Category: Genre

NIMONA (2023)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTORS: Nick Bruno, Troy Quane
CAST: Chloë Grace Moretz, Riz Ahmed, Eugene Lee Yang, Frances Conroy
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 94% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Framed for a crime he didn’t commit, a knight in a futuristic world reluctantly accepts the help of a shapeshifting teenager to prove his innocence.


Just when I thought the Spider-Verse animated films held the current monopoly on creating cool futuristic worlds, along comes Nimona with its delirious fusion of medieval pageantry with flying cars, cellphones, and annoying TV jingles.  Put aside what some will no doubt call its “woke” agenda/storyline and just drink in the amazing visuals, as knights in shining armor wield swords as they ride hoverbikes into battle.  (There is the occasional horse, naturally…some traditions apparently die hard in this version of the future.)

The pre-requisite prologue explains how a brave warrior queen, Gloreth, defeated a vile monster a thousand years ago.  To maintain vigilance against any future attacks, Gloreth’s subjects erected a wall around their magnificent city and created the Institute, a sort of school-for-knights, to train their protectors from generation to generation.

One thousand years later, the city prepares to matriculate its current class of knights, including, for the first time in their history, a commoner, Ballister (Riz Ahmed), championed by the current Queen Valerin as a symbol of progress.  What matters a knight’s lineage if his heart is brave, and his spirit is bold?  This choice has not gone over well unanimously in the queendom, unfortunately, but she is confident in her choice.  However, in a twist of fate, Ballister’s sword malfunctions during the knighthood ceremony, resulting in the Queen’s death, and Ballister, minus an arm, finds himself a fugitive.

He has exactly two allies.  One is his romantic partner and fellow knight candidate, Ambrosius Goldenloin, a direct descendant of Gloreth herself, who spearheads the search for Ballister in an attempt to keep someone else from killing him outright.  The other is a flighty, impetuous teenager who tracks Ballister down the following night and offers her services as sidekick to what she thinks is the newest villain in town, Ballister the Queen Slayer.  This is Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), a shapeshifter who can assume any form she desires, although her favorites appear to be a pink rhinoceros and a giant pink whale.  She likes pink.  And punk, as it turns out.

I imagine one could be cynical and say that what follows story-wise is nothing new: our heroes overcome initial adversities and suspicions of each other, they track down clues, deal with one or two serious crises, and eventually expose the truth of what really happened the day the Queen was killed.  But that’s like saying The Stand is about a bunch of people who survive the end of the world and eventually defeat the bad guy.  Well, duh.  Nimona doesn’t offer anything outrageously subversive in the story department.  What it offers is a fresh new imagination and perspective in how it tells this story, especially when it comes to the character of Nimona herself, the very definition of the rebel outsider who literally doesn’t fit in anywhere.

What makes great kids films work – what makes MOST films work – is how it invites the juvenile audience to identify with the main character.  In Pinocchio, what little kid doesn’t know what it’s like when a lie grows out of control?  In The Wizard of Oz, what little kid has never felt homesick?  In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, what kid has never dreamed that they were special, not really meant for everyday life?

In Nimona, what kid has never felt alienated at some point in their life because of something that makes them different?  They’re not as old as the grown-ups.  They’re not as young as little babies anymore.  They’re in an in-between world where they’re only as strong as the friends they make, if they’re lucky enough to make friends.  What if there is something inherently different about them?  Nimona has tried shapeshifting before, tried to explain her gift, but people immediately think of her as a monster instead of someone who’s gifted.  There are echoes of the X-Men films here, too, but those mutants were lucky enough to find a home at Xavier’s mansion.  Nimona is not so lucky.  So, she decides to embrace the monstrous role society thrusts upon her.  I imagine there are lots of people out there who feel the same to one degree or another.  I’m not a sociologist, but it seems logical.

The real villain of the story (I won’t reveal their identity) does everything in their power to manipulate the narrative in the eyes of the public.  At one point, their scheme is all but exposed, but they discover yet another way to maintain power: turn society on itself.  They reveal the existence of the shapeshifter, explaining to the city that the real monster could be sitting next to you, or playing with your child, or living in your house.  The sinister nature of this ploy made me genuinely angry, mostly because of how effective it is, both in the film and in real life.  When you’re too busy fighting each other, the true villains win.

Enough philosophy.  Nimona stands among the best animated films yet produced by Netflix (Klaus, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio).  There is plenty of humor to go around to leaven the moments when the film goes deep into territories unexplored even in the best Pixar movies.  (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t recall a Pixar film where a character contemplates suicide as an alternative to grief.)  The end credits inform me that Nimona is based on a graphic novel.  Guess what I’m looking for on Amazon in a few minutes.

SMASH PALACE (New Zealand, 1981)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Roger Donaldson
CAST: Bruno Lawrence, Anna Maria Monticelli, Greer Robson-Kirk, Keith Aberdein, Desmond Kelly
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100%

PLOT: After the break-up of his marriage, a racing driver sets out to get back his daughter – at any cost.


Since last night, I’ve been trying to figure out what to compare Smash Palace to, and I finally came up with something: John Sayles.  Smash Palace resembles the best films of John Sayles, in that they are concerned with nothing more than character and plot.  The performances and camerawork do not strive for effect or bias, and the plot, while it proceeds with perfect logic, remained a mystery to me right up to the final scene.  I can’t quite vouch for its re-watch value, but any movie that can keep me guessing until the credits roll gets its due in my book.

Alan (Bruno Lawrence) is a once-famous Grand Prix racer who has semi-retired to a sprawling auto junkyard, the titular Smash Palace, with his fragrant wife, Jacqui (Anna Maria Monticelli), and their 7-year-old daughter, Georgie (Greer Robson-Kirk).  The fact that these actors were all unknown to me created an atmosphere of reality that would have been more difficult to reproduce with established names and faces.  The movie opens with a spectacular single-car crash on a lonely road and establishes Alan’s job: to haul away totaled cars to his junkyard for scrap.  The size and scope of his automotive graveyard is shown in a shot that astonished me.  (I was even more astonished when I learned in the Blu Ray special features that this graveyard is an actual location that still operates today.)

We watch as Alan tinkers in his garage with a racing car he plans to drive in an upcoming race.  He’s also restoring an older car (from the ‘20s, maybe?  I’m not an expert) for his best mate, Ray (Keith Aberdein), a local policeman.  These opening scenes establish everyone’s relationship: Alan loves his wife and daughter, Jacqui loves their daughter but has become exasperated with Alan’s unwillingness to sell Smash Palace and move out of the sticks, and Georgie loves her mum and dad and enjoys helping Dad with his repair jobs.  When Jacqui wants to go to a party, Alan demurs, citing work.  Jacqui then says she won’t go at all, and Alan does what he thinks is the right thing: offers to drive her to the party, and Ray can drive her home.  Alan’s perfect logic completely ignores the crumbling state of his marriage, much to Jacqui’s dismay.  Even young Georgie questions his decision-making when Alan tucks her in that night.

Jacqui winds up driving herself to the party.  At the party, Ray, Alan’s cop friend, finds it necessary to drive Jacqui home when she is drunk and claims her car won’t start.  On the way home, a moment passes between Ray and Jacqui.  We are teased with the possibility that either something or nothing happened.  The next morning when Ray drives out to pick up the stranded car, he finds no trouble and the car starts with no problem.  Curious…

As the song says, one thing leads to another.  Alan and Jacqui get into a quasi-violent argument at home while Georgie retreats to her room, sucks her thumb, and turns a flashlight on and off, on and off, a precisely observed scene that brought back strong memories of when my own parents had their fair share of arguments leading up to their eventual divorce.  We get a deeper sense of Alan’s emotional depth, or lack thereof, when his idea of making everything all right is apologizing to his wife while she cries on the bed, then having rough makeup sex.  In the afterglow of their “lovemaking”, Jacqui calmly informs Alan she’s leaving him.  His nearly wordless response is worth the ticket price.

I don’t want to reveal too much of what happens next, because while it may seem like we’re heading into soap opera territory, and we kind of are, it’s important that I convey a peculiar emotional tug-of-war that occurred as I watched.  There are scenes of violent emotions getting the best of Alan.  I’m not talking about physical violence or beating his wife or anything like that; this movie is too smart to tip its hand in that direction so quickly and obviously.  But, for example, at one point, Alan points a shotgun at someone while he yells at his daughter to “get in the truck!”  Now, speaking as a rational person, there is obviously no situation, ever, in which pointing a shotgun and essentially kidnapping your own daughter would ever be justified.  I think we can all agree there.  But the subtle genius of Smash Palace is that, while the scene unfolded, I could so clearly see why Alan was doing what he did that, yes, in the moment, I sided with him.  It wasn’t until the scene was over that I found myself wondering, wait, that’s not cool what he did.

But then, was it “cool” for Jacqui to file the New Zealand equivalent of a restraining order against Alan when he had taken her hunting without informing her after they were separated?  Was it “cool” for her to almost immediately take up a relationship with Ray, Alan’s best mate, a move that would almost certainly enrage Ray even further?  Well, what difference does “cool” make?  Jacqui is doing what she feels is best for her and her daughter in the face of a loveless marriage to a man who would rather bury himself in the hood of a car than face up to his responsibilities as a husband.

That’s the beauty of Smash Palace.  We may not agree with what these people do, but we can clearly see the why at every turn.  The movie takes the trappings of a soap opera and turns it into a crystallized character study that explains why a man with limited emotional resources would point a shotgun at someone’s face because he believes that’s his last remaining option.  Alan’s shortcomings have trapped him, and while we audience members know he’s in the wrong, we sigh and commiserate with him: “That poor, dumb bastard.”  And the same applies to Jacqui.  We know she’s doing the right things by moving out and taking Georgie with her, but because we know how shortsighted Alan is, and we know SHE knows it, too, we feel the same kind of regret when her actions force Alan’s hand.  An old family friend, Tiny, even tries to warn her of the consequences of her actions, but she will not be deterred.  Poor, dumb bastard.

Smash Palace may infuriate some viewers who have been programmed by Hollywood convention to see clearly defined boundaries between heroes and villains, especially in domestic dramas involving custody of a child.  This movie denies them that.  Instead, it invites viewers to probe their own psyches and wonder about themselves: what would I do to get my daughter back?  What would I do to keep her safe?  How far am I prepared to go to be happy in this world?  The characters in Smash Palace supply their own answers to those questions in ways that had me rooting for both sides simultaneously.  Now that’s hard.

THE SNAKE PIT (1948)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Anatole Litvak
CAST: Olivia de Havilland, Leo Genn, Celeste Holm, Natalie Schafer [aka Mrs. Howell on Gilligan’s Island…how about that?]
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100%

PLOT: A young woman’s life is torn apart when she suffers a mental breakdown and is admitted to an institution.


For much of its running time, The Snake Pit remains firmly in the realm of reality without succumbing to melodrama, as was symptomatic of so many film dramas of the 1940s.  That’s what makes it mildly disappointing when, in the last reel, we get a nice little summation of the origins of our heroine’s dilemma, and she bravely makes a series of decisions that result in a happy ending.  Naturally, that was the case in real life, as well.  The film is based an autobiographical novel by Mary Jane Ward, who spent eight months in a mental institution after a nervous breakdown.  I don’t begrudge the happy ending, you understand.  I just wish it didn’t feel as rushed as it does.

But I’m quibbling.  This is a fine film.  The Snake Pit was another in a series of Daryl F. Zanuck productions intended as “message pictures”, movies that addressed real issues in contemporary society.  The Grapes of Wrath (1940) dealt with the Dust Bowl and harsh labor conditions.  Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) was one of the first films, if not THE first, to openly condemn casual anti-Semitism in “polite” society.  The Snake Pit is said to be the first mainstream film to realistically depict conditions in America’s mental institutions at the time.  If so, the filmmakers really went for the jugular in their first at-bat.  In its own way, this is as harsh and unforgiving a film as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  There’s even a sequence involving shock treatments that are as effective as anything else I’ve seen along those lines.

The story begins intriguingly, as we open on the lovely open face of Virginia (a deliberately un-made-up Olivia de Havilland) as she wonders mentally what she’s doing outside on this bench.  A man we don’t see asks her a series of questions, and she has little mental conversations with herself before she answers.  Then the camera pulls out, and there is no man, just another woman telling her it’s time to go back inside.  Inside where, she wonders?  Then she’s herded with a bunch of other women back into the main hall of the Juniper Hill State Hospital.  She starts to panic.  What is she doing here?  Is she crazy?  She doesn’t feel crazy.  The reasons for her stay provide the central mystery to the film.

(Incidentally, Stephen King apparently saw this film on TV as a youngster…which may account for the numerous appearances of the Juniper Hills psychiatric facility that appears in many of his novels and stories, including It, The Dark Half, and Needful Things.  When you win on “Jeopardy”, I’ll let you know where to mail my half of the winnings.)

De Havilland’s performance is extraordinary.  Her talent is undeniable, but it’s notable that one of the silver screen’s great beauties went without makeup, wore clothes two sizes to big, and even dropped some weight to make her look more fragile.  This was my first time watching the movie, and I was astonished at her appearance.  When she flies into rages, or pleads for mercy, or desperately tries to remember her past, you really believe it.

In a series of flashbacks, we discover that Virginia Stuart was a frustrated author who met her future husband in Chicago, in the offices of the company that had just rejected her manuscript.  There was a whirlwind romance that ended when she simply ran out on him and disappeared, only to show up six months later in New York, where he had moved…six months previously.  (I don’t know about you, but that’s red flag territory in my mind, but whatever.)  Their romance picked up where it left off, there was a ceremony at City Hall, and they enjoyed married life…for about a week.  At which point Virginia behaved erratically, declaring that she will never love any man, that no man can love her, and flatly denying that today is May 12th, no matter what it says on the newspaper.  Virginia’s husband admits her to Juniper Hill, and it’s here where her troubles REALLY begin.

The film’s depictions of life on the various wards of the asylum are tame by today’s standards, but they are no less disturbing.  There are the usual cast of off-kilter characters wandering the halls, mumbling to themselves or being unreasonable, but there is something indefinably…I don’t know, squirmy about seeing this kind of behavior in such an old movie.  At least for me.  When it’s played for real and not for laughs, in black and white, in 1948, something about that place and those people became much more real to me, at least as real as McMurphy’s fellow travelers, or maybe even more so.  I’m unable to put it into words.  When someone in Cuckoo’s Nest dances by themselves in a corner or wants his cigarettes, it’s kinda funny.  In The Snake Pit, when a woman dances by herself, or another covers her face with her hair and paces around muttering that it’s her right to cover her face…it was creepy.  Is it the black-and-white cinematography?  Is it the shortage of comic relief?  Is it because they’re women instead of men?  Discuss.

(There’s even a head nurse who seems like the prototype for Nurse Ratched: a no-nonsense, by-the-book authoritarian who makes no bones about disliking Virginia.  When Virginia is given a typewriter for therapeutic reasons, the nurse reminds her: “Don’t go thinking you’re better than the rest of us just because you’re a writer.”  Talk about terrible bedside manner, geez…)

Interestingly, I didn’t find Virginia’s behavior all that “crazy.”  She has problems with her memory, she tends to fly off the handle at trivial matters, and she once bit the finger of an arrogant doctor who was waving it in her face unnecessarily.  Frankly, that sounds like something I would do on a bad day.  Virginia’s conversations with her doctor, Doctor Kik (Leo Genn), are the only things that keep her tethered to reality.  These conversations are handled extremely well.  I found myself thinking of another famous movie about psychiatry in the ‘40s: Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), which was not so concerned with legitimate psychiatry as it was with making sure Bergman and Peck wound up together at the end.  In that film, the conversations between doctor and patient are full of double-speak and heavy-handed metaphors.  In The Snake Pit, I found it interesting that, whenever Dr. Kik makes a small breakthrough with Virginia, he never pushes the matter.  He simply calls it a day and picks it up tomorrow, armed with new information.  I’m no doctor, but that seems way more realistic to me.

I went into The Snake Pit expecting a semi-watered drown treatment of insanity and mental institutions.  Instead, I got a film that is remarkably effective and powerful, containing a performance from Olivia de Havilland that might seem like a lot of histrionics at first, but which is the very definition of someone completely at the mercy of mood swings beyond her comprehension.  They say that only the insane never wonder if they’re crazy.  If that’s the case, Virginia is as sane as they come, wondering over and over again why she does what she does, why she’s been thrown into this place.  She comes across as someone who desperately wants someone to listen to her.  Thankfully for her, someone does.  If everyone were as lucky as she is, maybe there’d be a lot more happy endings in the world.

THE GAMBLER (1974)

By Marc S. Sanders

James Caan is Axel Freed, The Gambler, and when the film starts it shows the main character figuratively at the bottom of a very deep hole.  From this point on, he’s always looking at its great endless height above; a depth so low or a height so high, that there’s no crawling out of this trap.  No matter the opportunities that rescue Axel from a $44,000 debt to some bookies, he’ll never allow himself to be saved.

The autobiographical inspiration of James Toback’s first screenplay is hardly entertaining, but it held my attention all the way through.  Axel is a well-educated literature professor and an expert on Dostoyevsky but he’s entirely foolhardy.  A parallel inspiration comes from the author’s novella The Gambler.

I dunno.  Whether it’s 1974 or 2024, if I’m told I owe forty-four grand to someone who will otherwise break my legs and then who knows what else, I’d be terrified with fear.  Axel Freed seems to brush off his dilemma as he cruises through the city in his Mustang convertible.  To him, this is just the current setback of the week.  Nothing big.  He’s been in worse situations.  At least that’s what he tells himself. Axel swallows some pride and asks his mother (Jacqueline Brooks) for a loan, and she has to go through her own hoops to scrounge up the funds.  Look for an early appearance from James Woods as an unsympathetic banker.  Once mother’s monies are in hand though, Axel opts for a different route than to wipe his debt clean. Therein lies the anchoring burden of gambling addiction.

Toback’s script, directed by Karel Reisz, is not so much about a story as it is about living with overwhelming compulsion.  He writes good dialogue performed with apathy by Caan.  It’s not about winning.  It’s about the thrill of possibly losing the money he’s got in hand. 

Once Axel obtains money, he ventures off to Vegas feeling sure that he will double what he’s got and still manage to pay off this huge debt.  The brilliance of the film is that it had me tricked as Axel marathons through victory at every table while also feeling confident on three college basketball games that seem to be moving in his favor.  I was not sure if I was looking at a hero or a despairing loser during this sequence.  Reisz convinces me that it can go either way for Axel with his girlfriend, Billie (Lauren Hutton) in tow.

As many films, books, and programs that I’ve encountered focusing on gambling and the addiction it musters, I feel confident I know the outcome of the piece.  What sets The Gambler apart though is the realistic nature of what this kind of craving does to a person.  It depicts the victim as in denial, rejoicing when he dodges bullets, thinking he’s invincible.  The film demonstrates how those close to Axel Freed respond to his mounting dilemmas, but also how they are affected.  It’s inclusive not only of his Billie, his mother, his self-made millionaire grandfather, or even his main bookie (Paul Sorvino), but an admiring student of his as well. 

There are scenes that I could see how they are going to play out as soon as they begin.  I’m sorry but when I see tough guy character actors like Burt Young and Vic Tayback enter a story like this, I know something, or someone, is about to endure some damage and walk away feeling terribly threatened.  Still, I’d be complaining if Toback excised moments like this from his screenplay.

The ending left me feeling a little perplexed as to if it really belongs here.  It’s not a happy ending but seemed to come out of nowhere and I questioned its relevance against everything else that was seen before. 

The strength of The Gambler lies in the honesty of James Toback’s script and the performance of James Caan.  The film belongs exclusively to Caan and his character, with the others entering the frame when they are called upon for a cause and effect of Axel’s actions and decisions.  There’s nothing to celebrate in a hard drama like this, but I applaud the film’s will to uphold a genuine truth of how gambling addiction leaves behind a crippling life for those caught in continuing temptation.

AMERICAN FICTION

By Marc S. Sanders

Cord Jefferson directs his first film and it’s a winning combination of Tootsie with the prose of Alexander Payne.  

American Fiction follows author/literature professor Thelonius Ellison, otherwise known as Monk (Jeffrey Wright).  He’s encouraged by his university to take some time off as his patience with the mindset of students and colleagues has reached its tipping point.  Upon his return to visit his mother (Leslie Uggams) and sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), he realizes that mother is beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.  An unexpected tragedy also strikes, and now Monk has to figure a way to afford round the clock care for mother.

A side story also gnaws at Monk. His literary agent, Arthur (a hilarious John Ortiz) encourages him to write a book about “black life,” much like the current bestselling novelist Sintara Golden (Issa Rae).  Her book is celebrated, particularly by the middle/upper class white demographic, for its “authenticity” in urban black dialect and situations.  Monk is disgusted by this kind of reception.  He may be black, but he’s simply a novelist. Best to take his hard cover novels out of the African Studies section at the bookstore.

After a drunken binge of adopting Sintara’s approach, Monk writes a book, under a gang like pseudonym, as simply a gag to demonstrate how foolish consumers and the top publishers can truly be.  Arthur submits the manuscript to potential publishers and immediately fortune finds him.  A publisher is so moved by the book’s plight, she wants to gear it as a summertime bestseller and Hollywood wants to adapt the story.  It’s also a serious contender for a literary award, of which Monk is on the judging panel.  To Monk’s reluctance, he must don a persona of a fugitive criminal author, unwilling to disclose his identity or location.  White consumerism eats all of this up.  At best, all of this hoopla is covering the cost of his mother’s care. Otherwise, he despises being a part of this charade in front of his new girlfriend, Coraline (Erica Alexander) and his family which also includes his gay, undependable brother, Cliff (Sterling K Brown, another winning actor in this outstanding cast). 

American Fiction works on several levels, but the balance is between satire and relatable drama.  There’s a past that defines Monk’s character.  It defines what irritates him as a black man who is encouraged to digress from the sophisticated intelligence and formal education he possesses.  No one encourages him to live up to his disposition as simply a good writer.  Because he’s black, he can only be regarded as a black writer.   

Jeffrey Wright breaks free of his well-known character actor performances (James Bond films for example) to lead this stellar script adapted from a novel called Erasure by Percival Everett.  He wears multiple hats in this film, which include tender moments shared with Erica Alexander and Leslie Uggams, as well as more challenging debates with the sibling characters while addressing a common family problem of dealing with an elderly parent’s care.  His siblings sardonically address him as “Detective Dictionary” when engaged in a debate. As well, Wright’s comedy works as he’s the irascible author who is flabbergasted at how seriously his little prank takes him so far.  It disgusts him that this novel, this deliberate smack in the face to what readers embrace as black literature, generates a sensation. The further it’s regarded in hype, the deeper Monk has to hide as that urban gangster fugitive.

Thelonius “Monk” Ellison is one of the best characters to come out of 2023.  Ironically, the first film I saw this year was a dreadful comedy called You People with Eddie Murphy and Jonah Hill.  That film attempted to poke fun at what presumed were the stereotypes of blacks and Jews when in fact it had no discernible concept.  American Fiction explores how black life and culture is perceived by a white populace only to genuinely demonstrate an unfair delusion, and it works perfectly.  It’s a very smart script with intelligent and likable characters, and the dialogue is never pandering but absolutely forthright.  

American Fiction pokes fun at perceptions.  How Hollywood addresses black history and culture and a sad truth of what garners attention for fiction with black characters and storylines.  For black actors and authors, like any of their industry peers regardless of race/demographic, there’s more than just stories focusing on life in the ghetto or on a southern plantation.

Cord Jefferson’s screenplay reveals a midlife crisis for Monk that allows a provocation to consider what is genuine in black and white people.  At the same time, while Monk only wants to reveal a false delusion, he also has to live up to unwanted responsibilities as a son, a brother and a boyfriend.  Jeffrey Wright is worthy of an Oscar nomination for his role.  

Nearly every scene in Jefferson’s film can prompt you to hit pause and think about what was just said or demonstrated.  This movie is also very, very funny in its honest truth of what consumers absorb.  Yes! I do believe Hollywood would likely make a revenge slasher horror picture on a Louisiana cotton plantation, complete with Ryan Reynolds as a slave owner getting beheaded by an Afro blade.  

American Fiction is one of the ten best films of 2023. 

LA GRANDE ILLUSION (France, 1937)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Jean Renoir
CAST: Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim, Marcel Dalio
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 97% Certified Fresh

PLOT: During WWI, two French soldiers are captured and imprisoned in a German P.O.W. camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are eventually sent to a seemingly inescapable fortress.


What a pleasure it is sometimes to be proven wrong.  Years ago, back when Netflix was still sending physical DVDs to subscribers, I watched Jean Renoir’s anti-war masterpiece La grande illusion.  Unfortunately, I either could not or would not appreciate it for what it was, and I returned it after giving it a mediocre rating.  Flash forward to today, and even in the midst of suffering through my second Covid infection (thank YOU so much, [establishment name redacted]), I rewatched La grande illusion and found it charming, delightful, poignant, and full of (for me) unexpected comedy and ominous foreshadowing, especially because it’s a World War I film made two years before Hitler invaded Poland and ignited World War II.  Turns out this is one of the best war films ever made, whose influences are clearly seen in later classics like Stalag 17, Casablanca, and The Great Escape.  Who knew?

The film centers around two French soldiers in particular, Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin) and Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay).  They are captured after being shot down during a reconnaissance mission and are taken to a German prison camp…camp number 17, because of course it is.  There they meet the paradoxical camp commander, Captain von Rauffenstein, portrayed by Erich von Stroheim as a man who knows the rules of war, but is willing to bend them – slightly – when it comes to imprisoned officers.  He invites them to dine at his table and even offers de Boeldieu a private cell because, wouldn’t you know it, he knew de Boeldieu’s brother before the war.  It’s almost like he’s saying, yes, we’re enemies, but we’re not savages.

There’s another reason for von Rauffenstein’s behavior that has nothing to do with chivalry.  It’s very clear that de Boeldieu and von Rauffenstein are both aristocrats.  They demonstrate this class affiliation by occasionally holding brief conversations in English, which the other soldiers, being mostly of working class, would not have understood.  It’s fascinating to watch the German and the Frenchman interacting with each other, stubbornly maintaining an air of sophistication and bonhomie required of their class, when de Boeldieu knows he must attempt escape, von Rauffenstein knows it, and de Boeldieu knows he knows it.  This might be considered the first and most obvious level of meaning in the film’s title: the grand illusion that we can still be friends, despite the war, because we’re both members of aristocracy.

Ironically, de Boeldieu doesn’t share this same kind of camaraderie with his own countrymen.  Maréchal, the man he was imprisoned with, is clearly a working-class soldier, a bit less refined, and doesn’t know a lick of English or German.  He makes one escape attempt too many and is put in solitary.  Interestingly, de Boeldieu makes similar escape attempts (we learn later), but we never see him having to experience solitary confinement for his actions.  Double standards?

The fourth major player in this drama is another fellow prisoner, Lieutenant Rosenthal, a French Jew played by Marcel Dalio.  He and several other prisoners are in the process of digging an escape tunnel under the barracks, using gear and methods that are directly quoted in The Great Escape, especially the problem of soil disposal.  It was fascinating to see so many elements in this 1937 film featured so prominently in later films.  I never realized just how influential this movie was, and probably still is.  (There’s even a scene – I won’t spoil the setup – that features a small orchestra spontaneously breaking out into La Marseillaise at a key moment…tell me the Casablanca screenwriters didn’t have this movie in mind when writing their script.)

After some months (perhaps longer, it’s unclear), Maréchal, de Boeldieu, Rosenthal, and several other prisoners are unexpectedly transferred to another camp before they can finish their tunnel.  Their new digs are at an enormous gothic castle, also run by von Rauffenstein, who by now has sustained injuries from some kind of airplane crash which require him to wear a neck brace.  He is still exceedingly friendly to de Boeldieu but assures him escape is impossible from this new “camp.”

What happens from there, I’ll leave for you to discover.  What I will repeat is that this movie covers some heavy territory with a deceptively light touch.  There is a scene where a prisoner receives a parcel from home, a large box containing nothing but women’s clothing, so the men decide to hold a mock “revue” with the male prisoners doubling for the showgirls.  One of the soldiers tries on a dress and wig and walks out and asks, “Don’t I look foolish?”  Au contraire.  The men are struck dumb in a moment that is at first hilarious, then poignant, as they feast their eyes on the first thing even resembling a woman for the first time in forever.  Another parcel arrives for some Russian prisoners in another barracks, a large box which they are sure contains food, but instead it contains – well, I won’t spoil it, but to say they are disappointed would be an understatement.

La grande illusion is brilliant at balancing profound ideas of men at war with the occasional humor in the everyday rhythm of life in a prison camp.  It even gets into the ingrained prejudices of so many people against Jews, views that in 1937 were sweeping across Germany like a plague.  (Nazi Germany banned the film, of course.)  This dichotomy is a little hard for me to describe without just giving a play-by-play of the film in its entirety.  Watching it again today, it’s impossible for me to remember what I didn’t like about this movie the first time around.  It has everything: drama, suspense, comedy, daring escape attempts, a showdown between friendship and duty, men in drag…I mean, everything.  This is one time I’m happy to admit: yes, I was wrong.  La grande illusion is not mediocre.  It’s a masterpiece.

KAGEMUSHA (Japan, 1980)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Akira Kurosawa
CAST: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsotumo Yamazaki, Ken’ichi Hagawara
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 88%

PLOT: A petty thief with an utter resemblance to a samurai warlord is hired as the lord’s double. When the warlord later dies, the thief is forced to take up arms in his place.


Kagemusha is a double-edged sword for me, no pun intended.  On the one hand, its visual beauty is virtually peerless.  Only the films of Kubrick, Lean, and those shot by Vittorio Storaro are even in the same league as Kurosawa.  There are shots in Kagemusha that will remain in my mind long after the details of the story have been purged by old age.  In particular, there’s a shot with Japanese soldiers crossing a ridgeline in the background, more soldiers in the foreground, and the setting sun positioned perfectly, so the shadows of the soldiers in the background reach out towards the viewer and interact with the foreground soldiers.  It’s a masterpiece.

On the other hand, the pacing is so sedate that newcomers to Kurosawa or foreign films in general might wonder, my god, when is something going to happen?  At one point, a key figure is taken out by musket fire from an enemy soldier.  This happens so early that we haven’t been introduced to all the main characters just yet, so the conversations surrounding the gunshot were a mystery to me until later in the film.

On the other hand, Kurosawa proves himself over and over again to be a master of the visual aspects of cinema.  In addition to the shot I mentioned above, there is a trippy dream sequence that looks as if it were painted with an explosion at the paint factory (I mean that in the best possible sense), a wonderful camera move that reveals two characters who are conversing in a plain room are actually overlooking a stormy lake, and an eerie moment when the contents of a large vase are revealed after a lengthy burglary attempt.  There are way too many other examples, you simply have to see the film to appreciate what I’m talking about.  I suppose the way to get the most out of the Kagemusha experience is to surrender to the visuals, much like I do with Barry Lyndon or Doctor Zhivago.

I wouldn’t advise anyone to completely ignore the story, though.  There is immense food for thought here.  A condemned thief is conscripted to act as a warlord’s double.  We never learn the thief’s real name.  He is credited only as “Kagemusha”, aka “The Shadow Warrior.”  He must present an outward face to the other generals, friends and foe, in the event that the real warlord is injured or killed, which (SPOILER ALERT) inevitably happens.  There is portentous dialogue about how a shadow only exists if the man is alive.  Remove the man, and how can a shadow remain?

There are several close calls where Kagemusha’s secret is almost revealed.  His grandson – well, sort of his grandson, it’s a long story – immediately yells, “THAT’S not my grandfather!” when he sees him after a long absence.  The real warlord, Shingen, had a huge black horse that only he could ride.  The inner circle who knows Kagemusha’s secret agrees immediately that he should never try to ride it; you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can never fool a horse.  Shingen’s mistresses present a real danger.  Kagemusha squirms for a few moments as they slowly start to question his identity during tea, but he brilliantly defuses the situation by telling them the one thing they would never believe: the truth.

There’s also a much larger issue at work in Kagemusha.  Shingen’s own generals (the ones outside of the inner circle), and the opposing warlords, all believe Shingen is still alive when they see him on the battlefield.  They have no reason to think he’s an impostor.  There are some skeptics, but their spies are helpless to discover the ruse.  For all intents and purposes, that is Shingen, and they behave accordingly.

There is one battle at night where this, I don’t know, philosophy becomes all too real for Kagemusha.  In the darkness, Shingen’s forces can hear enemy armies approaching, and then musket fire breaks out.  Instinctively, Shingen’s bodyguards leap to shield Shingen/Kagemusha from enemy bullets.  Some are killed.  The look of horror on Kagemusha’s face as the dead bodyguards are piled on top of other bodies is indescribable.  They gave their lives for him.  Or, more importantly, they gave their lives for the idea of Shingen, their belief that he was the most important person on the battlefield.  I was reminded of a bit of dialogue from American Sniper, of all things, when the lead character, an accomplished sniper, is asked to cover some soldiers on a raid.  He is told that the soldiers feel invincible with him up there.  He says they’re not, and the reply is eye-opening: “They are if they think they are.”  Just like the soldiers in American Sniper, the soldiers in Kagemusha are prepared to lay down their lives for a concept.  The man is nothing, a thief.  They don’t know that, though.

This took me down a little bit of a rabbit hole.  I thought of Secret Service agents whose literal job is to protect our President and take a bullet for him if necessary.  It doesn’t matter whether he (or she) agrees with the President’s policies.  That is secondary.  Their job boils down to one thing: I will die to protect this person if that’s what it takes.  The dedication on display by these men and women humbles me, and it makes me think.  Surely, they have opinions about world and national policies.  Doesn’t matter.  It’s not part of the job.

Watching those bodyguards fall in front of the imposter warlord made me think really hard about those kinds of jobs, about anyone in any branch of the armed forces.  Ready to kill and die for what they believe in.  In the case of Kagemusha, these people died for a fake.  It makes their deaths sad, but are they any less honorable?  Like I said, food for thought.

The film ends with a massive battle where, curiously, we are not shown any deaths, only the aftermath.  (The opposing general is especially cruel: “Shoot the horses first.”)  Then there is a dreamlike coda that recalls that philosophy of dying for the right cause.

To recap, though, the movie is slow going, at least as slow, if not slower, than Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.  I can see that Kurosawa has a lot to say with this movie.  He employed thousands of extras and lavish costumes (financed thanks to the involvement of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, which is this whole OTHER thing).  It’s not my favorite Kurosawa film.  That spot is reserved for Ran (1985), which I consider his career-capping masterpiece.  Kagemusha sort of lays the groundwork for that movie, in my opinion.  It was one of his first films in color (I think) and it shows a natural talent for the medium.  Like I said before, surrender to the visuals and contemplate the story, and the slow pacing will take care of itself.  (That doesn’t make much sense, but I’m sticking to it.)

THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT (United Kingdom, 1951)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Alexander Mackendrick
CAST: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Michael Gough
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100%

PLOT: An altruistic chemist invents a fabric which resists wear and dirt as a boon to humanity, but both big business and labor realize it must be suppressed for economic reasons.


First, a brief history lesson:

“The Ealing comedies is an informal name for a series of comedy films produced by the London-based Ealing Studios during a ten-year period from 1947 to 1957. Often considered to reflect Britain’s post-war spirit, the most celebrated films in the sequence include Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), Whisky Galore! (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955)… Many of the Ealing comedies are ranked among the greatest British films, and they also received international acclaim.” – from Wikipedia

There.  That summarizes it way better than I could.  Watch enough British films and the term “Ealing Studios” will invariably come up.  Their comedy films have a breezy, economical quality, sometimes combined with dark humor and almost always with something to say about the conditions in Britain at the time.

The Man in the White Suit is a prime example of the Ealing comedies (although Kind Hearts and Coronets is my personal favorite).  In this film, the versatile Alec Guinness portrays Sidney Stratton, an unemployed inventor with a head for chemistry and textiles.  He stumbles upon a formula that he believes will create the ultimate cloth: impervious to stains and virtually unbreakable.  After a series of pyrotechnic failures, he cracks the code and makes a white suit out of his miracle material.

The storytelling for this whole first half of the film is quick as lightning.  Director Mackendrick wisely realizes that lengthy exposition is the enemy of good pacing, so we get a lot of quick scenes that linger only long enough to make their point before we fade into the next one.  While watching it, I began to worry that this rapid rhythm would hinder my investment in the story, but in retrospect, it almost feels like we’re inside Sidney’s head.  On film, he’s almost always running, rarely strolling except when he’s trying to fool any casual observers.  When he makes his breakthrough, his speech becomes a rattling string of syllables that might require subtitles to decipher, his excitement nearly derailing his ability to talk.

Once he creates this magical cloth and fashions a suit out of it (resorting to blowtorches to cut the suit patterns), he beams.  What a boon to mankind!  You can’t damage it, you can’t get it dirty…it’s the only suit you’ll ever have to buy!  What a windfall!  Well, not so fast.  He immediately encounters resistance from both sides of the textile supply chain.  The laborers who work in the textile mills don’t like it because they envision making only one set of clothes per person and that’s it; it never needs replacing.  Competing companies (management) don’t like it because no one will buy anything else, and it will put them out of business.  Sidney becomes caught in this tug of war, and the whole second half of the film becomes a variation of chase scenes as Sidney struggles to publicize his invention while labor and management fight to suppress it.

There’s an interesting subplot when management tries to persuade Daphne, the daughter of the company’s owner, to seduce Sidney into signing away his rights to his invention.  In an era when most women’s roles were relegated to love interests, her reaction to this offer is unique: she calmly asks, in so many words, “How much is this worth to you?”  She negotiates her fee much the same way as a high-priced escort might.  The board members are scandalized when they realize exactly what they’re asking her to do, and what is being negotiated.  But instead of shying away from it, Daphne embraces it.  Neat.  (Her “seduction” of Sidney has a clever resolution that I did not see coming.)

Like other great films, The Man in the White Suit offers a lot to chew over after the credits roll.  Sure, the last half of the film offers lots of comedy and chase scenes and farcical situations to satisfy any film lover.  But the underlying concept is more interesting the more I think about it.  It’s not exactly a NEW idea, but interesting, nevertheless.  One of the workers at the textile mill tells Sidney: “The razor blade that never gets blunt.  And the car that runs on water with a pinch of something in it.  No.  They’ll never let your stuff on the market in a million years.”  We’ve all heard the urban myths of rubber tires that never wear out, or even the cars that run on water (just saw that one on the internet the other day).  Are they real?  Probably not.  But it’s fun to think so, to imagine the shadowy forces suppressing brilliant inventions for the purpose of commerce.

But there’s a flip side to the story.  During Sidney’s pursuit, he runs into an old washer woman and asks for a coat to cover his suit (the material’s properties make it practically luminous at night).  She happens to know about Sidney and his invention, and she tells him, “Why can’t you scientists leave things alone?  What about my bit of washing when there’s no washing to do?”  More than anything else, this gives Sidney pause, and I can almost hear him thinking, in the back of his head, the immortal words of Ian Malcolm: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

In this way, The Man in the White Suit offers more food for thought than I would have expected.  It’s making a statement about the inevitability of scientific progress, pleading with the responsible parties to be more, well, responsible with their actions.  This film was released only six short years after America ended World War II by dropping atomic bombs on Japan, so the question resonates more dramatically than you might expect from such a breezy comedy.

I can almost hear you asking, “Yeah, but is it funny?”  Yes, this delightful Ealing comedy is in the best traditions of the form.  It’s not too heavy, asking the big questions but wisely not answering them.  It has plenty of smiles and laughs.  And for those who have never seen Alec Guinness as a young man in the movies, it’s a treat to watch a very young Ben Kenobi cavorting on the screen with his eyes bugged out and a silly grin on his face.  And if it offers food for discussion afterwards, all the better.

P.S. Look for a very young Michael Gough in the cast, aka “Alfred” in Tim Burton’s Batman.

BLOOD SIMPLE.

By Marc S. Sanders

 “blood simple” is a term coined to describe the addled, fearful mindset people are in after a prolonged immersion in violent situations.

         IMDb – originally located in the book Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

The Coen Brothers’ first of several legendary and unique films is a seedy noir thriller called Blood Simple.  Joel Coen is the director.  Ethan Coen is the producer.  They wrote the script together and collected whatever pennies they could find door to door from anyone willing to invest in the picture.  You see how shoestring the budget was for this small film, but that’s exactly why it works so effectively.  The lowlifes of their script are not the sophisticated type like Hannibal Lecter or Harry Lyme.

This is a condensed piece, just over ninety minutes, with four principal players who inadvertently cause themselves to get tangled in a bloody web of gory crime.  The fun part is that none of the four know the whole picture of what’s occurring, or how, or why.  I’m satisfied the audience is in on the whole thing, though.

Without giving too much away, Dan Hedaya is Marty, the owner of a sleazy Texas saloon.  A private investigator provides evidence of Marty’s wife, Abby (Frances McDormand, in her debut performance), having an affair with one of his bartenders, Ray (John Getz).  Marty hires the P.I. to murder the two lovers.

Simple enough, right?  Wrong, because the Coen Brothers wisely have their players color outside the lines and soon there’s blood all over the floor, as well as in the back seat, and maybe something important was mistakenly left at a crime scene.  Perhaps someone who was thought to be dead is not, and maybe what you thought occurred is something else entirely.

Blood Simple. works because it operates beyond convention.  The characters are so unaware of what to do next or what precisely has happened that it introduces one layer of confusion and misunderstanding after another.  This is nowhere near a common episode of Three’s Company.  What’s even more appreciative is that once the end credits roll, those that survive this lurid tale will still never have a complete grasp of what’s happened or when or where the convolutedness began.  It’s satisfying that all of the answers are at my disposal. It gives me a sense of omnipotence.

M Emmet Walsh is the scuzzy private investigator.  You’ve seen this celebrated character actor countless times before.  It is this performance that might be the one where you would no longer recognize him as “What’s that guy from?” because now you’ll never forget his name. He’s a villain who pounces on a genius opportunity, covering all bases, until there’s one minor oversight.  The Coen Brothers inventively have this guy circling the waters of the whole film, and yet only one other character is aware of his existence.  Still, this guy is vital to the assorted conflicts uncovered in this sort of graphic novel pulp fiction.

Blood Simple. sets up scenes  that can be bridged together by what if scenarios. How can two windows mere inches away from each other lend to a painfully agonizing, thrillingly welcome moment of terror and suspense? When this scene arrives, does it make sense for how the characters play it out?  You bet it does.  

The film is strong due to its lack of dialogue too.  We watch what these characters do much more than we listen to anything they have to say.  Important props and locations seem to tell us more than any of the actors, and that’ll allow you to think like the character.  You read their minds rather than feeling a need to have everything explained to you.

Blood Simple. is an inspired nod to some of Hitchcock’s bewildering best like Dial M For Murder and Strangers On A Train.  It succeeds because of the twists it offers as nothing ever goes according to plan.  You’ll watch it once and then you’ll want to see it again to follow the breadcrumbs that trail off the path.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Wes Craven
CAST: Sandra Peabody, Lucy Grantham, David Hess, Fred J. Lincoln, Jeramie Rain, Marc Sheffler, Richard Towers, Martin Kove
MY RATING: 4/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 65%

PLOT: Two teenage girls heading to a rock concert for try to score marijuana in the city, where they are kidnapped and brutalized by a gang of psychopathic convicts.

*Note: This review contains spoilers.


I am not quite sure where to start with this review.  On the one hand, The Last House on the Left resembles the lowest kind of shock-ploitation movie…and if that’s not a word, it should be.  Rock-bottom production values, bad edits, hammy acting, gratuitous nudity, incongruous music on the soundtrack, and some of the most repulsive violent acts I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching on a movie screen. (Or TV screen, whatever.)

On the other hand, the sickest scenes are followed by an extremely gratifying second act where the chief perpetrators in the first act get what’s coming to them in an orgy of carnage that makes Halloween look like The Little Princess.  So, we’ve got a situation where the traumatic scenes at the beginning are necessary if the over-the-top revenge killings at the end achieve the necessary catharsis.  The question becomes: are you, the viewer, willing to sit through the filmic equivalent of eating a bowl of spider eggs in order to get to the chocolate cheesecake for dessert?

The story is as bare bones as it gets, except for the twist ending (and if you’ve ever seen Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, none of this would have come as a surprise anyway).  Two teenage girls, Mari and Phyllis, head to the city for a rock concert where a band called “Bloodlust” will be performing.  Subtle.  They try to score some weed from a skeevy character in a doorway, and before you can say “cautionary tale”, they’re in the clutches of four psychopaths who proceed to kidnap them, take them to the woods outside of the city, and force the girls to…but I find myself reluctant to even type out what happens to the girls.  Maybe I should leave that stuff out, if for no other reason than to preserve the surprises for any reader who still feels adventurous enough to watch this movie cold, as I did.  Suffice it to say the violent acts that follow are as distasteful as they can get.  If you know anyone who gets turned on or excited by these scenes, delete them from your contacts.

What makes these scenes even more outrageous is the background score used for some of the scenes.  In one shot, the bound and gagged victims are being slowly carried out the window of the apartment where the psychos were being holed up.  The apartment is 2 stories up, so they have to be carried down the fire escape, a delicate process.  And in the background, the score provides us with music that, instead of making the scene harrowing, makes it sound instead like a comedy beat from a cheesy TV comedy.  This jarring musical device is used again when the villains are driving the car out to the woods, with the girls tied up in the trunk, and again during a rape scene, although the music is far less giddy than before…more like a blues tune.

I’m shaking my head even now, thinking about it.  What was Craven thinking?  In interviews on the Blu Ray, Craven talks about how he had been disillusioned by how Westerns and war movies had glamorized violence to the point that it looked “cool” when good guys killed bad guys.  So, he set out to make a movie that showed violence, real and true, and showed the real effects of that kind of violence, without cutting away, without fancy camera tricks, and without anyone feeling good about it afterward.  He wanted to show violence as an ugly act.

Well, he succeeded.  The violence in The Last House on the Left is ugly, depressing, and deplorable.  It’s been said that it’s impossible to make a truly anti-war film because war, by its nature, is exciting.  Well, this may be the first truly anti-violence film, despite the amount of gut-churning violence it contains.  There is nothing exciting about any of it, not even at the end (which I’m getting to, I promise).

But I have to ask myself: while the goal is worthy, was this really the way to go about it?  At one point, the psychos’ leader, Krug, tells one of the girls, Phyllis, to pee her pants, or he’ll cut her friend, Mari.  Phyllis complies, in one of the most downright miserable scenes I’ve ever seen.  They’re forced to disrobe and make out with each other.  In another scene, one of the girls is stabbed so many times she’s disemboweled.

In another one of those Blu Ray interviews, David Hess, the actor who played Krug, nonchalantly mentions how, during a scene where he rapes Mari, the actress (Sandra Peabody) suddenly got this look in her eyes, like she had really gone somewhere else mentally, and he says, “At that point, I knew that if I’d really wanted to, I could have f****d her, and she wouldn’t have done anything.”  What???  So, yeah, the movie up to this point is ugly, unpleasant, repulsive, pick an adjective.  I found myself wondering how Craven found a career after this movie.

But then, a saving grace, plot-wise.  The killers’ car is dead, so they seek help/refuge from the people who live in a nearby house…and wouldn’t you know it, this is where Mari lived with her parents.  After some uneasy conversation, the parents offer them room and board for the night.  At some point, the mother discovers a clue that leads to the inescapable conclusion that these people have murdered her daughter.  She informs her husband, and in the dark of night, he carefully locks all the doors, removes the window handles, and lays out some rudimentary traps that look like nothing so much as the prototypes for Home Alone: whipped cream on the floor, hard-to-see wires in doorways to trip you up, even an ingenious way to electrocute someone that, if it doesn’t actually work in real life, it really should.

The bloodbath that follows is chaotic and messy, much like it might be in real life if an unassuming doctor tried to kill three people.  (Don’t worry, I didn’t lose count…the fourth psychopath has been seduced by Mari’s mother and led out to the neighboring woods where she gets her own revenge, Lorena Bobbitt style.)  To Craven’s credit, his credo for this film remains intact: while the violent acts inflicted on the bad guys do provide a catharsis, they are hardly glamorous or exciting.

(I haven’t even mentioned the two bumbling cops who provide an insanely inadequate level of comic relief…and of them is Martin Kove, who would later achieve fame as the sensei of Cobra Kai in The Karate Kid.)

So, the question remains: are you willing to sit through this series of depraved acts of (pretend) violence that have been designed to remind you that real violence is not cool?  See, I already knew that.  But then, I’m in my fifties.  The Last House on the Left seems geared towards younger mindsets than mine who, at the time (1972), had not yet seen The Silence of the Lambs or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a movie that covers this same ground with equal or even greater impact, but without spending quite so much time depicting the violence it’s eschewing.  Craven’s philosophy and motives are sound.  I am just not a fan of this movie’s method.

P.S.  The story of this film’s surprise success is no doubt well-known, as is the fact this was a fledgling director’s first film.  I assure you, I’m well aware of the backstory, but to delve into that particular rabbit hole would result in a 3,000-word essay, which I have neither the time nor the inclination to write.  I’ve decided to focus on the immediate effect this movie had on me personally.