Watching soul-crushing films is rough – writing about them is even worse. And there are a lot of bad films out there (I know, shocking). But, as a film critic, when you have the chance to champion a wonderful, cinematic underdog – a film your readers have likely never heard of and will likely never purchase tickets for – it easily makes up for the ten Martin Lawrence vehicles that preceded it. American Teen is one of those films, a documentary full of charm and wit and grace that smoothly functions on multiple levels – as entertainment, as human drama, as social commentary – and is guaranteed to resonate with anyone who’s put foot inside an American high school.
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It’s that time again where we feature the most informative and entertaining comments of the week. The first one is a bit of a doozy, and I even truncated it some, but it’s just so dang good that you owe it to yourself to read the entire thing. As always, our readership is 100% solid gold bling-bling.
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It must be stupid comedy week, or something. (I know someone’s going to say, “What about Death Race!?” — but trust me, that one’s a stupid comedy too.) On the bright side, Hamlet 2 and The Rocker look pretty good, and the much-heralded documentary I.O.U.S.A. debuts as well (but I’ll wait until it picks up a few more screens before mentioning it officially).

Hamlet 2
A long-awaited indie flick that tells the story of a drama teacher directing an infinitely offensive sequel to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet in an attempt to save his high school’s theater department. I can’t promise you quality (I haven’t seen it — you can ask Evan what he thought), but it’s different enough to be worth a look. It was also directed by Andy Fleming, who directed the 1999 comedy Dick, which I consider to be somewhat underrated (though admittedly flawed). But then, he also directed Nancy Drew, so proceed with caution.

Recommended if your dream movie is a mash-up of High School Musical and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

The Rocker
Based on my experience with Dumb and Dumberer, I assume that this one is the prequel to The Rock. Nah, seriously, Rainn “Dwight Schrute” Wilson is a washed-up headbanger who joins his nephew’s garage band. Looks about like what you get when you put The School of Rock, The Office, and Almost Famous in a blender. Or something like that. Or not.

Recommended if you’re one of those people who strips his shirt off and bangs on the drum kit for Rock Band when he thinks he’s alone (and believe me, I know far too many of those people)

The House Bunny
Dear Anna Faris,
You’ve got talent. I just know it. Even in brain-dead movies, I still find you pretty funny. You even produced this film yourself, which I guess means you have brains. But here’s a free tip: the world doesn’t need a female Adam Sandler. And it definitely doesn’t need another comedy about an attractive girl teaching nerdy girls about how to get boys. Even if you learn valuable lessons about how it’s what’s on the inside that counts (and I’m sure you will), the whole thing will still be banal and offensive. Do yourself a favor and get out while there’s still time. Find a smart script, escape from Happy Madison Productions, and never look back.
Your pal,
Luke

Recommended if you liked Legally Blonde, She’s All That, or Mona Lisa Smile

Death Race
A bunch of hardened convicts drive around in circles trying to kill each other. I’m pretty sure that tells you all you need to know. (I saw an early showing of this, and it was frustrating. I wanted to hate it, but it turned out to be a pretty fun time — which was very surprising, given that this one came from Alien vs. Predator auteur Paul W.S. Anderson.)

Recommended if you’ve been sitting in your parents’ basement playing Twisted Metal on your PlayStation since 1995

The Longshots
Wait, what? A family sports comedy starring Ice Cube and directed by…Fred Durst? How many different ways are there to say “Please stab me in the face now”? If Fred Durst becomes to family comedies what Rob Zombie is to horror movies…I’m leaving the planet. Seriously.

Not recommended. At all. Ever.

A short year after filming White Heat, James Cagney returned to the gangster genre once more with Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, a decent, but not nearly as notable, film based on a novel by Horace McCoy (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?). The film isn’t a bad one—it has plenty of twists and turns, and it clips along at a nice pace—but compared to White Heat, it feels a little bit tame and flat.
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Craig Kennedy runs Living In Cinema, in my opinion one of the best film communities on the net. I actually find myself looking forward to his weekly Watercooler discussion, in which everyone gets chatty with what they’ve viewed over the past week. Imagine sitting a nice little coffee shop, talking up Batman and Judd Apatow and Jules Dassin and Satantango, and you’ll have an accurate picture of the atmosphere at LiC. In addition to all of that, Craig is also a fabulous writer. Grab a cup of coffee, enjoy his work here, and then go mingle at LiC. That’s what I’m doing.

When we first meet Harry Fabian, he’s a tiny figure racing through the streets of London. Observed first from a God’s-eye view above the city and then up close where we can see his fear and sweat, he is pursued by men looking to get their money back after another of his schemes gone bad. One way or another, whether he’s avoiding creditors or simply trying to outlast the inevitability of his own fate, Harry spends the rest of Jules Dassin’s 1950 noir classic Night and the City a man on the run.
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Just so everyone is on the same page, Speed Racer comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray September 16th. Mark your calendars, put in for vacation time at work, whatever it takes. If you have yet to acknowledge your need for this film, I can be patient.

Primo Levi’s Journey
“Around us, everything is hostile. Above us the malevolent clouds chase each other to separate us from the sun; on all sides the squalor of the toiling steel closes in on us. We have never seen its boundaries, but we feel all around us the evil presence of the barbed wire that separates us from the world. And on the scaffolding, on the trains being switched about, on the roads, in the pits, in the offices, men and more men, slaves and masters, the masters slaves themselves. Fear motivates the former, hatred the latter, all other forces are silent. All are enemies or rivals.” – From “Survival in Auschwitz”, by Primo Levi

I know next to nothing about this film but it is my top choice this week. A combination documentary/travelogue, it’s narrated by Chris Cooper and retraces the journey that Holocaust survivor Primo Levi took after being released from Auschwitz, when he traveled 1000 miles on foot to reach his home in Italy.

Recommended if you the selection I chose moved you in the slightest.

Recount
Featuring an unbelievably star-studded cast (Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary, Laura Dern, John Hurt, and Tom Wilkinson) this HBO film tackles all the political hoopla around the Florida recount. Quite frankly, any film that ticks off both Republicans and Democrats is worth a looksee in my book.

Recommended if the current political brouhaha hasn’t worn you out already, and if Oliver Stone’s W. can’t arrive soon enough.

Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day
Who doesn’t love charming English comic-romances filled with whimsy? (and if you just raised your hand, why don’t you go make some more babies cry while you’re at it?) Marge from Fargo (Frances McDormand), Giselle from Enchanted (Amy Adams, who totally rocks), and Ned from Pushing Daisies (Lee Pace, and how freaking long before that show is on again?) all star. Count me in.

Recommended if you liked Finding Neverland, Nanny McPhee, or Calendar Girls,

The Life Before Her Eyes
Despite the pedigree of its cast (Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood), this one appeared to get middling reviews. It cross-cuts two stories about one woman, one narrative from her past and one narrative from the present. It involves a school shooting and (I’m just guessing here) a Twist that I could see coming from a mile away in the trailer, but it could be a pleasant surprise. House of Sand and Fog, the director’s previous outing, was one of the best films I saw that year, so this does have that going for it.

Recommended if you liked House of Sand and Fog and Elephant (albeit with less verite and more stars)

Hit the jump for the rest of your choices.
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Daniel Getahun once again provides an excellent treatment to a relatively unknown film. Be sure to visit Getafilm afterwards, which perfectly distills his personality and passion for all things cinema. One of the better blogs out there.

People are being cheated, robbed, murdered, raped. And that goes on 24 hours a day, every day in the year. And that’s not exceptional, that’s usual. It’s the same in every city in the modern world. But suppose we had no police force, good or bad. Suppose we had… just silence. Nobody to listen, nobody to answer. The battle’s finished. The jungle wins. The predatory beasts take over.

So says Police Commissioner Hardy (John McIntire) in an impassioned speech at the conclusion of The Asphalt Jungle, an overlooked noir classic that’s also considered to be one of the earliest and most stylistically influential heist films. Based on the novel of the same name by W.J. Burnett, The Asphalt Jungle was brilliantly adapted by Ben Maddow and John Huston, whose masterful direction of the film is often overshadowed by his projects that came directly before and after it: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and The African Queen (1951), respectively. Of course, Huston’s contribution to the noir canon is also most often attributed not to The Asphalt Jungle, but to The Maltese Falcon, his seminal masterpiece that set the tone for the classic noir era that would span nearly two decades.
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This review was originally published April 12th, 2008.

“It could have been great.”

A more haunting Hollywood phrase for directors and writers and studio executives (and sometimes fans) you may not be able to find. Given its pedigree (writer James Ellroy from who’s work L.A. Confidential was drawn, and director David Ayer, who scripted the compelling, if flawed, Training Day), Street Kings should have been, in the eternal words of Marlon Brando, ‘a contender.’ Instead, it is a mildly distracting entertainment, a choice to make if nothing else looks good at the multiplex, and worst of all, forgettable. Light a candle for missed opportunities; this film has them in spades.
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This review was originally published May 12th, 2008.

The 1966 court case “Baniszewski v. The State of Indiana” detailed what is known as “the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana.” The case prosecuted homemaker and mother of six Gertrude Baniszewski for the prolonged torture, mutilation, and eventual death of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens.
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I’ve come to a bit of a realization. Apparently what I previously asked all of you to do to become eligible for the noir boxset giveaway was a bit stressful. Asking you to tell us 1) what MovieZeal is doing really well and 2) something it needs to improve must have made many of you balk because I have not received as many entries as I had expected. When one entrant said “Whew, that was tough!” at the end of their email, I knew something was up. I’m going to assume most of you like us so much that you don’t want to say anything critical at all (a big assumption, I know). I’m flattered, but I also want more people to enter the giveaway. The boxset is worth around $50 after all. So….

….I’m changing the rules. Now, simply send an email to moviezealgiveaway@gmail.com with “300th Post Giveaway” in the subject line and your name in the body of the message. That’s it. You don’t have to write anything else at all. Just send in your name and you’ll be eligible. To those of you who worked so hard to write out your critiques, thank you very much, and some of them have been quite eye-opening. I apologize that I just negated all of your hard work, but you’ll still be fully eligible.

So now there should be no excuse not to enter. Apart from the four core MovieZeal writers and their immediate families (sorry Phillip, Sam, and Luke), anyone can enter, including those of you who have contributed to our noir retrospective this month. Tell your friends, tell your family; all they have to do is send their name to the above email address. And as an FYI, this is the 271st post. For those of you, like myself, who need a calculator to perform any kind of basic mathematical computation, that means there are 29 more to go.

And just as a recap, the boxset includes Out of the Past, Gun Crazy, The Asphalt Jungle, Murder My Sweet, and The Set-up.

It is with much trepidation that I step down Sunset Boulevard. Reviewing a film that for 50 years has been considered a masterpiece by much of the film community is a daunting task and one that could easily end in luminous insight or ridiculous failure. Few films approach Sunset Boulevard’s level of cinematic perfection or Billy Wilder’s insight into the reality of the Hollywood system. Along with Out of the Past, it represents the pinnacle of what noir can be — a bleak and shadowy representation of the darkness visible in the human heart.
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Chuck Bowen resides at Bowen’s Cinematic and is, quite frankly, one of the best writers that I read with any regularity. I’m not sure anyone has told you this yet, Chuck, but you need to get paid for this. Seriously.

Humphrey Bogart was an ideal movie star, one of the movie stars, and that partially sprung from his ability to marry (and sentimentalize) what most men hope to be with what most men fear themselves to be; seemingly without effort. Bogart is one of American cinema’s lasting ideas of masculinity, but he also had a sharp, wounded verbal quality, and vulnerability, that could appeal to the sort of outsiders that noirs probably spoke (and continue to speak) most clearly to. Noir is the opposite of romantic comedy, we go to those to be comforted, to have our giddiest, silliest dreams confirmed; noirs play to our suspicions that life is rigged, and that the sexes are driven by irreconcilable desires (that men are obsessed with money as route to sex, and women are obsessed with sex as route to money). Noirs provide comfort too, it’s just of a different sort; they’re that friend with whom you can share your self-indulgent feelings of loneliness and alienation. Many actors, including the continually underrated Robert Ryan, embodied the noir in ways that few future actors will most likely ever match, but Bogart is our spokesman, a deserved legend. In some films he’s reveling in the highs of quick-witted self-absorption (The Maltese Falcon), and in others he explores what that mercenary shell might mask, such as In a Lonely Place.
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Joel Ehly is a frequent commenter at Living In Cinema, and I first met him over some heated discussion on the Coen brothers. Joel is a passionate filmgoer and possesses an extensive cinematic vocabulary. Hey, why doesn’t this guy have his own site yet?

A precursor to Bonnie and Clyde, Gun Crazy is an example of the romantic subset of crime stories dating back to Macbeth: Two morally-weak kids fall hopelessly in love and take the short and easy route (i.e., criminal) to Happily Ever After. Fate has something else in mind and inevitably tragedy ensues. In other words, don’t try this at home.

Directed by Joseph P. Lewis in 1950, Gun Crazy (aka Deadly is the Female) is based on a short story by MacKinlay Kantor. Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay, working under the pseudonym Millard Kaufman. This crime noir is Lewis’ most well known work, featuring his daring visual style and rat-a-tat-tat storytelling.
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It’s time to once again salute you, the wonderful readers of MovieZeal and your colorful opinions. It’s a pleasure to troll through our comment logs and see just how intelligent, thoughtful, and humorous all of you are (I realize the picture above somewhat contradicts that last statement, but I just thought it was funny. Don’t go reading into it too much). Go ahead, get yourself that tall glass of ice-cold pink lemonade. You deserve it,
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Major plot points are discussed, including the infamous ending.

White Heat is a wild beast of a film with a wild beast of a star. It is blunt, unpredictable, thrilling, grotesque, and frothing-at-the-mouth rabid. Films that hold up as magnificently as this one does do so because they have become benchmarks that the following decades have continually referenced – Psycho, A Clockwork Orange, Reservoir Dogs and even The Dark Knight all owe some manner of debt to it. I take issue with the film’s classification as noir (it bears more resemblance to a gangster flick, and most film historians that I’ve read provide the weakest justifications for its inclusion in the canon), but similar to other great films of the period (The Maltese Falcon, Mildred Pierce, The Big Sleep), whether it is noir or not is a moot point – White Heat thrills as much as it did when it was first released 60 years ago, an incredible film that can effortlessly stand on its own two feet.
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Um…wow. Summer must be over, because there are more than two releases worth discussing this week (although, as you’ll see, I use the phrase “worth discussing” pretty loosely). I’ve always preferred sleepers to blockbusters, and while I’m holding out hope for most of these, I have to admit that most of them are likely to suck. But you’ll definitely find me at the local multiplex this weekend, taking in at least one of these, and keeping my fingers crossed in hopes that I’m becoming part of history. (Yeah, right.)

Tropic Thunder
I was going to publish this post tomorrow, until I noticed that this one actually gets released today. Carrying on the tradition of Three Amigos! and Galaxy Quest, this high-concept comedy finds three actors hired to film a Vietnam War epic stuck in the middle of an actual war. I wasn’t exactly blown away by the trailers, but I’m holding out hope — I don’t want to live in a world where a movie that teams up Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and Robert Downey, Jr. (who, after Charlie Bartlett and Iron Man, might just be my new favorite actor) isn’t amazingly great.

Recommended if you always thought Apocalypse Now just wasn’t funny enough

Star Wars: The Clone Wars
There was a time that George Lucas talked about making nine, or even twelve, Star Wars movies. Then he ran out of gas after six (some would say before), and decided to pay the bills with royalties from action figures and trading card games instead. That doesn’t mean other people can’t make more of them, though! I guess this computer-animated film qualifies as another addition to the so-called “Expanded Universe”…and if you don’t know what that phrase means, it’s probably not for you. As I understand it, this is the kick-off for a planned TV series of the same name. No word on how it relates to the previous animated series Star Wars: Clone Wars (but I assume it’s something like the relationship between Ghostbusters and The Real Ghostbusters).

Recommended if you know who Zorba the Hutt is

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
First Match Point, then Cassandra’s Dream…and now yet another critically acclaimed Woody Allen film? Is it possible that we’re experiencing a Woody Allen Renaissance? “Woody Allen Movies” is a genre (yes, genre) that refuses to go away, so I sure hope so. As I understand it, this one stars Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson as a couple of Americans named Vicky and Cristina, who fight with Spaniard Rebecca Hall over her boyfriend Javier Bardem, in Barcelona. Now if only I could figure out where he got the title…

Recommended if you actually saw Scoop

These things just keep coming…hit the jump for more.
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Carol Reed’s The Third Man is a prime example of what you get when an American movement like noir is adopted and adapted by a talented British filmmaker. Prior to this film, noir was more or less an exclusively American movement, albeit one with roots in European expressionism; with this masterpiece, Reed took the idiom and made it his own. The Third Man has very little of the typical American brashness possessed by most of its counterparts made across the pond; instead, it maintains a much more withdrawn, calculated immediacy. Gone are the ubiquitous shadows and the menacing music; in their place is a slow-burning, meticulous sense of craft that manages a historical and political resonance rarely seen within the genre. The end result is nothing short of transcendent.
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I missed the 100th and 200th post milestones, but by golly I’m not going to miss the 300th one. We are currently sitting on 257 posts (this is the 258th), and with Noir Month still going strong, in addition to the prolific addition of Sam Juliano to our writing staff, I’m anticipating hitting 300 at (or soon after) the end of the month. So, in order to celebrate, we’re hosting our very first giveaway, but rather than cobble together some used DVDs lying around the house (the cinematic equivalent of sloppy seconds), we’re doing it up right.

In honor of Noir Month, we’re giving away the best noir boxset that I could find. It features 5 films, 4 of which are indisputable essentials in the film noir canon: Out Of the Past, The Asphalt Jungle, Gun Crazy, Murder My Sweet, and The Set-Up. Every one enjoys an immaculate transfer, and each film includes commentary.

In order to be eligible, you only have to do two simple things. Drop us a line at moviezealgiveaway@gmail.com, include your name, and tell us 1) something MovieZeal is doing really well, and 2) something MovieZeal is lacking or really needs to improve. That’s it. Anyone can enter. When we hit our 300th post, we’ll randomly select from those who’ve entered and ship you your brand-spanking new collection of noir classics.

Oh, and please be honest. We’re doing this to figure out what we need to improve as well as give away a fantastic set of films. Trust us, we love constructive criticism.

Apparently, American audiences are craving another addition to Lionsgate’s Saw franchise … after all, what would October and its accompanying holiday be without some good torture porn? But what’s so special about this particular trailer that makes me point it out?

The new teaser for Saw V is the third trailer I’ve seen in a year in which the main musical centerpiece is an ironically used piece of religious music. The first trailer was Hitman which used Schubert’s Ave Maria, the second Alien vs. Predator: Requiem using Silent Night, and now this new horror film using the classic hymn of the Christian faith Be Thou My Vision.

This has to be the most blatantly offensive of them all. Although I’m a Christian, I’m certainly not one to get caught up in the boycotts that emanate so often from the orifices of the Christian Right; but this is just wrong. It may not be illegal, but its one of the most distasteful, disrespectful, and intentionally offensive pieces of advertising I’ve ever seen. Shame on Lionsgate.

Sorry if my angst shows, but I really don’t think we need another one of these films. Don’t we have enough already? Every time I see a new preview for one of these, I’m reminded of something Frank Darabont (director of The Mist) said in an interview last year:

The torture-porn thing is pretty distasteful. I’m just not into it. Horror unfortunately tends to go in these cycles where it puts itself back in this ghetto. I just don’t find anything amusing about people getting tortured. I wish we weren’t making these movies. I think it degrades the culture. I think it diminishes the human spirit.

Truer words, Frank. Truer words.

Here’s the link to the trailer at YouTube — it doesn’t quite deserve the HD treatment

Mademoiselle Zeena

Before we learn exactly who Ms. Zeena Krumbein is, she’s seen standing outside her carnival tent. The wind is blowing and the raucous sounds of the carnival are heard around envelope her. There’s a strange look on her face, too. Is it worry? Is it guilt? Or does she just know a heckuva lot more than anybody else? Later we’ll see plenty of Zeena (played with zealous self-awareness by Joan Blondell), but that opening shot does something which only cinema can do: it takes us completely into the mind of a character even before we’re given details about them.

From there on its Nightmare Alley, Edmund Goulding’s woeful, inky and deathly serious film about a carnival performer picked up by the claws of fame. Its one of the grimmest pieces of noir you’re likely to find, ranking with Double Indemnity and Out of the Past on the doom and gloom scale.
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