Colchicine

Reviews by Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net

Guarantee: many spoilers

"Le Cercle Rouge" (1970), directed by Jean Pierre Melville, is a competent

but not very distinctive heist movie. Melville's work is a little

cerebral, a little too reliant on coincidence, for me. Here, a newly

paroled thief meets an escaped one when the latter happens to hide in his

trunk. They recruit an elcoholic ex-cop who is a marksman, and whose

interesting job is to disable a jewelry store's security system by firing

a bullet into the lock from a distance. In the end, there is nothing in

this movie that "Rififi", "Asphalt Jungle" and a score of other films

didn't do better.

"The Shipping News" (2001), directed by Lasse Helltsrom, is faithful to

the Annie Proulx novel. Kevin Spacey, as Quoyle, loses his unfaithful

white trash wife in a car accident, aand brings his small daughter to Nova

Scotia, where his people are from. The movie, like the novel, hovers on

the edge of magical realism, and crosses over at the end when a corpse

comes back to life at a wake. The Nova Scotia setting is brutal and

beautiful. as are the people who inhabit it (in one scene, they drunkenly

smash the boat of a man who is planning to leave). There are excellent

performances by Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench as his aunt, Julainne Moore as

Wavey, his quirky love interest, and particularly the very aristocratic

Cate Blanchett, who seems to come to vibrant life in white trash roles.

"Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" (2008), directed bY Peter Sollett, is

the charming epitome of the geeky, knowing teenage romance practically

patented by John Hughes--the type of movie where teenagers are smarter,

hipper and more cultured than we are, where in an entire high school crowd

there is one geeky boy and one beautiful but geeky girl who belong

together. Nick and NOrah spend a memorable night in New York City,

following clues to the stealth concert of a cult band called "Where's

Fluffy", while a drunk female friend goes astray and must be found, and

both of their exes surge up to make one last claim on them. It is a boy

gets girl movie with relatively little conflict nor much laugh out loud

humor, yet it is completely charming.

"Panic in the Streets" (1950), directed by Elia Kazan, is a find, a

wonderful little noir I had never heard of, directed by a very talented

but controversial director and featuring fine performances by Richard

Widmark, Jack Palance and Zero Mostel (in the early, serious, gangster

part of his career). An illegal immigrant is murdered in New Orleans and

the body is diagnosed with plague, triggering a 48 hour race to find the

killers before they can spread the disease to too many other people and

trigger a nation-wide epidemic. Kazan, whom I personally dislike for

shopping his friends to HUAC, was an extraordinarily talented director,

and coaxed naturalistic performances from everyone involved, set against a

teeming, aurally rich background of city streets. The script, without

forgetting it is a thriller, takes time out for marital stresses between

Health Service doctor Widmark and his long-suffering wife, and even, in a

kind of ironic and funny counterpoint, between Mostel and his moll, who is

much tougher than he is. There is one startling scene where Palance and

Mostel are moving a dying henchman down a flight of stairs on a mattress

when Widmark appears; they simply throw their friend over the side and

run.

"Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters" (1986) directed by Paul Schrader has to

be one of the most unusual labors of love an American director ever

persuaded anyone to finance: a tribute, in Japanese, to an author that

most Americans have never read. The result is an evocative blend of

passages from Mishima's stories and biography, framed by the last day of

his life, when he led some cultish acolytes in holding a general hostage

and addressing his troops. The penultimate scene, when Mishima realizes

the rowdy, angry soldiers are not listening--that the apotheosis of his

life has turned into a cruel joke--is very poignant. There is great Philip

Glass music. The movie also fits into a mini-genre, with "The Conformist",

about the nexus between homosexuality, literature and fascism. Schrader's

interest in Japanese concepts of dignity, duty and redemption are

expressed in a very different way in "Yakuza", whichb he co-wrote with

Robert Towne.

"The Street With No Name" (1948), directed by William Keighley, is a

rather dull entry in a 1940's and '50's mini-genre, the FBI-glorifying

near-documentary made with the help of the agency (and with agents playing

themselves in supporting roles). It contains some mildly interesting

procedural stuff. It is also an interesting historical artifact, a film

about generic non-ethnic U.S. organized crime made before the FBI admitted

the Mafia existed. Richard Widmark walks through his trademarked

crazy-gangster role, which he invented in the much better "Kiss of Death".

"The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (1969), directed by Ronald Neame, is a

compelling version of the prior play and novel, about a sui generis

teacher in '30's Edinburgh whose flair, anger and rebelliousness lead to

her downfall. Along with "Remains of the Day", it forms a mini-genre about

people you would admire if they didn't love fascism;Brodie's eyes light

up when she praises Mussolini to her students. One of them, the reserved,

cat-eyed Sandy, blossoms into a sort of counter-Brodie in the course of

the movie, arranging for her old teacher's ruin. Its a fascinating story,

and as someone pointed out when I heard a reading of the play recently,

one of the few full scale tragedies with a woman as the central figure.

"The Bad Sleep Well" (1960), is that rare thing, inferior work by Akira

Kurosawa. Including an hysterical performance by the usually dignified

Toshiro Mifune, the film ratchets down familiar grade B thriller pathways,

as Mifune attempts to avenge his father by manipulating his corporate

bosses into suicide, madness and public humiliation. Nothing here is

believable, and Mifune's character, Hamlet-like, dithers far too much,

giving his adversaries a chance to kill him. The film's ending forecasts

the 1970's American genre epitomized by "The Parallax View", in which

conspiracies always triumph and the heroes are murdered.

Mifune turns in a better, though not surprising, performance in a role he

was born to play, a samurai trainee in "Samurai Trilogy I: Musashi

Miyamoto" (1954), directed by Hiroshi Inagaki. He and a friend, both

peasants, go to war to achieve fame and fortune, hook up afterwards with

two women of easy virtue; the friend stays, but Mifune flees their

borderline criminal lifestyle, and his own sexual desires, returning to

the village which no longer wants him. A monk, a sort of Obi Wan Kenobi

prototype, captures him and hangs him from a tree as a first step in the

disciplinary training which will turn Mifune into a true samurai.

"The Kite Runner" (2007), directed by Marc Forster, suffers from the

familiar disease of faithful adaptations of best-selling novels: it is

glossy but somewhat lifeless. A large part of the problem was also present

in the novel: the protagonist is a man struggling with cowardice who it is

hard to like. Though he takes some physical risks, traveling into

Afghanistan to atone to a now dead friend he betrayed in childhood, when

he confronts his former nemesis, he is as passive as ever and must be

saved by a child. The film is worth watching for the assured performances

of the first time child actors in its extended flashbacks--who had to flee

Afghanistan as a result of participating in this film.