Riffraff (1936)

Riffraff (1936), directed by J. Walter Ruben, 3 stars

"What's past is gone out and over and done with" – Nick Lewis

The above quote nicely sums up the recurring motif of this film, that is, that pretty much all sins are forgivable--provided one makes an earnest attempt to atone for them.  And sins aplenty occur during this emotionally-wrought tale of tuna workers exploited by their oily factory boss, Nick Lewis (Joseph Calleia).  One surmises that he must have changed his name since he speaks in a contrived form of pidgin English, no doubt intended by the screenwriters to inject humorous malaprops aplenty into the dialogue.  Nick is smitten by Hattie (Jean Harlow), and who wouldn't be?  She’s drop-dead gorgeous and alternatively sweet and sassy in inimitable Harlow style.  Hattie, on the other hand, is in love with “Dutch” Muller (Spencer Tracy), an egomaniacal tuna fisherman who works in Nick's factory.  However, Nick is so self-absorbed that he ignores her overtures. Instead, he occupies his time making reckless decisions that wind up wreaking increasing havoc not only on Hattie and his closest friends, but on the entire community dependent on the fishery for its livelihood.

But no matter how poorly perspicacious Dutch's decisions turn out to be, the movie makes a point of differentiating them from the ever-present 30s red menace that seeks to use Nicks’ exploitative business practices as an excuse for a socialist solution.  Communists are portrayed as either bat-wielding thugs or as arrogant highbrows who use the biggest words available when fewer syllables would carry the day.

The attraction that Dutch and Hattie display off and on for one another transcends the political environment that surrounds them in a way that could only work in a Hollywood film.  Initially, Dutch wants nothing to do with his fellow fishermen, who are on the verge of calling a strike that will most certainly lead to their being replaced by scabs.  He'd rather spend his time in a local tavern in the company of two lovely ladies.  But it takes only the slightest stroking of his ego by Hattie and others to nudge him into action: the delivery of a speech that leads to a huge brawl outside the cannery.  Despite the fact that Dutch and Hattie were at each other’s throats only moments before, she chooses to help him escape from the police by creating a distraction, wrapping a can of tuna in paper, flinging it into the melee, and crying “bomb.”  When she later congratulates him for averting the strike, he reacts violently, pushing her to the ground.  Hattie gets her revenge in short order by hurling a fish at him while reporters are filming an interview.  It hits him in the face, causing him to loses his balance and fall overboard into the water—all this while the cameras are rolling.  This row doesn't prevent them from marrying, becoming pregnant, having irreconcilable differences, and then divorcing, all in short order.  The attraction between the two lies in their studio star power, not in themselves and certainly not in their stars.

“Riffraff” was the second film Harlow made with Spencer Tracy in 1936, the other being the better known and better film, “Libeled Lady.”  Although sparks fly in this film, the sparkle just isn’t the same between the two as it is with Harlow and her other leading men.  I'm thinking especially of Clark Gable.  But other cast members do liven things up quite a bit.  Una Merkel as Lil, Hattie's sister, and Mickey Rooney as Jimmy, Lil's son provide plenty of fast-talking wisecracks as well as real help when it's needed.  Anita Loos, Frances Marion, and H.W. Hamemann were responsible for the snappy screenplay, which is filled with zingers, though the highlight for me are the conversations in broken English between Nick and Markis (George Givot), his lawyer, which I found simply hilarious.  This is neither Harlow’s or Tracy’s best effort by far, but it is an interesting if not a totally successful pairing of two of MGM’s big box-office sensations.

Mimic 3 Sentinel (2003)

Mimic 3 Sentinel (2003), directed by J.T. Petty, 1 star

"Haven’t you guys seen this movie?" – Marvin Montrose

If the demonstrative pronoun in the above quote referred to “Mimic 3 Sentinel,” then my guess is that few people would answer yes to the question posed.  And that’s a mercy.  In the film, however, Marvin Montrose (Karl Geary), a sickly bubble boy confined largely to his room, is referencing Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” even though he does not name the film.  The question is posed to his hopelessly drug-addicted younger sister Rosy (Alexis Dziena) and her friend Carmen (Rebecca Mader), a pretty young lady from across the alley.  Since his question is never answered, one can infer that neither of these characters know what he’s talking about, but my having seen both films, I wonder what director/screenwriter J.T. Petty is talking about.  Yes, both films do feature a man with a camera who is confined for medical reasons to his room, but “Rear Window” is a masterful piece of filmmaking and “Mimic 3 Sentinel” is a miserable piece of something entirely different.

In his pre-digital world, Marvin unabashedly takes picture after picture from his bedroom window, most of which are terrible.  It must have cost his family a fortune to develop all the photographs that he's plastered on the walls of his room.  He shoots with the lights on so everyone in the neighboring apartments can see what he’s doing, but nobody seems to notice or care.  His timing is also invariably way off.  When there is nothing going on, his eye is glued to the viewfinder.  When creatures come in for the kill, he’s nowhere to be found.

I’d really like to say something nice about the film, but I just can't think of anything.  The cast does include Amanda Plummer (“Pulp Fiction”) as Marvin’s mom and Lance Henriksen (“Aliens”) as “the garbage man” (don’t ask), but neither actor is given any motivation or material to work with.  When they die (oh, sorry; I guess that was a spoiler), it’s good riddance to bad rubbish.

There’s nothing going on in the way of filmmaking either.  The plot is plodding; the score is uninspired (what’s with the unseen, diegetic viola?); and all of the characters—not just Marvin—seem completely enervated and sleep-deprived.  Perhaps, the actors who portrayed them really were.  The film was shot in Romania (most of the crew have diacritical marks in their names and there’s also a nod to Bucharest in the end titles), and except, perhaps, for the effects shots, it couldn’t have taken very long to shoot the whole thing.  Maybe the crew rushed through it as quickly as possible to put it all behind them.  Sheer speculation on my part, I admit.

So why did I watch it through to the end?  For the same reasons I always do.  I obsess over completion: After watching “Mimic,” I stumbled upon the two sequels, and that as they say is that.  In my estimation, this is the worst of the bunch by far.  If you like films about angry overgrown bugs, there are many others to choose from, any one of which has got to have more going for it than this.

“Mimic 2” (1997)

“Mimic 2” (1997), Jean de Segonvac, 1.5 stars

“What the hell are we looking for?” – soldier

With all of the headaches the original “Mimic” created for its director and, presumably, its producers as well, you wouldn’t expect anyone to pony up any more money on a sequel but, nevertheless, that’s just what happened.  Screenwriter Joel Soisson (“Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”) takes Remy (Alix Koromzay), the most minor of the major characters in the original film, gives her a backstory as a science teacher, and concocts a horrific scenario that provides her with her own heroic journey.  In the first film, Remy assists Dr. Susan Tyler of the CDC in an ill-defined capacity while her boss descends deeper and deeper into the innermost rings of hell.  Here, the hellishness plays itself out in a deteriorating public school somewhere in the South Bronx.  People are losing face (literally) and one of these poor unfortunates is a dunderhead Remy recently dated and now wants nothing to do with.  She sure knows how to pick 'em.  Her wall is plastered with Polaroids of herself in the aftermath of countless dates gone wrong.

But we don’t really care.  Remy’s not a particularly attractive or sympathetic character herself, and the sad truth is neither is anyone else who winds up in harm’s way.  Certainly not Detective Klaski (Bruno Campos), who noses around trying to get to the root of the ghastly homicides.  He’s pretty much clueless, and hopelessly crass to boot.  Nor do we worry whether or not the young’uns, Nicky (Will Estes) and Sal (Gaven E. Lucas), will survive their after-hours ordeal in the bowels of the school.  The former is too hormonally out of balance, and the latter, although he's a cute kid, doesn’t really say or do anything worthy of surviving through to the end credits.  In fact, he does some pretty stupid things along the way.

Although the plot is anything but, the film itself looks very smart.  Like its predecessor, much of the action takes place in darkness illuminated by a stray light here and there, which may or may not flicker annoyingly for additional effect.  The production also oozes more than its fair share of luminescent slime, and bugs of all sizes crash through ceilings and walls right on their frenetic musical cues.  Director Jean de Segonzac (“Homicide: Life on the Street”) distorts the camera and places it at all sorts of odd angles, but this is an example of excessive form attempting to compensate for inadequate content.  Though I like the original film quite a bit, I’m afraid I can’t recommend its offspring.  Gone are all of Guillermo del Toro's signature themes:  faith, dispair, heroism. The bugs are back, but no one is any smarter or renewed spiritually as a result of surviving an encounter with them.  And from everything I’ve read, which admittedly isn't much, I can’t imagine that the next genetic mutation in the series (“Mimic 3 Sentinel”) will be much better: a conclusion I will at some point in the near future no doubtedly wind up drawing for myself.

The Unholy Three (1930)

The Unholy Three (1930), directed by Jack Conway, 3.5 stars

“That’s all there is to life – just a little laugh, a little tear.” – Professor Echo

Lon Chaney was late getting into sound pictures.  He made only one, a remake of his 1925 hit, “The Unholy Three,” and it was to be his last film. Just over a month after its release, he died from bronchial, throat, or lung cancer, depending on which of the many online biographies you read.  One of the reasons he may have chosen this to be his first foray into sound was because it not only featured the actor in disguise, it also gave him the opportunity to show off his ability to create several distinct voices, giving rise to the film’s ad campaign, which touted with typical Hollywood hyperbole, “The Man of a Thousand Faces is now the Man of a Thousand Voices!”

The plot of the film is nearly identical to its silent forbear, though economically pared down from 86 to 72 minutes.  I’ve seen many argue that the original, directed frequent Chaney collaborator Tod Browning is the superior of the two films, and at first glance, the remake creates very little that is new or different if you subtract the vocal track.  However, it is exactly because of the now precious on-screen presence of Chaney’s commanding voice(s) that this film is worthy of note, and because it is, it’s equally interesting to take a look at some of the changes that were made and to speculate as to why they were.

First, there are two new very brief comedic bits that take place at the start of the film during Professor Echo’s (Chaney) ventriloquist act.  His dummy offers to sing a song a song titled “She Was a Butterfly’s Daughter,” which opens with the title line followed by “But he was a son of a bee.”  Echo immediately covers the dummy’s mouth and admonishes him to behave.  A few moments later, he projects a female voice into the audience which causes a sailor to put the moves on a young lady standing beside him.  Many Hollywood films of the early 1930s pushed conservatives Americans to the limit, resulting in a significant clamping down by censors in the summer of 1934.

The next difference is in the introductions of the various characters.  The gorilla, who plays a key role late in the film, is brought in much earlier, and the antipathy between the animal and Hercules (Ivan Linow), makes much more sense after we see the strong man antagonize the ape with a slingshot.  Echo’s warning to Hercules goes unheeded:  “You’re gonna do that once too often and he’ll tear you to pieces.”  An even smaller difference, but a curious one, occurs during the first interaction between Echo and Rosie O'Grady (Lila Lee).  In the silent version, Echo offers her a steak dinner for being such a good pickpocket.  In this film, he offers her steak with mushrooms, and it’s the mushrooms (not the steak, as in the original) that impel her to reveal the rest of her stash to him.  I wonder if this is a depression-era update denoting, perhaps, one particular frill that is no longer available (or affordable) to the working class.  Getting back to character intros, there’s one change worth noting.  Like Hercules, Tweedledee, the midget (Harry Earles) is clearly a much darker character in the sound film.  The last of the unholy three to be introduced, when the barker (Richard Carle) alerts him that it’s nearly time for him to do his act and they’ve got a good crowd of nice people, Tweedledee goes into a bitter rant, which ends with “I’d like to poison them all.”  This better sets up the following scene in which he responds to a young boy’s taunts by kicking him in the face.

Fred Kelsey and Lon Chaney

Perhaps, the biggest difference is in the endings of the two films.  In the original, Echo confesses and is forgiven for his crimes.  He releases Rosie from her promise to remain with him and returns with his manikin to the carnival.  In the remake, Echo in the guise of Grandma O’Grady is unmasked in the witness stand by the District Attorney (John Miljean) and receives a one-to-five year prison sentence.  Once again, he frees Rosie to find happiness in the arms of another man, but this time, with the lovers united and the train pulling out of the station on its way to the penitentiary, Echo calls out his final words from the observation car: “I’ll send you a postal card.”  As the screen fades to black, Chaney waves one last time to the screen.  Exit way too soon one of the greatest, multi-talented entertainers ever to grace the movie screen.

"Dinner at Eight" (1933)

"Dinner at Eight" (1933), directed by George Cukor, 4 stars

“Nothing can be done. That's the unfortunate thing about death. It's so terribly final. Even the young can't do anything about it.” – Carlotta Vance

This depression era gem, which sits at number 85 on the American Film Institute’s (AFI’s) top comedies (100 Years, 100 Laughs), explores both the idyllic and the carnal qualities of young love, the jaded, depressed, and corrupt side of the more mature set, and betrayals of various sorts that plague young and old alike.  Although characterized by AFI and others as a comedy—and it certainly does have its fair share of farcical wits about it—the fact that infidelity, bullying, financial ruin, heart disease, and suicide are all critical plot points, I consider the film more of a drama.  For some characters things do end well, but for others, not so much.

The studio certainly didn’t advertise it as a comedy—at least not in its posters or previews.  MGM’s publicity department concentrated instead on the film’s stellar cast.  “The riches of the entire dramatic world gathered for one stupendous screen entertainment.”  So says the original trailer for the film, further professing that it even dwarfs MGM’s own “Grand Hotel," released the year before with many of the same actors.

The invitation to dinner certainly does extend to several of the biggest names in the entertainment industry in the early 1930s.  Most prominent are John Barrymore as Larry Renault, an actor once known for his “great profile” and now unable to get even small, supporting parts, Lee Tracy in the thankless role of Max Kane, Renault’s supportive, fast talking agent, Wallace Beery as Dan Packard, a rough-hewn and unscrupulous financier, Jean Harlow as Kitty, Packard’s young, fast, and free-spirited platinum-blonde wife, Lionel Barrymore as Oliver Jordan, a sickly shipping tycoon with his business on the rocks, and Billie Burke as Millicent, Jordan’s next-to-neurotic wife whose dinner plans set most of the plot in motion.  Oh, yes, there’s also Marie Dressler as Carlotta Vance, grande dame of the New York stage, who is wise, wizened, and not nearly as well-off as her fading finery would have everyone believe.

A quick plot summary: An eponymous 8pm dinner is being given by the Jordan’s for the esteemed Lord and Lady Ferncliffe.  Things go badly right away.  Carlotta, Oliver Jordan’s former lover and erstwhile Broadway star, drops by to borrow money just as the Jordan’s shipping line is discovered to be in severe financial straits.  Dan Packard, the person Jordan looks to for succor, sees this instead as an opportunity to suck up the stock at a rock bottom price.  The Jordan’s daughter has recently become enamored of an aging alcoholic stage actor, and horror of horrors, there is an uneven number of dinner guests now that Carlotta is on the scene.

The major actors in the film are so spot on in their roles that one gets the distinct impression that the original play (or at least, the modified screenplay) was written specifically with them in mind, Larry Renault, the John Barrymore character, most particularly.  I’ve watched and enjoyed the film at least twice before, but I liked it more than ever this time.  Perhaps, this was because I saw it for the first time in a theater, on a large screen, and surrounded by an audience.  But I suspect that my increased pleasure derived even more from the attention I paid to the difference of opinions expressed by the free-spirited youthful dinner guests and their boxed-in elders. As I’m not getting any younger, I was able to appreciate both perspectives much better now than in the past.

“Moonrise Kingdom” (2012)

“Moonrise Kingdom” (2012), Wes Anderson, 3.5 stars

“What kind of bird are you?” – Sam

Wes Anderson’s quirky “Moonrise Kingdom” rolls back the clock to the 1960s and recounts the tale of a pair of lonely and troubled pre-teens who run off together to escape the anguish of their anything but normal lives.  Sam (Jared Gilman) is a member a khaki scout troop bivouacked for the summer on the island of New Penzance.  Suzy (Kara Hayward) is the eldest child in a massively dysfunctional family that lives on the island.  Her parents, Walt and Laura Bishop (played by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand), two lawyers teetering on the edge of divorce, communicate through a megaphone, and her mother is having an affair with Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), the island’s only police officer.  Sam’s skills as a scout facilitate the pair’s escape despite the fact that Suzy is dressed as if she’s on her way to Sunday school and has brought along many of the comforts of home, including a suitcase, a cat, and a record player.  Captain Sharp enlists the aid of Scoutmaster Ward (Edward Norton) and his troop of eager khaki scouts, but the couple remains one step ahead, in one scene by unleashing some unexpectedly gruesome violence on their pursuers.

Much of the action within the film borders on the absurd, but the cast plays it completely straight, which makes the staging and reciting of their lines very funny.  The camera seems to be constantly on the move, dollying left, right, up and down and not at all self-conscious about the sweeping movements that give grandeur to rather ordinary scenes.  Scenes within the massive Bishop house are the most elaborately staged with characters entering and exiting the frame as the camera dollies with or in opposition to their movements.  Even static shots call attention to themselves: many are photographed from high or low angles (seldom straight on); many are filled with odd color combinations; and many catch characters behaving in ways you just don’t expect, for instance, Walt shuffling about with an axe on his shoulder and a bottle of wine explaining to his sons that he’s about to chop down a tree. (Actually, you might expect him to do that if you’ve seen the trailer.)   It’s a quirkily constructed piece of work in which quirky characters find comfort in each other’s quirky company, and it feels as if everyone involved, the camera included, had a good time making the film.  I had a good time watching it, and so did the audience I saw it with.

“Underworld” (1927)

“Underworld” (1927), directed by Joseph von Sternberg, 4 stars

“There was something I had to find out – and that hour was worth more to me than my whole life” – Bull Weed 

Anyone familiar with the cycle of gangster films from the early 1930s will see in this movie much of the familiar iconography of that genre: the fast cars, the self-absorbed, wise-cracking dames, the jesterish sidekick, the gangster with a gimmick (this one bends coins in his bare hands), the macho posturing, the fateful signage (“The City is Yours”), the jaunty nightclub (Dreamland Cafe), the car chase, and, of course, the fatal climactic shootout.  George Bancroft is free-wheeling “Bull” Weed, crime boss, Evelyn Brent is “Feathers,” his sultry moll, and Clive Brook, who gets top billing, is “Rolls Royce,” a drunken, down-and-out ex-lawyer who Bull decides to take under his wing during the aftermath of a robbery.  Except for his aide-de-camp, “Slippy” Lewis (comedian Larry Semon), Bull seems to operate pretty much alone.  This is in distinct contrast to his counterpart in the world of crime, “Buck” Mulligan (Fred Kohler), who is full of bullying bravado when cavorting with his carousing companions.

Unlike many gangster films of the thirties, there is very little interplay between the police and the criminal element.  There is no over-the-top cop, detective, or newspaper reporter fixating on getting his man, as there is in “Little Caesar” (1931), “Scarface” (1932), and, most prominently, in MGM’s reactionary answer to the crime film, “The Beast of the City” (1932).  There is Buck, who though constantly surrounded by compatriots, always feels overshadowed by the larger than life persona exuded by Bull and, thus, overcompensates in ways that invariably backfire.  In a sequence that may have inspired the opening scene of “Rio Bravo,” Buck tosses a $10 bill into a spittoon both to impress Feathers and to demean Rolls Royce, who is is now sweeping floors at the café.  Unlike his kindred spirit in the Howard Hawks oater (Dude, played by Dean Martin), Rolls Royce does not take the bait by (literally) lowering himself to pick up the money.  His response infuriates Buck—especially because his gang finds it amusing.  After demanding that Rolls Royce pick up the bill, in a cleverly constructed subjective shot from the point of view of Rolls Royce, Buck throws a vicious punch to the stomach to which the camera reacts by suddenly panning upward as if being struck by the blow.

All of the deadly sins except, perhaps, gluttony feature prominently at one point or another in the film, and they escalate the violence which ultimately culminates in the killing of Buck Mulligan by Bull Weed.  Despite the laxity of the production code in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Hollywood’s rules of the game nearly always mandated that murderers meet their just reward before the house lights came back on.  Bull winds up on death row, and Paramount executives almost sentence the film to the same fate.  The studio wasn't particularly happy with the end product and gave it a very limited release.  Then, something unexpected happened:  the public took the film by storm. Screenwriter Ben Hecht was initially so angry at Director Von Sternberg's modifications to the script that he asked that his credit be removed.  It wasn’t, and Hecht won an Oscar for it at the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929.  The popularity of crime films has not diminished since that time, and anyone who enjoys the genre should watch this film and see how all the fuss began.