COCO CHANEL AND IGOR STRAVINSKY (2009)

Call it ‘Glamography.’ Jan Kaonen’s plush looking biopic on the Parisian fashionista & the great Russian composer opens with a real coup de théâtre, a meticulous recreation of the riotous 1913 Paris premiere of Stravinsky’s THE RITE OF SPRING. (Nijinsky’s weakly conceived dance, the probable cause for most of the pandemonium, is long lost, but the reimagined choreography certainly looks inadequate! Not so the music, which is gorgeously played by Simon Rattle & the Berlin Phil. The premiere’s conductor, Pierre Monteux, would have killed for such a band!) With the crème de la crème of Paris dressed to ‘the nines’ for le scandale, this scene is the sole reason to bother watching. Skipping ahead to 1920, more or less where COCO BEFORE CHANEL/'09 left off, we follow a largely fictitious tale about la grande affaire between Igor & Coco. Him: warm, passionate, obsessed, guilt-ridden. Her: cool, calm, collected, guilt-free. All of it: hooey. Anna Mouglalis’s chilly Coco is probably closer to the notoriously witchy dame than Audrey Tautou’s gamine was in ‘that other’ Coco pic. Alas, she’s no more interesting. And what the heck is handsome, hunky Mads Mikkelsen doing as the decidedly unattractive Igor Stravinsky? At the least, a Beauty & the Beast angle might have juiced up the storyline. Compared to this chic trick, the entirely mediocre COCO AVANT CHANEL is Proust.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: By 1913, the last century had produced its two defining works in music & painting with Stravinsky’s LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS and Picasso’s LES DEMOISELLES D’AVIGNON/’1907. What artistic thunderbolts have come on the scene so far to help define the 21st century?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: The only 'choreography' that's come close to living up to Stravinsky's score was provided by the dinosaurs & volcanoes in Disney's original FANTASIA/'40. Stravinsky hated the tweaking Leopold Stokowski made to his score, but it's still a great recording. And imagine Hollywood making a mainstream animated feature all about the theory of evolution today.

DEAD RECKONING (1947)

Humphrey Bogart segued from his home base @ Warners to Columbia for this largely unnecessary noir, a surprising stinker. He’s a WWII vet, back in the States and on his way to D.C. to pick up some medals with his war bud (William Prince) when the guy suddenly takes a powder. Bogie gives chase, landing in his pal’s hometown where he finds plenty of dirt on all the usual suspects. Before he’s smoked a pack of Luckys, he’s implicated in a murder or two; started to romance his pal’s wife (Lizabeth Scott), a no-good damsel-in-distress type; won a pile of dough at a fancy, but crooked gambling club; hid from some corruptible cops; been knocked out (twice!), gotten shot at; found a priest to tell his troubles to; and God knows what else. All your classic noir ingredients, if only someone knew what to do with them. But helmer John Cromwell and a posse of writers show little feel for the form. Is it supposed to play as a near parody? The fruity dialogue (‘Maybe she was alright, and maybe Christmas comes in July’); the illogical plot; the all-too-convenient clues (Bogie’s hotel room alarm clock is a police band radio). On the plus side, Lizabeth Scott looks less beat up than usual; On the minus, Bogie more. (Maybe new wife Lauren Bacall was keeping him up nights.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Great noirs don’t have to make a lot of sense. Columbia did just fine with GILDA in ‘46. And in the same year, Bogie, Bacall & Howard Hawks triumphed over the famously confusing plot of THE BIG SLEEP.

BEAUFORT (2007)

This highly praised Israeli pic is a tightly focused character study about a small military unit charged with closing down the last outpost in Lebanon 18 years after the 1982 border war. The young soldiers, barely older than the occupation, are well aware that their lives are being used as fodder by various political factions and that their officers have been vamping with contradictory missions & pointless tactical efforts. Suddenly, everyone’s tour is ending, but they’re still dodging incoming mortar attacks and trying not to be careless as they prep the fort for end-game. Joseph Cedar’s script & helming offer a welcome, believable respite from the current testosterone-charged Hollywood battlefield norm, and his measured pacing only accentuates the brief, but terrifying episodes of violence & nail-biting suspense. (The action is strikingly book-ended with the unnervingly calm precision of two opposing demolition experts.) If only the film’s execution matched Cedar’s intentions/ambitions. Made for a mere 2.5 mill, the film belies its budget (the atmosphere is very well caught) and the young cast all turn in memorable characterizations. But Cedar hasn’t quite developed the technical control needed to carry us all the way along with his melancholy outfit. Too often, the film feels worthy rather than compelling, as if Cedar is giving us talking-points for a post-screening discussion at the local Jewish Community Center. But he’s definitely a guy to watch.

GREEN FIRE (1954)

M-G-M hoped lightning would strike twice when they reteamed Stewart Granger & Andrew Marton, star & co-director of KING SOLOMON’S MINES/’50, for another exotic treasure hunt, now in CinemaScope & Stereophonic Sound! But emerald mines in South American proved less enticing than adventure-at-every-turn in Darkest Africa. And while this film carries an extra twenty minutes, it provides half the thrills, chills & spills. And not a Watusi in sight! Still, once it sorts out all the relationships and starts working the emerald mine (with Paul Douglas as a companionable partner) and the nearby coffee plantation (with Grace Kelly reaping beans in designer duds), some nicely structured plot reversals start to pay off. Cave-ins, worker revolts, the on-coming rainy season, interference from the church, an overly ambitious kid brother, a lawless bandito with a comically bad accent (Murvyn Vye): there’s plenty of incident. And while some of the swell location footage is compromised with studio recreations & ‘50s process work, there’s always that great Miklos Rozsa score which survives a corny title song before blossoming with South-of-the-Border rhythms.* Strict conservationists might want to skip the finale which blows up a mountain & redirects a river in pursuit of a happy ending. Not so happy for Mother Nature! All-in-all, a reasonably fun ride considering the pic’s rotten rep.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The swinging samba Rozsa worked up for the coffee harvest must have caught the ear of Frederick Loewe who found a place for it in his score for THE LITTLE PRINCE/’74.

GREEN ZONE (2010)

Even with a billion dollar following after a couple of BOURNE pics, Matt Damon & helmer Paul Greengrass couldn’t get much traction on this behind-the-shock-&-awe Iraqi war story. Too bad, since it’s not only an important story, but a fascinating & entertaining one about how the information on those never-to-be-found Weapons of Mass Destruction was knowingly manipulated by the infernal Echo-Chamber that made up the George W. Bush administration. The dramatic trick in the script has the deceit uncovered by the same military team leader who’s working off of the ‘cooked’ info on the chaotic streets of Baghdad. He’s both the brains and the brawn, which helps keep the complex plot tightly focused, (saves time, too). But you need someone like Damon, a ‘thinking man’s’ action hero who can drop the irony & play it straight, to make this work. The rest of the cast is just as good (kudos to Khalid Abdalla as the reluctant translator) and the physical production is convincing. Yet, the film doesn’t quite come off. Partly, it’s from the ending, too pat, and from Damon’s character, too much the plaster saint, but it’s mostly the Greengrass shake, rattle & roll camera technique. In the abstract puzzle of a BOURNE ‘Spy vs Spy’ conundrum, it works wonders, but with Iraq’s real life confusion & moral dilemmas, clarity trumps generic excitement.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: As a truth-seeking CIA type, Irish-born Brendan Gleeson pulls off a damn fine Mid-Western accent. Close your eyes when he talks and you may (just) hear his presumed role model, Gene Hackman. BTW, Khalid Abdalla was born in Scotland. So, extra kudos to him on his Iraqi accent.

THE DAY OF THE JACKAL (1973)

Fred Zinnemann’s plus perfect adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s novel (about the race to stop a hired hitman from killing French President de Gaulle) works in a methodical fashion, holding its pace where other filmmakers might charge ahead. It's a metronomic & economical design of plot points & pieces of information; mesmerizingly effective, the Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ of political assassination thrillers. Edward Fox, as the Jackal; Michael Lonsdale as the detail-obsessed French detective; and Cyril Cusack as an Italian gunsmith are just stand-outs in the eye-popping cast list, and Zinnemann's insistence on taking the long dramatic view gives off a satisfying sense of occasion; as if plush, handsome, civilized entertainments were still possible, still worth doing. The finale, which was largely shot in the middle of the French Liberation Day Parade in Paris, is particularly stunning, but the whole film is a knock-out. (And fun to compare with the current crop of chop-happy, slice-&-dice hyper-edited thrillers.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Like Anthony Mann’s excellent low-budget assassination thriller, THE TALL TARGET/’51, about an attempt on the life of President-Elect Lincoln, JACKAL pulls off its suspense without a lick of underscoring.

VARSITY SHOW (1937)

This formula musical from Warners is like an episode of GLEE, circa 1937. Dick Powell, still young & yeasty, stars as a washed-up B’way director who reluctantly returns to his alma mater when the annual varsity show needs a lift. Too bad the stuffy professors don’t want his help. When the starry-eyed kids find out he’s toast back in NYC, they sneak into town and camp out at a vacant theater until they can open the hit show he had tried to put on. It sounds like goofy fun, and with a big Busby Berkeley finale for a ‘wow’ finale, but no one seems to be trying very hard on this programmer. Even Berkeley seems out of ideas and falls back on too many trick reverse shots. But wait! The original two-hour running time has been axed to a measly 81 minutes on the current DVD edition. No wonder numbers start & stop awkwardly and the admittedly silly plot is all but incomprehensible. At least, the great team of Buck & Bubbles are around for a couple of stand alone spots. The rest is more frustrating than fun.

NOTE: Don’t miss Frank Tashlin’s HAVE YOU GOT ANY CASTLES in the EXTRAs. This Looney Tunes short brings a few dozen book covers to life in tumbling hilarity. DARKIES ALERT!! Yep, the caricatures are on the insensitive side, so be warned. (If you like this, check out Bob Clampett’s BOOK REVIEW/'46 which is the ne plus ultra of all the book-gag cartoons.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: M-G-M's GOOD NEWS/'47 is still the cornball college musical to beat. It was the first film for writers Comden & Green & choreographer-turned-helmer Charles Walters which may explain why June Alyson & Peter Lawford are so unexpectedly Rah-Rah. .

LA TERRA TREMA / THE EARTH TREMBLES (1947)

Luchino Visconti’s famous film about the hard life in a Sicilian fishing town is more ‘known about’ than seen. It may be his only strict neo-realist work (non-professionals, real locations, story of ‘the people’), but it pales next to OSSESSION/’42 and BELISSIMA/’51, his stunning films before & after this, which only use what they need from the style. The story follows a three-generation family unit of fishermen, women & children living in a single home, who attempt to cut out the middlemen and sell their own catch. But harsh economic reality & nature itself conspire against them. The outcome is as predetermined as a Party Line vote by a politburo, but in spite of a few uncharacteristic speeches from the laconic proletariat, the film’s leftist sympathies look less like the crush of capitalism against labor than as a proactive punishment for coveting the joys of bourgeois entrepreneurship. The film comes without grace notes, but it’s harsh visual beauty is often impressive, in spite of its poor physical condition (try the Image DVD). And there’s no denying this rustic tragedy now feels twice cooked, like ricotta.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Visconti hit the jackpot with Franco Zeffirelli & Francesco Rosi as his assistants. One of these three found the only two near-blonde guys on the island and stuck them into the family. Cola, the boy who leaves town, is also the best actor on screen.

. . . A TUTTE LE AUTO DELLA POLIZIA / CALLING ALL POLICE CARS (1975)

This low-budget Italian police procedural about a kidnapped teenage girl was designed strictly for local consumption, but a new DVD edition is trying to nab a confused customer or two by calling it WITHOUT TRACE, like the recent tv series (minus a teeny article). It’s a dreary item about the murder of a sexy little thing and a series of cover-up killings that follow. The last act tries to move the film into giallo territory, those gory Italian crime dramas of the era that Dario Argento & Mario Bava specialized in, but this film, coarsely megged by Mario Caiano, hasn’t an ounce of style. It bumps along from one scene to another as family drama becomes police investigation becomes political cover-up becomes . . . well, something else entirely; and none of it any good. The main appeal undoubtedly lies in getting a number of nubile young pretties naked for the camera to ogle, even a crime lab autopsy room is used for titillation on a corpse. There’s a bit of fun in seeing Antonio Sabato, Sr. done up to pass as a sort of Italian Burt Reynolds, and then realizing that this handsome fellow is Dad to that even more handsome model/actor Antonio Sabato, Jr. But the main story, especially the misogynist slant that’s approvingly used to ‘explain’ the crimes, is too nasty to let you sit back & laugh at the inept filmmaking and hideous synthesized soundtrack. With local product like this, no wonder the Italian cinema collapsed in the ‘70s.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Kurosawa's HIGH AND LOW/'62, based on an Ed McBain story, is hard to beat in the kidnapped kid department.