Category: Mystery

WAKE UP DEAD MAN

By Marc S. Sanders

Benoit Blanc is back with a new mystery to solve in Wake Up Dead Man.  With three films, all directed by Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Glass Onion), Daniel Craig’s eccentric detective now belongs in the ranks of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.  He’s a pleasure to watch with a smirk on your face.  Ironically, he doesn’t make his entrance until at least a third of the picture is complete.

Josh O’Connor is Father Jud Duplenticy who first reveals a wide berth of exposition ahead of the murder mystery that awaits us.  He’s a catholic priest who works hard to contain his temper that might resort to raising his fists.  He’s been assigned as the assistant minister to a church in a small New England town where everyone knows one another, especially repulsive Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin).

Whodunit mysteries should never be spoiled.  I certainly wouldn’t imply how this film wraps up.  I also do not want to reveal who the victim(s) is/are.  I urge you to see Wake Up The Dead Man because this puzzler of a story is as gleeful as the title itself.

Like the Agatha Christie film adaptations from the 1970s, Rian Johnson does his best to provide a lineup of suspects with celebrity familiarity including Brolin, O’Connor, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Thomas Hayden Church, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner and a standout performance from Glenn Close who steals much of the film away from the rest of the cast.  After seven nominations spanning over forty years, give her the Oscar already.  She’s eerie and needling, spooky and fun.  As Detective Blanc continues his investigation, a character tells him this all seems like something straight out of Scooby Doo.  Glenn Close, donned in black with an elderly bleached facade certainly feels like she’d come in contact with the animated pup and those meddling kids.

Rian Johnson writes with that classic narrative that Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle adopted, only it’s modernized.  The director of The Last Jedi even throws in a Star Wars reference and the joke soars.  The writer/director crafted this script as an invitation for hair raising merriment with his design.  If you can’t be a part of a mystery dinner theater party, he ensures that you can participate in this one.

An old church, priests who curse, habitually pleasure themselves and confess to an abundance of sins, a gothic tomb, a dark basement with a repulsive bathtub, a bar with a photograph of clues, startling entrances, unconventional dialogue and a quizzical murder weapon function like page turning literature.  Even better is to understand how impossible the first murder can be under the limitations of a locked door mystery.  How can someone be killed right in front of our eyes when no one else is in room?  The answers await and thankfully the revelations are not far-fetched.

Wake Up Dead Man is a fun time at the movies.  It’s coming to Netflix on December 12, 2025.  Nevertheless, I encourage you to go your local cinema.  The crowd we saw it with was responding consistently with us, and that only enhances the experience.

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (Mexico, 1962)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Luis Buñuel
CAST: Silvia Pinal, Jacqueline Andere, José Baviera
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 94% Fresh

PLOT: The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave the drawing room in Buñuel’s famous, none-too-subtle satire.


Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel has many moods.  On the one hand, it’s a dark comedy of manners railing against the entitlements of the upper classes, much like the more recent Triangle of Sadness (2022), which owes much to this film.  On the other, it’s a Serling-esque horror story mining a common occasion for unexpected suspense, like The Ruins (2008) or Open Water (2003).  On a deeper level, perhaps it’s a Lynchian exploration of the human psyche, regardless of class, like Mulholland Drive (2001) or…well, with Lynch, you can probably just take your pick.

I experienced all of those moods while watching The Exterminating Angel.  I haven’t seen such an effective juxtaposition of tone since Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).

The weirdness starts right away, in scenes that seem to be setting the stage for a Marx Brothers comedy.  Edmundo Nobile (“Nobile”, “noble”, get it, wink, wink?) has invited a large number of his posh friends to his mansion for dinner following an opera.  The moment they arrive, Nobile notes that his servants are not stationed at the door to take the visitors’ coats.  This is because most of the servants felt the sudden need to take the night off and left, being careful to avoid their employer.  He makes a statement about his servants, then everyone troops up the grand staircase to the dining room.

Moments later, this scene literally repeats itself, not by re-using the same footage, but in a separate take.  This kind of repetition occurs multiple times during the actual dinner scene, as well.  If there’s a deeper meaning to this device, I’ll have to leave it to film scholars to analyze.  For myself, it simply added a layer of oddness to the proceedings, but not in a bad way.

The dinner scene contains pratfalls, repeated conversations, and a visit to a side room containing three or four lambs and a bear on a leash.  What the WHAT…?  I remember thinking, okay, so this is going to a broad comedy turning upper-class manners into slapstick.  Seen it before, so I hope this movie executes it well.

The weirdness escalates when everyone retreats to a drawing room just off the dining room, where one of Nobile’s guests entertains everyone with a piano solo.  But when one of them tries to leave, he finds he can’t.  Not physically, like there’s suddenly an invisible wall, but one by one the guests discover they’re simply unable to leave the room.

They slowly realize the logistics of this bizarre situation.  The drawing room has no food.  Water runs low.  The one servant who remained outside manages to bring in a tray of water and coffee, but when he tries to leave to bring food…he can’t.  There’s no phone for them to call anyone about their predicament.

Outside the house, people find themselves unable to enter the grounds, so no one can tell what has happened to the people inside.  Curious crowds gather.  Inside, social structure starts to degenerate.  There are no restrooms, but one quick shot reveals a closet full of nothing but vases, and we see people entering and exiting these rooms repeatedly.  Ick.  Arguments are started with the drop of a hat.  One couple finds a unique, but undesirable, method of escaping their prison.

I responded to this material very unexpectedly, due mostly to its unpredictability.  I wasn’t cheering at the sight of upper-class twits being brought low when faced with bizarre circumstances, but I was more in tune with the horrific aspects of this story.  Buñuel has stated in interviews that he regretted not being able to take the story even further by including cannibalism, which is honestly where I thought things were headed.  It would have made a marvelous satirical statement, hearkening all the way back to Jonathan Swift.

(So, what DO they eat, you may be asking yourself?  Wouldn’t EWE like to know?)

I realize this review of the film hasn’t been much more than just a summary of its events, minus the surprising, “circular” ending.  A more detailed analysis might require listening to the commentary or reading Roger Ebert’s review or something.  But I hope I’ve conveyed how much I enjoyed The Exterminating Angel.  It was weird and surreal and absurd, and comic and horrific, and slapstick and satiric, and totally unpredictable all the way to the final frame.

P.S.  Now that I’ve seen this movie, the Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris (2011) has even deeper resonance when Gil meets Buñuel at a party and gives him the idea for The Exterminating Angel, and even Buñuel can’t understand it: “But I don’t get it. Why don’t they just walk out of the room?”  Funny stuff.

KLUTE

By Marc S. Sanders

Perhaps Klute, directed by Alan J Pakula, was one of the earliest erotic thrillers to hit the cinema.  In 1971, with Jane Fonda portraying a call girl who briefly goes topless on screen, the daringness of the picture likely garnered a lot of attention.  I bet it was perceived as controversial and elevated the common murder mystery to a grittier more forthright and sleazier height.  Even John Klute, the investigator, played by Donald Sutherland, did not possess the theatrical disposition of a Sam Spade like Bogart or even a Jake Gittes that was just a few years away.  The case at hand in Klute felt real and disturbing.  The actions of the characters were unmentionable and unfathomable.

A highly respected married man named Tom Grunerman turns up missing.  The most unusual clue into his disappearance are letters found in his desk that were written to a New York City prostitute named Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda).  According to his wife and the CEO of his company, the letters seem out of character for a man like Tom.  Six months go by and there is still no sign of the man.  So, John Klute voluntarily goes to New York to investigate for himself while becoming acquainted with Bree.  

Bree is a very high-priced call girl who estimates she does between five hundred and six hundred calls each year.  She’s trying her best to step away from this lifestyle and work as a professional actress and model.  Yet, to uphold her means of living and to make up for the various rejects at auditions, she can’t help but return to what she’s best at.  Occasional visits to a therapist help her justify why she maintains this seedy occupation.  Various recordings of Bree’s observations and conversations with her Johns are about her regard for the profession. She claims that she is capable of catering to any particular vice a man might have. Most impressive is that she does not get turned on by the trysts she shares with these men. She also does not cast much judgment on whatever niche her various clients are into.  She’s positively cold to the demands of her job. Tom does not sound familiar to her, but he might have been the guy who beat her up a year earlier.  

I like the slow burn wait of this story.  A picture like Sea Of Love with Al Pacino works this way.  That’s a better movie though.

Donald Sutherland has significantly less dialogue than Jane Fonda.  He’s got a disturbing expression with large eyes and closed lips, not to mention a tall stature, that allows him to seem alert as an observer and a listener, particularly to Fonda’s character who is protective of herself even if she has much to say.  So, while the two get to know one another with Bree offering some possible leads for Klute to follow, there is an eerie and deliberately meandering pace to the story.  I knew I had to keep up my patience with Klute because an unexpected payoff would eventually arrive.

What bothered me though is that the twist of the mystery is revealed midway through the movie.  You brought me my steak before I had time to finish my salad.  Now, for the rest of the story I’m smarter than the characters and I’m only watching everything unfold. That left me feeling unchallenged through the whole second half of the film. Klute became boring and less inviting.

In 1971, this was a bold kind of picture though, not a common 1990’s erotic thriller like Basic Instinct or Color of Night.  It was seedy, unheard of and therefore fascinating.  At the time, the intrigue for a picture like this must have been off the charts.  Pakula even shows off how novel a tiny tape recorder was in 1971. Imagine what this recorder is capable of!

Had Klute been released today, I’m certain many would take issue with its final edit of story development.  I would also argue that a young Jane Fonda would never be accepted in a role like this.  Frankly, twelve years after this film, Jamie Lee Curtis was more convincing to me as a call girl in Trading Places.  Fonda’s inflection and voice of maturity just did not work for me in this role.  I did not find her alluring in the part, and I think she was too organized and educated to be Bree the call girl.  I was surprised to read afterwards that Jane Fonda won the Oscar for Best Actress for this film because I considered her miscast. Fonda’s voice always sounded overly patronizing to me.  I read later that the actress’s moments with the therapist were primarily improvised by Fonda, shot after the bulk of the picture was completed. Pakula honored her wish to shoot the therapist scenes later because Fonda wanted to have more of a grasp on this call girl character. The therapist scenes definitely look unpolished, particularly for the woman portraying Bree’s counselor. I could detect the improv going on before I knew that it was so. I was watching Jane Fonda, the actress, making a case for the research she collected to prepare for this role.  I wasn’t convinced Jane Fonda was playing the role, though.

The film provides moments where Bree is catering to a couple of clients.  Pakula is honest with his staging.  One client breathes heavily with nervousness about the trouble he’s about to indulge in and then there is the awkward business agreement between Bree and the man followed by the necessary construction of turning the hotel sofa into a bed. It’s weird and unromantic. All this business interrupting this guy’s ultimate fantasy. Very good direction by Alan J Pakula.

Another client hires Bree to pose like a woman from a pre-World War I era where she simply narrates a scenic moment from his past. He does not touch her. He does not undress. This old man from the city’s fabric district simply takes it all in, allowing Bree to do the heavy lifting while he remains stoic in his chair surrounded by the darkness provided by famed cinematographer Gordon Willis (The Godfather).  Still, Fonda seems out of place in these episodes.  Even her fear of a possible killer on her trail left me unsatisfied.  This woman always looks like she has it altogether. She arrives on John Klute’s doorstep in the middle of the night because she’s apparently haunted by what he’s pursuing and also, she’s getting prank calls at odd hours. Nevertheless, I’m still not convinced that Jane Fonda as Bree the call girl is truly shaken by any of this. Jane Fonda is just too put together and hardly evokes any convincing weakness.  

It is ironic the film is named after Sutherland’s character, Klute.  The story begins with his perspective.  I liked his detective.  Almost like the guy could’ve branched off into other stories, like Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade or Mike Hammer.  The fact that the picture is called Klute leaves me wondering if a series of mysteries would have been paved for this character.  To my knowledge, I do not believe that ever came to be.  I’m sorry the trajectory of the movie veers off into Fonda’s character primarily when she enters the story.  Little is revealed about John Klute.  I only know his experience as a detective is limited, and he’s actually never visited New York City before.  Some interesting challenges for this guy, but none of this hardly becomes obstacles or factors for the rest of the film.  Much is learned about Bree Daniels, but hardly anything is absorbed about the title character, John Klute.

Klute starts off with a lot of promise.  I was excited to tag along with a new kind of brooding investigator who is impervious to influence and looks like he could not get easily overwhelmed. The mystery to uncover why a man went missing but not murdered is very intriguing.  My curiosity was there from the start.  Unfortunately, my interest dwindled as the picture carried on.  Jane Fonda talks a lot with not much to say and when the real culprit is unmasked at the midway point, my attention span is no longer demanded by the film.

Klute was likely a risky, pioneering kind of picture at the time of its release.  A sexy thriller.  Nowadays, it’s like any Saturday night midnight kill thrill of the week where the tempos are foreseen several minutes before they come to life.  Klute just loses its lust–ahem–sorry luster.

BRING HER BACK (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTORS: Danny Philippou & Michael Philippou
CAST: Billy Barratt, Sally Hawkins, Jonah Wren Phillips, Sora Wong
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 89% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother.


Bring Her Back is a supremely disturbing modern horror film from the two directors of 2022’s celebrated debut film Talk to Me; it’s right up there with Hereditary [2018] and The Babadook [2014].  It brazenly opens with creepy black and white footage of…something…then appears to drop into “Lifetime-movie” mode, lulling us along until WHAM, something truly unbelievable occurs, and it’s just a roller-coaster ride the rest of the way.  It’s bloody ingenious.  (Emphasis on the “bloody.”)

Andy (Billy Barratt) and the visually-impaired Piper (Sora Wong) are step-siblings who experience an early tragedy, resulting in the two of them being assigned as foster children to Laura (Sally Hawkins), a single mother who has experienced a tragedy of her own.  Her child is Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), a 10-year-old boy who has been voluntarily mute since his sister, Laura’s daughter, drowned in their pool, now kept empty.

Ominous signs abound.  Laura’s house is completely encircled by a strip of white paint.  She locks Oliver in his room whenever she leaves the house.  At a funeral, Laura surreptitiously clips some hairs from the body in the casket.  Andy discovers he has started wetting the bed, but he’s 17 years old; Laura ascribes it to stress, but the real reason is far more…invasive.  And over everything is the mute Oliver, lurking in the background, occasionally banging on doors and windows, and more.

Another superb element to the story is the character of Piper, Andy’s visually-impaired sister.  I mention this because the filmmakers deliberately held a casting call for actual visually-impaired actresses, settling on the completely non-professional Sora Wong.  This aspect of her character is utilized to the hilt throughout the movie, in ways I can’t even hint at without spoiling any surprises.  (Okay, I’ll mention one moment…where she knows someone is front of her, feels their head, then turns and asks someone else, “Who is this?”  BRRRRR…)

When the Philippou brothers do drop the hammer and get started with the real horror elements, they do not hold back.  There are scenes here as terrifying and as off-putting (in a good way, I guess?) as anything in [insert your favorite horror film here].  There are images here that I will not soon forget.  In a perfect world, this movie would become so popular among horror fans that those scenes would become part of a pop-culture shorthand.  “The knife scene.”  “The table scene.”  “The Russian videos.”  “The ‘self-snacking’ shot.”

I initially had an issue with the very ending, which felt more, shall we say, heartfelt than the rest of the movie implied was coming.  However, I learn from IMDb that the Philippous had a much grander ending planned.  But everything changed when a close friend of theirs passed away unexpectedly during production; the film is dedicated to him in the closing credits.  Danny Philippou is quoted: “[The film’s ending] goes against the conventions a little bit, but it feels more true to life.”  Watch the film and judge for yourself if he’s right.  As for me, now that I know that piece of trivia, the film’s ending is easier for me to accept.

Here’s hoping that Bring Her Back becomes at least a cult classic.  For someone like me, who’s a bit picky with this genre, it’s an easy pick for a new movie to throw into my annual Halloween rotation.  I enjoyed the hell out of this movie.

MEMENTO

By Marc S. Sanders

Christopher Nolan’s Memento was Oscar nominated for his screenplay, adapted from a short story by his brother Jonathan, as well as for editing.  You’d be hard pressed to find a better example that lives up to the merits of these categories because without the inventive storytelling and how it’s cut together, Memento would not be so memorable.  

Guy Pearce plays Leonard, but he distinctly remembers that only his wife called him Lenny.  We observe him in two different narratives.  A black and white collection of scenes has him in a hotel room chatting on the phone with an unknown caller.  In modern color, Leonard is wearing a tan suit and driving a dusty Jaguar while traipsing from one place to another.  He’s trying to make progress with uncovering who murdered his wife.  The scenes in color though must be shown in reverse.  In other words, a scene is shown, then it will cut to Leonard back on the phone, and then another scene is revealed showing what occurred literally just prior to the last color scene we saw.

It must be done this way so we can be just as discombobulated as Leonard.  He suffers from a condition where he has no short term memory.  Therefore, if Leonard learns something or meets someone or arrives at a location, he’ll soon forget anything he just encountered minutes ago.  

While he pursues the mystery of his wife’s killer, Leonard tattoos his flesh with notes to help guide him when his short attention span can’t. He also takes instant Polaroids of people he meets and the places he goes.  As quick as he can, he’ll jot a note on the photos to aid him as he carries on.

Memento starts at the end of the story and when the film concludes, the viewer arrives at the beginning.  Perhaps the beginning will explain the end that was shown almost two hours before.

Christopher Nolan had a small budget to work with and the California city locales are nothing dazzling.  There’s little to offer with special effects as well.  So, it is impressive that he uses Jonathan’s idea to create a mystery we want to see resolved where the information we get seems to erase itself as quickly as it is told.

Leonard can’t remember anyone he’s recently met, but oddball cases like Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) certainly remember him.  Are these folks working with Leonard or against him?  Even with seeing the ending first, I could never spoil anything, and you’ll find it hard to decipher what these are these characters’ best interests.  

Nolan exercises some neat visuals to keep you on track.  We see a broken car window before we see how it got shattered.  Leonard can’t recall how that happened.  Leonard is also unable to remember why a bar patron is chuckling at him.  Christopher Nolan maintains well placed book marks to aid the viewer in this story that makes an effort at throwing off its protagonist as well as the audience.

What also helps is that when all the secrets are revealed, at least to the viewer, it’s a pretty solid crime set up that does not come off like a stale Murder, She Wrote episode.  It’s clever, tricky and unexpected.

Guy Pearce is really good in his role that eventually reveals some duality, but that’s where I’ll stop.  Carrie-Anne Moss always seems questionable, but what’s her agenda?  Joe Pantoliano is the sleazy guy with the mustache.  So why is he always turning up in Leonard’s way?

Like his future efforts to come, Christopher Nolan layers his films in great depths of dimension.  It never stops thinking. Often, he answers a riddle with one or two or three more conundrums.  What’s especially appreciative is that he eventually reaches a final answer to all of his questions.  Still, that doesn’t mean he ever would want you to stop thinking about what you ascertained from Memento.

TO CATCH A THIEF (1955)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
CAST: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, John Williams [no, not THAT John Williams]
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 93% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A retired jewel thief in the French Riviera sets out to prove his innocence after being suspected of returning to his former occupation.


Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief is somewhat of a paradox.  It contains all the hallmarks of the master’s touch during what was arguably his most fruitful decade of work: exotic location shoots, a breathless romance, sly comedy, daring innuendo, and, of course, a vivacious blonde.  But there is little to no suspense.  There’s an intriguing mystery that admittedly left me guessing until almost the very end, but I never felt invested in the hero’s predicament.  I cared way more about L.B. Jefferies [Rear Window] or Roger O. Thornhill [North by Northwest] or even “Scottie” Ferguson [Vertigo] than I did for John Robie.

The story opens right away with a typical Hitchcock wink-and-nod.  The camera pushes in to an inviting travel brochure for the south of France, then there’s an immediate smash cut to a woman screaming.  Is she being murdered?!  This is a Hitchcock movie, after all!  No, she’s distraught because someone has stolen her precious jewelry.  There has been a rash of burglaries, in fact, perpetrated by a shadowy, unseen figure whom French authorities believe is none other than the infamous John Robie (Cary Grant), aka “The Cat.”  But Robie has retired comfortably to a stunning villa and claims he’s innocent of this new string of daring crimes.  To clear his name, he must do what the police can’t: identify and capture the burglar himself.

There’s a subplot about how Robie was involved in the French Resistance during the war, but his former comrades, who now all work at the same restaurant (!), are distrustful of him.  I was never quite clear on why.  Something about how the law could catch up to them if Robie was ever arrested?  But if they were Resistance, why would they be considered criminals?  Did they help him with his previous string of burglaries?  The screenplay is not 100% clear on this, unless my attention wandered at some point.

Anyway, in the course of Robie’s investigation, he meets (by chance?) the stunning Frances Stevens, played by the inimitable Grace Kelly in one of her three films for Hitchcock.  At first, she is aloof towards Robie, but when he escorts her to her hotel room after rebuffing him all night, she boldly plants a firm kiss on his lips before closing the door on him.  Not only that, she reveals the next day she knows exactly who Robie is and practically dares him to steal the fabulous diamond necklace she’s wearing.

While Frances is certainly no shrinking violet, her attitude and character felt…forced.  The screenplay explains (in a roundabout way) that she is a bit of a thrill-seeker, so she’s getting her kicks by tweaking a known criminal.  Okay, fair enough, I guess, but later in the film, she abruptly declares she’s in love with Robie, almost out of the blue.  This and other incidents, too numerous to mention, had me thinking that the new burglar was actually…Frances herself?  Watch the movie and tell me I’m wrong for thinking that way.  She throws herself at him in a male-fantasy kind of way because, duh, it’s a Hitchcock movie, but this aspect kept me locked in to my theory of her as the burglar, because what other motive could she possibly have?

Without giving TOO much away, let it be said that the mystery of the new burglar’s identity is cleverly hidden until the final scenes which demonstrate Roger Ebert’s Law of Economy of Characters.  This law posits that a character introduced with no clear role will turn out to be important to the plot.  In hindsight, it’s an obvious choice, but I must admit, it did keep me guessing.

But, again, while there was mystery, there was no genuine suspense.  The whole film is so light-hearted and airy that to introduce real danger might have ruined the atmosphere.  It’s not just comic, it’s downright slapstick, exemplified in a scene where Robie runs from the police only to fall into a bunch of flowers at a market and the elderly flower-seller starts beating him with a bunch of lilies.  In an earlier scene set in a hotel casino, Robie drops a 10,000-franc chip down the cleavage of a female guest as part of a ruse.  These and other instances almost make me want to classify this film as a romantic comedy rather than a suspense thriller.

Which brings up another point.  To Catch a Thief might be the most unwittingly prophetic film in Hitchcock’s filmography.  Consider:

  1. There is an early scene when Robie gets on a bus and sits next to a woman who is holding small birdcage.  Shades of The Birds, released eight years after To Catch a Thief.
  2. One scene features Robie in a motorboat, running from the police who are chasing him in…an airplane.  Four years later, Cary Grant would be running from another airplane in North by Northwest.
  3. A late scene features a key character dangling from a rooftop, which immediately reminded me of Vertigo, released five years later.
  4. The scene at the flower market takes place at an outdoor market that looks uncannily like the same one Cary Grant visits while looking for some rare stamps in Stanley Donen’s Charade, released TEN years later.  (Not a Hitchcock movie, but one featuring a very similar romantic relationship, this time with Audrey Hepburn.)

Having said all of that, I still must confess that this movie did not exactly stir up my emotions the way many other Hitchcock films do, even after repeated viewings.  To Catch a Thief is beautiful to look at, not least because of its sensational location photography and, of course, Grace Kelly.  The mystery at the center of the plot is sound, and I appreciate Hitchcock’s sense of humor, which occupies front and center as opposed to his other films where it lurks at the edges of the danger.  But I was never on the edge of my seat.  I know, I know, this isn’t Psycho or The Birds, but…there you have it.

THE PLEDGE

By Marc S. Sanders

The Pledge is a moody and bleak crime drama that follows a retired detective’s descent into obsessive madness.

Director Sean Penn opens his film with the gruesome discovery of a murdered nine year old girl found amid the snow covered woods outside a small Nevada town.  She happens to be discovered on the evening of veteran detective Jerry Black’s (Jack Nicholson) retirement party.  Upon receiving word of the crime, Jerry leaves his celebration to explore the scene that is carelessly compromised by the local sheriffs.  His protege partner Stan (Aaron Eckhart) rushes through a possible suspect’s (Benicio Del Toro) interrogation that draws a quick conclusion along with an unnecessary and bloody outcome.

Jerry surrenders his position with the police department, but he’s not entirely convinced the crime has been solved.  He obligates himself to uphold a devout promise he gave to the victim’s parents (Patricia Clarkson, Michael O’Keefe) that he will catch their daughter’s killer.

Time passes and rather than retire into a quiet life of fishing, Jerry purchases an old gas station located within the vicinity of the crime scene as well as nearby where two other murders with similar circumstances occurred.  Jerry is going to wait out the next attempt committed by “The Wizard” or “The Racoon Killer,” and catch him in the act.

The Pledge is a brooding and lonely film.  Sean Penn’s piece offers an impressive list of who’s who actors that appear in small roles to shape out the detective’s progress.  Amidst all of these familiar names in the cast, Jack Nicholson has never appeared so isolated or despondent before.  His character is limited on dialogue.  A thin mustache and a wrinkled complexion with a smoking habit hide any humor or joy.  Jerry Black knows he’s the last capable police detective in this area.  It pains him to abandon his post to the halfwits he leaves behind.

A promise is a dangerous gesture.  If you adhere to it, all obstacles become nonexistent.  Anything will be done to uphold a pledge and conclude your wild theories, even if proof is not conveniently supplemented.   Nothing stands in the way of pledge.  

The second half of The Pledge moves at a slower pace when Jerry welcomes an abused mother (Robin Wright Penn) and her daughter into his home.  A new life seems destined for these three people but at what cost?  Is the hero of this film at least as dangerous as the psychopath that supposedly remains at large?

Would you go to the great lengths that Jerry puts himself through?  Is the expense of his own sanity, and the safety of an innocent woman and her daughter worth this pursuit?

Sean Penn’s film does not operate on suspense. What action there is only fuels Jerry’s chase at a long-shot truth.  It’s a slow burn crime drama that makes the central murder a far second priority to how the initial discovery overtakes the main character.  Again, this kind of mania is a different breed from Jack Nicholson’s other crazed portrayals found in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Five Easy Pieces, or The Shining.  Nicholson is not as vocal or expressive in this role.  Yet, we all know what drives this guy with what few words he uses.

Robin Wright Penn and Nicholson share some effective scenes together. Their motive to be with one another stems from a misery loves company ideal. Good casting here, and throughout the film with small appearances from Helen Mirren, Harry Dean Stanton, Sam Shepard, Vanessa Redgrave, Mickey Rourke, Tom Noonan, Clarkson, O’Keefe, Del Toro and Eckhart.

Sean Penn is very good at creating visual moods to his film. The image of Nicholson standing within the pen of a crowded turkey farm with the anguished parents of the victim is truly haunting. Animals of all kinds seem to emote a cold harshness as well. The first image to appear consists of a swarm of large, winged birds soaring above this backwoods area where the biggest thing to happen is a town parade. Otherwise, as one girl tells Jerry there’s nothing else to do here. This remote Nevada area is unprotected from greater powers, and its only guardian is forced to accept retirement, leaving his community vulnerable. This formerly decorated Marine is now a formerly decorated cop, and the unseen animals-or monsters-still roam.

I won’t spoil the ending which I commend, but there is one moment that Sean Penn includes in the final cut that is objectionable.  For the first time in the picture since Jerry Black accepted the case, one moment near the end of the movie tells the audience everything they need to know while leaving Jerry in the dark.  I think it was a poor choice to go this way.  The audience is going along with Jerry’s pursuit until they are spoon fed a resolution they didn’t earn because Jerry never arrives at this conclusion.  A better route would be to leave the audience in the same dizzying haze that Jerry must live with.  Some hanging threads should be left untied. The Pledge is a pot boiling, well-made and disturbing film, but with minutes to go before the end credits roll, a less is more approach should have been adopted.

MYSTIC RIVER

By Marc S. Sanders

Two crimes, thirty years apart, pave the destiny for three childhood friends during their adulthood, while residing in the same Irish neighborhood of Boston.  Sean Penn is Jimmy, a former criminal.  Kevin Bacon is Sean, a police detective.  Tim Robbins is Davey, who was held captive and molested for four days following an afternoon when the guys were playing street hockey together.  Naturally, Davey was never the same but over the course of events in Clint Eastwood’s psychological crime drama, Mystic River, we learn that Jimmy and Sean likely changed too.

Jimmy’s daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum), is found brutally murdered following an evening of bar hopping with girlfriends.  Sean and his partner Whitey (Laurence Fishburne) head up the investigation.  While the magnetic screenplay written by Brian Helgeland, based upon the novel by Dennis Lehane, relies on a who done it track, that seems to be less a priority as details unfold for the trio of men.  Jimmy and Davey’s wives (Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden) may be hiding some information.  A possible murder weapon invites some curious questions. There’s reason to question Katie’s boyfriend, and Davey’s odd behavior combined with his childhood trauma raises eyebrows as he was one of the last men to see Katie alive.

The less you know about Mystic River the better, but this engrossing cast which earned Oscars for Penn and Robbins, plus a nomination for Harden, is not the only stand out feature.  This film is one of Clint Eastwood’s best directing efforts; definitely one of my favorites.  

First, Eastwood hides many of his characters in dark shadows so the viewer never forgets that all these people have pasts they regret or would rather not resurface.  Sometimes, you hauntingly recognize the silhouettes of Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, each for different and unnerving reasons. Eastwood notably shoots himself this way often when he’s in front of his camera (Unforgiven, Sudden Impact, Million Dollar Baby).  It’s a brilliant photographic strategy that will make you fear or empathize with his flawed protagonists.

Second, Clint Eastwood shoots much of the Boston neighborhood with wide overhead shots in the daytime.  Interiors offer little light no matter the time of day.  Exteriors present the multi floor homes which are easy to see and showcase a labyrinth of crevices, yards and blocks where activity occurs.  

While the title of Lehane’s mystery is hardly spoken until a series of shocking revelations occur at the end, Eastwood ensures the setting of this Boston Irish populace is given much attention.  The more closely located these homes are up against one another, the less apt that any of the residents can truly see what’s going on under their nose.  These people live on top of each other with no room to spread out.  Their nearsightedness is practically blinding.

Furthermore, Eastwood composed the morose soundtrack for this piece. The director seems to speak to the audience because nothing good will likely arrive for any of these folks who grew up together like the generations before them.  Even a colorful Red Sox cap worn by Davey does not offer much cheer or Boston pride.  Eastwood’s musical compositions paint a modern-day setting encased in unimaginable heartache.  

Mystic River is not an easy film to watch.  Yet it’s not gory.  It’s not scary.  It’s the internal struggles of these characters that’s hard to imagine or observe. On the surface Lehane’s story seems reminiscent of most any other crime drama or Law & Order episode of the week.  The challenge is to watch these masterful performances, especially from Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Marcia Gay Harden.  

We’ve seen moments where the father comes upon the crime scene of a murdered child.  However, Sean Penn delivers this staple with raw, unbearable heartache.  This actor invests his soul into the moment and reminds any one of us, whether we are a parent or child, of how wrenching it is to even imagine losing a loved one to senseless violence.  If I had to ever experience an episode like this, it might just take the entire police force to hold me down too.

Robbins and Harden are husband and wife, who get in over their heads when incidents of surprise occur.  Harden is especially ripped apart with what she knows and what she suspects.  Robbins embraces an inner child who has never outgrown a trauma that stubbornly stays attached to him, even if he’s a loving father.

As difficult as Mystic River is to watch, I’ll return to it on repeat because this cast and crew are at the top of their game.  Dennis Lehane has written other Boston crime stories (Gone Baby Gone with the film adaptation directed by Ben Affleck), particularly involving children, and he recycles his characters for future tales.  To my knowledge, I do not believe he’s ever written a sequel to Mystic River, but I’d love to see what happens to these people after the events of this film unfolded.  

Everything is revealed in Mystic River, except what happens next and I’m dying to know.  

AMERICAN BEAUTY

By Marc S. Sanders

Lester Burnham declares in less than a year he’ll be dead.  When we meet him, he’s masturbating in the shower, sleeping in the back of the family vehicle on the way to work, and declaring that his wife Carolyn used to be lovely.  Heck, he’s acting like he’s dead already.  His life has nothing new or exciting to pursue.  His daughter, Jane, doesn’t give him the time of day.  He’s threatened with being laid off from his magazine call center job that he’s held on to for nearly twenty-five years.  What’s to live for anymore? 

I guess what’s complimentary about poor Lester is that at least he’s honest with himself.  All the other neighbors, except for the gay couple known as Jim & Jim, are just as unhappy it seems and might as well be dead too.  A common theme running through the suburban landscape of American Beauty centers on a sense of mental awakening. Who revives sad, lost folks like Lester and Carolyn?  Perhaps it’s the generation sneaking up behind them, who are on the cusp of taking their place in young adulthood. 

Lester is played by Kevin Spacey, in his second Oscar winning performance.  Carolyn is portrayed by Annette Bening who is way overdue for a trophy.  Jane the daughter is played by Thora Birch.  The headliners of this cast are outstanding in how different and disagreeable they portray a broken family that is forced to live in an unstimulating home while trudging through a lifeless marriage.  Look at the set designs within this film.  There’s an endless amount of blank walls within the interiors of the homes.  Almost no artwork or pictures are to be found. 

Lester pines and fantasizes about Jane’s best friend Angela (Mena Suvari) getting rained on with red rose petals while she lies naked in a pure white bathtub.  Carolyn, the real estate agent who can’t make a sale, sidles up to the dashing Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher), her competition. Next door is Chris Cooper in a hospital cornered role as retired Marine Colonel Frank Fitts, with his near comatose wife Barbara played by Allison Janey, and their eighteen-year-old resourceful drug dealing son, Ricky (Wes Bentley). He takes advantage of his camcorder at any opportunity to collect the beautiful images found within the world he occupies and observes.  That could mean he’s capturing Jane in her bedroom window which faces his own.  Later, he’ll show you the freedom of a plastic shopping bag dancing within an autumn breeze.  An old shopping bag has more life among a breeze and brown leaves than Lester, Carolyn, Frank or Barbara.

There is a mystery to American Beauty that seems quite odd.  We know that Lester will die soon, but how and why? Maybe there’s a twist, because that outcome seems more and more impossible as we see Lester discover a spirited mindset to go after what he wants, when he wants and declare that he’s not going to allow himself to take shit from anyone particularly in his boring dead end job or from his unaffectionate wife.  Ricky, the kid with tons of money and electronics equipment, has nothing to lose because he’s not committed to anything at age eighteen and he can just quit an ordinary table-waiting job at any given moment.  Why didn’t Lester have the gumption to ever be like Ricky?   It seems so simple.

There’s a blink and miss it sign hidden in plain sight.  Pinned to the wall of Lester’s work cubicle is the message “Look Closer.”  Director Sam Mendes and writer Alan Ball gives the audience a subtle wink to dig within the cracks of suburban life sidewalks.  These homes may appear perfect on the outside, with neighborly neighbors, but if you watch with a more critical eye you’ll find an emptiness that has been unfilled for too long.  The filmmakers make it easy for you to uncover what eats away at the upper middle-class way of living.  Dinner with Lawrence Welk playing in the background is anything but uplifting.  It’s imprisoning.

When one member of this community opts to seize his moment, no matter if he’s motivated by a kid’s rebelliousness and the drugs he buys off of him, or the fact that he thinks a beautiful teenage blonde has the hots for him, he sets out to change.  He exercises and builds up his body, buys the dream sports car he’s always wanted, quits his job and grows to not caring how this may disturb his unloving wife. 

American Beauty seems to remind us how alive we can be when we are younger and not as restrained by the commitments it takes to live like adults with debts and parenthood and jobs and marriage.  Look closer though because couldn’t we live as well or more aggressively when middle age arrives?

The irony of Alan Ball’s script is that a boring guy like Lester Burnham discovers exciting things about himself just as the end of his life is approaching.  All he needed was stimulation.  He never saw his death coming, and you might forget he told you he will soon be dead, but American Beauty works to show how necessary it is to live each day to the fullest. 

I sound hokey.  I know.  Yet, that’s the direction of this film’s trajectory.  On the side, you observe those people who do not pursue what will fulfill their own lives and desperately need a modification.  Lester was limited to branch out. So is Colonel Fitts and his very sad wife.  So is Carolyn, and Jane and Angela, and maybe so is Ricky.  All of these people uphold facades about themselves to preserve a happiness on the outside when they really feel worse within. 

Sam Mendes is brilliant at drawing upon the subtle messages and insecurities of Alan Ball’s neighborhood characters.   About the only people that Sam and Alan do not dig deeper with is the gay couple.  I guess since they are happily out of the closet, what is left for them to conceal?

I could not help but compare Mendes’ Oscar winning film to Robert Redford’s.  American Beauty is more forthright than Ordinary People. Redford’s film draws out the ugly honesty of the family nucleus when an unexpected tragedy interferes.  Then it takes the entire film before the spouses take off their masks and truly declare how they regard each other.  It’s crushing to realize a sad truth. 

American Beauty rips off the layer right at the beginning, though.  A tragedy does not awaken these people to the natures that embarrass them.  Simply a hellbent, fed up mindset gets one guy going, and if that one member opens his eyes, then so will others because a simple disruption in ordinary life is next to impossible to live with.  Both films are so wise in how they criticize the very people these films were likely catered for.

What do these two Oscar winners say?  They tell the middle class, middle age American to simply look closer.

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975)

DIRECTOR: Dick Richards
CAST: Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Sylvia Miles, Anthony Zerbe, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack O’Halloran, Joe Spinell, Sylvester Stallone
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 71% Fresh

PLOT: When a giant ex-con fresh from prison asks Philip Marlowe to find his missing sweetheart, Marlowe winds up entangled in multiple murders, prostitutes, and a sultry trophy wife.


Because it was released only a year after Chinatown (1974), it is tempting to compare Farewell, My Lovely to that landmark film noir, but although they are in the same genre, the two films are apples and oranges…or at least apples and pears.  Both feature hard-nosed private eyes accepting cases that turn out to be more complicated and far-reaching than they appear, both feature multiple unexpected deaths, and both feature curvy, smoky-eyed dames with dangerous secrets and aging husbands.  All true to the genre.  But Chinatown breaks (successfully) with film noir in several key areas, while Farewell, My Lovely achieves its lofty heights while still remaining faithful to the bedrock tropes of vintage film noir, right down to the tired voice-over narration from the hero.  I have no idea how faithful it is to the Raymond Chandler novel by the same name, but if the book is half as entertaining as the movie, I may have to track it down and give it a read.

Robert Mitchum plays legendary gumshoe Philip Marlowe, the third version of the character I’ve ever seen after Humphrey Bogart (The Big Sleep, 1946) and Elliott Gould (The Long Goodbye, 1973).  Compared to the other two, Mitchum is by far the most shambling version, but I mean that in a good way.  We first see him staring out of a rundown hotel room in downtown Los Angeles, some time in 1941.  We know the timeframe because of a calendar here and there, and because Marlowe is obsessively following Joe DiMaggio’s progress, as he is on the verge of breaking the record for hits in consecutive games.  That’s a nice touch.  Marlowe’s world-weary narration plays over Mitchum’s sagging face and drooping cigarette, and the spell is complete: we are in the hands of one of the great genre pictures, from a story by one of the greatest mystery writers of his generation.

Marlowe’s story starts as a flashback, a story he’s relating to similarly-weary Lieutenant Nulty (John Ireland).  See, it all began when Marlowe was tracking down a rich family’s runaway daughter.  Soon thereafter, “this guy the size of the Statue of Liberty walks up to me.”  This is Moose Malloy, an ex-con fresh out of the slammer after serving seven years for armed robbery and making off with $80,000, which was never recovered.  Moose is played by Jack O’Halloran, whom cinephiles will recognize immediately as the overly large/tall man who played Non, the mute superpowered henchman in 1980’s Superman II.  To see this man actually string words together into sentences was a strange experience, but I eventually got used to it.

Moose wants Marlowe to find his sweetheart, Velma, who hasn’t written to him the last six years of his stretch.  Next thing you know, someone takes a potshot at Moose on the street, Moose winds up killing a guy in a bar, and Marlowe follows Velma’s trail to an insane asylum, and that’s still just the tip of the damn iceberg, because now there’s this guy who wants Marlowe to help deliver $15,000 in ransom to some other guys who stole a jade necklace…and we STILL haven’t seen the rich trophy wife yet.

And round and round it goes.  I have seen other films that attempted to combine this many plot threads and they wound up a jumbled mess.  Not this movie.  Farewell, My Lovely skillfully walked that tightrope and held my interest all the way through.  I was never lost, never confused…except for a couple of places where the soundtrack obscured a word or two, but I don’t know if that’s the soundtrack’s fault or the actors for mumbling too much.  Plus, this movie contains one of the single greatest interrogation sequences I’ve ever seen, starring Marlowe, two thugs, and the madame of a whorehouse.  It starts semi-normal, escalates with a shocker, then tops the first shocker with something I didn’t think even a hardcase like Philip Marlowe would do.  But the more I watched this movie, the more I got the sense (whether it’s true or not, I don’t know) that this Mitchum version of Marlowe is truer to the literary Marlowe than we ever got previously, in terms of Marlowe’s principles.

I should also mention the dialogue, which contains some of the best one-liners and comebacks I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to.  For example:

  • Marlowe describing a large house he’s driving up to: “The house wasn’t much.  It was smaller than Buckingham Palace and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.”
  • Marlowe on his billing practices: “I don’t accept tips for finding kids.  Pets, yes…five dollars for dogs, ten dollars for elephants.”
  • Marlowe describing the obligatory femme fatale (Charlotte Rampling): “She had a full set of curves which nobody had been able to improve on.  She was giving me the kinda look I could feel in my hip pocket.”
  • Marlowe when the femme fatale asks him to sit next to her: “I’ve been thinking about that for some time.  Ever since you first crossed your legs, to be exact.”

Dialogue and lines like this are dangerous because they have been the targets of so many parodies for so long that modern audiences may have forgotten how to take them at face value.  But in Farewell, My Lovely, it comes off perfectly as a tribute to the classic noirs of the 1940s and ‘50s, a tip of the hat to the giants of the past.

Conversely, this movie also reminded me of many of the best eighties thrillers I remember watching, which is ironic considering it was released in 1975.  Movies like Body Heat and Jagged Edge and Silverado, whose purpose for existing seemed to be just to tell a freaking awesome story, unburdened with subtextual layering but laden with style and wit and intelligence, paying homage to their cinematic ancestors by emulating them without plagiarizing them.  There are no doubt film historians who could analyze this film scene by scene and explain exactly what the filmmakers were really trying to tell us underneath the ingenious dialogue and intricate plotting.  But even if I knew or understood all of that, I maintain the best reason for seeking out and watching Farewell, My Lovely will always because it’s just a damn good movie.

(…if for no other reason because of that interrogation scene…I had to rewind it a couple of times just to get my shocked laughter out of my system…)