Play Misty for Me (Clint Eastwood, 1971)

Pretty terrifying, and almost exclusively because of Jessica Walter’s acting. An Ally-like obsessive psychopath to be sure, but I like how little to no effort is made to explain, say, her past or any other reason for that madness. All we see is a quirky but cute girl who mixes an impossibly innocent/childlike smile and laugh with terrifying verbal outbursts and a surprising sexuality that contrasts completely with that innocence at the drop of a hat, all of which gradually descends into outright mania when she becomes more and more obsessed with Eastwood’s radio DJ Dave the more he pushes her away. The mystery as to why she’s so crazy makes the crazy that much more interesting. Eastwood doesn’t do his film any favors with his acting, with the same whispery/raspy voice as his Man with No Name just not really fitting in contemporary California, other than seeming custom-made for a radio show. However, look for instance at the odd little Adam and Eve, Roberta Flack interlude that sticks out like a sore thumb amongst all the Jessica Walter-centric suspense, as Eastwood and his girlfriend feel safe at last and make love in the woods. The whole time during this long, drawn-out sex scene, I was expecting Clint to lean his head down and kiss his girl, only for him to lift his head up and for us to see that it’s suddenly Jessica Walter, and then he wakes up all sweaty in his bed. That never happens, which arguably makes this scene out of nowhere seem even more out of place, but at the same time, I applaud Eastwood for refusing to use the long-unoriginal it-was-all-a-nightmare gag. In fact, that I was expecting something terrible to happen in this scene of utter idyll is testament to how Clint, directing a film for the first time, was able to combine a truly creepy performance out of Jessica Walter and a simple yet incredibly effective air of suspense (combining ‘is she watching him just off in the distance?’ stretches with sudden moments of jarring, shaky-camera, exploitative violence) to keep your attention from start to finish. Eastwood’s transition of power from the front of the screen to behind it made a great beginning here.

8/10

Underworld U.S.A. (Samuel Fuller, 1961)

For much of this, Cliff Robertson’s Tolly is a lot like Lee Marvin’s Walker in “Point Blank,” never actually killing anyone, yet still causing the deaths of many men who’ve wronged him, the men who beat up and killed his father years before and have now risen to the top of the criminal underworld, making Tolly’s job of seeking revenge that much more difficult. Walker just wanted his 93 grand back, while Tolly wants to avenge his beloved father, so while Walker has this kind of ultra-cool aloofness as he stumbles his way through that criminal organization to avenge himself, Tolly tastes blood, and puts in a specific plan, not to kill these men himself, but to ingratiate himself with both the underworld and the law and then turn all sides against each other Red Harvest/Yojimbo-style, defying his outward appearance of a determined yet dumb hood with a rather ingenious plan where everything has to go right. As a result, Fuller’s film comes damn close to full-on glorifying the concept of revenge, as Tolly truly seems to live a charmed life as he implements his plan, as nothing goes wrong, and the girl/witness he rescues even falls for him despite his treating her like trash, and to this I objected while nevertheless having fun with what I was watching. But then, by the end, Tolly crosses the point of no return, learns that crime never pays, and all is right again with the world. But this is Samuel Fuller’s world, of tough-talking criminals, cigarette smoke, a fashionably scarred anti-protagonist, over-the-top jazzy musical scores, little girls getting run over to send a message to a potential witness, a corrupt police chief eating his gun in his own office in the middle of the day, and the drunk love interest looking right into the camera as she rants and rambles, so who the hell knows what’s right and what’s wrong in this world.

8.5/10

The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1988)

Even though I knew all about this film’s famous ending well, well ahead of time, the 100 or so minute lead-up to it was no less powerful and engaging. The bliss between the couple Rex and Saskia is so seemingly flawless and imperturbable that you think it HAS to end in tragedy, which of course it does, but that doesn’t make it any less believable, as their chemistry is high, making the sense of panic as Saskia goes missing in a crowded rest stop and Rex becomes more and more worried that much more palpable and tense. As the film soon cuts to three years later and Rex is no less obsessed not with finding Saskia, but simply what happened to Saskia, this would have been a decent-enough thriller examining one man’s obsession with finding the truth behind a tragedy…but then it defies all expectations of a traditional thriller. Soon we meet the outwardly charming and affable chemistry teacher Raymond – the man who’s responsible for Saskia’s disappearance, and no, that isn’t a spoiler – and suddenly this thriller is anything but a whodunnit. Raymond’s story is even more engaging than Rex’s, as he never delves into full-on eats-his-own-feces madness, but the vague signs of sociopathy are clearly there, and his subtle weirdness absolutely gets under your skin, from his quiet obsession with his resting heartrate to his just-as-obsessive fixation on getting his kidnapping procedure just right, to the point that he does a test-run on his unknowing daughter. “The Vanishing’s” form of comic relief, depicting Raymond’s increasingly humorous, failed attempts at kidnappings, is both morbid and bold. And the disjointed chronological structure, going from the time of the kidnapping to three years later to Raymond’s preparations well before the deed to Raymond’s childhood at drops of a pin, leave little doubt as to who the perpetrator is, but keeps you on your toes and force you to pay attention (even if a late flashback shows just how poor Saskia’s judgment is, to the point where I was taken out of the otherwise natural unfurling of events). Finally, when the inevitable Rex-Raymond showdown occurs, it’s far from the thriller-esque taking-revenge showdown we’ve been programmed to expect. Despite a good amount of philosophical, wordy mumbo-jumbo out of Raymond’s mouth that you’d unfortunately expect from a typically deranged villain, this little game between the two men show that Raymond, the sociopathically fascinated ringmaster, and Rex, the wronged rat in the maze, aren’t so far apart in their obsessions. Two sides of the coin of derangement, the only difference being that one of them gets more of our sympathy – and the gap isn’t as wide as you’d think.

8.5/10

Murder by Contract (Irving Lerner, 1958)

Scorsese included this in this article/list he compiled of his favorite gangster/crime movies, saying that it was one of his primary influences for “Taxi Driver,” and from the opening minutes, that’s more than obvious. The protagonist, Claude, spends all day every day in his room, working out, pacing about, and every other solitary motion, much like Travis Bickle years later. In this case, Claude is waiting for a call from a prospective employer, that particular employ being assassin. No explanation is really given as to why Claude wants to kill people professionally, as we first see him requesting an unannounced audience with his potential, surprised employer, claiming this is just a new career direction he’d like to take and nothing more. I liked that about Claude. He’s introduced as a nice little blank slate, a loner with a tunnel-vision for self-betterment, whose only real difference from Travis Bickle is that he actually has a career ambition. As the film progresses, there’s less of a downright fetishistic focus on the protagonist’s daily, isolated routine than in the likes of “Taxi Driver” or Melville’s “Le Samourai”, making much more use of dialogue than those two films, or rather, monologue. Claude sure likes to talk a lot, and in that talk, he sure does like to project how highly he sees himself as a killer and as god’s gift to the human race, much to the chagrin of his two exasperated handlers / colleagues overseeing the particular job that takes up the bulk of the film. Moments like this drag the film’s pacing some – more often than not I just wanted to see Claude put his money where his mouth is – and overall there’s a weirdly comic tone to the whole proceedings, from the lively music to Claude’s two bumbling companions to Claude’s unexpected and darkly humorous failures in accomplishing this job, that’s sometimes compellingly satirical and sometimes just plain strange and off-putting and inappropriate. Nevertheless, Claude’s an interesting character to observe, even if we’re not directly observing the moment he’s getting paid for, as director Irving Lerner wisely – and innovatively – hints here and there at the fate of Claude’s victims, so that the killings themselves are either just off-screen or right after a scene cuts. It’s all about the preparation and the motions and the lonely lifestyle itself – an emphasis that in my opinion is put to better use in films like the aforementioned “Le Samourai”, for instance, but nevertheless raises “Murder for Contract” slightly higher than the B-exploitation film it could have been. Instead, I won’t say that it’s a character study since Claude remains so distant and mysterious – playful and mischievous one minute, terrifyingly serious the next – despite showing off his gift of gab, but rather a study of a day or two in a life. He says he objects to killing a woman because they’re too unpredictable, and thus demands double pay…is he really that callous and resentful of women, or is he trying to hide some kind of moralistic chivalry from his two partners to try to project the laid-back tough guy persona he seems to hold so dear? We’ll probably never know, he’s that attentive to concentrating on the job and his craft alone and emotionally divorcing himself from his victims for the sake of business, despite leading his partners on a days-long goose chase of fun ‘n sun throughout the city (for a very important reason, as we eventually discover), so maybe he did put his money where his mouth was after all.

7.5/10

High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941)

It had potential to be, and often is, more than a typical one-last-heist story because of a particularly interesting sub-plot involving an old farmer and his crippled granddaughter that Bogart’s Roy “Mad Dog” Earle keeps going back to in the midst of planning that one last heist. Never mind the creepiness factor of the older Bogart wooing the obviously much younger girl through small talk, paying for her surgery without asking for a penny in return, etc., I’d say it was sweet if it wasn’t utterly bizarre…but it’s effective. Earle may say he wants to marry the girl and that he loves her, but that’s probably not true. He doesn’t want the innocent, naive girl, he just wants to get out of the fast, crime-ridden lifestyle he’s been drowning in. Ida Lupino’s wannabe-mob girl Marie won’t give him that ticket to the good, easy life, and he knows it, so the next best thing mustbe the young girl and her poor but honest family, by his logic. Marie, and Earle’s cohorts in the upcoming hotel heist, grow increasingly confused at Earle’s behavior as he keeps going back to that family, and indeed it sticks out like a sore thumb in the midst of all the heist planning and mobbish threats as penned by John Huston (the scene where Earle tells the job’s inside man the story of the gun, punctuated by the ‘taptaptap’, is great, showing a terrifying side to Earle that we’ll learn may be little more than a mask of his true self). That family is the specter and the symbolic embodiment of a good life, of the good person that Earle is fascinated by the prospect of becoming, that may even want to be…but is not to be. It’s upsetting that that subplot is all but abandoned as it soon becomes little more than Ida Lupino crying in the passenger seat with the dog in her lap while Bogart acts all manly and shut up-y, but in a way it makes sense. In a surprisingly disappointing screenplay by Huston, complete with the token dog, token black indentured servant with the funny voice and lazy eye, and the farmer’s family coming right out of a Rockwell painting, at least it’s bleak when all is said and done. Earle, from a philosophical and psychological sense, is arguably one of Bogart’s more interesting characters – desirous of a good, crime-free life as seen by his seemingly inexplicable fascination with the granddaughter and her family, and even seen as a good man despite being a criminal, the way he defends a lady’s honor when he sees a black eye, or honors an agreement with his superior despite that superior lying dead on his side, or has an unremovable soft spot for that pesky dog (Bogart’s dog in real life…makes sense when you see how attached it is to the man). Chivalry lives, but crime never pays.

7.5/10

Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)

Would’ve been so great if it was just those incredible shots of Fonda and Hopper cycling through the best landscapes America has to offer, with the occasional scene of the two of them waxing poor man’s philosophical around a campfire (of which this movie actually does have some – the one where Nicholson theorizes about aliens and UFOs is a particular highlight).  But then the plot, and Hopper’s downright shockingly bleak worldview (seriously, this is the second of his directorial efforts I’ve seen after Out of the Blue, and both of them **MAJOR SPOILERS** end with the main character dying a horrific, violent, insanely over-the-top death due to the world and its grandmother being against that protagonist **END MAJOR SPOILERS**.  What the fuck? ) had to come along

Overall, it’s a somewhat effective meditation on culture clash and the youthful generation’s feeling of isolation, desire for absolute freedom, and paranoia of being watched and judged by those who just don’t understand.  Unfortunately, it just goes too far in trying to drive that point of generational differences home, with everything from a more-than-obvious symbolic comparison shot of Captain America and Bill fixing the bike while the old farmers hammer a shoe on a horse, to an abundance of shots of scary-looking rednecks looking at our heroes with either confusion or disgust or designs of evildoing, to the ending.  Later road movies like “Two-Lane Blacktop” and “The Loveless” would perfect those ideas of youthful waywardness and isolation, and the allure of life on the road and its limitless freedom and lack of inhibition, and the differences between the rebellious youth and the more stand pat-ish older generation, but at least “Easy Rider” got the ball rolling with a new, adventurous and risk-taking form of cinema depicting a new, adventurous and risk-taking generation of human beings.

7/10

Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)

The spectacularly-choreographed and shot pickpocketing sequences in the likes of subways and train cars and such, and Michel’s spoken beliefs concerning theoretical supermen who should be free from the constraints of laws and society-induced morals, make you think that this is like “Pickup on South Street” or “Rope”, respectively, if those two films took themselves much more seriously than they actually do, but “Pickpocket” is so much more than a more depressing, less fun version of “Pickup” or “Rope”, and to arbitrarily group it with those films, or any other type of film for that matter, is unfair.  For one thing, even though the opening message informs us that the film is not meant to be a thriller, it certainly has outstanding thriller elements – quite a few times I was at the edge of my seat and unable to swallow my saliva as a nervous Michel’s hand moved ever-so-slowly towards his mark’s wallet-filled pocket (oh, and the train station sequence, in which Michel and his accomplices go to town, using the station and its patrons as their own personal playground, was absolutely ludicrous and farfetched, but absolutely, absolutely incredible and fun to watch, the way Bresson focuses so much more on hands and fluid closeups of those hands in action than on faces or bodies in motion.  This is how to film a cinematic set-piece…of any kind).  And the sign of a pretty great film, and a pretty greatly-realized protagonist?  Even though he’s pretty much scum – refuses to see his dying mother, rebuffs the attention and advice of the kindly and beautiful Jeanne (at least for the most part…it’s the evolving relationship between Michel and Jeanne that I couldn’t get into, leading to the ending that turned out to be one of my few gripes about the film), makes philosophical excuse after excuse for his crimes and egotistical claim after claim for why he, this petty rat of a thief living in a dusty shithole, is superior to those around him – I was hoping and praying he’d succeed in his crime and getting away scott-free without his victim finding out.  Perhaps that was merely because I knew the movie would be much less interesting if he was caught in the first five minutes, but regardless, Michel’s clear talents and even clearer flaws are oddly endearing, and whether his superman theories and claims of moral and intellectual superiority are genuine, or merely a way to hide his immense insecurities, he’s a great, flawed anti-hero.  In this short, 75-minute film about this insignificant nobody who steals chump change and wristwatches, it’s remarkable how telling it is of the concept of addiction and vices in general.  The relatively emotionless, outwardly arrogant, inwardly insecure, unable-to-stop Michel could be any one of us, revolving his or her life around a compulsion – alcohol, drugs, pornography, food, stealing, lying, or what have you – a compulsion he or she may not even enjoy, and in fact may loathe, but is so ingrained in their daily routine that they’ll make every excuse and every justification to continue doing that thing, to the point that that action defines them more than anything else.  With that in mind, Bresson’s well-known technique of wiping recognizable emotion from his actors arguably serves an added purpose here, as Michel, who’s ordinary and unassuming enough to be an ordinary and unassuming contributor to society, allows the act of opening jacket buttons and grabbing some spare change to define who he is.  His Bressonian blank face, then, is not just a means of acting natural as he commits his crimes so as to not get caught, but is also, like his Nietzschean Superman description of himself, a mask indicative of the dehumanized husk that he’s allowed himself to become.  I felt no sympathy for Michel when considering how he willingly allows himself to become this kind of person, and yet at the same time, I couldn’t help but sympathize, and identify, and attach a piece of myself to him.  Bresson nailed it.

9/10

The Element of Crime (Lars von Trier, 1984)

Is it possible that the simplest of tricks, an odd color hue, was enough for this film to wow me in terms of production value? Apparently. You’d think that the constant barrage of dark sepia tones would get old after a while, but I never got tired of it – this nightmarish wasteland in which the burned-out detective Fisher investigates the serial killings of little girls is truly nightmarish, from that color scheme to the constant night to the nearly-as-constant rainfall. Obviously, with the nightmarish, being-a-character-in-and-of-itself quality of the setting, as well as the premise of Fisher obsessively searching for a supposed dead man, von Trier borrows heavily from “The Third Man,” and obviously “The Third Man” is the far-superior film, but you can’t fault von Trier for trying to go above and beyond in bringing a place to horrific life. The story makes little sense, and that despite the supposed plot twist being more than obvious, but for me it was all about the setting, the sense of macabre dread that pervades every second of this film. Everything about this place is simply unnatural, and of course a lot of that has to do with the fact that the whole story is told by Fisher after a psychiatrist puts him under hypnosis. Is it an easy-way-out storytelling shortcut on von Trier’s part to possibly attribute the otherworldly qualities of this apocalyptic nightmare to Fisher’s mindset more than an actual depiction of a particular world? Sure, but it’s a cool way to do it, nonetheless. As the rain comes down in buckets, the archive room of police headquarters is completely flooded so that Fisher practically wades through a lake to get to some information (water is a heavy, heavy motif in this film), the faces of just about everybody comes out red and ominous, and houses, brothels, and just about every other place seem more like abandoned hovels and caves than man-made edifices, it becomes so arguably obvious that much, if not all, of the unnatural qualities of this world are a projection of Fisher’s tortured, mutilated mindset as he looks back on this story in hindsight. I would’ve been tempted to call von Trier’s barrage of gloomy imagery overkill, but that simple flashback, noir-ish narration gimmick turns that into a somewhat fascinating, if not utterly incomprehensible, look at how a time and place can affect a man’s mindset, as well as the opposite: how a man’s mindset can affect a time and place as he sees it.

8/10

The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1943)

“Paths of Glory” in the old west? Not quite, as you have barely a shred of the remorse for and sheer intimacy with the condemned men here as you have with the condemned men in Kubrick’s masterpiece, and Fonda as the de-facto voice of reason can’t hold a candle to Clenched-Jawed Kirk. And “Paths” had settings ranging from a no-man’s-land battlefield to a regal palace to a grimy holding area for the condemned men to a makeshift execution area as its backdrop, while “Ox-Bow” essentially uses one crappy-looking set with about 30 smelly men packed into it like it’s a can of sardines (although some select shots are quite impressive, particularly those involving the three on-the-spot condemned men huddled together and filmed like the world itself is crowding in on them). To its credit, though, “Ox-Bow”, like “Paths of Glory,” did genuinely get my blood boiling to see these three men – a family man, an elderly simpleton, and a mysterious and highly intelligent bandit – get treated like garbage by what amounts to a lynch mob. It all feels rather scripted and not all that “real”, whatever thatmeans, but nevertheless, to witness this group of men’s pack mentality, their bloodlust, their desire to see three necks snap, really for the heck of it rather than their claim that they want to see justice done, did genuinely piss me off in a good way and make me lament man’s continued inhumanity towards man in general. Solid western that I’m probably not giving enough credit to.

7.5/10

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)

It’s so much more than, say, a Children of the Corn for intellectuals, because frankly you’re never quite sure the kids really did do all the fucked up stuff, despite how creepy they come off (especially the pastor’s older daughter, the one who does the thing to the bird and clearly has mental issues of some kind yet makes it a point to be respectful and polite towards grown-ups and strangers – one of the creepiest children I’ve ever seen in a movie). In fact, it feels like finding out “whodunnit” isn’t the point in the least – someone set a wire that tripped the doctor, someone beat up the retarded kid, someone set the baron’s barn on fire, someone was likely responsible for the “accident” that killed the woman at the mill. Is it the same person? Different people working in conjunction, or for completely different reason? Honestly, who cares? The point is that a wire between two trees that tripped a doctor on a horse sets off a chain reaction of people becoming suspicious of neighbors they’ve known for generations, of sexual and physical abuse, of an always-caring and dutiful mother and her son disappearing under mysterious and distressing circumstances.  Even the teacher (and narrator’s) courtship of the shy nanny for the baron, the nicest and most innocent subplot in the film, is tinged with unease in this town slowly and subtly going to hell.

The town’s structure is remarkably simple – the baron and his family are in charge in their big, fancy house, and all the people in town – the pastor, the doctor, the steward, the farmers – all know their purpose and serve it, and the way so much of the misgivings and hatred that develop over the course of the film seem to be aimed at the baron – the fire, the appalling mistreatment of his spoiled young son, the ruining of his crops, it’d be easy to say that Haneke is making an anti-authoritarianism statement, that the ruination of this tiny pre-World War I farm town is a microcosm of the coming storm of Nazism, that a seemingly stable society in which one man or family is in charge and everyone else does a different task towards a common goal of essentially serving that man, is destined to fail when the flapping of a butterfly’s wings, or a wire tripping a doctor’s horse, begins a chain reaction of misgivings and the slow rotting of that society.  And yet, “The White Ribbon” feels so much more apolitical than that simple explanation.  In a more common genre picture, the town likely would’ve devolved into all-out chaos and violence, but not here.  It’s structured almost like an Altman film, as we get to know many different people and families in the village, each getting enough screentime for us to learn about them, and the secrets that begin to come out.  The doctor is initially the victim of a tripwire and thus garners our sympathy, but soon is revealed to be a cruel monster towards his mistress and possibly sexually abusive towards his young daughter.  The pastor is seemingly cruel to his children, but in an odd kind of way seems to truly believe that his embarrassing them by making them wear a white ribbon and otherwise treating them like inferior soldiers in a platoon, is in their best interest, so his motivations and true nature are also impossible to discern.  And we see it all like the teacher narrates it, as objective observers, for the black-and-white cinematography and technical qualities of the film are that good, the camera often gliding through a scene like how our eyes would look back and forth at its players (the occasional stagnant shot of, say, a character leaving and entering a room so that we stay outside that room, or some other non-moving camera shot, will draw too much attention to itself and be to the film’s detriment, but generally this is rare), making the proceedings feel that much more natural, that despite how little sense the bizarre events make, how the clues just don’t add up, it really feels like the fate of this town couldn’t go down any other way.  The moral and intellectual destruction of this town happens almost completely behind the scenes, as we see only the results of the violent acts, never the acts themselves, and unlike, say, von Trier’s “Dogville,” the ruination of the town isn’t physical, but emotional; not involving mass death and the smoldering ruins of buildings, but the introduction of suspicions and mistrust that will only increase over time, and for that reason it’s much more insidious.  I can’t be entirely sure what Haneke’s trying to say about human nature, but if a tripwire can be the catalyst for such an outwardly organized and religiously-based town abandoning the basic tenet of Love-Thy-Neighbor, essentially becoming a ticking time bomb of misgivings that no Sunday church service will cure, no matter how innocuous and ‘back to normal’ that service seems, it can’t be good.

8.5/10