Movie Reviews: The Garment Jungle

The Garment Jungle
directed by Vincent Sherman

This 1957 noir movie, like the previous film On The Waterfront, was another noir NYC film based on the real life infiltration of organized crime into business. 

On The Waterfront looked into the mob control of shipping and waterfront labor activities, which in real life were in part controlled by Mafia boss Albert "The Lord High Executioner" Anastasia.

The Garment Jungle reviews the mob dominance of clothes manufacturing and fashion distribution, which were then overseen by people like  Mafia boss Tommy "Three Finger Brown" Lucchese and top hoodlum Johnny Dioguardi.

Shortly before this movie was released, Dioguardi arranged for the  acid blinding of a newspaper journalist who was exposing mob control of the New York City garment industry.

The two movies shared a star in Lee J. Cobb. In On The Waterfront Cobb played an extroverted and dangerous hoodlum who was quite similar to Anastasia. In The Garment Jungle, Cobb was equally boisterous but portrayed a garment manufacturer who wanted to keep his shop non-union and wasn't too particular about how he accomplished this. 

Although both movies argue that crime doesn't pay, On The Waterfront is a more radical film. The Garment Jungle  softened its critiques, perhaps because the film studio didn't want to be too pro-worker and be stigmatized with the "Commie" label and because Cobb didn't want his character to be depicted as too bad of a guy.  

Movie Reviews: Crack House

Crack House
directed by Michael Fischa

I guess even icons have bills to pay. In some ways that's reassuring I suppose. In other ways it's sad. Perhaps most people sometimes do things for money. 

I mean most of us have jobs right? Or if we don't we used to or rely on our savings from previous jobs. 

Well when that money gets low and you're an actor perhaps you show up in movies like Crack House. That's about the only way I can understand how former leading men Richard Roundtree (Shaft) and Jim Brown (Slaughter) wound up in movies such as this. 

Now get this straight, considering that this was a Cannon Films production I wasn't expecting much. At the time Cannon Films was owned by Israeli film makers (and cousins) Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus , who were notorious for cheap low budget (but not always low quality) films. But even by Golan: Globus standards Crack House was a pretty s****y movie. The visual quality was poor. 

The sets looked like thrift shop rejects. The lighting was dim. I've seen better cinematography at family birthday parties. 

Female Twins Attempt to Murder Waiter

Some people like to make categorical claims that there is never any reason for violence against women, that no man should ever hit a woman, that any man who does use force against a woman is not a real man and so forth and so on. 

Although I would agree that in a domestic conflict situation no one should initiate violence against anyone else I can't agree that there is never any reason for anyone to use violence against a woman. 

There are, no matter how much both traditionalists and feminists might like to pretend otherwise, some physically aggressive, impulsively violent, and downright dangerous women in this world. 

A recent example of this came to light in a George Webb restaurant near Milwaukee where two women, apparently upset with the speed and quality of their food order, allegedly expressed their displeasure by assaulting, pistol whipping, and shooting the male waiter. 

Twin sisters are facing charges after a restaurant worker was shot in the face because their food was taking too long, Wisconsin detectives said. The twins, both 20 from Milwaukee, were charged with attempted first-degree homicide with a dangerous weapon after the Jan. 30 incident at a George Webb location in Wauwatosa.

Movie Reviews: Clean

Clean
directed by Paul Solet

There are, have been, and likely always will be a number of movies in which a mysterious man is struggling with some past trauma when some criminal makes the mistake of mugging the monster. 

Because this moron didn't realize just who he was f***** with, the mysterious man loses or removes the mental locks and strict imposed inhibitions that were keeping his internal beast leashed, gagged and chained. 

But now, thanks to this big dummy and his greed, ignorance, and total stupidity, the beast is free. 

The old days, the bad days, the all or nothing days are back! And once the beast is free well someone is gonna get his throat ripped out isn't he? 

Many people are going to get turned into red smears on the sidewalk while the beast does what it does best. 

This is the underlying theme of too many movies to mention, including but not limited to Man on Fire, The Equalizer remakes, the John Wick series, Unforgiven, and A History of Violence among others. The difference between Clean and many of the listed films is that Clean does not glamorize the protagonist or show violence as cool or even as deserved --though your mileage may vary on that last one. 

Clean spends a lot of time, maybe too much time in the first three quarters of its duration, hinting at and increasingly showing the costs of what a past life of violence and anger have done to someone. 

I don't think any viewer walks away from this thinking that vengeance or violence are cool. With the exception of his 1987 Buick the protagonist doesn't have any possessions that scream "I'm a baaaaaaaad man!". 

Movie Reviews: Report To The Commissioner

Report To The Commissioner
directed by Milton Katselas

This is a grimy looking NYC cop drama that works the same side of the street as such near contemporary films as Across 110th Street, Serpico, and The French Connection.

Report To The Commissioner and The French Connection shared the same screenwriter in Ernest Tidyman, so perhaps it's not too surprising that the cop played by Yaphet Kotto seems to have a lot in common with The French Connection's Popeye Doyle, right down to the porkpie hat. 

Report To The Commissioner has understated social commentary. By today's standards the language is rough befitting the sort of story this film is trying to tell but the violence is minor and not explicit. 

I haven't been to New York City in decades; I hear that compared to the seventies and eighties everything has been cleaned up and "Disneyfied". 

This 1975 film takes place in the bad old days of live sex shows, garish neon, and big yellow Checker taxicabs. There's an excitement and energy to the film that leaps off the screen even when nothing much is happening. 

That's not something that's easy to pull off. This movie makes New York City look like a smelly rotten den of iniquity full of lowlifes, ripoff artists, and corrupt government officials. It also makes it look like a place you might want to visit though perhaps not live.

Right-Wing Loons Force Closure of National Butterfly Center

When two people can't get along they have to stop living together. 

One underlying reason that people can't get along is that they no longer share the same reality. 

From a societal standpoint two people's personal problems don't mean very much.

But when entire swaths of society reject empiricism, embrace outlandish disproven conspiracies, and seek to harass and intimidate other people based on their distorted reality map then that is a much bigger problem than two people getting upset because they have different ideas about money, child raising, fidelity, or clothing choices. 

Society begins to fall apart when too many people no longer agree on reality.

Conservatives have been on the warpath about race (what else, I may have more to write on that later) but have recently taken a detour to attack the National Butterfly Center. Yes you read that correctly.

Movie Reviews: The Many Saints Of Newark

The Many Saints Of Newark
directed by Alan Taylor

The Many Saints of Newark (TMSOM) is a prequel to the HBO crime drama series The Sopranos. The Sopranos creator, David Chase, produced and wrote, but did not direct this film. With prequels, unless there is some undetailed and exciting narrative that improves the original story, audience interest can flag.

The audience already knows what happened to the major characters in the original story. Skilled creators can find ways around that.  

Instead of examining the young adult Tony Soprano who will become the intimidating (and depressed) boss of the DiMeo Crime Family, TMSON focuses on Tony's mentor, his uncle by marriage, Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), whose translated surname provides part of the film's title and serves as a indicator of the struggle between good and evil that lives in his heart. 

Less successfully TMSON also tries to say something about race, by introducing the character Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr). A Black gangster who was a high school schoolmate (and football teammate?) of Dickie's, Harold now works for Dickie overseeing numbers and gambling rackets in inner city Newark. And I do mean "overseeeing".