The Good Stuff: 2013, Recapp’d

First, the year in me. Rosemarie and I moved to a deluxe apartment in the sky. We won an award. And I published a book. All in all, not a bad twelve months.

2013 was the least active year in the history of ye olde website, and most of the posts were about cocktails. But blogs are dead anyway, as Jason Kottke was the most recent to remind us. Still, I feel bad that I didn’t manage to rattle on about everything I watched, read, listened to or otherwise ingested. Hence, this rambling roster of recommendations, in the order consumed. It is by no means complete; there are highly touted titles I have yet to catch up with, others I’ve seen and am still chewing over. But such lists are always written in the sand, aren’t they? Consider this a snapshot of how I feel on New Year’s Eve. Come New Year’s Day I’ll be another person entirely. And so will you.

Drinking with Men, by Rosie Schaap. A heartfelt memoir about the pleasures and occasional perils of being a regular in a bar near you. My favorite book of the year.

Side Effects. New age noir, slyly updated for the era of prescription drugs. In the words of my friend Ray Banks, “classically sleazy.” And with that, Steven Soderbergh retires.

Noir City. A high point every year. Saw it in both Seattle and Portland this annum!

Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, by Sara Gran. Miss Gran continues to toy with the conventions of the mystery novel even as she probes the deepest mystery. This entry in the best series going is, sadly, the only novel on this year’s list. It was a strange reading year for me.

Behind the Candelabra (HBO). And with that, Steven Soderbergh returns! (I never bought that retirement story for a minute.) Featuring a bravura performance by Michael Douglas as Liberace, it doesn’t stint on the dirt or the garish period details while proving to be a riveting portrait of a long-term relationship falling apart.

Pacific Rim. The movie I always wanted to see when I was eight years old made me feel eight years old again.

The Hitchcock 9. Seeing the Master of Suspense’s first directorial efforts, completely restored and with live musical accompaniment, was an event of the first order. Kudos to the British Film Institute – and to Seattle’s SIFF Cinema, for innovative musical choices and following the series with several days of Hitchcock’s early U.K. sound films.

Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939, by Thomas Doherty. Engaging social history looking back at how the studios and the predominately Jewish moguls who ran them did and did not respond to the rise of Nazism in the years before World War II. Doherty has a thorough understanding of movies and of Hollywood as a business and a community. (Would that the same could be said for Ben Urwand. His shoddy and sensationalistic The Collaboration, which covers much of the same ground, is the worst book I read in 2013.)

Drug War. You can have your superheroes. Give me bad-ass cops. Johnnie To goes to mainland China and makes an epic thriller.

This Town, by Mark Leibovich. The one book that almost makes me say “The one book you have to read.” It serves up in clinical detail why American politics is broken – because once elected, the people who run this country essentially move to a separate realm, one without connection or consequence. Told with the gleeful abandon that only comes when an insider (Leibovich is a longtime political correspondent for the New York Times) decides to set the palace walls ablaze himself.

Blancanieves. A bewitching black-and-white silent film that retells the tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1920s Spain. With bullfighting. I can’t believe it wasn’t more popular.

The Bling Ring. In a year of movies about the hollowing out of the American Dream, Sofia Coppola’s up-to-the-minute look at fame-obsessed teenagers turned bandits takes the prize. Also deserving of consideration in this category: Michael Bay’s underappreciated Pain & Gain.

Rush. Ron Howard returns to his Grand Theft Auto roots and makes the film of his career and my favorite of 2013. Peter Morgan’s script transforms the battle for the 1976 Formula One championship into the essential existential question: how do you live your life? Magnificently photographed by Anthony Dod Mantle, with Daniel Brühl giving the performance of the year as Niki Lauda.

Captain Phillips. Harrowing all the way through, never more so than when the damage has been done; the closing scenes depicting shock are impossible to shake. Tom Hanks at his finest.

Frances Ha. The great dilemma of your twenties – finding your own music to dance to – put on screen in a truly unique way. Greta Gerwig beguiles even while she maddens. Thinking of the final shot puts a smile on my face even now.

A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940, by Victoria Wilson. At times frustratingly thorough, the first of this two-volume biography gives our greatest movie actress the treatment she deserves.

Collision Low Crossers, by Nicholas Dawidoff. A confession: I didn’t watch a single snap of the 2013 NFL season after skipping January’s Super Bowl for the first time in years. One unpleasant story after another – too many deaths of former players with signs of serious brain trauma, the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal, a rash of player suicides culminating in Jovan Belcher’s death by his own hand at the Kansas City Chiefs’ practice facility after he murdered his girlfriend – had drained all pleasure from football for me. Dawidoff’s book chronicling his 2011 season embedded with the New York Jets coaching staff thus came along at an interesting time. Beautifully written and packed with inside info, it perfectly captures football’s grind both on the field and off; George Will was not wrong when he said the sport combines the two worst aspects of American life, namely violence and committee meetings. Coaches and players alike acknowledge the risks inherent in the game and undertake them willingly, but don’t care to discuss them in depth. I feel better about football knowing that. I’m still not planning to watch the Super Bowl, even if the Seahawks are in it.

Six by Sondheim (HBO). A biography in the form of half a dozen songs, and one of the best treatments you’ll ever see of a writer writing.

Nebraska. Alexander Payne’s film (written by Seattle’s own Bob Nelson) is an elegy for a life and an entire way of life – as well as a reminder that time passes for the young as it does for the old. Will Forte should be getting more love for his performance here.

Inside Llewyn Davis. In many respects the evil twin of Frances Ha. Structured like a folk song, which is why it’s going around and round in my head. What happens when you’re good enough to make it – and you don’t make it? It’s also a meta, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-we self-portrait by Joel and Ethan Coen, two artists dogged by questions of likability who may only be able to create with a partner.

Here’s wishing all of you the best in 2014. Thanks for stopping by on occasion. I’ll leave the light on. Odds are I’ll still mostly be talking about cocktails, though.

Movie: Robot & Frank (2012)

Frank Langella wrote one of the odder, more compelling books I read in 2012. He also starred in one of the year’s more underrated movies.

Frank (the character, not the actor) lives alone in bucolic upstate New York, which makes his estrangement from his family and his escalating dementia worse. His son does what he can by buying the old man the latest in near-future amenities: an automated home health care aide (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard). Frank initially resists and resents this chipper microchipped interloper with its insistence on regular schedules and hobbies. But once he sees the robot in action, he decides to return to his old profession – cat burglar – with a new partner. Thus stumbling into a legal gray area not covered by Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.

Don’t let Robot & Frank’s geniality fool you. Beneath its unruffled surface lie some tough-minded thoughts on aging and obsolescence, which are not at all the same thing. The entire cast is fine, especially Langella and Susan Sarandon as the flesh-and-blood librarian that Frank wants to take out more than any of the few remaining print books. With its gentle charm and matter of fact exploration of how advanced technology could be integrated into everyday life, the movie has the feel of a Ray Bradbury story.

Movie: Garden of the Moon (1938)

To begin: Happy New Year!

Then a housekeeping note. 2012 saw the fewest amount of posts in this blog’s history, and over a third of them were of the Cocktail of the Week variety, which I started this year on a whim. I’ll endeavor to update more frequently on a broader range of subjects in 2013, but I make no guarantees. A lot’s going on around here.

As a good faith gesture, here’s a New Year’s Day post on the last movie I watched in 2012. My contribution to the Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies series. I’ve mentioned Garden of the Moon before, but it deserves a post all its own. I’m tempted to call it a noir musical given the principals, but it’s too fizzy for that. It’s a veritable champagne cocktail of a movie, and thus it made ideal New Year’s Eve viewing. I sense a tradition coming on.

Pat O’Brien (Crack-Up) machine guns through his dialogue as the manager of the title nightclub, the most swellegant spot in Los Angeles. He finds himself in a bind when his latest star attraction is waylaid in a motoring accident; it’s an indication of where Garden fell in the Warner Brothers hierarchy that it didn’t rate an appearance from Rudy Vallee, but landed a cameo by his bus. O’Brien books a replacement orchestra led by unknown John Payne (99 River Street, Kansas City Confidential) without telling him he’s merely a placeholder meant to serve two weeks. Payne teams up with the Garden’s publicist Margaret Lindsay in a battle of wits to extend his run.

The script by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay (They Drive By Night) brims with wisecracks, which O’Brien delivers at top volume. Vaudevillian Ray Mayer (High Wall) is one of the members of Payne’s band, along with Johnnie ‘Scat’ Davis and Bob Hope regular Jerry Colonna. Colonna may have been a one-note performer, but what a note!

Dick Powell was originally slated to take Payne’s role, and Bette Davis chose to remain on suspension rather than appear in what she dismissed as a trifle. The film is most notable for being director Busby Berkeley’s last assignment at Warner Brothers. Berkeley has no bevy of showgirls here, no breakout hits. What he does have is a clutch of sharp songs with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Al Dubin and Johnny Mercer, the best of them two novelty numbers performed by a dozen or so guys on a bandstand. Faced with these constraints, Berkeley responds with some of the most inventive staging of his career.

Garden may be silly nonsense from start to finish, but I have tremendous affection for it. It’s one of my favorite movies of the 1930s, and you can buy it from the Warner Archive. To give you a taste, here’s the demented and inspired ‘The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish,’ which would become a Looney Tunes staple whenever a touch of the exotic was required.

Movie: Mike’s Murder (1984)

For years I knew three things about Mike’s Murder, all of them making the film nigh on irresistible to me.

1. It had a test screening so legendarily disastrous that any mention of it to certain key participants turns them green to this day.

2. The compromised version that was tossed into a handful of theaters in 1984 after two years of studio tinkering still gained a fervent cult following. Leonard Maltin, in his always-within-reach Movie Guide, gives the film one-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it “One of the worst movies ever made by a filmmaker of (James) Bridges’ stature ... Escapes BOMB rating only because several critics thought highly of it.”

3. It was impossible to see. Usually movies with flawed reputations surface on cable in the wee hours of the morning, but not Mike’s Murder. It essentially vanished without a trace.

The on-demand Warner Archive made Mike’s Murder one of its early titles. I finally bought a copy and sated my curiosity.

Bridges’ original cut was longer, featuring a fractured narrative, a brutal murder sequence, and a lot more of Joe Jackson’s music. The film that was released was straitjacketed into a more conventional structure with lush John Barry accompaniment. But no amount of second-guessing was going to transform Mike’s Murder into a box office sensation. Not because it’s a dark, downbeat story, but because it tells the tale of losers in a city of winners. Mike’s Murder is not a great movie. But I’d lobby for it to be considered one of the great Los Angeles films, with a seductive, doomy vision all its own. (I’d wager that one person who has seen it is Paul Thomas Anderson; the ‘80s section of Boogie Nights has a similar feel, and Thomas Jane’s character in that film is a doppelganger for one here.)

The critics who loved the movie did so largely because of Debra Winger’s lead performance. She’s sensational as Betty Parrish, a woman who moved to L.A. for sunshine not stardom, a bank teller who still calls her parents when she lands a promotion. Part of the easy SoCal vibe means a hook-up with her tennis instructor Mike (Mark Keyloun). Mike is a looker of modest charm, a happy hustler who does what he can and who he can to get by. Sometimes that means crashing proto-Kato Kaelin-style at the guest house of a minor show biz luminary. Sometimes that means selling small quantities of drugs. Anything to keep alive the dream of flying high in the City of Angels. Mike is a telling gender reversal of a character common in L.A. lore, the young woman who uses sex to get ahead and soon finds herself lost.

Some of the digressive style Bridges intended lingers in the film’s first act. It unfolds hazily, spanning several months without making the passage of time immediately apparent. Bridges’ Los Angeles is a metropolis of low-slung ugly buildings and manicured medians, where life is lived in transit. Betty and Mike cross paths, mix signals, then drift apart for weeks at a time. Until Mike gets murdered following a drug deal.

The particulars aren’t that clear or even that interesting. What matters is that Betty suddenly feels a void where she didn’t even realize there was a presence. It’s here that Winger’s performance occasionally touches the transcendent. She’s not mourning Mike as a person but as a possibility; she’s grieving over the prospect that at some point they might have drifted together for good. She tells another of Mike’s paramours, a record executive played by Paul Winfield, that she loved Mike, but she’s only trying the sentiment on for size. Casting the little-known Keyloun pays dividends. He would leave acting a few years after this movie to work in I.T. Mike’s Murder is his sole cinematic legacy, a quirk that only intensifies the haunted feeling surrounding his character.

Betty doesn’t investigate Mike’s death. She simply wants to know more about the man who’s never going to come back into her life, and that interest puts her in harm’s way. The tense ending includes an only-in-California gambit at once completely ludicrous and wholly plausible. The movie leaves Betty and the audience in an in-between place, where the ground beneath your feet can’t be trusted and there are plenty of clear skies but no clear answers. A place an awful lot like Los Angeles.

Movie: Carancho (U.S. 2011)

Forget the Dos Equis ads. For my money the most interesting man in the world, as well as the best actor, is Argentina’s Ricardo Darín. Criminally charismatic and with a taste for dark material, he starred in the only two films directed by the late, much-missed Fabián Bielinsky as well as my favorite movie of last year. In the now-on-DVD Carancho, he’s working in the shadows again.

Darín plays Sosa, a disgraced lawyer hustling for clients injured in collisions on the lethally dangerous streets of Buenos Aires. The title means “vulture,” and while we don’t actually see Sosa chasing an ambulance he does follow one very closely. He’s not above staging accidents to turn a buck. Doing so brings him into the orbit of Luján (Martina Gusmán), a hard-working doctor concealing a drug addiction. Trapped in a deeply corrupt system, they wonder if they can trust each other – and if so, whether they can make a clean break.

Carancho admirably doesn’t hold the viewer’s hand, although at times I wouldn’t have minded. It’s still unclear exactly why Buenos Aires’ traffic is so deadly, or how Sosa fell to his lowly state. But the intensity of emotion between these two broken people is unmistakable, setting up a hair-raising ending. Noir to its very core and further proof of Ricardo Darín’s unassailable awesomeness, Carancho is not to be missed.

Movie: The Big Bang (2011)

In the wake of an extremely limited theatrical release earlier this month, The Big Bang is now available on DVD. No doubt you’re thinking, “Another particle physics neo-noir? Does Hollywood make anything else?”

Ned Cruz (Antonio Banderas) is a bottom-feeding L.A. private eye having serious doubts about his profession. A boxer surprised to be sprung from prison following a homicide conviction shambles into his office with what should be an easy case: find his stripper penpal. But the Uncertainty Principle is in full effect. Before long Cruz finds himself dealing with Russian mobsters, a trio of angry cops (one played by habitual offender William Fichtner, who steals every movie he’s in), some missing conflict diamonds, and a hippie billionaire (Sam Elliott) who has bought a sizeable chunk of New Mexico to further his quest to discover the God particle.

The gaudy visual scheme deployed by director Tony Krantz is distracting and the polyglot of accents is, in the early going at least, tough to follow. But Erik Jendresen’s script has some genuine wit and cleverness, finding parallels between theoretical physics and detective fiction, between mysteries large (the universe) and small (the human heart). There are amusing riffs on Farewell, My Lovely and Kiss Me Deadly among other classic noirs. Johnny Marr of The Smiths provides the soundtrack. Jimmi Simpson has some good scenes late as Elliott’s boy genius. And Autumn Reeser explains fundamental scientific precepts in a most illuminating manner, featuring highly effective visual aids.

Is The Big Bang good? Probably not. But I was never bored. If you find the notion of Snoop Dogg shooting an existential porn film in Schrödinger’s warehouse amusing, then you may be in this movie’s burgeoning cult following. I’m there, and I hate being alone.

Movies: Hookers, Spies and Grifters

The Economist looks at the current state of home video and finds IFC Films “miles ahead of the big studios” in terms of video-on-demand. Currently available through their IFC Midnight series is X (2011), which offers additional proof that the best genre films are coming from Australia. Holly (Viva Bianca) is a veteran Sydney call girl who vowed to get out of the life by age 30. On her birthday, she’s determined to make good on that promise. Needing a partner to work one of her last appointments with her, she approaches young runaway Shay (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence). Then the job goes horribly wrong, and a very long night begins.

The thriller plot is perfunctory – the villain too broad to be truly scary, the underworld too small – but the film is obviously more interested in its two lead characters. Both actresses are terrific, offering different portrayals of female resilience. The street scenes have an authentic desperation; an encounter with heroin addicts nails their spiteful neediness. Shay’s reasons for running away are laid out in a single, beautifully brief flashback. Director/co-writer Jon Hewitt keeps the action taut and the violence brutal. A tough film with sex placed front and center. In other words, the kind of movie that’s unlikely to be made in America. Here’s the trailer.

While I’m at it, some DVD recommendations. Two recent releases that are better than the Oscar bait films that stole their thunder late last year.

Fair Game. Maybe the wrong-headed belief that we already knew everything about l’affair Valerie Plame et Joe Wilson contributed to this film’s getting lost in the awards season noise. But the script, co-written by sweary playwright Jez Butterworth, wisely keeps the focus on their marriage. The scenes set at the CIA are beautifully deadpan, The Office meets Le Carré. Director Doug Liman channels his typical pell-mell energy into a frame that’s calm but never static. Sean Penn captures Joe Wilson’s self-righteousness, which never mitigates the fact that he was, well, right. And Naomi Watts is magnificent as Valerie Plame, her reliance on traditional American values of loyalty and keeping one’s own counsel painting her into a corner. As strong a performance as I saw in 2010.

I Love You Phillip Morris. Jim Carrey is utterly fearless in this movie – his hairline is proof of that – as a secretly gay cop turned flamboyantly gay con artist. With Ewan McGregor as the fellow convict who makes an almost-honest man out of him, and a very funny Leslie Mann as the ex-wife who finds ways to remain in his life. The movie, based on a true story and co-written and directed by Glen Ficarra and John Requa (Bad Santa), is consistently surprising and frequently moving. Featuring a two-word line of dialogue that’s one of my favorites of last year. You’ll know it when you hear it.

Movies: Whip Round

Tamara Drewe (2010). The latest film from director Stephen Frears slipped briefly into theaters under cover of darkness last year. A funny, sexy, literate romp, it’s well worth catching up with on DVD. Set in and around a writers’ retreat, it throws together a hugely successful and deeply fatuous crime novelist (Roger Allam), his long-suffering wife (Tamsin Greig), an academic constipated in every conceivable sense, the title character (Gemma Arterton) who has returned to the village where she grew up, two teenage girls who are desperate to leave, and a host of other characters. A textured movie that surprises throughout, it’s based on a graphic novel by Posy Simmonds (shrewdly adapted by Moira Buffini) that in turn updates Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. (Not that I am so versed in the work of Thomas Hardy. I had to learn that elsewhere. If it were based on the work of Frank and Joe Hardy, that I would have figured out on my own.) The marketing campaign consisted entirely of Gemma Arterton in hot pants; even though the scene in question lasts only a few moments and makes sense in terms of the story, it’s exploited repeatedly on the DVD’s special features. A splendid sight to be sure, but it sells the movie, um, short. Featuring the best ill-timed will-you-sign-your-book-for-me? moment ever, it’s essential viewing for anyone interested in the literary life.

The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945). This Robert Siodmak film screened at Noir City in San Francisco but didn’t make the trip to the Seattle fest, so I was pleased to find it on Netflix Instant. George Sanders plays Uncle Harry, a New England bachelor who lives in a rambling home with his two sisters. When Harry falls for Ella Raines, Geraldine Fitzgerald decides she’s not going to share her brother with anyone. Psychosexual tension galore, deftly dealt with in the face of the censors of the time. Raines’ character is allowed to be smart, sending the film down some unexpected paths. Sanders is quite touching, and Fitzgerald is, as usual, a powerhouse. The ending, alas, is a complete cheat, but you’ll know the real climax when you see it.

Sleep, My Love (1948). Also streaming on Netflix. The second movie I watched in as many days in which doctored hot chocolate is essential to the plot. Such is the life I lead. Claudette Colbert is a New York socialite who wakes up on a train to Boston with a gun in her purse and no memory of how she got there. What follows is a variation on Gaslight, with Don Ameche as the scheming husband. But it’s served up with uncommon flair, thanks to a sophisticated screenplay co-written by Leo Rosten from his novel and skillful direction by Douglas Sirk before he entered his lush melodrama phase. The movie’s secret weapon is Robert Cummings, his delivery so sharp and fresh his scenes could have been filmed yesterday. Also with the gorgeous Hazel Brooks, hell-bent on finishing her dialogue as quickly as possible.

TV on DVD: Ellery Queen (1975-76)

For a series that only lasted a single season, Ellery Queen casts a long shadow. A cult favorite among mystery fans, the show would occasionally surface on cable but I’d never seen it. With its DVD release late last year, I blitzed through all 23 episodes and wish there were more.

Based on the detective created by cousins Frederick Dannay and Manfred Lee, who also penned the books under that pseudonym (confused yet?), Ellery Queen is a genuine fair play mystery. Crime writer Ellery (Jim Hutton, affability incarnate) helps his detective inspector father (the permanently irascible David Wayne) on some of the NYPD’s most difficult cases. Every clue required to unravel the riddle appears onscreen. In the show’s signature innovation, once the penny drops for Ellery he turns directly toward the camera and asks if you’ve figured it out, helpfully recapping the suspects, key bits of information and even offering a hint. Never before has the pause button on our remote gotten such a workout. As soon as Hutton broke the fourth wall, we’d stop the show and hammer out our theories. Once I even made a sketch of the crime scene.

Co-creators William Link and Richard Levinson bring to bear the same sharp writing they deployed on Columbo. The first few episodes rely heavily on “dying clues,” cryptic bits of information left by the murder victims – the one in the pilot film, Too Many Suspects, verges on preposterous – but as the series progresses it slyly subverts that convention. The show also fully exploits the period 1947 New York setting. The locations and costumes aren’t always convincing but the atmosphere is, blending nostalgia for a bygone age (radio dramas and the Brooklyn Dodgers) with anticipation for the modern era (television).

Each episode brings a fresh cast of special guest stars. Familiar faces from Hollywood’s golden era abound (Vincent Price, Donald O’Connor), with many drawn from the ranks of film noir (Ida Lupino, Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Howard Duff). But the show’s secret weapon is John Hillerman. His rival “radio detective” Simon Brimmer, a cross between Orson Welles and Claude Rains’ character in The Unsuspected, appears in a third of the episodes. Neither as famous as he wants to be nor as smart as he thinks he is, he regularly sets out to unmask the culprit before Ellery does. Hillerman makes a sublime foil, plummy voice and bogus bonhomie setting him up for a fall.

Some favorite episodes:

The Adventure of the Mad Tea Party, a Lewis Carroll-themed show adapted from a Dannay/Lee story

The Adventure of Veronica’s Veils, with George Burns as the victim of the week and a great burlesque background

The Adventure of the Wary Witness, a surprisingly effective minor key outing

The Adventure of the Sinister Scenario, set in Hollywood and taking swipes at earlier screen incarnations of the character

The Adventure of Caesar’s Last Sleep, for finally allowing the long-suffering Sgt. Velie (Tom Reese) to have a moment in the spotlight

If only I’d watched the show in time to ask William Link about it at Bouchercon. To ease my pain, here’s a song that namechecks Ellery Queen. Hat tip to Russell Atwood, whose fine novel East of A is now available as an eBook.

Movie: The Underworld Story (1950)

Over the weekend I read critic David Thomson’s New Republic article on “feel-good noir.” Thanks to Megan Abbott for bringing it to my attention. (Checked out the blog Megan’s running with Sara Gran, the Abbott Gran Medicine Show, yet? It’s well worth your time.) I’m an admirer of Thomson’s but his latest is a windy, broad brush piece. “There are many things corroding America,” Thomson fulminates, “and this endless cultivation of noir must be on the list.” If you say so, but it had better be pretty fucking far down that list. It doesn’t help that Thomson is guilty of the very crime he protests against. Only by the broadest definition can Dennis Lehane’s Moonlight Mile and Ben Affleck’s film The Town, both of which I enjoyed, be considered noir.

Thomson’s sentiments chafed because over the weekend I also encountered genuine noir. Long forgotten, The Underworld Story has been brought back into circulation courtesy of the Warner Archive. It’s based on a story by Craig Rice, whose antic crime novels landed her on the cover of Time magazine. But the only laughs here come from the gallows. The movie whips up a paranoid atmosphere so intense it’s no surprise its director (Cy Endfield), screenwriter (Henry Blankfort) and one of its stars (Howard Da Silva) would soon be blacklisted.

When a story by reporter Mike Reese (Dan Duryea) about a witness against a crime boss gets that witness killed, he becomes the fall guy for the paper’s higher-ups. Non grata in his chosen profession, Reese waltzes into the office of the crime boss (the blazing Da Silva) to ask for payment for the service he unintentionally rendered. Reese uses the money to buy a stake in a suburban rag for people who like to see their names in print. Then he strikes pay dirt with a juicy society murder. The victim: the daughter-in-law of one of the press moguls (Herbert Marshall) who refused to give him a job. It’s immediately revealed that the killer is Marshall’s own son (Gar Moore), and that both men are perfectly willing to allow the family’s poor African-American maid to take the blame for the crime.

The Underworld Story captures several dynamics at play in the wake of World War II: the rise of the suburbs, the shift to either the trivial or the sensational in news. It also manages to shake one’s faith in every major American institution. The Fourth Estate? Reese’s initial plan for his new paper is to shake down his own advertisers. He brokers the maid’s surrender to the authorities only to claim the reward money. When that fails, he sets up a defense fund in her behalf so he continue to control the story and rake in chips. He ends up on the side of the angels simply because he’s got nowhere else to go. The lawyer who takes the maid’s case does so only for the publicity and the fee he’s splitting with Reese. The crusading D.A. puts his grudge against the reporter ahead of his responsibilities. And don’t expect any help from the top of the food chain. Marshall marshals the town’s elite and has them boycott the paper, using his influence to stifle debate. In a bone-chilling scene, respected citizens stand outside Duryea’s office glaring at him after the place has been vandalized, making it clear that they’ll escalate their tactics if necessary. The movie’s vision of a world dictated by bureaucracy and self-interest make it play like a proto version of The Wire.

It’s not a perfect film. Gale Storm doesn’t do much with the bland role of Reese’s new partner, Gar Moore is a vague presence as the killer, and the casting of a white actress as the maid (along with some strange dubbing in the scenes in which her character’s race is discussed) is jarring. But it’s a potent work that asks a lot of unsettling questions about where America was heading. When it’s over, nobody feels good.

Movies: Noir On Demand

Netflix has been bulking up its Instant Viewing service for some time now. But a recent post on the Film Noir Foundation forum brought home just how many once obscure, still unavailable on video titles are now a mouse click away.

Among the movies currently streaming on Netflix: the personal favorite Cry Danger, Ed McBain’s Cop Hater, the haunting Moonrise, John Payne in Phil Karlson’s 99 River Street, the Gold Medal adaptation Johnny Cool, Down Three Dark Streets and The Killer is Loose.

My first dip into this treasure trove was 1956’s Crime Against Joe, a film I’d never heard of before. Joe is a battle-fatigued veteran struggling to make it as a painter while being “subsidized by (his) hardworking mother.” He chooses a bad night to get hammered while seeking out a nice girl to bring home to meet Mom; a nightclub singer he flirted with is murdered, and Joe doesn’t have an alibi. At a trim 69 minutes the film is more like an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but a good one. John Bromfield’s beefy bafflement works well in the title role, and Julie London is a fetching carhop named Slacks. There’s a strong feel for small town life in the supporting characters like the local businessman with an outsized sense of propriety and Frances Morris as Joe’s mother, who dotes on her boy but still thinks him capable of dark deeds.

Next up, a chance to revisit Private Hell 36 (1954). Like most of director Don Siegel’s films, it offers extreme pressure in close quarters. Cal and Jack (Steve Cochran, the slightly-better-off man’s John Bromfield, and Howard Duff) are L.A. cops chasing down three hundred grand in cash. Their only lead is faded chanteuse Lilli Marlowe (Ida Lupino, who co-wrote the script). Cal gets the hots for Lilli and pockets some of the stolen loot, assuming no questions will be asked. Except, of course, by the partner he drags into his crime. The result is a tense, sweaty affair with recriminations galore. For added frisson seek out James Ellroy’s 1997 novella “Hollywood Shakedown,” which reimagines the film’s production in sin-sational style.

And there’s more crime coming. Next year VCI Entertainment will bring The Prowler, restored in part by the FNF, to DVD. And as of yesterday the remastered Richard Stark adaptation The Outfit, starring Robert Duvall as Parker (renamed Macklin), is available from the DVD-on-demand Warner Archive. Special thanks to John Hall for giving me the tip-off before the Archive did.

Movies: Animal Kingdom/The Square (U.S. 2010)

Why haven’t I posted lately? Blame competing deadlines, promising developments, and the busiest weekend of my life. I spent the last few days at the Penny Arcade Expo, directing willing con-goers before a green screen in vignettes that may allow them to be background characters in a video game. Am I a director? No. But I’ve seen more movies than anyone else at the company, so the assignment naturally fell to me.

I put more than 300 people through their paces in three days, and for the most part the cast seemed to enjoy themselves. It’s surprisingly exhausting work. You wouldn’t think telling other people what to do would be so draining. Fortunately I remembered an essential piece of directorial advice I’d heard years ago: wear sensible shoes.

Here’s another tidbit that some of you are already aware of. They know how to make crime dramas in Australia.

In theaters now is Animal Kingdom, which I’ve been waiting for since seeing the trailer. (NOTE: You will never hear Air Supply the same way again.) In David Michôd’s electrifying film, a teenaged boy is returned to his distant extended family of armed robbers. Michôd never shows us their crimes; it’s as if they’re wanted primarily because of a grudge on the part of a deeply crooked police force. Every performance is worthy of praise. There’s Guy Pearce’s understated honest detective, Jacki Weaver as the mother who loves her sons too much. Ben Mendelsohn’s Uncle Pope is the most realistic criminal this side of Elmore Leonard, a man whose ruthlessness is made necessary because of his stupidity. It’s all held together by James Frecheville, unbelievably making his debut. His Joshua is a heartbreakingly real teen, all awkward impulses and silences. Frecheville’s face actually seems to physically change onscreen as he feels his way through a treacherous world with no one to rely on but himself.

Joel Edgerton has a key supporting role in Kingdom. He co-wrote and co-stars in The Square, directed by his brother Nash and now available on DVD. It starts with a conventional noir premise: two lovers married to other people and desperate for escape, and the promise held by a bagful of cash. Unlike many neo-noirs there’s not a wink in the entire enterprise. The Square has a true blue collar sensibility. The lives of these people would in fact be changed by the relatively meager sum of money involved, so the stakes are that much higher. And the small town setting, where everyone knows everyone else, only ratchets up the claustrophobic feel. Two relentless films, beautifully engineered.

DVD: New York Confidential (1955)

New York Confidential was once thought of as “the holy grail of missing noir films.” The only thing harder than finding a decent print was untangling who owned the rights. Both problems have been solved, and the movie finally debuted on DVD last month.

One of the many exposé films made in the wake of the Kefauver hearings into organized crime, NYC packs a dizzying amount of story into a fast-paced 87 minutes. I would expect no less from the team of Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse, also responsible for the sublime trash of Wicked Woman.

The movie prefigures The Godfather and Point Blank in terms of depicting the rackets as a corporate enterprise. The coiled spring that is Richard Conte plays a syndicate man from Chicago with the unimpeachably badass name of Nick Magellan. He’s sent to the Big Apple when boss Frank Lupo (Broderick Crawford) needs an outsider to handle some dirty work, and quickly makes himself indispensible.

The revelation of NYC is Anne Bancroft, whose Kathy is desperate to escape the stigma of being Lupo’s daughter. For a brief period early in her career Bancroft was groomed as the next Ava Gardner. She didn’t care for the roles but she was awfully good at them, as evidenced by her sexy and heartbreaking performance here. The DVD also features an informative commentary track by my Noir City Sentinel cohort and friend Alan K. Rode and Kim Morgan that’s well worth a listen.

On a related noir on home video note: the Red Riding trilogy comes out today, and should be in your queue already.

DVD: Discs I Should Have Mentioned Last Month

Night Train to Munich (1940). It’s hard to believe that a thriller written by the team of Gilliat & Launder (The Lady Vanishes) and directed by Carol Reed (Odd Man Out, The Third Man) could be forgotten. Luckily the Criterion Collection has rescued it from oblivion. A Czech munitions expert is able to flee the German invasion of his homeland, but his daughter (Margaret Lockwood) is left behind. She escapes a prison camp and makes her way to England, where her father is under the watch of singing spy Rex Harrison. (OK, he doesn’t sing, exactly. He sort of ... Rex Harrisons it.) Only her lucky break isn’t what it appears to be. Soon Harrison is in Germany, masquerading as a Nazi officer mere hours before war is declared, trying to spirit Lockwood and her father back to freedom. It’s grand entertainment in the Hitchcock mode: romantic badinage (of a sort, given that the prickly, preening Harrison only loves himself), derring-do and a slam-bang climax at an exotic locale. Charters and Caldicott, the upper-crust gents played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne in several films beginning with The Lady Vanishes, lend a stiff upper lip here.

It Came From Kuchar (2009). Jennifer Kroot’s engaging documentary about the brothers George and Mike Kuchar, stars of the 1960s underground film circuit – John Waters cites their alternative take on Hollywood genres as a huge influence – who have never stopped making movies and plundering their own lives for material. (For decades George has taught a legendary hands-on course in filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute.) A low-key look at the obsessive need to create.

Movie: Mother (U.S. 2010)

Joe Queenan is the latest to claim that “2010 is the worst year in the history of motion pictures.” I disagree. I’d call 2010 a banner year, nay, an embarrassment of riches ... provided you’re talking about first-rate crime dramas from outside the United States. Yet another example is now on DVD.

The middle-aged title character in Mother doesn’t have a name, only a responsibility: taking care of her mentally-impaired son Do-joon. When a schoolgirl is murdered in their South Korean town and circumstantial evidence points toward Do-joon, the police are content not to look any further. His mother, however, is determined to get justice for the son to whom she has devoted her life, even if it means conducting her own investigation and angering local hoodlums. Hye-ja Kim is a powerhouse as a woman who has spread herself thin only to discover that she hasn’t come close to reaching her breaking point. Director Bong Joon-ho, now three-for-three after the cracked police procedural Memories of Murder and the monster movie The Host, has scaled down his ambitions but made his most emotionally satisfying film yet.

And for the record, Mr. Queenan, I would see The Four Amigos. There are plenty of questions the first movie didn’t answer.

Movie: Le Professionel (1981)

One of Ennio Morricone’s most famous compositions is Chi Mai. I’ve listened to it for years without seeing Le Professionel, the film for which it was composed. (The same music turned up as the title theme for a BBC series about David Lloyd George, but Le Professionel used it first.) Then I learned that the film was an early writing credit for Jacques Audiard, who made this year’s brilliant A Prophet. To the top of the queue it went.

I was in love before this title sequence was over. But don’t expect vintage fromage. Something much stranger is at work here.

Jean-Paul Belmondo, of the easy, insincere smile and the face that hangs on his skull like a poorly-sized Mission: Impossible mask, plays a French secret agent sent to assassinate an African despot. But the situation on the ground is, how you say, fluid, and the French government not only calls off the hit but offers up Belmondo to stay in the dictator’s good graces. After years in captivity, Belmondo escapes and alerts his former superiors that he’s going to complete his assignment – and on French soil.

Think of it as The Bourne Identity without the amnesia. Or, considering the incompetence and rampant political incorrectness on display, a po-faced OSS 117 movie. But it’s also about a disgruntled intelligence operative having fun at his agency’s expense, so maybe it’s Hopscotch with a body count.

Le Professionel is also a demented parody of star vehicles. Belmondo is not just, as they say, the guy men want to be and women want to be with. He is infallible, outthinking, outplaying and outlasting all comers. He is somehow always one step ahead and forever looking over his adversary’s shoulder.

It’s a sign of how nuts the movie is that we’re tipped to Belmondo’s unfettered awesomeness by a racist wheelchair-bound crank. There’s an edge of unpredictability throughout, along with healthy deposits of sleaze. (Exhibit A: the interrogation that wandered in from an Ilsa movie.) The Foley work is a bit heavy; when Belmondo punches a guy it sounds like a Fiat sideswiping a cow. A rough-and-tumble high-speed pursuit through the streets of Paris teases us with a car carrier that’s never a factor, in clear violation of everything Chekhov taught us about car chases.

The writing is sharp – I loved Belmondo’s manipulation of the press as a way out of a jam – and darkly comic, paying off in an ending so cynical that only the French could get away with it. And, of course, there’s Morricone’s music. The perfect thing if you’re after a different, wider-lapelled kind of spy movie.

Movies: The Missing Person (2009)/44 Inch Chest (U.S. 2010)

Playing catch-up with a pair of interesting new-to-DVD crime films. One was never released theatrically in this neck of the woods. The other’s entire engagement took place while I was in the bathroom.

The Missing Person is an offbeat, novella-scaled movie. Oscar nominee Michael Shannon plays an ex-NYPD cop turned Chicago shamus, hired by a slippery lawyer and his associate (fellow Oscar nominee Amy Ryan, doubling as producer) to shadow a man on a train to Los Angeles. It’s a sort of post-9/11 noir, Dashiell Hammett’s Flitcraft Parable as told by Paul Auster. Noah Buschel’s movie toys with private eye conventions rather than subverting them; Shannon is led astray by a sexy dame (Margaret Colin, whom I’ve always loved), gets knocked out cold, and finds himself criticized for making wisecracks no one understands. Shannon’s quietly forceful performance is the reason to watch this one. The awed way he says, “This kid blocks the plate like Thurman Munson” while watching a little league game slayed me. Plus the movie has the great good sense to feature Joe Lovano.

The writers and two stars of Sexy Beast reunite for 44 Inch Chest, which unspools like the foulest mouthed Harold Pinter play ever. Hard case Col (Ray Winstone), bereft when his wife (Joanne Whalley) leaves him for a younger man, kidnaps loverboy and spends the next few hours deciding what to do with him. He’s aided, abetted, and egged on in his endeavors by his querulous crew of Ian McShane, Tom Wilkinson and Stephen Dillane. Plus John Hurt, who is given dentures, the better to gnaw on the scenery. At the heart of the talk is men’s fear of love, of vulnerability, of any perceived weakness. Be forewarned that there is some truly world-class profanity on display, never more so than in the scene where the boys end up essentially spouting their sexual fantasies about Col’s missus in the idiotic belief they’re helping their mate’s cause. A scabrously funny movie with some real insight into the male psyche. Don’t skip the epilogues feature on the DVD.

DVD: Over-Exposed (1956)/Women’s Prison (1955)

How do you solve a problem like Cleo Moore?

The Marilyn Monroe manqué appeared as trouble in tights in a few ‘50s films. Christa Faust saw Strange Fascination at Noir City Los Angeles and noted that Cleo “had an astounding build, but she looks disturbingly like a Cabbage Patch sex doll or a female version of Arch Hall Jr.” This description is both disturbing and weirdly accurate. When Alan K. Rode, an organizer of said Noir City fest, called Janis Carter the Courtyard by Marriott of femmes fatale – “always credible, dependable and frequently underrated” – I asked him who the Hampton Inn in this metaphor was. He said Cleo. I can only assume this means Cleo is close to the highway and offers On The Run breakfast bags.

Several of Cleo’s movies appear in Columbia’s recent Bad Girls of Film Noir collection. Two of them, both directed by Lewis Seiler, appear on the same disc, and they’ve made me a Cleo fan.

In Over-Exposed, Cleo tackles the role she was born to play – and I mean tackled, because the woman had shoulders like Jason Taylor. (Speaking of which: welcome to the Jets, big man!) She’s Lily Krenshka, clip joint honey turned swimsuit model who reinvents herself as fashion photographer/blackmailer Lila Crane. Cleo is saddled with telegraphed plot twists, Richard Crenna as a wheedling boyfriend, and dialogue that indicates a pathological fear of subtext; when given her first camera, she declares, “I can use it as a jimmy. It’ll open doors for me.” It’s vigorous sleaze, and Cleo’s right at home in it.

Cleo has a minor role in Women’s Prison. Even with those shoulders she can’t muscle more screen time from this cast. You’ve got Ida Lupino as the hard-edged and possibly insane warden. Audrey Totter as a married con with a husband on the men’s side of the wall. Phyllis Thaxter as a hausfrau who can’t hack it in stir, a character the movie loses interest in as soon as we do. Future Oscar nominee Juanita Moore as an inmate named after the hospital where she was born, Polyclinic Jones. Best of all is Jan Sterling – the Ramada Inn of femmes fatale, according to Alan – as the brassy blonde who shows new fish the ropes. Even Chez K fave Gertrude Michael is along for the ride as the screw with a heart.

Women’s Prison is a cheesy issue picture, striking the balance between just good enough and just bad enough to be thoroughly entertaining. Watch it for the scene in which noble doctor Howard Duff calls Lupino a psychotic jealous of her charges because they, at least, have experienced a man’s love – and know that the two actors were married at the time.

Movie: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant. Along with Frequency, it’s on the very short list of movies in which the New York Mets are essential to the plot. I revisited the film last year and while Harvey Keitel’s performance is still galvanizing, it didn’t hold it up as well I’d hoped. It’s very Catholic, and I bring that to the table already. And the truth is a lot of movies from the ‘90s indie film heyday don’t date very well.

You don’t need to have seen version one to make sense of Werner Herzog’s in name only sequel. You may not make sense of it anyway. But I loved every minute of it.

Nicolas Cage is the title cop. His Terrence McDonagh is no angel at the outset, but after wrenching his back rescuing a prisoner in the wake of Hurricane Katrina he becomes addicted to painkillers and that accelerates his downward spiral. McDonagh is a dogged but demented detective, determined to find out who murdered an immigrant family while juggling his own criminal endeavors and indulging various appetites.

Cage is almost the whole show here, harking back to his wild, early, Vampire’s Kiss-era performances. His enthusiasm for silent film acting comes across in his walk, which had my back aching after ten minutes. His accent devolves as the movie progresses; halfway through he sounds like Tony Clifton. But his hell-for-leather inventiveness is given a sturdy framework courtesy of the script by TV veteran William M. Finklestein (who saves a few choice lines for himself as a weary gangster).

The movie’s funny, weird, and subversive. The scene in which Cage’s many problems are resolved rat-a-tat-tat plays like some deadpan existential sitcom, as if Samuel Beckett wrote an episode of My Two Dads. Ferrara’s film may come across as more serious; every minute he’s on screen Keitel is wrestling with demons, while Cage merely seems to be playing footsie with fate. Then you get to Port Of Call’s ending, which is moving, even transcendent. I don’t know if Port of Call is a joke or a work of art. I can only say that I enjoyed it tremendously.

Keenan’s Klassics: The Money Trap (1965)

Is that second K too much? Rosemarie thinks it’s too much.

In honor of Noir City Los Angeles and the pending release of Warner Brothers’ fifth Film Noir Classic Collection, the Warner Archive is running a sale. Thirty percent off select noir titles through April 19.

I wondered via Twitter why The Money Trap wasn’t on the list. In short order the situation was rectified. Thus did I single-handedly save consumers $5.99 and prove the utility of Twitter. No need to thank me.

Here’s a post from July 2007 explaining why this underrated film is as noir as they come.

Funny how these things work. When the question of forgotten pop culture personalities was raised at Hollywood Elsewhere earlier this month, Glenn Ford was one of the first names mentioned. And not without reason. Then the other day, author George Pelecanos wrote a heartfelt tribute to him, saying that “Ford, more than any other screen actor, is the paternal stand-in for a generation of boys whose fathers served in World War II” and praising the “quiet, confident masculinity that could only have come from someone who had nothing to prove.”

He’s ripe for reappraisal, with Russell Crowe taking over for Ford in his prime in the upcoming remake of 3:10 To Yuma. At Noir City I saw the young Ford in Framed. Time for a film from later in his career.

The Money Trap is an unheralded noir with an offbeat pedigree. Director Burt Kennedy is better known for comic westerns. Walter Bernstein adapts a novel by Lionel White (The Killing). Ford plays a weary detective married to a wealthy younger woman (Elke Sommer). The missus begins having cash flow problems just as Ford is handed the case of a thief gunned down in front of an empty safe by connected physician Joseph Cotten. The thief’s dying words have Ford convinced that the safe wasn’t originally empty, and that if Ford can somehow steal the contents Cotten won’t be able to go to the police.

I’m not claiming that The Money Trap is a neglected masterpiece. The plot’s a bit lumpy, and the only thing missing from the opening sequence – Ford and partner Ricardo Montalban rocketing through the rain to a murder scene at a brothel, complete with brassy jazz soundtrack – is a narrator intoning, “A Quinn Martin Production.” But it’s a good movie. More to the point, it’s a bracingly adult one, about sex and money and the need to make a name for oneself.

It has a healthy appreciation for sleaze, always a plus in a thriller. The magnificently fleshy Sommer undressing just at the edge of the frame, loads of shots of curvy women in garter belts.

That sleaze is tied to what drives the movie: Ford’s repressed paranoia that living off his wife’s money has diminished him as a man. At one point Ford looks up the thief’s widow, a woman from the neighborhood he has a history with, played by Rita Hayworth. Ford and Hayworth appeared together several times, most memorably in Gilda. They put that history to work for them in an extraordinary scene in which they compare how their lives haven’t matched the dreams of their youth and end up sleeping together one last time. Neither actor indulges in vanity, the weathered hunk and the ravaged beauty giving each other some small bit of comfort in the long night.

Black-and-white films from the mid-to-late ‘60s seem to carry a sense of their own futility. You can feel history shrugging its shoulders and asking, “Why aren’t you in color?” In a film noir that feeling is only intensified, moreso one with leads in the twilight of their careers. Stumbling onto The Money Trap was like discovering ghosts struggle with their problems, certain in their belief that no one was watching.