Time Crimes

Directed by Nacho Vigalondo (2007) Starring: Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernandez, Barbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo

Time Crimes is one of a slew of smart science fiction from the past decade that is making me wonder if we’re going through a genre revolution the same way the late sixties had a stylistic change in film.  Instead of the American Independent movement, I think this one will be international in scope.  As a genre, Science Fiction will become known for its sharp plots, which for Time Crimes is its selling point.

As one sustainable time loop, set in the same location the film introduces a lot of itself within the first fifteen minutes.  Hector (Elejalde) has just moved into his new house with his wife Clara (Fernandez).  He gets a mysterious phone call that afternoon, but ignores it.  Later, he spies a woman in the woods and follows her, but is attacked by a man wearing a bandage across his face.  While trying to escape, he runs into a mad scientist and gets caught up in his time travel experiment.

While we don’t get a big glimpse into a future filled with flying cars or a mining station on the moon, Time Crimes is every bit as imaginative.  It takes the idea of time travel and controls it to a tight loop, where every event has to occur exactly as it happened to Hector originally.  He has to deal with the idea that there are multiples of himself existing in one time frame and it drives him a little nuts.  It’s a tight Spanish thriller and an excellent watch for a summer night.

Criminal Law

Directed by Martin Campbell (1988) Starring: Gary Oldman, Kevin Bacon

My immediate reactions to this movie? 1) Gary Oldman’s hair was really distracting and 2) It’s a Yuppie movie.  Ben Chase (Oldman) is defending Martin Thiel (Bacon) for murder.  He gets him off, but the murders begin again.  Chase has to face the consequences, including what it means to be a “friend” to a violent murderer.

All of the characters are grade-A, 1980′s yuppies.  Thiel is the son of old-money, his mother a successful obstetrician-gynecologist.  Ben Chase used to be a prosecutor, until he realized that going into defense could better fund his grey apartment.  Let’s put it this way: He plays racket ball.  Nothing more yuppie or 80s than that.

The first half is largely uninteresting.  There’s a blonde lady prosecutor who acts as some kind of moral guidepost for Chase to ignore and we see him celebrating the big win before getting a phone call from Thiel to meet him in a park, where he trips over a dead, burning body.  Not only does the murder signal Thiel’s return, but also forces Chase to question his career of defending the guilty.  He also meets the roommate of the victim, who becomes the romantic interest and active lady character in the better latter half.

Martin Thiel’s motivation is related to his mother’s job, or one segment of it: She performs abortions, working for clinics around the city.  Thiel sees these as “little murders,” and he picks his victims from his mother’s patients.  The last twenty minutes or so are devoted to this aspect, as Chase joins the hunt for evidence to send Thiel to prison for the recent murders.

It’s not much of a thriller, except for two key scenes.  If you want to see a bizarre performance from Mr. Oldman’s hair, you’ve found yourself the right movie.

 

Double Feature: Joseph Cotton

Many moons ago, when I watched Citizen Kane for the first time, I wasn’t terribly interested by Orson Welles’ performance.  Crazy, right?  But it was another Mercury actor who caught my eye– the wonderful Joseph Cotton.  For this Double Feature, I figured that some of his best and earliest work makes for a great comparison between his various roles.

The Third Man (1949) Directed by: Carol Reed

The Third Man is considered to be one of the best film noirs out there, set in post-war Vienna.  Cotton plays Holly Martins, a writer of pulp westerns, who has come to Europe with the promise of a job by his friend Harry Lime.  Unfortunately, the day he arrives is Lime’s funeral.  While the police are willing to let go of Lime’s death as an accident, Holly digs deeper, becoming involved in Lime’s inner circle and learning about the mysterious “Third Man.”

There’s a lot about The Third Man which makes a wonderful film– the strong shadows, the famous ferris wheel scene, and the true nature of Harry Lime’s business affairs.  While Holly is the main character, the film is dominated by Lime.

In comparison, Holly Martins seems almost helpless– an alcoholic, out of work writer, who the side characters mostly push around with false leads or coddle him on and off.  Almost every time he sees the police Martins is convinced that it’s best for him to take the next plane back to the U.S. in the morning.  However, in contrast to Lime, Martins is infinitely likable, the last good guy in a post-war world.  His determination to exonerate Lime is echoed later with his desire to be close to Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), when the world wants to keep him in shadows.

Even if you’re not a big fan of Joseph Cotton, The Third Man is just one of those movies that is enormously fun to watch.  It’s a smart mystery penned by author Graham Greene and is character and plot driven.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Unlike the likable Holly Martins, Uncle Charlie is a  nihilistic serial killer.  He visits his family in Santa Rosa in order to escape from police.  Charlotte (Teresa Wright), the eldest niece, becomes the only one to know her uncle’s secret.

As one of Hitchcock’s earlier films, Shadow of a Doubt doesn’t have some of his usual signatures– no Bernard Herrmann score, no Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart, not even a cool blonde.  However, it does have a weird family dynamic, something green (in this case, an emerald ring), and vague psychology, all of which is evident in later films by Hitchcock.

Seeing Shadow of a Doubt is realizing just how good Joseph Cotton is at playing a villain.  Uncle Charlie is nihilistic, obsessive, and crafty.  The only love he seems to show is for the Santa Rosa- Family’s idyllic lifestyle, where everyone is busy.  It’s evident that he doesn’t care for anyone when he quickly turns on his neice.

If you’re ever in need of a Hitchcock fix, Shadow of a Doubt is one of the best.  The story draws a distinct line between Charlie’s big-city worldview and the idealized, small-town America applied to Santa Rosa, but each character is very unique while still fitting into the Hollywood mold.  The father’s favorite hobby is discussing various ways to commit murder with their neighbor and the youngest niece is a voracious reader who shows almost no care at all for anyone else in the plot.  The mother is sweet, but very flighty, although she seems to guess at her brother’s secret in one short scene before dismissing it.

Joseph Cotton proved early on that he was a versatile actor, able to perform good guys and villains, attracting the attentions of talented directors, big studios, and fellow actors.  Suffice it to say, I am looking forward to seeing some more of his filmography very soon.

Killing Emmett Young

Killing Emmett Young/Emmett’s Mark

Written & Directed by Keith Snyder (2002)

Starring: Scott Wolf, Tim Roth, Gabriel Byrne

Emmett Young (Wolf), a homicide detective in Philadelphia, gets the news that he is suffering from a mortal disease after a simple blood test.  He is given less than a month to live, but when he meets a stranger named Jack Marlow (Byrne), he decides to take death into his own hands and hires someone to kill him.  While in his last days, a violent homicide has absorbed his focus as his last deed.

Marlow, meanwhile, goes to an acquaintance Frank Dwyer (Roth), who is a down and out ex-cop currently working as a security officer.  Frank is unwilling to kill a man, but the need for money wins out.  He agrees, with Marlow belittling him along the way.

The process of Frank preparing to murder Emmett is matched with his investigation of the homicide.  Emmett becomes absorbed entirely in what he assumes is his final case.  He’s hoping he can wrap it up in the five days he’s given himself.

I gravitated more to the Frank Dwyer portions of the movie, really.  Emmett’s story holds up really well for fans of crime shows– anyone who’s a fan of Law & Order and its various spin offs will find an interesting story there.  Frank is more of a psychological study; we see him in his small apartment, going out on dates, glimpses of his past as a former police officer.

Killing Emmett Young is a fair enough movie about two men.  The washed out visuals and Philadelphia location makes for an intriguing urban crime story, as much about how mistakes in life can have larger consequences as about a hit.

The 39 Steps

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1935) Starring: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle, Wylie Watson

When an attractions show is interrupted by gunfire, Canadian Richard Hannay (Donat) is asked by glamorous spy Annabelle (Mannheim) to come with him.  She tells him that she’s a counter-agent, who must get a secret related to the 39 Steps before it leaves the country.  She becomes murdered during the night, launching him into a quest in Scotland while evading the police.

Robert Donat is charming as Hitchcock’s Wrong Man in this film.  He goes back and forth between cocky black humor and dead-serious action very well, fitting into the narrative well as the hero.  On the train, he makes an attempt of avoiding the police by kissing the first woman he sees–Pamela (Carroll), who doesn’t take kindly to the interruption.  They wind up connected in the third act after Hannay gives a hilarious forced political speech at a rally.

While The 39 Steps contains many themes that Hitchcock returns to over his career, the film is middling for the director.  The winning aspects are all in Donat’s performance and the climatic scene.

Shallow Grave

Directed by Danny Boyle (1994) Starring: Christopher Eccleston, Ewan McGregor, Kerry Fox

When three flatmates interview for a fourth, he ends up dead the next morning with a suitcase full of cash.  While David (Eccleston) wants to call the police, Alex (McGregor) and Juliet (Fox) would prefer to spend the money.  All three decide to hide the body, but unfortunately two thugs are out looking for their stiff.

Shallow Grave plays out like a Hitchcock film.  The three flatmates are young professionals and close friends, who seemed to have only started interviewing for a fourth in order to play pranks on the interviewees.  Alex comes up abrupt, rude, and a serial slacker, constantly criticizing David for this high-strung tendencies.  Juliet mostly looks on coolly from above, often acting as a mediator between the two.

The reactions to finding the dead body is immediately shock, followed by greed once the suitcase is discovered.  From his position as a journalist, Alex knows how to hide the identity of a body through cutting off the hands and feet and destroying the teeth.  By drawing straws, David is assigned the gruesome task, but that seems to send him over the edge of sanity.

Boyle has created another psychodrama that pits young, intelligent people against a tough moral situation.  Moral roles for the characters become reversed and their actions become more desperate.  A few paranoid scenes with inspectors coming around create a very “Tell-Tale Heart” feel, while the structure of the apartment and the consistent discussion gives off more of a Rope-like atmosphere.

On the more shallow note, it’s fun to see these early-nineties fashions.  I mean, Mullet McGregor? Love it!  In a weird, weird way.

Shutter Island

It’s not relevant anymore! Let’s talk about it anyway!

Shutter Island (2010) Dir. Martin Scorsese Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Jackie Earle Haley

Eddy Daniels (DiCaprio) is a U.S. Marshal sent to the asylum at Shutter Island in order to find a missing patient.  He’s joined by a new partner, Chuck (Ruffalo) and is trapped on the island during a sudden storm.  The patients are the most violent of their kind, but Daniels sees threats and elaborate conspiracies behind every corner of the threatening hospital.

There’s a lot in the film, mainly because it’s so long!  With a run time of 138 minutes, there’s a lot of claustrophobic psychodrama plot to get through.  The tone is set in the approach to the island, with DiCaprio and Ruffalo watching as the island approaches, dressed in fedoras and trench coats with dialogue that sounds like it’s from the best film noir.

If I had to list a problem with the film, it would have to be that it relies on DiCaprio’s character a little too much.  While it makes sense in the story to have everything from his point of view, I think this is just me, being bored with DiCaprio.  The hallucinatory sequences with Williams were exceptionally well done, but when Daniels is just combing the island, it gets dull.  The intense landscape, complete with sharp cliff faces and a derelict cemetery, works as a fascinating backdrop, but it doesn’t help much when there are scenes after scenes with Daniels quickly spouting conspiracy theories and back story.

And the thing is, you’ve got DiCaprio being all crazy-face, but then Ruffalo or Kingsley comes in and acts circles around him without a ton of dialogue to get through.  I’m a bit biased because I like Ruffalo going in, but it is apparent.  I will say that I thought DiCaprio did really well with the material and he’s a strong actor, but the conspiracy jargon thrown at you at certain points wears on the nerves.  A really great example of this is a Very Important Scene with the Jackie Earle Haley character, George Noyce, having a conversation with Eddy Daniels.  It’s an important scene to the plot and the mood of the film, and Haley’s performance is pitying and horrifying.  Then there’s Daniels, who ends up as more of a sounding board, as I recall, even though he’s going through another hallucination of his wife during this scene.

Really intense film, maybe too long, but I liked the film noir mood that Scorsese created.  He turned out a great psycho-thriller, with strong era-thematic tones of paranoia (the Red Scare of the 1950s) running throughout.  In short: It’s noir-iffic.