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CineScene's
Hidden Treasures of Film  |
 THE
DREAMS OUR STUFF IS MADE OFor, Goody - more treasure! |
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The Man in the White Suit
American Psycho
(Mary Harron, 2000). The Uninvited (Lewis
Allen, 1944). |
Champagne for Caesar Dodsworth (William
Wyler, 1936). |
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Bedazzled (Stanley
Donen, 1967). The Honeymoon Killers Beautifully filmed, weird, wild, horrifying, and even a little funny.
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Celine and Julie Go Boating Donnie Darko (Richard
Kelly, 2001). |
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©2002 CineScene
A sparkling comedy about a wealthy, idealistic young woman (Katharine
Hepburn) who finds herself enamored of the charming, independent-minded
young man (Cary Grant) who is unfortunately engaged to her prosaic sister.
This delicious concoction seems to get overlooked in favor of The
Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby. But that's a shame,
because while those films are wonderful, this one holds its own very
well - it's still just as fresh, romantic and funny after decades of
viewing, and has the added virtue of Lew Ayres. Sigh. If only I could
go back in time, track Ayres down, and have my way with him. Hasn't
anyone invented a viable time machine yet?
A man and two women are drifting in a boat after a shipwreck. They tell
each other the stories of their lives. This is the most mythical of
Brazilian movies - thought lost for many years, then rediscovered in
the 80s, it has many powerful images, exquisitie music, and the beautiful
Olga Breno. 
Tyrone Power, tired of being typecast in heroic pretty-boy roles, optioned
William Lindsay Gresham's pitch black noir novel himself. His nasty, snapping
performance as an amoral carnival grifter turned society mentalist and,
eventually, high class spiritualist con man, is an extremely unsettling
and atmospheric journey through the darkest of noir worlds, where the
lowest conceivable human depths are represented by the sideshow geek,
a rotgut drunk biting the heads of chickens for a bottle a day. Along
the way the film manages to condemn psychiatry and showcase the talented
Joan Blondell and Colleen Gray in sympathetic roles. Although Hollywood
managed to add its requisite glimmer of hope at the end, that touch can't
possibly diminish the cautionary bleakness 
of this tale - like a fatal car accident, it's horrifying, but you can't
look away. 
What's it like to be so intelligent, so gifted at something that it
is impossible for others, even your family, to relate to you? This is
the story of Josh Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc), whose gift at chess is as
much of a curse as a blessing for him. His attempts to be a normal child
are made very difficult by his father and chess instructor, who try
to make him someone he isn't in order to fully develop his gift. The
film benefits greatly from the sensitive treatment by first-time director
Steven Zaillian, who isn't interested in child-prodigy clichés,
and by the lovely Oscar-nominated cinematography of Conrad L. Hall.
I
submit that this is one of the best sports movies ever made. Ah, you
say, but it's about a board game! Chess is not athletic, and therefore
not a sport. Perhaps, but as a film it features all the elements of
the best sports stories: raw talent under development, enigmatic mentors,
burnout. Pushy parents living vicariously through kids. Matches filled
with palpable tension. Add a stellar cast (Joe Mantegna, Ben Kingsley,
Laurence Fishburne) led by Max Pomeranc giving one of the best child
performances since Mary Badham in To Kill a Mockingbird, and
you have a film that never gets old for me. And I don't enjoy playing
chess at all. 
Concepts don't get much higher than the basic premise of Walter Hill's
paean to New York City street life. A Coney Island gang is wrongly accused
of murdering a beloved gang lord, and must fight their way across town
to their home turf. But a routine plot synopsis doesn't do justice to
the energy and style Hill and company bring to the film. The little touches,
like the literal and figurative mouth of the radio DJ who delivers late-breaking
updates between spinning the platters that comprise most of the film's
wonderful soundtrack or the different styles of gang the heroes must go
through (I'm a personal fan of the Baseball Furies), make The Warriors
worthy of its cult status.
A mild-mannered chemist (Alec Guinness) invents a material that can
never get dirty or wear out, and soon all the clothing manufacturers
and labor unions are after him to destroy the formula that is threatening
to put them out of business. Rarely do you find a satire so clever,
so perfectly constructed, and yet so kind to its characters. Guinness
is his usual marvelous self, and Joan Greenwood is on hand with her
deep, inimitable purr.
Overlooked because of its source material, a notoriously violent novel
by Bret Easton Ellis, this film took the best from the book and discarded
the overkill. Christian Bale is perfect as the man without an inside,
in a great poke at vapid, competitive corporate-class culture. The scenes
wherein he expounds the "greatness" of Genesis and Huey Lewis and the
News are side-splitting.
Underappreciated stars Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey play a brother and
sister who decide to buy a house on the English coast. Wonder why it
was so cheap? Uh oh, things go creak in the night. The mystery isn't
hard to figure out, but getting there is thrilling and stylish, and
the cast is top-notch. 
This surprising, little-known comedy concerns one Beauregard Bottomley
(Ronald Colman), a man who seemingly knows everything, and his quarrel
with a rather surreal corporate entity, the Milady Soap company. Milady
Soap runs a quiz show called "Masquerade for Money," and Beauregard
decides to try to win enough money to bankrupt the company and its owner
(played with delightful looniness by Vincent Price). Quiz show host
played by Art Linkletter, just the man for the job! 
Extremely intelligent adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel about a
well-to-do Midwestern couple (Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton) traveling
in Europe, and how their different attitudes towards aging split them
apart. This is the picture of which Sam Goldwyn allegedly said, "It
was a great picture, but nobody wanted to see it. In droves," but I
wish it weren't so. This is a film that you'd never see get the green
light today, as it concerns the emotional lives of middle-aged people.
Sterling performances from Huston, the restless retired mogul; Chatterton,
his shallow, terrified-to-grow-old wife; and most of all, Mary Astor,
as the kind of woman I would like to grow up to be someday. 
A moody and enigmatic story about a drifter (Harry Dean Stanton) who
has disappeared for four years, then suddenly returns to recover and
complete his past with his brother, his son, and his wife. Enhanced
by Ry Cooder's melancholy score, this is a beautiful and subtle work
of art that captures the emptiness of the American southwest in a way
few films have. Stanton's character is a disturbing, and ultimately
unresolvable enigma. 
posits amnesia as the natural extension of American alienation. Wenders
continues his fascination with the mysteries of the road, and Harry
Dean Stanton gives a rare leading man performance as a man in search
of his identity as well as the reason why he lost it. The estrangement
climaxes literally behind glass, with Stanton and Nastassja Kinski doing
perhaps the best work of their careers.
One sign of a really good suspense movie is that I'm willing to watch
it more than twice. This clever little crime film doesn't get mentioned
much, what with all the great film noir being made during that period,
but it holds my attention every step of the way. A woman has been murdered,
and a witness has a description of a suspect leaving her apartment. A
magazine editor (Ray Milland) knows that he is the man that the witness
saw - but he's innocent, and he must investigate the crime and pretend
to search for the suspect. He only has an hour to nail his boss, the real
killer (Charles Laughton), before being identified himself. Maureen O'Sullivan
(Mrs. Farrow) helps him out, George Macready is Laughton's evil sidekick,
and Elsa Lanchester turns up in a brief, but funny and marvelous bit part.
Milland is at his most appealing. Laughton is great as a detestable villain.
Watching the movie is like reading a stylish page-turner - smooth in style,
but with plenty of tension, it clips along at a fine pace, and winding
up with an inspired "poetic justice" type ending. Pure entertainment.
A deadly parasitic alien craves violence, fast cars, and loud rock.
What's not to love? A knowing homage to 50s sci-fi along the lines of
Tremors. As an alien FBI agent on the killer's trail, Kyle McLachlan
previews Twin Peaks' Agent Cooper, who was surely not of this
earth either. 
An absolutely hilarious, dry British comedy, set in 1969, in which two
unemployed actors, the narrator (Paul McGann) and his dissolute friend
Withnail (Richard E. Grant) head for the countryside for some peace
and quiet, but find it to be just as bad in its own way as the city.
Grant is perfect, and there is beautiful work from Richard Griffiths,
playing one of the most unforgettable characters I've ever seen on film.
Robinson's script is full of witty dialogue, but it's also right on
the dot when it comes to the tragic aspects of Withnail's life and personality.
What begins as a light romantic comedy turns into a nail-biting paranoia
thriller as Anthony Edwards, trying to find his date after oversleeping
their meeting, takes a pay phone call and is told that nuclear missles
will be hitting L.A. in just over an hour. It would be unfair to say
more except that I've never seen a film quite like this. Funny, odd,
sad, and touching, and it has stayed with me over the years despite
having seen it only once when it came out. -- Devin Rambo
The
director views the proceedings with an eye for more than a simple apocalyptic
fable. The very conventions that have led some to dismiss the film as
dated or cliché are cleverly subverted through DeJarnatt's awareness
of the medium and its methods (the foregrounding of time and and pace,
the narrative presentation of evolution and de-evolution, the evocation
of notions of underlying cultural paradigms). Whether watching the film
for the first time or revisiting it after a long absence, watch closely,
for God is truly in the details. 
A barge captain (Jean Dasté) brings his new bride (Dita Parlo)
on board, but she longs for the excitement of Paris. The only full-length
feature from Vigo, who died prior to the film's release, this is one
of the most simple, poetic, and romantic films ever made. Michel Simon,
as the strange ship's mate, gives one of the great character performances
of all time, and the famous dream sequence is damn near perfect. 
In the middle of watching this movie, nearly two decades after its release,
the elderly white woman in the next seat turned to me and whispered, "This
movie is dangerous!" Melvin Van Peebles self-financed (with some help
from Bill Cosby), starred in, wrote and directed the first completely
unrestrained African American cinematic utterance, and it still shocks
all these years later with raw sexual and violent imagery, and an incendiary
point of view. In Sweetback's world, rich white folks come up to Harlem
to watch black folks fornicate, and our racist state condemns any truly
virile black man to life on the run, if at all. It's even more of a racial
Rorschach Test than Do the Right Thing, but the next great wave
of African American filmmakers - including Spike Lee, The Hughes Brothers,
and even Melvin's son Mario Van Peebles - owe a world of debt to the pioneer
filmmaker and film that broke all the rules. 
Many have drawn comparisons between Clouzot and Hitchcock, but unmistakably,
Clouzot is a master of suspense in his own right. Here he tells the
story of a sadistic private school headmaster (Paul Meurisse) whose
wife and mistress (Véra Clouzot and Simone Signoret) plot together
to murder him. Clouzot slowly turns the screws on us, leading to one
of the most visually unsettling climaxes the genre has ever seen. Often
imitated but rarely equalled, Diabolique is a must-see thriller
for the discriminating viewer fed up with the watered-down shocks of
today's suspense wannabes. 
Dudley Moore plays short order cook Stanley Moon, smitten with Margaret
the waitress (Eleanor Bron). Peter Cook plays Mr. Spigot, who just happens
to be the devil himself. Stanley wants Margaret enough to sell his soul,
but Spigot is full of tricks. This 1960s take on the Faust legend is
still one of the funniest films around.
An ugly black and white film about two ugly, cold blooded murderers
(played by Shirley Stoler and Tony LoBianco). Utterly honest and relentless,
and based on a true story.
The cinematic equivalent of metafiction. Two women (Dominique Labourier
and Juliet Berto) meet, play tricks on each other, exchange identities,
and go on to explore the mysteries of a haunted house. Rivette explodes
our expectations in order to allow full play to an inter-feminine realm
of fantasy and insight that gradually demolishes the narrative of patriarchy.
All but ignored by critics and moviegoers alike during its brief theatrical
run, Richard Kelly's ode to teen angst has undergone a slow but substantial
rebirth on home video. The plot, which involves schizophrenia and time
travel, is best left unstated, but the film abounds in references and
cross-references that go beyond the merely clever. Jake Gyllenhall's
touching portrayal of the tortured teen, coupled with Kelly's grand
vision and keen understanding of what it means to be an adolescent,
makes for a surprisingly moving and thought-provoking film.