Every Blog Has Its Day

Some not-so-breaking news: I've been invited to blog at a new website called ConversantLife.com, a self-styled "faith-based content and social media hub" that launched late last year. All are invited. Hopefully the change of scenery will do me some good, get me motivated to log my thoughts more frequently. If all goes well, maybe I'll stay on awhile.

To everyone who's been a faithful reader and/or occasional commenter, thanks. You've made this experiment in criticism worth the trouble. I hope to see your names pop up in the comments section of the new blog, which I've handily titled, "The Realm Beyond Words," just so nobody's confused.

I've also been writing lately for film critic Emanuel Levy, helping cover the L.A. movie scene for his mammoth website, emanuellevy.com. Check out my review of National Treasure: Book of Secrets HERE.

A very Happy New Year to all!

Willoughby Right Back

Despite the scarcity of posts within this poor anemic blog, I'm going to self-administer a vacation. I recommend you all do the same.

I'll be back in January with some real news in tow. I can't say much right now, but there have been a couple of exciting developments, job-wise, in my life lately.

Please get yourselves to a theater and watch something good. If you've got strong stomachs, I recommend There Will Be Blood, which announces itself as an important American film, to be counted in the same company as Days of Heaven and even Citizen Kane. I don't think it quite deserves that distinction, but it's a helluva good try.

Not much wonder found in this 'Emporium'

I've got a review of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium in the Daily News today. Let's just leave it at that.

Read all about it HERE.

Halloween Double Feature

Saw two classy ghost stories at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica:


The Haunting

Seeing it projected, one is able to properly appreciate the ornately detailed art direction and full-bodied widescreen image. To enhance the feeling of omnipresent dread, director Robert Wise positions stone cherubs and statues within the frame as if they were observing the tiny cast, at one point even superimposing a close-up of a blank-eyed angel so it registers subliminally. The incredibly dense, intricately layered sound design is also impressive. The Haunting is that rare specimen: a psycho thriller that’s actually psychological, a horror film that truly horrifies. Julie Harris’s intense performance plunges you so deeply into the main character’s troubled conscience (with a risky but effective voice-over narration) you begin to partake of her paranoia. Nelson Gidding’s screenplay also finds room for sympathetic characterizations in Claire Bloom’s modish lesbian, Richard Johnson’s erudite doctor (who provides a bit of rationalism for balance), and Russ Tamblyn’s wisecracking rich kid. Quite brilliantly photographed in black and white by David Boulton, this stands tall as the Mount Everest of haunted house movies, with set pieces that linger long after the final fade out.


The Uninvited

Charming, witty, comical, but still sufficiently unsettling, this is one of the finest examples of the Hollywood ghost story. The seaside mansion and adjacent cliff are softly, dreamily photographed by Charles Lang, Jr., and the ghostly back story is carefully demarcated like a delicate mystery plot, with each crucial piece of information revealed at precisely the right moment. There are some wonderfully imaginative special effects, such as a bouquet of flowers that suddenly wilts in a haunted room; candles that mysteriously snuff out of their own volition; ubiquitous sobbing that comes from somewhere (and nowhere) in the house; the mysterious scent of mimosa signaling the presence of an restless spirit. Other points of interest include the subtle suggestion of a lesbian relationship, a plot structure similar to Hitchcock’s Rebecca (another classic ghost movie), and a sympathetic performance by Gail Russell as a put upon daughter. In fact, the whole cast is fine, including a droll Ray Milland, and the film makes one nostalgic for WWII movies in which the men wear suits and the women dress for dinner.

French Crime Double Feature

Went to a double feature last week at Grauman’s Egyptian and took in a couple of French crime thrillers:


Sleeping Car Murder (1965)

This early Costa-Gavras film—his first—had a greater influence on the giallo horror movement than history lets on. The plot is pure horror Italiano: black-gloved killer eliminates witnesses to crime committed on overnight train. Lots of red herrings, each one more delicious than the last, are woven into an ingenious murder plot Agatha Christie would have smiled at. And why does reality seem more real in French films? The peachy cast includes Jacques Perrin, Simone Signoret, Michel Piccoli, Yves Montand, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and so on and so forth.


The Champagne Murders (1967)

Completely strange, disorienting Claude Chabrol thriller, filmed in that coolly distanced style that makes it impossible to fully engage with his characters. This one’s an American-French co-production, and all the voices are egregiously dubbed, furthering the sense dislocation. Maurice Ronet plays a champagne tycoon suffering from blackouts who thinks he’s being framed for murder by slinky business partner Yvonne Furneaux and her ne’er-do-well husband (Perkins). Many of the characters remain in a booze-induced fog, and watching the film is a little like being drunk, or as my friend Cameron Stallones quipped, “like walking through Jell-O.” Worth seeing for Chabrol’s supremely elegant camerawork (color cinematography by Jean Rabier), and for exotic Stephane Audran’s tricky performance as a female escort who isn’t quite who she seems.

Jindabyne

Thickly atmospheric Aussie adaptation of Raymond Carver’s frugal but ample short story, “So Much Water So Close to Home,” first seen onscreen in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. Ray Lawrence (whose previous Lantana didn’t do anything for me) and screenwriter Beatrix Christian open up the story a bit by cutting away to the killer, who, for dramatic clarity, was previously kept off the page. This adds a dimension of suspense (certain shots are mindful of Deliverance) and a dimension of irony (the fishermen who find the girl’s body are scapegoated while the culprit remains at large). The decision to add an element of racial anxiety (the murdered girl was an Aborigine) is frustratingly beside the point. It dilutes, it obfuscates. Carver’s modest objective was to dredge up the underlying tension within a marriage. Lawrence can’t resist the lure of portentous symbolism, and the powerful emotions get lost in a sea of metaphor. Suitably grown up, though, with goodly acting.

Screengrab #12

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

What I've Been Watching Lately

Cockfighter

Warren Oates as a silent trainer of prizefighting roosters whose life has been swallowed up wholesale by his bloody trade. Monte Hellman’s subdued, relaxed tone is sneaky—the film’s a terrifyingly pessimistic character study about a reclusive loser living on the fringes of society. Nestor Almendros’s naturalistic cinematography captures the Georgia countryside in all its languorous beauty. A quintessential ‘70s film, with a near-iconic performance by Oates.


The Browning Version

Prim, well behaved, yet completely successful character piece from the most fertile period of English cinema (post-WWII). Based on Terence Rattigan’s one-act play about a dried-up schoolmaster whose life is turned around by a small act of kindness, this Anthony Asquith production takes its sweet time unfolding, the better to establish a realistic portrait of its anguished protagonist. Among other things, this is an uncompromising look at failure, regret, and expiation—it succeeds in crushing expectations to a bloody pulp before miraculously reviving them for an emotionally honest happy ending. The piece is held together by a masterful Michael Redgrave, who somehow manages to take a glassy-eyed, stiff-upper-lipped character and turn him into one of the most searingly sympathetic figures ever to suffer the silver screen.


The Great Garrick

James Whale, whose sense of humor was kept at a low boil in his Frankenstein movies, lets it all hang out in this enjoyable farce about a French acting troupe that stages an elaborate hoax in order to show up an arrogant English thespian. The complications are delightfully convoluted, and the whole enterprise resembles both a critique and a celebration of the art of acting.


Secret Ceremony

Bizarre gothic chamber piece about a neurotic child-woman (Mia Farrow) and her ostensible mother (Elizabeth Taylor), who mutually deceive, abuse, and manipulate each other in their tomb-like mansion. Robert Mitchum (wearing a joke-shop beard) shows up as a predatory uncle, and his presence is emblematic of the vaguely menacing tone achieved by the film. Directed by Joseph Losey with his usual flair for cold, stately compositions, it’s long overdue for cult status, and remains perversely amusing.


The Whisperers

Dame Edith Evans gives a shattering performance as an impoverished old lady who slowly loses her grip on sanity while subsisting on faded memories in her dreary Manchester flat. She retreats into a private world of fantasy as various lowlifes (and a few well-meaning social workers) take advantage of her senility, and the mistreatment she endures is difficult to behold. Bryan Forbes dilutes the power of this punishing parable by adding a last-ditch crime subplot, but all told this is a fairly successful stab at social commentary, atmospherically photographed by Gerry Turpin in a style that recalls the work of Eugene Atget.

Screengrab #11

The Seventh Victim

Trade

Two Wrongs Make a Movie