CAT'S EYE

So grateful for the chance to get reacquainted with this, a hidden gem among Stephen King adaptations. King himself adapts two of his NIGHT SHIFT stories ("Quitters, Inc." & "The Ledge"), and pens a new closing segment ("The General"). So distinct is each segment from the other two that director Lewis Teague is directing three different movies. And he's directing a cat in all of them.



A blogger of my acquaintance makes a credible case that rather than an anthology, it's all one story with a plucky and determined (not to mention insanely well-trained and directed) cat as its protagonist. The film even follows its feline hero through Hell (Quitters Inc. - a terrifying no-escape situation) into Purgatory (The Ledge - trial by heights) before ending in Heaven (The General - home at last).

Kudoes to Teague, King, and the four credited animal trainers in this film; I'm hard pressed to recall another animal character (a cat, no less) that makes such a strong impression. But each of the segments has its strengths: James Woods provides a grounded and believable performance in the Twilight Zone-like Quitters, Inc.; Kenneth McMillan's mania dances beautifully with Robert Hays' fear-then-determination in The Ledge; and there's genuine suspense in The General's cat-on-troll fight.

Stephen King movies came and went throughout the 80s, but something about CAT'S EYE held it a little higher than the others. It became something of a staple on cable, which is where I initially saw it - indeed, I caught it tonight on Encore's Movieplex station, which seems to be bearing the standard of pan-&-scan, weirdly random cable programming that made Cinemax such a favorite destination during my teenage years. If pressed, I'd name "The Ledge" as my favorite segment, for the intensity of the McMillan/Hays conflict, the way the cat plays his shifting loyalties, and the sound effect that caps it. Rare for anthologies like this, a browse of reviews on line finds each of the three segments with its champions. This lack of consensus speaks to something special in it, an offbeat charm that the decades haven't diminished, whether you enjoy it as a trio of Stephen King stories, an undersung gem in the offbeat but entertaining filmography of Lewis Teague, or the tale of a resourceful, well-traveled, and ultimately lovable cat.

TRANCE

A good friend once commented that THE DA VINCI CODE existed for the sole purpose of making stupid people feel smart. "Well, it's got Da Vinci, and he's smart, and it's about a code, and I figured it all out, so I'm smart! Wa-hey!" I can not speak to the accuracy of this assessment of THE DA VINCI CODE, and yet I feel, having seen Danny Boyle's TRANCE, that I have experienced the exact movie my friend was describing.



The movie is as empty as the frame held above by Vincent Cassel. For all its games of dress-up in the complexities of the human psyche and entry-level art history, TRANCE has nothing to offer us. No credible, dimensional characters (the leads are revealed to be as shallow and duplicitous as the multi-ethnic but otherwise interchangeable thugs that make up the cast); no reason to give a damn about the fate of the missing painting that serves as the movie's MacGuffin; no real plot on offer that isn't driven by the schemes of these shallowly drawn and uninvolving characters. The truly lovely cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle and brisk filmmaking do their damnedest to make something look like it's going on, but it very carefully explains every stray image, sealing everything so neatly that even the most dense viewer is sure to not be left behind. If after seeing this you have a desire to go again to catch the details you've missed, then you've been conned, and are a suitable target for the anti-human disdain this smug motion picture oozes from every scene.

200, for Roger

Representation is, in fact, important.

And so it was that young, prepubescent, bespectacled, asthmatic, schlubby me was somewhat adrift in a childhood free of identifiable role models. No one on television looked like me, or did anything within my sphere to emulate.

Except.

Davey Marlin-Jones (who was just as bespectacled and a hell of a lot weirder than I) was on television reviewing films for Eyewitness News. Which started to unlock something in my head...

...until viewings of Sneak Previews not just unlocked that door, but blew it wide open. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert weren't just relatable, they were smart. The way some kids looked at athletes with tangible dreams of growing up to be one, so did I see these guys as my own heroes. I was always a movie-loving kid, but these guys honed my nascent cinephilia. Siskel & Ebert had me looking at movies outside my comfort zone at an early age, enabling a number of cinematic epiphanies possible. Sure, my family took me to STAR WARS like any other child of my generation, but THE SHOOTING PARTY was the movie that truly sent me and showed me what movies could address. Sneak Previews didn't point me at that film, but it made my experience of it possible.

With Siskel and other partners, into soloville as Thee Recognizable Face and Voice of The Movies, Ebert continued to serve admirably as both reviewer AND critic (remember, they aren't the same thing). You could trust his opinions, whether you agreed with them or not. The disagreements were a challenge to articulate your own position. And the agreements would open new doors to beloved, familiar works. And he was refreshingly capable of human error (as when he picked up a certain rumor about a local movie palace a year and a half ago, but why dredge up those details?).

I had something much larger in mind for my 200th post here (which, indeed, this is), but that piece has been floundering under the weight of what I wanted it to become. It's necessary for me, for everyone touched by Roger's example, to articulate what that example meant to them. I can't imagine what my life would be like without that early formative influence. I'm sad to say goodbye to him, but the fire he stoked in me burns still. And in everything before these 200 posts, through them, and everything after.

Thanks, Roger. G'night.

UNDER CAPRICORN

1831, Sydney, Australia: Among the ne'er-do-wells and convicted criminals making a new start in this sweaty liminal zone is Charles Adare (Michael Wilding), the cousin of the colony's new governor. Charles is taken in by shadowy but prosperous businessman Samson Flusky (Joseph Cotten), whose troubled and alcoholic wife Henrietta (Ingrid Bergman) was acquainted with Charles back in Ireland. Charles' growing fondness for Henrietta gradually brings her out of her shell, but also brings to light a variety of demons that have lurked quiet in the Flusky household, which threaten to destroy all in their wake.



Goddammit, this movie should have been HUGE for director Alfred Hitchcock, returning him as it does to the Gothic milieu of REBECCA and building confidently on the long-take experiments of ROPE. It's one of his most technically assured films, and he'd aided immeasurably in its execution by the artfully garish Technicolor photography of Jack Cardiff and an incredibly lightfooted crew of camera operators. The long takes stalk through the manor and draw you in, giving the actors time and space to fully inhabit their characters and put you away. (Among other noteworthy scenes, Bergman delivers a confession that, at the time, was the longest speech recorded in a feature film - I think it's the finest piece of acting I've ever seen her do, in its breadth and restraint.) The result is one of Hitchcock's most emotionally involving films, a powerful revitalization of the Gothic melodrama that remains absolutely fresh and engaging.

It is believed that its box office failure was the result of an audience unwilling to follow Hitchcock into non-thriller territory (which is baffling, since in its quiet way it's one of his most thrilling films), and/or the public's shunning of Bergman after her affair with Roberto Rossellini became public. Part of me thinks that the failure of this movie either depressed Hitchcock so much that he wound up phoning in STAGE FRIGHT, or that he deliberately phoned it in as a fuck you to that neglectful audience. Their stupid loss became our stupid loss, and UNDER CAPRICORN remains one of Hitchcock's more obscure films. It remains a truly misunderstood gem, and well worth seeking out.

WARM BODIES

Eight years after an unknown event brings the dead back to life to feast on the flesh of the living, one young zombie (call him R) shuffles through an aimless existence; though vocally reduced to monosyllables, R is able to take startlingly clear perspective on his life with a robust inner monologue. Protracted circumstances find him feeling oddly protective toward Julie, a young survivor suspicious of her undead savior. But R's growing feelings for Julie begin to have startling effects on both of them, and the shattered world around them.

WARM BODIES is certain to be deemed not-hardcore-enough by the zombie faithful. But though clearly pitched mainly at a young adult audience, its orientation is pitched toward fantasy rather than pig-guts-and-fake-blood. As such, it's absolutely charming, and disarmingly earnest. Nicholas Hoult is as adept at R's zombie meanderings as his glib, smart voice-over; Teresa Palmer offers a solid and believable young heroine in Julie. (Rob Corddry brings a nice energy to a solid supporting arc R's zombie peer M.) Jonathan Levine keeps the whole thing balanced, mixing some overt Shakespeare references, a nice wrinkle on zombie-unlife-as-contemporary-metaphor, and, most crucially of all, an unflinchingly sincere sense of romance. Whether or not the hardcore zombie crowd are open-hearted enough to accept it is open to question; the rest of us get to enjoy the spectacle of unabashed romantics injecting new life into the dead genre.

INFERNO

My first great moviegoing experience of the year came courtesy of Noir City, from your friends at the Film Noir Foundation. The screening of a new DCP of a respected but little seen 3-D noir was always going to be an intriguing event; this particular presentation, the result not of corporate repackaging but some insane curatorial diligence (including a lucky find at an estate sale by the late 3-D producer Ray Zone), was nothing short of a goddamn miracle. Eddie Muller and co. have presented the fruit of their efforts back to 20th Century Fox (who had no idea this work was even being done on the film), and I'm hoping that digital rep offerings will include other left-field projects like this (or the lovely fan-made DCP of PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE that made the rounds last year). The screening offered real excitement that at least this moviegoer usually doesn't feel in the face of digital cinema. And as a nice little bonus, the movie was pretty damn terrific, too.

INFERNO is a gritty and involving piece of work, with Robert Ryan battling for survival in the Mojave Desert (even as he contemplates how he'll dispatch the cheating wife and lover who marooned him there, if he survives). Director Roy Ward Baker, a perversely prolific journeyman whose filmography includes as diverse offerings as A NIGHT TO REMEMBER and THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES, patiently creates a tense and involving film blanc, trading up noir's customary shadows for an ever-beating sun. The roughness of the digital transfer was evident in many of the more brightly lit scenes, but even the crystalline points of pixelation added a nice, somewhat psychedelic edge to the proceedings, endowing the screening with some of the character that an occasional scratch lends to a 35mm print. And though the film came out of Hollywood's initial 3-D craze, Baker's handling of 3-D is more subtle, putting the audience among the story's environments rather than constantly throwing things in our faces. Even if Baker does fling a snake or a rock at the camera from time to time, the effect is more startling given the involvement he's already made us feel. And the cast just brings it home: Robert Ryan is compelling as a man who just won't quit (unless he does), and Rhonda Fleming and William Lundigan are just as strong as the lovers dealing with the consequences of their plan.

(Image from They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To, who's just as high on the movie as I am.)

KILLING THEM SOFTLY

We can blame it on RESERVOIR DOGS, I think, the spate of self-aware indie gangster movies with glib, pop culture savvy criminals double- and triple-crossing each other in a comfortably shady milieu. These things are as thick on the ground as low-budget zombie movies, all trying to capture the same lightning that Tarantino did with his startling (and, it should be said, still effective) debut. But the problem with all of these fan-made films is that they're too mired in other movies - set in a world made up of established types rather than people, all of these gangster movies fail to ultimately be about anything more substantive than other gangster movies.

Andrew Dominik is just as aware of these formulae as we are, and his gangland opus KILLING THEM SOFTLY, from a novel by THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE scribe George Higgins, is a bracing change of pace. It's by no means a perfect film; though of course all films should be About Something, Domink's sledgehammer insistence on underscoring the economic desperation of his milieu in every scene is somewhat tiresome (every dive bar in Boston seems to have their TV tuned to CNN). And yet Dominik's not above juicing his action with forays into high style: the ironic juxtaposition of a romantic ballad with an extreme-slo-mo gangland execution, pretty as it is, is nothing we haven't seen before. (The scoring of a drug trip scene with the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" is a particularly lazy choice.)

In the end these are quibbles. For all of the film's strident symbolism, Domink's characters all live in something recognizably close to our world. They deal with tangible concerns, their dialogue refreshingly real with a noticeable and welcome absence of cod-Tarantino glibness. Some of our finest characters actors (many of whom I suspect worked for scale simply to be involved) step up to the plate and run with the fine, literary dialogue. And its glorious final scene, in which the nigh-unstoppable, status-quo-enforcing hitman played by Brad Pitt is finally rendered vulnerable (in lovely counterpoint to the message of solidarity and hope that's been blaring from all screens everywhere) is a perfect capper.