Face/Off (John Woo), 1997.

This would have been more impressive if they hadn't just used a sharpie.

MAN, this is a dumb movie.  And not nearly as fun as The Rock, an equally bombastic piece of insanity.  It's hard to believe this was from the late 90s.  One of the ridiculous climactic scenes looked exactly like the shooting location for for Madonna's Like A Prayer video -- from 1989.  I was just waiting for Jesus to come alive and make out with someone!  Kitschy effects like star bursts and slo-mo have not aged well, either.

Everything is over the top and yet still not wholly exciting, mostly because of the pretentious tone.  We have brothers named Castor and Pollux (you know, like the semi-divine twin brothers from Greek mythology, duh) and each scene is soaked in the bloated orchestral tootings and scrapings of John Powell.  

Nicolas Cage is decent (although we get "boring" Cage for most of the time, after he swaps faces with John Travolta).  Travolta just can't pull off the demanding role of Sean Archer, both the "toughest cop in the country," and a grieving father.  He also does a lousy job of imitating a wild Nic Cage.  (And what's with the Alien-like open-palm caress he does on his wife and daughter's faces?)  Yet Face/Off's 138 minutes were almost worth it just to hear Margaret Cho and John Travolta exchange this dialogue (if only because I thought she said "dick"):  

- Sir, did you just have a surgical procedure?
- What do you mean? 

- Well, was the stick...successfully removed from your ass?

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), Peter Yates.

Shady deals in grocery store parking lots

Eddie's friends are kind of losers.  Eddie (Robert Mitchum) is an aging crook, wheeling and dealing to get out of a charge of being caught with stolen goods.  He loses whatever remaining dignity he has with each agreement. This film crawls but is broken up by bursts of action.  Sit back and enjoy the the ambiance: mundane and garish Boston, in 1973. You'll think you're in a Stephen Shore photograph.  

5th Street and Broadway, Eureka California, Stephen Shore (1974).

International House (1933), A Edward Sutherland.

The premise:  a disparate group of expats gather at a luxury hotel in Wu-Hu China where Doctor Wong will be demonstrating his magical radioscope device with the hopes of selling it to the highest bidder!  This is a good excuse as any to bring kooky radio and vaudeville acts together; ones as different as Burns and Allen and Baby Rose Marie do their bits; they either make up the storyline or are summoned on the spooky radioscope (which seems to be a proto-television, but also allows the people onscreen to interact with their audience!).  Gotta love WC Fields, who insists on the top hat with the PJs.  In the shabby hotel opposite, an enraged Bela Lugosi is trying to get a clear shot at Fields for shacking up with his lovely but not-quite-divorced wife.  Silly and charming!

Underworld (1927), Josef von Sternberg.

 "I guess this is why you're called Feathers?" 

They made Scarface right the first time, and it was called Underworld!  Ben Hecht scripted both; this one is the masterpiece and established the gangster genre.  Very dynamic camera use and full of wonderful details.  What other toughnut gangsters let starving kittens lick milk off their fingers?

 

Bull Weed finds a feather in his cigarette case.

The Hole in the Wall (1929), Robert Florey.

I'm going to be honest and admit that while watching this early talkie, I suffered from a New Year's hangover and probably missed a few details.  But as a total amateur unschooled in film history, my first reaction to it is that I would imagine it would be very rich to write about.  It's liminal, standing between silent and talking pictures; and it's unusual, being shot in New York by a French director.  This film belongs to Claudette Colbert, who gives a confident performance even though this is only one of her first onscreen; both she and Edward G Robinson come across as relatively mature performers in an embryonic art form.  The story goes that Colbert, recently released from prison, wants to kidnap the granddaughter of a wealthy woman who had her framed for theft to get her out of her house and away from her son's attention.  Colbert implicates herself in Robinson's fake psychic racket, hiding out as Madame Mystera until a newspaper man sniffs out the truth behind the kidnapping.

The sets and props have an expressionistic flair, and several scenes drift dreamily into silence and pantomime. The actors demonstrate a few wildly rhetorical stances from the silent era (or stage performances), but words are spoken very naturally.  Colbert especially has some touchingly realistic exchanges with the child actor Marcia Kagno.  And the little nightclub scene below is so lovely: in it, Robinson confesses he loves Colbert but is rejected, and the emotions are revealed mainly in the interplay of the actors' hands.

Once again, the antagonists are privileged individuals who tread over the rights of ordinary people,  their wealth allowing them to use the law to their advantage.  I wonder where this trope has gone to in American movies! 

The Lady Eve (1941), Preston Sturges.

Horse horning in on the action.

"I need him like the axe needs the turkey!"

It's an odd take on life where the ideal man is an awkward doofus who doesn't twig on to the most obvious things, but if you can get past that then The Lady Eve is goddamn hilarious. I'm not sure how they got this all past the censors. Stanwyck plays a card sharp who bilks rich fellows for their money but ends up falling for Fonda, the beer (ale?) heir. Hijinks ensue.

Ace in the Hole (1951), Billy Wilder.

Slick NYC reporter Kirk Douglas barrels into an Albuquerque newspaper office and demands to be hired. In search of a yarn, he stumbles on the news that a local man has been trapped in a caved-in pueblo and manipulates the circumstances to draw the story out as long as possible to burnish his reputation as a journalist with a nose for a good human interest story. Classic Kirk Douglas manliness all over the place including shirtlessness, hair-grabbing, drink-throwing and consternation at the sight of tacos. There's not too many stories about the integrity of journalism these days but like cop stories they are almost always interesting. I am highly suspicious of the idea that rattlesnakes enjoy bubblegum with the wrapper still on.

The Blue Dahlia (1946), George Marshall.

Dark, man dark. Plus que noir. Great writing, Chandler.

This Gun For Hire (1942), Frank Tuttle

If he didn't get the part of Shane later on, could we assume based on this film that Alan Ladd may have disappeared into oblivion? To me, Ladd is just Shane, but what do I know. This Gun For Hire is hokey bananas as anything. Why would Willard Gates (Bill Gates!) pay a hit man in uniquely numbered bills that could be traced back to him? Was Gates some kind of symbol for weak-kneed anti-war sissies? Why was Gates' butler so incredibly loyal as to happily take on murderous activities for him? Was Ladd on an apple box for the whole film or just wearing lifts? Notable perhaps for unsexy dance number performed by Veronica Lake, which has her awkwardly fly fishing for goldfish in a rubber suit. Most confusing line (a downright terrible metaphor) had something to do with all-American breakfast cereal being fed to the Japanese. Too corny to try to make heads or tails of the stumbling plot, but nevertheless enjoyable. My first glimpse of Lake, who seems tiny, and girlish - very young.