Vacancy (2007)

Why aren't more thrillers 1)modest; 2)smart; 3)short?

They should teach this movie and Red Eye in film school.

The Good Shepherd (2006)

Robert DeNiro directed this fictionalized version of the career of James Angleton, the mastermind of the Bay of Pigs, played in the film by Matt Damon.

In look and in structure, DeNiro seems to have fashioned the film after "The Godfather Part Two", and it suffers only in comparison to that masterpiece.

Too short at three hours long.

Recommended.

Ace In The Hole (1950)

Kirk Douglas plays a former big-city reporter doing time at the Albuquerque daily when he stumbles on his ticket back to New Yawk: a man trapped by a cave-in at a roadside attraction.

Douglas manipulates the situation – even undermines the rescue operation – for his own glory.

Written and directed by Billy Wilder, and possibly darker than Double Indemnity or Sunset Boulevard.

Recommended.

Strummer, Movies

Today's New York Times' review of the new Joe Strummer documentary by Julien Temple reminded me that I have yet to see Alex Cox's Straight To Hell (above) co-starring the Clash and Elvis Costello and I forget who-all.

Anyone ever seen it?

Blood Simple (1985)

A splatter-movie art movie. The director, Joel Coen, wrote the screenplay with his brother Ethan, who was the producer; they made the film independently, but it's a Hollywood by-product. A Texas roadhouse owner (Dan Hedaya) wants to have his young wife (Frances McDormand) and her lover (John Getz) murdered; he hires a killer, a good-ol'-boy private detective (M. Emmet Walsh) who takes his money and double-crosses him. The one real novelty in the conception is that the audience has a God's-eye view of who is doing what to whom, while the characters have a blinkered view and, misinterpreting what they see, sometimes take totally inexpedient actions. Joel Coen doesn't know what to do with the actors (they give their words too much deliberation and weight), but he knows how to place the characters and the props in the film frame in a way that makes the audience feel knowing and in on the joke. His style is deadpan and klutzy, and he uses the klutziness as his trump card. It's how he gets his laughs—the audience enjoys not having to take things seriously. The film provides a visually sophisticated form of gross-out humor; the material is thin, though, and there isn't enough suspense until about the last ten minutes, when the action is so grisly that it has a kick. M. Emmet Walsh is the only colorful performer; he lays on the loathsomeness, but he gives it a little twirl—a sportiness. The grimy, lurid cinematography is by Barry Sonnenfeld. With Samm-Art Williams. (Pauline Kael)

The Dead Girl (2006)

This is one of those self-consciously "literary" films - you know, a collection of (in this instance)five segments connected in some cosmic way. Here, in each vignette, a woman somehow connected with the discovery of a murdered woman's body has a very literary epiphany...But let's roll with it: Toni Colette is the woman who finds the body (strange, but okay); Rose Byrne,the sister of another long-missing girl, has become an M.E. (really? well...okay); Mary Beth Hurt is the wife of the murderer (she does...what? I don't get it); Marcia Gay Harden is the murdered girl's mother (this was good); and then, Brittany Murphy stomps onscreen as the soon-to-be dead girl, and makes everyone else looks foolish.

The Good German (2006)

Where's Claude Raines when you really need him?