[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: AMC, Criterion Channel, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]
The Sleeping Tiger (dir. Joseph Losey, 1954). “We’ve never had a criminal for a houseguest — at least one we knew about.” A daft premise: prison psychiatrist Clive Edmonds (Alexander Knox) takes in the man who tried to mug him, Frank Clemmons (Dirk Bogarde), for a six-month effort at rehabilitation. Clive’s wife, Glenda (Alexis Smith), left to her own devices as her schlubby husband is off to give one lecture after another, is increasingly drawn to this young, pompadoured, rather brutal stranger, one already possessed of a rich criminal record. A sudden, unconvincing plot turn keeps me from giving the movie four stars, but Smith gives a great performance as a self-abasing, emotionally starved mess. ★★★ (YT)
*
Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants (dir. David Mamet, 1996). A filmed version of Ricky Jay’s Broadway show. An amazing performance of card tricks, card throwing, and sleight of hand, enhanced with learned patter. To watch Ricky Jay in action is to be transported to a Steven Millhauser-like world in which things happen that are beyond explanation. When someone like Ricky Jay leaves us, I think about all the knowledge that goes with that person. ★★★★ (YT)
[Watch it while it’s there.]
*
Maestra (dir. Maggie Contreras, 1023). A documentary about La Maestra, an international competition, held in Paris, for female orchestral conductors. From 250 entrants, fourteen are chosen; then five; and finally one. The most interesting story, to my mind: that of a French émigré, now teaching in Iowa, who finds herself confronting the painful family life she left behind. What would help offset the unvarying narrative movement (conducting followed by eliminations): greater exploration of the sexism that the competitors themselves talk about — for instance, the suggestion, even at La Maestra, that one competitor should smile more. ★★★ (N)
*
Shadow in the Sky (dir. Fred M. Wilcox, 1952). An oddly low-key treatment of combat-induced PTSD. Ralph Meeker plays Burt, a veteran receiving long-term care in a VA hospital. Nancy Davis is his sister; James Whitmore, his brother-in-law; Jean Hagen, a sympathetic nurse. Burt is tormented by rain, and a moment of crisis forces him to overcome his fear. ★★★ (TCM)
*
Love Actually (dir. Richard Curtis, 2003). It’s a Christmas movie and feel-good movie, with a huge cast and slightly bewildering network of relationships, familial, romantic, friendly, work-related. The comic bits are genuinely funny; the moving moments are genuinely moving; the corny moments are painfully corny. And the plotting is delightfully intricately, with everything coming together in an airport. Stealing the movie: Billy Nighy as a dissolute rocker looking for a comeback with a Christmas refashioning of the Troggs’ “Love Is All Around.” ★★★ (AMC)
*
Footsteps in the Dark (dir. Lloyd Bacon, 1941). A harmless murder-mystery comedy, with Errol Flynn as Francis Warren, an investment counselor who secretly writes mystery novels as F.X. Pettijohn. When a prospective (and sketchy) client is murdered, Warren turns amateur detective to find the killer, consorting with burlesque dancer Blondie White (Lee Patrick), staying out all night (“board meeting”), and arousing his wife’s (Brenda Marshall) and mother-in-law’s (Lucile Watson) suspicions. I have no interest in swashbucklers, but I like Flynn in this comic role, lobbing stock compliments to his tart-tongued mother-in-law and impersonating a Texas oilman to impress Blondie. With Ralph Bellamy, William Frawley, Alan Hale, Allen Jenkins, Roscoe Karns, and several actors from the second half of the alphabet. ★★★ (TCM)
*
From the Criterion Channel feature Cast Aginst Type: Heroes as Villains
The Velvet Touch (dir. Jack Gage, 1948). Valerie Stanton (Rosalind Russell) is a Broadway star famed for performances in light comedies — five smash hits in a row — but she wants to branch out and play Hedda Gabler (and think of it: here’s a Hollywood picture that assumes an audience’s at least glancing familiarity with Ibsen). Miss Stanton’s producer and one-time lover Gordon Dunning (Leon Ames) wants to keep his star in comedy, and threatens to reveal an ugly history to her new lover if she doesn’t comply — and within the first few minutes of the story, he’s dead, and the movie turns to flashbacks. A brilliantly filmed ultra-opulent noir, with great sets (that library!) and great music (by Leigh Harline), and sharp All About Eve-like dialogue (by Leo Rosten). With Leo Genn, Claire Trevor, and Sydney Greenstreet as Captain Danbury, looking backward to Inspector Bucket and forward to Lieutenant Columbo. ★★★★
*
Immediate Family (dir. Denny Tedesco, 2022). From the director of The Wrecking Crew, a warmhearted documentary about four session musicians whose names you’ve likely seen on some album’s back cover: guitarists Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar and Waddy Wachtel, bassist Leland Sklar, and drummer Russ Kunkel. Many great stories of dumb luck (right place, right time) and life on the road, though there’s almost no discussion of how a life in music impacts one’s obligations to one’s own immediate family. The greater reason I’d fault this documentary: coming in at 1:42, it’s too long, with too many professions of mutual admiration and too many details better left to Wikipedia articles or a website for the movie. I don’t need to know, for instance, that one of these guys produced six albums — one, two, three, four, five, six — for Jimmy Buffett. ★★★ (N)
*
Stakeout on Dope Street (dir. Irvin Kershner, 1958). A trio of teenaged boys find a briefcase holding a two-pound can of white powder, and when they figure out what they’ve found, they’re determined to cash in — and so are criminals whose briefcase is missing. I thought I was going to see a piece of lurid dreck, but I found instead a well-made Dragnet-style B movie, with a strong script, capable unknown actors, and surprising camerawork (that bowling ball). Best scene: a long flashback in which heroin addict Danny (Allen Kramer) recounts an episode of withdrawal. A bonus: music by Richard Markowitz, performed by the Hollywood Chamber Jazz Group. ★★★★ (TCM)
*
The Walls of Jericho (dir. John M. Stahl, 1948). So many older melodramas now look like case studies of the dark triad — Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy — which might have been found even in the early 1900s in the county seat of Jericho, Kansas. Here we meet (among others) county attorney Dave Connors (Cornel Wilde) and his alcoholic wife Belle (Ann Dvorak), Dave’s old friend and newspaper publisher Tucker Wedge (Kirk Douglas) and his wife Algeria (Linda Darnell), “she-lawyer” Julia Norman (Anne Baxter), and young Marjorie Ransome (Colleen Townsend). One of these characters will seek to poison relationships between others, whatever the cost. Political rivalries, ugly gossip, the small-mindedness of life in a provincial place, and, yes, the dark triad. ★★★★ (YT)
*
The Proud and Profane (dir. George Seaton, 1956). And the dark triad can also be found in 1943, at an Allied military base in New Caledonia. William Holden is Colonel Black (his first name, Colin, surfaces very late in the story), a rigid, domineering Marine, a wildly dishonest commander of men and women. Deborah Kerr is Lee Ashley, widow of a Marine killed at Guadalcanal, here as a Red Cross volunteer. Their relationship swerves into a mightmare of toxic behavior, and the story jumps several sharks before losing its balance, falling into the ocean, and being eaten by one last shark — that is, plot twist. ★★ (YT)
*
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (dir. Merlin Crossingham and Nick Park, 2024). Wallace invents a smart gnome to do gardening (and bring in ££); the evil penguin Feathers McGraw (from The Wrong Trousers) reprograms the gnome from the zoo where he’s locked up; an army of evil gnomes takes shape; and chaos ensues. There are many wonderful small touches: a Brown Betty teapot, a Penguin paperback, a box of “Brown Flakes” (cereal), Feathers’s sardine can, and, again and again, the meanings communicated by the facial expressions of silent characters. But the story gets bogged down in a subplot about Inspector Mackintosh and Police Constable Mukherjee (reminiscent of Wicked Little Letters), and Wallace’s cheerful conclusion about automation and artificial intelligence — “I knew you would embrace technology in the end, lad” — seems weak tea in light of the havoc the gnomes have wrought. And speaking of gnomes: they’re kinda terrifying, and I’m not sure any child younger than maybe eight would feel at ease watching them as they march toward the audience. ★★★ (N)
Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)
