Seven movies, five seasons

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Hulu, a theater, TCM, YouTube.]

Big House, U.S.A. (dir. Howard W. Koch, 1955). Wide open spaces (Royal Gorge, Colorado) and a claustrophobic cell are the settings for a tale of two crimes: a kidnapping and a jailbreak. Ralph Meeker plays the Iceman, whose ransom plot gone wrong lands him in a cell with a pimp (Lon Chaney Jr.), a “pervert” (Charles Bronson, reading muscle magazines), a psychokiller (William Talman), and a criminal mastermind (Broderick Crawford). Reed Hadley is the FBI man determined to bring the Iceman and company to justice. Several scenes of brutal violence and a unexpected plot twist add grimness and suspense to the proceedings. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Turning Point (dir. William Dieterle, 1952). A prosecutor (Edmond O’Brien) enlists a newspaper reporter (William Holden) in an effort to bring a businessman/crime boss (Ed Begley) to justice. Personal relationships complicate things: the reporter is attracted to the prosecutor’s significant other (Alexis Smith), and the prosecutor’s cop father (Tom Tully) might not be on the right side of the law. Many Los Angeles locations, including Angels Flight, and a long, harrowing scene with a hit man at the Olympic Auditorium. Any similarities between the businessman/crime boss and any other businessman/crime boss are purely coincidental. ★★★★ (YT)

*

[Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit in Parallel Mothers. From the film’s website. The shirt says “We Should All Be Feminists.”]

Parallel Mothers (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2021). It’s an extraordinary movie, and to my mind the best Almodóvar ever, about motherhood, friendship, trust, betrayal, secrets, lies, memory, truth, and documentation. Almodóvar joins the emotional intensity of Douglas Sirk’s “women’s pictures” to an exploration of Spain’s brutal fascist past. It’s a women’s picture indeed, with just one significant male character (Israel Elejalde), and Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Rossy de Palma, and Julieta Serrano front and center. The final scene moved me to tears, and I can only imagine the effect on a Spanish audience. ★★★★ (T)

*

Cornered (dir. Edward Dmytryk, 1945). As confusing a movie as I think I’ve ever seen — it makes The Big Sleep seem coherent. Dick Powell plays a Canadian pilot and former POW trying to track down the killer of his wife, a member of the French Resistance. A lead takes him to Buenos Aires, where all kinds of deception and double-crossing take place. Walter Slezak does good work as a man in a white suit and Panama hat (Sidney Greenstreet-esque). At some point I gave up on trying to follow the plot and settled for the Harry J. Wild’s cinematography: shadows and more shadows. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Woman on Pier 13 (dir. Robert Stevenson, 1949). It might be called an anti-Communist film noir (first titled I Married a Communist ). Robert Ryan plays Brad Collins, a just-married executive whose youthful dalliance with Commie Christine Norman (Janis Carter) and the Party comes back to haunt him. The plot is preposterous, with Thomas Gomez and William Talman adding some gangster flavor. What really adds some value: Nicholas Musuraca’s cinematography. ★★ (TCM)

*

Dark Days (dir. Marc Singer, 2000). A black-and-white documentary about a loose community of people living underground in a stretch of a Manhattan railroad tunnel. They go to extraordinary lengths to construct and maintain their houses, built with salvaged plywood, salvaged sheet metal, salvaged doors, and salvaged everything else. They light their living spaces with borrowed electricity, cook on hot plates and over open fires, scavenge the city’s garbage cans and dumpsters, and devote considerable attention to personal cleanliness, sweeping out spaces, showering under a broken water pipe, shaving with an electric hair trimmer and a piece from a broken mirror. Drug abuse (crack) and horrific backstories abound, and it would all be unbearable save for the film’s last minutes. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Stations of the Elevated (dir. Manfred Kircheimer, 1981). Forty-four minutes of (mostly) graffiti on trains, shot outdoors, in brilliant sunlight, with many great glimpses of whole cars painted by LEE, SLAVE, and other artists. Didactic juxtapositions of trains and billboards pose a question about urban blight: is it exuberant youthful self-expression, or hyper-realist images selling alcohol, cigarettes, and suntan lotion? There’s too much randomness in the movie: shots of kids, neighborhoods, green areas, and Attica State (I think), with no clear sequencing. Music by Aretha Franklin (“Amazing Grace,” briefly) and Charles Mingus, with no identification or pieces or musicians. ★★★ (CC)

*

Five seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, 1970–1975)

One: Escape to a pandemic-free world of manual typewriters, tiny television sets, shag carpeting, and Scotch in the boss’s desk drawer. The writing is sharp, with almost every line still landing, in Mary’s apartment and in the third-tier newsroom. And such vividly drawn personalities: Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper), Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman), Lou Grant (Ed Asner), Ted Baxter (Ted Knight), and Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod). And Mary Richards, who is such a goody-goody: when she does something that’s plain wrong, like telling Rhoda that an open position at WJM-TV is already filled, it’s utterly shocking — and that doesn’t happen until season two. ★★★★ (H)

Two: Something that surprised both Elaine and me: Lars and Phyllis Lindstrom don’t own the house they and Mary and Rhoda live in. The Lindstroms are building managers. Who knew? Another surprise in season two: an episode that turns out to be about anti-Semitism. Its title: “Some of My Best Friends Are Rhoda.” ★★★★ (H)

Three: Sex finally enters the picture, with a date asking Mary if he can spend the night (no), Mary’s parents Dottie and Walter (Nanette Fabrey and Bill Quinn), who have relocated and live just around the corner, sussing out that Mary got home from a date at 8:27 in the morning, and both Mary and Dottie responding to Walter’s reminder: “Don’t forget to take your pill.” Georgette Franklin (Georgia Engel) enters the story, with Mary steering her to a more equal relationship with Ted. Rhoda wins a beauty contest at her department store, a brief respite before she returns to faux-frump. A gay character appears, briefly (Rhoda even uses the word gay ), and there are Nixon and Agnew jokes: the times were changing. ★★★★ (H)

Four: Mary has a new shorter hairstyle; her parents are never mentioned; and her apartment now has a bookcase, plant shelves, a larger writing desk, and a cute little table for two by the window. Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White) enters the story line and bags her first partner (Phyllis’s husband Lars) in the season’s first episode. Lou and Edie separate; Ted plagiarizes Mary’s creative-writing assignment; Henry Winkler shows up briefly as Rhoda’s fired co-worker; Rhoda disappears from the series; and Pete, a frequent figurant (J. Benjamin Chulay) gets a chance to speak a line. ★★★★ (H)

Five: With Rhoda gone (and we hear nothing about her until an episode in which Mary heads off to the wedding in New York), the series focuses almost entirely on the people of the workplace. Lou begins a relationship with an “experienced” lounge singer; Murray toys with the possibility of an affair; Sue Ann fends off an incursion by an All About Eve-style stand-in; and Mary becomes more assertive at work and at home: “Phyllis, you’re making me nauseous.” But the series weakens, with stunt episodes (Lou moving into Rhoda’s empty apartment) and endless recyclings of the same scenarios: Mary walking into Lou’s office; Lou talking to Mary and Murray while Ted begs to be included; people knocking on Mary’s door at all hours to talk about their problems. Best episodes: “Not a Christmas Story,” in which a grumpy newsroom has Christmas dinner in November on Sue Ann’s set, and “Ted Baxter’s Famous Broadcasters School,” which approaches the surrealism of Seinfeld. ★★★ (H)

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard) : The last words of Parallel Mothers