Tag Archives: alfred hitchcock

November 16, 2019 · 5:10 am

Love in the 1980s, plus Hitchcock plus Sarah Connor: movies

Set in 1988, TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT (2011) has a great 1980s soundtrack, but it’s more interested in mimicking films of the era than really evoking the decade. Topher Grace is an MIT grad reduced to working at a video store (I don’t think they ever explain why) and largely avoiding his old buddies. Then he learns the high school crush he never dared speak to will be at the Big Party tonight, so he decides to show, dragging along sister Anna Faris (struggling to choose between Cambridge and Marriage) and his best friend. Will he get the girl? Will he be outed as a failure? I found this too trite to care. Buffy‘s Michelle Trachtenberg plays a punk. “Don’t call yourself a failure — you’re much worse than that.”

Rewatching THIEF OF HEARTS (1984) I think I actually liked it even more than when it came out. Steven Bauer plays Scott, a burglar who rips off Mickey (Barbara Williams) and her husband and discovers his take includes Mickey’s diaries, wherein she pours out her frustration and her fantasies. Intrigued by the passionate woman he reads about, Scott sets out to become her perfect lover — but as Think Like a Man put it, the trouble with pretending to be a better man is that sooner or later you have to live up to it. Part of what makes this work is that they don’t shy away from Scott being a stalker, rather than a dream lover. With David Caruso (later to enjoy brief TV stardom) as Scott’s psycho sidekick “I bet I can tell your favorite ice cream flavor.”

BLACKMAIL (1929) is the first Alfred Hitchcock film in the set I’ve been watching that feels close to the style that made him famous. A young woman has an argument with her cop boyfriend, flirts with an artist, goes up to his studio then stabs him when he assault her. Will her boyfriend learn what she did? Can she keep her mouth shut when an innocent man becomes a suspect? Minor (though Hitchcock Romance argues it has a lot of minor elements that would crop up in Hitch’s later career) but a quantum leap over Easy Virtue. “Scotland Yard? If not for Edgar Wallace nobody would have ever heard of them.”

TERMINATOR: Dark Fate (2019) has a lot in common Terminator: Genisys: using T2 as a template, major changes to the timeline, and another alt.Skynet, the AI Legion, becoming the threat to the future. It works a lot better, however as it has fewer time paradoxes and sticks closer to the spirit of the series, particularly in bringing back Linda Hamilton as a gruff, gunslinging older Sarah Connor. Natalia Reyes plays Dani, a Mexican woman who finds herself the target of Gabriel Luna’s liquid-metal Terminator, with Sarah and time-traveling cyborg Grace (Mackenzie Davis) as her only hope for survival, and the future’s. While I wouldn’t bet on the poor box office killing this franchise, if this is the last movie, it’s a good note to go out on. “So your plan is to slip across the U.S. border with an illegal Mexican immigrant and a woman who once had her own episode of America’s Most Wanted?”

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November 2, 2019 · 5:10 am

Factory workers, fraudsters and a Manxman: this week’s films

BUBBLE (2006) is a very indie drama by Steven Soderbergh following the relationship between two workers (one a young and aimless guy, the other a lonely middle-aged woman) at a doll-manufacturing factory in a dying town and how it changes when a young woman comes to work there. Suffice to say it doesn’t go well … The low-key, realistic style makes everything almost too understated but it worked for me (certainly better than the other films of the week).“We have obviously gone through a very tragic set of events.”

J.T. LEROY (2019) is supposedly the streetsmart author of a memoir growing up a prostitute’s son; in reality it’s middle-aged Laura Dern, pretending the book is based-on-truth to boost sales. When it’s obvious some personal appearances would boost sales more, Dern recruits her lover’s sister, Kirsten Stewart, to pose as JT, but the two soon find themselves at odds. The two leads give excellent performance (Stewart’s way better than I’d have expected), this based-on-truth film is just too rambling to work for me (I’m guessing it’s because it follows real events too closely).

THE MANXMAN (1929) was Hitchcock’s last silent film and like Champagne one he personally loathes, which shows good taste on his part. The melodrama involves a pair of best-friend Manxmen (residents of the Isle of Mann), a sailor and a lawyer, in love with the same woman; when the sailor apparently drowns, his rival moves in but wait, the guy’s not dead and he’s returning home rich! What will happen now? Like Easy Virtue, the melodrama hasn’t aged well and the ending left me grumpy (even given his kid is not his biological son, it seems cruel to have the sailor lose the baby along with the woman). “All manner of punishment comes to them that breaks its sacred vows.”

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Robert Altman, Alfred Hitchcock and the Doom Patrol: movies and TV

After watching Robert Altman’s disappointing Short Cuts, I put his NASHVILLE (1975) in my Netflix queue to see if despite the similarities (sprawling cast, nonlinear narrative, almost three hours long) it was, as I remembered it, a much better film.

Yep, it is. Possibly because Short Cuts is a group of separate stories tied together by connections among the characters where Nashville feels like a single story, albeit broken into multiple different subplots, many of which don’t really go anywhere. The narrative spine is a Nashville rally for a third-party politician whom we never see but whose messages (tax churches, end the electoral college) are heard throughout the film. Various other characters include country superstar Henry Gibson, womanizing musician Keith Carradine, Keenan Wynne and Shelly Duvall dealing with a woman’s death in different ways, choir director Lily Tomlin having an affair, a racist British reporter trying to interview Elliott Gould … It’s very much a slice of life, which is a tricky thing to pull off, but it works brilliantly. “Let’s consider our national anthem. Nobody knows the words. Nobody knows how to sing it.”

Silent movies were definitely not Hitchcock’s glory years — Like Easy Virtue, THE FARMER’S WIFE (1928) is another Filmed Stage Play by Hitchcock, this time a comedy one in which a widowed farmer pursues various local women in the entitled conviction he’d a fantastic catch for any o f them. Looks good — there’s a real sense of life around the crowd scenes, like the carnival in The Ring — but the story couldn’t keep my interest. “You are the first man who has accepted my sex challenge!”

Hitchcock shows good judgment in classing CHAMPAGNE (1928) as one of his worst films; the story of a madcap heiress who elopes only to learn her father’s just gone broke — what will she and her fiancé do now? I didn’t care at all. “I’ve met some lively people, invented a new cocktail and bought some snappy gowns.”

As a die-hard Doom Patrol fan, I shelled out for DC’s streaming service and binged their DOOM PATROL over the past few weeks (while there’s other stuff I wouldn’t mind catching, I’ve canceled it until DP S2 comes out in 2020). As NASCAR driver and first-class jerk Cliff Steele, Brendan Fraser wakes up from an accident to discover he’s now a brain in a robot body, living in a creepy old mansion alongside Niles (Timothy Dalton), Rita Farr (April Bowlby), Larry Trainer (Matt Bomer) and Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero). Then reality-warping intelligence Mr. Nobody (Alan Tudyk) kidnaps Niles for revenge and begins tormenting the team in countless bizarre ways, forcing them to change and adapt while making sneering metacommentary (“You’ve spent thirteen episodes whining like a C-list Breakfast Club!”).

This was absolutely fantastic. Adapting Grant Morrison’s DP gave them good material to start with and they’ve used it well. Rita’s arc, slowly going from selfish withdrawal to decent human being; Larry dealing with the energy being inside him and his own homosexuality; Guerrero giving an absolutely amazing performance as a metahuman with multiple personalities. And the show stays strong all the way to the finish. It was actually worth adding another streaming service — next year I might keep my subscription going so I can watch week to week. It’s that good. “I would sooner have sharks in my vagina than spend another minute in the same zip code as you.”

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September 21, 2019 · 5:10 am

Two fighters, one superhero: movies this week.

I was frustrated to discover my DVD of DIE NIBELUNGEN: Siegfried (1924) was scratched enough the last 40 minutes were unwatchable (I compensated with a German edition uploaded to YouTube). Fritz Lang’s film itself, though, is superb, telling the legend of Siegfried who over the course of the film forges a sword, slays a dragon (a really impressive sequence — Full Metal Alchemist: The Movie has Lang filming it during a visit by Elric to our world) and then helps the weakling king Gunther win the warrior queen Brunhilde under false pretenses (helping the king invisibly during trials of strength) in return for the hand of the king’s sister. Hmm, it’s possible this will not end well …Great-looking and impressively epic; I do hope Part Two is in better condition. “Whoever forsakes loyalty to the blood brother shall perish at the wayside, all honor lost.”

Alfred Hitchcock’s THE RING (1927) is a romance about a small-time boxer whose rise in the rankings becomes a personal quest when he discovers his wife is stepping out with the current champ. A vast improvement over Easy Virtue, with some excellent visuals, such as the opening scenes of carnival gaiety. However the romance is less than compelling (the wife is so faithless, it’s hard to be happy he wins her back) and one character drops the n-word mid-movie, neither of which is a plus.

SHAZAM! (2019) reworks Geoff Johns’ New 52 version of the original Captain Marvel (the name change is because Marvel’s Captain Marvel has that name trademarked so DC’s version can’t use the name in the title). Billy Batson (Asher Angel) is a tough street kid desperate to find his long-lost mother, now stuck in his umpteenth foster home and unable to see it’s a good one. A wizard (Djimon Honsou) gives Billy the power to transform into super-powered Shazam (Zachary Levi) but neglects to tell him that Sivana (Mark Strong), who was turned down for the gig, has now freed the Seven Deadly Sins and plans using their power to steal the Shazam-magic.

I’m glad they shot for an upbeat film rather than grim-and-gritty because Cap — er, Shazam — is a light-hearted character. But Levi’s Shazam comes off more like a nine-year-old than the focused, tough-nosed Angel and Strong’s Sivana is generic in his evil evilness (making him a Child of Abuse is a cliche — and having his father played by John Glover makes this feel like a Smallville reboot); the goofy comic-book version would have fit the mood better. The Seven Sins are also surprisingly dull, just big CGI monsters; despite Honsou warning that they’ll corrupt the world, they’re more about killing and destroying. They might as well have been Plutonians.

The best part of the film is Billy bonding with his family and finding a way out of his loneliness. It’s sweet, but it’s not enough to save the film. “You seek a purer soul, old man — but none are worthy.”

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September 14, 2019 · 5:10 am

From Mystery Island to Mauthausen and all points in between: movies

MANHUNT OF MYSTERY ISLAND (1945) is a fun serial from Republic Pictures, despite Richard Bailey’s ineffective performance as ace criminologist and nominal hero Lance Reardon. To make up for that we have veteran serial villain Roy Barcroft scowling as Captain Mephisto, who’s imprisoned a brilliant scientist on Mystery Island to steal the secrets of his invention for broadcasting electrical power wirelessly. On the good guys’ side we have Linda Stirling (who appeared the year before in Republic’s Tiger Woman), who’s not only more fun than the hero, she’s extremely capable, saving him a half-dozen times and proving she’s a crack shot even with her arms bound. Like many serial villains Mephisto has a secret identity, created by using a “transformation machine” to change back and forth from one of the owners of Mystery Island (some sources refer to this as reincarnation or time travel but no, it’s just a physical change by pseudoscientific gobbledygook). Definitely fun if you’re into old-time serials. “It’s dangerous — but we’re all in danger, every moment that man lives!”

DRESSED TO KILL (1947) wraps up Basil Rathbone’s run as Holmes (horrifying fans at the time) with a reasonably ingenious mystery. Patricia Morrison plays a female schemer strangely determined to collect three music boxes by fair means or foul, but what secret do they contain that she’s willing to kill for? This has some nice touches like Morrison setting a trap for Holmes by leaving her distinctive cigarette at a crime scene (“I’ve read your monograph on distinguishing 140 types of tobacco.”). “So fearfully awkward to have a dead body lying around, don’t you agree Mr. Holmes?”

TYG recently bought the DVD of DADDY’S DYING … WHO’S GOT THE WILL? (1990) which I’d vaguely assumed was a lowbrow Southern comedy. It’s actually a well-done dramedy about a family (wild child Beverly D’Angelo, frustrated Tess Harper and abusive jerk Beau Bridges) showing up at their dad’s deathbed alongside various partners (most notably Judge Reinhold as D’Angelo’s hippy boyfriend). I don’t like it as much as she does, but I did enjoy it. “I don’t think it’s God’s will you have six husbands before you’re 40.”

Alfred Hitchcock again — EASY VIRTUE (1927) is what The Hitchcock Romance would classify as an ironic romance, in that the obstacles triumph over the lovers. A beautiful divorcee (another example of Hitch’s Innocent Accused trope, in this case accusations of adultery) finds new love only to have it slip through her hands due to the hostility of her husband’s family turning him against her (it’s already doomed by the time her past comes to light). This filmed adaptation of a Noel Coward play interested me even less than The Lodger but the heroine’s relentlessly hostile mother-in-law is very much the forerunner of countless nightmarish mother figures in Hitchcock’s later works. “We married because we loved one another — no explanations were necessary on either side.”

THE PHOTOGRAPHER OF MAUTHAUSEN (2018) is a Spanish docudrama set a Nazi-run camp for Spanish communists shipped there by Franco. One of them becomes assistant to the camp photographer relentlessly documenting the brutalities around them; when he realizes the Nazis will want to destroy the evidence someday, the assistant sets out to preserve as many photos as possible. Effective at showing (as the director Ernst Lubitsch once put it) that it no more takes sadism to run a death camp than it does a laundromat; the callousness with which the Nazis deal with their charges is chilling. “The party is paranoid and it needs to clean up its mess.”

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September 7, 2019 · 5:02 am

Sherlock, She-Ra and Jack the Ripper: movies and TV

Continuing my viewing of the Basil Rathbone Holmes films — THE PEARL OF DEATH (1944) remains a personal favorite, a relatively faithful adaptation of Doyle’s The Six Napoleons. A stupid stunt by Holmes enables Moriarty-esque mastermind Conover (Miles Mander) to steal the priceless Borgia pearl, but where did he hide it? Does the theft tie in with a series of brutal murders by a killer who likes to break his victims’ backs and then smash plates? A solid story, with Mander fine in his vicious role, backed up by Evelyn Ankers (much better as a bad girl than the wharf rat in Voice of Terror) and acromegalic Rondo Hatton as the brutal “Creeper.” “I don’t like the smell of you — an underground smell, the sick sweetness of decay.”

Moriarty himself returns in THE WOMAN IN GREEN (1945)with Henry Daniell as an understated but ominous Moriarty (I can easily buy him as a mathematics professor) who actually gets some of Doyle’s dialog from The Final Problem. Unfortunately he’s in a mediocre movie involving hypnosis and an implausible blackmail scheme involving cutting off women’s fingers. This is narrated by Gregson, one of Doyle’s secondary detectives, which doesn’t add much (apparently the producers felt Dennis Hooey’s buffoonery as Lestrade wasn’t needed when they already had Watson for comic relief). However Daniell does manage to pull off one of those “let’s not put a bullet in Holmes right away” drawn out endings that annoy me so (“I’ve waited a long time for this moment.”). “Then we shall walk together through the gates of eternity, hand in hand.”

TERROR BY NIGHT (1946) has Holmes and Watson taking a train to safeguard the fabulous Star or Rhodesia, only to have the gem disappear en route with its minder dead. Could it be the woman traveling with her husband’s corpse? The dead man’s mom? The couple with the tea pot? Is it possible the real mastermind is Sebastian Moran? Competent, but no more than that, with Dennis Hooey returning and Watson at peak levels of stupid. “Col. Moran was directly responsible for what nearly turned out to be my premature death on three separate occasions.”

At six episodes, the third season of SHE-RA AND THE PRINCESSES OF POWER is even shorter than S2, but in compensation it’s very good. The story arc focuses on Hordak’s plans to open a portal and bring through the full Horde but the strength is in the character bits: Hordak and Entrapta bonding, Shadow Weaver switching sides, Adora freaking from the fear she’s failed everyone, Katra demonstrating she’s really as good as she thinks she is. Highly recommended. “I’d sooner see the world end than let you win again, Adora!”

When I picked up the Holmes DVDs at the library, I also snatched up a collection of early Hitchcock films. THE LODGER (1926) is widely seen as the first “Hitchcockian” film as it addresses one of Hitchcock’s favorite themes, an innocent man under suspicion. Based on a successful British novel (which the film’s script reworks radically) this has silent star Ivor Novello as the gentlemanly eponymous boarder striking sparks with his landlady’s daughter — but is it possible he’s also the mysterious Ripper-esque serial killer, the Avenger? This shows Hitchcock Romance‘s point about Hitchcock’s romantic streak as the heart of the film is the romance triumphing over the obstacles (suspicious parents, a disgruntled former boyfriend). Unfortunately that doesn’t make it interesting — it’s more a dry run for future classics than substantial in itself. “When I put a rope around the Avenger’s neck — I’ll put a ring around Daisy’s finger.”

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September 23, 2018 · 5:24 am

Women, rubber, luck, Hitchcock and ‘toons: books read

I’ve been meaning to reread THE MISMEASURE OF WOMAN: Why Women are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex or the Opposite Sex by Carol Tavris as research for Undead Sexist Cliches and finally did so. Tavris looks critically at the assumptions men are the default normal setting for homo sapiens, and that women are a defective copy, so when women do it differently, they’re doing it wrong. Tavris doesn’t deny women and men are different, but sees the differences as rooted in different life experiences rather than fundamental biology, and she shows how the explanations shift constantly; brain science, for example, “proves” men are superior because their brains are bigger, or more specialized, or particular parts of the brain are bigger, depending which theory is currently popular. Despite coming out in 1992, still timely; even though sociobiology seems to have vanished into the trash can of science, evolutionary psychology has filled the same place.

THIEF AT THE END OF THE WORLD: Rubber, Power and the Seeds of Empire, by Joe Jackson, shows why several Doc Savage novels such as The Flaming Falcons revolved around the USA getting its own rubber supply. Starting in the 19th century, rubber became as vital as oil would be to the 20th: waterproofing, insulation, molding into plastics, and as a cushion wherever mechanical parts in engines had to smash up against each other. The only source was South America, in part of the Amazon, until a Brit named Henry Wickham smuggled some seeds out, a shining triumph in an otherwise unsuccessful life. Complicating his efforts were Brazilian authorities interested in stopping such acts of biopiracy, and the classism and bureaucracy of the British government (collectors such as Wickham were considered lower-class, less scientists than gardeners). Overall, very good.

CITY OF LOST FORTUNES by Bryan Camp caught my attention because of his discussion on John Scalzi’s blog of the roles luck and trickster figures play in the novel. In practice, it’s a fairly standard urban fantasy set in New Orleans and being the demigod son of some Trickster doesn’t make the protagonist any snarkier or more anti-authoritarian than, say, Harry Dresden. So not for me, but if you like urban fantasy more than I do … One thing I do notice is that the power level is notably higher than most urban fantasies I’ve read; Dresden took a lot longer to actually start squaring off against gods.

THE HITCHCOCK ROMANCE: Love and Irony in Hitchcock’s Films by Lesley Brill argues that far from being cynical, Hitch’s films hold up love and marriage as the ideal end game for his protagonists, though not necessarily an attainable one. Brill divides much of Hitchcock’s output into Romances (true love triumphs over past tragedy [Marnie] or current obstacles [North by Northwest]) and Ironic which uses the same tropes and elements, but the lovers are dragged down (Vertigo). Heavy academese made this a slow read, but Brill’s persuasive enough I’ll keep it handy if I ever go through a Hitchcock rewatching cycle.

THE FIFTY GREATEST CARTOONS offers a nice range of viewing between #1 (What’s Opera Doc?) and #50 (Felix in Hollywood), including UA, Warner Brothers, Tex Avery, Disney and assorted indies. The picks (based on a survey of professional animators) include the landmark Gertie the Dinosaur, the unconventional The Old Mill, Tex Avery’s classic Northwest Hounded Police (“Don’t look now/use your noodle/You’re being followed/by Sgt. McPoodle.”) and weirdies such as Bambi Meets Godzilla. I’m not sure this list is one for the ages — would anyone my niece’s age get the parody elements of The Dover Boys and does it work without them? — but I still enjoyed this. The book includes a listing of various collections containing the ‘toons, but it’s a 1990s book so they’re all videotapes.

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