Reign of Terror: Anthony Mann

With Reign of Terror, also known as The Black Book, Anthony Mann has done something which I had previously thought impossible: he made a short, concise, and gripping thriller about the politics behind the French Revolution.  Mann frames the story as a battle between the corrupt Maximilien Robespierre and the virtuous members of the French Revolution who oppose his bloody reign.  The central plot device is a black book which holds the names of people that Robespierre is planning to execute.  If the names get out, then the other leaders of the French Revolution will turn on Robespierre and send him to the guillotine.  The film is surprisingly well-scripted and shot and contains some scenes of remarkable tension.  One sequence where Robespierre tracks down a couple who have stolen the black book to a countryside farm is stunning in its execution.  Some of the suspense is worthy of Hitchcock.  But the film's ultimate triumph is how it condensed one of the most complicated events of the 18th century into such comprehensive terms.  Mann understood that at the core of the French Revolution were a circle of fiery egos and megalomaniacs.  He was wise to make the film about them.  Very wise, indeed.

8/10

The House by the Cemetery: Lucio Fulci

It starts off as just another clone of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining: a family of three moves into a mysterious house with a bloody secret that slowly drives them insane.  But it gradually morphs into a film with its own bleak and tragic identity.  Of course, this being a Lucio Fulci film, it is full of all of the gore, violence, and dismemberment that fans of his work have come to expect.  But here's where The House by the Cemetery stands apart from the vast majority of Fulci's work: the plot is the vehicle for the violence, not the other way around.  While many Fulci films dwell on sex and/or violence that is completely nonsensical and irrelevant to the plot, in this film every stroke of the knife helps develop the mystery behind the house.  The characters soon realize that the house is inhabited by a twisted doctor who has survived for 150 years by somehow using cut up victims to regenerate his blood cells.  This is a silly twist, to be sure.  But somehow, Fulci pulls it off.  This is in no small part due to the ending which, reminiscent of his film The Beyond, hints that the survivors are doomed to wander in a netherworld of lost souls.  The House by the Cemetery is one of Fulci's most accessible works.  It is heavy in the gore department, but thankfully has enough of a story to back it up and keep less easily impressed viewers interested.

7/10

Santa Fe Trail: Michael Curtiz

Here's an interesting little Western.  Santa Fe Trail follows the exploits of a young J.E.B. Stuart and George Armstrong Custer as they are assigned positions in Kansas shortly after graduating from West Point.  Once there, they battle a clearly psychotic John Brown at Harpers Ferry who believes that splitting the Union will be the best way to end slavery.  The curious part of this film is how the characters and events within are portrayed.  The Southerns, including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, are depicted as righteous men who understand that they are on the wrong side of a bitter conflict, yet believe that the South should be left alone to solve its own problems.  Soldiers who would one day be separated and forced to fight against each other in the Civil War literally laugh at the idea that they would come to blows over such an issue.  The true villain is John Brown.  In a sense, John Brown is presented as a scapegoat for the start of the Civil War, thereby implying that the South had nothing to do with its initiation.  All of this was due to the time that the film was released.  The film premiered in 1940 after World War Two had already begun to ravage Europe and the Pacific.  The filmmakers didn't want to create a film that would polarize viewers in the North and the South.  So, in Santa Fe Trail, both the North and the South are depicted as friendly rivals who are forced into battle due to the actions of a crazed prophet.  It's a fascinating historical anachronism committed to celluloid.  It may not be accurate, but it's still an experience that both Yanks and Rebs can enjoy.

7/10

Raw Deal: Anthony Mann

Most great film noir have a dame.  Raw Deal ups the ante by having not one, but two of them to contend with its dark, brooding hero.  The hero in this case is Joe Sullivan, a crook who is doing a stint in prison for taking the heat for his pal Rick.  The first woman is Pat, his main squeeze.  She helps bust him out of prison in an escape orchestrated by Rick.  The second woman is Ann, a social worker who tried to reform Joe while he was in prison.  The three go on the run from the law and the mob.  It turns out the Rick set up the escape so that Joe would get killed.  Now that Joe is free, he does everything in his power to take him down.  This is standard noir stuff, from the doomed love affair (or triangle, in this case) right down to the moody inner narratives spoken over the sound of a theremin.  Cinematographer John Alton comes out swinging, providing some of the best work of his career.  But it can't elevate the bare bones story to greatness.  As it stands, Raw Deal is standard, yet still enjoyable, pulp fare.

6/10

The New York Ripper: Lucio Fulci

This movie doesn't play fair.  It lures you in with the promise of an interesting story with an effective, albeit slightly cliched, opening scene where an old man discovers a severed hand while playing fetch with his dog.  A competent police procedural starts to unfold before our eyes.  But then, at the first on-screen murder, all of this is thrown away when the murderer literally starts to quack like Donald Duck.  That's his trademark.  He's a killer who speaks like Donald Duck.  From there, the movie descends into the realm of pointless gore and derivative plot devices.  There are long, drawn out scenes of sex that have nothing to do with the story.  Two prominent murder scenes are later revealed to be fake-outs, so ultimately they are worthless to the film other than providing the audience with more gore.  The police procedural aspect becomes a tired hodge-podge of cop cliches that grind on the nerves.  I've said it before, I like a little gore when it's all in good fun.  But Fulci approaches this film with such a sense of seriousness and solemnity that it sucks all of the enjoyment from it.  It's a lifeless, unenjoyable film.

5/10

El Cid: Anthony Mann

Anthony Mann's El Cid is one of the great historical cinematic epics.  It stands alongside such classics as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and Lawrence of Arabia as shining examples of the peak of old school Hollywood entertainment and showmanship.  This romanticized story of Castilian knight Don Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, also known as "El Cid," recounts how he befriended hostile Moors through acts of mercy, shamed a corrupt king, and contributed to the ultimate unification of Spain.  There are tremendous battles filled with thousands of costumed extras, a earth-shattering score by Miklós Rózsa, and magnificent 70mm cinematography.  Charlton Heston commands the screen as El Cid, delivering one of his greatest performances as a man eternally torn between loyalty to his king and his personal convictions.  Some of the human drama falls flat, particularly in the scenes surrounding El Cid's wife Doña Jimena where she comes off as wooden and mechanical.  But for the most part, the human drama echoes the magnificence and scale of the tremendous battles.  And what battles!  Shot before the time when massive armies could be encoded onto the screen with computers, El Cid featured to-scale battles that shimmer on the screen.  Despite the obvious romanticization of the events and characters portrayed, El Cid is a delight to watch and a wonder to behold.

8/10

Don't Torture a Duckling: Lucio Fulci

Lucio Fulci's horror films were never designed for the faint of heart.  Here, in Don't Torture a Duckling, he tests the limits of the audience by focusing on one of the most heinous crimes imaginable: child murder.  In a small village in the south of Italy, there have been a string of incidents where young boys have been found murdered.  The entire village is up in arms.  Frantic whispers start to insinuate a local black magician who lives on a hill and his devious female assistant.  But ultimately it's a red herring.  The real murderer, revealed in the last five minutes, is so eye-rollingly stupid that it kills the entire movie.  Not that this was a great movie to begin with.  The more and more films by Fulci I watch, the more convinced I become that he was a sub-par director who is held in high esteem because he knew how to put gore onscreen like it was nobody's business.  This murder mystery at its core is bizarrely bereft of tension and drama.  And unfortunately, the gore isn't up to par with Fulci's other macabre works like The Beyond and Zombie 2.  Still, it isn't frustratingly opaque and confusing like The Beyond.  It could have been worse.

6/10

The Fall of the Roman Empire: Anthony Mann

The historical reasons behind the fall of the Roman Empire are so vast, so numerous, and so intricate that the idea of making a feature film about them seems absurd.  How could you condense hundreds of years of history, of battles, of political maneuvering, and decay into a film that audiences could be expected to sit through?  Anthony Mann had a clever idea: focus the film on a group of individuals who's actions REPRESENT the forces the tore the empire asunder.  The film focuses on the late life and death of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the subsequent power vacuum.  His bastard son Commodus steals the throne away from Livius, the man Marcus Aurelius appointed as his successor, and begins to undo everything that his father accomplished.  His rash, selfish actions send the empire into rebellion.  The film ends with a fight between Livius and Commodus after which the throne of Rome is literally auctioned off to the highest bidder.  Much like his Westerns, Mann's film adaptation of these historical events are highly symbolic and metaphorical.  Rome wouldn't fall for a few more hundred years...but the actions undertaken by the elites effectively doomed it to a slow death.  A fine film, Mann's massive epic would become a worthy template for future films such as Gladiator.

7/10

The Beyond: Lucio Fulci

If you fancy yourself a fan of Italian horror...then you can list off The Beyond's most famous scenes off the top of your head.  The man getting eaten alive by tarantula, the woman getting a spike driven through the back of her head so that it pops her left eye out, the woman getting her face melted off by acid...all are considered to be classic scenes of gore cinema.  But therein lies the problem...the only thing truly memorable about this film are the scenes.  As a whole, the film is an incoherent mess with a plot that ranges on the inexplicable and characters who are ultimately worthless.  I read that Fulci originally wanted The Beyond to be non-linear.  Well...it feels like someone took the disjointed pieces of his nonlinear effort and smashed them together into an unholy jigsaw puzzle.  The only things that I could gleam from the plot is that there's a hotel built above one of the seven gates of hell and it accidentally get opened by its new owners, unleashing the living dead on the world.  Other than that it's just scene after mismatched scene of gore, violence, and zombies.  But if that's what you're looking for in a movie, then The Beyond is your Holy Grail.  If not...then it won't do anything other than give you a debilitating fear of spiders.

5/10

Upon a second viewing, I feel compelled to revise my original score. I decided to try and enjoy this film on a purely visceral level instead of trying to comprehend it as a narrative. I must say, I was much more impressed this time around. I found Fulci's visuals and imagery much more striking and bold. Several sequences that left me unphased the first time around felt more disturbing, such as when Liza and McCabe are fleeing through an unpopulated New Orleans. The shot where they leave the house and several silhouettes suddenly appear in the windows was particularly effective.

8/10
Revised December 16, 2012

House of Bamboo: Samuel Fuller

There really isn't anything to distinguish House of Bamboo from other thrillers and noir from the 50s other than the fact that it was set in and shot in Japan.  Other than its exotic location, the film is a standard, generic thriller that was a dime a dozen back then.  The heart of the story is that the police become embroiled in an undercover investigation of a crime syndicate that has been knocking over military trains.  One of the men falls in love with the ex-wife of one of the gangsters who was killed in an operation.  This story could have easily been transplanted anywhere in the United States.  But instead we get shots of post-war Japan in all of its glory: geisha, bath houses, the Kamakura Shrine, pachinko parlors.  They are interesting, but considering the massive amount of films that are about Japanese culture and actually come from Japan, they seem unnecessary.  I can only recall two principal characters who were Japanese.  The rest of the cast, including the evil criminal overlords, were American.  Overall, the film, while competent enough on its own, just begs the question of why bother?

[I later wrote a more in-depth review of the film which can be read here: http://theretroset.com/house-of-bamboo/]

6/10

Street Trash: James Muro

Street Trash is a sick, dirty, twisted movie...for all of the wrong reasons.  An avid and outspoken fan of Troma Studios (and their flagship character the Toxic Avenger), I have no problem with the occasional gore flick for kicks and giggles.  But this film is neither entertaining from a visceral standpoint nor engaging from an amateur film-making one.  The plot of this film, if you can call it that, is that a liquor dealer starts selling off a box of 60 year old liquor that he found in his basement.  The only problem is that it causes the drinker to explode and/or melt in the most graphic way possible.  But here's the film's central problem: it isn't gory or violent enough...or at least consistently enough.  I'd wager that only about a third of the film has ANYTHING to do with the problem of liquor that makes hobos explode.  The rest is devoted to dull and noticeably non-violent vignettes about life on the street.  We see them eat, have Vietnam flashbacks, panhandle, and steal.  But only at the very beginning and the very end do we see anything exploitative.  What director James Muro doesn't understand is that if you are going to make an exploitation film, you have to go all out and keep the good stuff coming at a steady pace.  Quiet simply, it isn't interesting enough to warrant any special attention.  Now, if you'll excuse me...this is easily the scuzziest, nastiest film that I have ever seen...I need to take a shower and get a Tetanus booster.

3/10

A Clockwork Orange: Stanley Kubrick

I'm not sure if half of the people who claim to love this film know why they do.  Well, let me rephrase that.  They like it because of what it contains: graphic sex, ultra-violence, dystopian science fiction.  But that's where it ends.  They like its content, but could care less about its message or its inherent craftsmanship.  A Clockwork Orange is a film with graphic material that is justified by its even more graphic message: what is morality without choice?  Is forcing people to be good in and of itself inherently good?  The central character, Alex, is a murderous youth who is subjected to an experimental treatment to make him physically adverse to violence and sex.  But afterwards, can Alex even be called a human?  His free will defined him as a human.  Without it, is Alex more than just a shell?  There's much that can be said about A Clockwork Orange's exquisite craftsmanship.  Stanley Kubrick, a noted perfectionist, slaved over ever frame to make sure that it was just right.  The result is a film that seems to exist in two worlds: that of real life and that of the most frightful Orwellian hellscape.  Much like Lars von Trier's Antichrist, the film seems to exist in a world where the Devil has already won.  Yes, there is great evil in this film.  But for once, such graphic material is necessary.  I couldn't conceive of this film without the rape, the sex, the violence, the profanity.  It is a disturbing film because it has a disturbing story to tell.  Whether or not you partake of it is up to you.

10/10

Virginia City: Michael Curtiz

Virginia City is a delightfully entertaining film that is equal parts Western and adventure film.  It is structured around a simple premise: a group of Confederates need to transport a shipment of gold from Virginia City, Nevada to Richmond in order to help the Southern war effort.  However, they are pursued by a Union officer who has recently escaped from a Confederate prison.  The film becomes a game of cat-and-mouse as the Union tries to catch up with the Confederates and prevent them from making their delivery.  The film shamelessly rips off several scenes and stunts from John Ford's Stagecoach, released a year before.  The even recreate the scene where a soldier is knocked off the front of a carriage and dragged under it.  But in a way,  Virginia City seems to improve on Stagecoach from a technical standpoint.  The cameras are more mobile and flexible.  The editing is sharper and faster.  In the place of John Wayne, Virginia City boasts three major stars: Randolph Scott as the leader of the Confederates, Errol Flynn as the escaped Union officer, and none other than Humphrey Bogart as a the leader of a group of bandits who want the Confederate gold for their own purposes.  It's a shame that this film has been lost in the shuffle of time, because it holds up remarkably well by today's standards.

8/10

Breakfast at Tiffany's: Blake Edwards

I have a theory.  If this film had not starred Audrey Hepburn, it would not be considered a classic.  Hear me out.  The story of Breakfast at Tiffany's goes as such: a vain, eccentric Manhattan socialite named Holly Golightly learns to love others, and herself, through the constant attentions and efforts of Paul Varjak.  The thing is...I don't think that Holly deserves it.  She is a egocentric, selfish, and borderline sociopathic person.  She gained her standing in Manhattan by manipulating a wealthy Texan who married her and then ripping off a Hollywood studio who was grooming her to be a star.  She admits that she did it all for money in one scene when she's drunk.  Even when she's hauled into jail for helping a mobster run his drug business while in jail she acts like she's the real victim.  But dammit if Audrey Hepburn isn't the most adorable thing that God put on the face of the earth.  If it wasn't for her smile, her giggle, and the way that she held that cigarette holder and wore that black dress, the character of Holly Golightly would probably be universally reviled.  Not that the film is much better in any case.  The story is a thrown together hodge-podge of random plot points, throw-away characters, and scenes that go nowhere.  When you get right down to it...it's all about Ms. Hepburn.

5/10

Princess Yang Kwei-fei: Kenji Mizoguchi

During his entire career, he only made two color films.  The first was Princess Yang Kwei-fei, a retelling of the story of Chinese consort Yang Guifei, one of the Four Beauties of Ancient China.  Her story is like a tragic version of Cinderella: originally a maid working for her beautiful and corrupt sisters, she is spotted by an agent of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty.  She is gussied up and presented as a new consort for the emperor who is broken-hearted over the death of his wife.  Yang manages to teach the emperor how to love again.  However, their romance is overshadowed by the Anshi Rebellion, one of the largest uprisings in recorded history.  As the emperor flees from the capital, she is killed by his guards who blame the rebellion on her cousin Yang Guozhong and the rest of her family.  The central romance is pulled off effectively enough.  Mizoguchi still had his warm humanism that enriched the emotions of his characters onscreen and the audiences' sympathy for them.  However, it is never played to the correct scale.  Yang and Xuanzong's romance is never depicted as the epic, earth-shattering relationship that it is usually promoted as.  In addition, we never get a sense of scale of the rebellion.  Not once do we feel that the two are mere playthings of fate who are doomed to a tragic end.  This story should be bombastic and tragic, yet it feels quaint and morose.  Perhaps the film's 90 minutes was not long enough to properly tell the epic story that Mizoguchi wanted.  Whatever the case, Princess Yang Kwei-fei is a disappointing film.  Not a bad one, but a film that missed its true potential.

6/10

The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean: John Huston

To fully understand and appreciate John Huston's The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, one must take to heart the tagline that "if this story ain't true...it shoulda been."  Yes, there was a real life Judge Roy Bean, a self-appointed frontier judge who allegedly held his court in a saloon.  But the Roy Bean depicted in this film was overly exaggerated.  In this film, Roy Bean sentenced dozens, if not hundreds, of hangings and executions all in the name of law in order.  In real life, Roy Bean only sentenced two men to hang, one of which escaped.  But the Roy Bean in this film is more than just a character: he represented the spirit of justice of the Old West.  Yes, Bean was cruel with his sentences, but he never hung a man who didn't deserve it.  Bean's justice was an intangible thing that couldn't be captured by any statute or law book.  Bean was more interested with Justice, with a capital 'J', than with the word of the Law.  This is driven home in the last third of the film wherein Bean's saloon and the town around it that he helped build are stolen out from underneath him by an oil baron.  With the oil baron came law, with a lower case 'l', wherein he bribed politicians and paid off police to steal the locals' land and murder the competition.  The oil baron used the law to cheat, swindle, kill, and extort the good, honest people of Texas.  Thankfully, in the end, the good Judge comes back to town one last time to settle accounts.  This film shouldn't be taken literally, but instead viewed as a metaphorical examination of a time and place where the true villains were punished and good men slept easy at night.  Of course, that does depend on what your definition of a "good man" is.  Roger Ebert decried this movie and stated that it was about the loss of bad manners.  I say that it is about the loss of righteous bad ones and the rise of corrupt "virtuous" ones.

8/10

Children of a Lesser God: Randa Haines

No.  Just, no.  I don't believe this film for a second.  On the surface, Children of a Lesser God seems like a probable story: James Leeds is a new teacher at a school for the deaf in New England who falls in love with Sarah Norman, an angry young deaf woman who is completely isolated from the world.  By reaching out to her, he penetrates her self-imposed world of silence and teaches her how to love.  But, I repeat: I'm not buying it.  The love between James and Sarah is completely disingenuous.  After only seeing her for a few minutes, James is positive that Sarah is one of the smartest, most beautiful women he's ever met.  How does he know this?  He hasn't even spoken to her.  Why is he interested in her?  The film spends a great deal of time with developing their relationship, but completely forgets that for there to be a reaction there must be a catalyst.  One minute, they hate each other.  The other, they're in love.  The drama in this movie totally contrived and manufactured.  It turns out that James is also a ground-breaking teacher who can get through to rebellious deaf teens with the power of song and dance.  William Hurt, who plays James, cannot pull off the character.  Hurt, who on a good day sounds like he's on a Vicodin drip, is not energetic, not enthusiastic enough to sell his role as a cool, hip, rebellious teacher who sticks it to the man.  It's a real shame, because there's a good movie in here somewhere.  But this isn't it.

5/10

Cimarron: Anthony Mann

It always bothered me that the original Cimarron by Wesley Ruggles is virtually unknown to most moviegoers.  After all, it was the third film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture and the first of only three Westerns to do so.  So I approached Anthony Mann's 1960 remake very cautiously, afraid that it would spoil the legacy of a film that I treasure.  Much to my surprise, not only did Mann's film do justice to the original, it may very well have surpassed it.  The film is quite simply epic in both scale and emotion.  At its center is Yancy and Sabra Cravat, a couple who participate in the 1893 Oklahoma Land Rush.  As they set up their homestead, it becomes more and more apparent that Yancy is not meant for the quiet life.  He is the embodiment of American wanderlust, of the national spirit of adventure and exploration.  Unfortunately, that spirit is so powerful that it leads to him abandoning his family several times to explore the rest of the continent and engage in every major event in American history for decades.  It tears Sabra apart: she loves him, but she can't make herself forgive him for his trespasses.  In a sense, the film is a metaphor for America's westward expansion: it was brash, bold, daring, foolish, and uncaring about who it hurt.  Of great note is the film's treatment of minorities, particularly of Native Americans.  The original film, while progressive for its day in many ways, still contains the trademark Hollywood racism of the late 20s, early 30s.  But despite its more sensitive treatment, the film is still merciless in its depiction of how American settlers deceived and cheated the Native Americans.  But in hindsight, the film's racial politics are an afterthought.  What's truly important is that Cimarron is a fantastic film of love, loss, discovery, and courage.

9/10

Port of Shadows: Marcel Carné

It was 1938.  World War Two was getting ready to explode all over Europe.  In time, Jean Gabin would be transformed by the conflict.  His face would harden, his demeanor would sadden, and he would gain an authoritative command over his scenes.  But here in Port of Shadows, we see a Gabin willing to dream, to hope.  Gabin plays Jean, an army deserter who stumbles into a seaside town, weary of life.  There, he discovers like minded people with their own dark pasts and gloomy dispositions.  He finds some small measure of love and happiness in a woman who inhabits that shadowy town.  But as with many films of the poetic realism genre, fate has other plans for him.  The film is magnificently shot and tragic.  As with many French films of the era, it relies heavily on dialogue, not action, to move the plot along.  The film savors its dialogue and takes great pleasure in hearing its characters talk.  It is leisurely paced to a point where many modern viewers may grow impatient with it.  But it deserves watching as much as any other great film from its era.  Just don't expect the fog to lift anytime soon...

7/10

Tepepa: Giulio Petroni

One of the most widely recycled stories for spaghetti Westerns was that of the revolutionary fighting a corrupt government or general.  Many times, such as in Sergio Leone's phenomenal A Fistful of Dynamite, the revolutionary would be accompanied by a European who helps him organize his forces and take power.  Then, once he gains that power, he betrays the European and becomes just as corrupt as the people he just replaced.  Tepepa is one of those films.  It follows an English doctor who travels to Mexico to kill a famed revolutionary named Tepepa.  I paid close attention to this film, yet for the life of me I have no idea why he wants Tepepa dead.  Anyway...after witnessing how Tepepa helps the people of Mexico and fights the evil local generals (one of whom is played by a bloated Orson Welles) he joins his side.  Then, once they win, he discovers that Tepepa is a cruel womanizer and opportunist.  Now, the doctor must decide whether to stay with Tepepa after all or complete his original mission.  My main problem with this film is that it's too long.  Well over two hours, it doesn't have the stylistic flair or operatic sweep of Leone's spaghetti Westerns.  It simply isn't a strong enough film to carry its own weight.  But still, as a genre picture, it accomplishes it modus operandi: lots of action, lots of violence, lots of blood.

6/10

Jesse James: Henry King

Jesse James came from the time in American history where you could glorify men like Jesse James without a hint of irony.  He was a folk hero, plain and simple.  Oh...he was a villain...but he only attacked people who deserved it, like the greedy railroad.  A character in the film even states that he was a criminal, but they couldn't help but love him.  He wasn't a psychotic killer, but an American Robin Hood who fought for the people.  This solid early Western by Henry King purports to tell the story of Jesse James' life, his entry into the world of crime, his life as an outlaw, and his death at the hands of a traitor.  Of course, the film treats fact and history more as a blueprint than a story guide.  Sure, the acting can get hammy and downright laughable at times...but that's part of its charm.  It has such a wide-eyed earnestness and innocence that is downright intoxicating.  Other, better films would be made based on the story of Jesse James.  But that's alright.  This Jesse James feels right at home with a bag of popcorn and a soft, preferably reclining, chair.

7/10

The Ballad of Narayama: Keisuke Kinoshita

It's an old story that has become infamous in Japanese culture: in times of famine or great need, the elderly would be deposited on the top of mountains and left to die. This practice, know as ubasute, was carried out when people reached a certain age.  In The Ballad of Narayama, that age is 70 years old.  Old Orin is 69, and she witnesses the chaos that consumes her village due to famine and hunger.   She treats the practice as her solemn duty, as an inevitable part of her village's circle of life.  Director Keisuke Kinoshita tries to paint Orin as a selfless martyr.  However, he never focuses on Orin long enough for us to truly become attached to her.  Many scenes have to do with her son's new marriage after the death of his first wife.  In one prolonged sequence, a family is punished for trying to steal food by the entire village.  These scenes add atmosphere, but they detract from the human drama that Kinoshita was so desperately trying to invoke.  Also, the film's cinematography is often too dark or muddied to make out what is going on.  There's a difference between chiaroscuro lighting and turning off all of your set's lights.  The film would later be remade in 1983 by Shohei Imamura.  The remade version would go on to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.  This version, however, would never have won that award.  It simply isn't good enough.

6/10

Dead Man: Jim Jarmusch

Somewhere, in another universe cloaked by cigarette smoke and broken dreams of Bohemian Americana lies the mindscape of director Jim Jarmusch.  Where most directors seek to study the world and portray it accurately onscreen, Jarmusch uses his camera as a weapon of polarization.  His is a world of 16mm film stock and cheap lenses.  His films are like portals into a dimension almost like our own, but somehow slightly out of balance.  In Dead Man, Jarmusch resurrects the Spirit of the Old West with an infusion of poetry, post-Modernism, and peyote.  Johnny Depp plays William Blake, an accountant from Ohio who moves out West to take a job that he discovers has already been filled.  A bottle of whiskey leads to retired prostitute and a confrontation with her regular beau.  Before Blake can fully take stock of the situation, he is trapped in a room with two dead bodies.  He goes on the run from the authorities who blame him for their murders.  He is rescued by a Native American who believes him to be the reincarnation of the poet William Blake.  They flee from the police and bounty hunters only to embark on a killing spree, a drug-fueled vision quest, and a burial at sea.  I am reminded of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now in how it depicts a journey to an unknown destination as a metaphor for the destruction of society and civilization.  But this is a journey that Blake cannot return from, even if he stays on the boat.  In the end, he trudges towards his own doom, unaware that he's been a dead man since he first got off the train from Ohio.

Hey check it out! I wrote about this film professionally over here: theretroset.com/dead-man-tells-quite-a-tale/

9/10

A Room with a View: James Ivory

All Miss Lucy Honeychurch and her older, spinster cousin Charlotte Bartlett want on their trip to Italy is just a room with a decent view.  We know this because they literally spend the first fifteen minutes of the film talking about it.  And then, once the plot kicks off, this point is not brought up again until the very last shot.  Herein lies the problem that I have with many British period dramas, particularly those by Merchant/Ivory: so much of what is placed before the audience is either unimportant or irrelevant to the story that is occurring.  Let me give you another example.  During one scene about 2/3 of the way in, a group of young men take a bath in a secluded lake.  They dance and chase each other around stark naked for about five minutes before they remember that they are in a film that is supposed to be telling a story.  I wouldn't mind if this film was meant to be a snapshot of Edwardian culture.  But it isn't.  It's a coming of age tale about Lucy and how she meets true love in Italy, abandons it because polite society doesn't approve, gets engaged to a foppish and unromantic man, and then, at the very end breaks the engagement off and literally rushes into the arms of her beloved.  Maybe I'm being a bit too unfair.  The film is not without a measure of wit and humor.  The performances are stellar from every member of the cast, as is usual with such films where all the direction they need to is stand upright, look pretty in their suits and gowns, and speak clearly in droll English accents.  I just wish that they would get on with the movie and stop complaining about details like their damned view!

6/10

Dillinger is Dead: Marco Ferreri

I think that I have a pretty good idea of why this film is so beloved in art house circles.  Marco Ferreri's film Dillinger is Dead is an examination of that old favorite topic of European cinematic iconoclasts: upper class ennui.  Glauco is an industrial designer who lives an empty life.  So, one night, he goes home, cooks himself a fancy dinner, watches some home movies, and shoots his wife in the head with a pistol.  I have literally just described the entire plot of the film for you.  And, yes, I can imagine that Glauco's emptiness would be a selling point for the European film bourgeois.  After all, he DOES spend just as much time murdering his wife as he does painting the gun he uses red with white polka dots.  So, for those who want to try and discover some intense, ironic inner meaning to this film, they probably won't be disappointed.  The casual viewer will be repelled by this film, finding it obtuse, opaque, and deliberately boring.  I have a certain patience with this type of film that has been developed through countless hours of watching such films.  And yet, I have to say, at the end of the day, watching Dillinger is Dead isn't going to make my life any richer.

3/10 (Ranking for the average viewer)
8/10 (Ranking for the art house crowd)

Goodbye, Mr. Chips: Sam Wood

Goodbye, Mr. Chips is as softly sweet an ode to teachers and the untold numbers of students that they touch that has ever been made.  It is a story of personal discovery and self-sacrifice.  When Mr. Chipping first joined the staff at Brookfield Public School in 1870, he was ceremoniously tormented and disrespected by his students.  As the years went on, this reserved, yet entirely well-meaning young man realizes that the key to success with his students, and his personal life, is love and mutual respect.  He soon becomes a beloved icon of the school, teaching generations of students.  He finds love in a young woman whom he marries.  But she dies in childbirth along with their only child.  So he recommits his energies to his students, whom he regards as his own children.  As with many British films made in the World War Two era, there is the ever present gloom of war on the horizon.  Here, it is in the shape of the First World War which claims the lives of many of Mr. Chips' former pupils and friends.  The similarities between their wartime trials and the future ones to be faced by Great Britain are startling, particularly in a scene where the school is bombed.  But as with a surprising number of British wartime films, there is a melancholy cry for peace and mutual respect by including a German character who is not only sympathetic, but beloved by the audience.  Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a sweet little film, one as kind and earnest as the very man at its center.

7/10

In Which We Serve: Noël Coward, David Lean

David Lean was a film-maker who could work on two scales: an intense, personal one and a grand, sweeping, operatic one.  He would direct some of the most sincere and beloved dramas to ever grace England, such as Brief Encounter and Hobson's Choice.  But later in his career, he was instrumental in the development of the historical epic with The Bridge Over the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago.  Here, in his first film, David Lean proves that he would soon become a mastery of both methods of film-making.  In Which We Serve is based off the true exploits of Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten, captain of the destroyer HMS Kelly which was destroyed during the Battle of Crete.  The film starts with a montage of the ship being built by sturdy, patriotic English workers that would feel more at home in a Soviet film.  It goes on to feature intense battle footage as the ship wages war against German destroyers, supply ships, and bombers.  The ship is eventually hit so hard that it begins to sink.  The captain gives the order to abandon ship.  Once in the water, the film shifts its focus on a group of survivors clinging to a life-raft.  It flashes back to their lives back home and the forces and decisions that led to their entry into the Navy.  Each of these sections is heart-warming and emotional in a way that feels oddly non-contrived, especially considering that this film was essentially a piece of propaganda.  As the film explores their ship's past and the lives of its crew, a picture of the British Navy emerges: one that is simultaneously immensely humanistic and daring.  The human drama is not lost to the fire of cannon and machine gun.  With In Which We Serve, David Lean announced himself as one of the best new talents of British cinema.

8/10

Hollow Triumph: Steve Sekely

One of Hitchcock's most beloved plots was that of the mistaken man: an innocent character mistaken for a criminal and chased by the law and/or the criminal underworld.  In Hollow Triumph, we witness a fascinating reversal of this trope: a guilty man forcefully assumes the identity of an innocent man.  John Muller is a two-bit hoodlum released from prison who foolishly decides to rob a casino owned by the mafia.  The job goes sour, all of his accomplices were killed, and he goes on the run.  He encounters a man named Dr. Bartok, a psychologist who could serve as his twin.  The only problem is that he has a large scar on the side of his face.  So Muller kills Bartok and cuts a similar scar into his own face.  The only problem is that he accidentally cuts into the wrong side!  And soon, Muller discovers that Dr. Bartok may have had worse enemies than he could have ever possibly imagined.  Hollow Triumph is a fairly unremarkable noir despite its novel concept.  The only thing that propels it from the pits of mediocrity is its incredibly downbeat and cynical ending that rivals some of the best that the genre has to offer.  In fact, it's eerily similar to the ending of the French classic Pepe le Moko.  But while Pepe le Moko was a masterpiece of poetic realism, Hollow Triumph will forever be lost in the shuffle with countless other noir, waiting for its time in the spotlight.

6/10

The Blair Witch Project: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez

The Blair Witch Project is one of those films that has become so intrinsically ingrained into our cultural consciousness that it has basically become a parody of itself.  The phrase "Blair Witch" is in itself a punchline used to describe hokey, shaky cam horror films and the found footage genre.  But it's important to remember WHY it became so well known in the first place: it was a genuinely haunting and effective horror film.  This film about three documentary film-makers who travel into the New England forest to shoot a film about the fabled "Blair Witch" is a masterpiece of low-budget, high concept film-making.  It was made for only a few thousand dollars, was filmed with hand-held cameras, and was filmed in such a way that it drove the actors to their physical and emotional limits in real life.  The Blair Witch Project is just one in a long line of films that prove that the horror genre is the best entry point for wannabe film-makers who have extremely limited resources: The Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead 1 + 2, Paranormal Activity, etc, etc.  The reason is that in a horror film, what you DON'T see is more frightening than what you DO see.  So even a film like The Blair Witch Project where you never see what's actually lurking in the woods works amazing wonders.  It was not the first found footage horror film, nor will it be the last.  But it remains to this day the most effective.

10/10

This Gun for Hire: Frank Tuttle

This Gun for Hire starts out as a promising tale of crime and redemption that ultimately gets distracted and sidetracked into mediocrity.  At its core is Raven (Alan Ladd), a hardened hit man who is betrayed by his employer after carrying out a job.  On the run from the police, he encounters Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake), a young singer and magician.  The two pair up to find the man who hired and betrayed Raven.  The best scenes examine Raven's methods (he mercilessly guns down innocent witnesses to his hits) and motives (he was constantly abused as a child to the point where he killed his aunt).  However, this is all discarded once it is revealed that Raven's betrayer is manufacturing chemical weapons for...wait for it...the Imperial Japanese in World War Two.  Suddenly, finding his betrayer is not about justice and redemption, but about wartime patriotism.  I almost expected Lake to start advertising war bonds during one of her two musical routines (which are nonetheless terrific).  Of great interest is Raven's left wrist which was permanently disfigured after breaking it.  This is utilized as a source of tension in crowd scenes where the police are examining peoples' left wrists.  But it is largely used as an afterthought when a more competent director like Hitchcock or Huston would have taken an almost perverse delight in exploiting such a plot point.  All in all, This Gun for Hire is a disappointment, not a monumental one, but a disappointment nonetheless.

6/10

A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness: Seijun Suzuki

After being fired from Nikkatsu Studios after the release of his masterpiece Branded to Kill, Seijun Suzuki only managed to release one film during the 70s.  And what a strange, bizarre little film it is.  Much like many of Suzuki's later films, A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness is a pastiche of different genres and storytelling/editing techniques, resulting in a cinematic concoction that can only be described as Suzuki-esque.  It follows Reiko, a model who is groomed into a golf professional in order to promote a company's new line of sporting wear.  However, one night she is involved in an accidental hit-and-run with a sour neighbor who resents Reiko's success.  She blackmails Reiko with the possibility of going to the press and creating a scandal.  She systematically psychologically tortures Reiko, shearing her hair off and throwing lavish, destructive parties in her house.  But to say that this is a pure psychological drama would be incorrect.  It is also part sports film as Suzuki pays great and close attention to Reiko's training and development into a pro golfer.  Combine about a half dozen subplots involving local children, managers, and agents, and you have one of the most enigmatic films that Suzuki ever created.

6/10

The Accidental Tourist: Lawrence Kasdan

The Accidental Tourist is a film of insurmountable loss and the hungry desire to find solace in companionship.  It has humor, but isn't a comedy.  It has sorrow, but isn't a tragedy.  It is a steadfast reflection of life in all of its many incarnations.  Macon Leary spends his days cramped into airplanes and cheap hotels all over the world.  He writes travel guides for the smart traveler.  But he seems oddly detached from the world.  This is because one year ago, his 12 year old son was murdered by a robber during a stick-up.  Macon drifts away from his wife to discover Muriel Pritchett, a local dog trainer, who fills a gaping hole in his life.  Does he love her?  Maybe.  But Macon desperately needs her to help return his life to some form of normalcy.  This is a soft, warm film of human relationships that serve as shields against the ravages of life.  It takes its time, working slowly, yet surely, developing it characters.  Yet somehow, watching it isn't a tedious or tiring experience.  We see ourselves in Macon's shoes.  We have all felt indescribable pain.  If we are lucky, we find our own Muriel Pritchett to help us face the day again.

8/10

The Man in Grey: Leslie Arliss

British period dramas, particularly those from the Caroline to the Edwardian era, have never been my cup of tea.  However, I was surprised to find Leslie Arliss' The Man in Grey to be a delightfully demur affair.  As with many films of its ilk. it surrounds the issue of social status and family.  The film follows Hesther and Clarissa, two well-to-do women of the Regency period and their various affairs and amorous exploits.  As time goes by, they will go from being friends to rivals and finally to bitter enemies.  The film is framed with a clumsy narrative device that positions it as a flashback recounted by the characters descendents during World War Two.  It sets the mood and tone of the film, but generally seems unnecessary as it contributes nothing to the actual storyline.  Again, as with most like-minded films, there are strong performances by all of the actors and actresses.  While I have yet to see a film to convert me into an avid fan of English period dramas, The Man in Grey distinguishes itself as one of the more enjoyable experiences that I have had with the genre.

7/10

The Big Knife: Robert Aldrich

The Big Knife is one of the most violent film noir that I have ever seen.  Despite this, there is no actually physical violence anywhere inside the film.  The violence is that of wordplay and insinuation, of people toying with each others' lives and futures.  Charlie Castle is a massively successful Hollywood actor who wants to quit the business.  This is partly fueled by his desire to protect his relationship with his wife Marion.  The two of them have had a tumultuous past, having been separated three times in two years.  However, Stanley Shriner Hoff, his studio boss, is desperate to keep him.  He resorts to blackmail and even threatens to murder a young starlet who knows too much.  Most, if not all, of the action takes place inside Charlie's living room and in different rooms of his house.  And yet the film never feels small or constrained.  The performances are bombastic and intense to a point where they can be difficult to watch.  Not that it matters.  The Big Knife is an acerbic and devastating glance into the destructive industry of Hollywood at its worst.

8/10

The Young One: Luis Buñuel

Right before Luis Buñuel returned from his long sojourn into the bowels of low budget Mexican cinema to his rightful place as surrealist filmmaker supreme, he released The Young One.  This film is more in line with his earlier masterpiece Los Olvidados, a crushing Neorealist examination of children living in poverty.  The Young One follows Traver, a young black jazz musician on the run after a woman falsely accused him of rape.  He makes it to a small island inhabited by Miller, a curmudgeonly sour racist living with the young daughter of his deceased business partner.  As with many early films dealing with racism, The Young One pits Traver and Miller against each other in a battle of wills.  But Buñuel is interested in more than just race.  He turns a keen eye to Evvie, the young girl, who is molested by Miller.  Buñuel seems to portray Miller as an archetypal "bad" person with Traver being his symbolic opposite.  The film is gratingly unnerving.  Buñuel always knew how to make his audiences squirm ever since his first film Un Chien Andalou with its famous eyeball-incision scene.  Both Traver and Miller embody a stifling energy that feels like it might burst out and explode at any second.  Indeed, this was the first step towards Buñuel cinematic reincarnation.

8/10

The Chase: Arthur Penn

The Chase is one of the most misleading titles that I have ever come across in my cinematic wonderings.  There isn't a chase in the entire film.  Yes, there is a young convict who escapes from prison (played by a dashing Robert Redford before he was famous).  And, yes, a nearby town tries to capture him.  But this film isn't about that pursuit...it's about the town itself.  Arthur Penn's film is an examination of a Southern town in the mid-60s, still mired in the racism and sexism that ruled the area for so long.  More particularly, Penn's film is about what happens when this small town is given an excuse to fly its real colors.  The possibility of an escaped convict (who is later charged with murdering a local) gives the old, bored elite to go around under the pretense of mob justice.  They break into the town jail where they brutally assault the sheriff (played by Marlon Brando in a soft, yet surprisingly effective performance) and interrogate a black prisoner at gunpoint.  The local teens, drunk off youth and dancing, see it all as a big game, rolling into crime scenes and disrupting the investigation.  It all leads to a chilling sequence in a junkyard where the entire town corners the convict.  Their insanity is a powder keg that (literally) explodes, claiming innocent lives in the process.  It's a bit too long for its own good, however.  If it had been about half an hour shorter it might have been remembered as a better film.  But as it stands, The Chase is a great film and a devastating look into a society, and director, in a state of transition.

7/10

Terror at the Opera: Dario Argento

By 1987, Dario Argento had already established his reputation as one of the best directors of Italian giallo, or gruesome horror films.  He had a way of elevating the horror slasher into fine art, as evidenced by The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and the magnificent Suspiria.  His films were technicolor nightmares where murder victims were canvases for elaborate and horrifying acts of violence.  In Terror at the Opera, Argento reminds the world of his technical and visceral mastery over the horror film.  The film follows a young opera singer named Betty who is thrust into the limelight after the star of her show was hit by a car.  However, her debut is TOO good, as it gains the attention of a maniac killer.  Like a murderous Phantom of the Opera, he kills members of the production.  However, in the film's most gruesome twist, he frequently does so after tying Betty up and placing razors under her eyelids, forcing her to keep them open and watch his terrible work.  The film is technically stunning with some of the most inventive and imaginative camerawork this side of a Sam Raimi film.  The only problem is that the killer, when revealed, doesn't really mention his motivation.  If he did, it was drowned out by screaming and/or the soundtrack.  Also, the ending seems like it was transplanted from an entirely different film, killing the atmosphere that Argento worked so hard to create.  Still, Terror at the Opera is one of Argento's finest works and essential viewing for gore-hungry horror-hounds.

8/10

Mickey One: Arthur Penn

Arthur Penn was known for helming films that were uncomfortably realistic.  The Miracle Worker stripped the Helen Keller/Anne Sullivan story of its romanticism and examined the incredible battle of wills at its center.  The Left Handed Gun and The Missouri Breaks were violent, revisionist Westerns that didn't play out the way that audiences were used to.  And his masterpiece, Bonnie and Clyde, sparked a film revolution with its gritty, realistic violence.  So for the life of me, I can't figure out why he directed Mickey One.  The plot in a nutshell is as follows: a stand-up comedian, played by Warren Beatty, skips town after incurring the wrath of a member of the mafia.  He adopts a new identity and starts to rebuild his reputation as a comic.  But, as fate would have it, he soon is forced to perform and audition for the same gangsters that he was trying to escape in the first place.  The entire film feels uncomfortable and jittery.  Penn utilized harsh, expressionist black-and-white cinematography that would feel more at home in a Hitchcock, Huston, or Welles film.  The plot takes several detours for various flights of whimsy, such as the exploits of a street artist referred to as...wait for it...The Artist.  Mickey One is an unfocused, wannabe thriller that can't figure out that it has been cued off stage.

5/10

Secret Beyond the Door: Fritz Lang

Secret Beyond the Door is just one of a number of mediocre film noir directed by Fritz Lang in the late 40s before he rediscovered his latent talent in the 50s with such masterpieces as The Big Heat.  The film is an updated interpretation of the Bluebeard fairytale wherein a young woman discovers that her new husband has habitually married and murdered several other women in the past.  On the surface it seems like a competent psychological thriller.  However, Lang makes several crucial mistakes that result in a flawed end product.  The first is that he provides his main character with an insistent voice-over narration that has a nasty habit of ruining a scene's tension.  Alfred Hitchcock knew that silence can be the greatest weapon in scaring an audience, so many of his greatest scenes have an absence of dialogue and noise.  Lang should have mimicked old Hitch instead of lining the film with his protagonist's constant commentary.  The second mistake is that the ending is one of the most contrived that I have ever seen in a Lang film.  Yes, at the time Lang was at the mercy of the Hayes Code.  But the ending is so sappy, so unbelievable that it feels like an entirely different director shot and added it to the film.  Thankfully, Lang would later learn that a happy ending doesn't always have to be a sugar-coated one...

6/10

The Missouri Breaks: Arthur Penn

Arthur Penn's The Missouri Breaks is a strange little Western.  At its heart are two characters, Tom Logan and Robert E. Lee Clayton, played by Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando respectively.  Tom Logan is a down on his luck cattle rustler who's good friend has just been hanged by Braxton, a local land baron.  So he concocts a bizarre plan of revenge: buy up an adjacent ranch to Braxton's property, gain his trust, and then rustler his herd.  Why he doesn't go in with guns a-blazing to take care of the elderly man, we'll never know.  Instead, he spends weeks putting up a facade of starting up a ranch along with his criminal accomplices.  Braxton catches wise and hires Clayton, an infamous "regulator," to get rid of them.  And again, instead of murdering all of Logan's men, which we learn he is quite capable of doing, he toys with them, buddies up with them, and let's them know that he's wise to them.  Of course, Brando steals the entire film with his over-the-top performance.  Clayton sports a dandy wardrobe, perfume, Irish accent, and a powerful 1859 Creedmoor rifle.  To say he is flamboyant is an understatement.  But herein lies this film's ultimate problem: Penn has no idea what to do with him.  By the mid-70s, Brando was notorious for being difficult to work with and prone to not paying attention to the script.  Great directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Bernardo Bertolucci miraculously managed to channel his pathos into some of the most iconic performances of all time.  However, Penn seems content to let Brando wander around the film, muttering as he pleases and making a general fool out of himself.  One wonders what might have been if The Missouri Breaks had a director who could control Brando.  But as it stands, The Missouri Breaks is a shadow of what could have been a classic.

6/10

The Woman in the Rumor: Kenji Mizoguchi

For the life of me, I can't figure out what Kenji Mizoguchi was trying to accomplish with this film.  The Woman in the Rumor is one of a number of Mizoguchi's films revolving around the lives of geisha and their daily toils and troubles.  However, Mizoguchi would always have a central message to these films: geisha are exploited, geisha are viewed as expendable by Japanese society, geisha are akin to disposable toys for men, etc, etc.  In The Woman in the Rumor, there is no concise central message, nor is the lack of one a meaningful interpretation.  The film follows a young woman who tried to commit suicide when her lover left her after he discovered that her mother ran a geisha house.  She comes to live in the geisha house that she despises only to slowly warm up to it.  As fate would have it, she falls in love with her mother's lover, a young doctor.  But the mother finds out and the daughter leaves the doctor so she can be happy.  I suppose that Mizoguchi was trying to emphasize the idea of filial piety being perverted to an extreme by their environment, but both characters are happy at the end of the film.  One would then think that Mizoguchi was trying to portray the geisha community and lifestyle as self-affirming and wholesome.  But here's the rub: several times in the film, including the very end, he makes heavy-handed statements about how exploitative the geisha industry is and how it destroys people.  In the end, The Woman in the Rumor is a frustrating, aggravating work that ultimately doesn't have the same stylistic grace or subtle emotional impact as his other films made in the 50s.

5/10

The Miracle Worker: Arthur Penn

It's a story that every American schoolchild knows well: Helen Keller, a young deafblind girl, is taught to understand the world and overcome her disabilities through the constant work of Anne Sullivan.  At first, Helen is opposed to learning anything.  But a miracle at a water pump opens her eyes (metaphorically) to the unseen universe.  The story is so commonplace that it has become a cliche.  However, Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker transcends these to present the story in a way that feels fresh and original.  There are three real reasons why this story works.  The first two are Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan and Patty Duke as Anne Frank.  Both had honed their performances through the crucible of the Broadway stage, perfecting them until they became second nature.  The third reason why the film works is Arthur Penn's direction.  The man knew that the heart of the story was the relationship between the two women, so he frequently stands back, rejects exploitative camera work and editing, and lets the two actresses ACT.  The scene where the two of them battle over a meal is so authentic, so real that it almost transcends acting into an uncanny valley of reality.  The film can be exhausting to watch.  But ultimately, it is worth it.

8/10

The Left Handed Gun: Arthur Penn

In the Sixties, Arthur Penn would forever change the face of American cinema with his seminal Bonnie and Clyde.  However, before he kicked off the Hollywood New Wave, he began with The Left Handed Gun, his first film.  Just as Bonnie and Clyde looked squarely into the face of real violence and crime, The Left Handed Gun defied conventional Westerns by depicting a revisionist portrait of Billy the Kidd.  The film paints him as a crazed gunman hellbent for revenge after a group of corrupt businessmen murder his friend.  He hunts down and kills all four of them, sacrificing his sanity, his friends, and the lives of countless others.  After killing the first two men, a general amnesty is declared by a local general.  However, the amnesty will be null and void if Billy kills the other two men, potentially throwing the entire region back into war.  Of course, Billy can't control himself.  At the end of the day, he's just another gunman who's number is up.  The film isn't as polished as Penn's later work, but it announces the arrival of a bold new filmmaker who wasn't afraid to break rules and the hearts of Romanticists.

6/10

Attack of the Crab Monsters: Roger Corman

Don't get me wrong...I love Roger Corman's work probably more than any movie buff should.  I admired his work so much that I actually held a blogathon specifically to appreciate his films.  But sometimes, even Corman's charm can't redeem one of his films.  Attack of the Crab Monsters is one of these films.  It sounds like the perfect set-up for classic Corman schlock: a group of scientists are trapped on an island full of giant crabs that had been mutated by nuclear radiation. Even better, the crabs gain the intelligence of those they attack and consume, allowing them to talk and taunt their captives!  But this film can't live up to the promises of its title and insane subject matter.  It has two primary flaws.  First, I estimate that about 1/3 of the film is stock footage and padding of people wandering the island and snorkeling.  These scenes don't add atmosphere or a sense of dread...they just serve to lengthen the film.  The second major problem is that Corman must have lit the film with a 20 watt light bulb.  Another good third of the film takes place in sets that are so dark that you literally can't see what's going on.  And I don't mean that in a positive way.  Corman isn't toying with what we can and can't see.  Instead, many of the scenes are filled with an opaque darkness that completely blot out the audience's vision.  Oh, the rest of the film is entertaining if you love B-movies and monster flicks.  The crabs costumes are pretty decent and threatening.  But it isn't worth the incoherence of a plodding film that you can barely see.

4/10

Crime Wave: André De Toth

Now HERE'S a film that should be taught in film classes to audiences of wide-eyed young film-makers.  Crime Wave is a marvelous film and an exercise of cinematic simplicity.  Notice, I didn't use the word minimalism.  The two words are not the same.  Crime Wave, clocking in at only 73 minutes, is one of the leanest and tightest crime films that I have ever witnessed.  Not a line nor a shot is wasted as director André De Toth dives into this dark world of crime.  Steve Lacey is a reformed ex-con who wants nothing more than to live out the rest of his days quietly with his wife.  However, a bunch of his old "associates" force him back into the life after one of them is mortally wounded in a gas station stick-up and comes to his home for medical aid.  After he dies, Lacey calls his parole officer who notifies the police.  The police are determined to somehow pin the murder, and the robbery, on Lacey.  "Once a crook, always a crook," is their logic.  But Lacey's parole officer manages to get him released after he is wrongfully arrested.  However, things are even further complicated when two other crooks force him at gunpoint to participate in a bank robbery.  If he doesn't comply, they will kill his wife.  Crime Wave's plot is hard to summarize because it contains so little fluff.  Indeed, the only way to really discuss the film is to give a play-by-play of the entire thing.  I have tried to give the shortest description of the plot here.  And still, I feel like I've only described a fraction of the story.  Crime Wave is both a nail-biting thriller and a devastating film noir that proves that sometimes life just won't let you walk away from your past.

9/10

Them!: Gordon Douglas

Among B-movie aficionados, Them! is legendary.  It was one of the very first films to feature monsters that were mutated by nuclear radiation, even beating out Godzilla by a matter of months.  In addition, it helped kick off the "big bug" genre of monster movies.  This is amplified by a title so simple, so catchy, and so memorable that it becomes immediately endearing to all who hear about it.  Them! is the story of mutated giant ants who terrorize the Western United States.  When they are discovered by scientists and the military, they had already given birth to two queens who had flown off to start new nests.  The race is on to find them and destroy them before they spread and possibly wipe out the human race.  The film wisely doesn't show the insects until about a third of the way into the film, instead letting the audience see their carnage and hear their insidious chirping.  The ant special effects are cheesy, but believable enough that they are threatening.  However, the film does suffer that one great bane of monster flicks, pulp films, and B-movies: poor pacing.  At certain points the film grinds to an unforgivable halt as the science is patiently explained to the audience and as the military plans on how they are going to destroy the invaders.  Still, pacing problems aside, Them! is still an entertaining flick.  Even if the film is one day forgotten, the impact of its giant ants will be felt forever in the film industry.

6/10