Twelve movies

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

She Said (dir. Maria Schrader, 2022). A dramatization of the New York Times investigation of Harvey Weinstein’s long history of predation. Times reporters Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) are indefatigable in their pursuit of truth, taking planes and trains on short notice, showing up unannounced to try for interviews, working until midnight and cabbing home to their husbands and children. I especially liked the conference calls, with Times editor Dean Baquet (Andre Braugher) unintimidated by Weinstein’s (Mike Houston) bluster and bullshit. My favorite scene: everyone gathered around one screen, reading copy before hitting Publish. ★★★★ (N)

*

Night Tide (dir. Curtis Harrington, 1961). A sailor (Dennis Hopper) and a professional mermaid (Linda Lawson) meet on the Santa Monica pier, and complications follow. I wonder if this movie influenced Carnival of Souls (1962), another strange and stylish low-budget black-and-white effort. Another possible connection: the 1963 Route 66 episode “The Cruelest Sea of All,” about a romance between Tod Stiles (Martin Milner) and a possibly real mermaid (Diane Baker). Adding value here: an opening scene with a jazz quartet that includes Paul Horn, and an inventive score by David Raksin, who wrote the music for the great standard “Laura.” ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Man from Laramie (dir. Anthony Mann, 1955). Paranoia, sadism, and vengeance way out west. James Stewart is the man from Laramie, Will Lockhart, who’s transported a wagonload of goods to a remote town for a purpose that becomes clear as the plot thickens. Lockhart comes up against the Waggomans, a powerful ranching family with an erratic, violent son (Alex Nichol). Also present: Donald Crisp as the Waggoman patriarch, Arthur Kennedy as a dutiful ranch foreman, Cathy O’Donnell as a shopkeeper, and Wallace Ford as a sidekick. Spectacular camerawork (CinemaScope) makes for stunning scenes. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Way Down (dir. Marina Zenovich, 2021–2022). A cult leader, bizarrely coiffed and grifting off the gullible? No, it’s not about Donald Trump; it’s a documentary in four episodes about Gwen Shamblin (later Gwen Shamblin Lara, or as someone calls her, Gwen Almighty), the mind behind Weigh Down Workshop (a Christian diet program) and the Remnant Fellowship, a Christian church. The goal is perfection, at least superficial perfection, at any cost, because one must be, no joke, thin to enter heaven (one glance at Shamblin’s daughter Elizabeth is enough to understand what might result). An excellent documentary, worthy of, say, Frontline, filled with unwittingly revealing archival footage and numerous interviews of those damaged by this destructive preacher and her abettors. ★★★★ (M)

*

Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults (dir. Clay Tweel, 2020). Do you remember Heaven’s Gate? Founded in 1974 by Marshall Applewhite (“Do,” later “Bo”) and Bonnie Nettles (“Ti,” later “Peep”), it was a UFO-minded millennial cult whose surviving leader Applewhite and another thirty-eight members committed mass suicide in 1997, shedding their “vehicles” as they awaited transport to “the Next Level” and a reunion with “the Older Member” (Nettles) on a UFO supposedly traveling behind the Hale-Bopp comet. This four-part documentary brings together testimony from surviving cult members and family members, commentary by cult experts, Heaven’s Gate home movies, and copious excerpts from audio and video recordings of Applewhite, whose gentle but decidedly crazed affect makes me think of an unhinged Fred Rogers. Two ways in which this documentary might have been improved: remove the unnecessary woodcut-like animations; add much more commentary on the theology at work in the group (Manichaeism, anyone?). ★★★ (M)

*

‌Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence (dir. Zachary Heinzerling, 2023). I had only a vague awareness of Larry Ray, the father of a Sarah Lawrence student, and his so-called sex cult. But “sex cult” hardly begins to describe Ray’s control over a group of young women and men who began by seeing him as a live-in mentor and ended up broken, abused, brainwashed, estranged from their families, from their friends, and from themselves. This is an exceptionally well-made documentary (also Frontline-worthy), never merely lurid, never less than serious, with considerable video and audio from Ray’s documentation of life under his thumb. As I watched, I kept asking myself whether any Sarah Lawrence professor ever thought to ask one of these students the obvious questions: Are you okay? How come you’re not living on campus anymore? ★★★★ (H)

[Which of these cult leaders do you think is the worst? Given his utter cruelty, I think it must be Ray.]

*

The Man in the Net (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1959). Yes, there’s a dragnet, but the larger net in this highly unusual film would appear to be the insular Connecticut town where John Hamilton (Alan Ladd) contends with his unfaithful alcoholic wife Linda (Carolyn Jones), a macho sheriff (Charles McGraw), and an array of well-to-do neighbors. Having given up a position in commercial art, John is struggling to make money as a painter and seems happy only when he’s sketching on a pad, surrounded by the village children. When Linda disappears and John is suspected of murder, it’s the children who take his side. Ladd seems a blank here, barely showing emotion, barely able to run when he needs to, tight-lipped at moments when, really, anyone would shout. ★★★ (YT)

*

Stage Struck (dir. William Night, 1948). When a small-town girl who hopes to become a star is murdered in New York , her sister grows impatient with the police effort and enters the world of “acting classes” and “hostess” work to figure out whodunit. Thoroughly mediocre, with detectives sleepwalking their way through their investigation. No surprises as the movie creeps to its (predictable) end and its fatuous moral: young women, stay home. Look for silent-movie star Evelyn Brent in a brief appearance as an elocution teacher. ★★ (TCM)

*

Nightmare (dir. Maxwell Shane, 1956). Whaddayaknow — it’s a remake of Fear in the Night, by the same director. The abidingly eerie premise: a man (Kevin McCarthy) wakes up certain that he committed a murder: was he dreaming, or awake? Edward G. Robinson, out of place in these low-budget surroundings, is the police detective who guides the possible murderer (his sister-in-law’s boyfriend) to a solution. The movie’s musical emphasis — the possible murderer is a jazz clarinetist; his girlfriend (Connie Russell) is a singer — feels gratuitous, but it does afford the viewer the chance to see Billy May as a cranky New Orleans bandleader. ★★ (YT)

*

Lighthouse (dir. Frank Wisbar, 1947). A variation on The Postman Always Rings Twice, with kindly, unglamorous lighthouse keeper Hank (John Litel) his sleazy Clark Gable-lookalike assistant Sam (Don Castle), and the extraordinarily beautiful landlubber Connie (June Lang), who marries Hank to get back at two-timing Sam. And there they are, the three of them, cooped up in a lighthouse together: what’s gonna happen? A low-budget production with capable acting and some inexpensive artistic touches (brief interludes of music and ocean waves). And a surprisingly frank dinner conversation about Connie’s past. ★★★ (TCM)

[A surprise: Don Castle became an associate producer on the television series Lassie, produced by his old college roommate Jack Wrather.]

*

Prison Ship (dir. Arthur Dreifuss, 1945). Life and death on a Japanese hell ship. Nina Foch (looking remarkably like Angela Lansbury) leads the cast as a captive British war correspondent in possession of photographic evidence of Japanese atrocities. Among the other prisoners under the authority of Captain Osikawa (Richard Loo): Ludwig Donath, Robert Lowert, Louis Mercier, Barbara Pepper, and Erik Rolf, all of whom are familiar faces if not names. The story told here, of passengers with nothing to lose deciding to fight back, is eerily familiar to anyone who recalls Flight 93, September 11, 2001. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Parallel Mothers (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2021). I saw it in a theater last year, and I’ll let the sentences I wrote then speak their piece. What I’ll add: the closing words from Eduardo Galeano are more relevant than ever when the truths of history are everywhere threatened. Almodóvar understands that it’s impossible for a person or a culture to move forward without learning the truth about the past. The final moments, with four generations walking together to bear witness to the past, make for what I think must be one of the great movie endings. ★★★★ (DVD)

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All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)