Stark, faithful adaptation of the book by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler about an American nuclear bomber group that, due to a mechanical malfunction, flies into Russia on a mission to bomb Moscow, while the officers of the Strategic Air Command, the President, and of course the Russians attempt to stop it. Walter Matthau plays a civilian Pentagon advisor who sees the accident as a golden opportunity for a first strike. Henry Fonda lends weight and credibility as the President. Just as unflinching as the novel, with some nice directorial touches by Lumet to heighten the impact of this horrifying tale.
+++1/2
Stark, faithful adaptation of the book by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler about an American nuclear bomber group that, due to a mechanical malfunction, flies into Russia on a mission to bomb Moscow, while the officers of the Strategic Air Command, the President, and of course the Russians attempt to stop it. Walter Matthau plays a civilian Pentagon advisor who sees the accident as a golden opportunity for a first strike. Henry Fonda lends weight and credibility as the President. Just as unflinching as the novel, with some nice directorial touches by Lumet to heighten the impact of this horrifying tale.
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++1/2 Jamie Lee Curtis sticks out a thumb and leaves virginal Laurie Strode (Halloween) behind, casually sleeping with the middle-aged man who picks her up just outside the coastal California town of Antonio Bay. Here, as Elizabeth Solley, she finds herself in the middle of a ghostly mess involving the passengers of a ship that was lured onto nearby rocks a hundred years ago; the ship sank, the passengers drowned, and now they're pissed off and looking for revenge. Adrienne Barbeau plays a DJ, high up in her lighthouse radio station, with a bird's eye view of the strange glowing fog that conceals the wronged killers. Hal Holbrook is a priest who uncovers their hidden agenda. None of which is particularly interesting or scary or, believe it or not, in any way atmospheric. Carpenter's direction is strictly by the script, all plot and no poetry. With a stronger story, this might have worked, but this one is little more than a daisy chain linking one cliche to another. With an ending that manages to be not only trite but completely illogical. Remade, for some reason, in 2005. ++++ Two British diplomats, an American, and a female missionary are kidnapped while trying to escape a political revolution in India and flown to the mountains of Tibet where they are welcomed into a hidden lamasery (or monastery) called Shangri-La, which proves to be a place that is as difficult to leave as it is to find. The question Hilton poses is, Why would you want to leave, if you had found paradise? The story merges character and ideas to paint a complex portrait of a man (Conway, the elder of the two diplomats) who is neither hero nor coward and none the better for it: though he deserves his new-found peace and happiness (after surviving the trenches of World War I and his exemplary public service following the war), the only way to preserve it is to be what he is not, as he discovers in what can only be described as the intellectually exciting climax to this outstanding novel. A novel that is, as well, Hilton's pointed yet rather gentle critique of modern life -- frantic, chaotic, and violent; Shangri-La, his alternative, is built on the principle of moderation in all things, including moderation itself, a place as equally suited to the pursuit of philosophical as physical pleasure. And while Hilton makes a number of good points about how humans do (and, conversely, should) conduct themselves, he is wise enough to show us, in dramatic fashion, that paradise, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Modern readers should note that this book is hardly one that would comport well with any feminist ideal. The novel has been adapted twice for film, first (and most famously) by Frank Capra in 1937, then as a musical in 1973. ++ Beep beep, Ritchie. Teetering on the brink of comic excess, Fletch, the 1985 film to which this is the follow-up, kept its balance only by relying on the steadying influence of the serious mystery at its core. That mystery came from Gregory Mcdonald, author of the Fletch books, the first of which served as the basis for the movie. Fletch Lives, written by Leon Capetanos, is based not on any of Mcconald's eight literary sequels, but rather on a fundamental misreading of the success of the original. So here Ritchie and Capetanos give us a decidedly dull mystery and smother it with a lot of dumb and unfunny humor in a movie that takes nothing seriously (an early joke has to do with a dead woman in Fletch's bed; hilarious). For what it's worth, this one finds Fletch in Louisiana, uncovering a plot to separate him from his inheritance -- his late aunt's dilapidated mansion -- with suspects like the local police and the ministry of a neighboring televangelist, played by R. Lee Ermey. Chevy Chase seems to recognize the futility of it all, playing Fletch as even more aloof than in the first film. Also with Hal Holbrook, Julianne Phillips, and Cleavon Little. "[T]he ultimate comedy of condescension, a movie with a hero whose every other line of dialogue is a snide wisecrack directed at a fool." - Chris Willman, The Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1989 "Mr. Chase is such an agreeably low-pressure comedian that a movie has to be very inept to be as irritating as 'Fletch Lives.'" - Vincent Canby, The New York Times, March 17, 1989 +++ Southern Gothic set in New Orleans about two maiden sisters, their chronically cash-strapped brother (Dean Martin), and his suspicious young bride (Yvette Mimieux). Kicks off with Martin returning to the family home, mysteriously flush with money somehow linked to a dark-haired woman Mimieux saw him with in Chicago. Then it gets complicated. How did Martin get the money? Was he, Mimieux wonders, paid by her mother to marry her? Why is only one of Martin's sisters (Geraldine Page) all a-flutter to see her brother again, while the other (Wendy Hiller) is much more cautious about his visit? And who is that dark-haired woman? Based on a play by Lillian Hellman, but "opened up" nicely for film by director Hill. All the actors are good, the dialogue is smart enough (and funny at times), but the whole overwrought movie is held back by the very thing that holds it together: the mystery, which just gets more sordid as it goes along. By keeping their cards so close to their vests, Hill and screenwriter James Poe aren't able to penetrate very deeply in any direction, which makes for a fairly weak drama but a compelling mystery. Features a horrific scene of violence toward the end, one that leads into the scene depicted on the (remarkably misleading) poster. +++ Psychological horror novel in which a young mother is forced to confront a shattering reality: that her 8-year-old daughter is a murderous sociopath. That this is the mother's story and not the child's demonstrates March's understanding of the little girl's condition: she herself is quite uncomplicated, having no conscience or sense of morality to shade her personality. It is the mother -- who gradually learns more than she could ever have wanted to know about the girl's condition -- who faces the hard, frightening decisions about what to do with her. It's a dark premise, but one that March executes faithfully and, for the most part, with psychological insight. It is, however, all a bit detached, even dry at times, which might save it from the excesses another author might have imposed upon it, but which also keeps it from burrowing as deeply into the limbic system of our brains, where reside our emotions and our memory, as it might have with a somewhat more emotive approach. (Not that the book is without humor: one character -- a rough, uneducated caretaker -- unconsciously develops the hots for this little girl who is every bit as anti-social as he is, yet discovers, in the end, that she is far more practical about it than he could ever be.) Adapted three times, first as a Broadway play the same year as publication, then as a film in 1956 -- based on the play and the book -- and finally as a TV movie in 1985. +++++ Mismatched group of men and women, each for reasons of their own, crowd together aboard a stagecoach during an Apache uprising, headed for the distant town of Lordsburg. Star-making vehicle for John Wayne, whose character, an outlaw named Ringo, is introduced with an iconic zoom that has lost none of its dramatic power but now generates an additional sense of pleasurable pride -- in Wayne, America, and American film. Joining Ringo are a lady, an alcoholic doctor, a gambler, and a prostitute, among others. Ultimately, a transcendent Western that engages on every level, with simple yet sharply drawn characters, believable dialogue, a tense, well-balanced narrative, and impressive direction and visuals -- with the latter not being entirely confined to the harsh beauties of Monument Valley (one shot, for instance, of a long hallway where Ringo and Dallas, the prostitute, converse is memorable not for its metaphor but instead for its stark and prosaic beauty). Based on "Stage to Lordsburg," a short story by Ernest Haycox. The Story & The Adaptation The story by Haycox, quite good in its own right, was originally published in 1937 in The Saturday Evening Post. It's about a gunslinging man on his way to the town of Lordsburg to repay a "debt" -- that is, to kill two men over some unexplained grievance. To get there, he must join a group of strangers aboard a stagecoach and travel through Apache country. Among his companions is a prostitute, scorned by the others, who piques his interest. Typically the other way around, here it is the relationship between these two characters that serves as the comfortable backdrop for the journey itself, which Haycox describes sparingly yet evocatively, imparting always a sense of constant threat and, above all, movement. Dudley Nichols' screenplay captures all of this magnificently, and the only real deviations from the story lie in the necessary expansion of the secondary characters to flesh it out to feature length. ++ Three-hundred-pound lawyer uses his connections to avoid criminal charges for the vehicular death of a gypsy woman, prompting the woman's father to take matters into his own hands -- by cursing the lawyer to become thinner each day until the weight loss kills him. Good idea (believe it or not) gets hopelessly old-fashioned 1950's horror comic book treatment, resulting in a juvenile and unsatisfying might-have-been, not helped in the least by the de rigueur twist ending. On the plus side, Kari Wuhrer, on the few occasions when she isn't snarling or spitting, certainly photographs well. Based on one of Stephen King's Richard Bachman books. (It's tempting to say this film is about as bright as the poster for it. The curse -- losing weight -- has nothing whatever to do with the crime -- vehicular manslaughter. What the copywriter meant to say was, "Let the curse fit the criminal.") ++ Three girls from the sticks come of age in the big city; Chicago, in this case. One is a bored country girl who would like to find an exciting man, one is just religious enough to want to wait for the right man, and the third is so messed up she doesn't want any man, ever. Naturally they hook up with all the wrong guys. It seems a little odd that this book about women, written by a woman should make such a case for misogyny, but oh these girls are stupid. Of course, then you remember how young they are and how innocent, and you can't help but hate the men who would take advantage of them. Most of them are hateful anyway, though, which explains the subversive purpose of the book, and its particular pulp genre, for one of the girls eventually discovers the sweet release of the love that, once upon a time, dared not speak its name. True to form, the novel covers a good deal of sordid ground, delving into such topics as premarital sex, drug use, rape, unintended pregnancy, and a creepy sort of would-be incest. Yet, for all that, this book is neither raw nor particularly messy; it is, in fact, remarkably restrained, almost impersonal. Not by design, but because Taylor is only capable of scratching the surface of her subject matter and her characters. Worse, she writes as though she'd made a deal with the Devil: guilt-free lesbianism in exchange for the tacit acceptance of every other lifestyle, however odious. The reader has nothing to hang his (or her) hat on: if the girls themselves condemn nothing, what can the reader do? Except perhaps write a review of the book condemning it as a travelogue of depravity that, somehow, against all odds, manages to work out all right in the end. Republished by the Feminist Press in 2012, as The Girls in 3B. |
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