She’s So Lovely review

Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago at 7:49 pm. 0 comments

SHE'S SO ENTICING
A film look over by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes

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RATING (0 TO ****): **

"Hey Daddy, what are you doing?" inquires Joey's nine year old
step-daughter, Jeanie. "Shut and drink your beer!" retorts Joey. John
Travolta plays heavily against type as Joey, the wealthy construction
company owner who cusses a blue streak and sees no problem suggesting a
beer to his daughter as an appropriate afternoon beverage.

SHE'S SO LOVELY, from a old script by John Cassavetes and directed
by his son Nick, operates in a sea of booze and a cloud of smoke
surrounded by the constant threat of violence. The star of the film is
a highly likable but completely crazy Sean Penn as Eddie, Jeanie's
father. Eddie, a cheap hood with a gun, likes nothing better than
showing up without money and talking his way into clubs and closed
restaurants. With the smile of a small puppy, he has a host of
friends, but there is that temper and that lack of sanity that gets him
into more trouble than he can handle.

As the show opens, his pregnant wife Maureen, played by his real
wife, Robin Wright Penn, is searching for her AWOL husband. She
stumbles intoxicated out of her fleabag apartment to call on the pay
phone in the hall. When nobody knows Eddie's whereabouts, Maureen
decides to go drinking instead with her scumbag neighbor, who ends up
beating and raping her. Although the rape happens off camera and the
scene cuts away quickly, it is one of several parts of the film that
can be hard to take.

Eddie begins to lose it, beating up people, shooting them, and
jumping through plate glass windows. "We were made for each other,"
concludes a cut-up Eddie to his battered wife. "We're both banged up."
And they are both low-class alcoholics who do seem well matched.

Soon he begins to lose it with her, and his mind begins to
deteriorate. "Can you type 100 words a minute?" he screams at her in
one of his many bizarre streams of dialog. "Can you sew? Can you
dance? What can you do?" The answer, of course, is that she can share
bottles with him, but she just takes his diatribes without response.

Nick Cassavetes, whose UNHOOK THE STARS earlier this year was
beautiful and uplifting, at least knows how to stage scenes well in
this disquieting film. When Eddie totally flips out, he sits bleeding
at a bus stop with his pants down and his gun beside him. As the cops
surround him, Maureen runs up to him from out of nowhere, wearing big,
fluffy house shoes. The scene seems about as unbelievable as the rest
of the film, but visually it certainly shocks the audience into paying
attention.

In the second half, the story skips forward ten years. Maureen,
now Joey's wife, has been transformed to look well off, but she talks
and acts with the jumpy anxiety and crudeness of her earlier life.
Although the people in the film drink and smoke constantly, Maureen
gives the impression that she mainlines caffeine as well. (In a bit of
irony, Joey brags to Eddie about how great his own relationship is with
Maureen. "We quit smoking together" he says while he puffs away.)

The show has such excellent actors as Harry Dean Stanton, Debi
Mazar, Sally Kellerman, James Gandolfini, and Gena Rowlands in the
minor roles. Although all the actors accomplish what they set out to
do, only Sean Penn gives an exceptional performance. Still, you have
to ask yourself if these are people you want to spend a couple of hours
with.

"I'm really depressed," Eddie confides to Maureen when he is
released from the institution where he has spent the show's missing ten
years. You may feel the same way when the ending credits release you
from your time with these unhappy alcoholics.

SHE'S SO LOVELY runs 1:52. It is rated R for violence, alcohol
abuse and profanity. The show would be acceptable only for the most
mature teenagers. I admired the performances but did not like the film
enough to recommend it. I give it **.

**** = A must see fog.
*** = Excellent come. Look for it.
** = Average moving picture. Philanthropic of enjoyable.
* = Scanty show. Don't waste your money.
0 = Unconditionally and painfully unbearable picture.

REVIEW WRITTEN ON: August 27, 1997

Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.

A Free Soul (1931)

Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago at 6:34 am. 0 comments

A FREE PERSON
(director:
Clarence Brown; screenwriters: Becky Gardiner/John Meehan/from the novel
and play by Adela Rogers St. Johns; cinematographer: William H. Daniels;
editor: Hugh Wynn; music: William Axt; cast: Norma Shearer (Jan Ashe),
Leslie Howard (Dwight Winthrop), Lionel Barrymore (Stephen Ashe), Clark
Gable (Ace Wilfong), James Gleason (Eddie), Lucy Beaumont (Grandma Ashe),
George Irving (District Attorney); Runtime: 91; MPAA Rating: NR; producer:
Irving Thalberg; MGM; 1931)
"In the face the talented irregularity,
this one ends up looking insane."

Sexually charged pre-Code morality-play melodrama that has badly
dated. It's based on the novel and play by Adela Rogers St. Johns, who
based it on her father. Lionel Barrymore delivered a 14-minute courtroom
speech at the climax which helped him snag the Oscar for Best Actor. It
was Clark Gable's first starring role under his new MGM contract, and in
his tough guy role he knocks around sexy star Norma Shearer, wife of producer
Irving Thalberg, and tells her to "take it and like it." Director Clarence
Brown ("Chained"/"Ah, Wilderness!"/"The Gorgeous Hussy") keeps it stagebound,
but it was daring for its day. Despite the talented cast, this one ends
up looking preposterous. It was remade by MGM in 1953 as The Girl Who Had
Everything, with Elizabeth Taylor, Fernando Lamas and William Powell.

Famed San Francisco criminal lawyer Stephen Ashe (Lionel Barrymore)
is divorced, a boozer and comes from a society family. The brilliant but
flawed lawyer lives with his pretty free-spirited daughter Jan (Norma Shearer),
in a mutual admiration relationship. Stephen, through some lawyer tricks,
wins the acquittal of nonchalant gangster Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable) in
his murder trial. Eddie (James Gleason) is Stephen's assistant, who sneaks
in his back pocket the bottle of liquor for the boss to drink on the sly
at the courtroom. Drunk after the victory, the lawyer foolishly invites
Ace to attend an evening family birthday celebration at his snobby mother's
(Lucy Beaumont) house. Jan also attends, and falls madly in love with the
hunky gangster. The headstrong Jan resents her family's and her square
fiancé's, Dwight Winthrop (Leslie Howard), bad reaction to Ace and
leaves the party with him. On the way, Ace's car is sprayed by gunfire
from a rival gang. Jan only finds this exciting, and they begin a serious
romance. Stephen tries unsuccessfully to break them up after Ace asks him
for permission to marry his daughter. Realizing they are drifting apart,
both father and daughter try to change their bad habits; but he can't stop
drinking and when she leaves Ace–the thug turns violent and uses force
to get her to marry him. Jan rejects the marriage proposal and in fear
for her life goes to Dwight for help, and he responds by killing Ace in
his gambling place after being threatened by him when he sees the thug
at her apartment. At the trial, the noble Dwight doesn't want to drag Jan's
name through the mud and therefore confesses to the murder without defending
himself. Stephen sobers up to defend Dwight at the trial and argues that
this was a case of temporary insanity and blames the shooting on himself
because he was a bad father introducing his daughter to the thug and not
able to stop the romance. The lurid melodrama ends on an implausible note,
as Stephen has a heart attack and dies in his daughter's arms after his
vigorous defense, the jury finds Dwight innocent and Dwight and Jan are
happily off to New York for their honeymoon.

The public ate it up; the film made Gable a star, Shearer remained
immensely popular and the hammy Barrymore got his one and only Oscar. It
was hard for me to see what the Depression-era audience saw in this set-piece
studio heavy-handed melodrama, that seemed ungainly, overacted, unbelievable
and awkward. 

REVIEWED ON 3/6/2008        GRADE:
C

Rudolph Valentino was one of …

Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago at 1:19 am. 0 comments

Rudolph Valentino was one of the most illustrious boob tube personalities of the 1920s. When he died little ones and under unfathomable circumstances in 1926, he was mourned by immense crowds not rivaled until the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Kino here brings to DVD one of Valentino’s most notable roles, as the bullfighter Juan Gallardo, in the adaptation of Vicente Blasco Ibanez’ 1908 novel, Sangre y Arena.

Adolescent Juan has dreams of being a bullfighter, though they are belittled by his nourish (Rose Rosanova) and mocked by his sister, Encarnacion (Rosita Marstina) and associate-in-law, Antonio (Leo White). But when Juan becomes a colossal success in the arena, they (especially Antonio) are happy to bathe in the reflected reverence of the toreador. His career is paralleled in release by the life of a bandit, Plumito (Walter Long), since both of them make their livings by mightiness and bloodshed. When Juan marries his babyhood sweetheart, Carmen (Lila Lee), all seems closely. But then Juan meets the aristocratic widow Dona Sol (Nita Naldi), and strays from poor Carmen, prime to disaster on all sides.

It’s accommodating to see why Valentino was so adored. He has a radiant sensuality that drips off the screen, much as was the proves with Marilyn Monroe. His air of reliance is readily visible. He takes the part and has a high-minded deal of fooling around with it, at times active over the top. Though he doesn’t have much chemistry with Lee, he does with Nita Naldi, in her usual vamp part. The sparks decidedly fly when these two are on the scan; unfortunately that’s only the last third of the picture. Single of the indelible moments of the silent cinema comes when Valentino has his arm all Naldi as he talks helter-skelter going back to his wife; putting the vampire back into vamp, Naldi takes nip into the open air of his hand!

The pacing is fairly bovine, and sporadically matters dawdle a jot. I for one became chafing until the Dona Sol subplot birch the box. Although Blasco Ibanez’ unfamiliar is an indictment of bullfighting, that prospect of the legend almost becomes an afterthought here. It’s as if director Fred Niblo (who would make Ben Hur in 1925) is rather entranced with the bull guild himself. He tends to stress the misogynistic aspects of the copy plainly more than the condemnation of the toreros. Only the letter of the philosopher Don Joselito (Charles Belcher), an odd background character who collects torture devices, does anything to put down the arena. This helps the videotape keep from being a polemic, but at the same time the message is in danger of getting lost in the chimerical adventures of Juan.

Patently not a program for PETA members, there is manifest bullfight footage in the motion picture. The stock footage of the bullfights does not mesh in good shape at all with the shots of Valentino, giving the proceedings a quite mountebank appearance. The most impressive part of the picture is the magnanimous drama, which comes across nicely in a multifaceted presentation.

Thesp turned helmer-scenarist…

Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago at 4:14 am. 0 comments

Thesp turned helmer-scenarist Clark Gregg sets himself a formidable task in requital for his first off feature attainment: Adapting the manic, farcical, unsettling over the moon marvellous of lit cult darling Chuck Palahniuk. That worked (artistically if not commercially) for David Fincher in “Fight Club” nearly a decade ago; “Choke,” a much more shy effort, doesn’t suffer so much from downscaled production values as from direction and packaging that just don’t match Palahniuk’s clever brio in cinematic terms. Nonetheless, adherent interest should edge pic into the black a lot sooner than “Club” managed. Fox Searchlight pickup does avenge plenty of laughs — albeit in a more stuffy “outrageous” indie comedy mode than the source important promised.

Sam Rockwell, adding another distinctive portrait to his gallery of oddballs and outsiders, plays the simultaneously resourceful and dead-ended protag. Med school dropout Victor Mancini earns minimum wage as an “historical interpreter” at a New England theme park. More specifically, he spends his working day playing “the backbone of colonial America — an indentured Irish servant” in a recreated 18th century village where a whole staff of bored twenty- to thirtysomethings portray milkmaids, gentry and redcoats.

His best pal is big, jovial workmate Denny (Brian William Henke). After hours, they both attend 12-step meetings for sex addicts — Denny being a chronic masturbator and Victor in constant pursuit of the perfect mental “nothingness” experienced at orgasm.

Truth is, neither of them seem able to stay in “recovery” for more than a few days. Victor routinely leaves mid-meeting to copulate vigorously in the bathroom with fellow attendee Nico (Paz de la Huerta).

No doubt the key reason for all this is mommy dearest Ida (Angelica Huston), a paranoiac criminal nonconformist who raised him alone, on the run, in frequently extreme ways. (One of her bright ideas got him mauled by a lynx.)

As seen in flashbacks, she frequently dumped him into foster homes when her delusions (or institutionalization) necessitated, only to pluck him again from these fleeting glimpses of ordinary life.

Decades later, Ida resides in a women’s private care facility that Victor pays for through an unusual scam — he stages his own near-choking death in restaurants so some noble bystander can rescue him via the Heimlich Maneuver and feel heroic. The benefactors frequently later send him money out of further concern for his well-being. It’s a neat if somewhat perilous racket.

Ida no longer recognizes Victor, as she’s slipping away from dementia. New ward physician Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald) has a curious notion about how she might be saved that involves Victor inseminating the hot young medico.

Palahniuk’s antic absurdism is duly present, but the hurtling pace and barely-underlying nihilism that transferred to screen so vividly in “Fight Club” aren’t much in evidence here. Gregg (who’s quite funny as the colonial village’s autocratic manager Lord High Charlie) and collaborators come up with a routine bright look, uninspired setpiece stagings and an uneven performance tenor. They add up to diverting bad taste comedics rather than the novel’s truly skewed parallel universe.

To be sure, certain narrative ideas and verbal tropes will still tickle tome’s fans and may strike the gamely uninitiated as uproarious.

Among the cast, Rockwell and Henke best grasp the desired tone. Tech and design contribs are adequate, but could have been more assertive.

Monkeybone review

Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 4:54 am. 0 comments

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Directed by Henry Selick (Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas ) and based on Kaja Blackley’s graphic novel Puzzling Town, this is a bust, but at least it’s different. Fraser is cartoonist Stu Miller, on the brink of hitting it upper case with his creation Monkeybone, a wisecracking simian monster from the id. Stu is too right-minded to cash in, but ends up in a coma after a freak fortune, and his consciousness is transported to Bleak Town, a purgatory from which Monkeybone escapes to wreak havoc with his assemblage, not to mention his girlfriend’s. The design is often brilliant, although the murkiness is nowhere near as poor taste or waggish as it ought to be.

Kissing Jessica Stein (2002)

Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 6:54 pm. 0 comments

“The picture works best when
it isn’t so concerned about its hot button lesbian sexual subject matter.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Kissing Jessica Stein is an indie film made for a paltry $980,000.
It’s a lesbian comedy/romance, bittersweet sitcom movie, that works as
both a comedy and as a serious tale. It’s based on the brief six-night
running off-Broadway play “Lipschtick” by Heather Juergensen & Jennifer
Westfeldt, who also star in the film. The good chemistry between the star
performers and the easy-going wit and fluidity of the story, allow this
situational comedy room to develop into a credible film about relationships.
It is not an original film but mindful of many other New York City based
films about the Jewish subculture, not the least being Woody Allen’s “Annie
Hall.”

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Jessica Stein (Westfeldt) is a snob, a perfectionist and a graduate
of Brown University who is working as a copy editor for The Village Voice,
while also aspiring to be a painter. She’s a sensitive but neurotic woman
in her late twenties who suffers from insomnia and sadness because of being
single. Her snarky boss is her ex-boyfriend from college Josh Myers (Cohen),
whom she has a dueling verbal relationship with. Her well-adjusted lawyer
brother Danny has just announced his wedding date, which makes her envious
that he found happiness. She’s disheartened about all the losers she’s
going out with as the single scene is viewed as hell, as one date wants
to split the check with her, another is a pompous bore, and one has problems
with basic grammar. Her overbearing suburban Scarsdale Jewish mother Judy
Stein (Feldshuh) keeps trying to fix her up with a Jewish Prince, but she’s
unimpressed with her mother’s choices.

Jessica’s close friend at work is Joan Levine (Hoffman), who also
puts subtle pressure on her to get a mate. The pregnant Joan reads in a
mocking way a personals ad placed in The Voice by a female looking to meet
another female. The ad quotes from the poet Rilke, who happens to be a
favorite of Jessica’s. On a whim, even though she has never had a lesbian
experience, she answers the ad and meets the sender, a sexually liberated
bisexual Chelsea art gallery director and gentile, Helen Cooper (Juergensen).
The Rilke quote was given to her by her two homosexual friends to make
the ad classy, as she is not familiar with the poet and with the art of
placing such ads.

Helen is discontented with her juggling around of three insensitive
male lovers, one of whom we see is a black messenger (Ealy) who practically
rips off her clothes having a quickie without any feelings. This she says
satisfies her horny side. 

Jessica is very tentative and uptight about the gay relationship,
as the experienced Helen has to go slow with her and ease all her tensions
about having gay sex. Their relationship blurs the line between friendship
and romantic love, but ultimately finds an eloquent way for them to experience
both.

The picture works best when it isn’t so concerned about its hot button
lesbian sexual subject matter and is able to get the cute Jessica to stop
being so cute and to open up more dimensions to herself. Jessica begins
to blossom when stung again by a failed relationship and begins to know
more about herself because she is taking risks in her personal life as
well as in her career.

Murder, Inc. Murder, Inc. Fox…

Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 4:24 pm. 0 comments

Exterminate, Inc.
Murder, Inc.
Fox
1960 / B&W / 2:35 anamorphic 16:9 / 103 min. / Circle Date May 23, 2006 / 14.98
Stuart Whitman, May Britt, Henry Morgan, Peter Falk, David J. Stewart, Simon Oakland, Sarah Vaughan, Morey Amsterdam
Gayne Rescher
Richard Sylbert
Ralph Rosenblum
Original Music
Frank De Vol
Written by
Mel Barr, Irve Tunick

from the enrol by

Sid Feder, Burton Turkus

Produced by

Burt Balaban, Larry Joachim

Directed by

Burt Balaban, Stuart Rosenberg

The surprising popularity of the 1959 television show

The Untouchables

reignited interest in gangster pictures. A changed Production Code made it possible for movies like

Al Capone

to use the real names of Prohibition-era gangland figures and to depict some of their violence realistically.

Murder Inc.

fashions a fictional story around the activities of such notorious notables as Lepke Buchalter, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, Mendy Weiss and Albert Anastasia. Based on a best seller by Sid Feder and Burton Turkus, the Assistant District Attorney assigned to break the mob, the film uses some historical facts to good effect.

Synopsis:

The psychotic mob bash man Abe Reles, known as Kid Peculiarity (Peter Falk) uses a loan accountable to force jobless choir girl Joey Collins (Stuart Whitman) into criminal service. Joey's helpmate Eadie (May Britt) resists but is raped by Reles. When Reles' boss Lepke Buchalter (David J. Stewart) goes into hiding, Joey and Eadie are made to cook and tend as regards him in a swank Manhattan safe firm. The unfeeling Lepke is tricked into turning himself in to investigator Burton Turkus (Henry Morgan) and goes to prison for the treatment of relatively subordinate offenses. Fearing that his associates will implicate him in prime crimes, Lepke has his main assassin Mendy Weiss (Joseph Bernard) start massacre misguided the insider witnesses to his murders — a long list of names that includes Reles, Joey and Eadie.

Noted for its grim violence and good acting, Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg's account of the 30s racket known as Murder Inc. was simplified and sanitized for the screen. Lepke Buchalter at one time employed 200 hired killers and the power and reach of his organization was frightening. Lepke's associate Lucky Luciano had most of the New York rackets tied up and was expanding to the West by sending Bugsy Siegel to Los Angeles. Albert Anastasia was technically the head of the Brooklyn clan, but Lepke's appointment to the head of Murder Inc. gave him a special edge.

Murder, Inc.

starts with Lepke's Brooklyn organization winning the 'overall contract' for the mob's dirty work, providing precise, clean and dependable assassinations. The top killer Abe Reles had seized his Brownsville turf by literally burying his competition alive. He was a tough short guy with an inflated ego and no conscience. He sneered at judges and once told a court, "I will take on any cop in the city with pistols, fists, or anything else." Peter Falk plays Reles with a frightening mix of nerve and malice that earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. He performed the same character on a Television drama called

The Witness

the same year.

Mel Barr and Irve Tunick's script passes over most of the brutal detail in Burton Turkus' book, preferring to show a standard series of mob hits backed by a contrived melodramatic situation. While Stuart Whitman and May Britt play conventional gangster victims, Falk's Reles inhabits his role on a different plane entirely. When he flies into a rage and attacks Eadie, we realize that his entire involvement with Joey was a ruse to get at her. The film isn't about Murder Inc. as much as it covers this fictional husband and wife affected by the killers. The Joey Collins character seems to be loosely based on one Pretty Levine, a garbage truck driver who became a mob flunky after borrowing money to pay his wife's medical bills.

Murder, Inc.

's Joey does the same for Eadie. He works for Reles by transporting dead bodies in cars, another detail attributed to Pretty Levine.

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Assistant D.A. Burton Turkus is played by Henry Morgan, a television personality popular on talk and quiz shows of the time. He teams with Simon Oakland's detective to put pressure on the mob. Realizing that his boss Lepke has him on a kill list, Falk's Reles turns state's evidence but taunts Turkus with the knowledge that his testimony will be useless without corroboration from another stool pigeon. Joey refuses to cooperate, forcing Eadie to use extreme means to get him to change his mind.

Detractors point to

Murder, Inc.

's implication that organized crime is easily toppled when courageous witnesses help dedicated lawmen. The unraveling of the mob only happened because Lepke Buchalter turned against his own organization to save himself; forcing key people like Reles to turn themselves in or be murdered. The film avoids mention of the widespread complicity of judges and the police with mob activities. Abe Reles, for instance was arrested dozens of times and served little time in jail. With the profits from drugs, labor racketeering and extortion, the mob had plenty of money to suborn officials of the law.

Murder, Inc.

repeats the myth that organized crime is somehow separate from "normal" society, when it obviously thrives on the passive cooperation of the population at large.

The medium-budget picture has many atmospheric night scenes but is short on period detail. Although the events depicted reach from about 1934 to 1941 the film story appears to cover only a few months. Excellent casting compensates, with Joseph Bernard and David J. Stewart especially loathsome as the mob bosses. Among the cast of victims and innocent bystanders is Morey Amsterdam (


The Dick Van Dyke Show


) as a luckless club owner and young Sylvia Miles and Seymour Cassel as young kids in a diner. Singer Sarah Vaughan sings in one nightclub scene, and a youthful Vincent Gardenia makes a brief appearance as well.

Fox's DVD of

Murder, Inc.

is a fine enhanced transfer of this good-looking B&W CinemaScope production. Cameraman Gayne Rescher (


A Face in the Crowd


) must not have had access to the newest 'Scope lenses, for faces tend to distort in close-up scenes. The only extra is a theatrical trailer.

Co-directors Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg keep the pace fast and impart an efficient brutality to the various mob hits depicted. Balaban didn't have a long career, although his gangster film

Mad Dog Coll

introduced actor Gene Hackman and has become a cult favorite. Stuart Rosenberg was much more prolific in Television work before breaking back into feature directing with

Cool Hand Luke

seven years later.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,

Murder, Inc.

rates:

Movie: Very Real

Video: Excellent

Sound: Splendid

Supplements:

Trailer

Packaging: Camouflage b confine case

Reviewed: May 11, 2006