Le Notti Bianche (1957)

Le Notti Bianche, which translates into English as "sleepless nights," is an exquisite little movie from Luchino Visconti about two lonely people who meet, who dance the dance and part again in a strange city. I'm not an expert on Visconti's work, but I do know a good film when I see one, and this is one of my favs. Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) is new in town. He's come here for work, has no family in town, and no friends outside of work. He lives by himself in one room of a boarding house and spends his nights walking the streets, watching other people interacting with their friends and family. One night, he sees a young girl standing on a bridge, weeping. Mario approaches her, is smitten by her, introduces himself, and starts trying to court her. Natalia (Maria Schell) isn't interested in being courted though. She's in love with a man who used to rent the attic room in the building where she lives. He went away a year ago, but he promised to return. So Natalia waits for him every night on the bridge. But Mario is desperate, and he's sure he can steal Natalia from the past. So he amuses her. He distracts her. He tries to get her to fall in love with him. They go dancing. The dance turns into a wild, sexual act. Many have compared it to the party scene in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. Visconti places the dance in a public space though, and it ends in a brawl outside. In the end, Mario loses, and Natalia's love returns. Mario stands alone, and as the snow begins to fall, so do his tears.

Le Notti Bianche is a slow and deliberate movie. Those who are accustomed to faced-paced movies, full of snappy dialogue and car chases and the obligatory bedroom scene will be quite disappointed in this film. The only bedroom scenes involve Mario getting ready for work - all striped pajamas and toothpaste - and Mario sick in bed. Not very sexy, but terribly realistic. And that's one of the things I love about this movie - the way in which Visconti places the starkly realistic right alongside the utterly dreamlike. Mario is a real person, with a real personality, and with very real problems. We all understand loneliness and the desperation to find someone to belong to. Visconti gives that loneliness and desperation form in the character of Mario. You can feel the ache in him as he walks along the city street, jostled by the other people out having a good time. You can feel it in him as he struggles with whether or not to go with the prostitute - it would be so easy, a moments pleasure, the illusion of a relationship. That's something, isn't it? No, not for Mario. He wants the real thing, and he's found a girl that he thinks he can have it with. In the end, he's left with only himself and the snow and the empty city.

And speaking of the city, I love this one. It reminded me very much of The City of Lost Children - the bridges, the water, the stairs, the constant fog. This set was a work of art. I read that Visconti had the multilayered city set built on the sound stage. No CGI city here. This one is real. It has texture, brick and mortar, water and glass. You can feel the city as the camera moves through it. There's grime here, and perpetual damp. There are homeless people and rats and garbage. This is a real city, designed for the real people who will inhabit it for the space of time that it takes to watch the film. But in that space of time, I came to love this place. And against the backdrop of this gritty town, Visconti performs a love story - always a work of fantasy and imagination - using these realistic people. The result is a purely fascinating movie about the nature of love in the modern world.

Le Notti Bianche is rated G and has been restored to glorious black and white. Running time is 97 minutes.

The Trouble with Harry (1955)

The trouble with Harry Worp isn't so much that he's dead; it's that no one's quite sure how he died. Or who killed him. Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) thinks he might have shot Harry. Jennifer Rogers (Shirley McClaine in her film debut) hit him over the head. So did Miss Gravely (Mildred Natwick). Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe), a local artist, stumbles upon the body, just as Captain Wiles is trying to drag him into the woods. Sam is sympathetic. He's even willing to help get rid of the corpus delicti. Shovels are procured. The digging begins. Soon Harry is safely tucked away underground. But not for long. When the good captain accounts for all of his bullets and realizes that he didn't shoot Harry, he insists they dig him back up. And so they do. Then Sam meets Jennifer, and it's love at first sight. Jennifer tells Sam that Harry was her husband. She's been trying to get away from him. He's been quite insistent that they stay together. While he was insisting his way into her house, she whacked him over the head, and he stumbled away. Jennifer thinks the hit on the head must have killed Harry. She thinks they should just put him back in the ground and forget about him. So Jennifer and Sam and Captain Wiles bury Harry again. Then Miss Gravely tells the captain that she thinks that she might have killed Harry. He stumbled toward her while she was hiking, grabbing at her, knocking her down. She pulled off her hiking boot and clubbed him over the head with it. She's worried that she killed Harry. She wants him dug back up so that she can go to the police. Sam decides that they need to find out exactly how Harry died first. So they dig him up, clean him up, and call the doctor. He'll tell them how Harry really died. I won't though.

The Trouble with Harry was one of director Alfred Hitchcock's favorite movies, and it's easy to see why. It's and absolutely delightful film; although, American audiences didn't feel that way in 1955. It received poor reviews here. Europe received it better. The film ran for a year in England and Italy, for a year and a half in France. This is not a fast-paced movie, filled with intrigue and chase scenes and shoot-outs and explosions. It's a deliberate film that takes its time unfolding its story. The Trouble with Harry is more about the characters than it is about the crime, and the characters are wonderful. Sam is a bohemian artist who doesn't give a fig for conventions. Captain Wiles talks of his life sailing the world when in fact he was merely a tug boat captain on the East River. Miss Gravely is a middle-aged spinster who proves that you're never too old to fall head-over-heels in love. And Jennifer is a quirky young mother who wants to live her life in her own way. All four of these are brought together over the corpse of Jennifer's husband. The Technicolor cinematography brings the beautiful New Hampshire countryside to life. Interestingly, after the long exterior shots were filmed, the weather turned bad, so the rest of the filming had to be done on a sound stage. The crew collected as many of the Autumn leaves as they could and shipped them back to Hollywood, where they were painstakingly glued onto artificial trees to capture the feel of a New Hampshire Autumn. If you're in the mood for a quirky, romantic murder mystery, this one should fill the bill. Call it a black comedy or a morbid romance. Either way, The Trouble with Harry is a great movie.

The Trouble with Harry is rated G. Running time is 99 minutes.

Man's Favorite Sport (1964)

When it comes to the great outdoors, no one knows more than Roger Willoughby (Rock Hudson). Willoughby is the country's premiere expert on outdoors sports. He work's for Abercrombie & Fitch (the original A&F that sold high-end sporting goods, not the modern teen fashion shack). He teaches customers how to camp and hunt. He's written a best-selling book about fishing. Willoughby is the go-to guy for anything to do with nature. There's only one slight problem. Willoughby has never set foot in the woods. He lives in San Francisco. He's never been camping, doesn't hunt, and can't fish. In fact, he couldn't tell a trout from a salmon if his life depended on it. But as long as he can keep up the pretense of knowing, he'll be fine. Or so he thinks. Enter Abigail Page (Paula Prentiss) and Easy Mueller (Maria Perschy). These two finagle Willoughby's boss, Mr. Cadwalader (John McGiver) into entering Willoughby in a fishing contest to drum up business for the store. Sure that willoughby can't possibly lose, Cadwalader informs his outdoors expert that he's going into the outdoors.

Willoughby knows, of course, that he can't fish. He confides in Abigail. She tells him not to worry, that she and Easy will go along and help him out. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell just which of the three is more inept in the woods. Willoughby arrives at the lake loaded for bear, and runs smack into John Screaming Eagle (Norman Alden) a wise-cracking Native American who tries to make a touch on Willoughby. From here, the antics really get going. Willoughby can't do anything right. He can't even set up a tent, so he stays in a cabin at the lodge instead. When he tries to fish, he gets his line tangled in the trees, snags dead branches in the water, and nearly drowns himself on several occasions. Abigail and Easy devise a way to get Willoughby out of the tournament by pretending that he's got a broken arm. Unfortunately, when the cast dries, he can't lower his arm. Abigail removes the cast with a skill saw! And right in the middle of the whole mess, Willoughby's fiance shows up from Texas, wanting to know what he's doing with Abigail and Easy.

The biggest shocker of all, though, is that Willoughby actually wins the tournament with no help at all. Of course, he didn't actually catch the fish. They more or less committed suicide, by jumping on his hook when the line was tangled in some branches, by getting caught in his waders when he fell in the water, and several other means that have nothing to do with fishing. Because of this, Willoughby feels he can't accept the trophy. It just wouldn't be sporting. So he confesses everything. Of course, Cadwalader fires him on the spot, much to the dismay of his best customers. They lobby for Willoughby's reinstatement. Cadwalader finally gives in. But where's Willoughby? And where's Abigail?

Howard Hawks' Man's Favorite Sport is one of my favorite movies. It's one of the last in a long line of screwball comedies that stretch all the way back tot he advent of talking film. The dialog is fast-paced and witty, and the situations that Willoughby finds himself in are hilarious. Rock Hudson puts in a solid performance as the beleaguered Roger Willoughby, but the true star of the show - in my opinion - is Paula Prentiss, who gives one of the best performances of her career. She does sexy and funny at the same time and pulls off both brilliantly. Most of the rest of the actors are simply caricatures who act as foils for Abigail and Willoughby. If you're looking for a movie that's lighthearted and just plain fun, I highly recommend Man's Favorite Sport. I first saw it forty-one years ago and fell in love with it. It hasn't lost any of its appeal since then. See if you don't agree.

Man's Favorite Sport is rated G and is filmed in Technicolor. Running time is 120 minutes.

King Kong (1933)

Okay, I know. Who hasn't seen this movie? Show of hands. All right, so maybe you haven't seen this movie, but you've surely seen Peter Jackson's CGI-fest from 2005. Or maybe you saw that stinker they did back in the 70s with Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges. At any rate, you know the story, right? Show man Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong, in 1933) sails off to the south seas with a film crew including Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) and Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). They sail to the mysterious Skull Island, where they find that the natives have built a colossal wall to protect themselves from the creatures that live on the island. Chief among these is Kong, the 24-foot tall gorilla. Ann - being white and blond - is soon kidnapped by the natives and sacrificed to Kong, who takes her to his jungle lair. But Kong doesn't eat her, as he has done with all of the unfortunate native girls. No, he's completely enamoured of her, and protects her from all danger. Well, the boys from the ship naturally go after Ann, and a good many of them are killed in the process. Only Jack succeeds in reaching her. Together, they escape from Kong, while he's busy fending off a pterodactyl. When Kong realizes that Ann is gone, he pursues them, reaching the giant wall just as they're closing the gate behind Ann and Jack. But Kong's not gonna let a little thing like a stone wall stand in the way of true love. He bashes through the gate and stomps the snot out of the native village in his search for Ann. Eventually, he's felled by "gas bombs," which apparently are hand grenades fill with sleeping gas. Never heard of them before. Oh well. Kong is down, and Denham has a new exhibit for his show. When we next see Kong, he's chained to a post in an auditorium. Kong makes quick work of the chains and storms out of the theater in search of Ann. Along the way, he pauses to take in the sights, to terrorize a few innocent bystanders, and crush an elevated train. But true love leads Kong to Ann's window, and the long arm of Kong reaches in and gets her (talk about stalkers - he's the greatest). Kong climbs to the top of the Empire State Building with Ann in tow. There, we have the iconic battle between Kong and the airplanes. Kong may have been king of the jungle, but he's no match again modern air power. Mortally wounded, Kong plummets to his death just as Jack reaches the top of the Empire State Building and rescues Ann. When someone says to Denham, "Looks like the planes got him," Denham replies, "It was beauty killed the beast."

Does any of that sound familiar? It should. The movie's only been made three times now. Why? Cuz it's a darn good story, and that's one thing that Hollywood seems to be in short supply of these days. So they just keep remaking older movies and turning old cartoons into movies. But, in my humble opinion, nine times out of ten, the remake cannot compete with the original. Such is the case with King Kong. Don't get me wrong. Those other versions are fine movies in their own right, but they are copies of something that was done so well that it not only revolutionized the movie industry, but it also changed what the public would accept from movies. You gotta remember that when this thing first came out back in 1933, the people thought they were actually seeing a real 24-foot tall gorilla tramping around New York City. Admittedly, folks were a bit more naive back then, and they had were not used to special effects of this caliber. I mean, the effects by Willis H. O'Brien are so good that they still stand up today. Interestingly, Jackson's crew decided that they would try to recreate a missing scene from the original movie using the exact same methods that O'Brien employed in 1933. Jackson's team couldn't believe how difficult it was to create these effects, how much time went into them, and how much they cost to do. But those old effects are wonderful. Take the fight between Kong and the T-Rex. It is unbelievable. The way both Kong and Rex move, and the gore as Kong rips Rex's head apart. Then there was the famous scene on the log bridge, where Kong shakes all of the men off and they fall to their deaths in the gorge below. I'm still amazed at the level of detail and realism when I watch this today. All of the jungle scenes in this film are incredible. They used mattes and cutouts to give the jungle a depth that you don't acheive with a few potted plants and a cyclorama.

As I pointed out above, I'm not comparing the 1933 King Kong to the remakes because the original film stands alone. It is without peer. Made just five years after Al Jolson made talking films the standard, Merian C. Cooper and Willis H. O'Brien created a masterpiece of cinematography. They pushed the boundaries of what could be done in film and paved the way for the likes of George Pal, George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg and John Carpenter. King Kong has a wonderful look to it. The velvety black and white images lend the film a dreamlike quality, though many would say it's a nightmare rather than a dream. The acting is a little bit wooden, but then, you must remember that we're only five short years away from the silent era, with it's highly stylized acting. All things considered, the actors do a pretty good job. But of course, the star of the show is Kong, the 18" model gorilla. Amazingly, that little model wins our hearts in the end. We feel for him, root for him, and are sad when he finally falls. It's telling when a movie can produce that much pathos from an audience. If you need more proof of King Kong's worth as a movie, you need only remember that we're still watching and talking about it 78 years after it first premiered. It takes a mighty big movie to last that long. King Kong is about as big as they come.

King Kong is rated G and is filmed in black and white.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008)

London, 1939. Guinevere Pettigrew (Francis McDormand) is a governess with no one to govern. She also has nothing to eat. In desperation, she steals a client card from her agency and shows up at the apratment of Delysia LaFosse (Amy Adams), a young singer and actress who's looking for a social secretary. She's also looking for a part in a new play that's being produced, and she's sleeping with the producer, Phil (Tom Payne) in order to get it. The only problem is, she's doing her interview in the apartment of her lover, Nick (Mark Strong). He also owns the nightclub where Delysia performs. He's also a tad bit on the shady side, and a whole lot on the jealous side. Miss Pettigrew scoots the bewildered Phil out the door and cleans up the apartment just as Nick walks through the door. Delysia is taken by the frumpy Miss Pettigrew. She hires her on the spot and gives her a complete makeover. All Miss Pettigrew wants, though, is a good dinner. Meanwhile, Michael (Lee Pace) enters the picture. He's Delysia's former boyfriend, and he wants her back. Delysia loves him, but she wants that part in that play too. While Miss Pettigrew tries to help Delysia sort out her love quadrangle, she starts to fall in love with a lingerie designer named Joe (Ciaran Hinds). After a wild party at Nick's apartment and a brawl between Michael and Nick during an air raid, everything works out the way it's supposed to. Happy ending.

Yeah, that's what I like about these kinds of movies. They have happy endings. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a wonderful little film, one of those that managed to slip under the radar, and miss most of the multiplexes. One reviewer called it a "mediocre film." I couldn't disagree more. This is a fun, snappy little comedy, much like the great screwball comedies of the 1930s. I'd rank it right up there with My Man Godfrey and His Girl Friday. The action moves quickly along, with never a dull moment, and the dialogue is witty. Amy Adams is wonderful as the fickle and irrepressible Delysia trying to decide between true love on the one hand and fame and fortune on the other. Frances McDormand is incredible as the dowdy Miss Pettigrew, and her transformation into Delysia's elegant social secretary is great. There are also some wonderfully poignant scenes between Miss Pettigrew and Joe, as they commiserate with each other about the coming war. The sets are great, as are the props and costumes. Everything is 1930s; there's nothing out of place. And the movie is filmed in luscious color, with the camera taking full advantage of the gorgeous art deco world of 1930s London. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a delightful little RomCom that will put a smile on everyone's face.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is rated PG-13.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the cinema's great adventure stories, remembered now - if it's remembered at all - for two oft-misquoted lines: "We don't need no stinking badges," and "Could you spare a dime for a fellow American who's down on his luck." I've lamented before on this blog how I think it's sad that so many people today have never seen these classic films and most probably wouldn't appreciate them if they did see them. That this movie could have been reduced to a couple of quotes is a prime example of that. There is so much more to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre than could possibly be summed up by two lines. This movie is filled with adventure, with romance, with desperation, with greed, with madness, with deceit, with kindness, with generosity, with murder, with life. It is, in short, a picture of the world as we know it today, a picture of life in the post-modern world encapsulated into a two-hour-long strip of celluloid that contains the story of three down-and-out men hoping to strike it rich searching for gold in Old Mexico. Gold they find, and all that comes with it. As Dan Fogleburg once wrote, "Balance the cost of the soul you've lost and the dreams you lightly sold, and tell me if you're free from the power of gold."

Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is drifting around Tampico, Mexico, when he runs into Bob Curtin (Tim Holt). The two take a job working on an oil rig, but the boss tries to get away without paying them. This leads to a brutal fist fight between Dobbs, Curtin and their boss. They beat him senseless and take what's owed them, but soon the money runs out and they're destitute again. One night, in a flop house, Dobbs and Curtin meet an old prospector named Howard (Walter Huston). He knows of a gold vein ripe for the taking, but he needs partners to help him get it. Dobbs and Curtin sign on for the job. Before long they are heading up into the Sierra Madre with pack mules laden with tools and supplies. After weeks of trudging across deserts and through jungles, they finally reach the place they're looking for. They build a sluice and start digging. Sure enough, they find gold. Soon the bags start filling up with gold dust, and their minds start filling up with suspicion. Dobbs is the worst. He becomes convinced that everyone is out to take his share from him. He even threatens to kill Curtin on more than one occasion. Into the middle of this powder keg stumbles Cody (Bruce Bennett), another American looking to find his fortune digging for gold in Mexico. He wants to join our trio. Howard and Curtin don't mind. They think there's enough for everyone. Dobbs doesn't agree. He wants to kill Cody. As they're arguing this out, all four of them are set upon by bandits. After some tense negotiating, in which the infamous line is quoted, a gunfight breaks out. The bandits are routed, but Cody is killed in the battle. They bury him, and Curtin says he's going to give some of his gold to Cody's widow back in the Texas. Howard decides to also. But not Dobbs. As they pack up and head back toward civilization, Dobbs descends deeper and deeper into madness. When Howard turns aside to save the life of an injured boy, Dobbs attacks Curtin and runs off with all of the mules and the gold. Unfortunately, he runs right into the arms of the bandits they had run off. On his own now, Dobbs is outnumbered. The bandits make quick work of him. Then they steel his boots, his guns and his mules. Foolishly, they mistake the gold for sand, which they pour out on the ground. Curtin finds Howard, and the two of them go after Dobbs. All they find, however, is his corpse. The gold dust blew away in a sand storm.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the finest films that either John Huston or Humphrey Bogart ever made. Bogart is at his best as the lunatic Dobbs. It's fascinating to watch how he begins to unravel, how little things begin to wear on him, how he becomes increasingly suspicious of every move, every gesture made by his partners, until he finally cracks. Bogart would play another neurotic - Capt. Queeg - six years later in The Caine Mutiny, but Dobbs is a much more interesting character than Queeg. Queeg is slightly nuts to begin with, so his break isn't unexpected. In Treasure, Bogart must take the apparently sane Dobbs down into his madness by slow degrees. He does a job with it too. We feel the tension ratcheting up as Dobbs slips ever further into his paranoia. When the break comes, it's almost a relief. Walter Huston (the director's brother) plays Howard as the elder statesmen of the desert. He's the voice of reason, wisdom personified, seldom getting angry, always dealing with the mishaps with a serenity that drives Dobbs mad. Howard has seen every side of men, and nothing they do surprises him. Gold does not drive him mad. It only seems to make him more generous towards the failings of Dobbs and Curtin. Tim Holt usually played nice guys in Hollywood, and Curtin is no exception. He's Dobbs' foil, always looking for the good in things and people. If Dobbs suspects everyone of trying to cheat them, Curtin never really does. In the end, even his anger at Dobbs' treachery is assuaged at the thought of doing something good for someone else. John Huston even makes a cameo appearance in the film, in true Hitchcockian style, as the American businessman that Dobbs keeps hitting up for money on the streets of Tampico. It's a rare light moment in an otherwise deadly serious film.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is rated G and is filmed in luscious black and white.

Morning Glory (2010)

When Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams) gets laid off from her job as the producer of a local TV morning show, she lands a new job as executive producer for "Daybreak," the lowest rated morning show on national TV. Becky has been tasked with improving the ratings of a show that's so bad that it's circling the drain, but the effusive Becky is undaunted. Her first act is to fire the shows arrogant anchor. Then she strong arms a reluctant Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) into the vacant chair. Mike was once a world class reporter, but he's been sidelined by people with more showmanship. "Daybreak" is everything that Mike has come to loathe about TV news. He also loathes his co-anchor, Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton). The feeling is mutual. When the studio head, Jerry Barnes (Jeff Goldblum), informs Becky that she has only six weeks to raise the ratings or he'll cancel the show, she pulls out all of the stops. She sticks the weather reporter onto roller coasters and throws him out of airplanes, has Colleen playing with wild animals and dancing in a tutu, anything to raise the ratings. When Mike and Colleen start insulting each other on air, ratings begin to go up. Ever surly, Mike refuses every story that he concludes is "not news," until he finally scoops a story about the governor being indicted and manages to get to the governor's house just as the police are pulling up to arrest him. Becky is thrilled with Mike and tries to get him to do more human interest pieces, but Mike is still Mike, still hates the show he's being forced to do, and still refuses to do stories that are too fluffy. When Becky gets a job offer from "Good Morning America," though, the great Mike Pomeroy does an impromptu cooking lesson on national TV, to persuade her not to leave. He even uses the word "fluffy."

I gotta tell you, I was very hesitant about watching this film. I figured Morning Glory was just another rom-com. I couldn't have been more wrong. While there is a romance in the film, it's coincidental to the rest of the plot. The main focus is on Becky and Mike and how one person's faith in what they are doing can change another person's outlook on themselves and the world around them. Rachel MacAdams is wonderful as the over-enthusiastic, workaholic Becky, who runs circles around everyone else and gets her way because of her irrepressible joie de vie. Harrison Ford is perfect as the curmudgeonly Mike Pomeroy, a man who feels that his career has abandoned him and all that he held dear. He eventually succumbs to Becky's charm and enthusiasm, but - and this is what made the movie work for me - he doesn't become a whole new person. He remains a curmudgeon, only now he's a slightly less prickly one. Diane Keaton is great as the prima dona Colleen Peck, who catches Becky's spirit and throws her all into the program. And Jeff Goldblum plays Jerry Barnes as a cold, no-nonsense business man who needs to meet his ratings quotas. The show left me feeling good about myself, an odd thing for a movie to do, but it's true. When Morning Glory ended, I felt happy, upbeat and enthusiastic, like I could go out and accomplish anything. And that's a good thing for any film to do.

Morning Glory is rated PG-13 and is filmed in color.

The Big Sleep (1946)

"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was."

That's how Philip Marlowe sums up all that's gone before in the final pages of Raymond Chandler's novel The Big Sleep. I include it here because the one thing I have always felt that Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep lacked was the internal monologue that narrates the novel. The film ends on an upbeat note, with Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) and Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) falling in love. The novel ends with Marlowe walking off by himself, leaving the corrupt Rutledges behind him. The novel is more effective. But 1946 was a different era. People wanted a happy ending - the bad guys all killed or jailed, the hero and heroine walking off together hand in hand, the world spinning in greased grooves once again. It was the effect of the war, I guess. The need for normalcy and happy endings. It's too bad too, because the film suffered on account of the lack of the monologue. Don't get me wrong though. I love this movie. It's one of my favorites. I just wish Hawks and screenwriter William Faulkner hadn't changed the story so much.

In the film, Marlowe is called to the home of dying millionare General Sternwood (Charles Waldron). Sternwood's being blackmailed. His youngest daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers) has been gambling. General Sternwood wants Marlowe to take care of it. The conversation rolls around to Sean Regan, Sternwood's right hand man. Seems he's gone missing. There's talk he ran off with Mona Mars (Peggy Knudsen), the wife of big-time raketeer Eddie Mars (John Ridgely). As Marlowe is leaving, Vivan asks him if her father hired him to find Sean. Soon, Marlowe realizes that a lot of people would like to know what happened to Sean. Later, Marlowe discovers Carmen drugged and half naked with a dead man lying at her feet. Marlowe takes her home and returns to the scene of the crime, only to find that the dead man is gone. At this point, all hell breaks loose. The Sternwood's chaufer is murdered and dumped into the ocean. Eddie Mars seems to be everywhere. Carmen keeps popping up like a Whack-a-Mole. Marlowe finds out that he's being followed by Harry Jones (Elisha Cooke, Jr.). He's trying to help out Agnes (Sonia Darrin) who used to work for the guy who was killed at Carmen's feet. Then a couple of more people get dead. Sound confusing? It is. In fact, the novel is so confusing that Faulkner and co-writer Leigh Bracket couldn't figure out who killed one of the characters. They asked Chandler to tell them who done it, and Chandler himself was unable to point the finger at the culprit. But it all works out in the end. As I stated above - a happy ending for all of the good guys and gals.

Part of what makes The Big Sleep work, in spite of its transgressions, is the incredibly snappy dialogue written by Faulkner and Bracket. There is a lot of reparte' in this film. Consider Marlowe's first exchange with Eddie Mars:

Mars: Convenient the door being open when you didn't have a key.
Marlowe: Yeah, wasn't it? By the way, how did you happen to have one?
Mars: Is it any of your business?
Marlowe: I could make it my business.
Mars: I could make your business mine.
Marlowe: But you wouldn't like it. The pay's too small.
Mars: All right, I own this house. Geiger's my tenant. Now what do you think of me?
Marlowe: You know some nice people.
Mars: I take it as they come.

Or Marlowe's explanation of how the first two murders took place:

"You see, the dead man was Owen Taylor, Sternwood's chauffeur. He went up to Geiger's place 'cause he was sweet on Carmen. He didn't like the kind of games Geiger was playing. He got himself in the back way with a jimmy and he had a gun. And the gun went off as guns will, and Geiger fell down dead."

It's this snappy dialogue that sets this movie apart and really saves it. The film's other saving grace is Humphrey Bogart. Bogart had already established himself as the tough guy with his own code of honor in such films as The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and The Petrified Forest. He cashes in on that persona here, playing Marlowe as smart and tough, yet sensitive to the needs of others who get caught up in the web of deceit that he finds himself tangled up in. Marlowe, is genuinely concerned for General Sternwood, as well as for Harry Jones and Agnes, two people who don't deserve the hand they get dealt. Hired to solve a minor blackmail case, Marlowe goes on to bring down Eddie Mars and discover how Sean got killed and who killed him, if for no other reason than to give the general some closure.

The Big Sleep is rated G and is filmed in Glorious black and white.

Apollo 18 (2011)

Let's call it The Blair Witch Meets Alien on the Moon. That just about sums up everything you need to know about this low-budget stinker from the Weinstein Brothers. Here's the premise. There were actually 18 Apollo missions, not 17. Recently declassified film footage from 1972 reveals that Apollo 18 was a top secret mission designed to do...something. I think they were placing some transmitter doo-hickeys on the moon to monitor something or other. Once on the moon, though, our intrepid astroboys are attacked by...um...rocks...I think. Or was it strange crab-like creatures? Or was it rocks that turn into crab-like creatures? Or was it the alien? After all, one of the rocks did insert itself into Lloyd Owen, turning him into a goggle-eyed maniac. So maybe it was the alien. Or something else. If I sound unsure of myself, that's because the movie never really seemed to make it clear just what the alien was or what it had against the friendly, visiting delegates from Earth. Well, anyway, Lloyd and fellow moonwalker Ryan Robbins discover a Soviet moonlander. It's abandoned, but otherwise fairly intact. Nearby, in a dark and spooky crater lit only by the strobes of Ryan's camera flash (we spent all that money to send men to the moon, but we forgot to give them flashlights?) they find the corpse of the cosmonaut. Decayed. The movie never gets around to explaining how he decayed in an airless, sub-zero environment, so just work with me here, okay? He's all decayed. Soon after Lloyd starts showing the effects of his own contamination. It's the usual stuff - rapid movement, bulging eyes, wild ranting. After trying to trash the lander, Lloyd escapes and runs off into the night. Ryan tries to follow him into yet another dark and spooky crater, where he is assaulted by crab-like creatures. He escapes, makes his way to the Soviet lander and takes off, only to find that the Soviet lander is full of rocks...that turn into crab-like creatures... and eat him. Of course, everyone dies in the end which presents one slight continuity problem. If the astroboys are filming everything on these handheld cameras that take film cartridges, and they are all killed on the moon, and no one else ever went back to the moon, then how did the film cartridges end up in the super top secret vault at NASA? Oh, but film makers hate people like me. At any rate, as I have already pointed out, Apollo 18 purports to be recently discovered film footage from 1972, and at that, at least, director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego did a very good job of recreating the look of NASA film stock. That both helps and hinders the film. Remember when Neil Armstrong stepped onto Lunar soil for the first time? Remember how fuzzy everything was, as Neil's form, almost a palimpsest of a human being, moved around the Lunar landscape, dragging ghosts of his own image about with him? Okay, now imagine watching a whole movie that was done just like that, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what this movie was like. That and the whole shaky-shaky camera thing gets a little tiresome after a while. I'd have much preferred straight, old-fashioned camera work to this "I gotta camera and I'm gonna film everything I see" garbage. Finally, I found that the astroboys lost their cool extraordinarily fast. I mean, these are guys who are trained for years to keep their cool under any situation, yet they practically fly to pieces at the first corpse they come across. I would expect cooler heads on the moon. After all, it was only one corpse. Still, I suppose that some will find Apollo 18 entertaining. Some may even find it scary. It just failed to scare or entertain me.

Apollo 18 is rated PG-13 and is filmed in grainy, shaky color.

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)

Freddie Francis' 1965 Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is a first-rate example of a British portmanteau horror film. The film revolves around five men travelling in a train compartment. They make room for a sixth man, Dr. Schrek (Peter Cushing), who can read people's futures through the a deck of tarot cards, which he calls his House of Horrors. One by one, each of the men have their futures foretold, all of which end in death. Of the five tales, my personal favorites are "The Killing Vine," in which a family returns from vacation only to find a truly invasive vine taking over their garden, and "The Disembodied Hand," with Christopher Lee as an art critic terrorized by the severed hand of an artist that he ran over, causing him to lose his rather vengeful hand. Also of note is "The Vampire Story," starring Donald Sutherland as a young doctor who unwittingly marries a beautiful French vampire. The other two stories are, in my book, only mildly entertaining. In "The Werewolf Story," a real estate agent is called back to his family's estate where the current owners have a rather nasty surprise in store for him, and "The Voodoo Story" tells the tale of a jazz musician who rips off an ancient voodoo hymn with disastrous results for himself. But what are truly the best parts of the entire movie are the scenes in the railway coach. There's real atmosphere here. The train is travelling by night, so all you can see out the windows is blackness and smoke. The scenes are claustrophobic. And Peter Cushing plays the evil Dr. Schrek with just the right combination of mildness and menace.

Let me tell you straight up that this is not a great movie. Come to think of it, few horror movies are "great." But some of them are great fun. This is one of those. The casting is unbelievable. Hollywood would pay a fortune to get all of these men back in front of the camera for a second go around. And they play their parts well, each of them starting off jovial and non-chalant, each ending up fearful. The sets are not bad, and the special effects are good considering the time period and the budget. The five short stories are pretty good, even if they have plot holes in them. All in all, this is what I would call a good movie, if I use Roger Ebert's definition, which is that a good movie does what it sets out to do. Dr. Terror's House of Horrors sets out to entertain us and, maybe, give us a tingle. It accomplishes that quite well, and so it is a good movie. Could it have been better? Of course, but the same can be said for many movies. This happens to be the first horror movie I ever saw. I was five years old at the time and living in Germany with my family. My mother and my aunt decided they wanted to see it, so they went and took us kids with them. I was probably scared witless at the time, though I don't really recall. But I did recall the images from the film. They stuck with me for the rest of my life. So much so, that I sought out this film. You could say that it formed the basis for my love of horror films. Not gorefests, but real, old-fashioned horror films. This is just such a movie. Check it out if you're ever in the mood for some good, old-fashioned entertainment.

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is unrated. It's not available on DVD. Hopefully, somebody will restore it and issue it on DVD soon. Until then, you can only get it on fuzzy VHS or through NetFlix.

I Am Legend (2007), The Omega Man (1971), The Last Man on Earth (1964)

How about three movies for the price of one? Why not? After all, they are all the same movie. The plot goes something like this: Earth is ravaged by a terrible plague that kills most of the planet's inhabitants. Those it doesn't kill, it turns into flesh-eating zombies who fear the sunlight. Only one man is immune to the plague - a doctor who struggles to find a cure for those who are already zombified. He lives in a fortified house to keep the zombies from eating him before he can come up with a cure for this dreadful disease. Eventually, he meets a young woman who appears to be immune also. They get real friendly, on account of the fact that neither of them has seen another human for a long time. Just as the doctor is completing his research, the zombies attack. He's killed in the attack, but not before he gives the serum that will cure humanity to the young woman and she escapes to the only known colony of uninfected humans. That's the story in a nutshell, but it's was good enough to persuade the powers that be in Hollywood to make it not once, but three times (well, four really, but the forth one is so bad that it's not worth mentioning here).

Vincent Price played the roll of Dr. Robert Morgan in Ubaldo Ragona's The Last Man on Earth, filmed in and around Eur, Rome. This version of the film is tame, almost laughably so, by today's standards, as the slow-moving zombies bump into the good doctor's house chanting his name. Not much scare there. Yet, the scene where Dr. Morgan tosses the dead bodies into the city dump and lights them on fire was considered so disturbing in 1967 that it was cut from the American release of the film. Boris Sagal's 1971 film The Omega Man stars Charlton Heston as Dr. Robert Neville, the lone survivor charging around LA, blasting zombies, while he searches for a cure in his fortified townhouse. This version is really the classic of the three, and a movie that cannot be much improved upon, except maybe for some better zombie makeup. And in 2007, Francis Lawrence gave us I Am Legend, starring Will Smith as Dr. Robert Neville, who spends his day cruising the streets of New York City with his dog Sam, looking for mutants and his nights in his fortified townhouse looking for a cure. Here the zombies have gone completely animal on us. They no longer think, they simply act aggressively, except perhaps for the leader who holds a slight grudge against Dr. Neville. But even he's only marginally smarter than the rest of the snarling, slobbering brood.

So why three versions of the same story? Cuz the folks in Hollywood don't have a lot of imagination, so they just keep rehashing the same stories again and again. All three movies are adaptations of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend. The Last Man on Earth is, however, not that great, and begged for a remake. It was a low budget film, shot in Italy, with bad make-up on grainy black and white film. Let's face it, brain-eating zombies didn't look all that menacing in movies back in the 1950s and 60s. They usually just put a lot of white pancake on the actors' faces, added a whole bunch of eyeliner, mussed up their hair and put them in shabby clothes. The Omega Man is the best of the lot. Its zombies are really just folks who've been turned into light-sensitive albinos by the plague, and they have it out for old Chuck cuz he's the one they think is responsible for it. These zombies are smart, they're organized, they have weapons, and they have a plan. Also, by 1971, Hollywood had become a little more aware of America's ethnic makeup, and the survivors - zombie and otherwise - were both black and white. This film was pretty radical for its time in that Lisa (Rosalind Cash), the uninfected woman who Heston's character gets jiggy with, is black. By 2007, Hollywood is definitely integrated, at least in the SciFi realm. In I Am Legend, Dr. Neville is played by a black man and Anna (Alice Braga) - the uninfected woman he finds - is played by an Hispanic, making it a much better representation of New York society. Special effects have also gotten more sophisticated (notice I didn't say better). The zombie hoards that Will Smith must contend with are computer animated monsters that move at lightning speed and possess near-superhuman strength. Sucks to fight zombies in the 21st Century, dude.

The Last Man in the World is rated G and is filmed in black and white.

The Omega Man is rated PG and is filmed in color.

I Am Legend is rated PG13 and is filmed in color.

One can only assume that the next version will be rated R and will be filmed in 3D. Oh the horror!

The Uninvited (1944)

Lewis Allen's The Uninvited is one of the best little horror stories ever filmed, and a movie that you'll be lucky if you ever get to see. Like Under the Tuscan Sun, it involves an old deserted estate, and the dream someone has of fixing it up and starting a new life in the country far from the strife of the city. There the similarity ends, however. Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) discover Windwood Manor, a beautiful old mansion sitting empty on the sea coast. This brother and sister duo decide to purchase the home immediately and make it their own. Only one problem. The house isn't quite as deserted as they thought it was. Two women died there in less than fortunate circumstances. One is Mary Meredith, cold-hearted wife of the artist Llewellyn Meredith. The other is his model, Carmel Casada. As Roderick and Pamela try to unravel the mystery of these two ghosts - the former cold and threatening, the latter sad and weeping - Roderick falls in love with Stella Meredith (Gail Russell), the daughter of Llewellyn. Stella is also the granddaughter of the man who sold them the house, Commander Beech (Donald Crisp). He forbids Stella from seeing Roderick or going near Windwood Manor, much to the dismay of the young lovers. When Stella does finally show up there, she's at first filled with intense happiness as she smells the fragrance of mimosa. Later, she's scared out of her wits by the cold, angry spirit. Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, Roderick, Pamela, and Dr. Scott (Allan Napier) go to see Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner), who was a dear friend of Meredith's. Eventually, the trio solves the mystery and exorcises all of the spirits from Windwood Manor for good. Roderick and Stella will be married, as will Dr. Scott and Pamella.

The Uninvited is a wonderful old spine tingler, a tale of an angry presence that threatens the life of a sweet young woman and a beneficent presence that seeks to check the other. It's a story of love and revenge, of hatred and control, of repressed emotions and lesbianism. Yes, you read that correctly. Like Rebecca, there's a strongly hinted relationship between the cold Mary Meredith and the creepy Miss Holloway. Of course, such things could never be said outright back in the forties, so they had to be implied. This film implies quite a lot, enough to say that something more was going on between these two twisted women. I say "twisted," because that is the only was that homosexuality and lesbianism could be shown back in 1944. If a character's gender preference was called into question, they were by default evil. It's just the way it was. Like all of the really good suspense stories of the forties, it's shot in a deliciously moody style, with lots of deep shadows, even during the daylight hours. Windwood Manor is a creepy old pile of bricks, with its long, winding staircase and the reflections from the ocean cast onto the walls and ceiling, much like in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. There are some wonderfully funny scenes when Roderick takes Stella sailing and promptly gets sick, and when Roderick and Pamela visit the sanitarium of Miss Holloway. Like Cruella deVille, "if she doesn't scare you, no evil thing will." Finally, there's the ghost itself. Mary Meredith's disembodied presence was rendered with a wonderful special effect that revealed only enough of her spirit to scare you, but not enough of it to let you "see the strings." I've seen this movie a dozen times, and I still get shivers up and down my spine when that ghost appears on screen. That's how well it was done.

The Uninvited is rated G and is available in creepy black and white. It's only available in this country on VHS. This wonderful thriller has never been released on DVD in the United States. Why? I dunno. You'll have to ask Paramount about that one.

Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

Under the Tuscan Sun is a film about redemption, the story of one woman's attempt to craft a new life out of the shattered remains of an old one. Frances (Diane Lane) has it all. Great writing career. Nice house. Adoring husband. Wait a sec. Scratch that last one. Husband's not quite so adoring. He's seeing another woman. He wants a divorce. He wants the nice house too, and he gets it. Frances' life begins spiralling downward, until her lesbian friend Pati (Sandra Oh) gives her an all expense paid tour of Italy. It's a gay and lesbian tour. Lucky Frances. She goes anyway, just to get away from her depressing apartment. While there, she sees an aged villa, soaking in the Tuscan sun, with FOR SALE sign out front. Something about the villa strikes her. Maybe it's the way the sunlight seems so golden there. Maybe it's the olive trees. Who knows? Anyway, she orders the bus to stop, gets off, and buys the villa. Thus begins her new life in Italy. She starts renovating the crumbling villa with the aid of a local builder, Nino (Massimo Sarchielli), and three Polish immigrants: Zbignew (Sasa Vulicevic), Jersey (Valentine Pelka), and Pawel (Pawel Szajda). While the construction progresses, Frances searches for love. First she explores the notion with her realtor, Martini (Vincente Riotta), but he's in love with his wife. Then she has a wild fling with Marcello (Raoul Bova), something of a playboy and a ladies man. That doesn't work out too well either. While this is going on, Pati shows up on her doorstep eight months pregnant and deserted by her partner. Frances also plays matchmaker for the young Pawel and Nino's daughter, Chiara (Giulia Steigerwalt). All along she gets advice on loving and living from Katherine (Lindsey Duncan), a former actress and protegee of Fellini. Eventually, the house is finished, Pati's baby is born, Pawel and Chiara get married, and Frances has become a part of the village, deeply involved with the lives of the people she's come to call her friends. In the end, she too will find love, but only when she stops looking for it. When she waits for it to find her. It always does, doesn't it?

Audrey Wells' Under the Tuscan Sun, is a gorgeous, romantic movie that's just plain fun to watch. The scenery is breathtaking and the cinematography takes full advantage of it. Each and every scene is played out against the stunning backdrop of the Tuscan countryside and the coast of Amalfi. Watching this movie will make you dream of Italy, the hot sun beating down on the golden hills, the dark cypresses standing like sentinels over the villas and villages, the ancient churches, the collision of old world and post modern. It's all here as a cyclorama to the touching story of one lonely woman searching for meaning in her life. And then there's the food. Under the Tuscan Sun loves Italian cuisine the way that Chocolat loved, well, chocolate. And the acting is superb. The film is filled with wonderful characters, from the jittery Jersy to the kind-hearted Martini to the vivacious Katherine, with her joie de vie and her stream of lovers. Oh! But this is a delicious film, and one that slipped by most viewers at multiplexes. Under the Tuscan Sun is a quiet movie about slowing down and engaging with the people and the world around you. You cannot help but be happy as you watch life and love unfold before your eyes under the Tuscan sun. I'm betting you'll wanna be there too.

Under the Tuscan Sun is rated PG-13 and is filmed in glorious color to bring to life the Italian countryside.

Frankenstein (1931)

James Whale's 1931 masterpiece Frankenstein is another of those great, old movies, like Dracula, which has become so deeply ingrained into our society that I doubt there isn't a single person in this country who does not recognize the the film's iconic images. The star of Frankenstein's - Boris Karloff with his flat-top head and the bolts protruding from his neck - is easily one of the most recognizable figures in all of American popular culture. And yet, like Bela Lugosi's iconic film, very few people in this country have ever actually seen the original film version of this timeless story. In this regard, the 1931 Frankenstein is much like Herman Melville's Moby Dick - everybody knows what's it's about, but almost no one has actually read it (yes, in fact, I have). And that's really too bad too, because it's such a good movie. And it's the start of so much. The icon that a thousand other images were built on. It's not only a masterpiece; it's the master. The model. The mold for all that followed it, from the Hammer films of the sixties, to Andy Warhol's travesty, to Frankenberry. They all owe their existence to this film. Not to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly's novel of the same name. She never explains how the monster is made, and her monster is a very well-spoken creature, even though he learned to speak by listening to peasants. No, the images of the brooding, grunting, monster, the bolts of electricity coursing into the monster, bringing it to life, the ancient castles and tiny villages that resemble nothing in the real world, old or new, all of this comes to us directly from the mind of James Whale.

It all starts in a graveyard. The image of death brooding over the scene. Mourners filing away from the graveside. Two men appear. They rush to the fresh grave and start digging furiously. Next you see them cutting down the corpse of a criminal who was hanged on the highroad. You know who they are. Don't need me to fill you in on that one. It's Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and...no, not Igor...Fritz (Dwight Frye). Yeah, I know, Fritz kind of loses something in the translation doesn't it. Anyway, they get the body all sewed together, then Fritz is sent after a brain. Remember that wonderful scene in Young Frankenstein when Igor goes and steals the wrong brain? Mel Brooks copied that scene almost frame for frame from Whale's movie. Fritz gets the wrong brain. Dr. Frankenstein puts it into his creation. The rest, as they say, is movie history. The electrical storm comes. The lightning flashes. The machines are started up. Electricity flashes through the old watchtower. The monster lives. But he's not controllable. He's a mad man. He kills Fritz. Granted, Fritz had it coming to him. Tormented the poor creature constantly. Still, they'll have to destroy him. Victor's old teacher, Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan), will do the deed. But the monster's no dummy. He knows what's up. As Waldman prepares to destroy the monster, the monster kills him. Then he escapes. Who wouldn't. He kills a little girl by accident. Seems she didn't float as well as the flowers did. What a tragedy. The angry villagers go after the monster. Pitchforks and torches. We all know the scene. Victor finds him, and they struggle. The monster drags Victor into an old windmill, where they continue to fight. In the end, the monster throws Victor from the top of the windmill. The townspeople burn down the windmill and the monster is destroyed. At least until the sequel.

Frankenstein was filmed in black and white, obviously, on these wonderful sets that evoke the German expressionism of a decade earlier. Notice the wonderful watchtower with its angled stairway, its leaning walls, its crooked windows. The monster makeup by Jack P. Pierce has become so iconic that when you say the word Frankenstein, most people immediately picture Pierce's flat-topped, yellow skinned creation. The electrical equipment was designed by Ken Strickfaden, who doubled for Karloff while the electricity was playing about the monster's body. Yeah, they used a live person, not a dummy. This machinery is so tightly linked to the Frankenstein image that Mel Brooks used all of the same equipment - not reproductions but the very same pieces - in his spoof of Whale's film. Many of the shots and camera angles used in the film were cutting edge for their time, and later they became standard stuff. One of Whale's favorite camera techniques was to flow the action through walls, so he built his set so the camera could easily track the actors as they passed from one room to another. Sounds old-fashioned now. Then, it was state of the art stuff. Put all of this together, and you have one of the greatest movies that has ever come out of Hollywood. There have been lots of remakes and homages. Now of them can beat the original. Watch it yourself and find out.

Frankenstein is rated G, and is available in luscious black and white.