Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, HBO Max, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

The Secret of Convict Lake (dir. Michael Gordon, 1951). It’s 1871 in California, and five escaped convicts have secured food and shelter in a small settlement whose menfolk have all gone off in search of silver, leaving the women home alone. One convict has a secret purpose whose implications become clear as the story develops. Glenn Ford, Gene Tierney, Ethel Barrymore, and Zachary Scott star in a movie that mixes charity, lust, matriarchy, Stockholm syndrome, and some pretty rough justice. From the Criterion Channel’s Snow Westerns feature. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Square Jungle (dir. Jerry Hopper, 1955). A grocery clerk (Tony Curtis) in need of cash to bail out his alcoholic father (Jim Backus) enters an amateur boxing contest and is soon on his way to a world championship. Ernest Borgnine and Paul Kelly provide good support as a trainer and a cop investing in the new fighter’s career. Curtis emotes and then emotes some more. This movie wants to have it both ways: fighting is a brutal business, but here’s Joe Louis waving to the crowd, and here’s some wisdom from the Talmud, so everything’s okay after all. ★★ (YT)

*

Top Ten Monks (dir. Dana Heinz Perry, 2010). A short documentary about the Cistercian monks of Austria’s Stift Heiligenkreuz Abbey, whose recordings of Gregorian chant achieved great success on European pop charts. In thirty-seven minutes we get a clearer picture of a monastic routine and of the lives and motivations of individual monks than in the nearly three-hour-long Into Great Silence (2005). But there’s little said about the business of it all — about what happens when sacred music (a form of prayer, one monk explains) becomes a relaxant for motorists caught in traffic jams. The most arresting scene: a young monk talking to spellbound visitors, in a church so cold that everyone’s breath is visible. ★★★ (HBO)

*

Emily the Criminal (dir. John Patton Ford, 2022). Emily (Aubrey Plaza), a painter manqué beset by a criminal record and massive college debt, takes up a life of credit-card fraud in Los Angeles. When her mentor Youcef (Theo Rossi) becomes her lover, angry words fly between Youcef and his cousin-in-crime Khalil (Jonathan Avigdori). A bit formulaic, but genuinely suspenseful, with a great performance by Plaza (who nails a New Jersey way of talking). As the movie neared its end, it was impossible to know which way the story might go. ★★★★ (N)

*

Cry Vengeance (dir. Mark Stevens, 1954). Stevens stars as a former cop, just released from prison and headed to Alaska, seeking vengeance against the mobster who framed him and killed his wife and daughter. That’s the simple version: the real plot is bewilderingly out of proportion to the movie’s eighty-three minutes. Some good scenes in an insular, dumpy Alaskan town accessible only by seaplane. The standout in the cast is Skip Homeier as Roxey, a bizarro (bleached?) blond killer. ★★ (YT)

[Uh-oh.]

*

Twelve Hours to Kill (dir. Edward L. Cahn, 1960). A Greek engineer (Nico Minardos) working in the United States witnesses a gangland murder and is soon under police protection — or is he? Barbara Eden plays the role of a much more reliable protector. Gavin MacLeod and Richard Reeves are thugs, Dig the drugstore scenes (how late does that place stay open?), and watch for Ted Knight in a small role. ★★★ (YT)

*

Forbidden Passage (dir. Fred Zinneman, 1941). From the Crime Does Not Pay series, by a distinguished director whose parents were murdered in the Holocaust. The message: tell family members in Europe to stay there and not try to enter the United States illegally. The message is brought home with scenes of chilling brutality: when smugglers are about to be found out, they bind their passengers, place them in burlap bags, and weigh them down with chains before dropping them into the water. After watching Ken Burns’s The U.S. and the Holocaust, it’s impossible to think about this short movie without intense cognitive dissonance. ★ (TCM)

*

A Christmas Carol (dir. Edwin L. Marin, 1938). It flew by, and no wonder — it’s only sixty-nine minutes, and was, says June Lockhart, who appears as a Cratchit daughter, a B movie. Warmhearted and goofy, with the darker elements of the Dickens story removed. As Scrooge, Reginald Owen is more comic curmudgeon than mean miser; as Bob Cratchit, Gene Lockhart is a bit too happy and energetic. Seeing this movie for the first time, I now realize that Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962) found much of its inspiration herein — even the gentlemen soliciting for charitable contributions look the same. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Dance Craze (dir. Joe Massot, 1981). All singing, all dancing! A documentary of the British 2 Tone scene, with performances by Bad Manners, the (English) Beat, The Bodysnatchers, Madness, The Selecter, and The Specials. The sound and image are murky, the musicianship is not always polished — the Beat and the Specials are by far the most accomplished players — but the energy and enthusiasm make for a joyful noise indeed. Impossible to sit still. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Meshes of the Afternoon (dir. Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, 1943). It’s no. 16 on the Sight & Sound 100-best list, right below The Searchers. I don’t know what to make of such attempts to rank. Meshes is a short black-and-white silent, made of variations on a theme: a woman enters a house, finds objects, ascends a staircase, chases a hooded figure. I hesitate to buy into explanations of what it means: I’ll settle instead for recognizing its dream-like narrative, which makes, say, the dream sequence of Spellbound risible by comparison. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Wanda (dir. Barbara Loden, 1970). Also from the Sight & Sound list (tied for no. 48), it’s the only movie Barbara Loden directed, the story of Wanda (Loden), a woman from coal country who leaves her husband and children, takes to the road, and takes up with the first man whose path she crosses, “Mr. Dennis” (Michael Higgins), a wildly inept and hypercritical robber. Wanda is a cipher, a meek would-be outlaw. I thought again and again of Dickinson’s 764:

My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun —
In Corners — till a Day
The Owner passed — identified —
And carried Me away —

Like the speaker of Dickinson’s poem, Wanda serves a patriarchal master; she is inert until acted upon. ★★★★ (CC)

*
Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (dir. Roy Rowland, 1945). Further proof of Edward G. Robinson’s versatility: here he’s Martinius Jacobson, a Wisconsin dairy farmer, married to the dour Bruna (Agnes Moorehead), and devoted to his daughter Selma (Margaret O’Brien). I’m reminded of Our Town: this movie, too, looks at the life in a community of private joys, private sorrows, and a moment of collective foreboding that I was pretty sure would show up. The one weak point: Jackie “Butch” Jenkins (as Selma’s young friend Arnold). The movie’s trailer makes clear that his presence was considered a selling point for the film, but I say the kid should have been exiled to a Norman Rockwell painting. ★★★★ (YT)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)