Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

Title: The Great McGinty
Year: 1940
Director: Preston Sturges
Writers: Preston Sturges
Stars: Brian Donlevy, Muriel Angelus, Akim Tamiroff, William Demarest

The Story: Donlevy is a two-fisted bum who gets offered two bucks to vote for a corrupt mayor, so he votes 37 times, under 37 different names. This so impresses the political machine that they make him a bagman, then an alderman, then mayor, then governor. Soon he has enough power to do whatever he wants, as long as he doesn’t want to do the right thing.

Why It’s Great: How does Sturges manage to be so big-hearted and black-hearted at the same time? He does it by keeping a bemused ear cocked for how people really talk when they get in over their head. Now matter how farcical each scene gets, Sturges shows an unswerving dedication to portraying the way the world really works. And he nails it: A patrician politician runs such a slimy political machine that the public finally turns on him. His bosses in the business community decide that they need to anoint their own “reform” candidate to run in the next election. They find a small cog in the Chicago machine whose primary value is that nobody has heard of him. This up-from-poverty plain-talker soon takes off on a meteoric rise to the top, but there’s just one catch: his backers require him to continue all the corruption of the crook he’s replacing. What a crazy story! I guess that’s what it was like way back when in the bad old days.

Read more about it at Cockeyed Caravan.

Long before we got the woman-in-peril slasher films that popped up like dandelions in the late fifties into the sixties, then developed into those Halloween-type movies of the seventies and eighties, woman-in-peril movies could be much more adult, intelligent and, frankly, interesting. Like 1944′s Gaslight (directed by George Cukor).

The major difference between those films and this one is the later ones were based on shock whereas Gaslight is all about suspense — it’s a psychological thriller rather than a gore festival.

It’s a wonderfully atmospheric movie set in a foggy, dark London of the Victorian period. It begins following a murder, the death of young Paula’s famous mother. (Ingrid Bergman plays Paula.) Paula is taken away from her home and goes to live with relatives.

The movie then jumps ahead about ten years. Paula takes singing lessons (her mother was a singer) but her heart isn’t in it. She’s in love with her instructor’s assistant (Charles Boyer).

They eventually marry and, despite Paula’s anxieties about returning to the home her mother died in, her new husband wants to go to London and so she insists they move into her old home.

But once married, her husband appears to behave erratically and treats Paula almost as a child. One moment he’s kind; the next he is cruel. He justifies his harsher behavior as concern because Paula is growing increasingly unstable mentally.

She sees things others don’t see. Things disappear that she has apparently taken though she can’t recall doing so.

She begins doubting herself; she doesn’t know what is wrong with her but she becomes convinced she’s at fault.

All the while, however, there is a police inspector (Joseph Cotton) watching from a distance. The case of the death of Paula’s mother has never been solved and he believes he can crack it. He’s suspicious of Paula’s husband.

The movie revolves around the “gaslighting” of Paula, the psychological games being played on her to make her doubt her sanity and make others distrust her. (The term “to gaslight” someone gives the movie its title. It also refers to the frequent dimming of the gas lights Paula sees.)

Bergman’s performance as a woman slowly losing her mind is great — she received an Oscar for it.

Equally good are Charles Boyer as a smarmy devil destroying his wife’s mind, and Joseph Cotton as the dashing, intelligent inspector.

The movie’s look is also brilliant — it also received an Oscar for Best Interior Decoration.

It’s very detailed in its sets and, as mentioned earlier, atmospheric. It creates a wonderful mood that enhances the suspense and makes this a great film to watch.

This is by no means a great movie but, for some reason, I like it. For one thing, I love the song. It’s horribly corny, but … well, I like it. Go figure.

I think I’d call River of No Return (directed by Otto Preminger) a comfort movie. Like another movie I get the same feeling from, Father Goose, it just feels comfortable watching it and I don’t tire of it. At the same time, I can’t help having qualms because I know it’s not a particularly good film. It’s not bad, either. It’s just a middlin’ kind of movie.

And very cornball. Marilyn Monroe is a honky tonk floozy in a town in the Northwest. Robert Mitchum is a guy with some land he’s working out in the wilderness. Because of a bad guy and Indians (yes, Indians) they’re forced to take a raft down river.

Well, there’s a lot more than that. Essentially, this is an old-fashioned adventure movie with a romance thrown in. Robert Mitchum looks a bit more clean-cut than he normally does, and Marilyn is … well, Marilyn in tight jeans, saloon singer corsets and so on.

Despite this wishy-washy review, there are a couple of really nice elements to the film. One is Marilyn’s singing.

She does quite a bit of it (including a nice rendition of that cornball song I love, River of No Return) and it demonstrates what a nice voice she had and her talents as a singer.

The other element of the film that stands out is the second-unit work. The scenery and the shots that incorporate it are wonderful. Shot in British Columbia I believe, the natural backdrop is quite stunning and the cinematography is top-notch.

As part of the Marilyn Monroe: The Diamond Collection II, the film has gone through the restoration process and the image is fabulous. Maybe a little too much so.

The problem with having such a good image is you get to see some major continuity problems, such as the changes from location work to studio. This must have been a rushed, low budget affair as a very poor job has been done matching lighting and other elements, and it’s really quite obvious.

You also get to see some omissions in the restoration process. During dissolves, you see one quality of image then, just as the dissolve ends, the quality of the image, particularly the light element, jumps to a much higher quality.

It’s almost as if once the dissolve ends, someone turns on the lights. I don’t recall noticing this the first time I watched the disc. But I did the second time. And, not being a tech guy, I’m guessing the problem is in the restoration. However, given the poor job in the filmmaking, perhaps its in how the film was originally made.

Either way, there are some technical issues with this movie that stand out.

So … This is a troubling film. I can see so many problems with it. Yet, despite that, I like it.

Title: Scarlet Street
Year: 1945
Director: Fritz Lang
Writer: Dudley Nichols, based on the novel “La Chienne” by Georges De La Fouchardiere and Andre Mouezy-Eon
Stars: Edgar G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea

The Story: Robinson is a meek little bank clerk, unhappily married, who wants to be a painter, but he’s always had a problem with perspective. He falls under the spell of a femme fatale who falsely assumes that his odd little paintings are worth big money. Afraid to disillusion her, he has to support her with embezzled money. Things get complicated when her no-good boyfriend discovers that the paintings are worthless, and tries to get rid of them, but then the work belatedly gets discovered by the art world. In both situations, it is Robinson’s lack of perspective that ironically makes him a valuable commodity, for a short while, but it all comes crashing down.

Why It’s Great: Like a lot of movies that have entered the public domain, this was available for years only in truly terrible prints. Only recently did Kino begin to distribute a beautiful restoration. It’s gorgeous and reveals the film to be a masterpiece… I’m just going to say, this may now be my favorite Fritz Lang movie. Better than Metropolis. Better than M. Better than The Big Heat. I’ll go even further: it may be my favorite film noir! I’ve always loved it but the restored version finally reveals how perfect it really is: The script is ingenious. The performances are heartbreaking. The directing is passionate. This movieinterlocks plot and theme and symbolism and character with a microscopic level of clockwork precision. Joan Bennett is certainly my all-time favorite femme fatale. In many ways, she’s the most pitiless and cruel lover to ever be depicted on the screen. (He begs to paint her portrait, but she forces him to get on his knees and paint her toenails instead, sneering “they’ll be masterpieces.”) But Bennett’s astounding performance grants her a deep pool of vulnerability and, against all odds, sympathy. Her love for her secret sleazebag boyfriend Duryea is so naive, so overpowering, that the worse she treats Robinson, the more you pity her.

More at Cockeyed Caravan!

This film is an old favorite of mine and seeing it again after all these years didn’t disappoint. It’s wonderful. However, a cautionary note needs to be sounded.

This movie is sentimental. It’s politically incorrect. It is not Ireland. If these sorts of things get your shorts in a knot, avoid this movie.

The Ireland of The Quiet Man is an Ireland that never existed. It is loaded with every Irish cliche imaginable. For all I know, this movie is responsible for generating many of them. While it doesn’t include leprechauns, it might as well with the drunken Irish priest played by Barry Fitzgerald (Going My Way).

So what is this movie? It’s the other side of the John Ford coin. As a director, he may have been the apotheosis of the American macho Hollywood filmmakers of the 40s and 50s. Like Howard Hawks, his films were about men – stoic and tough and articulated best through John Wayne. It was directors such as these that made the western what it was, creating the formula that would be worked and reworked and improvised on in so many later films.

Despite their surface toughness though, all these films were high romanticism. They were idealized images of what men were or should be. The North American stoic is, like the cynic, an inverted romantic.

The movie The Quiet Man perfectly illustrates this. Keep in mind that this is a movie made by the same man who gave us Stagecoach, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande and The Searchers.

This time, however, rather than the spare-talking tough warrior, we see the Ford male in domestic surroundings. The warrior at home, as it were; the patriarch in love.

And if the westerns and war films are excessively tough-minded, here we see the same excess mirrored as sentimentality. Everything is idealized (hence, the Ireland we see). Everything is fantasy.

Essentially, it is a fairy tale and one that works tremendously well. A large part of the reason for this is the pairing of John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara (Miracle On 34th Street). They always worked well together but never more so than in this movie.

And the relationship they have – at odds, somewhat embattled, and a bit appalling to a contemporary audience with the surface submissiveness of the Maureen O’Hara character – is thoroughly engaging.

And just to remind us we’re in the macho world, we get a brilliant brawl at the end of the film. This is the man’s Harlequin romance. And while it may be a guilty pleasure, it is a pleasure nonetheless.

Title: Kiss Me, Stupid
Year: 1964
Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, based on the play “L’Ora della Fantasia” by Anna Bonacci
Stars: Kim Novak, Dean Martin, Ray Walston, Felicia Farr, Cliff Osmond

The Story: When the famous singer “Dino” passes through the tiny town of Climax, Nevada, two would-be songwriters decide to keep him there long enough to hear their work. At first, Walston is afraid that Dino will want to steal his wife, but they decide to hire the town hooker to pose as his wife, so that Dino can have his way with her. If you think it can’t get any more dirty-minded than that, you’d be very wrong.

Why It’s Great: Can we talk about how daring Dean Martin is here? To play any character this callous and depraved is brave, but to do it as himself– using his real nickname, doing his own act, name-checking his real friends, then demanding another character’s wife in tribute as if he were the bad guy in Braveheart?? This was one ego-less actor! He twists his persona into something so casually monstrous that it’s terrifying. You can’t get your jaw off the floor as you watch it. But this is Novak’s movie. She’s funny, sexy as heartbreaking, giving the movie a surprising amount of heart and soul. Her performance couldn’t be more different than her equally great work in Vertigo, even though the roles are bizarrely similar: In both movies, a man hires her to impersonate his wife and then seduce another man!

Two more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan…

Watching In a Lonely Place, I couldn’t help recalling all those English Lit classes about tragedy and the hero with a tragic flaw. This is a film noir with Humphrey Bogart playing such a character and the result is a great, if heartbreaking, movie. (It’s a little eyebrow raising to find out the set was a replica of a place where director Nicholas Ray lived and the film is called In a Lonely Place.)

This is a movie about loneliness. As with many noirs, the hero (or anti-hero) is an outsider. He’s isolated from everyone around him. Here, however, he has a chance to alleviate that loneliness, finding love with a woman he feels understands him (Gloria Grahame).

Humphrey Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter with a less than stellar career. He’s cynical about the business he’s in, dislikes its commercialism and goes about with a chip on his shoulder. He also has a volatile temper. The anger he carries around with him is generally repressed but always on the verge of boiling over. Often, it does.

He’s given a novel to read to see what he can do about turning it into a script. But rather than read the novel, he gets a starry-eyed hatcheck girl to come over to his place and tell him the story (since she has read it). Later, after leaving, the girl is found murdered. Steele becomes the lead detective’s prime suspect.

Steele has an alibi, however. It comes by way of Laurel Grey (Grahame), his neighbor across the courtyard. Steele and Grey develop a relationship and are soon in love. This love frees Dixon from his demons, at least for a time, and he starts riding a creative wave, writing the script he’s been asked for but, at the same time, turning it from a trashy novel into something considerably better.

But the investigation of the murder haunts Dixon and Laurel. His temper soon resurfaces and she sees this part of him. Soon she (and we, the audience) start to wonder if Steele is innocent or not. His temper certainly makes it seem possible he committed the crime.

Doubt and distrust begin to eat away at Dixon and Laurel’s relationship and it soon starts to spiral downward.

Bogart is tremendous in this movie and you could make a good case for this being his best performance. While you can empathize with him to an extent, and want the relationship of Dixon and Laurel to work, you can’t help also disliking him because of his anger and suspicions. With a personality such as his, with his emotional problems, it’s easy to see how if the relationship were to work it would soon become characterized by domestic violence.

Gloria Grahame is also perfect. It’s difficult to imagine anyone else in this role. You can see the love and fear battling within her. In noirs, she’s the ideal femme fatale. (See The Big Heat, for example.)

The movie also has a perfect ending. It has something of a twist to it but it doesn’t seem forced or imposed. Rather, it seems inevitable.

While In a Lonely Place begins with the appearance of a potboiler murder story (which I gather the book it came from was), the murder here is just an excuse to tell the the real story — the relationship between Dixon and Laurel, and how Dixon’s flaw affects and determines its end.

Note: There is also some great black and white cinematography here. Roger Deakins has mentioned this as one of the movies that influenced the shooting of Coen brothers The Man Who Wasn’t There.

Title: Queen Christina
Year: 1933
Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Writers: H. M. Harwood, Salka Viertel, Margaret P. Levino, and S. N. Behrman
Stars: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith, Lewis Stone, Elizabeth Young

The Story: The kick-ass 17th century Swedish queen reads books, dresses like a man, and refuses to get married, laughing at those who try to impose gender roles on her. You’d almost think she was a lesbian if she didn’t have so much uninhibited sex with men. She’s allowed to get away with all of it until she tries to shut down the military-industrial complex, resulting in a whisper campaign that brings her regency to a crisis.

Why It’s Great: Mamoulian combined the sensuousness of Ophuls with the brazen good-naturedness of Hawks, but only in recent years have moves like this, Applause and Love Me Tonight been treated like the masterpieces they are. This movie is very much a product of that magical period from 1929-1933, after the arrival of sound but before the strict enforcement of the production code, when Hollywood movies enjoyed a brief flowering of sexual sophistication. Most “pre-code” movies used that freedom to tell tales that were lurid and dark, but this was one of the few that used its frankness to celebrate sexual liberation in a way that was positive, political, and progressive. It’s pretty gobsmacking to watch it today.

Three more reasons at Cockeyed Caravan…

There’s a heck of a lot of drinking in this movie. But there’s also a heck of a lot of fun. In fact, The Thin Man is a delight from start to finish.

It begins as a standard, noir-like mystery-thriller of the period (1934). We meet some characters, most not very savory, and we soon realize that something none-too-good will happen. And it does.

There’s a murder but we’re not sure who committed it (though we’re given some possible suspects). And there is yet another mystery which we’re not necessarily aware of yet (the mysterious Wynant) — it will develop as the film goes on.

Only after we’ve been given all this story set up do we finally meet the stars of the film, William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, the cocktail loving, free-spirited couple who, between drinks, may poke their noses into a mystery or two. (Oh yes, there is their dog, Asta, too.)

Upon meeting Nick and Nora, the tone of the film abruptly changes. The pair party, wisecrack and generally take everything that comes into their lives breezily. Everything is a passing amusement.

From a noirish piece, we’re now into a comedy. (Maybe it’s more accurate to say a comedy has been laid over the thriller — more or less smothering it. And that’s more than okay. It’s a great comedy.)

Nick and Nora are absolutely charming. They’re always witty — which is remarkable since Nick, at least, is almost always tipsy. Powell plays it perfectly, not simply with the intonation of his lines but also to getting a bit of a slur into his voice.

While there is a great supporting cast this movie works primarily because of its stars, Powell and Loy. They work beautifully together. Loy is the perfect foil to Powell since she rarely takes anything he says seriously. She’s as casual as he is.

The movie also works due to its quick pace. Remarkably, with all the amusing nonsense going on, it also manages to be suspenseful. It wraps up with one of the best “gathering of all the suspects” scenes ever as Powell’s Nick tries to determine who the murderer is (he hasn’t a clue, but he doesn’t let anyone other than Nora know that).

This is definitely a movie about dialogue, of which Powell is a master.

Roger Ebert puts it best, I think, when he says, “William Powell is to dialogue as Fred Astaire is to dance.” (For another great Powell performance, see My Man Godfrey.)

The Thin Man is absolutely great entertainment. It still plays well and it’s easy to see why it spawned a number of sequels. Together, William Powell and Myrna Loy are utterly charming.

Title: Million Dollar Legs
Year: 1932
Director: Edward F. Cline
Writers: Joseph L. Mankiewicz (!) and Henry Myers
Stars: W. C. Fields, Jack Oakie, Susan Fleming, Andy Clyde

The Story: Fields has retained the presidency of a treacherous little country called Klopstockia thanks to his arm-wrestling prowess, but now his enemies are going to take it all away. Luckily, an American brush salesman who wants to marry his daughter has a plan to save the country: win all the medals in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics!

Why It’s Great: W. C. Fields’s movies, most of which are from the early sound era, have been in terrible shape for a while, which hurts his chances of finding new audiences. Even worse, this one has never been on available an American DVD. The tagline on the poster says it all: “It’s insane — It’s joyous!” and the storyline couldn’t be crazier, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hold together, in its own odd way. There’s actually a lot of “set-up and pay-off”. Each one of the special skills that they wind up needing in the Olympics has been established beforehand in a fairly organic way, as far as anything can be said to organic is utterly absurd movie.

Three more reasons over at Cockeyed Caravan…