Tag: Mystery

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (Mexico, 1962)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BRING HER BACK (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO CATCH A THIEF (1955)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975)

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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