EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956)

The title tells the tale in this low-budget vehicle for master-monster animator Ray Harryhausen. It’s sort of a reactionary warmongering bargain-basement response to the peace-loving elite-liberal morality of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL/’51: Laser vaporizers, impotent military bluster, discus-shaped space vehicles, aliens in floppy aluminum suits, the works. But the well-established iconography of the genre confines Harryhausen’s stop-motion magic to exploding government buildings and articulated U.F.O.s, there’s not a monster in sight. And most of the film plays out like a Sci-Fi episode of Jack Webb’s DRAGNET: Bad acting, unintentionally hilarious dialogue & dopey plot turns, the works. (But credit to Curt Siodmak’s story construction which has served for rip-offs & parodies for decades.) Still, you’ll want to stick around for the goofball destructive fun of watching all those Harryhausen Flying Saucers destroy various Washington, D.C. monuments. (Best subversive joke: the George Washington obelisk getting the cherry tree treatment.) Don’t expect the acting, emotion, elegant design, clever plotting, thoughtful ideas or magnificent score of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and you’ll have a reasonable good time.

SOUS LES TOITS DE PARIS / UNDER THE ROOFS OF PARIS (1930)

In his first sound film, writer/helmer René Clair turned the limitations of early-Talkie technology to his artistic advantage. It’s one of a handful of Part-Talkies that feel perfectly realized in this bastardized format. From the magnificent opening crane shot that glides across the eponymous roofs and continues down to the backstreets of Paris, Clair welds the romantic inevitability of his modest story with a fluid technique that was miles ahead of what others were settling for. (You’ve got to go back to Murnau flying over the cityscape in FAUST/’26 or forward to Disney’s extravagant use of multi-plane animation in PINOCCHIO/’40 to find its equal.) We’ve hardly hit pavement when we’re plunged into our tale of a song barker, the foreign girl he’s mad about and the pickpocket whose actions will both complicate and reveal the course of true love. Albert Prejean (Mackie in the French version of THE 3-PENNY OPERA/’31) doesn’t have the manly charisma that Jean Gabin soon brought to these parts, but everyone else is just about perfect. Edmond Greville, who switched to directing after this single acting gig, is particularly good as the best pal who shares everything with Prejean. But there are memorable crooks & cops, barkeeps, call girls & the slumming rich; an entire Parisian underworld that would nicely serve the dramatic needs of French ‘poetic realism’ for decades. Fabulous support from lenser George Périnal & art designer Lazare Meerson, make Clair’s melancholy charm, character empathy & sense of fun bloom with delight.

VALKYRIE (2008)

This fact-inspired WWII drama about a conspiracy of senior German officers to assassinate Hitler is big, handsome and slightly dull; an honest attempt at the craftsmanlike, old-fashioned, impersonal filmmaking of early ‘60s pros like Robert Wise & John Sturges. (No doubt megger Bryan Singer & star Tom Cruise did some serious pre-production male-bonding over THE GREAT ESCAPE/’63.) A deep-dish line-up of British talent (Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Terrence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, et al.) does Cruise no favors, his tight, toneless whisper only exposes his technical limitations & undercuts his authority, but he keeps your attention with a raft of physical handicaps (glass eye, missing digits, missing hand) and a great hair cut. Luft-styling. But the film never quite delivers on its promise, shortchanging suspense & emotional involvement. Back when, Wise & Sturges would have risked a logy opening reel or two to get their characters & story lines situated. They paced with the long view in mind, knowing that the third act payoffs would ‘tell’ all the better if properly set up. VALKYRIE’s script has plenty of big dramatic opportunities (one featuring a roomful of female communication attendants is, conceptually, a knock-out), but Singer hasn’t the patience (or perhaps wasn’t allowed the elbow room) to till his dramatic soil and get the big moments to ‘land.’ Still, the history is plenty fascinating and it’s been a while since Cruise successfully subdued his cringe-inducing grin and scary over-enthusiasm.

DIE BUECHSE DER PANDORA / PANDORA’S BOX (1928)

Louise Brooks' guileless carnality as Lulu is the stuff of legend. With thoughtless beauty & sensualist joy, she brings calamity to every man (and woman) she beds. Her wandering eye & short attention span take her up from the clubs of Berlin to the heights of Weimar society; then down from a murder rap to the back-streets of London. With her signature black bangs & striking athleticism, Brooks is like a shiny art moderne trophy and helmer G. W. Pabst assembled a worthy team of worshipers in front & behind the camera. Stand-outs include lenser Gunther Krampf, Francis Lederer (as Lulu’s youngest admirer) & Gustav Diessl as Jack the Ripper. Yes, as Jack the Ripper. Pabst remains a tricky creative figure, never quite breaking thru to top-tier standards, the sum always a bit less than the glittering parts. But only a fool would hold his faults against his achievement on this late-Expressionistic classic. The current Criterion DVD is outstanding, with excellent image, a fully restored running time & four music tracks to choose from. Try the ‘modern’ orchestral track which has the smell of Weimar & Kurt Weill.

LES MILLES (1995)

Remember those Displaced Persons in CASABLANCA/’42? In this little seen French film, a trainload of detainees are in a life & death race to join them. Jean-Pierre Marielle stars as Cmnd. Perrochon, a WWI officer recalled to run a makeshift detention camp in Les Milles, France. Refugee Germans, Jews, Leftists and other ‘enemy aliens’ are being held like cattle as the German invasion begins. A man who goes by the book, Perrochon is determined to follow regulations, but France’s swift collapse changes his ideas. He knows his ‘protection’ is a death sentence for most of his charges. When is disobeying orders one’s duty? It’s an exciting story, and a largely true one, with a strong cast (Philippe Noiret, Kristin Scott Thomas) and a remarkable list of actual detainees (artist Max Ernst, writer Lion Feuchtwanger). If only scripter/megger Sébastien Grall had a better hold on his craft. He certainly gets no help from the crappy image on this SKD DVD, it looks like an amateur transfer from a VHS copy. But worth a look for WWII history mavens.

STAR TREK (2009)

About three reels into J. J. Abrams’ paint-by-the-numbers STAR TREK reboot (the Clearasil® Edition), a young Jim Kirk & a young Nyota Uhura are ‘meeting-cute’ at a bar when some large, over-protective goons from the local space academy misinterpret their coy bantering and, before you know it, a big ol’ bar fight erupts. ‘Stop it! Just stop it,’ Uhura yells. Good advise.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Endearing, hilarious & smart, GALAXY QUEST/'99 was the 'real' STAR TREK reboot.

BUTA TO GUNKAN / PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS (1961)

This immensely entertaining film from Japanese helmer Shohei Imamura was originally hailed for its scathing look at life around an American naval base in Japan. But time has tamed its fangs and it now plays less as an indictment of warring gangs of Yakuza, seedy neighborhoods, brothels, booze & boys-on-leave, then like the flip-side of a pitch-black service comedy. In American cinematic terms, it merges the bleak nighttime milieu of SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS/’57 with the spirit of a Blake Edwards/Richard Quine SNAFU-military comedy with Jack Lemmon or Ernie Kovacs gaming the system. But here, the POV is on the locals. Hiroyuki Nagato, in a rather overdrawn perf, stars as the main weasel, a fledgling gangster up to his neck in a scam to use scraps from those big battleships as fodder for a mob run pig farm. But his girl (a superb Jitsuko Yoshimura) is pressuring him to leave the biz, his boss is dying of stomach cancer, a dead body refuses to stay underwater and the pigs need to be brought to market. Imamura melds the dramatic & comic elements like a sensei, the fluid staging, pacing & CinemaScope compositions are phenomenal, and the pigs-in-port finale is a masterpiece. A great intro to Imamura.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME (1949)

The trio of pics Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly made @ M-G-M haven’t aged very well. ANCHORS AWEIGH/’45 was 140 minutes of war-time uplift (plus Kathryn Grayson); ON THE TOWN/’49 is fondly remembered, but only for its fab NYC opening. This one’s the middle child and it suffers from forgettable tunes by its associate producer Roger Edens and a hopeless plot that tries to mix professional baseball & vaudeville. Esther Williams & Betty Garrett are around for romance, Edward Arnold gets to play villain, and Jules Munchin hams things up when Kelly lets him, all to little avail. Yet, the film holds real interest as the last directing credit for past master Busby Berkeley (he decamped after shooting the dialogue scenes) and as the first for Kelly & young Stanley Donen (who appear to have taken over most of the musical numbers). It’s hard to know who did what, but you can’t mistake Donen’s signature camera boom shots. Some numbers look like trial runs for their masterpiece, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN/’52, and in the Garrett/Sinatra ‘It’s Fate’ number, Donen shoots on location, without the usual studio lenses, lighting & sets. How’d he get away with that?* Be sure to check out Sinatra’s stellar perf of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s stunningly beautiful "Boys and Girls Like You and Me’ which shows up on the DVD Extras. It outclasses everything else here. But when Kelly’s signature comedy number with Williams tanked, it had to go. (Tip: Zoom in to read the scale @ Frankie’s baseball weigh-in: 122 lbs!)

DOUBLE-BILL: *If you want to see Stanley Donen cut loose on a baseball diamond, try DAMN YANKEES!/'58. Lots of fun, great score, sexy Gwen Verdon and a weirdly flat ending.

LA QUESTION HUMAINE / HEARTBEAT DETECTOR (2007)

This existential corporate thriller is both maddening & engrossing. (It’s French.) It’s a handsome piece of filmmaking that uses it’s multi-layered plot and richly textured characters to commingle dark thoughts about company downsizing & genocide that never convince. The ideas can’t support the last act revelations or the attempt to cross-pollinate LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD/’61, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD/’65, EXECUTIVE SUITE/’54 and MAD MEN/’08. But then, those who aren’t up for the mind meld helmer Nicolas Klotz & scripter Elisabeth Perceval are aiming at will have long dropped out. Matthieu Almaric is superb as the company psychologist who’s failing to deal with his own personal crises when he’s confidentially assigned to make out a report on his CEO. Played by Michael Lonsdale as a powerful, phlegmatic tortoise of a man, this CEO is either going thru a nervous breakdown or being set up to take a fall by the new company owners. Maybe both. The artsy style is never going to satisfy those looking for solid evidence & narrative closure, but the melancholy tone is very compelling, as is the unusually imaginative use of source music to lend emotional weight. An odd duck of a film, but rewarding.