Movie Reviews: The Set-Up

The Set-Up
directed by Robert Wise

This is a taut 1949 film noir by the man who would later go on to direct The Sound of Music. But The Set-Up is not something which is going to have anyone breaking out into song. The Set-Up is set in the brutal world of boxing. Here there are no excuses or explanations, just results. And very few of the boxers achieve anything resembling long term success. 

Many wind up barely better off than they would have been in a 9-5 job while a significant minority are worse off. The boxers are ripped off by the sport's parasitical promoters, managers, and mobsters. Some boxers end up with permanent health issues. Glory and the ability to say they took the best their opponent had to offer and kept moving forward are the motivators for all of these boxers.

Film noir mainstay Robert Ryan is aging boxer Bill "Stoker "Thompson. Stoker's no bum. He's had some ups and downs in his career, but more downs than ups. At thirty-five he's considered an old man by boxing standards. He's getting hit more often than he used to, something has not failed to escape the attention of his loyal wife Julie (Audrey Totter). Julie thinks that Stoker needs to get out of the game before he gets brain damage. 

Television Reviews: Salem's Lot (1979)

Salem's Lot (1979)
directed by Tobe Hooper

This is the three hour television miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's novel of the same name. Although it was directed by the man who became famous for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this movie was tasteful and restrained in its use of violence and sexually charged imagery. There's very little. What there is turns out to be all the more impressive because of its rarity. It's certainly toned down a great deal from King's book, where there are detailed descriptions of gore and exactly what certain perverted bus drivers or preachers want to do to the teen girls they encounter. 

Obviously a lot of these changes were for television, but I never felt the movie was holding anything back either. It manages to scare and occasionally titillate without nudity, much cleavage, or long takes of blood spurting everywhere. It also prunes away and/or combines many of King's characters, simplifies or flattens many of those who remain, and completely alters the novel's urbane but dangerous master vampire to a wordless snarling monster who can never ever ever be mistaken for anything else. 

Despite these changes this miniseries was and remains one of the best adaptations of King's work. This movie is an excellent example of how to move a story from one setting to another. It keeps the major themes and story points. It utilizes the advantages of the new medium while minimizing the losses of the original.

Movie Reviews: While The City Sleeps

While The City Sleeps
directed by Fritz Lang

This is a 1956 crime film noir directed by the famed Fritz Lang, who also helmed such films as M, Metropolis, and The Big Heat, among many many others. Although the film opens with a murder, which provides the surface basis for the story's events, in fact that's really something of a red herring. 

This movie is more concerned with the political and moral battles, internal and external, of a group of media conglomerate executives--think Fox News. There's also a fair amount of romance and sexual skulduggery. 

Although we may often think that women's film roles were always limited and stereotypical in Hollywood's Golden Age, actually the women in this film all have their own agency, get pretty good lines, don't take any stuff off anyone, and exude sex appeal without taking off their clothes. There are some modern directors who could learn from this. 

The film's point of view is that although men and women will often get on each other's last nerve, normal men and women like and need each other. This is in direct contrast to the murderer.

Amos Kyne (Robert Warwick) is an elderly and ailing news mogul who leads the company he founded and which bears his name. His company has three divisions: television, newspaper, and wire service. As are many such men in his position, Amos is a hard charging Type A personality who doesn't take no for an answer. Amos demands that things be done the right way--his way.

Movie Reviews: American Skin

American Skin
directed by Nate Parker

I have written before of how I tire of media sexual assault double standards wielded against Black men. Kobe Bryant hadn't even had a funeral yet before one white actress was calling the untried retired athlete a rapist while conveniently leaving out her gushing adulation of musician David Bowie, who allegedly seduced/raped a thirteen year old groupie. 

Similarly some people have trashed this movie by referring to Parker's acquittal from rape charges two decades ago when he was a college sophomore. Although we are free to believe anything we like I think that we should also try to judge art on its own merits as much as possible. I try to do that whenever I can. I will certainly do that as long as there are such racial double standards.

So, just going by the actual film itself and not what I might think of the actor, was this a must see movie? No. No it wasn't. It was uneven. It was even a little bit of bait and switch. Ok, make that a lot of bait and switch. 

This might be the subject of another post, but as other people have pointed out, it is very difficult to find many mainstream Hollywood films where the Black man is the hero, defeats his enemies, overcomes other internal/external obstacles, gets the girl, is not comic relief, and survives at the end. 

Also, and likely not unrelated to that phenomenon, many of the African-American heroes and great men or great women we learn about in school were those who turned the other cheek, suffered indignity after indignity, and generally went along to get along.

Movie Reviews: Gilda

Gilda
directed by Charles Vidor

This film noir really put the actress Rita Hayworth on the map in terms of exciting sex appeal though by modern sensibilities visually the movie is at worst PG-13. Still, regardless of the times, people are always going to respond to swivel hipped women in high slit sleek evening gowns singing somewhat risque songs. So there is that if you are looking for it. In many aspects this film was a knockoff of Casablanca. 

There's the femme fatale, a nightclub operator with a hidden conscience, and threats from bossy Germans. There is also some subtext which probably wouldn't have been too far out of place in modern films. But in modern film it wouldn't have been subtext at all. I was a little surprised to see it. More on that in a minute.

Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) is a devil may care American gambler and hustler. You can take that second description any way you like. Johnny has made his way down to Buenos Aires, where after having won a lot of money cheating at craps, is rescued from a mugging and beatdown by an older gentleman. This older fellow scares off Johnny's attackers by brandishing his (ahem) walking stick outfitted with a hidden sword. The man admires Johnny's gambling skills and tells him about the best casino in town. But the man advises Johnny not to cheat there.

Casu Martzu: Maggot Cheese

Different cultures have different ideas of what is considered permissible to eat. What is kosher in one culture could be considered disgusting in another. There are too many examples of this to mention. Sometimes even the smell or description of a food which people in one culture consider a delicacy can sicken people from another culture. Some folks get on their high horse and accuse anyone who feels this way of being racist or intolerant or xenophobic. I don't think that's quite accurate. There are individuals with contemptuous feelings towards everyone who is not the same as them who nonetheless enjoy eating at a different ethnic restaurant each week. There are those who believe in all the wonders of multiculturalism who wouldn't be caught dead trying anything too far removed from their teenage palate.

I do know this, though. Although I enjoy many of the various kinds of Italian and for that matter Mediterranean cuisine I am not, repeat NOT eating any kind of food that relies upon the digestive and reproductive processes of flies to give it what some consider a wonderful taste. If I purchased some cheese from the supermarket and upon preparing to consume it, discovered maggots writhing all about inside, I wouldn't be very happy. And the store clerks, managers, and corporate bigwigs would hear all about it. But apparently if there aren't maggots in the cheese Casu Martzu, you just aren't getting your money's worth.

Movie Reviews: The Last Shift

The Last Shift
directed by Andrew Cohn

This indie film is worthwhile watching despite some occasionally muddled themes. I appreciated that this movie didn't neatly resolve everything like an old episode of Scooby Doo or one of those ABC Afternoon Specials. Life is not like that. Sometimes the bad guys win. Sometimes we don't know or agree on who the bad guys are. I thought The Last Shift was realistic, both in casting and in the character depiction and reactions. 

The writing sagged near the end. As mentioned, if you like solid conclusions where everything makes sense and everyone gets what he or she "deserves" then this movie is not that. The Last Shift is also, purposely or not, an extended herky-jerky exposition on why the "class first" focus of people like say Bernie Sanders, doesn't often work in the American political economy. 

This film is set in Albion, Michigan. Stanley (Richard Jenkins) is the night manager of an Albion location of a regional fast food franchise, Oscar's Chicken and Fish (and apparently burgers as well). 

In what could be a nod to co-actor Ed O'Neill's role of Al Bundy, Stanley took this job more or less right out of high school and has remained there for the next forty years or so, give or take. Starting at just over $3/hr back in the day, Stanley has managed to grow his salary to the princely rate of just over $13/hr. Real ambitious hard charging dude, Stanley is. Not.