SALINUI CHUEOK / MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)

Turns out Korean phenom Joon-ho Bong, just out with an English-language debut pic (SNOWPIERCER/’13) after making his Stateside rep with one of the best horror/monster pics of recent vintage (THE HOST/'06), had previously shown his strengths on this tremendously assured, mood-jangling serial-murderer/police procedural. Suggested by a real, infamous Korean case, the investigation is being bungled by townie cops when a young, smarty-pants detective from Seoul takes charge. Or thinks he does. Bong finds an invigorating mix of tones with low-brow comic riffs bumping into nauseating police brutality on likely suspects, while never ignoring the horrific nature of the crimes or forgetting to carefully integrate set suspense pieces of action and stillness. It’s all held together thru Bong’s almost unnervingly apt mise-en-scène; the guy has an unerring nose for just the right camera set-up & shot selection. With fabulous casting choices on every role, the story is much easier to follow than typical for the genre, and the quick switches from farce to tragedy never seem forced on the material in either the main action, which is set in the mid-‘80s, or in the short, memorable epilogue set in 2003. Tremendous stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL: Unless you’re completely allergic to the horror/monster genre, get thee to THE HOST.

MUSEUM HOURS (2012)

An art-house film about an art house, the Kunsthisorisches Museum in Vienna, minimalist in execution, large in spirit & effect. Framed by the musings of a late-middle-aged museum guard, its wisp of a story has this pleasant man aiding a Canadian stranger, adrift in this formal city while waiting for some sort of outcome on a comatose relative. The two fall into the easy platonic short-term intimacy of strangers, touring the museum, the city and their lives, without any established pattern of behavior to hold on to. Filmmaker Jem Cohen is equally free to roam, letting the best incidents speak for themselves in the manner of a Frederick Wiseman documentary whether in or out of the museum. Avoiding character arcs & story beats, he discovers a compelling narrative built out of the smallest actions, stepping out of bounds briefly for an odd reverie where nude museum visitors view clothed portraits before reversing back to the usual nude portraits & clothed viewers. It’s the only conceit in the film that feels forced. A lovely, memorable work, though obviously something of a connoisseur’s piece.

DOUBLE-BILL: More musing o’er a night in Vienna in Richard Linklater’s BEFORE SUNRISE/’95 which led to two well-received, woefully self-indulgent sequels.

THE BLACK DAHLIA (2006)

When did Brain De Palma stop being part of the conversation? Was it with a flop like FEMME FATALE/’02; or earlier, from the sour aftertaste of a hit like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE/’96? Certainly it was some time before this slick, but opaque murder mystery, a confusing sampler of bits from its betters (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL/’97; CHINATOWN/’74; even SUNSET BLVD/’50 & THE BIG SLEEP/’46). Oozing film noir manner, laid on with a trowel, it’s nearly an unwitting parody: craggy voiced narrator; cool jazz score; lying broads with bedroom eyes; desaturated palette; but the heart & soul of a pastiche ad for deodorant, with lenser Vilmos Zsigmond & production designer Dante Ferretti whoring out to earn their keep. After employing the L. A. Zoot Suit riots as a ‘fun’ opening, someone had the clever idea of using Paul Leni’s great silent THE MAN WHO LAUGHS/’28 as a visual key to the mystery. But no one knows when to stop stirring the pot till it becomes impossible to follow. At least the unaccountably awful perfs from good actors keep things interesting in a grim sort of way. De Palma can still run an action scene like no one’s business when he wants to, look at an early multi-POV shootout. But he’s just as likely to over-lard things with empty displays of technical virtuosity. It could scare you off sampling his earlier work.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/READ ALL ABOUT IT: DAHLIA is taken from a mess of a book by James Ellroy, who was much better served by Curtis Hanson on L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. While hardly his best work, probably his most adaptable title is HOLLYWOOD NOCTURNES, a story collection from ‘94, especially a section that riffs on the theme of post-war heroism using a little junky B-pic called DADDY-O/’58 as framework.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Pick any of the non-De Palma titles above. (If only someone would work up a better score for Leni’s marvelous silent. Calling Carl Davis!)

YOGOTO NO YUME / EVERY-NIGHT DREAMS (aka EACH NIGHT I DREAM) (1933)

Another superbly realized late silent from Japan’s Mikio Naruse, further refining his skill set on one of his signature Working Woman stories. Here, an apparently single mother is employed as ‘hostess’ at a tough waterfront bar (she’s more like a roving Geisha) when her long-missing ‘ex’ unexpectedly returns home. A sweet, unambitious man, he hasn’t the will or drive to buck the depressed economy and, with his self-defeating hangdog demeanor, even the lowest jobs pass him by. Yet, he fully believes he can somehow support his wife & child. With what? Someone’s got to earn an income, especially when an accident and hospital bills show up. Naruse gets beautiful perfs from wife, kid, dad (exceptionally lovely work from a goateed Tatsuo Saitô), and finds telling details that make his small, rather melodramatic story feel grounded. Technically, he’s still got a yen for fast tracking Push-In shots, but there’s now point as well as punctuation to them. And, in a brief, but fascinating sequence that covers a police chase thru back streets after a robbery, the film presentation suddenly tilts toward Fritz Lang @ UFA to fabulous effect; an explosion in style that must have completely flummoxed the execs @ Shochiku Kamata Productions.

DOUBLE-BILL: As seen above, the Criterion SILENT NARUSE box.

MAN OF STEEL (2013)

The prologue to Zack Synder’s SUPERMAN Re-Reboot is positively Shakespearean: ‘Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing.’ It’s the last days on an imploding Planet Krypton where villains are ironically saved via exile and an infant gets blasted to Earth. His Dad (Russell Crowe) may be doomed to die, but don’t worry, he’s available on Flash Drive. Once that’s out of the way, things improve quickly as Superman/Kal-El (Henry Cavill) lives out a few non-linear highlights from his itinerant life, earning hard-won maturity on a MidWest farm before displaying his hairy chest & a killer bod working at sea, then meeting-cute (and dangerous) with Lois Lane (Amy Adams) in the frozen North. (Wait! Back-up! A hirsute super-hero? Positively revolutionary!*) This central section, before the exiled villains, led by a constipated Michael Shannon, make their return, is the best part of the film. Helmer Synder goes for an overcooked serious tone, with handheld camera and a drab palette, but it also takes good advantage of some effective moves from producer/co-scripter Christopher Nolan, revamping his DARK KNIGHT/’08 voodoo to good effect. But then that final battle goes on for a mind-numbing (and ear-numbing) 45 minutes. Even divided into three waves of action, it’s pure fanboy palaver, an Extended Director’s Cut for everyone.

DOUBLE-BILL: No one has topped the sheer visual ‘rightness’ of those early Fleischer Bros SUPERMAN animated shorts made for Paramount in the early ‘40s. Alas, no proper restoration, but a BOSCO/Image DVD gives a decent idea of their visual flair.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Oh for a transcript of the conference calls on whether or not to shave Henry Cavill’s chest. (They could have tattooed another egregious Product Placement on the extra blank space.)

DARK STAR (1974)

Sci-Fi/Horror film-meisters Dan O’Bannon (ALIEN/’79; TOTAL RECALL/’90) & John Carpenter (HALLOWEEN/’78; STAR MAN/’84) wrote & directed this cinematic amuse-bouche as a USC film school project (very 2001/’68; SILENT RUNNING/’72): cost: $55,000. Padded up to feature length for commercial release, it stuck around in smeary VHS dupes to haunt them as an object of cult worship & derision. Now, with a somewhat cleaned-up picture, a new HyperDrive Edition makes their shorter/original cut available to fanboys and newbies. With its slightly drug-addled spacemen, the woozy tale of a twenty-plus year mission to destroy unstable planets retains a knockabout silliness that’s very winning. Especially so, in a hilarious sequence that finds O’Bannon chasing down a loose ‘pet alien,’ a sort of pre-parody of his own ALIEN that earns extra credit by also sending up THE RED BALLOON/’56. With catchy DIY toy-like F/X, it’s irresistible in its shortened form, with a climax that prefigures GRAVITY/’13, and, in its low-tech juvenile way, is probably more realistic.

SUSPICION (1941)

Two things even casual Alfred Hitchcock aficionados know about SUSPICION is that Hitch got a spectral glow on a possibly poisoned glass of milk by sticking a little light bulb inside the glass; and that a compromised climax weakened his original twist ending. Well, no one’s going to argue about that glass of milk. In fact, the whole film is lit with sumptuous attention to detail by lenser Harry Stradling. But that ‘weakened’ ending begs a second look. Here’s a speedy recap: Joan Fontaine, on the edge of spinsterhood, falls hard for Cary Grant’s dashing scapegrace. With an easy sexual manner alternating threat, passion & charm, he’s really a well-groomed bounder, lying his way from one personal cul-de-sac to the next. He’d likely murder for financial gain, and Joan might well be his next victim, a role she’d willingly play. Without getting into SPOILERS, the original idea worked toward an O’Henry-worthy twist that could have played as a deluxe episode of tv’s ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. But the reworked ending, especially as dialogued by Ernst Lubitsch collaborator Samson Raphaelson, comes off as something far less neat & tidy, more like an unresolved chord in spite of Franz Waxman’s surging love theme. Memorable stuff, with a strange & compelling ‘off’ tone beautifully sustained, along with stunning perfs from a bevy of character players, led by Nigel Bruce, supporting Joan Fontaine’s unusual heroine. Hitch gallantly gives her two separate intro shots: first as mousy train companion, then as a stunner on horseback. All told, it’s one of his most underrated titles.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: In many ways, this British UpperCrust suspenser replays themes & even incidents from REBECCA/’40, Hitch’s Hollywood debut . . . but without producer David O Selznick breathing down his neck. ‘Dear Hitch: It is my unfortunate and distressing task to tell you that I am shocked and disappointed beyond words by the treatment of REBECCA. I regard it as a distorted and vulgarized version of a provenly successful work, in which, for no reason that I can discern, old-fashioned movie scenes have been substituted for the captivatingly charming du Maurier scenes.’ And so on for six pages. (See: MEMO FROM DAVID O SELZNICK.) But what was this early draft like? Chances are good that in tone, style & attitude, if not in plot, it was much like SUSPICION, wilder, stranger, infinitely more Hitchcockian. No wonder he put his own dog in the cast!

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1942)

No, not that A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, there’s no Titanic in sight. Instead, a sort of Dark & Stormy Haunted House of Screwball Murder Mystery, with Loretta Young & Brian Aherne as newlyweds just moving into a two-room flat (plus garden) at 13 Gay St. in Greenwich Village. (Real street, by the way.) Turns out they’re early, so the lights aren’t on, but blackmail & murder is running rampant! A delightful situation for Aherne’s murder mystery author, always hunting up his next plot. (No doubt, Columbia was hunting up a new Nick & Nora Charles/THIN MAN Series!) These slapsticky farces can turn dumb & tired pretty quick, but little remembered helmer Richard Wallace keeps everyone light on their toes & doesn’t oversell the hoary physical gags. There’s a real sense of silly fun here, even a couple of nifty scares, thanks to Joseph Walker’s spooky low-key noir lensing. Plus, witty music cues from Werner Heymann that support, rather than simply Mickey Mouse, the comedy. It’s no classic, but generally leans in the right direction; no small feat. (And one that Wallace managed to good effect in comfy little pleasures like WEDDING PRESENT/’36 and YOUNG IN HEART/’38.*) The film gets so darn sensible, they even let Young & Aherne go to the cops when they’ve got something fresh to report. Imagine that! Or maybe they just wanted another chance to show Chief Detective Sidney Toler out of his Charlie Chan drag.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: It’s rare to see a Hollywood version of a Manhattan two-room flat that looks more or less like a Manhattan two-room flat. Kudos to art director Lionel Banks! And kudos to whomever it was who managed to get Loretta all sooted up in the coal bin without a whiff of a follow-up BlackFace gag. All she does is wash it right off. Hurrah!

DOUBLE-BILL: *Cary Grant & a blonde Joan Bennett make WEDDING PRESENT viable, but YOUNG IN HEART is even better, with a super cast and sweet Janet Gaynor hanging it up at 32.

THE FIFTH ESTATE (2013)

The saga of WikiLeaks, the hotly debated internet disclosure portal for government secrets, went from news-(back)story-of-the-decade to who-cares indifference by the time this Bill Condon film came out. What the heck happened? Old news? Lack of star power? Or did we never notice it was gone . . . or ever been around? A more likely answer is that Condon gussies up his material with so much obfuscating visual style and sotto voce dialogue mumbling, it’s all but impossible to follow the action; so worried about losing his audience with a dry run-thru of events, he overcompensates with technical dazzle when he should be clarifying action, characters & general import. As WikiLeaks head Julian Asssange, Benedict Cumberbatch comes off as such a self-regarding arrogant creep, you can’t imagine him gaining anyone’s trust, let alone a cult following. While his erstwhile partner, Daniel Brühl, makes no impression at all, a blob. (For a giddy moment or two, you think Laura Linney just might be playing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Alas, she’s just a career State Department sort. Sigh.) Midway into the third act, the story focus narrows to follow the huge cache of US military info WikiLeaks got from Pvt. Bradley Manning and Condon figures he can drop the Attention Deficit direction without losing our interest. He’s right, the personalities & drama suddenly take hold. But it’s too little, too late.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: In the ‘70s, paranoid political thrillers were a genre unto themselves. Richard Condon (no relation to Bill) wrote the screwiest, never more so than his JFK Conspiracy slapstick-thriller WINTER KILLS/’79.