Humphrey Bogart and Martha Vickers in THE BIG SLEEP
On April 17, Turner Classic Movies presents Humphrey Bogart as Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled LA detective Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Bogart’s performance is iconic, and The Big Sleep is famous for its impenetrably tangled plot. It’s also one of the most overtly sexual noirs, and Lauren Bacall at her sultriest is only the beginning. The achingly beautiful Martha Vickers plays a druggie who throws herself at anything in pants. And Dorothy Malone invites Bogie to share a back-of-the-bookstore quickie.
Speaking of the plot, I recently heard Eddie Muller say that, after filming, the studio bosses had more scenes written for Bogart and Bacall (and we thank them for that); to make room for those new scenes, some exposition was cut, leaving at least one loose end. I have to say, though, that I enjoyed watching The Big Sleep many times over the decades before I learned about the supposed hanging plot thread. You probably won’t notice it, either.
Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart in THE BIG SLEEP
Photo caption: Bríd Ní Neachtain in ROISE & FRANK. Courtesy of Juno Pictures.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of the delightful Gaelic dramedy Roise & Frank, the gotta-see-it-to-believe-it I’m an Electric Lampshade and the surprising Reggie Jackson doc Reggie. And a totally refreshed CURENT MOVIES section.
CURRENT MOVIES
Return to Seoul: brilliantly crafted and emotionally gripping. In theaters.
Roise & Frank:therapy dog and hurling coach. In theaters.
Mary Astor in DODSWORTH, the subject of SCANDAL: THE TRIAL OF MARY ASTOR
On April 11, Turner Classic Movies airs the recent documentary Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor. It’s worth a watch for its tale of America’s Victorian social mores running headlong into the emerging celebrity culture. In 1936, movie star Mary Astor suffered through a humiliating child custody trial; her vindictive ex-husband stole her diary, in which she had documented her sex life with the playwright George S. Kaufman and others, and leaked it to the press. The trial was held at night so Astor could shoot Dodsworth during the daytime. And, in another bizarre twist, Astor won over the court on the stand by channeling her extremely sympathetic character in Dodsworth!
Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels in 1931’s THE MALTESE FALCON
If you want to understand what Pre-Code is all about, take a look at the 1931 The Maltese Falcon, which has an entirely different tone than the 1941 John Huston/Humphrey Bogart/Mary Astor The Maltese Falcon that you’ve surely seen. The 1931 Falcon, which is coming up on Turner Classic Movies on April 4.
Ricardo Cortez’s Sam Spade is lecherous, cocksure, leering and pawing. Indeed, if this Pre-Code The Maltese Falcon is about anything, it’s about sex. It opens with a woman adjusting her hose before leaving Sam Spade’s office, evidence of a just-completed sexual encounter.
Bebe Daniels plays Miss Wonderly/Brigid O’Shaughnessy as sexually aggressive. She’s shown taking an obviously post-coital bath, and deals out lines like “who’s that dame wearing MY kimono?“. At one point, a large banknote is missing and Spade takes Brigid into an adjoining room and strip searches her. This 1931 movie is the only Maltese Falcon that contains this sequence. What we see on camera is an apparently nude Brigid clutching her clothes behind the door.
The Hays Code prevented the re-release of The Maltese Falcon in 1936, which led to the 1936 remake, Satan Met a Lady. Because it’s so risque, the complete version of this 1931 film was not screened again in the United States until 1966.Here’s my essay on the three faces of The Maltese Falcon.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – a new review of Sansón and Me. Watch this space for upcoming reviews of Turn Every Page and Roise & Frank.Wind River is highlighted on my most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE.
On March 28, Turner Classic Movies airs one my personal favorite movies, The Paper Chase, which traces a young man’s (Timothy Bottoms) first year at Harvard Law School and is based on the memoir of a recent grad. Although IMDb labels The Paper Chase as 1973 movie, I saw it in the summer of 1975, just as I was about to enter law school myself. It’s such a personal favorite because just about EVERYTHING in the movie is something that I experienced myself at in my first year at Georgetown Law – everything, that is, EXCEPT dating Lindsay Wagner. It’s a compelling story and the great producer John Houseman won an acting Oscar for his performance as the mentor/nemesis law professor; Houseman immediately cashed in with his ”They make money the old fashioned way… they EARN it” commercials for Smith Barney.
The Paper Chase is also notable as the first feature film credit for actors Craig Richard Nelson, Graham Beckel (Brokeback Mountain, L.A. Confidential) and Edward Herrmann (known for many portrayals of FDR). All three are stellar as members of the law school study group, and these guys have now combined for over 300 screen acting credits. The Paper Chase is also available to stream from Amazon, Vudu and YouTube.
John Jay Osborn Jr., who wrote the autobiographical novel which was the source material movie, died last year.
The Whale, with its spectacular performances by the Oscar-winning Brendan Fraser and by Hong Chau.
Aftersun, with its Oscar-nominated performance by Paul Mescal.
Broker, which was spurned by the Oscars despite being a masterpiece.
REMEMBRANCE
Sadly, the actor Robert Blake will be remembered for the horrific childhood and sordid post-career detailed in his NYT obit, a hit TV show with a parrot and an absence of personal boundaries on TV talk shows. He was a child star, exploited by an abusive parent, in Our Gang and even The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. But he proved his underlying talent in In Cold Blood.
On March 24, Turner Classic Movies airs Metropolitan from 1990, the work of writer-director Whit Stillman, who is essentially his own genre. What Stilman does really well is bring us unto the world of old money Eastern preppies with their refined manners and their odd customs like debutante balls. His well-educated characters have earnest late-night existential conversations in complete sentences. Nobody else does this, and Stillman’s dialogue has always kept me wholly absorbed. I keep thinking, I should despise these people, and yet their ruminations are kind of intoxicating. Stilman’s next movie, Barcelona, is enjoyable, too.
Photo caption: Lashana Lynch in THE WOMAN KING. Courtesy of TriStar Pictures.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – my Cinequest coverage, some thoughts on The Woman King and remembrances of two actors who were not-so-well-known, but massively talented. And watch this space for The Movie Gourmet’s 2023 Oscar Dinner, coming imminently.
At the urging of The Wife, we caught up with The Woman King. It’s a very well-crafted movie, and a pretty good one. Like any war movie (or Western), there are the familiar elements of assembling the team, training for the mission, combat, rescue of comrades and the climactic battle. Of course, The Woman King is novel because we aren’t used to seeing a war movie with women warriors, and especially not African-Ancestry women warriors – and let’s not underestimate the importance of that. I was struck how much better The Woman King was than Top Gun: Maverick, even though they follow the same war movie conventions.
Viola Davis, of course, is one our most emotionally powerful screen actors, and it’s fun to see her cut loose as an action hero at age 58. Lashana Lynch is really excellent in The Woman King, just as she impressed me so much as Nomi the new Agent 007 in the Bond movies. Vetting the claim “inspired by true events”, I was impressed by this Wikipedia article on the Agojie.
REMEMBRANCES
Tom Sizemore in THE LAST LULLABY
Actor Tom Sizemore is most remembered for his Oscar-nominated performance as Tom Hank’s sergeant in Saving Private Ryan. Sizemore was intense and charismatic and hugely talented, but his longtime cocaine addiction kept him off the screen and in the tabloids, rehab and jail. In a rare leading role, Sizemore carried an excellent little neo-noir, The Last Lullaby; see it on Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu and redbox.
Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent in AWAY FROM HER.
Prolific Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent was unforgettable in Away from Her, Sarah Polley’s Alzheimer’s movie with Julie Christie (my choice for the best movie of 2007). Pinsent piled up 152 screen credits, much of it lesser material on TV. He played a bad guy in one of my favorite neo-noirs, Chandler with Warren Oates.
CURRENT MOVIES
Women Talking: safety and its costs. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Broker: in the margins, finding a profound humanity. In theaters, but increasingly hard to find.
Living: what is it to live? In theaters, but increasingly hard to find.
Empire of Light: a woman, revealed. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox and included with HBO Max.
The Whale: regret to redemption. In theaters, but increasingly hard to find.
THE CANDIDATE – Robert Redford learns that running for elected office has its disadvantages
On March 15, The Candidate reappears on Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscar. The Candidate may still be the greatest political film of all-time, with a searing leading performance by Robert Redford. My day job, for 38 years, was in politics, and so many moments in The Candidate are absolutely real. Excellent supporting performances by Peter Boyle, Don Porter and Melvyn Douglas. (Significant parts of The Candidate were shot in the Bay Area, including San Jose’s Eastridge mall and Oakland’s Paramount Theatre.)
TCM is sandwiching The Candidate between two other great films of American politics, Seven Days in May and All the King’s Men.
Photo caption: Brendan Fraser in THE WHALE. Courtesy of A24.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – my coverage of Cinequest (links live later today), now underway, and a new review of Women Talking. Plus the following rant.
I finally got around to watching Top Gun: Maverick, if only because The Wife insists on catching herself up on all the movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. I knew that I was not the audience for this well-crafted movie, which is very entertaining on the most superficial level, and I acknowledge that the aerial training and combat scenes are technically unsurpassed. The actors all do their best with the hackneyed and well-worn dialogue, like “You’re where you belong. Make us proud.” But I wasn’t prepared for the insipidity of the happy endings of each plot thread; the only way Top Gun: Maverick could have been cornier is if they found out that Goose wasn’t killed in the first movie, after all. And, since I’m the last person to see Top Gun: Maverick, I don’t consider this a spoiler: although Maverick and Rooster each do something to sacrifice himself for the other, nobody is really sacrificed – this is another war movie where there is no human cost to the violence; (and the enemies are clad anonymously in Darth Vader-like headgear). The screenplay is cynically written to make sure no one feels sad after this movie – it is a fantasy. FWIW Jennifer Connelly is a huge improvement over Kelly McGinnis in the original Top Gun.
CURRENT MOVIES
Women Talking: safety and its costs. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Broker: in the margins, finding a profound humanity. In theaters, but increasingly hard to find.
Living: what is it to live? In theaters, but increasingly hard to find.
Empire of Light: a woman, revealed. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox and included with HBO Max.
The Whale: regret to redemption. In theaters, but increasingly hard to find.
Photo caption: Felix Kammerer in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Courtesy of Netflix.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – I’m busy screening movies that are programmed at Cinequest’s on-line festival Cinejoy, beginning next weekend. Of the current movies that I recommend, only Living, The Fabelmans: and Everything Everywhere All at Once are still relatively easy to find in theaters. The good news is that most are already streaming (see Current Movies below), and Empire of Light just became available to stream.
REMEMBRANCES
Raquel Welch in KANSAS CITY BOMBER
Early on, Raquel Welch was thought of more as a novelty movie star than as an actress. She had become instantly recognizable for displaying her spectacular figure in a skintight spacesuit (Fantastic Voyage), a doe-skin bikini (One Billion Years B.C.), a star spangled bikini (Myra Breckenridge), and flimsy undergarments (100 Rifles). In 1972, she proved that she could act in Kansas City Bomber. Welch nailed the character of a hard scrabble single mom committed to raising her kid while facing one indignity and bad choice after another. (Welch herself had two kids by the time she was 21 and was divorced at 24.) In 1973, she demonstrated brilliant comic acting chops in The Three Musketeers,
Her birth surname was Tejada; she took Welch from her first husband. Welch’s father was Bolivian, and her cousin was the first female president of Bolivia.
Director Hugh Hudson’s FIRST FEATURE won the Best Picture Oscar – Chariots of Fire. He never approached that level of achievement with feature films again, although he had a successful career directing commercials. He was one of the very few directors to attempt to make a movie about the American Revolution, Revolution
CURRENT MOVIES
Broker: in the margins, finding a profound humanity. In theaters, but increasingly hard to find.
Saeed Jaffrey, Michael Caine and Sean Connery in THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
On March 1, Turner Classic Movies presents a great Rudyard Kipling adventure yarn, gloriously brought to the screen by director John Huston – The Man Who Would Be King. Michael Caine and Sean Connery star as Peachy Carnahan and Daniel Dravot, two reprobates mustered out of the Queen’s army in colonial India. Rather than return to menial prospects in England, these cheeky and lovable scoundrels seek to make their fortune as mercenaries on the outskirts of the Raj. Fortune smiles, and they reach unforeseeable success – and then one of them overreaches…
John Huston had been trying to make this 1975 movie since the 1950s. His first choices for the roles of Carnahan and Dravot were Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable, but Bogart became ill. Then the casting of Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster fell through. When he was mulling over a pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, Newman advised him to use British actors for these British roles. Thank you, Paul Newman – Caine and Connery are magnificent.
Huston told Caine that the movie was about friendship, and that Carnahan and Dravot are successful as long as they are united in single purpose.
Christopher Plummer plays Kipling. Saeed Jaffrey is excellent as the local fixer.
Song Kang-Ho and Ji-eun Le in BROKER. Courtesy of NEON.
I am between film festivals, and here I sit in the winter of my discontent. I still haven’t found a way to see Women Talking, Turn Every Page or No Bears, the last three 2022 films that I am eager to see. And I am waiting to see Return to Seoul and Full Time, the first really promising 2023 films. Sigh.
Anyway, I’ve got two very cool TCM recommendations below. And check out my Best Movies of 2022 as we await the Oscars.
CURRENT MOVIES
Broker: in the margins, finding a profound humanity. In theaters.
Carole Lombard and John Barrymore in TWENTIETH CENTURY
On March 21, Turner Classic Movies will present the 1934 screwball comedy Twentieth Century, which holds up as well today as it did 89 years ago. A flamboyantly narcissistic Broadway producer (John Barrymore) has fallen on hard times and hops a transcontinental train to persuade his former star (Carole Lombard), now an A-list movie star, to headline his new venture. Barrymore’s shameless self-entitlement and hyper dramatic neediness makes for one of the funniest performances in the movies.
And, on March 23, TCM airs a milestone in LGBTQ cinema, the 1976 madcap comedy The Ritz. A straight and very square suburban businessman (Jack Weston) is fleeing from his homicidal mobster brother-in-law (Jerry Stiller) and hides out in the very last place one would look for him – a gay bathhouse in Manhattan. The Ritz is a fish-out-of-water farce with lots of comic mistaken identities. Today, it’s plenty dated, and a handsome but squeaky-voiced detective (Treat Williams) falls especially flat. But it’s one of the first movies with a decidedly queer setting, and F. Murray Abraham plays one of the first entirely sympathetic and relatable gay movie characters. Rita Moreno is all in as Googie Gomez, the house entertainer. Watch for John Ratzenburger (Cliff the mailman in Cheers and the voice of many Pixar movies) as a bathhouse patron.
Rita Moreno, F. Murray Abraham and Jack Weston in THE RITZ.
Bill Nighy in LIVING. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – (finally!) new reviews of Broker and Living. Check out my ever-updated Best Movies of 2022. Plus two filmmaker remembrances.
REMEMBRANCES
Melinda Dillon was Oscar-nominated for Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Absence of Malice. But my favorite Dillon performance will also be that of another mom, who is worried her son will shoot his eye out in A Christmas Story. She also shared an intimate scene with Paul Newman in Slapshot, and said, “I spent 10 and a half hours naked in bed with Paul and absolutely loved it.”
Cindy Williams, before her TV success in Laverne and Shirley, made two of the 50Greatest Movies of All Time. George Lucas’ American Graffiti is about that moment in 1962 when the innocence of the 1950s was months away from being replaced by the turbulence of the 1960s, for which nobody in America was prepared; she played the girlfriend of Ron Howard’s Steve, whose willfulness got her in a situation that was more than she could handle. Williams’ apparent sweet innocence was also perfect for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, where it is revealed that her character was not so threatened after all.
CURRENT MOVIES
Park Hae-il and Tang Wei in DECISION TO LEAVE. Courtesy of MUBI.
Broker: in the margins, finding a profound humanity. In theaters.
Armageddon Time: coming of age – right into a moral choice. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
The Banshees of Inisherin: no limits on stubbornness. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox and included with HBO Max.
Tar: a haughty spirit before a fall. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
Triangle of Sadness: more subtlety, please. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
WATCH AT HOME
MUSTANG
After pausing through the Holidays to highlight the best movies of 2022, I’m returning with The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE.
Mustang: repression challenged by the human spirit. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Truman: how to say goodbye. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Love & Mercy: a tale of three monsters and salvation. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Searching: A ticking clock thriller that captures the Silicon Valley vibe. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
Venus: Meeting your kid for the first time while transitioning. Amazon, AppleTV.
The Sapphires: Here’s a crowd pleaser: Motown meets Aborigines. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu.
Wind River:“This isn’t the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of you’re on your own.”Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, redbox.
Radio Dreams: stranger in a strange and funny land. Amazon, AppleTV.
Little Dieter Needs to Fly: an unimaginable escape and a quirky guy Project Nim: .Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt in THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF
On February 15, Turner Classic Movies airs the underseen The Man Who Cheated Himself, in which a cop falls for a dame who makes him go bad. But it’s not just any cop and not just any dame.
The cop (Lee J. Cobb) isa seasoned and cynical pro who knows better. The woman (Jane Wyatt) is a puddle of capriciousness and carnality. Jane Wyatt is best known as the mid-century suburban mom/wife in Father Knows Best, rock steady and super square. But in The Man Who Cheated Himself, Wyatt got to uncork more hysterical unreliability, sexual predation and neediness than in all of her other roles combined.
And, odd for a San Francisco-set noir, it is definitely not fog-shrouded. The day I saw The Man Who Cheated Himself at the 2018 Noir City film festival was one of those gorgeous sunny days that San Francisco gets in the winter – and that’s what the movie looks like.
The Film Noir Foundation has restored The Man Who Cheated Himself, but it’s not yet available to stream. See it this week on TCM.
