The Prowler: Van Heflin takes a dark turn

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Van Heflin (right) in THE PROWLER

On April 30, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the oft overlooked 1951 film noir The Prowler, starring usually sympathetic good guy Van Heflin as the twisted bad guy.  Heflin is a beat cop responding to a call – a woman has reported a prowler outside her house.  By the time Heflin and his partner arrive, the prowler is long gone, but Heflin is lusting after the comely woman (Evelyn Keyes), who is home alone every night because her husband works as an all-night DJ.  Under the ruse of making sure that the prowler has vamoosed, Heflin returns and overcoming her reticence, seduces her.  As befits a film noir, once he finds out about the husband’s insurance policy, sleeping with the guy’s wife just isn’t enough anymore.

It’s a strong screenplay, penned by the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (who also provides the voice of the DJ).  Heflin sheds his usual decency to cast a predatory eye at another man’s wife and stuff.   This isn’t the Double Indemnity film noir sap who does the bidding of the femme fatale; it’s all his idea, and she just triggers his rapaciousness.  Keyes plays a woman who wants to pretend she’s on the level, but kinda knows what’s going on.

And of course, the cop has figured out how to get away with the scheme…except for one thing.

The Prowler has been restored by the Film Noir Foundation and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.  It’s an underrated noir thriller.

Movies to See Right Now

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Bradley Cooper in THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES

Best bets in theaters this week:

  • If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later;
  • I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
  • Read my ambivalent comments before going to see the enigmatic Upstream Color.

I haven’t yet seen (but I’ve been eagerly awaiting) the drama Mud, with Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Sam Shepherd, Michael Shannon and the kid from The Tree of Life.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

PBS is broadcasting the compelling doumentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al.  It’s also available streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD providers.

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy.  I’m not a big fan of the shaky cam noir Sun Don’t Shine from promising indie director Amy Seimetz, available from various VOD outlets.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the authentic and evocative coming of age movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

On April 30, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting the oft overlooked film noir The Prowler, starring usually sympathetic good guy Van Heflin as the twisted bad guy.

Sun Don’t Shine: shaky cam noir

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Kate Lyn Shein and Kentucker Audley in SUN DON'T SHINE

Thirtyish Crystal and Leo are on the run and coaxing his weathered (and probably uninsured) sedan through central Florida.  Crystal is a white-hot mess.  I was going to describe her as needy and erratic, but those adjectives seem inadequate.  She is a unfiltered, explosive bundle of nerves, filled with impulses that are unfailingly ruinous.  The suspense in Sun Don’t Shine stems from whether Leo can navigate an escape path through her emotional minefield; we can tell from the neo-noir undercurrent that she’s going to bring him down no matter what.

In her first feature, writer-director Amy Seimetz combines a command of pacing with a Malickesque visual sense.   Watching her sweaty characters, we can feel both the Floridian humidity and the relief from air conditioning in a tourist trap. (A promising actor, Seimetz just turned in a compelling performance in the controversial Upstream Color.)  

The strength of the screenplay is that the audience only gradually learns why the two are on the run, from what and to where.  However, those revelations are not surprising.  Fortunately, Seimetz has chosen not to send her characters on yet another hyper-violent nihilistic crime spree.

But why doesn’t Leo leave Crystal on the side of the road and drive the hell away?  After about fifteen minutes, we know that’s his only chance.  He’s not very bright, but he is grounded in reality, and we wonder why he is so drawn to this wackadoodle. It may be a fim noir, but she sure isn’t Mary Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy in Maltese Falcon. 

Watching Sun Don’t Shine is a 96-minute simulation of having an annoyingly clingy and scarily volatile girlfriend.  Long ago my friend Steve advised me, “Never sleep with anyone crazier than you are”.  Sage words, my friend.

Sun Don’t Shine is available for streaming from Amazon Instant and other VOD outlets, and is beginning a limited theatrical release.

DVD/Stream of the Week: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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In a fine movie debut, Stephen Chbosky directs the screen version of his novel.  A shy high school freshman in 1991 is adopted by two unapologetically misfit seniors, played by Harry Potter’s Emma Watson and Ezra Miller (very different here than in We Need to Talk About Kevin).  The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a coming of age story, and a very good one. We’ve all experienced adolescence, so my test for a film in this genre is whether the moments of adolescent awkwardness, peer obsession, self-doubt and discovery feel real.  I felt that authenticity with Perks.  In addition, the story is textured and unpredictable, and the performances – especially those by Watson and Miller –  are excellent.  It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

Movies to See Right Now

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Amy Seimetz in UPSTREAM COLOR

Best bets in theaters this week:

  • If you see the thought-provoking drama The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, you’ll still be mulling it over days later;
  • I guarantee that you will enjoy the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War.
  • Read my ambivalent comments before going to see the enigmatic Upstream Color.

PBS is broadcasting the compelling doumentary The Central Park Five from Ken Burns, et al.

On Video on Demand:

  • Letters from the Big Man: a beautifully looking and sounding fable about a prickly woman with a guy and a Bigfoot competing for her affections.
  • Electrick Children: an entirely unique teen coming of age story with fundamentalist Mormon teens in Las Vegas.
  • Music fans will enjoy the bio-documentary Beware of Mr. Baker.

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy. The HBO movie Phil Spector is really just a freak show.

I haven’t yet seen the Norwegian scientific true adventure Kon-Tiki. Also opening today is Terence Malick’s To The Wonder.   You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the indie drama Smashed, with its breakthrough performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

Upstream Color: “enigmatic” is an understatement

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UPSTREAM COLOR

I have never been as ambivalent about a movie as I am about Upstream Color.  (More about that later.)

A character named Thief concocts a drug from corpulent worms, doses a woman and scams her out of her savings.  Another character, named Sampler, deworms her in a surgical tent at a pig farm.  This experience washes away her memory, and she happens into a relationship with a man, another loner trying to move on from a traumatic episode.  Along the way, we see vividly colorful shots of the human bloodstream and riparian ecology.  Sampler periodically reappears to solemnly observe the goings on and experiment with sound recordings, and he spends lots of time with the herd of pigs.

Yes, this is one trippy movie.  The worming and deworming scenes could fit in a sci-fi or horror movie.  The second half has the air of a romantic thriller.  The overall tone is of an art film or experimental film.  Upstream Color is written, directed, produced and co-edited by Shane Carruth, who also plays the male lead and composed the score.  Indeed, the cinematography and Carruth’s editing and music are strikingly unique and effective.

Even viewers who admire Upstream Color find it baffling.  What’s going on and what’s it all mean?  Halfway through, I put it all together:  Sampler represented the writer himself who was imagining – and trying on – different characters, plot elements and settings.   So I thought this was a brilliant film about the creative process.  But then Carruth himself set me straight.  At the screening Q & A, Carruth said that I was wrong about Sampler, that the film is about how people might relate if their identities are stripped away, and that Upstream Color is intended to be a coherent narrative.

So here’s my problem –  it’s not a coherent narrative – not even close.  If Sampler is merely an observer, how can he play a critical part in the plot by deworming the woman?  Why are the characters doing the same thing simultaneously at the pig farm and in the highrise? And what gives with the bearded guy and his wife (seemingly unrelated to the other plot threads)?  So I don’t think that Upstream Color is a success on the filmmaker’s own stated terms.  But my interpretation did work for me, and the music, visuals, editing, and lead actress Amy Seimetz combined to make the overall experiece worthwhile.

Amy Seimetz is excellent as this haunted and confused character.  (Seimetz is a director in her own right and is getting enough acting parts now to demonstrate that she has the chops of a potentially significant actress.  (BTW 25 years ago, Lindsay Crouse would have played this role.)

If you like your movies understandable, stay away from Upstream Color – you will hate it.  If you want a unique art film experience, go with it.

The Central Park Five: a sense of outrage

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THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE

PBS is now broadcasting the excellent documentary The Central Park Five, about the media-driven rush to wrongly convict five young men of the rape attack upon the Central Park Jogger.  The film is co-directed and co-written by famed documentarian Ken Burns (The Civil War, Baseball) , his daughter Sarah Burns and her husband David McMahon from Sarah’s book of the same name.  The Central Park Five is just as credibly researched as Ken Burns’ previous work but has more of a bite, more of a sense of outrage.

The Central Park Five begins with the actual perpetrator of the crime, so we immediately are reminded that the Central Park Five teens are innocent, which helps us absorb their experience through their eyes.  That’s critical for us to understand how they could have been browbeaten into confessing to crimes that they did not commit.

We see their video confessions and hear from the Five and their families today.  We also hear from lawyers, politicians and journalists, but not from the police or prosecutors.

The story of The Central Park Five is remarkably compelling.  It’s also an important film.  Viewers will never assess confessions induced by police interrogations in the same way again.

DVD of the Week: Smashed

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In this indie drama, a couple navigates life while drunk.  Can they stay together and flourish when she sobers up?  Smashed is a remarkably realistic portrayal of the drinking life and the challenges of recovery and relapse, informed by the personal experience of co-writer Susan Burke.

The best thing about Smashed is the performance of Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the wife.  Winstead realistically takes her character through the carelessness, denial, humiliation and self-degradation of drinking and the fears and determination that co-exist in her recovery.  It’s a stellar performance, and I’ll be looking for Winstead in bigger roles.

Also very good are Nick Offerman as the wife’s colleague, Megan Mullally, unrecognizable as the wife’s boss, and the always delightful Octavia Spencer.

As The Wife pointed out, the amount of time that director and co-writer James Ponsoldt spent on the drinking part of the story means that lots of plot points whiz by in the final ten minutes.  Still, Smashed is very watchable and benefits from the breakthrough performance by Winstead.  It’s available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes and other VOD providers.

The Place Beyond the Pines: the sins of the fathers visited upon the sons

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Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes in THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES

According to the Old Testament, “the iniquity of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons”.  Indeed, the successes and flaws of fathers, and the choices they make, impact their sons.  And sons are often driven to be like or unlike their fathers, to match them or to surpass them.  That is the territory explored in writer-director Derek Cianfrance’s intelligent drama The Place Beyond the Pines.  (The story is set in Schenectady, New York, and the title refers to the Mohawk origin of the town’s name.)

At first, the story follows a familiar path for a crime drama – a motorcycle trick rider (Ryan Gosling) turns to bank robbery and has an encounter with a cop on patrol (Bradley Cooper).  But the screenplay embeds nuggets about how both men feel about their fathers and how those feelings drive their actions. Both men have infant sons, and the father-son theme becomes more apparent as the story resumes fifteen years later with a focus on their own sons as teenagers.

I can’t remember a recent performance by Ryan Gosling that hasn’t been compelling, and he’s outstanding here, too.  But the unexpected gem is Bradley Cooper, who shows us acting depth and range that we haven’t seen in his earlier work.  Especially in scenes with a police psychiatrist and when forced to ask his father for advice, Cooper exposes the naked vulnerability of his character.

The Place Beyond the Pines is replete with excellent performances.  Eva Mendes plays the mother of Gosling’s baby, and her performance stands up to Gosling’s – no small feat.  Harris Yulin is superb as Cooper’s canny father.  The wonderful Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom, Killing Them Softly) plays Gosling’s crime partner.  Ray Liotta, who often plays shady characters, has never been so menacing.

I found the character of Cooper’s son to be very unsympathetic; he is supposed to be a kid messed up by his parents’ divorce and father’s inattention, and I think that the story would have worked better if it were easier to look past his obnoxiousness to appreciate his damaged nature.  Still, it’s a film that I’m still pondering a day later.  Cianfrance made Blue Valentine, the hard-to-watch but starkly authentic story of an unraveled relationship, an acting showcase for Gosling and Michele Williams.  The Place Beyond the Pines is just as thoughtful and more accessible than Blue Valentine. Pines is an ambitious and mostly successful film.

Movies to See Right Now

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The Sapphires

I’m still recommending the absolutely winning The Sapphires, a charmer about Australian Aboriginal teens forming a girl group to entertain troops in the Vietnam War. The other side of the coin is the bleak, but masterful Romanian drama Beyond the Hills.

And I still love two indies on Video on Demand:

  • Letters from the Big Man: a beautifully looking and sounding fable about a prickly woman with a guy and a Bigfoot competing for her affections.
  • Electrick Children: an entirely unique teen coming of age story with fundamentalist Mormon teens in Las Vegas.

The other best choices in theaters:

  • No: Gael Garcia Bernal stars as the regular guy who brainstormed the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet.
  • The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: a pleasant comedy and a showcase for Jim Carrey.
  • Side Effects: Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
  • Quartet: a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances.

Music fans will enjoy the bio-documentary Beware of Mr. Baker, available on VOD.

On the Road is the faithful but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel, with surprisingly little energy. The HBO movie Phil Spector is really just a freak show.

You may still be able to catch the fine PBS documentary Philip Roth: Unmasked. Roth himself gets lots of screen time to explain his career and his creative process.

I haven’t yet seen the much anticipated The Place Beyond the Pines with Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, which opens today.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the campy 1994 sci fi western Oblivion, which I’m betting is more entertaining than this week’s Hollywood remake.

On April 15, Turner Classic Movies is showing all four of the Clint Eastwood Man with No Name movies:  the Sergio Leone trilogy (For a Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) plus Hang Em High.