Category: Thriller

THE GRIFTERS (1990)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Stephen Frears
CAST: Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle, Charles Napier, J.T. Walsh
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 91% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A small-time con man has torn loyalties between his new girlfriend and his estranged mother, a high stakes grifter working for the mob.


Imagine your favorite film noir from the 1940s and ‘50s.  The Big Heat, say, or Double Indemnity.  Now imagine someone remade it, set it in the modern world, retained most, if not all, of the hard-boiled dialogue and characters, threw in some gratuitous nudity, and added some Freudian subtext that would have made Oedipus blush.  Oh, and imagine David Mamet directed it.  Voila…you’ve got 1990’s The Grifters, directed by Stephen Frears and co-produced by none other than Martin Scorsese.  It tends to move just a tad slow at times, but all that simmering pays off in the movie’s phenomenal final reel.  I am going to have to tread carefully indeed to avoid spoiling some of the movie’s best surprises.  Here goes:

As the movie opens, we are introduced to three very different characters, at least on the surface.  Lilly (Anjelica Huston) works for the mob by visiting horse racing tracks across the country and laying pricey bets on long shots to bring the odds down just in case they pay off.  She also skims just enough off the top to stay under the radar.  Roy (John Cusack) is a young man pulling small-time cons of his own, like the one where he flashes a $20 bill at a bartender, then pays with a $10 bill instead, getting $20 worth of change at half the price.  And Myra Langtry (Annette Bening in her breakout role) is first glimpsed attempting a lame con at a jewelry shop that ends with her offering her body to the jeweler instead.  (I like the fact that nearly everyone calls her “Mrs. Langtry” even though no one seems to have laid eyes on her husband.)

Myra is Roy’s vivacious new girlfriend.  Lilly is Roy’s estranged mother; she had him when she was fourteen years old (yikes) and he left home at 17, as he puts it, “with nothing but stuff I bought and paid for myself.”  Roy values his independence above all else, maybe even more than the money he’s “earned” and stashed away behind the ugly clown paintings in his living room.  So, when Lilly unexpectedly drops by his apartment in Los Angeles (which she always pronounces “Los Ann-guh-leez”) on her way to the track at La Jolla, he lies about his livelihood.  The last thing he wants is a concerned grifter mother trying to partner up with him.  He learned that from a mentor years ago, seen in a flashback: “You take a partner, you put an apple on your head and hand the other guy a shotgun.”

Due to an injury sustained from a bartender who caught him in a grift, Roy winds up in the hospital, where Lilly meets Myra for the first time.  They are not impressed with each other; their introductory conversation is brief, but it plays like Bette Davis clashing with Joan Crawford.  We get a little more information about Myra’s situation when we see her go home to her apartment where she is met by her landlord, Joe, who demands payment on her outstanding bill.  Her response is to bat her eyes and launch into a patter of what sounds like a radio or TV commercial.  “You, too, could learn to dance!  All you need is a magic step!”  After some more back and forth, she lies down naked on her bed and offers Joe a choice: “Only one choice to a customer, the lady or the loot.  What’s it gonna be?”

What makes a scene like that sparkle, along with virtually every scene in the film, is the fierce individuality displayed by the characters.  They are each wholly original, not simply placeholders for foregone dialogue or plot developments.  In classic film noir, the lead character is usually a smart guy (or gal) who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else but gets caught off guard by his own desires.  In The Grifters, all the main characters are smart…and they stay that way the whole movie.  There is not one single plot development that evolves because anyone makes a dumb decision.  You can see that they all have a clear view of all the angles, and no one is going to make a stupid choice for the sake of the script.  I can’t tell you how rare that is.  The plot and the story unwind and are wound up like a precision watch.  By the time the credits roll, you can see exactly why each character made the decisions they did, leading them to the shocking finale in the last reel.

I really can’t say more about the plot without simply retelling scenes or giving away spoilers.  Throughout the film, Huston, Cusack, and Bening deliver performances that would be right at home in a Mamet film.  They’re allowed to show more emotion than can usually be found in Mamet (I’m thinking particularly of House of Games), but their pared-down, hard-boiled dialogue cuts to the heart of the matter without being flowery.  There’s a scene involving Lilly’s boss, Bobo, played by Pat Hingle with a flat-eyed menace that would make Sonny Corleone run for cover.  His deadpan dialogue with Lilly about oranges is one of the tensest gangland conversations I’ve ever seen, and he does it without ever raising his voice.  Brilliantly written.

If this review has been vague, it’s because I am trying to preserve the unexpected twists and turns about who’s who, and who’s hiding what, and why.  If you find yourself wondering why things are moving kind of slow in the first 30-45 minutes, just be patient and let your ears bask in the hum of the crisp dialogue; observe how each character behaves according to their character, not according to a script; and marvel how a movie set in modern day can still have dizzy dames and classy broads and world-weary heroes and not feel like a relic from the 1940s, but instead feels as fresh as a movie that was released yesterday.  The Grifters is nearly-buried treasure that deserves to be rediscovered.

THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (United Kingdom, 1961)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: J. Lee Thompson
CAST: Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Irene Papas, Richard Harris
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 92% Fresh

PLOT: A team of Allied saboteurs is assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held Greek island and destroy two enormous long-range field guns preventing the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.


The Guns of Navarone is a “message” picture cleverly disguised as a World War II action-adventure/thriller.  No surprise there since the screenwriter was Carl Foreman, who also co-wrote 1957’s The Bridge on the River Kwai, another stirring wartime adventure with a strong anti-war message buried inside.  I found it interesting that, in the multiple behind-the-scenes documentaries on the Blu-ray, not one of them mentioned the one movie which I feel most resembles The Guns of Navarone: 1967’s The Dirty Dozen.  In both films, teams of men mount insurmountable odds to accomplish an insanely difficult mission, incurring casualties while ultimately succeeding.  In both films, there is a buried, or not-so-buried, subtext about the futility of the mission and/or war in general, while still gluing audiences to their seats.  However, given the timeframe of the release of The Guns of Navarone in the early 1960s, I find it to be the more surprising of the two, despite the foregone conclusion of the movie.

The movie’s narrated prologue tells us everything we need to know.  (Forget for a moment that there is not, and never was, a Greek island called Navarone.)  In 1943, two thousand British soldiers marooned on the island of Kheros must be evacuated before Germany convinces Turkey to join the Axis.  But the only sea lane to Kheros is defended by two massive German guns built into the sheer cliffs of the island of Navarone.  The guns must be knocked out of commission by a team of Allied saboteurs before any rescue attempts can be made.  This team will be led by Captain Mallory (Gregory Peck), Corporal Miller (David Niven), Colonel Stavros (Anthony Quinn), and Major Franklin (Anthony Quayle).  Along with the rest of the team, they must sneak on to Navarone, scale a steep cliff at night, and sneak across the island to the guns, hooking up with Greek resistance fighters along the way.  These details are laid out with admirable brevity, during which we are given just enough information about each of the three primary characters to understand their actions once the mission is underway.

The Guns of Navarone may be constructed almost entirely out of war movie cliches regarding desperate men behind enemy lines on a secret mission, staying undercover, close calls, and unexpected setbacks.  However, I enjoyed how much Navarone sort of “leans into” the material.  It’s almost as if the filmmakers said, “Okay, so this is a cliché, right?  We might as well embrace it and do it up right.”  For example, we find out that one of the squad commanders has a nickname: “Lucky.”  In the history of movies, any character in a war picture named “Lucky” has been anything but.  You know this, I know this.  Even so, as events transpired, I found myself thinking less and less about the most cliched material and just admiring how it was executed.  It’s a tribute to the director, J. Lee Thompson, that he found a way to present everything in such an uncomplicated fashion that its very directness pushes aside our suspension of disbelief.

That’s not to say there aren’t a couple of surprises.  Capt. Mallory devises an ingenious method of dealing with a man so injured he may have to be left behind.  A clandestine trip to a local doctor turns into something quite different, offering Anthony Quinn the opportunity to perform some amazing off-the-cuff histrionics that would make Nicolas Cage envious.  The Greek resistance fighters turn out to be two women who offer much more to the story than mere eye candy or comforting shoulders.  (One of them, played by the great Irene Papas, may even be the strongest member of the squad…discuss.)  David Niven’s character, Corporal Miller, is given two remarkable speeches that would have stopped a lesser film in its tracks, considering their anti-war and possibly even anarchic sentiments, including this exchange:

Mallory: And if Turkey comes into the war on the wrong side?
Miller: So what!  Let the whole bloody world come in and blow itself to pieces.  That’s what it deserves.
Mallory: And what about the 2,000 men on Kheros!
Miller: I don’t know the men on Kheros, but I do know the men on Navarone!

Was that kind of dialogue or sentiment even possible in a war movie made in the ‘50s?  (Aside from The Bridge on the River Kwai, of course.)  A war movie made in 1961, just fifteen years after The Greatest Generation rallied to defeat the worst dictator in history, and one of the main characters seems to be advocating desertion in order to survive the night?  Wow.

In my eagerness to describe how, I guess, subversive The Guns of Navarone is, I have yet to mention the action.  It’s top-notch.  Find it in your heart to forget how some of the effects are clearly matte paintings and models and miniatures and remember that this was top-of-the-line production values in 1961.  In fact, Navarone won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects that year.  There’s an impressive shipwreck sequence, attacks from dive-bombing airplanes, massive formations of tanks and troops (provided by the Greek monarchy), and the titular guns themselves, full-size props that dwarfed the actors and belched real fire when activated.  No expense was spared to provide audiences with true spectacle.

Is The Guns of Navarone perfect?  I mean, I personally could have done without the sequence where one of the soldiers sings along at a local wedding.  The story itself is ageless, but the film doesn’t quite feel timeless, despite its anachronistic tendency towards liberalism in the middle of a war zone.  There are one or two story decisions that I found questionable.  (One character’s death looked as if he was basically committing suicide, and I found no reason for it story-wise.)  But there’s no denying it’s a thumping good yarn.  And come on, who doesn’t enjoy watching Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn tear up the screen for two-and-a-half hours?

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold
CAST: Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, William Schallert
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 83% Certified Fresh

PLOT: After being exposed to an ominous mist, Scott Carey starts to shrink in size, baffling medical science and subjecting him to unanticipated dangers.


I appreciate the seemingly endless string of 1950s sci-fi/monster movies in the same way I appreciate the short films of Georges Méliès: I acknowledge their place in movie history and their influence on the films of today, but I have no overwhelming desire to hunt them down and watch them.  If that makes me a dilettante, so be it.  I remember watching some of those ‘50s films as a boy on Saturday afternoons, although the titles elude me.  (One of them was in 3-D, requiring a trip to the local 7-11 to get a pair of those funky cardboard glasses.)  As young as I was, I could already see that these were not exactly Hollywood’s best films.  The plots were creaky and repetitive, the special effects were barely passable, the scripts were hammy and the acting even more so.  The ideas behind the stories were more compelling than the movies themselves.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I sat down to watch 1957’s The Incredible Shrinking Man, directed by Jack Arnold, the man behind a few of the most famous entries in the sci-fi/horror craze at that time: It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, and Tarantula.  Even though Shrinking Man appears on the National Film Registry as well as the invaluable list of 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I was prepared to be mildly bored with cheesy effects and overwrought acting.  Instead, I was genuinely thrilled by the adventures of Scott Carey, an everyman whose body inexplicably starts to shrink and shrink, until one day a housecat poses a mortal threat and a household spider – well, a tarantula – becomes as symbolic as anything from Hemingway.

A plot summary seems mildly superfluous: while boating one day with his wife, Scott Carey unwisely remains topside as a mysterious cloud of mist passes over their boat, leaving his body coated with somehow ominous glitter.  Six months later, he starts to notice his clothes aren’t fitting as they should.  His wife, Louise, barely has to stand on her tiptoes anymore to kiss him.  Doctors are baffled, but promise to do whatever they can, spouting pseudo-scientific nonsense about phospholipids and a “deadly chemical reversal of the growth process.”  There is some unintentionally (?) suggestive dialogue as Scott expresses his concerns to Louise: “I’m getting smaller, Lou.  Every day.”  And: “You love Scott Carey.  He has a size and a shape and a way of thinking.  All that’s changing now.”  Not exactly Michael Crichton, but I rolled with it.

One of the things that sells the movie and the story is the ingenious production design that kicks in when Scott reaches about 36 inches in height.  As he walks around his living room, everything has become larger than life.  When he sits in an easy chair, his head doesn’t even reach the top of the back.  A pencil is larger than a baseball bat.  He despondently visits a diner, where a cup of coffee is as big around as a beer barrel.  This aspect of the film seemed reminiscent of, say, a Disney movie.  It seems obvious at first, but it’s done so well that I was drawn into the illusion completely.  Some clever trick photography manages to put the shrunken Scott in the same frame as the full-size Louise many times.  Even my experienced eyes couldn’t see the “splice” without a lot of searching.

Scott eventually shrinks to just a few inches tall and must resort to living inside a literal dollhouse, another triumph of production design.  This sets up the first major set piece of the movie as their housecat sees the tiny Scott as a tiny morsel and attacks the dollhouse.  Scott winds up in the cellar, Louise comes home and assumes the cat has eaten her beloved husband, and Scott, unable to climb the now-inaccessible staircase, must navigate the menacing wasteland of a dimly lit cellar in search of food and water.

This central portion of the film is what sets it apart from most other similar films of its era.  The screenplay was written by Richard Matheson, based on his book.  Matheson also wrote I Am Legend, and in both stories, there are long passages where a solitary character is alone with his thoughts and must solve life-or-death problems with no one to talk to.  The silence of Shrinking Man during Scott’s adventure in the cellar is striking.  The film started with narration, and I expected it to last throughout the cellar sequences, but the filmmakers wisely decided to keep it minimal and focus instead on Scott’s actions, allowing the audience to think along with him instead of telegraphing what he was thinking.  I was reminded of Cast Away (2000), although poor Scott never gets a Wilson.  Instead, he’s stuck with the resident tarantula that becomes his nemesis.

I should mention the subtext of the story, even though it’s not something that occurred to me while watching.  I’m told in various documentaries that Matheson wrote his novel The Shrinking Man in 1956 during a bout of depression and insecurity as a new father.  Scott’s shrinking reflected Matheson’s own sense of insignificance under the responsibilities of a father and husband in an age of accelerating technology and the fears of the Cold War.  This is something that might have been far more obvious to audiences of the time than it is to a member of Generation X, but in hindsight, it’s an intriguing added level to a story that is compelling enough on its own.  If I wanted to, I could connect this story with Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park with its ravenous dinosaurs paired with a warning to the scientific community about the dangers of unchecked progress.  Pretty neat.

As fascinating and, at times, terrifying as the cellar sequences are, what really sets Shrinking Man apart from its contemporaries is the ending.  In virtually every other ‘50s monster film, the story ends on some kind of positive resolution where the threat is removed due to some new scientific discovery or an unexpected ally (the germs in The War of the Worlds come to mind) or, like Godzilla, it just disappears into the sunset.  This movie sidesteps that cliché by presenting the audience with an existential statement about the vastness of the universe on both a cosmic and an infinitesimal scale.  I know that sounds dry as hell, and the final monologue flirts with hokeyness, but listen to it carefully, and the ideas in it are grand and mystifying.  It mentions “God” here and there, but if you think of God, not as THE God, but as the unknowable engine of fate and/or the cosmos, the sentiments expressed have thought-provoking implications.  Scott’s last words in the film may sound simplistic, but they’re loaded with meaning, and can be applied to his own situation or to anyone struggling with the meaning of their own existence.  Pretty heady stuff for a sci-fi/special effects genre movie.

Where other films of its kind attempt and fail to ascribe grand themes to their kitschy stories and rubber-suited big-bads, The Incredible Shrinking Man actually made me think.  That’s an accomplishment.

THE VANISHING (Netherlands, 1988)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: George Sluizer
CAST: Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter Steege
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 96% Fresh

PLOT: A young couple, Rex and Saskia, stop at a service station during a road trip.  Saskia vanishes without a trace, prompting a years-long search by Rex…while an unassuming family man monitors his progress.


[WARNING: This review contains unavoidable spoilers.  If you have any plans to see this movie, trust me…stop reading now.]

I went into The Vanishing absolutely cold.  I knew nothing about it aside from the name of the director, the bare outlines of the plot (a young woman vanishes while on vacation), and the fact it was a critically acclaimed foreign film, remade in America with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland, which I never saw because it was, quote, “laughable, stupid and crude” (Roger Ebert).

With absolutely no gore, no unnecessary side plots, and no clichéd final chase between the killer and the cops where the outcome is a foregone conclusion, director George Sluizer has crafted one of the most compelling, creepiest abduction films I’ve ever seen.  By not showing the actual abduction when it happens, by focusing on the boyfriend’s frantic attempts to track her down immediately afterwards, and by abruptly shifting gears twice in the first hour, the viewer is kept constantly off balance (in a good way).  If she was abducted, how did the kidnapper accomplish his task in broad daylight?  WAS it even an abduction?  We get a good look at the person who most likely committed the crime, but his process looks almost comic…how did he pull it off?

We first meet Rex and Saskia as they’re driving to France to do some cycling.  After Saskia relates a recurring nightmare to Rex (she dreams of being trapped inside a golden egg floating through space), there is an early crisis when their car runs out of gas in the middle of a long tunnel.  We get an early, incisive look at their relationship when Rex elects to walk back for gas, while Saskia stays behind frantically looking for a flashlight she insists they will need.  Later, at a crowded service station, they kiss and make up.

This scene at the service station looks entirely mundane at first, but it is interrupted by a sequence in which we are shown the man who pretty clearly is about to commit a kidnapping.  When we cut back to Rex and Saskia, their interactions become charged with tension.  They talk and tease and kiss, while we are suddenly hyper-aware of their surroundings.  Director Sluizer fills the background with extras, and we start scrutinizing them to see if any of them might be the kidnapper.  Or perhaps there will be a clue later, a Hitchcockian callback which relies on our recall of the crowd scenes.  Rex takes a random Polaroid as a blue semi rolls past the lens, obscuring the front of the store.  Sluizer’s camera lingers on the semi, and we immediately wonder if there is any significance.  (There both is and isn’t.)

The creepy effect of these scenes cannot be overstated.  I can easily imagine some people watching this movie and immediately changing their travel habits.  Never go into a crowded store alone.  Carry mace.  If you must separate, stay in touch with your cellphone until you meet up again.  Stanley Kubrick knew what he was talking about when he told Sluizer that The Vanishing was the most terrifying movie he’d ever seen.

After Saskia’s disappearance, there are the nominal scenes of Rex searching the store and grounds for her, asking if anyone has seen her, giving her description, and so on.  Interestingly, we never get a scene of Rex being interviewed by the police as the day drags on.  Looking back on it now, I get the feeling that Sluizer perhaps thought those scenes would be way too familiar for audiences who have sat through any number of police procedurals in the movies and on TV.  Better to stay with the matter at hand and keep the story moving.

It’s at this point that the movie makes its first abrupt shift in tone and focus.  With no warning, we suddenly spend a good 20-30 minutes, not with Rex’s search, but with the apparently happy family life of the man we got a good look at earlier in the film, the man who appeared to be prepping for a crime.  These scenes are even creepier than the earlier scenes at the service station because we are pretty sure this is the kidnapper, but his home life seems stable: a wife, two daughters, a well-paying job as a chemistry teacher, and the financial wherewithal to buy a large farmhouse in the country…where we discover, in an INTENSELY creepy moment, that no neighbors will hear any screaming.

The decision to focus on this man was jarring and disturbing to me, but in that good way achieved only by the best crime thrillers.  We get more details about his life and his “preparations” that I won’t spoil here.  The film almost seems to have forgotten all about Rex and Saskia; this man is now the primary character.  (In fact, this actor gets top billing in the credits).  He has the kind of forgettable face and unimposing persona that would fly under anyone’s radar.  By showing us the fact that he has two sides to his personality, we come to the uneasy realization that evil could easily lurk behind the cheerful facades of just about anyone we meet.  This concept is far more terrifying to me than a slasher wearing a mask.

But The Vanishing has two more tricks up its sleeve.  It takes yet another dramatic shift when we abruptly jump forward three years.  Saskia is still missing.  Rex has a new girlfriend, but he still posts flyers asking for any information on Saskia.  He makes appearances on local news programs, pleading for the perpetrator to step forward, promising not to press charges; he just has to know whether Saskia is alive or dead.  He craves closure more than anything else.  It has consumed him.  And…he has received several anonymous postcards from the kidnapper asking to meet in a public place, but whenever Rex arrives, the kidnapper has never shown himself.

This creeped me out even more than I had already been.  But the screws get tighter still.  At one point, the kidnapper offers Rex a choice: turn me in, in which case you’ll never find out what happened to Saskia, or I show you what happened to her…by going through the same ordeal she did.

This has all SORTS of psychological implications that I don’t feel fully qualified to sort out.  I have to wonder about those families and friends who have suffered through the disappearance of a loved one.  (I looked up the statistics on missing persons on a whim…they are horribly depressing.)  I can only imagine what those people would do to finally get closure on what happened.  Would they accept this kidnapper’s offer?  Even if it means they might possibly die?  What price would they be willing to pay to finally get an answer after years of searching?

I hope I never have to answer that question.  Rex goes back and forth in agony before finally making his choice.  His decision leads to an ending that was probably inevitable, but which still took me by surprise.

In an interview with the actress who played Saskia (Johanna ter Steege), she states that when the movie was finally released, she was deeply disturbed.  She went to George Sluizer and asked him, “What is the point of this movie?  What do you achieve by telling this kind of disturbing story?  What are you trying to tell the audience?”  If I had to answer that question, I would say that the first motive was to make an entertaining crime thriller, which it is.  But perhaps there’s also a deeper statement about the banality of evil.  One does not have to wear a black hat and twirl his mustache to be the bad guy.  Sometimes you just have to blend into the background.  The film opens and closes with shots that include a praying mantis, a creature that relies on stealth and speed to capture its prey.  The kidnapper in The Vanishing has learned that lesson in spades.

PATRIOT GAMES

By Marc S. Sanders

You may remember Patriot Games as a tense thriller featuring the favorite hero Jack Ryan doing the wherewithal action that is demanding for the adaptation of Tom Clancy’s best-selling novel.  Harrison Ford (taking over the role from Alec Baldwin) plays the guy who will thwart an assassination attempt on the Royal Family or punch out a terrorist thug invading his home or on a speed boat during a dark and stormy night.  Only a small bit of the action sequences are flawed, but that doesn’t take away from what makes the picture truly special.  In the follow up to The Hunt For Red October, Jack Ryan goes back to the CIA to investigate who wants revenge against him and who was responsible for that assassination attempt.  What the picture serves as the covert halls of the Central Intelligence Agency is what is especially convincing and most fascinating.

On the surface, the Irish Republican Army appears to be the scapegoat for attempting to murder members of the Royal Family as they are pulling out of the front gates of Buckingham Palace.  Jack Ryan is in London vacationing with his wife Cathy (Anne Archer) and daughter Sally (Thora Birch) when he comes upon the incident just in time to foil the crime.  In the process, Ryan takes a bullet to the shoulder and kills the younger brother of the most dangerous squad member, Sean Miller (Sean Bean).  A quick trial puts Miller behind bars and Jack is recognized as a hero.

However, Sean Miller escapes with his surviving comrades and vows revenge on Jack and his family.  An attempt is made on the Ryans’ lives and Jack insists on getting back into the CIA to locate Miller and his team.

The revenge plot is the main thread and its pretty ho hum.  We’ve seen all that many times before.  However, what branches off are the conflicts within Irish politics and how Jack Ryan gradually uncovers who and where this small faction of terrorists may be.  Cold War commentary is delivered by an under the radar performance from one of my favorite character actors, Richard Harris.  He attempts to deny responsibility of these attacks and offer an olive branch to Ryan.  Ford and Harris have three good scenes together, two of which are minimal on dialogue but effective in sending their messages to one another. 

As well, Harrison Ford occupies another great heroic role.  I agree with a majority who believe he was too old to play the novice Jack Ryan described in Clancy’s early novels.  Many insist casting Baldwin was perfect.  It was. Yet, I am able to look past that as the character does not have the rookie appearance or regard in this picture.  With Harrison Ford, Jack Ryan is now at a point where he looks seasoned and experienced like the character eventually becomes in the book series.

Director Phillip Noyce is good at using the mysterious and quiet orchestral accompaniments of James Horner to follow Jack as he studies photographs or reflects on the day of the assassination attempt in order to piece together random clues.  In other films, this might get boring and tedious.  However, the director captures good closeups of Harrison Ford and quick flashbacks are edited to help identify what were important blink and miss it moments necessary to assemble the puzzle.  A simple visit to the restroom for Jack Ryan and a glance at a woman’s ponytail lead to a solid conclusion.

Sean Bean has the physical and quiet intensity to his role.  He’s the muscle of the terrorist group, not the leader (played by Patrick Bergen).  Bean serves the revenge element and his physique and weapon handling work well as a nice threat to the hero of the picture.

As the story progresses, the audience follows along with Ryan.  Satellite photographs are studied and zoomed in seeking some semblance of an image in a blur.  Sometimes Jack Ryan is moving in the right direction but in other times he’s unsure.  Even though we always know how the bad guys are doing and where they are, we empathize because Harrison Ford’s character does not.  Still, it’s a thrill to witness him eventually make his discoveries.

A nice approach occurs when the CIA sends in troops to what they believe is an enemy base camp.  We watch Jack Ryan and all of the government officials stare with intensity on a big screen as little black pixels drop down and move at a running pace from an overhead satellite shot.  We don’t have to endure one more machine gun battle.  This kind of intensity is much more interesting where lives are taken as a means of protection, but still a principled man like Jack Ryan does not feel good about what has to be done.

Patriot Games works well with its plays on espionage, spy activity, traitors, and government relations between America, Great Britain and Ireland.  The select action scenes are done well and hold their suspense for quite long.  However, the final sequence is challenging to sit through. 

As the enemy prepares a covert attack on the Ryans’ Virginia home where the Royal Family are guests, there is much running around upstairs and down, in the basement, and outside the roof and so on.  It’s pouring rain with the standard thunder and lightning in the middle of the night as well.  Once the villains and the hero make their way to some getaway boats, the film unravels.  The picture shakes like crazy against the waves and rain.  There’s little light on any of the shots as well and the sound goes loud due to the boat engines and the storm setting.  All of these elements make it challenging to get absorbed in the movie’s climactic ending. 

Hollywood pictures fall back on this approach often in films like Ang Lee’s Hulk and the first installment of The Hunger Games.  It’s dark and wet and shaky and rainy. So, it is hard to decipher who is hitting who and who is shooting at who and who is driving which boat and where are they now.  It’s a shame really because Patriot Games is a taut thriller that holds your attention for nearly two hours, but then you give up in the final few minutes to simply rely on your instincts for how the story is going to wrap itself up.

Jack Ryan’s second adventure is worth watching but oddly enough, maybe wait for your restroom break until the last ten minutes of the picture.

GET CARTER (United Kingdom, 1971)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Mike Hodges
CAST: Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland, John Osborne
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 87% Fresh

PLOT: When his brother dies under mysterious circumstances, London gangster Jack Carter travels to Newcastle to investigate.


While watching 1971’s Get Carter (Caine, not Stallone), I was reminded of so many other later films that I began to wonder what gangster/crime films weren’t influenced by Get Carter.  Throughout the picture, I could see hints and whispers of Bugsy, Beverly Hills Cop, Carlito’s Way, and the John Wick franchise, among others.  I probably missed some.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe those films weren’t paying homage to the best British film ever made (according to a 2004 poll), at least not consciously.  But its DNA is there for anyone who knows where to look.

(To be sure, Get Carter was itself influenced by earlier authors and films.  In very broad strokes, the plot of Get Carter resembles The Big Sleep.  In both films, a hard, cynical man tries to get to the bottom of a mystery that no one else is particularly interested in solving.  They both even involve pornography, though to be sure that was more implied in the older film, while in Get Carter we are left in no doubt.)

The tone of Get Carter matches its protagonist: cold, flat, uninflected, violent only when it has to be.  Michael Caine’s performance is a masterpiece of understated, simmering viciousness.  He only gets really angry a few times in the film, and he doesn’t smile, not genuinely, until the very end.  I read on IMDb that Caine’s intention was to show a more realistic, less sensational kind of violence than had been seen in earlier gangster films, “never using thirty punches when one would do.”

This is also an echo of a French film, Le samouraï, in which a professional killer shows absolutely no expressions the entire film, even with a gun in his face.  Carter is equally cool under pressure, as in the scene when he is surprised in the act of “lovemaking” (love has nothing to do with it) by two gangsters.  He registers surprise and little else, pulling a double-barreled shotgun from under the bed and, while stark naked, marching his would-be attackers out of the flat at gunpoint.  In a movie with little to no humor, there is a welcome double-take from the nosey next-door neighbor, not to mention the children’s parade taking place down the street.  (In this scene, there is something very Bond-like about Carter, mixing deadly danger with borderline slapstick.)

1971 was not a year for shrinking violets at the movies.  It saw the release of Dirty Harry, A Clockwork Orange, and The French Connection, among others.  Into this mix comes Get Carter with its casual violence and frequent female nudity, profanity, and so on.  Even so, there were a couple of moments that got a little shock out of me.  One was when a car is disposed of while Carter knows what precious cargo is in the trunk, but the bad guys do not.  Watch Carter’s utter impassiveness; he could have raised a warning, but he doesn’t.  There’s cold, and then there’s cold.  Another shocking moment is when Carter absentmindedly turns on a film projector and watches the amateur porn film displayed on the wall.  Watch his face again as he slowly realizes the identity of one of the actresses in this tawdry film.  A tear rolls down his face.  Because of what we already know about Carter, that tear doesn’t just mean he’s grieving.  He’s so boiling mad that I feared for the life of the woman in the next room.  It’s a great moment because of how rarely we see emotion on his face.

Get Carter is classic noir, just in color and with more adult situations.  Carter may not be a cop, but he has a code, nonetheless.  He absolutely will not stop digging until he solves the question of his brother’s death.  He defies his own bosses in London, ignores many warnings, survives several attempts on his life, but he just can’t help himself.  His obsession trumps everything else, just like Bogey in The Big Sleep or William Hurt in Body Heat.  There are hints of tragedy at every turn, but Carter presses on, whatever the cost, even if he thinks he might not like what he finds.  These are the qualities of any great noir hero, and Carter exemplifies them all.

***SPOILER ALERT AHEAD, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED:***

I feel obligated to mention my reaction, at least briefly, to the film’s ending.  At first, I threw my hands in the air, much as I did at the ending of…well, another very different film from the late ‘60s.  But as I thought back to the events of the film leading to this moment, I had to shrug and say to myself, “Well…it’s not like they didn’t warn him.”  At least it’s motivated by something, and not just random fate.  I can accept it.  It’s not something you would see in a conventional Hollywood film today, that’s for sure.  Look at John Wick.

AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM (2023)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: James Wan
CAST: Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Randall Park, Temuera Morrison, Dolph Lundgren
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 35%

PLOT: When Black Manta seeks revenge on Aquaman for his father’s death, Aquaman forges an uneasy alliance with his imprisoned brother to defend Atlantis and his family.


“They say everybody’s good at something.  Me?  I talk to fish.  …Some people think that makes me a joke.  But I don’t care.”

Those lines, spoken in narration by Aquaman at the beginning of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, admirably sum up just about every comic book fan’s opinion of Aquaman and his dubious powers over the course of his existence.  The genius move on the part of the DC Extended Universe was casting Jason Momoa as the King of Atlantis.  As I wrote in my review of Aquaman (2018): “Hell, I wouldn’t laugh at a guy who looks like that.  ‘You talkin’ to fish?  Ping away, Muscles!’”

So, you’ve got the right guy for the role, no worries there.  The problem now is how to use him.  Based on Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, it would seem they used up all the best ideas in the first movie.  I wouldn’t call Lost Kingdom a rehash of Aquaman, necessarily, but it doesn’t exactly stake out new territory.  (Well, except for when they visit the underwater version of the Star Wars cantina, complete with a live band, seedy characters, and a pirate overlord who looks like Jabba the Hutt with fins for hands.  That was new.  I mean, sort of.)

Putting it another way, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom does not transcend, or even seem to ATTEMPT to transcend, the boundaries of the comic-book-movie genre.  The filmmakers did add some witty banter between Arthur and his imprisoned brother, Orm (Patrick Wilson), that was a nice source of comic relief.  Orm’s almost complete ignorance of life on the surface world leads to some funny scenes involving such basic concepts of what to eat and how to run.  But aside from that, a rundown of the plot seems redundant because you’ve heard and seen it all before.  “Bad guy from first movie shows up, more powerful than before, threatens life on Earth for personal vendetta against good guy.  Good guy learns to get along with semi-bad-guy brother to defeat good guy.”

With that in mind, though, knowing full well that the movie followed the comic-book-movie formula step-by-step…I must truthfully report that I had a good time.  I enjoyed it.  I could intellectualize endlessly about the bankruptcy of the story, the bloated visual effects, the overly-preachy finger-wagging to climate-change deniers (Black Manta’s plan is to raise global temperatures in order to release an army of mutant henchmen from their icy prison in Antarctica; he has a line where he says something like, “I’m only continuing what we’ve been doing for decades.”  Shaaaame on us).  But…again, I must admit, I had fun.

At some point, when it comes to comic book movies, I have to start asking myself: what more do I want from a comic book movie?  If I expected every single comic book film to be as good as Superman or The Dark Knight or The Batman or even the first Shazam!, I would be sorely disappointed.  It’s impossible to have that kind of track record, quality-wise.  To be sure, there have been disappointments (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Venom, Wonder Woman 1984, and many others).  But none of those films were even close to being as much fun as Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.  Others will no doubt disagree.  Understandable.

But I still had fun, and no amount of critical dismantling of the plot will change that.

SALTBURN (2023)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Emerald Fennell
CAST: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 71%

PLOT: A scholarship student at Oxford finds himself drawn into the world of a charming and aristocratic classmate, who invites him to his eccentric family’s sprawling estate for a summer never to be forgotten.


What is Saltburn?

I sit in front of my keyboard and try to figure out a way to write a review of Saltburn that doesn’t spoil its surprises in any way.  I ponder.  I rack my brain.  As of this writing (January 2024), the film has already been released theatrically and in the public eye for almost three weeks.  Any avid filmgoer who hasn’t seen it has heard rumblings about some kind of dark undertones and risqué material in writer-director Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to her astounding debut film Promising Young Woman.  The trailers reveal nothing except a plot that seems almost too similar to another film released over a month ago, The Holdovers.

Having just watched it last night, I can say that Saltburn is a pure thriller, masquerading as a dark comedy about class warfare, heavily influenced by The Talented Mr. Ripley and, say, Howards End, but that’s just plotting.  With this movie, it’s all about style and delivery, both verbally and visually.

First, a plot summary.  Young Oliver Quick (nice Dickensian name), played by Barry Keoghan, is a scholarship freshman at Oxford University in the long-ago year of 2006.  Virtually friendless except for an antisocial math whiz, he notices the strikingly handsome Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi, unknown to me), a very rich…what, junior?  Senior?  Probably a senior.  People of all genders are attracted to him like bees to honey.  Oliver is instantly attracted to him, but that doesn’t stop him from making out with one of Felix’s paramours given the opportunity.  He is nothing if not opportunistic.

After a meet-cute involving a flat bicycle tire, Felix gradually folds Oliver into his flock of hangers-on, much to the dismay of Felix’s cousin, Farleigh (who is brown-skinned…that will be important later), and to Oliver’s math friend, who cryptically tells Oliver, “He’ll get tired of you.”  One thing leads to another, and Felix winds up inviting Oliver to stay at his – there’s no other word for it – palatial manor house, Saltburn.  There, Oliver meets Felix’s aristocratic, idiosyncratic family: Felix’s mother, Elspeth (Rosamund Pike); his father, Sir James (Richard E. Grant); his sister, Venetia (newcomer Alison Oliver); a “friend of the family”, Pamela (Carey Mulligan); and the creepiest butler since that guy in the men’s room with Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Here at Saltburn, and at Oxford, Fennell proves to be a master at creating a certain kind of mood.  There is an air of…something in the offing.  You know how some animals supposedly know when an earthquake or a tornado is coming?  That’s what the movie feels like during its first half.  I kept expecting a gruesome murder to occur, or for Oliver to discover a literal skeleton in a forgotten closet, or an explosion, I dunno, something.  I don’t know how much of that is due to my expectations after Promising Young Woman and how much to the carefully modulated camerawork and editing, but either way, the mood was there, permeating the screen with a sense of foreboding.

Oliver revels in his proximity to Felix, and I remembered with some chagrin my own formative years as a geeky teenager.  Trust me, I recognize hero worship when I see it.  At Saltburn, they sleep in separate rooms with a common bathroom, but there’s no shower, just an old-fashioned bathtub in the middle of the room.  At one point, Oliver hears…noises…coming from the bathroom and takes a peek inside, where he sees Felix lying back in the filled bathtub and – well, I’m given to understand that in Catholic schools, it was called “interfering with yourself.”

And it’s here I must stop with any kind of summarizing.  It’s here where Saltburn abandons its masquerade as a comedy of manners and becomes something else entirely.  It’s still comic, in my opinion, but it becomes less about manners and more about Machiavelli.  Oliver may present a meek façade, but he reveals the ability to do some very quick thinking indeed, especially in a moonlit scene involving Felix’s sister, Venetia, and during a karaoke party when Farleigh suggests a song for Oliver to sing that hits a little too close to home.

I admired how the movie turned my expectations on their head…twice.  There were a couple of times when, I must admit, my conspiratorial thinking led me to a couple of conclusions that turned out to be right in the end, which is something I don’t really like to do.  I don’t like to be that guy who goes to see The Sixth Sense and thinks, “You know, I don’t see how Bruce Willis could have survived that gunshot…”  I want to revel in the mystery, to live in the moment of the film and let its surprises work organically.  When a movie does its job well, I don’t even have to think about it.

What’s cool about THIS movie is that I managed to pick up on little “clues” about what was happening, or about to happen, but as the movie progressed, other things occurred (especially Felix’s little field trip with Oliver), and I found myself thinking, “Nah, never mind.”  And that is pretty ingenious, I think.  To lead the viewer down the garden path, make a left turn, get back to what looks like the main road so you think you know where it’s headed, then to pull a sudden U-turn into something else entirely?  That’s masterful misdirection.  I dunno, I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.  Call me crazy.

I haven’t even really touched on what will no doubt be the most famous elements of this movie.  That would be the scenes involving the bathtub, the cycle of the moon, a surprise midnight visit, a freshly dug grave, and Oliver’s, er, choreographic inclinations.  With the exception of that last one, which occurs too late to mean anything to the plot except as a wonderful ribbon to tie it up with, these scenes were, yes, shocking, but not in a hostile way.  Or even a Hostel way, if you take my meaning.  They were not intended to disgust or horrify the audience.  Or perhaps they ARE meant to horrify, but not in the kind of way that a serious horror movie disgusts people, like The Thing or Hellraiser.  It’s very tongue-in-cheek.  I’d like to believe there was a certain kind of glee in Emerald Fennell’s face when she watched her actors performing those scenes, knowing the material might completely turn some people off to the film without hesitation.  I found them to be yet another example of misdirection.  The off-putting nature of those scenes sort of lulled me into thinking one thing was happening and that the movie would then follow that thread into a more predictable conclusion.  But it didn’t.

I know, I’m being maddeningly vague.  The movie is new enough that I don’t want to risk spoiling anything.  There are supposedly some moths that, once touched by human hands, can never fly again.  Or is that butterflies?  Either way, I don’t want to deprive this movie of flying high in the eyes of a first-time viewer.  It’s refreshing to see a movie that seems to be following all the mile markers towards one thing, when it was really leading you somewhere else.  Saltburn is a treasure.

IN THE LINE OF FIRE

By Marc S. Sanders

While watching Wolfgang Petersen’s In The Line Of Fire for about the umpteenth time, it occurred to me that good, solid action pictures work so well when there is at least one or two characters who suffer from a past trauma.  Recently, I wrote about John Rambo in First Blood where what haunts the character sets the story in motion.  In Petersen’s film, both the villain and the hero attack one another’s personal sufferings to stay ahead of a game that could result in the assassination of the President Of The United States.

Clint Eastwood is aging Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan.  He served on the team the day Kennedy was killed in Dallas.  A deranged lunatic who initially goes by the name of Booth (John Malkovich), a salute to Lincoln’s assassin, forces Frank to play hand after hand through disturbing phone calls he makes to Frank where he discusses his eventual rendezvous with death when he will finally kill the President.  Booth tests Frank mettle though.  Does Frank have the guts to take a bullet for the subject he is supposed to protect? 

In The Line Of Fire is a very effective thriller because of its lead performances from Eastwood and Malkovich – two actors of different ranges with very different personalities.  Eastwood is famous for being the quiet kind of hero in films like Dirty Harry and Unforgiven.  Malkovich is a character actor who hides within his roles, which is especially demanding of the character in this film.  It is hard to find two roles in his career that seem similar. 

Booth is a master of disguise.  Wolfgang Petersen takes more the one opportunity to show the endless possibilities of what Malkovich as Booth could do to alter his appearance.  The morphing of the digital composites-bald, hairy, thin, plump, glasses or no glasses-is a welcome disturbance.  Interestingly, the basic John Malkovich that audiences are familiar with does not even make an appearance until at least a third into the movie.  Prior to that he’s disguised as a hippie or Petersen has him concealed in dark corners where all that you are seeing are his eyes hiding behind a pair of binoculars. 

What holds your attention in a script from Jeff Maguire is that you learn more and more about the man called Booth as the story moves on, all the way to final act.  What would motivate someone to assassinate the most powerful leader of the free world?  The odds of accomplishing the act are enormous against the security and protection devoted to one person. 

You also witness the defeat that Horrigan endures as Booth stays ahead of him and torments him over his past transgressions. At first Frank is forced to recollect his past failures by what Booth brings up in one phone call after another.  Later, Frank gets the upper hand as his investigation uncovers more.  A later scene in the movie brings about a sensational exchange of dialogue between the two actors.  The agent also has to contend with a difficult supervisor (Gary Cole) and a Chief Of Staff (Fred Thompson) who carry no faith in Frank’s efforts and are more concerned with the President’s image versus saving his life. 

Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich are a terrific protagonist and antagonist. There are a few scenes the two actors share together but they arrive later.  Before those moments, much material depends on the phone calls they have.  So, they work well off each other without even being in the same room.  The characters come at one another with the demons they dig up and the responses from Eastwood and Malkovich appear very convincing.  Very effective work with script, direction, and performance.

The supporting cast is terrific too.  There’s a romantic angle that could have been filler, but thanks to a good matchup between Eastwood and Rene Russo, as another Secret Service agent, there are some humorous moments as well as tender scenes for the heroic agent who is approaching a dinosaur period.  Clint Eastwood is great to watch as a piano player in this film.  Watch as he plays As Time Goes By when Russo rejects his advances and wanders off for the elevator.   Shortly after, she succumbs and there’s a hilarious moment that pokes fun at what it takes to be an active agent.

Dylan McDermot is Frank’s younger partner.  He’s quite good, representing the fear that goes with being a man willing to take a bullet for someone else.  An opening scene presents a frightening moment for the character.  On a Clint Eastwood level, it works with the signature charm that most are familiar with, but from McDermott’s perspective it is something else entirely, helping to shape his character for the rest of the film.

The characters in In The Line Of Fire are not tough guys beyond dares.  They are conflicted.  They experience fear and hesitation.  They have pasts that haunt them as well, and the opponents use psychological warfare to weaken their enemy.

Because Maguire’s characters are so fleshed out, the suspense works nicely with Petersen’s direction and a recognizable Ennio Morricone soundtrack.  The ending is great, not just for the action and editing, but the tension is quite palpable as well.

In The Line Of Fire has magnificent performances. You get a clear picture of what is necessary to be in the Secret Service, all the way down from the department’s appearance while jogging next to a Presidential limousine while wearing a suit, to the process of preparations, and what heights Presidential protection strives for to stay ahead of endless threats that come their way.

Wolfgang Petersen’s film is thirty years old, and the technology and procedures within the governmental departments have assuredly been updated since its release, but this picture does not appear dated or out of touch.  This thriller still works.

ONIBABA (Japan, 1964)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Kaneto Shindô
CAST: Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Satô
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 90%

PLOT: In feudal Japan, two women kill samurai and sell their belongings for a living. While one of them is having an affair with their neighbor, the other woman meets a mysterious samurai wearing a bizarre mask.


Squint your eyes, and long stretches of Onibaba look as if they were adapted from comic books.  I’m not talking about the eye-popping colors of Kirby, though.  More like the moody noir of Miller or McFarlane…especially Miller.  Extreme closeups, off-centered faces (to make room for word balloons, of course), sneering lips and bared teeth, gratuitous female nudity, shocking violence, the possibility of supernatural elements getting involved in the story – we’ve got all the makings of a new chapter for the Sin City saga.

But Onibaba misses its chance for true greatness by the disappointing nature of its ending, which I cannot, in good faith, describe in detail here.  The last time I felt this cheated by the ending of a film was when I watched the original Night of Living Dead for the first time.  When the credits for that movie rolled, I wanted to throw popcorn at the TV.  Since I didn’t have popcorn, I cursed out my friends instead.  C’est la vie.

The story of Onibaba begins as we see two women – one older, one younger – living in poverty in medieval Japan.  Some later exposition informs us of an ongoing war far away between two warlords.  Weary soldiers from both sides wander into the tall grassy fields where the women live, and the women promptly kill them, take their clothes and belongings, and sell them to local merchant for bags of millet.  (We never learn the women’s names, by the way.  They are identified only by how they relate to Kichi, a man we never see: one is Kichi’s mother, the other is Kichi’s wife.)  The bodies of the men they kill are disposed of in a large, ominous pit hidden by the tall grass.

I should mention yet another stylistic and visual flourish.  The two women live in a grass hut constructed in a vast field of tall grass at least six, possibly seven feet tall.  There is poetry in many shots when the wind rises and pushes the grass.  In one neat overhead shot, the only way we can see a man pushing his way through the grass is by tracking the hole he makes as he walks.  It’s an indescribably lyrical moment in an otherwise mundane scene.

ANYWAY.  A neighbor arrives, Hachi, with sad news for the two women: Kichi has been killed.  When he asks how the women got by during his absence, they are cagey.  It’s here where we get the first of many masterful sequences where faces and eyes are used to convey emotion more vividly than any prose could.  When Hachi propositions the young woman, now a freshly-minted widow, she sneers.  But as days go by, Hachi wears her down, and they begin an affair, much to the mother-in-law’s disapproval.

Night after night, the young widow wanders off to Hachi’s shack, while the mother-in-law sneaks off and follows her, disapproving but never interrupting their liaisons.  All she offers as a rebuke are stern words and resentful glares.  This cycle repeats itself several times, and despite the visually unique methods of showing us these middle passages, I found myself wondering where this was going.  No doubt people more knowledgeable than I can make conjectures about how this might be a representation of Japanese culture at the time: the old severely disapproving of the young, but powerless to stop the march of progress.  It’s not a far-fetched theory, but if so, it’s an obvious one.  So, what’s the point?

Hope arrives (story-wise) in the form of a tall samurai warrior the mother-in-law encounters in the tall grass one night.  He wears a fearsome demon mask and demands the old woman show him the way to the nearest town.  She asks him to remove the mask.  He refuses, but he assures her that he is very handsome underneath.  Right.

At this point, I was on the edge of my seat.  At last, here we go, some real horror-story stuff.  The mask looks awesomely horrifying, not like the kind of demons we tend to think of, but a weird, bug-eyed, fanged face that still looks vaguely human, which only makes it that much creepier.  When the old woman finally gets her hands on the mask (I won’t say how), she formulates a plan.  The next night, when the younger woman sneaks off to another rendezvous with Hachi, she is confronted by a tall figure with long black hair with the face of a demon…gliding through the grass is if it were floating over the ground.  Floating?  People can’t float.  …what exactly is going on here?

At this point, I was primed for a Twilight Zone kind of twist, revealing the true nature of the samurai warrior, the mask, and the old woman.  (Onibaba translates to “demon woman”, according to the main titles of the movie.)  But what?  I was pleasantly surprised by my eagerness to see what would happen next, even if it were mildly predictable.  The movie had shown great visual flair, so even if the ending was a cliché story-wise, it would look really cool.

But…alas.  The film’s ending teases us with several minutes of truly disturbing stuff psychologically, and then throws it away in a moment of ambiguity, the kind of open-endedness that may inspire discussions on the movie blogs, but which is terribly unsatisfying when it doesn’t work.  And here, unfortunately, it doesn’t work.  It leaves us with more questions than answers, and when “The End” appears, it almost feels like the director and/or screenwriter said, “That’s it, I’m out of story.”

The liner notes of the Criterion Blu Ray for Onibaba inform me that it’s based on an ancient samurai legend, so I guess I can’t totally blame the director/screenwriters.  But I just wish there had been something meatier waiting at the end of what had been a visual treat.  If it had provided a nudge into something deeper or more visceral, I’d have been ready to put Onibaba near the top of my favorite Japanese films.  Visually, it’s stunning with a surprisingly modern feel.  But, oy, that ending.