Tag: reviews

BLUE COLLAR (1978)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Paul Schrader
CAST: Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto, Ed Begley Jr.
MY RATING: 6/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 96% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Three financially strapped automotive factory workers rob their own labor union, but when they get more than what they bargained for, their friendship and loyalty are tested.


There may come a day when I revisit Blue Collar and revise my current opinion.  It’s not impossible.  I’ll be a different person five or ten years from now.  I may have a different job with different bosses and co-workers, or I may be living in a different neighborhood in a different house.  All sorts of things could change that will affect my perception differently.  Until that happens, though, this is what I think:

Blue Collar, the directorial debut of eminent screenwriter Paul Schrader, author of Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and American Gigolo (1980), is a film with a good story to tell.  Not just good – important.  This is an important story about loyalty, friendship, and duty to your family.  Richard Pryor turns in a great performance, flexing his dramatic muscles as he seldom did, unfortunately.  Schrader’s screenplay, co-written with his brother, Leonard, and using source material from Sydney A. Glass, pulls no punches regarding corruption within the powerful auto workers union.  Character motivations are crystal clear from the opening scene to the final, cynical freeze frame.

But…but…I wish this story were contained in a film that made me care about these characters while the movie itself was playing.  Intellectually, I see the value of the story.  But as a moviegoer, I was less than moved.  Schrader’s direction is competent, but the film moves from beat to beat with the energy of a sloth.

Zeke (Richard Pryor), Jerry (Harvey Keitel), and Smokey (Yaphet Kotto) are three working-class friends on the line at an automotive plant in Detroit.  Their closeness is established in a bar scene that gave me hope for the rest of the film.  It plays almost like an Altman film, with some overlapping dialogue, simple but clear direction, and conversations that give us an instant picture of who these three disparate characters are.

It’s unclear what Smokey’s financial situation is until later in the film, but Zeke has back-taxes to pay because he has declared too many dependents for the last three years, and Jerry has a teenage daughter who is so desperate for expensive braces that she tries making some herself, with exactly the kind of results you’d expect.  Their union, which is supposed to help them, is a joke as far as they’re concerned; they can’t even fix Zeke’s broken locker door.  So, after Zeke makes some observations at the union’s local office, he and his pals hatch a plan to rob the office vault.

What they find there drives the rest of the plot, so I’ll tread lightly from here on out.  But the vault robbery is a good example of where the movie is lacking for me.  The plan is simple and relatively risk-free, but I was hoping for at least SOME suspense during the robbery.  A moment occurs when they’re about to be discovered, so they don their masks…but the masks that Zeke bought aren’t masks.  They are, in no particular order, plastic vampire fangs and a funny hat, a pair of sunglasses covered by an American flag design, and a pair of googly-eye glasses – you know, the ones where the eyeballs are attached to the glasses by long springs?  This crucial moment was ruined by the utter ridiculousness of their “costumes”; it felt like a transplant from some other Richard Pryor comedy about incompetent criminals.

After that, the screenplay feeds us important chunks of information, but there is no dynamic energy to the editing or the direction or something.  It just felt…boring.  Which is a shame because, again, there is a good story here.  The union local blatantly lies about the contents of the vault after the robbery.  An FBI agent tries to get Zeke, Jerry, or Smokey to spill what they know about union corruption, but they are too loyal to turn stool pigeon.  Zeke has to make some hard choices in one of the movie’s better scenes towards the end.  Smokey displays strength when threatened by union thugs, but he pays for it later.  And Jerry just wants to do the right thing without anyone getting hurt.

But there was just zero energy to the narrative.  I never felt carried along by the tide of the story.  And without that forward momentum, every scene felt like it was just marking time before the next.  To the degree that I understood the plight of these blue-collar workers, the movie just didn’t make me care enough to feel anything about it.  I did feel empathy for Zeke, mostly due to Pryor’s powerful, angry performance, but even that empathy was turned on its ear by the time we got to the closing credits.

There is, I guess, something to be said about how the screenplay is constructed so that, at any given point, you could say that any of the three main characters are the true lead of the film.  The story is truly balanced, and I give it credit where it’s due.  I just wish the storytelling was more dynamic.  Like I said, the day may come when my opinion of this movie will change.

Today is not that day.

…tomorrow’s not looking good, either.

THE BOYS IN COMPANY C (1978)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Sidney J. Furie
CAST: Stan Shaw, Andrew Stevens, James Canning, Michael Lembeck, Craig Wasson, Noble Willingham, R. Lee Ermey
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: [no score]

PLOT: In 1967, five young men undergo Marine boot camp training before being shipped out to Vietnam. Once they get there, the experience proves worse than they could have imagined.

[This review contains MILD SPOILERS concerning the film’s finale.]


I remember a short while ago, when I watched the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) for the very first time.  I remember asking myself, “Why did it take me so long to finally watch this movie?  It’s fantastic!”

I’ve just had the same exact experience after watching Sidney J. Furie’s The Boys in Company C, which I think (someone correct me if I’m wrong) is the first attempt by Hollywood to provide a genuinely realistic portrayal of being a combat soldier during the Vietnam War.  There are some obvious parallels to Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Fuller’s The Big Red One (1980), but this one was first out of the gate.  Company C is just as visceral, just as riveting, and just as entertaining to watch as those other films.  I have only seen a handful of Furie’s other films (including Iron Eagle [1986] and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace [1987]), so I can’t make a 100% informed opinion, but in my limited experience, this is far and away his masterpiece.  It goes on the list of my favorite war movies ever made, and I think it’s a real shame that it appears to have been nearly forgotten.

Like so many other war films that came after it, The Boys in Company C begins at boot camp.  More properly, it begins right outside the recruitment center (I think?) in late 1967, as several young men – boys, really – kiss their loved ones goodbye before getting on a bus.  In a weird way, this sequence reminded me of the opening scene in The Breakfast Club (1985) as each student is dropped off for detention by their parents (except for Bender, of course).  We are introduced to the boys who will become the key players: Washington, the angry black man (Stan Shaw); Pike, the country boy (Andrew Stevens); Foster, the aspiring writer (James Canning); Fazio, the Italian American from Brooklyn (Michael Lembeck); and Bisbee, the pacifist who is put on the bus in handcuffs (Craig Wasson).  Stereotypes?  Sure, I guess.  But the screenplay doesn’t limit them to JUST their stereotypes.  Washington, for example, starts out in camp as a guy who is looking out for himself, but after a surprisingly passionate speech from his drill instructor (R. Lee Ermey in his film debut!), he assumes the mantle of leadership and wears it exceedingly well.

We get the by-now standard scenes of the recruits getting their heads shaved, struggling through exhausting training runs, being called names that would’ve made George Carlin blush, and, eventually, graduation, where their reward for making it through boot camp is being assigned to combat duty in the ‘Nam.  Their problems begin even before they disembark from their troop carrier when the Vietnamese port comes under artillery fire.  It all sort of goes downhill from there.

The movie so far is nothing incredibly new, at least not to someone watching in the present day, but I had to keep reminding myself that this was probably the first time American audiences had seen a relatively honest representation of combat that wasn’t filtered through layers of self-censorship and jingoism.  M*A*S*H (1970) did show us the bloody reality of surgery in the field, but it didn’t concern itself too much with actual combat – plus it was set in Korea, not Vietnam.  A minor quibble.

There are a LOT of plot details I won’t relate here – the clueless captain, the “vital” convoy, Washington’s drug trafficking plans – because of the soccer subplot that reveals itself to be the film’s beating heart and real cry of protest.  Much like Kilgore and the California surfer in Apocalypse Now (1979), the squad captain learns that Pike, the country boy, is pretty good with a soccer ball.  There is a squad of elite Vietnamese military men who are also good at soccer.  The captain dreams up a plan: put together a soccer team of American soldiers who will play the Vietnamese men in an exhibition match.  If the American team wins, they will get a reprieve from combat and go on a “goodwill” tour of southeast Asia, including Tokyo and Bangkok.

Sounds good, right?  But complications arise when, at the match, the American general watching the match is approached by his opposite number in the Vietnamese army.  With the Americans leading at the half, the order is passed to the team: lose the match so the Vietnamese can save face in front of their own people.  If they throw the match, they will still get reprieved from combat to go play mare matches against Vietnamese teams…and lose every time.

The Americans can’t believe it.  Pike (and everyone else) wants to get back home, but he is afraid he can’t live with the shame of intentionally throwing a match, no matter what the big picture looks like.  But the orders contain no ambiguity.  Throw the match and go on tour, or win and go back to frontline combat the next day.

This is what the movie has been driving towards the whole time.  The squad has to collectively decide what is more important: winning or surviving.  I hope I don’t come off like an amateur historian here, but to me, that is the same question that could have been asked about the entire Vietnam conflict.  As a country, we had a chance to ask ourselves: is winning this war worth the price we’re paying?  How much more are we willing to spend, in money and lives?  In the film, the squad is asked to balance that equation themselves on a smaller, but no less important, scale.

Is this about honor?  Should they win the match to preserve their own personal integrity, even if it means going back to fighting in the jungle and maybe never making it back home?  Or should they throw the match, increasing their odds of making it home alive and boosting morale for their Vietnamese allies, but leaving them with a stain on their integrity?  Is this kind of thinking the reason the American government participated in possibly the most unpopular war in American history?  Because losing face was worse than losing lives?

These are questions I would not presume to think I could answer.  I know, of course, what I would have done in that situation, but I can only speculate because I have never been a soldier in a time of war.  The Boys in Company C put me right there and allowed me to understand the whys and wherefores of each major character in a way that we’ve seen in every notable war film ever since.  This is an incredibly important artifact in the history of war films, and it deserves to be seen by every movie fan.

[Trivia note: this movie was executive produced by none other than Raymond Chow, the man behind Enter the Dragon (1973) and nearly 200 other Hong Kong films, and virtually the entire movie, including the boot camp sequences, was filmed in the Philippines.]

NOVOCAINE (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTORS: Dan Berk, Robert Olsen
CAST: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 82% Certified Fresh

PLOT: When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, a man incapable of feeling physical pain turns his rare condition into an unexpected advantage in the fight to rescue her.


Just when I thought the John Wick franchise had shown me everything there was to see in terms of modern action films, along comes Novocaine.  If there are philosophical rumblings at the heart of the screenplay, I didn’t see them.  There is a brief scene where a character says probably the deepest line in the film, something along the lines of, “We all have something to hide.  Maybe we’re just looking for someone to show it to.”  Apart from that, though, this movie is a machine designed for one thing: thrill you and make you laugh and cringe all at the same time.  That’s three things, but you get the point.

Because this machine has only one purpose, any criticisms accusing it of not doing something it wasn’t designed for are moot.  You don’t eat a cheeseburger and then complain it didn’t taste like chateaubriand.  I got what the movie’s goals were after 10-15 minutes – or, actually, even after just watching the red-band trailers.  I went in with eyes wide open, and I was not disappointed.  My only real complaint is that those same trailers gave away a little too much of the very best fight scenes in the film, ruining two of the best gags (the deep fryer and the ball-and-chain).  But I forgive the trailer editors because the rest of the movie was so freaking entertaining.

Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid, whose father’s famous smile will haunt his face for the rest of his life) is an assistant bank manager living with a very real genetic disorder called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, or CIP.  He literally cannot feel pain, to the degree that he can’t even chew solid food because he could theoretically chew off bits of his tongue and not realize it.  His obligatory meet-cute with the love interest, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), involves him spilling scalding hot coffee on his hands, but of course he doesn’t feel a thing.  One thing leads to another, and they spend the night together.  Apparently, Nate can’t feel pain, but pleasure is another story.  (I thought that scene might include a homage to Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis’s love scene in Some Like It Hot [1959], but alas.)

Next day, as is revealed in the trailers, three robbers dressed as Santa Claus rob his bank, kill his boss, and take Sherry hostage.  On impulse, he takes off after them in a stolen police car, which of course leads authorities to believe he’s in on the case.  This also leads to the first of several jaw-dropping fight scenes, not because they’re insanely choreographed like a Jackie Chan movie, but because the physical violence shown on screen goes beyond anything I can remember seeing before in a fight scene.  Maybe Oldboy (2003) comes close.

Fair warning: if you are squeamish, this movie is simply not for you.  Just in the first fight scene alone, we see Nate get kicked, punched, seared by a scalding hot frying pan, and burned horrifically, which results in him wearing a bandage (and a disturbingly realistic prosthetic) on his hand for the rest of the movie.  The comedy comes from equal parts watching as Nate gets injured and simply powers through it, and from cringing and cursing and covering your face as those injuries occur.

I won’t give anything else away.  The movie does include an intriguing story development that I did not see coming.  My fellow Cinemaniac, Anthony, also made an interesting observation.  It was unusual to see a clearly comic film featuring so many actual deaths: multiple cops murdered after the bank robbery, a death inside the bank itself, and the body count keeps adding up as Nate gets closer and closer to rescuing Sherry.  Nate himself contributes (minimally) to the body count, but it’s mostly the bad guys killing anyone who gets in their way.  Is it possibly to balance almost slapstick physical comedy with so many, almost gratuitous deaths?

For myself, I didn’t think so.  I look at a movie like Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), with umpteen deaths, but it’s a movie that’s clearly having fun with the kung-fu genre, which requires lots of death.  Novocaine felt to me like a riff on the John Wick movies.  John Wick mows through LEGIONS of bad guys, getting punched and shot and sometimes falling from four-story buildings onto vans and just getting up, brushing himself off, and moving to the next fight scene.  Nathan Caine does the same thing, just not with legions of bad guys, but you’re constantly aware that he could be killed at any minute.  That kept the stakes raised, so I didn’t feel like I was watching a video game come to life.

Novocaine might be the most fun I’ve had at the movies in 2025 so far.  I laughed a lot, I CRINGED a lot (usually while I was laughing), and uttered more curse words at the screen than I have in a long time (usually “JEEEsus!” or “Oh SHIT”).  The story doesn’t quite reinvent the wheel, but the execution is superb.  Just to restate my warning from earlier: if you don’t like graphic onscreen violence, stay away.  Everyone else, enjoy!

3 WOMEN (1977)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Robert Altman
CAST: Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule
MY RATING: 6/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 83% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Two roommates/physical therapists, one a vain woman and the other an awkward teenager, share an increasingly bizarre relationship.


Ever see the movie Big?  Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins, Robert Loggia, directed by Penny Marshall?  YOU know.  Well, there’s a scene in Big, AFTER the hero boy has magically changed into Tom Hanks, and he’s now working as a toy-tester at a big toy company.  He’s invited to a focus group to give his feedback on a new toy that transforms from a robot into the Empire State Building.  The other suits are enthusiastic, but Hanks (because he’s a little boy at heart) is confused by it.  He raises his hand and tells the designers: “I don’t get it.”  They try to explain the demographics and the survey results, etc.  He nods, takes it in, and says, “I still don’t get it.”

That was me after watching 3 Women and reading about it a little.  I didn’t get it while I was watching it, and I still don’t get it after I learned more about it.

Robert Altman’s 3 Women is a dreamlike psychodrama that explores concepts of identity, self-discovery, and, I guess, femininity that reminded me, oddly enough, of the Burt Lancaster film The Swimmer (1968), mostly because a lot of it centers around water, but also because of the similar atmosphere created by both films: creepy and reluctant to give up its secrets.  There are numerous shots that are filtered through one of those store-bought wave machines that were so prevalent in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so the shot achieves a surreal effect that’s hard to describe.  It feels like foreshadowing, and in one respect it is, but for the most part it’s just there to either illustrate someone’s mental state or…I’m not sure what else.  I’ve had a day to think about this, and I’m no closer to interpreting exactly what those shots are supposed to mean.

Anyway.  We meet two women, Millie Lammoreaux (an impossibly young Shelley Duvall) and Pinky Rose (an even younger-looking Sissy Spacek).  We’ll get to the third woman later.  They both work at a physical therapy center, assisting elderly patients as they walk through a pool or sit in a hot tub – more water.  Millie is a wannabe sophisticate who is very friendly on the outside, but she doesn’t seem to have any actual friends.  Her co-workers and her neighbors at her hotel do their best to ignore her and her endless patter about articles in McCall’s and what she’s cooking for dinner tonight.  Pinky, whose real name is Mildred, is a young woman whose emotional maturity seems to have peaked around the age of fifteen.  She is immediately awestruck by Millie and contrives to be as close to her as possible at all times.  It’s essentially hero worship, though Millie hasn’t given her anything to really worship aside from being…herself.  They will eventually become roommates.

Millie is fond of yellow; Pinky dresses in, you guessed it, pink.  Millie will talk to just about anyone; Pinky is shy and introverted.  Millie has a large closet full of clothes; Pinky seems to own only one outfit, including underpants.  They are as opposite as it’s possible to be.  These points are drummed home in scene after scene.  The two women frequent a themed saloon called Dodge City, where we will eventually meet the third woman, Willie Hart (Janice Rule).  Willie, who is pregnant, communicates with glares.  She also paints these amazing, disturbing murals featuring what appear to be harpies or something like the mythological Furies.

I could go on with the story, but why bother?  This is not a movie about a story.  This is a movie about conveying a mood.  Altman literally conceived of this movie in a dream, pitched it to 20th Century Fox almost on a whim, and insisted on shooting without a finished script.  The pervasive mood of the film is one of suspense and foreboding.  There are a pair of twins who lurk in the background of scenes of Millie and Pinky at work.  Foreboding.  The musical score is atonal and creepy.  Foreboding.  Pinky starts to read Millie’s diary.  Foreboding.  You may have noticed that the last part Millie’s last name, Lammoreaux, is phonetically similar to Pinky’s last name, Rose.  Foreboding.

So, okay, Altman’s movie is about creating a mood.  To that degree, he succeeded.  It’s nothing if not creepy.  Events occur that were surprising.  Mystery abounds.  But…there came a point about halfway where it all became repetitive to me.  How many scenes of Millie being snubbed socially do we need to get the idea that Millie is not popular?  How many times do we need those shots that are filtered through the wave machine?  How many lingering panning shots do we need of those murals?  I’m just saying.  I got the point after five each.  Call me crazy.

And when we get to the final sequence…man, if I wasn’t confused before, I was completely at sea when the credits rolled.  I’ve seen some open-ended movies before, some I loved (Mulholland Drive, 2001), some not so much (The Lobster, 2015).  When it’s done right, I find it exhilarating to see a film that trusts a viewer’s intelligence so much that it doesn’t spoon-feed you.  But 3 Women gave me an ending that is so open to interpretation that it backfired.  Because it could mean so many different things, it ultimately meant nothing and left me feeling a little cheated.

I get it.  This is not that kind of movie, by Altman’s own admission.  Fair enough.  I give it 6 out of 10 based purely on the craftsmanship and sheer chutzpah of the film, and because the performances by Duvall and Spacek are worth the price of admission.  (And I just wanna say, Duvall may have won Best Actress at Cannes, but my vote would have gone to Spacek, who is utterly convincing as a woman-child in a state of arrested development.)

But I cannot really call this movie “entertaining.”  I don’t mean in the sense that I didn’t laugh or cry or whatever.  I just mean that watching it felt like a homework assignment, not an escape.  I never connected to it emotionally, so I ultimately didn’t care what was happening, or why.  I have enjoyed so many of Altman’s other films, but this one might have just become my least favorite Altman film that I’ve seen, finally replacing [name redacted so I don’t get doxxed].

TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING (1977)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Robert Aldrich
CAST: Burt Lancaster, Charles Durning, Richard Widmark, Paul Winfield, Burt Young, Melvyn Douglas, Joseph Cotten, Richard Jaeckel, John Ratzenberger
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 80% Fresh

PLOT: A renegade USAF general takes over an ICBM silo and threatens to provoke World War III unless the President reveals details of a secret meeting held just after the start of the Vietnam War.


Twilight’s Last Gleaming, one of Robert Aldrich’s last films, is a cleverly constructed Cold War thriller whose pointed message about the Vietnam War nearly torpedoes the suspense.  The political message is hammered home in a scene that goes on for a bit too long with people speaking dialogue that feels hammy and trite.  But the movie surrounding this one scene is good enough that I would still recommend it to anyone in the market for something off the beaten track.

The movie is set in 1981, four years after it was released, so no one could draw any real-life parallels between the characters and people in real life.  In an opening sequence that feels reminiscent of Die Hard (1988), General Lawrence Dell (Burt Lancaster) and his team of military ex-cons manage to infiltrate and take command of a US ICBM missile silo in Montana.  While I highly doubt it would be as easy as portrayed in the film, Aldrich films the sequence so that I got caught up in the suspense of the narrative instead of worrying about pesky details.  (If there’s a drawback to these and other sequences featuring military hardware and installations, it’s the overall low-budget feel to the sets and props; everything looks like it was shot on a TV soundstage instead of a big-budget film set.)

Once inside, Dell makes his demands: $20 million for each of his remaining team (Burt Young and Paul Winfield), the President must read the transcript of a secret meeting held just after the Vietnam war started, and the President must hand himself over as a hostage to secure their escape.  Otherwise, he’ll launch nine Titan ICBMs at their targets.

This creates a little tension among the would-be terrorists.  Winfield and Young couldn’t care less about the secret meeting, but Dell is adamant.  Meanwhile, General MacKenzie (Richard Widmark) formulates a plan to eliminate Dell and his crew using a “tiny” nuclear device, the President (Charles Durning) agonizes over the secret transcript, and his best friend and aide uses some “tough love” to get him to make a decision.

Despite the fakeness of the surroundings, I was absorbed by the thriller elements in Twilight’s Last Gleaming.  I would compare them to the best parts of WarGames (1983) and The China Syndrome (1979).  There is some impressively impenetrable technobabble about booby traps and inhibitor cables and fail-safe systems that I just rolled with.  The plan involving that “tiny” nuclear device leads up to a sequence that I would compare favorably with any contemporary thriller you can name.

One of the ways Aldrich achieves this effect is through the use of split-screens…LOTS of split-screens.  It starts at the beginning of the film with two screens.  Then there are moments with three split screens, two on top and one in the bottom section.  Then, during the most intense sequence of the film, we get four splits in each corner of the screen.  At first, I found it disorienting, but it absolutely works when it most needs to.  (I’m trying not to give away too many plot details, so excuse the vagueness.)  I don’t know that I would want to watch an entire movie like this (Timecode, 2000), but in small doses, it’s very effective.

Where the movie bogs down is the middle section of the film when the President expresses his disapproval of the contents of the secret transcript Dell wants publicized.  It’s a bit theatrical to believe a sitting American President would be this vocal about his feelings in the middle of a dire crisis.  I think the scene would have played just as well if we had gotten a general idea of the transcript, or even if the contents had NEVER been revealed to the audience.  It would have been a perfect Macguffin, leaving viewers free to imagine anything they want.  The truth about Kennedy’s assassination?  Area 51?  Pearl Harbor was an inside job?  The Super Bowl really IS fixed?  Who knows?

Instead, the President insists on reading a portion of it out loud to his Cabinet members, enlisting them to read certain lines.  While I admire Aldrich’s intent (to send a cinematic protest to the architects of the Vietnam war), the scene nearly brought the movie to a stop, which is deadly when dealing with a suspense thriller.

But, like I said, the rest of the movie is so good, I am compelled to let it slide.  Later, we get surprise attacks, snipers, helicopters, a crafty fake-out involving torture, and an ending that is as cynical as they come, but which felt like the best way out of the situation for everyone involved…except for the American people, but that’s another story.  Twilight’s Last Gleaming feels virtually forgotten, and that’s a shame.  Aldrich directs this movie with a lot of passion for the material and milks every ounce of suspense he can with the tools at hand.  If you’re prepared to overlook that middle section, you’ll get a kick out of this movie.

P.S. Look fast for an unexpected appearance by William Hootkins, aka “Porkins” from Star Wars (1977).

THE MAGIC FLUTE (Sweden, 1975)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Ingmar Bergman
CAST: Josef Köstlinger, Irma Urrila, Håkan Hagegård, Birgit Nordin
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 91% Fresh

PLOT: Valiant prince Tamino and his zestful sidekick Papageno are recruited by the Queen of the Night to save her daughter from the clutches of evil.


Here lies the noble, magical illusion of the theater.  Nothing is; everything represents. – Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman’s whimsical staging of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute is a movie made by a theater fan, for theater fans…and to a certain degree, it’s about theater fans.  I use the word “staging” instead of “film of” because, throughout the movie, Bergman never once lets us forget that we’re watching a staged production.  The opera’s overture plays over shots of the audience members, and at intermission we watch actors passing the time by playing chess or smoking where they shouldn’t be.  Once or twice, we see the hands of the stage crew as they move from one “cue card” to the next.  Fishing wire is clearly visible when objects “float.”  But the very artificiality of the production is what makes it so charming.  It celebrates artifice and scorns reality.  It wouldn’t surprise me if this were one of the favorite films of Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam.

Since my only previous knowledge of the story of The Magic Flute comes from a precious few scenes in the film Amadeus (1984), here’s a brief summary for anyone else who knows as much about opera as I do.  The brave, handsome prince Tamino and his enthusiastic sidekick Papageno are recruited by the Queen of the Night to rescue her beautiful daughter, Pamina, from the clutches of the evil Sarastro.  Before the opera is over, there will be revelations, separations, reunions, laughter, tears, semi-divine intervention, and even an operatic strip-tease.  There are monsters, woodland creatures, villains, three angelic young boys in a hot air balloon, and, of course, a magic flute.  And it’s all portrayed as it might be seen if we were watching it on a real stage in a real theater, with some obvious cinematic licenses taken with time and space.

I’m gonna be brutally honest: having never seen an opera, I had moderate-to-low expectations of how much I would enjoy it, even if the music is by my second-favorite classical composer of all time.  (Beethoven is the king, and that is that.)  But Bergman’s film sidestepped my expectations by not trying to present anything in a realistic way, or by simply staging a live production and just filming it from multiple cameras.  By keeping everything clearly artificial, clearly staged, and occasionally using clever movie tricks, The Magic Flute held my attention, making me curious about what other tricks Bergman might have up his sleeve.

For example, he’ll start a scene with a wide shot, showing the entire stage with the flats and fake backdrops, then cut to a medium shot, making us think we’re in the space we just were, then panning over to reveal a completely separate set that was invisible before.  But because it’s been established that we’re in the realm of theater, this kind of spatial paradox isn’t jarring, it’s almost expected.  You can get away with certain things in theater, especially opera, especially in a fantasy, that would never fly in a regular movie.  In The Magic Flute, a person’s face can be completely made over with a simple edit.  A picture in a locket can come to life.  A journey through a fantastic hellscape can be suggested by clever editing and careful camera placement.

But what if you simply don’t like opera?  Is The Magic Flute enough to convert you?  I mean…maybe?  If you’re a fan of the films of Terry Gilliam, particularly Brazil (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), then this movie is going to be right up your alley.  They share the same visual strategies and production design sensibilities.  Even if you believe you don’t like opera, The Magic Flute could still win you over for at least this one movie, simply because it’s such fun to look at.

Looking back over what I’ve written so far, I don’t believe I’ve accurately conveyed how the deliberate “fakeness” of the film enhances its effectiveness.  Live theater has the ability to get audiences to suspend their disbelief in a way that film cannot always achieve.  I’ve seen community theater productions where, for example, the walls of a café are supposed to “fly” off the stage revealing a night sky, and the effect was accomplished by simple lighting tricks.  A clubhouse foyer can be magically transformed into a golf course with a green carpet and some more selective lighting.  In live theater, the audience is constantly aware that it’s fake, but when they’re in the grip of a good story, their mind fills in the blanks.  That’s the effect Bergman is going for in The Magic Flute, and it works.

So, in the end, what you have here is a love letter to the stage, to opera, to Mozart, to fantasy.  Throughout the film, Bergman will cut to the face of young girl, an audience member, who watches with rapt attention and an almost Mona Lisa-esque smile.  Not only is he reminding us, the viewer, that this is a staged production, but maybe he’s also sending a reminder to filmmakers to never forget that, for a movie or play or opera to work, you have to remember who you’re making it for: the paying audience.  Speaking as an occasional audience member myself, I know that, when I buy a ticket, I want to be taken out of myself.  I want to believe that a man can fly, or that a wooden puppet can come to life, or that a valiant prince can overcome three tasks to win the heart of his beloved.  The Magic Flute is a tribute to the magic-makers and the storytellers, to the genius of Mozart, and to the people out there in the dark who make it all possible.

DODSWORTH (1936)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: William Wyler
CAST: Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, Mary Astor, David Niven
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 91% Fresh

PLOT: A retired auto manufacturer and his wife take a long-planned European vacation only to find that they want very different things from life.


Melodrama.  It gets a bad rap in some circles.  Synonymous with “soap opera.”  Do it right and you get masterpieces like Terms of Endearment (1983) or fan favorites like Beaches (1988).  Do it wrong and you’ve got a sappy, soppy, shamelessly manipulative mess like [too many to mention].  In days past, I would take what I thought was the high road and say it’s not my favorite genre at all, too schmaltzy, blech.

But then I started expanding my viewing habits a little and started watching some older films.  I discovered hidden jewels like Peter Ibbetson (1935), a shameless weepie about separated lovers who connect in the spirit world.  I finally watched The Blue Angel (1930) with Marlene Dietrich as the semi-willing agent of a snobbish professor’s emotional and professional destruction.  Soap opera, but done right and very effectively.

And now here’s Dodsworth, a domestic drama about a middle-aged couple where the husband, Sam (Walter Huston), has just retired from running his immensely successful car company.  He’s looking forward to relaxing with his rod and reel, his golf clubs, “with nothing more important to worry about than the temperature of the beer…if there is anything more important.”  But first, his wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton), who is tired of spending her life in society circles, wants to see the world on a transatlantic cruise – on the Queen Mary, no less – to London, Paris, and wherever the spirit moves them.  “In Europe,” she says, “a woman of my age is just to the point where men begin to take a serious interest in her.”

At this stage, I felt like I was in the grip of a fairly standard plot whose signposts I could see a mile away: married couple on European vacation, wife going through midlife crisis is courted by a dashing young man who believes her husband is ignoring her, husband finds out, wife denies it, does some self-reflection, slightly farcical situations, some touching speeches on a moonlit balcony, and the married couple return home stronger than ever.  Even if this was going to be a well-made movie, I was pretty sure I would be bored.

Oh, how I do love being wrong.  Dodsworth takes this trope-ridden plot and drives it down some roads where I never expected a movie from the ‘30s to go, at least not when dealing with the sacrosanct institution of marriage.  Fran doesn’t get hit on when she gets to Europe, she gets hit on while still in transit in the Atlantic, by a British cad played by an indescribably young David Niven.  He makes no secret of his attraction to Fran, though later on it seems possible he was trying to take advantage of Fran’s situation.  He even kisses Fran, who offers no more than token resistance…after the fact.

During this semi-tryst, Sam is above deck enjoying the sea air when he has a kind of adult meet-cute with Edith Cortright (Mary Astor), an American divorcee who is younger than Sam by, oh, let’s say at least fifteen years, maybe more.  They have two conversations, and then circumstances send them on their separate ways, Sam to France with his wife and Edith to Naples.

A word about their two conversations.  This is some of the best adult, mature dialogue I’ve ever heard in a film, let alone one from the 1930s.  These are two mature adults who are speaking to each other, neither one with an agenda, but there is something intangible in the language and how the actors play it and how Wyler directed it.  The scene is pregnant with subtext, not sexual, but a sense of connection without being obvious about it.  I found myself starting to root for Sam and Edith to get together before their ship docked, but the movie played around with my own expectations multiple times.

In Paris, Fran and Sam’s relationship deteriorates.  Sam makes plans to sightsee, but Fran has made hair appointments and lunch appointments with her new French acquaintances, so he goes alone.  In her frantic desire to prove how cosmopolitan she is, as opposed to being a middle-aged woman from middle-America, Fran wants to spend more time on the town than being a tourist.  She meets another dashing European gentleman, this one a Frenchman named Arnold Iselin.  It seems as if Fran wants to have her cake and eat it, too: remain married to Sam while indulging in flirtations – flings? – with handsome men with foreign accents.

It all comes to a head one night when Fran suggests that Sam return to America without her.  She wants a “break.”  Sam fights for her, but in the end…but I’m not going to tell you what Sam decides.  Again, your predictions may or not be correct, but there are some deliciously written curveballs up this movie’s sleeve.

I should also mention the delightful discovery of Walter Huston as an actor.  Oh, sure, we’ve all seen him in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, made twelve years later, featuring his deserving Oscar-winning performance as the prototypical prospector with his little jig and his forever-imitated accent, but that’s how I ALWAYS pictured him.  In Dodsworth, Huston is, quite frankly, a revelation.  His performance is as far removed from Sierra Madre as it’s possible to be.  Sam Dodsworth is a respectable man of business, especially handsome when he’s dressed to the nines, congenial, and smarter than the average bear.  He is what they call, dare I say, a silver fox, the kind of man other women might willingly set their cap for, whether they’re his age or not.  Huston’s delivery and portrayal of this character make Dodsworth immediately likable, which is important in later stages of the movie when he seems on the verge of making a questionable decision.

Then there’s Ruth Chatterton as Fran Dodsworth.  Chatterton was in a strange predicament as an actress for this film.  At the time, she was desperately trying to revive her career at an age when, unfortunately, Hollywood (and society) was ready to put her out to pasture…by which I mean early forties.  And she’s playing a character who is also desperately trying to hang on to her youth.  So, there is a layer of authenticity, and courage, to her performance that cannot be overstated.  Even when she engages in some questionable behavior, I was still able to empathize with her.  She isn’t doing anything out of pure spite.  She is responding to impulses she can’t explain or ignore.

Dodsworth is one of the best films from Hollywood’s first golden age that I’ve ever seen, and yet I don’t hear too many people mention it in their lists of favorite films from the ‘30s.  It deserves to be mentioned alongside the greats, because it IS one of the greats.  And it’s melodramatic as hell, in the beginning, the middle, and especially that shamefully schmaltzy final shot…but you know what?  Dodsworth makes it work.  Soap opera?  Meh, who cares?

SEPTEMBER 5 (Germany, 2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Tim Fehlbaum
CAST: Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 93% Certified Fresh

PLOT: During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, the ABC Sports broadcasting team must adapt to providing live coverage of Israeli athletes being held hostage by a terrorist group.


Two of my absolute favorite true-life movies (United 93 [2006], Bloody Sunday [2002]) happen to be from the same director, Paul Greengrass.  Watching Tim Fehlbaum’s film September 5 felt at times like I was watching a Paul Greengrass film, and I can offer no higher compliment than that.  From the moment the first gunshots are heard coming from the Olympic village in Munich in the wee morning hours of September 5, 1972, this movie never lets up on the tension.  Over the next 24 hours, we will follow the ABC Sports broadcasting team as the managers and crew work through a tangle of journalistic ethics and operational logistics to report on the biggest news story of their lives while maintaining objectivity and their obligation to the truth, and ALSO keeping the safety of the victims and their families in mind.

The four major characters are legendary ABC Sports executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard); a then-unknown control-room functionary, Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), who was in the right place at the wrong time; ABC Sports producer Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin); and German-to-English translator Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), who is probably an amalgam of several different people who were most likely present during the actual events of the film.

One of the masterstrokes of September 5 is how it rachets up the tension by staying inside the claustrophobic control room and connected offices for the entire film, minus the opening and closing shots showing Geoff arriving for work and leaving the next morning.  Anything showing us the outside world is only visible on the banks of television monitors in front of them, which leads to much confusion towards the end of the film as reports of the Israeli hostages being freed begin circulating, but no one can actually see what the hell is going on.  This is one of the ways the film reminded me of some of the best scenes in United 93 when the people responsible for making the most crucial decisions of their lives were limited by what they could see and hear on the news.

I have never worked in a TV studio, but this movie carries a palpable authenticity that made me believe everything I was seeing.  I never knew, for example, that chyrons (those small captions on the bottom of a TV screen during the news) were analog back in 1972.  Whenever a new development occurs, the control room has to call up a woman in a completely separate room/mini-studio so she can manually place individual letters onto a physical message board, then get behind a camera and shoot the image so it can be superimposed back in the main control room.  Exhausting!

Peter Jennings is reporting remotely across the street from the Israeli apartments, but he cannot be heard live from his radio into the audio feed for the TV signal.  So, some random dude takes a phone handset, unscrews it, solders some wires, clamps it all together in front of a microphone, and presto, now Jennings is live.  The whole operation is put together with spit and baling wire.  It feels like it’s a miracle that anything was televised at all.

The other conflicts presented to us are no less important.  Marianne, a German woman, is drafted into helping with the translation, but first she must endure some brief accusations from Marvin.  The fact these Olympics are being held in Munich less than thirty years after the end of World War II is something many people are still coming to terms with.  He asks her if her parents knew about the concentration camps.  She stares for a second and gives the best answer possible: “But I am not them.”  After that, she earns the complete trust of the entire staff.

The subtext of the German guilt over World War II is bubbling just beneath the surface for the entire film.  A German maintenance worker won’t release replacement cables to a French tech until Marianne talks him into it.  It is theorized at one point that German military forces could possibly end the hostage situation within minutes, but the German military is constitutionally forbidden to operate within the Olympic village, for obvious reasons.  Roone Arledge watches Mark Spitz win yet another gold medal, and instead of going to a closeup of Spitz, he instructs the cameraman to cut to the face of the German swimmer who lost.  Someone asks him, “Do you really want to bring politics into this?”  And he replies, “It’s not about politics, it’s about emotions.”

Which brings in the other major point of retelling this story in this way.  There is a point where ABC’s cameras have great shots of the building, the balcony, and the entire complex, and they are broadcasting live (the first time the Olympics had been broadcast live, by the way).  Someone spots German policemen – non-military – getting into position with sniper rifles.  Marianne hears chatter on the police band about an operation getting the green light.  The press is ordered out of the area, but ABC’s cameras continue to broadcast live.  Someone notices that a TV appears to be on inside the apartment where the hostages are being held.  Geoff suddenly asks a reasonable question: “Are the terrorists seeing this?”  Minutes later, German police storm the ABC control room and demand the cameras be turned off, pointing a gun at the crew at one point.  The cameras get turned off and a furious Arledge kicks the Germans out of the building, but the point is made.  Minutes later, the operation is called off. 

“They should’ve cut the electricity to the apartment, it’s not up to us to double-check on them,” says Marv.  But Geoff makes a point: “Marv, it’s not okay if we made it worse.”  The fine line between the freedom of the press and general public safety could not be more elegantly portrayed than it is here.  Earlier in the film, just as the cameras have been set up with shots of the balcony of the apartment, someone asks, “Black September [the terrorist group responsible], they know the whole world is watching, right? …if they shoot someone on live television, whose story is that?  Is it ours, or is it theirs?”

It seems like an easy question to answer: “Public safety comes first.”  But who gets to decide what’s in the public’s best interest?  Those policemen who burst into the control room and shut the cameras off at gunpoint?  Perhaps it should be left to each newsperson’s individual conscience, but can that always be trusted?  These are questions I am not qualified to answer, but I appreciate films like September 5 because they have enough faith in the viewer to pose those questions and then refrain from providing a tidy answer.  It’s one of those rare thrillers that tells a crackling good story and also asks some big, relevant questions that you may not even think about until you’re driving to work the next day.

One of the last things we hear is Marianne talking to Geoff, who had sent her to the German airport where the hostages were supposed to have been flown out of Germany.  “I was there with hundreds of people, we stared into the night.  We were waiting for something to happen because we wanted to take a picture of it.”  While that’s a rather bleak way of describing a profession that has given us some compelling images that have swayed the world’s opinion on vitally important matters, perhaps it’s also a way to caution those who would exploit situations, like the paparazzi who chased Princess Di into that tunnel.

GREY GARDENS (1975)

DIRECTORS: Ellen Hovde, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Muffie Meyer
MY RATING: 6/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 94% Fresh

PLOT: The celebrated Maysles brothers spearhead this cult classic documentary about Big and Little Edie Beale, reclusive and eccentric cousins of Jackie Onassis who occupy a crumbling mansion in East Hampton, New York.


I have seen and loved many documentaries in my life, from the sublime (Baraka, 1992) to the absurd (The Aristocrats, 2005), from the terrifying (Gimme Shelter, 1970) to the edifying (Dark Days, 2000).  But after watching the cult classic Maysles brothers documentary Grey Gardens, I am sitting in front of my computer terminal and I am at a loss of what to say about it, beyond a summary of its contents.

As the film opens, Big Edie Beale, who celebrates her 79th birthday during the film, and her daughter, Little Edie Beale, 52, reside in a sprawling mansion nicknamed Grey Gardens in a high-end East Hampton neighborhood.  Their biggest claim to fame before this film is that they are cousins to Jackie Onassis.  To say their house is a mess is an insult to both the words “house” and “mess.”  It’s a dump, although we are shown newspaper articles that seem to indicate the house was in even worse condition before the Maysles started filming.  The state health department threatened eviction unless the mansion was cleaned up; there’s even a photograph of Jackie O pitching in with the cleanup.  Through the course of the film, the Maysles and their film crew will capture what some have described as “an impossibly intimate portrait” of a relationship between two people whose minds have retreated to a point where they scarcely notice their surroundings as they repeatedly hash out old arguments from years past.

Any fan of film has at least heard the name Grey Gardens or the names of the Beales at some point in their life.  I’m told it’s featured prominently in at least one episode of the television show Gilmore Girls.  The Criterion Blu-ray contains two interviews from noteworthy fashion designers who have both designed clothing lines directly inspired by Little Edie’s clothing in the film.  There are even pictures of a European photo shoot that replicates scenes from the movie.  This is arguably one of the most famous documentaries of all time.

So, I hit play on my Blu-ray player and started watching.  The cameras do indeed capture intimate moments between mother and daughter.  Little Edie’s fashion sense involves never being seen without something covering her head, whether it’s a turban, a sweater, or a dishtowel.  Big Edie spends – based on what I saw – most of her days in bed, leaving only to take in the sun on her porch or to use the restroom.  Sometimes she leaves the bed to eat a meal, but Little Edie usually brings the food to her mother.  In one sequence, Big Edie cooks corn on the cob on a hot plate while sitting in bed.  She shares her bed with one or more of their many cats, as well as various boxes, books, binders, and photographs.  The mattress is dotted with water stains and what appears to be rust.

But wait, there’s more.  There is a hole in the top corner of a wall in one of the hallways.  This is where a raccoon lives.  At one point, Little Edie leads the camera crew to the attic to perform her version of pest “control.”  She empties a loaf of Wonder Bread onto the attic floor.  Then, as an added treat, she empties an entire box of dry cat food on top of the bread.

Now, why am I mentioning the state of their surroundings instead of recounting the delightful (I guess) eccentricities these two women proclaim at each other night and day?  Because I could not take my eyes off the backdrop of the house itself, which is as much a character in the film as the Overlook Hotel is in The Shining.  There is a room that Little Edie is in the process of decorating, but it looks as if her design process is stuck at a fourth-grade level.  The grounds of the mansion appear to be in utter disarray, overgrown and wild, with unchecked vines and bushes threatening to swallow the house itself.  Every corner of Big Edie’s bedroom is laden with stacks of boxes containing old photo albums and vinyl records, many of which feature Big Edie herself.  (She was a recording star back in the day, apparently; she doesn’t sound half bad.)

We are treated to many scenes featuring Little Edie talking to us about her past, how her mother curtailed her ambitions to be a model in Europe in order to come back home and take care of her.  How her mother sent away one of her suitors because she, Big Edie, didn’t want another cook in her kitchen.  We hear from Big Edie talking about how wild Little Edie was, how she was so hard to handle, so she had to treat her sternly.  There’s a scene where Little Edie sings and sings, and it’s clear she is not as gifted as her mother was, but do you think that’s going to stop her?  No, ma’am, not even when Big Edie begs for a radio so she can listen to something else, ANYTHING else.

I’m watching all of this play out, as the directors capture remarkable footage and whispered conversations.  It is undeniably bizarre, yes, and some of it is mildly entertaining.  (Little Edie’s dancing scenes are worth the price of admission.)  But I could not stop asking myself this question while I was watching: “Why?”  Why is this movie necessary for me to watch?  What do I gain by becoming a fly on the wall and being privy to conversations between two people who would be better off if they lived in separate houses?  In separate states?  What am I missing?  I would imagine I could find all those answers in various other online reviews or movie blogs, but if those answers didn’t occur to me while watching the film, who should I blame?  My own preferences, or the film itself?  Yet another answer I don’t have.

I’d like to think my cinematic taste is relatively evolved, although I was a bit of a late bloomer.  I didn’t see the gangster masterpiece The Public Enemy (1931) until recently, and I have yet to see more than one film by Abbas Kiarostami.  But I love a great documentary, and this has a reputation for being one of the genre’s best.  So, why did I not respond to it as enthusiastically as so many other people have?  What am I missing?  How is this entertaining?  This might hit more poignantly with mothers and daughters, but I’m just speculating.

I have no answers.  I can only promise that, at some point, I will watch this movie again because I do think it deserves another chance.  I don’t know when that will be, but when I do, I’ll try to ignore the house and focus more on the characters.  I’ll keep you posted.

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…)