Film Freak Central

Ripley's Game (2002) - DVD

**** Image A Sound A
starring John Malkovich, Dougray Scott, Ray Winstone, Lena Headey
screenplay by Charles McKeown and Liliana Cavani, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith
directed by Liliana Cavani

by Walter Chaw When I heard that The Night Porter auteur Liliana Cavani was adapting one of Patricia Highsmith's Mr. Ripley novels, I knew to expect something more in line with René Clément's brilliant Purple Noon than Anthony Minghella's lavishly simpering The Talented Mr. Ripley. What I didn't anticipate was that this film, which never received any sort of domestic theatrical distribution before being summarily dropped, supplement-free, onto the home video market, would be one of the best of its year--indeed, of its kind. Ripley's Game is doomed to the "direct-to-video" label and an ignominious eternity buried in the Blockbuster shelves for the occasional stunned bemusement of the well traveled and the John Malkovich fetishist--it languishes there while over-masticated tripe like The Alamo finds its way to thousands of screens, its lingering impact to remind again that the slippery slope in Hollywood's distribution game just got steeper. Ripley's Game would have looked great on the big screen--and some genius robbed us of the opportunity to see it that way, thinking we'd prefer American Splendor or Along Came Polly.

Femme Fatale (2002) - DVD

*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C
starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Eriq Ebouaney
written and directed by Brian De Palma

by Walter Chaw The first script written solely by Brian De Palma since his 1992 film Raising Cain, Femme Fatale, like that film, rips off the famous murderer-reveal of Dario Argento's Tenebre. Come to think of it, the picture is essentially a rehash in one way or another of every film De Palma's ever written (the voyeurism and body switch of Body Double, the phallic film equipment of Blow Out, the steamy stall-sex of Dressed to Kill, the evil twin thing and split-screen of Sisters, the voyeurism again of Hi, Mom!, and so on)--and because De Palma's best films and screenplays were iterations of Hitchcock (and sometimes Argento, the Italian Hitchcock), Femme Fatale is as stale and detached as the third-generation copy that it is.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) + The Rains of Ranchipur (1955) [The Limited Edition Series] - Blu-ray Discs

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
***/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn
screenplay by Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch, based on the novel by James M. Cain
directed by Tay Garnett

THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR
**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Lana Turner, Richard Burton, Fred MacMurray, Michael Rennie
screenplay by Merle Miller, based on the novel by Louis Bromfield
directed by Jean Negulesco

click any image to enlarge

by Jefferson Robbins There's a series of doublings in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Lana Turner's best-known vehicle, that illuminate its obscure title. Disillusioned young wife Cora Smith (Turner) and drift-through handyman Frank Chambers (John Garfield) try twice to make way for their illicit love by eliminating her diner-impresario husband, Nick (Cecil Kellaway). There are two court cases steered by suspicious chief prosecutor Sackett (Leon Ames) and defended by wonderfully shifty lawyer Arthur "I'm Handling It" Keats (Hume Cronyn). There are two moonlight swims, each a turning point in the criminal couple's courtship. Twice the action bends when ailing female relatives, never seen, summon a main character to their sickbeds. There are even two roadside-diner femmes fatale: Cora, and her double Madge (Audrey Totter), who diverts Frank while he's on the outs with the woman he killed to obtain. Finally, the murder itself creates a literal echo. These aren't anvils falling from the heavens, but instead the patterns life presents only in retrospect: This moment, that day, that was when God was trying to get my attention. Like Frank, we're too preoccupied to ever hear the first ring.

Gangster Squad (2013)

*/****
starring Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Sean Penn
screenplay by Will Beall
directed by Ruben Fleischer

by Angelo Muredda In his recent chat with David Poland, Ruben Fleischer bristled at the suggestion that Gangster Squad shares any DNA with Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy. That's the sort of aesthetic family resemblance a lightweight like Fleischer ought to milk for all it's worth, but hear him out: Sean Penn's enterprising mob boss Mickey Cohen, he insists, isn't a cartoon bruiser in the tradition of Al Pacino's Big Boy Caprice, but a real guy whose face only looks a little off because it's been molded by other men's fists. He isn't a comic strip-grotesque, then, but a seasoned boxer-turned-kingpin reanimated by a grand old actor and his team of historically-faithful makeup artists. What more could one ask of a Warner Bros. crime movie than such attention to detail? A lot, apparently--especially if the finished product looks more like Elmer Fudd than any retired amateur boxer. Verisimilitude is a nice goal, but it doesn't suit Gangster Squad, at once a lumbering history lesson and a squib of a gangster picture--a zit on the ass of Mulholland Falls, Lee Tamahori's somehow more accomplished stab at L.A. noir.

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

****/****
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, James Gandolfini
screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
directed by Joel Coen

by Walter Chaw The noir genre was born of discomfort with women in the workplace, the rise of cynicism, and a world polarized by international conflict (WWII). Its symbol, the hardboiled detective, became the projection of the collective paranoia about the ascent of globalism and the death of Pollyannaism. Women and foreigners are not to be trusted in the noir universe; information is slippery and expensive; and the solution of the puzzle more often than not points back to a rot at the heart of the detective. It is the Oedipus/identity trajectory, complete with a blasted plague land, a murder, its thinly veiled culprit (noir is typically invested in process, not mystery), the appearance of a femme fatale, and a solution involving mortal self-knowledge. The noir hero may save the day, but at the price of being betrayed by those he loves. He is impotent to avenge his fallen friends and lovers, and at the mercy of a larger corruption that is unalterable and serves only to further degrade individual confidence. Tellingly, a great many noir works in literature and film begin with the death of a best friend or a partner and end with the realization that any victory is a hollow one in light of society's inexorable fall into chaos.