RELATIVE STRANGERS (2006) *

A successful doctor/writer meets his biological parents after realizing that a rich family adopted him. Okay, the big laugh (and a repetitive one at that) is that the biological parents are named Menure. Get it? “It’s French!” It’s that sloppy. That’s when its time to turn it off. There are other things to do than suffer the slings and arrows of this non-outrageous yuck fest. As a concept, the story is plausible and the cast decent enough but the laughs are paced with a negative frequency. Ron Livingston is the lead with Neve Campbell as his wife. M.C. Gainey, Beverly D’Angelo, Star Jones, Edward Herrmann round out the cast and for some reason Ed Bagley Jr. and Martin Mull are also on board. The usually reliable Danny DeVito and Kathy Bates are the Menures, but they can’t save this now. “It’s French!” Okay we got it and goodbye.

5 FINGERS (1952) ****

A valet, during World War II, working for the British Ambassador in neutral Turkey sells top secret documents to the Germans. James Mason is perfect as the valet (codename: Cicero) seeking the life of a rich gentleman with a disgraced Countess (Danielle Darrieux). He does by striking a deal with the Germans in exchange for information that is “most secret, top secret”. It seems simple enough. The plot is set for white knuckled twists and turns that are laced with irony, suspense, and social commentary. It is comparable to Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir. It even eclipses Robert Altman’s GOSFORD PARK as a commentary of the changing of society’s rules regarding the upper and lower class. Mason once again excels at playing a despicable person whom you really care for. Michael Rennie is also on hand as an investigator who is on to Cicero. All is made better with some handsome 20the Century Fox productions values, music from Bernard Hermmann, a script from Michael Wilson and sharp direction from Joseph Mankiewicz. Supposedly based on true story! Great locations and good use of sound for 50s Hollywood movie. The exchange rate for this bit espionage will make you gasp for air.

HITLER: DEAD OR ALIVE (1942) **1/2

** Spoilers. There is not there way to write about it **

A million dollars to will go to three ex-cons if they can find and kill Adolph Hitler. Ward Bond heads the group that has plans to make money and kill for Uncle Sam. Now you may wonder; how will they get around the Germans? They’re English right. Don’t worry about it. They did some work in Milwaukee. Produced by Sam Sherman, this is pure pulp cinema from the B budget days of World War II propaganda. The action keeps coming and it is clumsy. Don’t expect it to be razor sharp pacing. The movie takes a shocking turn. Bond and the boys team up with The Resistance to defend the town from an onslaught and they lose and win. It features a tearful Ward Bond as the Germans slaughter the kids because they can’t find a kidnapped Hitler. Why can’t they find Hitler? The Germans already killed him. Why? His mustache was shaved off. Yeah, they didn’t recognize him. Why was it shaved off? Well, there is only one way to tell this Hitler apart from the imposters running around the countryside. Fortunately, Hitler’s former barber is now a part of the resistance and remembers a scar underneath the facial hair. How does he know of the scar? The barber gave it to him. It is that kind of movie and it is hilarious. It’s made stranger when Ward Bond learns the hard way that this is a war not a game. Unbelievable.

DUEL IN THE SUN (1942) **1/2

Family tension is underscored when a half-breed girl lives with some distant relatives. Sometimes referred to as a sex western, Jennifer Jones ignites the passions and fury of brothers (Gregory Peck and Joseph Cotton), father (Lionel Barrymore), and preacher (Walter Huston). In terms of production values and scope DUEL IN THE SUN is one of the best. It is vulgar, sexy, dusty, provocative and evocative. This is a moving color paperback in all of its glory. This is as well made as can be and also not that good. It’s as if the movie was produced more than directed and written several times over. It had enough directors to form baseball team. The foreshadowing in act one never comes to fruition. The conclusion seems random compared to the foreshadowing and set design. What you want to happen never does. It features a great cast that is formable and performed to good advantage. The actors know how to put on a show: Lillian Gish, Herbert Marshall, Butterfly McQueen, Otto Kruger, the voice of Orson Welles and others. The sexy aspects became a joke by 60s but nowadays may seem more surprising when you consider how prudish sexuality can be in current cinema. What the movie really needs is a grand shoot-out between clans and not just symbolic figures from a rewrite. Years later some of the themes would find there way in a John Huston western titled THE UNFORGIVEN (1960) and also featuring Lillian Gish. It has its share of problems but is better movie all around in terms of entertainment and as an example of the genre.

CAUGHT (1949) ***

A woman seeks refuge in the arms of a modest doctor after storybook marriage turns to rot. Barbara Bel Geddes is the girl who can’t decide to which man to love but more importantly which environment to have her child reared in. James Mason is the humble doctor and Robert Ryan is billionaire. The movie begins with the trappings of a film noir but really is more of woman’s picture. It is no more a noir film than THE EARINGS OF MADAME de…(1953). Come to think of it CAUGHT does work as a rough draft of sorts for the Max Ophuls classic. There are some taut and perplexing situations. It’s not done through technique but how characters interact with each other. CAUGHT lays out some fascinating situations with how people fall into relationships. Can the wife just be too spoiled to live the rich life? It also has peculiar way dealing pregnancy and a “miscarriage”. Most of the movie is slanted in Bel Geddes favor. However one of the sequences during and industrial short film, she truly is a brat that needs to be shamed. Because she is looked upon as property she runs off and finds comfort in James Mason. His love is not money but work and that is a far cry from her other arrangement. He of course shows her that there is more to life and people than what she knows. The movie concludes with a square off between the two men. It’s not what you would think and there may have been some studio tampering regarding Ryan’s fate and the pregnancy. Yet it still works because Mason’s character is so unbothered by Ryan’s swagger and taunting. These two actors are so fun to see against each other that Barbra’s character is lost in her own story.


BRANNIGAN (1975) ***

A Chicago cop is sent to London to find an American gangster. Story is not really the focus here. This is a showcase for The Duke in London complimented with slick visuals. To expect that much more is asking too much. This is real hoot. To see the Duke clashed against the English settings is like a collage of Pop Art ala Terry Gilliam or Roy Lichtenstein. After ordering a stack of flapjacks, The Duke joins forces with Dick Attenborough and Judy Geeson to find out where John Vernon is hiding. This is almost a template for Joel Silver/Dick Donner pictures of the 80s and 90s. It features an exploding toilet, a shotgun tied too a doorknob, a car chase halfway over London Bridge, shattering glass, an assassin, rain, mud, and a long fistfight in a pub. Special merit goes to director Douglas Hickox (THEATER OF DEATH). He makes it move at a proper clip with slick visuals. The actors also remember to join in on the fun. Wayne even shares screen time with John Vernon and Mel Ferrer at the conclusion and it works. This may also be the only movie when The Duke moves in slow motion. Great! Only minor complaint is that while Sir Dick is fine and all but it would have been better if someone gritty (Stanley Baker) or more Shakespearean (Ian Bannen) had been the Commander. It would have made for a better clash of styles but that’s okay. BRANNIGAN will always be more fun than any movie nominated for Best Picture in 2007.

RUNNING WITH SCISSORS (2006) *

After his mother signs away his custody and inheritance, a drug-pushing doctor adopts an underage writer-to-be. A good cast, well produced, with a 70s soft rock score and it is depressing to point of unbearable. Based on a true story from Augusten Burroughs memoirs, the themes of family and structure make for a great premise but few people are likable and the ones that are such pawns. To know that people are used like this is enough for outrage but there is nothing you can do for anyone. One can only hope that Burroughs other writings (and his life) are less like this movie. To see the drugs passed out like candy is sick. To frustrate things there are too many epiphanies, too much shouting at the heavens while rock music drowns out everything except the visuals. The cast includes Brian Cox as the drug pusher and Annette Benning as the drug addicted mother. Alec Baldwin plays yet another prick. SHAKESPERE IN LOVE’s Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow are reunited but as “brother and sister”. This movie is hard stuff to swallow. This was directed from one of the minds behind NIP/TUCK. I’ve never seen the show and after this, I never will.

THE CHASE (1946) ***1/2

When a hapless fellow (Robt. Cummings) returns a lost wallet that belongs to gangster (Steve Cochran) and becomes his chauffeur and then he falls for his boss’s girl (Michelle Morgan). Usually when something is called surreal, it’s a codeword for senseless but entertaining. THE CHASE is surreal. It is a dream. From the get go we witness California cliffs standing in for the Florida coasts, a Rahcmaninoffesqe piano theme that surfaces from a radio and dictates at least a third of the narrative, the haircut sequence, a man eating animal in the shadows, a bottle of wine that stands in for a corpse. It also helps that Peter Lorre is on board as the villain’s right hand man. That’s all before the chase begins and moves to Cuba. Later there is even more haunting imagery with a set of knives evoking the chime Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil. When the police observe the murder weapon, the flick moves like black ink running across a table with Cummings about to drown in it. It is as if the movie is an exquisite corpse. It begins on one plane but it concludes with a very different setting than promised. The story remains what you expect but the props and environments are always changing. What foreshadows with a knife fight ends with car chase. THE CHASE is sinister in all of the right ways. The script is Philip Yordon and based on a novel from Cornel Woolrich. For an adaptation that is full of event changes, the structure and dreaded atmosphere are still faithful to the novel itself. THE CHASE is as much of a rearrangement as it is an adaptation. If you simply switch a couple of reels you’ll have a closer version of the source novel. The movie’s plot unfolds more like a deck of cards than a novel. Oh! Peter Lorre and Steve Cochran make a great pair and it’s a shame they didn’t make more movies together. At least you have this one. For your information Cary Grant is featured in a Old Time Radio version of this story. That is some wild stuff.

THE HOLIDAY (2006) *

After meeting online, two girls who are unlucky at love decide to exchange their homes for a two weeks Christmas vacation. Cameron Diaz is a L.A. insider making a life out of cutting trailers while Kate Winslet is an editor for an English publishing company. The American becomes enchanted with the house, England, and Jude Law as a nice guy. The Englishwoman finds counsel in Beverly Hills and the arms Jack Black. The pickings must be thin but come on. Must I accept that scenario? It sounds promising enough for a case of mistaken identity, as both of them are blondes. This is what passes for a Romantic Comedy. It features flirtation, titillation and promise and not much else. There is a concept here but it can’t get past the first act.

The lavish production values include a proud Los Angeles mansion, Southland scenery contrasted with a ‘cute’ English cottage and a hamlet blanketed with snow. Yet there is nothing to behold. The surroundings do not reveal character. Instead it merely disguises the lack of goings on. It is really nothing more than a confection, something to look at in passing.

Edward Burns and Rufus Sewell also appear as the disposable boyfriend and philandering fiancé respectively. Thankfully for some of us, Eli Wallach walks into the picture to supply some wisdom and romance about Hollywood but…I want him to curse and chew cigars. Written and directed by Nancy Meyers so that’s all the more reason to avoid this one. See SUPERMAN III instead.


YEAR OF THE DOG (2007) ***

Peggy (Molly Shannon) lives quite and self-contained life. She is a friend, an aunt, a secretary, and most of all a ‘Mother’ to her pet dog Pencil. What happens when she loses Pencil to an unknown death? It’s a question poised for a surprisingly poignant and humorous tale of pet ownership in contemporary Los Angeles. The movie follows not so much a storyline but a series of observations and experiences made by Peggy. Through out she realizes her true nature of her relationships with her Brother and Sister in Law (Laura Dern). She complicates her work environment by urging animal rights and pet adoption. She adopts a German Shepard from a broken home with frustrating results. Her dating life is made awkward as a courting next-door neighbor (John C. Riely) professes a love for hunting. There is also a dog trainer; the man she really loves has other canine concerns. Of note is the spot on realism and naturalism of Southern California locations. This movie is also a radical departure for director Mike White who also crafted CHUCK AND BUCK. While both movies are love letters to lonely people, CHUCK could be a creepy and uncomfortable movie at times. YEAR OF THE DOG is a more affirming, bright, and likable. Mike White does a credible job as a whiney Salesman that employs Peggy. For someone who once walked dogs for the Humane Society this movie sure gets it right in showing the neurotic tendencies of animal lovers.

I saw THE CHASE last year and found it very enjoyable, though I haven't had a chance to read the Woolrich book it's based on yet.

It's been a while since I saw CAUGHT, so I avoided reading your review, but I've got a VHS copy of the movie just waiting to be watched.

Re: YEAR OF THE DOG, it wasn't bad, but I wanted to like it more than I ended up doing.

Both CAUGHT and YEAR OF THE DOG can be easy to overrate. It takes a sharp wordsmith to evaluate them. I wish I could do it.