WOMAN ON THE RUN – a sassy gal in 1950 San Francisco

Deenis O'Keefe and Ann Sheridan in WOMAN ON THE RUN
Deenis O’Keefe and Ann Sheridan in WOMAN ON THE RUN

On Friday night, June 5, Turner Classic Movies is presenting one of my Overlooked Noir, in its wonderful film noir series Summer of Darkness.   The character-driven thriller Woman on the Run (1950)  is notable for its San Francisco locations, making it a veritable time capsule of the post-war City By The Bay.

The movie opens with a murder, and the one terrified witness goes underground.  When the police coming looking for him, they are surprised to find his wife (Ann Sheridan) both ignorant of his whereabouts and unconcerned.  While still living in the same apartment, the couple is estranged.  And the wife has a Mouth On Her, much to the dismay of the detective (Robert Keith), who keeps walking into a torrent of sass.

But soon the wife starts hunting hubbie, along with the cops, a reporter (Dennis O’Keefe) and the killer.  It’s a race to see who can find him first.  One character is revealed to be more dangerous than was apparent, and the audience learns this before our heroine does.

One quirky nugget – when she visits his workplace, we learn that his job is making mannikins in the basement of a large department store.

Sheridan is great in this uncharacteristically insolent role.  So are O’Keefe and Keith.  But the real star of Woman on the Run is San Francisco itself, from the hilly neighborhoods to the bustling streets to the dank and foreboding waterfront.  Oddly, the finale is at an amusement park which seems to be Playland At the Beach (but was actually filmed at the Santa Monica Pier).  (Further trivia – that Laffing Sal is the one at Santa Monica, not the one at Playland which now resides at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.)  The only movie that rivals Woman on Run for its depiction of San Francisco in the 1950s is The Lineup.

The story is a taut 77 minutes of mouthy Ann Sheridan, the life-or-death manhunt and stellar period San Francisco.  Woman on the Run is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video (free with Amazon Prime).

Ann Sheridan (far left) sasses Robert Keith (far right) in WOMAN ON THE RUN
Ann Sheridan (far left) sasses Robert Keith (far right) in WOMAN ON THE RUN

Movies to See Right Now

Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD
Eller Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater in BOYHOOD

It’s time for the Oscars, so you really should watch the year’s best film (and Oscar favorite) Boyhood if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video. Otherwise:

  • Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
  • The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
  • The Belgian drama Two Days, One Night with Marion Cotillard, which explores the limits of emotional endurance.
  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
  • Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
  • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
  • Julianne Moore’s superb performance is the only reason to see Still Alice;
  • The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
  • I was underwhelmed by the brooding drama A Most Violent Year – well-acted and a superb sense of time and place (NYC in 1981) but not gripping enough to thrill.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the droll Swedish dramedy Force Majeure, Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. It is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

It’s time for Turner Classic Movies’ annual 31 Days of Oscar – a glorious month of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films on TCM. This week, I am highlighting:

The Producers (February 21): This zany 1967 Mel Brooks madcap classic is probably my nominee for Funniest Movie of All Time. (Much better than the 2005 remake.) Deliverance (February 21): Our of my all-time favorites – still gripping today – with a famous scene that still shocks. Jon Voigt, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox form an impressive ensemble cast.
Seven Days in May (February 26): A GREAT political thriller
The Emigrants (February 27): This Swedish film remains the best depiction of pioneer settlers in the American West.

Movies to See Right Now

David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. (center back) in SELMA
David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. (center back) in SELMA

The best films in theaters right now are no secret – most are Oscar-nominated:

  • Clint Eastwood’s thoughtful and compelling American Sniper, with harrowing action and a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper.
  • The inspiring Selma, well-crafted and gripping throughout (but with an unfortunate historical depiction of LBJ).
  • The Belgian drama Two Days, One Night with Marion Cotillard, which explores the limits of emotional endurance.
  • The cinematically important and very funny Birdman. You can still find Birdman, but you may have to look around a bit. It has justifiably garnered several Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
  • Reese Witherspoon is superb in the Fight Your Demons drama Wild, and Laura Dern may be even better.
  • The Theory of Everything is a successful, audience-friendly biopic of both Mr. AND Mrs. Genius.
  • The Imitation Game – the riveting true story about the guy who invented the computer and defeated the Nazis and was then hounded for his homosexuality.
  • I was underwhelmed by the brooding drama A Most Violent Year – well-acted and a superb sense of time and place (NYC in 1981) but not gripping enough to thrill.

My DVD/Stream of the week is last year’s best Hollywood movie, the psychological thriller Gone Girl, with a star-making performance by Rosamund Pike. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Flixster.

It’s time for Turner Classic Movies’ annual 31 Days of Oscar – a glorious month of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films on TCM. This week, I am highlighting:

  • The Great Dictator (February 7): Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious and devastating takedown of a thinly disguised Adolph Hitler – almost two years before the US entered WW II.
  • Laura (February 9): perhaps my favorite thriller from the noir era, with an unforgettable performance by Clifton Webb as a megalomaniac with one vulnerability – the dazzling beauty of Gene Tierney. The musical theme is unforgettable, too.
  • All the King’s Men (February 11): one of the best political movies of all time, from the novel based on the saga of Huey Long . Watch for the brilliant, Oscar-winning supporting performance by Mercedes McCambridge.
  • The Bad Seed (February 13): very bad things are happening – the chill comes from the revelation that the murderous fiend is a child with blonde pigtails.

CAGED: Eleanor Parker and Hope Emerson in the prototype for Orange is the New Black

31-days-2015-blogathonThis article is written for the annual blogathon in celebration of Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscars.  The blogathon is hosted by classic movie bloggers Outspoken and Freckled, Paula’s Cinema Club and Once Upon a Screen.

Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED
Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED

Want to see the prototype for Orange Is the New Black?  In the 1950 Caged, Eleanor Parker (who died last year) played the naive young woman plunged into a harsh women’s prison filled with hard-bitten fellow prisoners and compassion-free guards. Parker was nominated for an acting Oscar, but her performance pales next to that of Hope Emerson, whose electric portrayal of a hulking guard also got an Oscar nod.

Caged is a Message Picture, editorializing that the prison experience unnecessarily molds inmates into criminals.  Although its trailer (available on IMDb), with its breathlessly sensationalistic narration, makes the film appear overwrought, Caged is edgy enough to have currency with modern sensibilities.  Parker’s newbie  is NOT innocent and wrongly convicted –  as the movie opens, she’s one of the crew in a bank heist.  She experiences hellish brutalization behind bars.  There’s also behind-the-bars pregnancy, inmate suicide and implied lesbianism.  The ending, when the protagonist is finally released and can choose between going straight or going bad, is filled with the cynicism and despair of film noir.

Eleanor Parker hit every note on her character’s slide from the Good Kid who made a dumb mistake all the way down to a Hard Case seasoned with hopelessness.  (In a stunningly competitive year, she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday, along with Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard, and both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter for All About Eve.)

But this is Hope Emerson’s movie.  Emerson draws the audience’s attention every moment that she’s on-screen.  Her prison matron is not just harsh but sadistic.  Emerson was able to radiate meanness with every glance, and took full advantage of her dominating physicality. It’s a performance that still works today.

This was the apex of Emerson’s career.  She stood a big-boned 6″2″, and then as now, Hollywood didn’t have many parts for an actress with her appearance.   She started on Broadway in her early 30s (as an Amazon in Lysistrata), was successful in radio voice-over work and managed 43 screen credits.  She was 53 years old when she made Caged.

Caged also features the fine character actresses Agnes Moorehead, Jane Darwell (Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton here as a young woman).

Sixty-five years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever.  TCM is featuring Caged on February 20 during its 31 Days of Oscar.  It’s also available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on  iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Xbox Video and Flixster.

CONVICTS 4: Ben Gazzara in prison with his crazy friends

Ben Gazzara and Timothy Carey in CONVICTS 4
Ben Gazzara and Timothy Carey in CONVICTS 4

The title of Convicts 4 (1962) is odd because it’s really the true-life tail of one convict, played by Ben Gazzara, who develops into a fine artist while in prison.  It’s based on the autobiography of John Resko, who was sentenced to death for a killing during a robbery; his sentence was commuted, and he developed his skills as a painter in prison, contributing to his eventual release.

Now Convicts 4 is not a masterpiece:  some of the scenes are contrived, the dialogue is often stiff  and there are some overwrought moments, especially the pre-execution shower and the wintertime escape attempt. interesting story.  But it’s pretty entertaining because of the real-life story and the compelling performance by Ben Gazzara – at the height of his charisma.

Resko/Gazzara does have a set of cronies while in the Big House.  There’s a particularly unforgettable turn by one of my favorite movie psychos, Timothy Carey, here in one of his most eccentrically self-conscious performances.  Ray Walton (My Favorite Martian) plays another loony prisoner, crazier than Carey’s, but not a menacing.  The rich cast includes Stuart Whitman, Vincent Price, Rod Steiger, Jack Albertson, Brodrick Crawford and Sammy Davis Jr.

Turner Classic Movies will air Convicts 4 on October 25.

D.O.A.: racing the clock to solve his own murder

Edmond O'Brien in D.O.A.
Edmond O’Brien in D.O.A.

On August 27, Turner Classic Movies has the gripping film noir whodunit D.O.A., which opens with a man walking into a police station to report HIS OWN MURDER. The man (Edmond O’Brien) finds out that he has been dosed with a poison for which there is no antidote – and that he has only a few days to live. He desperately races the clock to find out who has murdered him and why – all in a taut 83 minutes. Much of D.O.A. was shot on location in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and one SF scene has one of the first cinematic glimpses into Beat culture. The little known director Rudolph Maté gave the film a great look, which shouldn’t be a surprise because Maté had been Oscar-nominated five times as a cinematographer. The next year, he followed D.O.A. with another solid noir, Union Station, with William Holden and Barry Fitzgerald.

(This 1950 version with Edmond O’Brien is the one you want to see; avoid the 1988 remake with Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan.)

Spider Baby: as Chaney’s horror career ended, Sid Haig’s was born

Lon Chaney, Jr. in SPIDER BABY
Lon Chaney, Jr. in SPIDER BABY

There’s a cult classic coming up this Friday night (or very early Saturday morning) on Turner Classic Movies.  In the 1968 Spider Baby, a family of inbred ghouls is tended by a kind and rational caretaker (Lon Chaney, Jr.) until some greedy relatives and their shyster invade their spooky Victorian mansion and become cannibalized.  Spider Baby was reportedly made for only $65,000 – and it shows.  There’s the clunky and explicitly expositional beginning and ending narration and a TV sitcom look and feel.  But no 1960s TV show featured a daughter kissing her skeleton father goodnight, along with cretinous uncle and aunts in the basement and negligee-clad cannibals.

Spider Baby was filmed in 1964, but was caught up in bankruptcy proceedings and not released until 1968. This explains the offensive black character, which might have passed as regrettably mainstream in the early 60s, but must have seemed odd to the more racially conscious audiences in 1968.

Chaney has fun with playing a normal human among the monsters, and there’s a sly reference to The Wolfman at the dinner table.

As Chaney’s horror career ended, Sid Haig’s was just beginning.  Haig, in just his second feature, played a sex-craved Igor type.  He now has over 130 screen credits, including character roles in Emperor of the North and Jackie Brown and lots of TV work.  But Haig is most well-known for his horror, and it’s hard to top his portrayal of Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses.  Yikes.

Spider Baby is also known as The Maddest Story Ever Told, The Liver Eaters, Cannibal Orgy and various combinations of those titles.  Spider Baby has played on Turner Classic Movies before and is available streaming from Amazon, Vudu and Xbox Video.

Sid Haig in SPIDER BABY
Sid Haig in SPIDER BABY

The Outfit: Robert Duvall, Linda Black and Joe Don Baker on the loose in the 70s

Robert Duvall in THE OUTFIT
Robert Duvall in THE OUTFIT

The Outfit (1974) is a revenge/crime story starring Robert Duvall as a bank robber released from prison who starts a campaign of terror against the crime syndicate that killed his brother.  It turns out that Duvall’s gang robbed a bank that, unbeknownst to them, was mob-owned.

The Outfit is well acted by Duvall (of course) and his fellow 70s stars Linda Black, Joe Don Baker and Bill McKinney (Deliverance and Worst Movie Teeth).  Black delivers one of her patented 70s lovable floozies, defined by a concoction of shopworn sexiness, bad luck and unreliability.  Baker is especially appealing as Duvall’s buddy.

The cast also stands out for its crew of 1950s film noir veterans:  Robert Ryan (mob kingpin), Timothy Carey (chief henchman), Jane Greer, Elisha Cook Jr and Marie Windsor.  Then there’s the dependable Richard Jaeckel, whose career bridged the decades. Joanna Cassidy plays Ryan’s bimbo du moment.

Duvall pisses off Timothy Carey in THE OUTFIT

I was most pleasantly surprised by the directing of John Flynn, who directed a handful of otherwise pedestrian crime films and action vehicles for Sly Stallone, Jan Michael Vincent and even Steven Seagal.  Flynn also did have a knack for working with good actors (James Woods, Tommy Lee Jones, Ned Beatty, Frank Langella, Danny Aiello, Brian Dennehy).

In The Outfit, Flynn shows himself to be a master of the stationary camera, the long shot and off-screen action.  The movie opens with a driver stopping at a remote gas station and getting out of the car to approach the attendant.  We see what happens in a single shot from roadside, outside the car, looking through the passenger side window and then again through the driver’s side window toward the gas station.  We see that there’s another man in the back seat, but we can’t identify him.  We only hear the ordinary music on the car radio. Still, we can tell that the driver is asking directions, and we sense that the two men in the car are up to no good.

The two men find their destination, and it turns out that they are hit men.  We see them sneaking into position around a home while the dog barks, and then we see them fire shots.  We don’t see the victim getting splattered.  We just see the dog barking his warning while we are hearing the shots.  Then the dog becomes agitated and whines.  Finally, in long shot, we see the victim prone.  It’s another very effective sequence.

Late in the story, we first sense that something has happened to Linda Black when we see the look in Joe Don Baker’s eyes in his rear view mirror.

The Outfit’s story is a little dated (not as violent as today’s crime films), but Duvall and Baker make for an appealing duo, and Flynn gives the film an interesting look. The Outfit plays this week on Turner Classic Movies and is available streaming from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

The trailer slaps together every scene with a gun to make The Outfit look like too much like a shoot ’em up, but it does include a great line reading from Timothy Carey.

Movies to See Right Now

GLORIA
GLORIA

The Chilean drama Gloria is about an especially resilient 58-year-old woman.  The Palestinian Omar is a heartbreaking romance inside a tense thriller; Omar is nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the flawless true story thriller Captain Phillips, my choice as the best Hollywood movie of the year. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

In theaters, you can still find Oscar nominees Nebraska, American Hustle and Her, which all made my Best Movies of 2013. I also strongly recommend Best Picture nominees The Wolf of Wall Street and PhilomenaDallas Buyers Club, with its splendid performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, is formulaic but still a pretty good watch.

I saw this year’s Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts and was disappointed.  There was nothing to match recent gems like The God of Love or Curfew.  I liked the British short about a particularly bored and malevolent God masquerading as a convict, but that 13 minutes didn’t justify the two hours that I had invested.  A 30-minute Spanish film about child soldiers in Africa was to excruciatingly brutal to justify the trite attempt at a redemptive payoff.  (I haven’t seen the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts, but I have heard good things about that program.)

Check out my first post on Cinequest – and follow me on Twitter for my Cinequest coverage.

I love 31 Days of Oscar, Turner Classic Movies magical month of Oscar-nominated films. On March 1, TCM is showing all five Best Picture nominees from 1967: The winner was In the Heat of the Night, which I can’t imagine holds up as well today as The Graduate or the groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde. The other nominees were Doctor Doolittle and the now embarrassingly dated Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

Movies to See Right Now

SHORT TERM 12
SHORT TERM 12

This week, I’m featuring three movies that are flying under the radar. The Chilean drama Gloria is about an especially resilient 58-year-old woman.  Harder to find, Stranger by the Lake is an effective French thriller with LOTS of explicit gay sex.

And my DVD/Stream of the Week is the compelling and affecting foster care drama Short Term 12. This movie made both my Best Movies of 2013 and my Most Overlooked Movies of 2013, with its star making performance by Brie Larson.   Short Term 12 is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, GooglePlay and Xbox Video.

In theaters, you can still find Oscar nominees Nebraska, American Hustle and Her, which all made my Best Movies of 2013.  I also strongly recommend Best Picture nominees The Wolf of Wall Street and PhilomenaDallas Buyers Club, with its splendid performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, is formulaic but still a pretty good watch.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is another fine thriller from that franchise, with another amazing performance by Jennifer Lawrence. I also like the Mumblecore romance Drinking Buddies, now available on VOD.

I saw this year’s Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts and was disappointed.  There was nothing to match recent gems like The God of Love or Curfew.  I liked the British short about a particularly bored and malevolent God masquerading as a convict, but that 13 minutes didn’t justify the two hours that I had invested.  A 30-minute Spanish film about child soldiers in Africa was to excruciatingly brutal to justify the trite attempt at a redemptive payoff.  (I haven’t seen the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts, but I have heard good things about that program.)

Turner Classic Movies has launched its wonderful annual 31 Days of Oscar – filling the entire month with Oscar-nominated movies. This week I recommend the romantic French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) which is notable for three things: 1) the actors sing all of the dialogue; 2) the breakout performance by then 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve; and 3) an epilogue scene at a gas station – one of the great weepers in cinema history.  I also recommend two great performances by Peter O’Toole screening on February 20, as a lethally driven movie director in The Stunt Man (1980) and as a gloriously dipsomaniacal screen icon in the comedy My Favorite Year (1982).