What!? You Haven't Seen... Marnie?

"Oh Ms. Marnie-penny, sometimes a phallic symbol is just a horse's mouth."

Marnie (1964)- Alfred Hitchcock

Pike's take:

Some of us folks here at the Booth have decided to play a little friendly game of film recommendation with our intent being that we post our impressions after watching the films. For this kick-off post I was recommended the 1964 Hitchcock film Marnie by the master of the ten-film review, Patrick. Now I must admit beforehand, that I am not a big fan of Hitchcock's work in general and that I always enter into one of his films with a skeptical eye. I have found his work for the most part to be alternately hackneyed or bombastically overbearing, and generally consider his films to be lesser works in comparison to his English compatriots Carol Reed, Michael Powell, David Lean (in his early years) and Anthony Asquith. With Marnie though, Hitch really outdid himself in that he finally let his hackneyed and bombastically overbearing sides merge into a completely stupefying whole.

Marnie stars Tippi Hedren as the titular character, a compulsive thief who goes through life trying to gain her mother's love and affection with ill-gotten gains. Her trick is to fall into the confidence of her leering male bosses and then, while working a little overtime, rob the office safe of its contents and split town. It's a good gig until she applies at a publishing house that does business with her last place of employment/heist. The publishing house owner, Mark Rutland (played by Sean "007" Connery), recognizes her from her last job. He hires her knowing full well that she stole ten-thousand in cash from her previous employer, and it is with this knowledge that he plans on trapping Marnie and forcing her into the most compromising position of all.

What starts out as a controlled thriller à la Vertigo, soon gives way to some of the most ripe melodrama Hitchcock has ever produced. In the mix we get: A grown woman speaking in a little girl's voice, a disapproving mother straight out of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie that speaks (of course) in a full-on magnolia drenched drawl (... after living most of her adult life in Baltimore? Really?), one of the most ridiculous old-moneyed New England families ever put to screen and, last but not least, the most disturbingly ambiguous rape scene since Rhett took Scarlett upstairs in Gone With the Wind. All the while, Freudian nonsense (repression as a self defense mechanism, transference, sexual sublimation) is flying off the screen fast and hard. In one scene Marnie and Mark even go tête-à-tête with a little free association that could be considered comically heated if only this was a screwball comedy. As for the ending- I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen the film but- Oh my! What an ending it is! Marnie ends with so much overwrought emotional bloodletting (literally) and pop-psychology mumbo-jumbo that it had to be Hitchcock's intent to push the film over the cliff into pure camp. There is no way that he believed that this stuff could have been taken seriously by even the most unsophisticated audience of its day.

I shouldn't give the impression that Marnie is a complete misfire though, as it has a lot going for it. Some scenes are well handled and in their own way prove to be iconic examples of filmmaking, such as the opening scene with Marnie walking down the train platform or the scene where she shoots her horse after a riding accident- all we see is her gloved hand in the foreground carrying the pistol forward and firing, while in the background her horse's legs kick one last time. The most controlled and impressive scene has to be the the first Rutland heist scene where Marnie is emptying the safe while a cleaning lady is mopping the floor close by. The way that the tension of the scene is resolved is pretty fantastic and funny to boot.

These moments though are not enough to overcome what the film asks of my suspended disbelief. In addition to the aforementioned "heightened emotionalism" and Freudian bunk in Marnie, there are also some moments of shear laziness in the filmmaking. One example is with the character of Mark's sister-in-law who is introduced as a lesbian (maybe bi-sexual) tigress on the prowl but then is later shuffled off in a abruptly dismissive manner as just a caring sister with a proclivity for Nancy Drew-like antics. There are also moments of over-explanation in the visual storytelling that become almost ham-fisted motifs in their use and repetition. In Marnie, Hitchcock shows either a lack of confidence in his material or a lack of confidence in his intended audience. It amazes me that he, being the master craftsman that he was, was not able to eschew the blatantly clunky elements in the film. I mean how many times do you have to fast zoom in and out on the money to show that Marnie is having a moment of troubled conscience or how many times does a character have to repeat an action to show that he hasn't memorized the combination to his own safe and that the said combo is in his drawer. After a while, all of these little things pushed the film past the point at which I could continue to enjoy it. Watching it just became a chore to trudge through. It also didn't help that Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery felt like a couple of also-rans in the casting of their respective rolls. Neither one ever came close to producing the on screen magic of either the James Stewart and Kim Novak pairing (Vertigo) or that of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly (To Catch a Thief). Both performers run the gamut from bland to comically bad in this film.

Having said all of that, I think it's time for Patrick to give his take on the film.


Patrick's Take:

Well, sure it's over the top. That's one of the things I liked about it. I'll grant you that it belabors some points heavily - didn't bother me, but I'll grant it - but saying it starts out as a controlled thriller which then turns into a ripe melodrama sounds like it's as a bad thing, which I certainly don't believe.

This was recommended to Mr. Bishop with the proclamation that it took many of the themes running through Vertigo to extremes. For me, if it pushes it into melodrama, if it uses unrealistic effects - a tree ten stories up, a rear-screened process shot of a horse ride - to highlight the emotional state of the characters, so be it. It adds to the overall feel of the film, even if elsewhere Hitch has been subtler and slyer. I've never been one to be upset by a filmmaker who takes a sledgehammer to things to drive an interesting point home.

It takes a lot of ideas out of Vertigo and gives them a different spin here - in particular, I focus in on the obsessive drive of the male character to take control of an errant woman and in some ways, break her. In the case of Marnie, he's breaking her to reset the bone and have her heal properly but like Jimmy Stewart's Scottie in Vertigo, it seems he's got to go to some real ugly lengths to do what is supposedly right and along the way we begin to question not just how pure the man's motives are but if what's he's doing to the lady in question is really in any way a good thing. In fact, I'd say that this one's even more brutal in how it portrays Mark's behavior as compared with Scottie's, given that Madeline/Judy could've actually walked away from Scottie if she chose to - though then she'd probably be in deep trouble with the even more sinister Elster - while Marnie is left little choice by Mark and he manipulates her knowing that at any time he could turn her over to the law.

Again taking a trick from the Vertigo bag (maybe even the Spellbound bag), the horse rides, the red screens, the Poltergeist-y evil tree branch - all are effects the aren't necessarily meant as realistic, they're more expressive in the way that the green light of the Judy's hotel room reflects back to her green dress the first time Scottie met her (as Madeline) or the famous telescoping "vertigo" shot puts us inside Scottie's head when his acrophobia kicks in or the hazy, dreamlike quality of the cemetery and redwood scenes. For me these are merely visual referents intended to express the mindsets of the characters (though it may just be Freudian hoo-hah to you). You may be right, Mr. Bishop, that these in conjunction with repeated dialogue that also offers these same ideas is too much - it's been years since I saw the film and I don't remember if they too frequently double up ideas that could have been expressed visually - but I also don't remember it bothering me in the slightest.

Long story short - Vertigo's a better film, nobody's arguing that. It's subtler, better shot, requires less suspension of disbelief and Stewart's performance is terrific (though I think that I might actually prefer Hedren's Marnie to Novak's Judy (but not her Madeline)). It's a masterful and beautiful film. Marnie takes some of its ideas and motifs and takes them in a different direction. Certainly it veers to melodrama but it's nothing that turned me off, and I was quite taken with parts of the film - the central relationship is a fascinating extension of the Scottie/Judy relationship and even if the overall technique of the film is blunter, rawer, less refined, it doesn't make it less fun for me to watch.

Ten recent reviews

Murder! (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1930) -

A person wrongly accused and condemned to death; another seeking out the guilty party - it's an early prototype of what would become the Hitchcock standard for decades. And with good reason, it's a durable idea and is executed here as enjoyably as many of his later films, if perhaps with less flair in the area of making grand set pieces. However, this comes immediately on the heels of the silent era and set piece or no, Hitch has a total command of how to structure things visually without the heavy reliance on dialogue that became the norm later. It's not a great one, even for the period, but it's totally enjoyable, crisp and well-made and certainly a worthwhile piece of his catalog to check out.

Longtime Companion (dir. Norman René, 1990) -

Way better than the rank and file of gay-themed films I've seen and - ending aside - a good, solid film overall. It's one of the earliest American films to really take on the AIDS crisis as its central theme and I really appreciated the (almost complete) absence of melodrama in favor of serious talk, well-drawn characters, and a realistic look at a particular group of (mostly gay, mostly white, mostly affluent) men and how the crisis impacts on them and their group of friends.

It's helped immeasurably by its episodic structure - following one story through beginning to end would probably be too schmaltzy to tolerate, but checking in with the people periodically is a good way to follow the situation which is, in reality, the central idea of the film more than any individual character. I have to say, I expected the worst and I liked it quite a bit. As films that voluntarily place themselves into the gay-themed section of most video stores, it's top of the heap. As a film-film, pretty good stuff.


The Pianist (dir. Roman Polanski, 2002) -
Of course Roman won the Oscar, because this is the kind of film the Academy loves - serious in intent, well-made on all levels, and nothing that's going to challenge your preconceptions (unless you believe that every single person who was associated with the Nazi party was thoroughly evil and had not a shred of sympathy or humanity, in which case you'll be stunned by one character introduced late in the film). Watching it, I was drawn into the drama, the story, and Brody's excellent work in particular (he's in pretty much every single scene), but I feel like this was a relatively unchallenging film about the Holocaust, bringing nothing new in particular to the table, to the growing body of work of films about the subject. I respect it, it was an interesting story to tell and lest I be read wrong here I don't see any problem with continuing to tell variations on a theme - as long as something unique and new is brought into the world, which is the only place where I think Polanski failed. If you haven't seen a lot of films on the subject of the Holocaust, this one will be a powerful experience. If you have, you may be subject to a feeling of deja vu, in spite of the best intentions of everyone involved.

Detour (dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945) -

I nodded for a moment or two when I first saw this last fall, as I am prone to, so I rented it again to see if it was as fucked-up as I remember and yeah, Ann Savage is absolutely amazing as the femme fatale of the picture. I mean, even by the standards of noir femmes, she's wacko and absolutely carries the energy of the film since Tom Neal's Al character is one step from being a total void - he's not likeable or disagreeable; not handsome, nor is he ugly; he doesn't get too heated over the situation, yet he doesn't totally lie down and go along with things. But with a budget approaching zero dollars and a couple unknowns, Edgar G. Ulmer crafter a fine little thriller long on mood and anxiety, short on all other amenities, and therein lies its charm.

Le Boucher (dir. Claude Chabrol, 1970) -

After seeing Chabrol's latest film and enjoying it without loving it, I decided to jump back and see one more or less agreed upon as a masterpiece - this one - and found that I also liked it without loving it (though Roger Ebert's rave review on his website leads me to believe that this has depths that I haven't begun to get near). I did love the placidity of the French countryside and the mundanity of the events interrupted by the murders of the film - it's almost like they don't really matter much, more like discussion points between the characters than reasons for feeling afraid. And though Hitchcock can be felt in the proceedings, Chabrol never lays too heavily on the suspense until the end, when it seems that Stephane Audran's character actually has moved from her carefree provincial life into real danger. It's certainly not the savage view of the bourgeois that I've heard about Chabrol's films but not yet seen, but it's also certainly interesting enough to keep me going further into the catalog. Oh yeah, and the score is fucking amazing as well.


The Body Snatcher (dir. Robert Wise, 1945) -

Boris Karloff again turns in a terrific performance for this Val Lewton vehicle as the title character (or is Henry Daniell's Dr. MacFarlane the title character?) in which a doctor sanctions grave robbing and possibly murder in the name of furthering medicine and science. It's no place we haven't been elsewhere and better, but it's still an enjoyable slice of the macabre, directed by the fine, steady hand of Robert Wise, thus ensuring a skillful way with both visual aspects and actors, though even he has a hard time making Russell Wade as the spineless intern anything to get excited for or about. And though Bela Lugosi is second-billed, his role is small. It's fine, pivotal even, but both Wade and Daniell have heaps more screen time and more to do with the plot. Central plot could move along a little faster for my tastes, but it's still fun and when Karloff's purely sinister John Gray stalks one of his victims down a dark alley, it's a truly effective moment of suspense in a film that I feel could've been pushed further into the realms of the creepy and nerve-wracking, but still makes for some engaging entertainment.


Motel Hell (dir. Kevin Cooper, 1980) -

Pure fun that intimates more serious matters without throwing them in your face. All the leads - excepting our female heroine (and assuming of course that your heroine is not Nancy Parsons as Ida) - have a great time chewing the scenes and camping it up and making this about as funny-yet-disturbing as they possibly can. And like the best satires, it succeeds as the (scary) thing it's making fun of while givng chuckles a-plenty, such as watching John Ratzenberger as a member of a punk outfit called "Ivan and the Terribles." I'd love to hear the record. Anyway, smoked meats made of human quarry are the norm in the innocuously named "Motel Hello" and Farmer Vince lives a simple, quiet life, recycling people into food and thereby reducing waste - that's how he sees it anyway. He is also living with Ida, and when the nature of their relationship is casually dropped into the story, it adds just another whole creepy level to the proceedings. The film takes a central premise but keeps throwing in ideas from way out in left field to keep you intrigued, keep things off-balance, and keep you involved. I can't say it ever really wraps up into a coherent statement (they seem to be avoiding going too heavily with anything serious here), but as a good slice of the weird, the funny, and the creepy, it does me just right.

Diabolique (dir. Henri-Georges Clouzout, 1955) -

Superb thriller from Clouzout brimming with the usual group of completely sour human beings, pessimism about mankind's motives in dealing with other humans, and a cold touch of realism brought to bear on some grisly proceedings. A school headmaster openly holds a mistress whom he contemptuously showers with affection in front of his wife. The wife and mistress plan to kill him while the school is on a break and that's whee it starts to get interesting. Things build slowly - perhaps a touch too slowly, though it didn't really bother me - up to the stunning finale, as good a ten minutes of screen time as Clouzout ever filmed. There is, of course, the comeuppance in the end that I think takes the picture down a tiny bit, where in other films of his sinister deeds would - or could, anyway - go unpunished. The film has greatness in it that it doesn't quite achieve (except in the closing scenes, which are absolutely brilliant), but it's pretty damned effective regardless and a fine addition to his catalog nonetheless.

Cure (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997) -

I got about 25 minutes into this film before I realized that I'd already seen it. Fitting, I suppose for a film about an amnesiac who may or may not be responsible for motivating people to murder, but it didn't speak well for the film that I didn't remember it. This time though, I've got total recall of the scenes and the way the film works its effective and scary premise right up to the showdown between the two main characters. A good thing, strangely paced by American standards, but really effective in the way it draws you slowly and inexorably into the world it's created - something not too far off from the real world maybe (nothing here that's gonna dazzle you with shocks or special effects), but just "off" enough to be really unsettling. A sleeper, yes, but no pun intended.

Porcile (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) -

Worst transfer ever! Bad print, reel changes are apparent every single time, and unless Pasolini's up to some sort of tricks, two reels are even switched late in the film, jumbling the chronology of this obscure film even more - but that's not really his style so much, even if indirectness is. So this one was evocative, despite my issues with the transfer, and the roughly contemporary interview with Pasolini in the bonus features offered up this nugget that helps explain not just this film, but his whole approach:

Pasolini: "I've never wanted to make a conclusive statement. I've always posed various problems and left them open to consideration."

Makes a hell of a lot more sense in watching this film that alternates between a historical story of a cannibalistic warrior and a that of a contemporary bourgeois family torn by political beliefs, neither of which lay their intentions on their sleeve or move in any sort of normal or predictable way (especially when suddenly you've moved ten minutes ahead in things and have to jump back later due to a reel switch). I finished the film wondering just what and why I had watched, but the comment above frames the whole thing - and other more obscure works of his - quite well, giving a key perhaps as to how to view them next time I want to make the effort. It's evocative and interesting, sure, but don't come to this one looking for any easy answers. Only Teorema and Salo are more inscrutible in his catalog, and maybe not even quite as much as this one.

Ten recent reviews

Lilith -
Robert Rossen really had a way in his later films with portraying people with mental and emotional problems. Between this and The Hustler, there's a real interest in and affinity for women in serious distress, and he's got a stark visual aspect that corresponds to it. I don't know what the mental health care system was like at the time, but early on in the film it feels just out of wack that Beatty's character could just walk into the job like he does when it's clear that despite being a nice guy, he doesn't have the skills to really do the job. That's probably the chief failing of the film, but in telling his story it's a disbelief I just suspend to see how the story plays out, which is of course tragically and emotionally right on the money, if not 100% accurate in adhering to how things might work in reality (then again, maybe it was a case like his that brought about background checks). Anyway, a really interesting portrayal of people with deep-rooted problems and worth seeing again. Also makes me interested in checking out Rossen's ouevre as it develops from All the President's Men to this, despite the bad reviews abounding on IMDB.

Jamaica Inn -
Hitchcock not exactly in top form though I wouldn't place the blame on him for the film not quite working. In fact, I wouldn't even say the film doesn't work, just that it's not great and that it's not a typical Hitch film. Problems begin and end with the script, I think. We're not given a heroine (or hero) that we can really latch on to - you only like her because she stays strong in the face of some very effective and strongly played villains, from the brutish uncle Joss to the sinister gang leader Thomas to (especially) the utterly repuslive Sir Humphrey Pengallan (played with slavering relish by Charles Laughton). In this, it's not unlike a ton of films where our lead is stiff and wooden and the villains have all the color and remain the center of interest in the films. But it does tend to undercut the plight of our central characters - and thus our interest as viewers - when we don't care as much what happens to them as we care what dastardly things our villains might be up to. Enjoyable in spite of its flaws, I'm glad I wasn't scared off by the bad rep the film has because of it being sandwiched between two far more brilliant works.

Electra Glide in Blue -
A really captivating vision of the fallout of the 1960's and the conflict between the underground youth movement and the establishment, here represented by a few motorcycle cops and detectives caught up investigating the murder of a loner. Robert Blake plays the ambitious cop who comes across the body and wants to use it to springboard his career into homicide but he's checked at every side by his naivety, by an establishment that's far more rigid than he imagined, and by an underground that doesn't want him, no matter how sympathetic he may be to their ideals. It's like the film takes "the Man" and draws him from the point of view of the underground, while not really taking either side. Only Blake is a truly sympathetic character - his associates range from arrogant to mean-spirited to engaging in real abuses of power while the hippies and other normal folks he comes into contact with lie, steal, and murder or are simply crazy. Filmmaking is really stylistically dynamic, with one of the greatest closing sequences I've ever seen - major props to cinematographer Conrad Hall for his work here. It's a shame that James William Guercio never made another film - this is a remarkably strong and assured directorial debut, but I guess that managing the group Chicago just as they were taking off commercially (singer Peter Cetera is great here in a small role as a drug-dealing hippie) had to swallow up a lot of time and probably didn't allow for the rigors of filmmaking. Anyway, really interesting, especially in its immediately post-Woodstock (and more importantly, post-Altamont) look at the counter culture. Helps give a possible (and plausible) explanation to Peter Fonda's enigmatic "We blew it" from Easy Rider.

Memories of Murder -
What I enjoyed most about The Host is that it took a genre pic and took off from it in its own unique way, and this earlier (and better) film from director Joon-ho Bong does the same, upending conventions of the serial killer/police procedural film until it becomes something entirely different. As I've heard Zodiac does and as Spike Lee's Summer of Sam tangentially does, this concentrates not on suspenseful rendering of fact-based, scary murders but rather on how those murders affect those involved in the killings and a recreation of the atmosphere in which those killings happened. As that it's a masterpiece, showing us two provincial cops and their boss stymied by a puzzling rape/murder. They're later joined by a big city investigator in from Seoul who's more used to this type of crime but proves equally unable to solve the increasing number of murders. Things begin to unravel for the investigators as their efforts and those by the government (at the time a military dictatorship) fail to produce proof of an individual responsible for the crimes or to stop more from occurring. Really good stuff all around with tension, humor and drama taking about an equal amount of time in the spotlight.

Fort Apache -
One of the best of the Ford westerns I've seen and possibly the clearest view in his films of the tension stemming from the conflict between the "civilizing" frontiermen and the "savage" natives; or if you prefer, between the call of order and the call of chaos. Those who think that westerns are intrinsically racist would do well to start seeing the error of their ways here - at no point does the film (as opposed to certain characters within it) see Cochise as anything less than a leader worthy of great respect and at no point does it offer a full endorsement of Fonda's tactics - he's mainly portrayed as an arrogant and rigid interloper from the East who has no understanding of the subtleties of cultural interaction necessary for survival on the frontier. I've always liked the way that some directors of the classic Hollywood period use mainstream films to portray and undercut these sorts of social and cultural conflicts, and Ford (along with Hitchcock and Sirk) is one of the best at offering up a situation not to celebrate it, but to analyze and sometimes critique it. Lastly, the entire ensemble is brilliant, with Fonda's rigidly militaristic Lt. Thursday and John Wayne's Capt. York taking the top honors as complex people, but even the small side players giving their all and providing the realistic and illuminating details that make the characters feel real and giving you reason to sympathize with every one (even Fonda). A masterful work.

Encounters at the End of the World -
A friend I saw this with had complaints that this went for poetic moods rather than scientific analysis, but I have to wonder what he was expecting. After all, it is a film by Werner Herzog, very possibly the most quixotic romantic in film history. And here rather than seeking out scientific data about Antarctica he's looking for the "encounters" of the title, finding the kindred spirits who choose to live or work there and talk to them about what drew them there, what makes them tick. If there's a problem with the film for me, it's that he doesn't give them the space to let us meet them fully - cutting off one interview with a rudely abrupt "Her story goes on forever," for example. But it still paints a portrait of the type of person who - like Herzog himself - is drawn to Antarctica not to see cuddly penguins, but to find a way out of the perceived constraints of "normal" society. He also shows enough of Antarctica itself to give the viewer an understanding of why some of them choose to come to "the end of the world." Like most Herzog documentaries it's gorgeously made, it's impressionistic rather than building a strict argument, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Broken Blossoms -
Having only seen Griffith's massive spectacles, this came as something of a surprise with its intimate tenderness and sensitivity. Lillian Gish is fantastic, as is Richard Barthelmess. Story is a fine little tragic love story, and seeing this on the heels of The Bitter Tea of General Yen offers a nice comparison for an Asian/Caucasian love story and the slightly differing attitudes that 13 years makes in the way it can be portrayed (more openly in the latter, though no less tragically). More than anything this shows me the diversity that Griffith can bring to the table and brings his talent alive more than the historical lens I've always watched his other stuff through. Now it's time for me to start exploring his catalog more fully.

Sons of the Desert -
Something light and silly to take my mind off a shitty day at work. Laurel & Hardy are in good form here, with their slapstick working better for me than Laurel's perpetual misunderstanding of words but the situational comedy working perhaps best of all. As soon as the conventioneer they've grown chummy with gets on the phone I knew there was gonna be trouble and I love the way it played out. For that matter, as soon as they started planning out their trip to the convention I knew trouble would ensue and it came through about as humorously as I would hope. Good stuff.

Series 7 -
I wanted so much more from this than the promising idea ended up actually giving me that I was pretty disappointed. But when I take a step back I realize that it did offer up its premise and follow through with it, just that instead of watching some meta-narrative about a reality TV show as expected, I was watching a reality TV show. And I like Survivor a lot better. If this is a comment on anything in particular I must have missed it, but I think that it's more likely writer/director Daniel Minahan missed the part about putting it in the film, allowing the audience to simply extrapolate their own feelings about reality TV onto the film. Disappointing for a film that uses such a potentially rich premise.

La Notte -
Much ado about nothing, like most Antonioni I've seen. Two people who've been married for years find that they don't love each other anymore and Antonioni uses some expert camerawork, a great cast, and 122 minutes to express that (supposedly) shattering revelation. There is a way to express ennui and boredom in a film without making your audience bored and restless themselves. Maybe that's why the camerawork and cinematography are so good, because he knows that at the core, his film isn't saying very much? Lovely to look at, less so to listen to, and probably a tedious bore to discuss later.

blogger of tears: stuck, standard operating procedure, machine gun mccain, the apple, mother of tears

Ah, to be stuck someplace with you, Ms. Suvari.

Stuck (2007)/ Standard Operating Procedure (2008) – Has it been almost a decade, already?

If Danny Boyle, Eli Roth, and George Romero squired the first post-9/11 and post-Iraq horror flicks into theaters, Stuart Gordon and Errol Morris may have given us the first post-Bush genre pics: apparently very loosely based on a macabre car accident, Stuck's story hones in one celebratory Friday night with Mena Suvari that suddenly turns stupid and brutal, and nothing Suvari - an otherwise patient and well-meaning young nursing home attendent - does after helps herself or the hapless victim of her neglience, played by Stephen Rea, who skillfully manages to elevate the odd circumstances of his role to one commanding considerable empathy.

An entropy - a state of stuckness - permeates every corner of the wintry, despondent landscape Suvari inhabits: the elderly stuck at the nursing home she works at, the Latino immigrants in her neighborhood, stuck in a paranoid limbo of semi-citizenship, to Rea, stuck on the streets, stuck in unemployment, and Suvari somehow stuck with all of the above.

It would've be easy for Gordon (who I've more or less ignored since the mid-1980s, and after this I think I'll do some backtracking to see what else I've missed) to ride the metaphors and imagery of Stuck into the ground, but the film's brisk pacing and exceptionally clever script never droops into that kind of obviousness: it's depressingly easy enough for us to see ourselves in Suvari, stuck with our myriad momentary lapses - political, environmental, and otherwise - that've lead from one bad decision to a bigger one, and no one to blame but one another.

"Stuck" could be the explanatory title to Erol Morris' documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, the story behind the torture photos at Abu Ghraib. Morris sits down with a number of the soldiers who were tasked with "softening up" detainees herded into prisons after Iraqis began to buck the slew of draconian economic policies forced onto the populace by CPA chieftan L. Paul Bremer (otherwise known as the beginning of the insurgency). Of course, the guards at Abu Ghraib, in the wretched leftover from Saddam-time, weren't running the country: in many ways, they were only stuck there too. They tortured those prisoners, of course, even if on reflection the guards aren't entirely sure - it becomes clear, however, when the refrain of "we were just following orders" finally sinks in. Preparing people - people who were for the most part only there because they were of fighting age - for a more formalized, more "regulated" physical and pyschological torture is merely a part of the torture process.

Morris' gift isn't for the straight documentary, but giving the participants in his films the opportunity to create and own their stories, and then contrasting this narrative with imagery of his own. Morris deliberately apes a sort of slick, high gothic style for SOP (longtime Tim Burton collaborator Danny Elfman sits in for longtime Morris collborator Phillip Glass here), and is successful throughout. Nevertheless, Morris has caught a lot of flack for not being more tenacious and wending his way back to the CIA or other contractors responsible for the "proper" torture, or Donald Rumsfeld, or Dick Cheney or then-NSA head Condoleezza Rice, or Bush himself; after spending two hours with the Abu Ghraib crew, some of whom are utterly clueless as to the role they've played in the history of the early 21st century, SOP's shot here remains a tight close-up - not quite just the facts, but pretty much just the torturers. Sure - a few minutes with someone like Naomi Klein or Seymour Hersh or Dahr Jamail would've placed the guards' stories in perspective - but early on, Morris identifies the stories here as the soldiers', and the Standard Operating Procudure they participated in, the one that cost them - not Rummy or Dick or Condi or anyone else - time and infamy. They were just following orders. And maybe that's all that needs to be said.

Machine Gun McCain (1968) / The Apple (1980) – Two offerings by way of Turner Classic’s TCM Underground, a kind of TCM Essentials for the deranged: the first purports to be a hard-boiled, late 60s Italio-thriller, with John Cassavetes as the titular main character and Peter Falk as an ambitious mob boss. The plot – concerning Cassavetes’ release from prison to pull a Vegas casino heist on Falk’s behalf – lopes along without too much energy, perking up only briefly to show off Britt Ekland’s dresses and drop Gena Rolands into a short, emotional scene with longtime companion Cassavetes. McCain is a very particular kind of Italian film, one that appeals to a very particular kind of fan, and TCM should be lauded for presenting such a slice of esoterica. Alas, I am not that particular fan: I felt both Cassavetes and Falk were terribly miscast – the sort of tough guy Machine Gun McCain needed is more than likely found in something like 1967's Point Blank or squinting at the sun in a Peckinpah flick rather than this sensitive and tightly-wound duo.

The Apple was no doubt an attempt to make good on the Rocky Horror Picture Show phenom, and is thus interesting as a kind of cultural artifact, but the music’s bad and the leads forgettable so there’s little else to recommend it, aside from the idea of a corportatist-state-via-American-Idol and God strolling down from heave above to rescue this earthly plane’s folk singers and hippies.

Mother of Tears (2008) – Dario Argento has been coasting on the international community of horror fans’ good faith and generosity for the last 20-odd years, when he fobbed off his goofball horror-in-the-hotel movie Inferno as the second part of the “Three Mothers” trilogy he unofficially began with the legendary Suspiria (1977). The latter was such a high point, not only in Argento’s body of work, but in the history of horror and the thriller genres generally that given so much time, the last Mother movie had to at least come close to the flick that not only helped define horror in the 70s, but also lent splatterpunk its aesthetic, and even continues to influence directors today: and yet, Mother of Tears is such a mess of noise, gibberish, and mad dashes through twisty alleyways and train stations that not even Udo Kier’s eyerolling or the film’s gratuitous nudity could save this here blogger from boredom. There isn’t even an over-the-top set piece to take away, ala Inferno (1982) or Phenomena (1985). Mother of Tears isn’t merely bad, it’s just plain lazy, so I won’t bother recounting the plot here because it hardly seems to matter to Argento himself.

The farther Dario Argento has gotten from under the shadow of his cinematic fathers – Bava, Leone, Hitchcock – the more untethered his films have become from the idea of entertainment. A recent New York Times article generously offered that Argento was more concerned with the thrill of the chase than how he got there or what happened after that, and in this way was a kind of cousin to the stylist's stylist Brian DePalma. Once upon a time, this might have been a fair contrast. DePalma’s work, however, continues to be grounded in ideas, even if they aren’t sometimes fully-realized or maybe as good as they look on paper. Sadly (and I really do mean that) the chase, and whatever thrill that comes with it, lapped Dario Argento a long time ago.

Ten recent reviews (5.29.08)

Butterfly Sword -
A prototype of several U.S. kung fu film hits - both Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers borrow liberally from specific scenes - but it retains that incomprehensibility of many imported Hong Kong treats. Fight scenes are fast and furious and sometimes confusing, plot doesn't exactly make sense, though the gist of it is quite fine. Lotsa ridiculous (and fun) flying action, lots of good hand to hand (and foot), basically the quintessential romantic/historic/silly mid-90's Hong Kong costume drama. A lot of fun, and a lot of major stars in the making do exceptional work here.

Detour -
Man, she's crazy! Even by the standards of the femme fatale, Ann Savage's Vera is an exceptionally devious and evil lady. And Tom Neal's Al is a dope, maneuvered by guilt (not desire, really) and duped into the trap she's set for him and keeps modifying to ensnare him further into her plans. As a noir it's excellent, though sometimes its threadbare production values could've been refined slightly with another take, a few more bucks to dress up a set. But they also give us a film that boils down to the essence of noir without any extra dressing to distract from its classic-ness. I'll need to see it again now that I know what I'm in for so I can watch things like the sexual subtext more readily without just zeroing in on Savage and staying stuck there.

Blood Simple -
Not exactly noir, but certainly influenced in that everyone's selfish and sometimes sinister. But I wouldn't call McDormand's character a femme fatale and with the Austin setting, it's hardly the classic dark urban jungle of noir. That said it's typically clever Coen Brothers stylistic mash-up of their favorite things with a typically distanced and non-emotional take on things that happen to their characters. I love their way with a visual, but more and more I find their stuff too academic. They invest very little in their characters emotionally and though the style is sometimes enough to compensate, they don't provide the intellectual framework or thematic interest that might make such a distancing more palatable. I enjoy watching their films but rarely enjoy talking about them.

Gigi -
My TV's rating gave it four stars, as do most of the references I've seen. It won 9 Oscars, including Best Picture in the year of its release, beating out Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Hitchcock's Vertigo (not even nominated). Automatically my interest is there - French setting and mostly French cast, Lerner and Loewe music, and the aformentioned plaudits. I don't hate musicals, I swear. I got no problem with people expressing themselves in song, really. But this one, wow, I just hated it. I read a defense of the film that went something like: Gigi is not sold off into society but enters on her own terms and instead forces Gaston to change. I don't buy it. Not only is Gigi's goal to find a man - Gaston specifically - rather than existing solely on her terms with or without a man but the techniques she finally uses to do so are those of her allegedly repudiated grandmother, whose ideals don't jibe with Gigi's except when it's convenient for them to do so. I dunno, maybe I'm being too harsh. But even where this could've been redeemed - Lerner & Loewe - I found the music forgettable, less melodic and memorable than simply there. There are plenty of Hollywood films of this era where women's issues are explored more interestingly and progressively. This trite little Cinderella story did nothing except irritate me.

Tokyo Story -
Kyoko - "Life is disappointing, isn't it?"
Noriko - "Yes, it is."
This isn't all the film has to say, but it's certainly the climactic dialogue that it moves towards. Like any great film, this brings up a lot of things that revolve around the central thematic thrust - in this case (as with much Ozu) intergenerational conflict. But it's not just youth contemptuous of their elders and the old ways, the film is sympathetic with the kids - even Shige, who's the hardest to like of the children, has her moment where she tells about having to put up with her drunken dad as a child and now having to do it again. It's not terribly hard to see how they became distanced from their parents. But Kyoko and (especially) Noriko are clearly finding ways to reconcile both their busy lives and maintaining respect for their elders and traditional society. It's a fascinating film loaded with amazing moments too subtle to even be noticed in a typically overdramatic Hollywood film - such as the devastating scene of Tomi weeping in the darkness - but that's Ozu's bag and what makes the film as effective as it is. Every time I see this it takes a little jump on my imaginary list of favorite films.

The Killer Elite -
Sub-par Peckinpah, but I blame the script more than the man. A secret security organization built of assassins that the C.I.A. contracts collides with an Japanese organization filled with samurai - how could it possibly hold together and be good? Well, because Peckinpah's stock in trade is macho bonding fests, and James Caan and Robert Duvall make a classic Peckinpah pair for the first part before Duvall goes to the dark side. Then it's a revenge tale for Caan, who does a great job here. Problem is, the action just doesn't cut it except in one shootout in the middle that I expected to be much bloodier, perhaps reminiscent of the opening of The Wild Bunch, until I remembered that the film was rated PG, not R. Anyway, some interesting ideas going on here so Peckinpah completists will find scenes worth chewing on, but it's not great by any stretch.

Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made -
Jim Jarmusch accompanies Sam Fuller to Brazil to talk about a film Fuller planned in the 50's and never got to complete. It's interesting, especially to see how Fuller ultimately used much of the footage he shot in Brazil in his Shock Corridor (helps flesh out that film's oddly iinserted color footage as well), but I wasn't entranced. Fuller is totally charmismatic though, hard to take your eyes and ears off and hard not to enjoy his reminisces. But second-fiddle Jarmusch and director Mika Kaurismäki don't really push any particular idea into the film, preferring to sit back and let Fuller take charge. I guess that's fine since he's as funny and charming as he is, but despite the title I didn't find myself particuarly interested in "Tigrero," just in Fuller. Which is probably how Kaurismäki and Jarmusch felt making it.

To Catch A Thief -
Hitchcock's enjoyably slight follow-up to his much more intense Rear Window still finds the usual stuff going on - sexual tensions between two characters played out in a crime thriller. And maybe if the crime had more teeth the relationship stuff would aswell. But never mind that - it's still fun, Kelly and Grant are terrific, as is Jessie Royce Landis as Grace Kelly's mother, and the location shooting is absolutely gorgeous. You'll probably guess who "the cat" is early on if you haven't seen it before, but you'll still have fun getting there. Well, I did anyway.

Stranger Than Paradise -
I counted 66 shots total, though the guy who lead the discussion said there were 67. That's fewer than the famous Psycho shower scene by about 9 shots. About half had camera movement, though usually only slight adjustments to follow the characters, not many unmotivated moves like the tracking shot that follows Eva near the beginning. Stylistically, it's pretty damn stark - as extreme as Jarmusch has been yet (with the possible exception of the Coffee & Cigarettes stuff) - but in terms of content it's a typical set of Jarmusch outsiders moving humorously through a world they have no real control over and just observe from the sidelines. I've loved it for a long time, it's a big part of the make-up of my film appreciation, but some of the audience was befuddled which I guess made me love it more.

The Awful Truth -
Terrific little gem from the era of the screwball comedy, though I'd have to put some serious qualifiers on this before I'd call it that. First of all it's got some truly uncomfortable moments between the characters, bits that may have gotten some people laughing but made me feel awkward (as it did the chracters in the situations), as though I was privy to a really intimate, private moment that I shouldn't have been there for. Grant and Dunne are great together, both totally engaging as people and as couple (and split couple). They follow a trajectory that you'd expect, but watching them get there is all the fun. With more exposure to Leo McCarey's supposedly reactionary views I may modify my idea of this but the leads seem equal to each other at all times, never with one subordinate to the other, and the comedy borders on anarchic especially Irene Dunne's behavior in the later scenes, which I totally loved. I'm really interested in McCarey all of a sudden.