ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE: a little made to go a long way

Is ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE a cult movie or just an independent film that got lucky?
The term cult movie is one that has been much used and abused, primarily because it's so elastic. The basic requirements for its' bestowal appear to be that the film has developed a small but passionate, sometimes obsessive following, despite being a commercial failure on its original release. Often it's a film that is in some way outside of the mainstream, whether through story, production values or casting, although the term has also been applied to standard Hollywood fare 
By this criteria ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE would seem to fit the bill but does it deserve the status of a cult? To me it's one of those rather quirky, slightly left field no-big-stars American films from the early 1970s (1973) that has become tagged with the descriptor "cult" for no other reason than because it is slightly quirky and vaguely counter-culture, with no big star names.

The quirky quotient is provided by Robert Blake as John Wintergreen, a vertically challenged motorcycle cop patrolling the dusty desert roads of northern Arizona who dreams of becoming a homicide detective. 
Wintergreen's a 100% by the book cop,eternally optimistic and unfailingly polite even when issuing a speeding ticket to an irate LA detective who thought he'd been let off because he's a fellow cop. His best friend, fellow motorcycle officer Zipper (Billy 'Green' Bush) is the total opposite, and it's this study in contrasts which supposedly gives the story depth. 
Why would a straight arrow cop like Wintergreen tolerate, let alone pal around with, someone so blatantly corrupt and contemptuous of the values he's paid to uphold? Maybe it's because he's quirky!
The story moves at a leisurely pace with numerous scenes that don't appear to have much point to them, and the camerawork switches from claustrophobic close-ups in the first half (where it's impossible to get a clear picture of what's going on) to long shots in the second half, suggesting perhaps an alienation from the central character.
But it's also too easy to read the languid pacing and unusual camerawork as indicators of a deeper meaning that's just waiting to be discovered if only the viewer thinks hard enough. I did think about it and I'm not convinced that there are any deeper meanings to be divined. There is however plenty of gratuitous overacting (I'm talking about you Elisha Cook jr, Jeannine Riley and Mitchell Ryan) to make the suspension of disbelief a painfully back-wrenching piece of heavy lifting.
Other than some beautiful desert landscapes I found ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE to be an empty, unsatisfying viewing experience memorable only (and not necessarily in a good way) for it's very unusual final shot.

CLASH BY NIGHT: powerhouse performances by stand-out stars

Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan in a drama directed by Fritz Lang! 
It doesn't get much better than this.
1952's CLASH BY NIGHT plays to the strengths of both stars' screen persona while also confounding our expectations.

Stanwyck is Mae Doyle, a cynical, hard-boiled middle-aged dame, selfish and embittered from life's experiences who returns to her impoverished working-class hometown and turns its' menfolk upside down.
Ryan is Earl Pfeiffer, one of those menfolk. Unhappily married to a permanently absent wife, he's similarly cynical about human nature, and irresistibly drawn to Mae. She however is fighting with fate and rejects Earl's advances, choosing instead to marry his kindhearted but weak-willed friend, Jerry D'Amato (Paul Douglas). She hopes it'll turn her into the domesticated and loyal housewife she believes she must become if she's to have any chance of finding happiness.
Earl's ardor is not to be dampened by  trifles like marriage or a baby, setting the stage for a clash of wills that is totally enthralling. Stanwyck and Ryan work magnificently together, trading barbs and looks of illicit lust without ever attempting to upstage one another. One can only imagine how much professional pleasure both experienced from working with someone so equally matched in talent and yet so completely lacking in ego. 
Their generosity extends to the rest of the cast. In many ways it's Douglas's character who is at the centre of this story because without him you've just got two unpleasant people who deserve the unhappiness they inevitably bring to their relationship. A pre-glamour superstar Marilyn Monroe works surprisingly well in the part of Peggy, a young Cannery Row worker frustrated with the limitations of her life and fully possessing the potential to become another Mae.
The odd line of overblown dialogue occasionally belies CLASH BY NIGHT's  theatrical origins (the film's based on the play by Clifford Odets) but it's to credit of veteran director Lang that these don't detract from the cinematic experience. This is very much a film, not a filmed play with a couple of outdoor scenes thrown in to open out the action.
This film is wrongly identified as film noir on several reputable movie websites that should know better. CLASH BY NIGHT is a drama and a damn fine one too. Watch it and enjoy!

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE: flashback to a time when the future was still ahead of us

For anyone who came of age in the 1980s the experience of watching HOT TUB TIME MACHINE is very similar to going back in time ourselves to that decade (were we able to).
Chances are we'd discover that our rose-tinted memories don't quite match up with the reality, leaving us with a slight sense of disappointment. 

As someone who did come of age in the 80s and associates the decade with great music, fun times, the making of friendships that have lasted to this day, and the feeling of a wide open future, I was expecting a lot from this film - probably too much.
I was hoping that it would allow me to relive - at least for 90 minutes - an era which meant so much to me on so many levels. What I got was the mildly (very mildly) pleasant experience of revisiting the 80s through the eyes of an American my age. Although I spent a fair amount of time in the USA during the 80s via vacations and an undergraduate exchange program, I didn't share the film's cultural touchstones - especially the music
The songs that we listened to in our late teens and early twenties can conjure up powerful, intangible, sensations of that time and place and, frankly, Poison doesn't do it for me. US youth's obsession with those hideous preening hair bands meant they missed out on a lot of the good stuff that us Brits were listening to.
So, instead of providing me with a portal to revisit my youth I feel like I'm tagging along on a nostalgia roadtrip organised by one of my American friends. It's less than I'd hoped, but that's ok because there's enough points of common interest that I'll still have a good time - right?  
Well, yes and no. 
I liked that the 80s references and iconography are inserted into the story more organically than, say, "The Wedding Singer" which relentlessly bombarded us with them. But perversely, this admirable restraint on the part of the film's makers left me unsatisfied. I wanted more, I wanted to be bombarded, perhaps because the more 80s stuff they threw on the screen the greater the chance was that I'd find things to identify with.
But what I was most disappointed with was the humour. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE wants desperately to be "The Hangover" but it's not because it's just not funny enough. There's plenty of appreciative smiles and the odd chuckle to be had, but it's lacking the all important laugh-out- loud moments that made "The Hangover" such a memorable cinematic experience. It's not the fault of John Cusack and his co-stars. They do their best with the material they've been given, but it's beyond their talents to make a silk purse out of this particular sow's ear. However Chevy Chase is a major disappointment. Why cast a famous comedian in a cameo and then not give him any funny lines?
The rhythm of the story also suffers from what feels like bad editing. My sense is that HOT TUB TIME MACHINE was originally a longer film that's been cut down, possibly in the interests of length or pacing. Whatever the reason it's resulted in some uncomfortable and awkward cuts in the flow of the storytelling. I strongly suspect that there's a longer 'director's cut' waiting to be released on dvd.
Not as bad as it might have been but certainly nowhere near as good as it could have been, I'm still waiting for the definitive cinematic trip back to the most important decade of my life. 
 

WHAT A WAY TO GO! What a Crock!

WHAT A WAY TO GO! ranks as one of the great unsung bad blockbusters in Hollywood history. This is a truly terrible film on so many levels, from the bunch of big name stars with no talent for comedy to the lazily constructed sets, the terrible lighting, the downright dreary story, and the total lack of style.
This is a certified solid gold fiasco.

Shirley MacLaine is the glue holding this stodgy 1964 concoction together as Louisa May Foster, a small town girl with the King Midas touch.  Every man she falls in love with becomes incredibly successful and even more incredibly wealthy before dropping dead, leaving the distraught Louisa May an incredibly wealthy but unhappy widow.
This premise plays out no less than four times, each one less amusing and more drawn out than the one before. Quite how J Lee Thompson can justify his screen credit as director is beyond me given the ragbag collection of performances he elicits from his stars. Far from being directed they all appear to have been left to their own devices. MacLaine shrieks and wails her way through most of the story, Paul Newman mistakes overacting for comedy, Robert Mitchum sleepwalks through his part, while Dean Martin plays his character like a Las Vegas parody of Dean Martin on stage at The Sands. Gene Kelly is the only one who emerges with any shred of decency thanks to a song and dance number which bears faint traces of his great routines from his 40s and 50s musicals.
Interminable, leaden, misguided and just plain painful to watch, WHAT A WAY TO GO! is a masterclass in how to squander talent and twenty million dollars and produce a polished turd.

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES: a booze soaked descent into hell

There would appear to be one major implausibility in the premise  for DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES - the very idea that the beautiful, utterly adorable Lee Remick would be single, unattached and strangely attracted to a working stiff like Jack Lemmon. It just doesn't ring true, at least not on paper. 
But in the film it works.
Remick and Lemmon make an odd, but believable couple and that's entirely due to their talents as actors. Lemmon's Joe Clay may be nervy and a little twitchy but he's relentless - in a goofy kind of way - in his pursuit of Remick's Kirsten Arnesen, and he succeeds in cracking her rather icy demeanor. He also persuades her to abandon her life-long teetotalism and join him in his drinking habit which fast becomes an addiction for both of them, hurtling them into a downward spiral of alcoholism.
DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES is a brutal examination of how alcoholism destroys lives. Joe and Kirsten slide from heavy social drinking into addiction without realising what they're doing to themselves. Their descent from successful middle-class professionals to pathetic bums willing to steal, lie and cheat to get their next drink is truly disturbing. Lemmon in particular holds nothing back in portraying the agony and helplessness of a man in the grip of a demon which has reduced him to the state of a howling animal. 

Both he and Remick were Oscar nominated for their performances and he was unlucky not to win. 1963 was a tough year in the Best Actor category; Lemmon was competing against the stars of "To Kill a Mockingbird", "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Birdman of Alcatraz" and it was Gregory Peck whose name was on the card when the envelope was opened.
If there's a criticism to be made it's that DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES resembles a recruiting film for Alcoholics Anonymous at times, particularly when Jack Klugman makes his entrance as Joe's AA sponsor, talking like he's an audiobook version of the AA handbook.
It's tempting to say they don't make films like this anymore, but they do. They difference is that Lemmon and Remick and director Blake Edwards succeeded in telling an engaging, disturbing,  powerful and very adult tale of despair and moral disintegration without resorting to violence, nudity or profanity.
Now that kind of film they don't make anymore.

BIG JIM McLAIN: Big John kicks some commie butt!

John Wayne was never shy about wearing his heart on his sleeve. He was never going to be mistaken for one of those liberal lefty Hollywood types who dared to question the motives and morals of the American Way. But rarely did he display his politics quite as nakedly as in 1952's BIG JIM McLAIN. Here he doesn't just wear his heart on his sleeve - his heart is the sleeve and most of the rest of the shirt as well!

Big Jim (Wayne) is an investigator for HUAC - the House UnAmerican Activtities Committee. HUAC had come into it's own in the second half of the 1940s as the US Congress' primary tool in rooting out American born communist subversives who were working on behalf of Moscow to bring about the downfall of capitalism. Often confused with Senator Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunt of the early 1950s, HUAC actually got there before him, and the committee's probing of communists in Hollywood in the latter 40s started rolling the bandwagon which McCarthy jumped aboard in 1950 and then hijacked to whip-up anti-communist hysteria in the USA with wild claims of Reds under almost every bed.
There's no room for baseless accusations or irrational hysteria in Big Jim's world. He and fellow investigator Mal Baxter (James Arness) remain scrupulously law-abiding and polite, even as the stinkin' pinko university professors they know beyond a doubt are redder than a red rose walk free after invoking their fifth amendment right against self incrimination while testifying before the heroic HUAC committee members (woodenly playing themselves). 
But things start turning ever so slightly dirty when Jim and Mal are sent to Hawaii to investigate a commie spy ring. Big Jim's forced to take time out from romancing a doctor's receptionist (Nancy Olson) to punch one of the conspirators on the nose after he insults a lady of dubious morals, who is nonetheless worthy of protection because she's red white and blue through and through.
The whole film is an unashamedly simplistic exercise in flagwaving which bears only the slightest relationship to the reality of HUAC's work. But it's also a fascinating artifact of a time not so long ago when the nation which prides itself on being the personification of freedom and democracy allowed itself to be plunged into a nightmare of fear, betrayal and ruined careers by the increasingly ludicrous claims of McCarthy and his HUAC associates.  BIG JIM McLAIN plays now as a far-fetched yarn but back in 1952 Wayne and Warner Bros were deadly serious about alerting Americans to the threat posed by the supposed traitors in their midst.
Even without the right wing politics BIG JIM McLAIN is far from Wayne's finest cinematic moment. There's really not enough storyline to fill the 90 minute running time so it's padded out with a couple of excruciatingly unfunny and pointless comic scenes, some excruciatingly bad acting by the real life Police Chief of Honolulu, and same painfully sappy mugging by Wayne attempting to portray bashfulness in his courtship of Nancy. 
Genuine modesty was never his strong point.

MONSIEUR VERDOUX: the Little Tramp speaks - and murders!

I've never been a fan of Charlie Chaplin's work. It's an opinion based on copious exposure to the Great Man's work. When I was growing up my memory is that the BBC screened his silent movies relentlessly. Being a film fan I watched them, but they never made me laugh.

So I was interested to see MONSIEUR VERDOUX because it marked such a big departure from his earlier work. Originally released in 1947, twenty years after the introduction of sound, this was - amazingly - Chaplin's first proper 'talkie.' It was also a considerable change in style for him.  His Little Tramp character was replaced by a semi-suave, grey-haired ladykiller, the Monsieur Verdoux of the title, who literally killed a series of ladies in 1930s France after marrying them for their money.
A few minutes into the film I realised that this was the first time I had ever heard Chaplin speak in a movie. It was a rather weird experience seeing this star who had become etched in my memory as the baggy black suited, bowler hatted tramp with the cane and Hitler mustache, pantomiming through numerous comic adventures, looking much older, sporting a pencil mustache and speaking in perfect - very British accented - English.
It was fortunate that I had this transformation to fixate on as the plot moved at the speed of an arthritic donkey. I felt as if I was watching a very creaky stage drama. The acting, the pacing and the sets all seemed very old fashioned, even for 1947. The pace does pick up a little as the story unfolds but it remained too leisurely to hold my undivided attention. Verdoux's constant shuttling between his different wives and lovers became rather repetitive when it should have been engaging.
Chaplin hasn't entirely abandoned his past. There's moments of humour - this is a black comedy after all - with routines reminiscent of his silent work, and glimpses of the Little Tramp, mostly in the expressions which flit across Verdoux's face. Chaplin works best when paired with Martha Raye as Verdoux's loud, crass, seemingly unkillable American wife, but otherwise he's in a different league to the rest of the cast. They're playing rather stiff drama while Chaplin's got a loose, go-with-the-flow attitude, although it's considerably easier when you're the film's writer-director-producer-star and - therefore - creator of the flow.
Unfortunately this dominant position also allows Chaplin to indulge himself in the last reel at the film's expense, getting onto his soapbox and going off on a preachy tangent about the evils of society, which is just boring and - well - preachy.
Unsurprisingly the film bombed on its release in 1947 although Chaplin reportedly regarded it as "the cleverest and most brilliant film of my career." I'd say "The Great Dictator", "Modern Times" and "City Lights" all have a greater claim to that description than MONSIEUR VERDOUX which could, more fittingly, be labeled an interesting oddity. 

AUTUMN LEAVES: Mommy Dearest the magnificent

A young man with a mommy fixation really couldn't do better or worse than focusing their attention on the biggest mother of them all - Joan Crawford. Here was a woman who presented herself to the world as an adoring, hands-on mother but who, if her ungrateful adopted daughter Christina is to be believed, was a sadistic monster.
A very young Cliff Robertson as Burt Hanson becomes enamoured of a considerably older Joan Crawford in AUTUMN LEAVES and won't take no for an answer. His relentless pursuit of Millicent Wetherby, a  lonely, middle-aged work from home typist for hire is disturbingly creepy; so creepy that even Millicent tries to push him away until that moment when Burt first locks lips and the floodgates of her long hibernated passion are thrown asunder.
Millicent Wetherby is the archetypal Crawford character of her1950s career. Every facet of Joan's film persona is on show here - the working class woman who's buried herself in work to forget her loneliness; who's hard as nails on the outside and rather masculine in appearance, but who's crying inside from the lack of male attention; who only ever attracts attention from the wrong kind of man, but takes it because deep down she believes that's all she deserves; and who's eyes can brim with tears at the drop of a hat and a moment later flash with barely suppressed fury.
There's no better Joan Crawford impersonator than Crawford herself.
What makes her performance in AUTUMN LEAVES even more rewarding is the knowledge that she'd fought tooth and nail to win this part, refusing to relinquish her leading lady status at an age when Hollywood consigned her type to character parts because, conventional wisdom had it, they were too old to be alluring anymore. Who's gonna pay to watch a 51 year old woman make out with a leading man young enough to be her son?
Crawford was either brave or desperate in taking on a part which required her to make numerous references to the fact that she was "too old" for her toyboy suitor, and to function as his mother as much as his lover. I imagine she was willing to accept any number of indignities if it meant she retained her leading lady status and kept her name above the title.
And she was right to do so. AUTUMN LEAVES is a 100 per cent Crawford star vehicle. That she's playing a character named Millicent Wetherby is irrelevant really. She's playing herself and doing so magnificently. 
If you want to understand what it really means to be an old school film star you need look no further than AUTUMN LEAVES.

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW: simply brilliant cinema

I'm going to say this only once because I need to get it off my chest, then I promise I won’t mention it again.

I cannot understand those people who insist they will not watch a film if it's made in black and white. It doesn’t matter what it’s about or who’s in it – if it’s in black and white they are just not interested.

This inability to get past the lack of colour effectively closes them off to ninety five per cent of Hollywood’s output before 1960, including many of the all-time greats. “Citizen Kane”, “Casablanca”, and “On the Waterfront” all feature in the American Film Institute’s all-time top ten.

Black and white is not simply the absence of colour. In the hands of talented directors and cinematographers it’s an art form in its own right, using light and shade to create stunning compositions.

And among the thousands of films which would not be half as effective had they been shot in colour is a 1959 film noir drama called ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW.

I first saw this many years ago on late night tv, and it's stuck in my memory not only because of the gripping story and superb star performances, but also because of its' visuals. The combination of creative camerawork and stark black and white images are crucial to the film’s impact.

Ostensibly, the story is about a small town bank heist but the real focus is on two ill-matched members of the gang who are unable to get past their hatred for each other to work together effectively.

Robert Ryan is Earl Slater, a racist aging ex-con with a hair-trigger temper and a lifetime of bitterness over bad breaks etched into his face. “No one’s going to junk me like an old car” he snarls when his equally aging girlfriend Lorry (played by Shelley Winters) tries to talk him out of taking the job.

Harry Belafonte is Johnny Ingram, a musician and a drifter with a gambling habit and an ex-wife and young daughter. Unable to break his addiction to the horses, he’s deeply in debt to gangsters who are now threatening the lives of his estranged family.

Despite their mutual dislike both men see the bank raid as a final chance to find, in Slater’s words, the “hole in the fence” that everyone is looking for in life – the chance to change the course of fate.

Their lives are played out against the backdrop of an eerily bleak and silent New York City. Shot in the depths of winter Manhattan appears almost frozen, with the skyscrapers rising like giant tombstones in an enormous graveyard. There are cars and people on the streets but no sense of life. The air is so cold one can almost see it on the screen.

Robert Ryan is simply magnificent. Because he never made a fuss about his work and rarely gave interviews he is often overlooked but the fact is that he’s one of the finest actors ever to grace the big screen. His success here is in making the nakedly hateful Slater such a compelling character.

It says much about Harry Belafonte’s talent as an actor that he is able to hold his own against such powerful competition. Like Elvis, he had also found initial success as a singer before making the transition to films but unlike Presley he retained control of his career.

This allowed him to choose projects which required more than simply singing. Watching this film (which Belafonte’s company produced) with no prior knowledge of the man one would think he's an actor who could also sing when required.

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is film noir at its finest; its sense of impending doom so palpable it almost takes solid form alongside Slater and Ingram as the walking dead, their futures predetermined by their inability to seize control of their life in any positive way.

Powerful, haunting and a great example of black and white cinema at its best ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is an essential part of any serious dvd collection. You can pick it up brand new for much less than $10. So buy it!

PRECIOUS: Oscar-worthy or overblown?

The most cringe-making aspect of the entertainment media's patronising fawning over Gabourey Sidibe in the run-up to this year's Oscars was the oft-repeated question "You're such a happy person and your character's in such a depressing place. How did you manage to deal with that?"
Hello! Last time I looked it was called acting.
It's what people who act in films do for a living.
They're called actors.
Gabourey Sidibe is an actor and when she played Precious she was acting. There is no requirement that an actor have personal experience of a character's lifestyle in order to play them.
Nobody asked Jeff Bridges how come he managed to be so good at portraying an alcoholic ex-country music star in "Crazy Heart" when he'd never been an alcoholic or a singing star.
Jeeeez! 

Of course the unspoken subtext here is how could a totally inexperienced, grossly overweight, not conventionally attractive young woman deliver such a powerful performance in her debut movie, as if this kind of achievement is normally reserved for slim, attractive, lighter skinned actresses with several years worth of movie roles already under their belt?
Sidibe's performance is undeniably impressive and assured. The effectiveness of the story being told depends entirely on her ability to make us believe in Precious as a real, three dimensional person, and she more than meets the challenge.
What has, however, been overlooked in the rush to heap praise on her, is the fact that Precious is a character who reacts to events and people around more than she initiates actions. Other than a handful of fantasy sequences which allow Sidibe to intentionally overact, she's not required to express a wide range of emotions or make the kind of grand statements or gestures  that might be a stretch for someone so inexperienced. We understand how Precious is feeling less from her facial expression (which rarely changes) and more from the information provided in her voice-over narration.
It's left to the more experienced Mo'Nique as Mary, Precious' sadistic monster of a mother, to act out the emotions of a woman pouring all her bitterness and anger into a relentless physical and emotional assault on her daughter. Mary is a truly terrifying character and the scenes of Precious' home life are genuinely disturbing, resembling nothing less than a real-life horror soap opera.
It's to the immense credit of producer-director Lee Daniels that he not only gets the most out of his cast but also keeps the story from tipping over into soap opera. While there is seemingly no end to the miseries piled onto Precious, the manipulation of our emotions is tempered by some creative camerawork, reminding us that PRECIOUS is something more than just another Film of the Week on the Hallmark Channel.
The film is powerful, bleak and hardhitting, but does it deserve all the Oscar attention? I got more out of PRECIOUS than I expected. I think the interpretation of the subject matter by Sidibe, Mo'Nique and director Daniels elevates the film to a status it might not otherwise have attained. In lesser hands this could easily have been overblown melodrama. 
Mo'Nique's performance is absolutely Best Supporting Actress Oscar-worthy and, in a year when Sandra Bullock took home the Best Actress statuette, it's difficult to argue that Sidibe was any less deserving. I think the Academy also made the right decision in nominating but not awarding Daniels for best director and PRECIOUS for best film. 
They're good but they're not the best of the best.