90 Movies in 90 Days: Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.

Title: Bad Day at Black Rock 
Release Date: January 7, 1955
Director: John Sturges
Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Summary/Review:

Bad Day at Black Rock blends Film Noir with a modern Western aesthetic to tell a chilling story of racial prejudice and American reactionary politics.  In late 1945, a passenger train makes a rare whistle stop in the tiny desert town of Black Rock. War veteran John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) finds that the people of Black Rock are suspicious of him, paranoid even, within moments of his arrival.  His stated goal of finding a Japanese-American farmer named Komoko only increases their hostility.  Soon it’s clear that Macreedy’s life is at risk as the townfolk coalesce behind the strong man Reno Smith (Robert Ryan).  He does find support from the alcoholic sheriff Tim Horn (Dean Jagger) and the veterinarian/mortician Doc Vellie (Walter Brennan), but Macreedy needs to rely on his own wits to escape Black Rock alive.

Without spoiling things, I liked how the reason for Macreedy’s visit is revealed late in the movie and is not what I expected.  The cast for this film is strong and also includes Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, and Anne Francis.  Tracy is probably too old for the character he’s playing but his performance of a man who is outwardly unflappable but nonetheless clearly fearful for his life is excellent.  The cinematography which emphasizes the wide open spaces of the Western desert is impressive.  And despite the sunshine and bold colors, this is a very dark story about America made during the McCarthy Era and sadly still relevant today.

Rating: ****

90 Movies in 90 Days: What Did Jack Do? (2017)

Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.

Title: What Did Jack Do?
Release Date: November 8, 2017
Director: David Lynch
Production Company: Absurda
Summary/Review:

A detective (David Lynch) interrogates Jack (a Capuchin monkey named Jack Cruz, but voiced by Lynch) about his possible involvement in a murder.  For 20 minutes, man and monkey exchange film noir cliches, and there’s even a musical number, before the stunning denouement.  It’s delightfully absurd.

Rating: ***

75th Anniversary Movie Festival: Drunken Angel (1948)

Title: Drunken Angel
Release Date: April 27, 1948
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Production Company: Toho
Summary/Review:

The alcoholic and curmudgeonly Doctor Sanada (Takashi Shimura) treats patients in a rundown section of postwar Tokyo.  One night a gangster named Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune in his first sixteen collaborations with Akira Kurosawa) comes in with a bullet wound.  Sanada notices that Matsunaga likely has tuberculosis and begins pestering him to rest from his wild lifestyle and get treatment.  The better part of the movie is about the two cantankerous and stubborn learning to trust one another.  Things are only made more difficult when Matsunaga’s sworn brother in the crime syndicate Okada (Reisaburo Yamamoto) returns from prison.

The movie was made during the American occupation of Japan, which is not directly addressed, but the uncertain conditions of the neighborhood and the diegetic American R&B music in the soundtrack reflect the times. It’s a sad movie but a tour de force for two of Japan’s great film actors.

Rating: ****

70th Anniversary Movie Review: The Big Heat (1953)

Title: The Big Heat
Release Date: October 14, 1953
Director: Fritz Lang
Production Company: Columbia Pictures
Summary/Review:

A police officer commits suicide, and homicide detective Sergeant Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is assigned to the case.  When the dead man’s mistress also ends up dead, Bannion begins looking into the activities of the leader of the local crime syndicate, Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby).  The higher ups in the police department want Bannion to drop the case and then he’s suspended.  But the crime wave has hit home for Bannion so he continues his search for justice.  When Lagan’s second-in-command Vince Stone (a very young Lee Marvin) turns violent, his girlfriend Debby Marsh (Gloria Grahame, Violet of It’s a Wonderful Life fame), she starts helping Bannion with the leads that could break the case.

I guess I’m in the minority, because a lot of people really like this film, but I found it kind of dull and Ford was kind of wooden. Grahame is great, but she doesn’t really become a significant character until well into the movie.  The noirish elements are basic, and this could easily be a police procedural show on TV, complete with the copaganda that the police need to “break the rules” to nail the criminals.  It lacks the “mood” of noir which is surprising because Fritz Lang is always so good at creating mood in his other films.

Rating: **1/2

90 Movies in 90 Days: Detour (1945)

I’m kicking off 2023 by trying to watch and review one movie every day for the first 90 days, all of which will be 90 minutes or less.

Title: Detour
Release Date: November 15, 1945
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Production Company: Producers Releasing Company
Summary/Review:

Made by “the smallest and least prestigious of the Hollywood film studios of the 1940s” (according to Wikipedia), Detour is a lowest-of-budgets movie that distills the essence of film noir down to an efficient 68 minutes.  Al Roberts (Tom Neal) is a pianist who hitchhikes from New York to join his aspiring actress girlfriend in Hollywood.  When an accidental death leaves him in a compromising position, Al takes on the identity of another man (as well as his car, clothing, and wallet).

But when Al picks up a hitchhiker himself, a woman who calls herself “Vera” (Ann Savage), it turns out that she knows his whole story and manipulates him into bigger crimes.  Dripping with venom, Savage’s performance is one of the most feral of Classic Hollywood.  The movie ends on a brilliant twist that I didn’t anticipate at all.  Of course, Al is an unreliable narrator, and he’s shown telling this whole story to himself.  So perhaps what we’re seeing is just the version of events that Al can make himself live with?

Rating: ****1/2

Movie Review: Cairo Station (1958)

Title: Cairo Station
Release Date: July 1,  1958
Director: Youssef Chahine
Production Company: Al-Ahramm Studios
Summary/Review:

Cairo Station was produced just a few years after the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy and the birth of the Egyptian republic and captures the nation at a time of great social change and modernization. The film’s frank depiction of the lives of the working class and sexuality would not be possible even a few years later when government censorship became more restrictive. Director Youssef Chahine took inspiration from Italian neorealism and film noir, and I also see flashes of French New Wave and a Hitchcock thriller as well. Indeed, Chahine’s performance as Qinawi presages Anthony Perkins in Psycho two years later.

Set in Cairo’s main railway station, the film focuses on the everyday lives of the people who work their, including the vivacious soft drink vendor Hannuma (Hind Rostom), the union-organizing porter Abu Siri (Farid Shawqi), and the kindly newspaper seller Madbouli (Hassan el Baroud). When the shy and physically disabled Qinawi arrives from the countryside Madbouli gives him a job selling papers. Qinawi becomes obsesses with Hannuma and immediately proposes marriage. Hannuma casually rejects him since she plans to marry Abu Siri. Qinawi’s obsession then turns murderous.

I”ve seen a lot of reviews that refer to Qinawi by the modern term “incel,” which is an apt shortcut to describing the toxic masculinity and violence against women depicted in this film.  While the Hitchcockian final act is a tense thriller, one should not overlook that the early parts of this film are a sympathetic look at the quotidian lives of the working class.  There’s even space for joy as in a vibrant scene where Hannuma dances to the music of a band of buskers in a rail car, which is beautifully filmed. Cairo Station is definitely a film worth checking out.

Rating: ****

Movie Review: Gilda (1946)

Title: Gilda
Release Date: March 14, 1946
Director: Charles Vidor
Production Company: Columbia Pictures
Summary/Review:

An itinerant gambler from America, Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford), arrives in Argentina where he meets the proprietor of an illegal casino, Ballin Mundson (George Macready). Farrell gains Mundson’s trust and gets hired as a casino manager. A while later, Mundson returns from his travels with a newlywed wife, Gilda (Rita Hayworth), a woman from Farrell’s past.  Farrell finds himself in the position of having to watch over Gilda’s scandalous behaviors, and the love/hate feelings between Gilda and himself.  Meanwhile, German mobsters are on Mundson’s tail in regards to a tungsten cartel.

Like a lot of film noir, Gilda doesn’t make a lot of sense plotwise, and it’s particularly hard to figure out the characters’ motivations.  But this is a movie that’s all about the vibes.  And the vibiest of all is the electric performance by Hayworth at Gilda.  She even does a couple of hot musical numbers although Anita Ellis dubs her singing voice.

I’m sure that people could write an entire book of essays about questions raised by this film (Does Farrell have a same sex attraction for Mundson?  What exactly was the nature of Farrell and Gilda’s past?) Mostly I just enjoyed chilling in the balcony of the Brattle Theater while soaking up the excess of Classic Hollywood.

Rating: ***1/2

Movie Review: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Title: Ace in the Hole
Release Date: June 14, 1951
Director: Billy Wilder
Production Company: Paramount Pictures
Summary/Review:

Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas), an arrogant and cynical reporter who has lost jobs at various big city newspapers, bullies his way into a job at an Albuquerque newspaper.  His plan is to get “one big story” to launch him back into the big time.  A year later, while on assignment, he stops for gas at a desert trading post and learns that the owner is trapped in a cave where he was looking for Native American artifacts.  Tatum enters the cave to befriend and photograph the trapped Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict).  Outside the cave, Tatum takes control of the rescue operation manipulating everyone to maximize his “human interest” story.

Ace in the Hole is a not-at-all subtle satire of sensational news media and the general public who laps it up.  It’s acidly funny and horrifying at the same time.  Douglas puts in a particularly good performance shifting from self-aggrandizing and commanding to playing kind and sympathetic when talking with Leo. Jan Sterling plays Leo’s wife Loraine who wants nothing more than to leave Leo and New Mexico for good, but uses the literal carnival that grows around the trading  post to profit.  Ray Teal is the corrupt Sheriff Kretzer who allows Tatum exclusive access to Leo in return for positive news coverage for his re-election campaign.  Tatum also acts as kind of a negative mentor for Herbie Cook (Robert Arthur), the young and idealistic newspaper photographer who gets sucked into Tatum’s plot.

Like all Billy Wilder films, Ace in the Hole is magnificently scripted with sparkling dialogue.  It is also beautifully filmed and tightly edited, so there’s a lot of story in a short movie.  Since I started investing a lot of time into watching classic film that past couple of years, I’ve been impressed by Wilder’s films, so I’m glad to add another one, even if Ace in the Hole isn’t quite as magnificent as Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot,  or The Apartment.

Rating: ***1/2

Classic Movie Review: Touch of Evil (1958)

Title: Touch of Evil
Release Date: February 1958
Director: Orson Welles
Production Company: Universal-International
Summary/Review:

Touch of Evil takes place on the border of Mexico and the United States, beginning with someone placing a time bomb in a car in the sleazy Mexican border town that doesn’t explode until the driver crosses the border.  Witnesses to the explosion include Mexican special prosecutor Ramon Miguel Vargas (Charlton Heston) and his newlywed wife Susan (Janet Leigh).  Vargas takes an interest in the case and unravels the corrupt career of a racist American police captain, Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles). Meanwhile, Susan stays at an isolated motel not realising that it is owned by the sinister Grandi gang.  Bad things always happen when Janet Leigh stays at a motel.

This is not a movie that you watch for the plot as it doesn’t make much sense if you think much of it and every scene exists simply to set up the next twist.  Instead this is a movie you watch for the technical brilliance of its filming, particularly the camera work that is exemplified in the brilliant opening scene where we follow the car with the ticking time bomb and are simultaneously introduced to Vargas and Susan walking down the street. Heston may be the least Mexican person ever (he either has a deep tan or is wearing brownface) but he acquits himself well as the noble prosecutor.  Welles for his part is suitably slimy as the cop who plants evidence on his suspects.  Other notable performances include Dennis Weaver as the twitchy night manager of the motel (another precursor to Psycho) and Marlene Dietrich as the brothel owner and Quinlans ex-lover.  This is the movie I’d like to see again on the big screen if I have the opportunity.

Note: I watched the 1998 version of the movie that was edited to Welles’ specifications.

Rating: ***1/2

Classic Movie Review: Laura (1944)

Title: Laura 
Release Date: October 11, 1944
Director: Otto Preminger
Production Company: 20th Century Fox
Summary/Review:

I first watched Laura about 25 years ago with a friend named Laura.  I’ve long ago lost touch with her which is sad because she was a good person.  This is irrelevant of course to the story of this film noir murder mystery.  Like many film noir movies, the plot and the actions of its characters don’t make a lot of sense upon thinking about it.  But sense is not important with the delivery of sparkling dialogue and camp theatricality delivered by its actors.

Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigates the murder of Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), a young woman who works at a New York City advertising firm.  Among the witnesses/suspects he interviews is Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), a self-aggrandizing columnist who was Laura’s friend and svengali who was jealous of her attention to other men.  One of those men was her fiance Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price) who had been having an affair with Laura’s co-worker.  Shelby is also a kept man to Laura’s socialite aunt, Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson). As McPherson examines Laura’s personal effects and admires her oil portrait, it appears that he is falling in love with the dead woman.

Laura is full of twists and turns and mostly some terrific outlandish performances by Webb and Price.  It’s a great example of Classic Hollywood at its wackiest.

Rating: ****1/2