Costello look at the bird as the creature chirps away, then we see the bird, and then we cut back to Costello as he makes a decision to take action.

Costello seems to communicate with the bird in other ways. After henchmen bug his apartment Costello seems to understand from his chirping partner where to locate the microphone. It is the sort of touch that creates a deeper dynamic with the audience and allows them an entryway into other possible levels of the film.

It is significant that one of the major showdowns happens in this hotel room with the blond businessman who hired Costello. The even lighting of the scene allows the viewer to see clearly the relationships in the story and why the message of the film so potent. There is no doubt about where Costello stands and his employer who is willing to kill the assassin to eliminate any collateral damage.

This is different from the American Noir style which utilizes a good deal of shadow to obscure the actors and obliterate meaning. In Le Samourai the characters actions are plain to see. Melville's direction shows us all the details and by doing so emphasizes the ulterior motives of the characters.

The ending is another static shot of the emptiness of a night club, punctuated by the director as he pulls out to reveal the edges of his own film set. It is Melville's way of creating distance both physically and intellectually for the viewer to perceive a greater understanding of the Noir film genre.

Michael Mann may have gotten some inspiration from Melville for his film Collateral, in which the Tom Cruse character constantly reminds Jamie Fox that he kills people for a living. This sense of professional expertise in Le Samourai is contrasted against the piano professionalism of Valerie the pianist, and the expert detection of the police detective Francois Perier.

It is the isolation and loneliness of the Delon character that burns the images of Le Samourai into our understanding of an activity and process involved with any profession, but especially professional killing for money.

Reportedly released in the US under the title The Godson, in a cut-to-fit format and overdubbed (I can't imagine the voices they used for the overdub!), it was overlooked until its re-released version in 1967.

The movie that Rock Hudson considered to be a horror story and a big gamble for his otherwise steely screen persona, Seconds from 1966 is a stark black-and-white parable o the dangers of wishful thinking. A dark side to the same theme that made It's a Wonderful Life so potent a story for the working class, Seconds makes the same statement for the urban professional who after climbing the corporate ladder to succeed finds himself deplete of the very thing he was competing for, namely his vitality.

Next in line for the top job at his bank, Antiochus 'Tony' Wilson (Rock Hudson) is disturbed when he gets a late night phone call from his old tennis buddy and school chum whom he thought was dead for many years. What he discovers is an organization that will give him a new youthful life and lifestyle for a fee, and he accepts after some coercion. Tony gets a new life but finds an empty existence inside him after he has left his wife and old comfortable surroundings. When he requests to return to his former life and start over he finds that those in charge demand an even higher sacrifice than he had imagined.

This is one of those dark films that stand today as one of the landmarks of the sixties, when real disappointment was rising in the working class, and those dropouts from society who saw the formal institutions of home and family and career as vapid social constructs. It's a bold statement, a protest film in a way because it highlights how society functions on a base of empty values, yet the filmmakers offer no real alternative. When Tony attempts to recover his place and start again, the organization demands severe loyalty.

There's also the supposedly "new" community that Tony enters. As an artist, he lives the free-spirited life admired by all his neighbors. The real test comes when he is required to follow though with his new identity, something in which he discovers is to demanding to support. Knowing what we know today about Rock Hudson, the layers of meaning in the film run deep making this one of those quintessential Hudson vehicles for any academics classroom.

The stark imagery highlights the noir qualities of the film. This is certainly film noir at it's most existential, as the fantasy-like atmosphere of the world of the film contains enough everyday trappings to keep us identifying with the characters, even as the action veers off kilter and meta-horror situations occur.

There's something basically elemental about a character who wants to improve his life and who gets knocked down at every turn. This is the stuff of all the great stories of success in the modern world and The Fugitive Kind, with its religious and sexual imagery rides this theme to a glorified dramatic climax.

In a slow southern town in Mississippi, entertainer Valentine "Snakeskin" Xavier (Marlon Brando) wanders into trouble when he tires of fast girlfriend Carole Cutrere (Joanne Woodward) and her friends and decides to start a new life. He finds work in a store belonging to Lady Torrence (Anna Magnani) a repressed Italian widow married to an overbearing racist. Lady pines for the old days when she and her first husband had an estate with fruit trees and supposed happiness. Husband Jabe M. Torrance (Victor Jory) is dying of cancer and tries to remain an obstacle to Lady's opening a new money-making addition to the failing store. When she enlists Valentine to be her partner, the relationship gets out of hand and the result is a tragic one for many.

Tennessee Williams in his day was a popular writer for actors because he laid out very speakable lines, which were also incisive words that revealed the core of a characters needs and desires in ways that were completely acceptable regardless of the degradation of the characters spirit.

Although the film abounds with monologues that exhibit the high-minded attitudes and values of the characters and the writer of the material, the Gothic southern landscape supports completely this verbose derangement of verbiage. Brando has moments in which he sears through the screen with his seemingly inept performance. It's hard to knock the actor no matter how caricatured his performances have become. In his day Brando was the man for actors precisely because he was able to sustain such performance for the camera.

Anna Magnani as Lady Torrance delivers one of the best perfs of her life as the repressed wife of a southern racist. How this relationship began we can only guess, and that's not important. What we get from the coupling is the final outrage resulting from years of built-up hatred. Her dynamic interaction with Brando is one for the film historians (although it is reported that Brando wasn't impressed). For fans like me she can never deliver a flat performance.

Director Sidney Lumet surely must have felt he was reining a glorious beast of a film with its hot star cast and edgy story. The Mississippi locale doesn't sound too much like the deep south- we can actually understand the characters speaking. The look of the movie feels like a lost world with a beautiful high-contrast black-and-white imagery that does a lot for the performances, although some long monologues of Brando talking about the religious flying creature of his soul may have you nodding off.

No matter how you look at it The Fugitive Kind is a piece of Hollywood history that remains a testament to all involved, actors, writer, and director, and clearly shows how a period of studio filmmaking in America reached great heights. This remastered version shows the movie at its best.

There's more than one moment in this film when you might feel a little lost, wondering just what it is the director is trying to say. It is absolutely not about redemption, but it is, and it's more about perception of truth than it is about how art mirrors life… but then it isn't. The DVD features an introduction from the director about his intentions and if it weren't for this primer to what follows, the movie may play for you like just another independent flick about Hollywood.

Escaping from prison Cameron (Steve Railsback) dodges a car heading toward him on a bridge causing the car to plummet into the water below drowning the driver. When Cameron discovers that he has stumbled into a movie being made by Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole), he immediately attempts escape but is stopped when Cross offers the con protection if he'll be a stunt man in the picture. Cameron still plans to leave until he meets Nina Franklin (Barbara Hershey), the lead actress in the film. Cameron falls for Nina immediately and she makes him feel good while Cross gets him to go to greater and greater lengths to get Cameron to perform dangerous stunts for his camera. When Nina and Cameron try to escape together they plan for her to hide in the trunk of the car that Cameron will drive off of a bridge in a dangerous stunt for Cross to film, but when the momentous day arrives will they be able to go through with it?

I'm not sure I hold with Director Richard Rush's ideas voiced by his alter ego Peter O'Toole's Eli Cross who on the one hand seeks out great realism with Cameron's true Vietnam experiences and their affect on his movie, while philosophizing about truth versus movie magic. It's clear that Cross is a ruthless task master when it comes to getting his picture made, and this aspect of the Hollywood industry we understand.

This is possibly Steve Railsback's only shining moment as a rising Hollywood star. His only other most popular film role was as Charles Mason in Helter Skelter and it's kind of too bad that he hasn't gotten better roles. The Stunt Man is a special case because it puts Railsback in scenes against two really fine actors. In scenes with Peter O'Toole Steve Railsback utilizes his Actors Studio training well to deliver the truth of character and scene, with Barbara Hershey Steve Railsback reveals a particularly sensitive side to his persona that very nearly makes him palatable to the mainstream taste.

The quality of the script for The Stunt Man clearly sets it apart from other movies like it. Writing credits for the film go to Lawrence B. Marcus and Richard Rush for adapting the Paul Brodeur novel. The action keeps pushing and pulling us in different directions, and as we recover we find that we are viewing the film story from a variety of angles. Some valuable time is consumed as we learn, along with the main character Cameron, what stunt men do, and it is this process that relates the idea that filmmaking is like life- there are those who direct, and those who act, and those who do the stunt work.

Where the film is weakest is in relying on Railsback's Cameron to deliver the angst and betrayal of the U.S. Government on the people via the Vietnam War. If this movie is about that, and we are pointed to the comparison repeatedly through the World War 1 art direction of the movie within the film, then a more direct bond should have been made. There are some great scenes of excellent stunt work that develop the story but logically stop the action for anyone who has worked on a film.

It's still an exciting picture to watch and one that for filmmakers and cineastes will continue to bring a wealth of ideas and possible themes. The stellar cast shines and in many ways makes this movie a pleasure to watch.

This movie clearly must have started as a stage play as most of the action takes place in the living room and dining room of the lead character's house and this stilted, suffocating, and labored event will leave you regretting that 90 minutes of your life has passed watching this thing, waiting for something to take away.

When architect Casey (Thomas Jane) gets a call from an old friend one Thursday morning for a visit he accepts with some apprehension. Their friendship, based on drug dealing and killing, ended some four years earlier and Casey was not eager to be reminded of those days as he has sufficiently created a legitimate life for himself and his wife. When Nick (Aaron Eckhart) arrives he borrows Casey's car and leaves his luggage as he runs off to a "business" meeting. When Casey discovers a suitcase full of drugs he flushes them down the drain but when a Rastafarian hit man arrives looking for the drugs Casey finds his problems have just begun. Later when Nick's partners porn actress Dallas (Paulina Porizkova) and sadist Billy Hill (James LeGros) arrive looking for two million dollars that Nick has squirreled away Casey finds himself in a situation where he must out-wit gangsters, cops, and hit men in order to escape with his life.

With the acting talents of Paulina Porizkova on display as well as her naked body one can understand how her acting career skyrocketed right to the bottom. The woman can't act, and why the filmmakers thought that a view of her scrawny naked body would entice an audience to this cinematic mess is unfathomable. She delivers lines as if she's sucking the air out of the room, without one hint of sub-textual consideration.

With the even-lighted sets we can assume that the film is intended as a comic take on the gangster film, but the jokes are so pushed and overplayed, and scenes so pointless that you wonder how these people can get up and dress themselves in the morning. There is no one in this film we can care about, and this is the fatal flaw of the movie.

Writer/Director Skip Woods must have thought that his witty dialogue was so good that simple scenes could be set up and played out for the best effect. This kind of filmmaking went out with His Girl Friday, and the revolutionary dominance of the Actors Studio over film acting. The lines aren't funny, but then the actors aren't comic actors either, and this confusion is what drags the movie down to a mind-numbing series of claustrophobic set-ups with Casey at the center.

Thomas Jane is a fine actor, and his scene with the excellent Aaron Eckhart are dynamic, but Jane isn't a comedian. Moreover he is up against an impossible task of taking his character Casey and showing how he redeems himself after killing someone in a previous career. There is very little any actor can do to get us to like him after showing that he is a murderer, and Jane, as sincerely as he tries, cannot pull this off.

Eckhart on the other hand makes the movie humorous and quirky from his first appearance in the movie. Eckhart can sufficiently act with his eyebrows and makes us interested in his character regardless of the thoughtless mayhem he and his cronies create in the opening scene of the film. We feel from this appearance that his character is the main one we should follow, but after Eckhart disappears from the picture for most of the important scenes, we are left with a sense of being cheated.

The one-day action arc in the narrative makes it a classic story, but the isolated set of Casey's house make this much better suited to an off-Broadway play, and the tainted tone of the story moving from serious to comic would play better for stage actors.

Reportedly the John Sturges-directed, ponderous Hour of the Gun that came some ten years after the high-profile flourished Gunfight at the OK Corral, was a much more appreciated film. Mostly the admiration came form the director who was dismayed at the bending of historical facts to fit into a palpable Hollywood vehicle.

Writing kudos to Edward Anhalt who takes the gnarly legal situations of the film and makes them gripping as scenes are set up to examine the way in which Wyatt Earp uses the instruments of the law-enforcement system to bring the Clanton Brothers to trial for their wide-ranging activity of robbery and assassinations. Moreover the film highlights well how the character of Wyatt Earp disintegrates to the level of avenger in order to force justice.

It's a thinking man's film. These gunslingers talk a lot about their reasons for doing what they do. The deadly gunfight at the OK Corral happens very early in the movie, and the nullifying affect it has on the balance of power between law-abiding citizens and the outlaws becomes a social pivot point in how the film defines success. This is a period of change in the West, a time in which laws were supposed to supersede gun violence, and the script makes note to repeat the efforts of Earp to utilize this new rule of the land.

The performances of James Garner as Wyatt Earp, Jason Robards as Doc Holliday, and Robert Ryan as Ike Clanton anchor the film one three distinct personas. Each represents a defined viewpoint of how civilization is proceeding, and each argues as well with words as he shoots his gun.

There is some slight bending of historical accuracy as when Garner's Earp finally tracks down Ryan's Ike Clanton and the confrontation is one of those classical Hollywood standoffs. This only seems slightly self-indulgent for the filmmakers. This is still a classically-structured movie and we already know the story, but seeing how Hour of the Gun reaffirms the myth of the West will have you thinking more about how America developed such a respectful admiration of guns.

A film more for the designer or artist than for the average movie-goer, Helvetica seems to float by until the viewer realizes that the various faces and opinions that the movie features are so completely subjective that the film never anchors itself and feels like a stream of talking heads.

That isn't saying much, for the topic is as nebulous and fuzzy as trying to describe the color blue might be. The Helvetica font was born in the fifties and immediately impressed designers, craftsmen, typesetters, and artists with its simplicity and overall allure. As the film progresses the viewer may feel that he is being seduced into believing some subversive things, and this may be the filmmakers overall intention.

The impetus for this intriguing documentary may be the number of award-winning ads that appeared in 2007 featuring the Helvetica font. One particular item is Massimo Vignelli's design for the New York City Subway map, which not only features the attractive Helvetica font, but also manages to reduce the craggy map of Manhattan and Brooklyn, and the snaking underground train lines into smooth helveticized images.

Interviews in the film with Massimo Vignelli feature a cheerful self-satisfied man who seems on the constant verge of a chuckle as he talks about the indescribable allure of shapes and the feeling one gets from the Helvetica font. The man seems perfectly convinced of the belief in what he says like: "You can say, "I love you," in Helvetica. And you can say it with Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy. Or you can say it with the Extra Bold if it's really intensive and passionate, you know, and it might work." Director / Producer Gary Hustwit made the documentary in 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the font, and besides just making a film that wallows in the touchy-feely stuff that the aesthete deals with, he basically imparts a bombardment of the Helvetica font on the screen to let the viewer see how pervasive it has become, and also to suggest that the font itself may carry some subversive suggestion that possibly world peace is imaginable, and thus attainable.

This may sound like a tall tale but when some of the artists intone their love of the font just "because" it feels right to them, the viewer isn't left with a whole lot of objective stuff to support sticking with the movie. In fact your eyes may begin to gloss over without some overriding point to move toward, but you will be massaged visually.

Even though the majority of the film feels like a fluffy valentine to an innocuous subject (I wonder how many people really gush so over a font!), it is quite an engaging look at something that, to be useful, should seem transparent. In the eyes of most of the professionals who use Helvetica and speak glowingly about it, the font is used endlessly by everyone including pros, and amateurs alike because it has such a durable consistency and yet can be used often without becoming disengaging.

Filled with examples from every corner of the world, the film may have you peering for longer periods at simple signage just for the pleasure of moving your eyes over the friendly font. Hmmm.

Man on Wire is one of those true stories that, because of the DVD cover and introductory images, you know the ending to. You may find yourself squirming in your seat and feeling your pulse racing as the filmmaker carries us along on the preparations and execution of walking on a wire a quarter of a mile above the New York sidewalk.

This particular tale is one narrated by a lead character who possibly achieved the single most awe-inspiring feat in the last 50 years by illegally extending a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center during the final phase of its construction in 1974, and tight-rope walking and stunting for 45 minutes during the midday lunch crowd.

Philippe Petit was raised without much formal schooling and spent his childhood supporting himself as a juggler, unicyclist, and tightrope walker, and getting detained by the authorities many times for doing public performances without permits. The documentary allows the man to express himself and his desires in broad terms, and it becomes clear that self-challenging feats like earlier wire-walking at Notre Dame Cathedral and the Sydney Harbor Bridge only galvanized the central aesthetic drive of a man who defines himself in the physical feats he thinks up.

The pictures of the World Trade Center, many super-8 clips, will bring a sense of loss to those in New York who remember the buildings and what they meant to the local community, and the world at large. That Petit chose the buildings to make his "statement", now in the wake of 911, carries volumes of meaning. This kind of stunt could never be achieved again today given the heightened security accompanying virtually any public place in New York.

Adapted and directed by James Marsh from Philippe Petit's book "To Reach The Clouds", the film carries you along by chronologically recounting the sequence of events that led up to the Twin Towers tightrope crossing. Many of the actors in the reenactments look eerily like Petit, and his group of supporters, a feat that lends considerable thrust to the film as many of the men and women who helped Petit in 1974 are interviewed for the film.

What becomes evident in the film is Petit's passion, and an unapologetic pride that he managed to circumvent security and do something that will seem to the viewer as an act of an insane man. Petit at one point states that the act of walking a wire between the Twin Towers was "impossible", and that immediately drove him to achieve the feat, and if he possibly had died during it, he would had died a "beautiful" death for attempting it.

It may be interesting for many viewers to speculate on what is left for this risk-taker exhibitionist who today seems unchallenged by routine gymnastics and other performance activities. It's clear that the wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 was his crowning achievement, and don't we all wish we could do something as daring in our lives!