Horrible Bosses

Horrible Bosses (2011) dir. Seth Gordon
Starring: Jason Bateman, Jason Sudekis, Charlie Day, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell

***

By Alan Bacchus

Bateman/Sudekis/Day make an affable trio in this over-the-top workplace/bromance comedy about three doofuses plotting the murder of their ‘horrible bosses’. It’s a decent though unoriginal premise, but it’s the population of strong actors self-effacing themselves in the name of crude humour that makes the picture a watchable and warm disposable comedy.

Nick (Jason Bateman) is a corporate middle manager subjugating himself to his maniacal boss (Spacey), thinking he’s in line for a promotion to VP. Recently engaged Dale (Charlie Day) is an emasculated dental hygienist subjected to reverse sexual harassment by his cougar-esque dentist boss, Julia (Jennifer Aniston). And Kurt (Jason Sudekis) is a charming playboy suffering underneath the cockhead son (Farrell) of his recently deceased boss.

After Dale is blackmailed by Julia into performing sexual favours on her, this becomes the straw that broke the camel’s back and the reason to resort to murder. The trio hire an equally dimwitted hitman (Jamie Foxx) to do the job. Instead, as their ‘murder consultant’ he suggests each of them murder the other friend's boss to hide their motives. These bad decisions lead to increasingly outlandish and therefore hilariously disastrous results.

Though we can all relate to the premise of three best friends all stuck in jobs with ego-maniacal bosses making their lives miserable, the film unnecessarily exaggerates the boss’s behaviour, which takes us out of the realm of identifiability. It's a weak start establishing the plight of these guys, but the film gains momentum with the escalation of the plotting and complexities of their schemes in the second act, which pits them as fish out of water in the world of crime.

The casting of Spacey as the psycho egomaniac attempts to rekindle our memories of his fun turn as the hardline movie executive who gets kidnapped by his assistant in Swimming with Sharks. Unfortunately, Spacey is not the same actor he was back then, and mostly everything he does is a bland play off his former roles.

Colin Farrell and Jennifer Aniston, on the other hand, pull surprising turns in their respective roles. Though his false comb-over is an overused site-gag, Farrell renders his douchebag extraordinaire with full commitment, which is further evidence that he is better at comedy than drama. Aniston, as a conniving man-shark, adequately subverts our expectation of the former Friend as wholesome good girl.

But it’s Foxx as the wannabe gangsta who wears badass head tattoos a la Mike Tyson but also sips his drinks with a straw like a dainty woman that shines the most. His poor math skills make him a hilariously inept businessman and negotiator. Ironically, he becomes the heart and soul of the film.

Horrible Bosses is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Warner Home Video.

Real Steel

Real Steel dir. Shawn Levy (2011)
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lily, Karl Yune, Olga Fonda

***½

By Greg Klymkiw

"Battling Maxo, B2, heavyweight, accompanied by his manager and handler, arrives in Maynard, Kansas, for a scheduled six-round bout. Battling Maxo is a robot, or, to be exact, an android, definition: 'an automaton resembling a human being.' [...] This is the story of that scheduled six-round bout, more specifically the story of two men shortly to face that remorseless truth: that no law can be passed which will abolish cruelty or desperate need - nor, for that matter, blind animal courage." - Rod Serling's introduction to Steel, written by the legendary Richard Matheson in Season 5, Episode 122 of The Twilight Zone, the greatest television anthology series of all time.

There is virtually nothing original about Real Steel, an amalgam of Rocky, The Champ and based partially upon Richard Matheson's short story and Twilight Zone teleplay Steel, and in spite of the fact that it's cobbled together by as many old parts as its hero, a fighting robot, this is one of the most entertaining, satisfying, uplifting, thrilling and, uh, original movies to hit the multiplexes in ages. Even its most "original" element, however, isn't even all that original, but given the state of current American mainstream cinema, it's fresh as a daisy.

The element I refer to is one that seems to have many reviewers' tits/nuts in a wringer. Many of them are whining about how unsympathetic the central character Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is. Cry me a river.

Oh woe is me, the hero is a prick!

And yeah, for a good chunk of the film's running time, Charlie is no poster boy for sympathy. He's a washed-up former boxer in a not-too-distant future where humans have been replaced in the ring by mega-robots and controlled by human beings at computers. Charlie owes money left, right and centre. He owns a ramshackle robot that he tours on the rural rodeo sideshow circuit - competing in sleazy affairs where rednecks cheer as hunks of metal pummel animals with their steely fists.

Unfortunately for Charlie, also an inveterate gambler and womanizer, the tables turn and a 2000 lb. bull destroys his robot in the ring while our "hero" is flirting with some corn-fed inbred babe in the audience. Broke, in debt well beyond his means to any number of thugs and bereft of his only means of money, he's more than delighted to find out that his ex-wife has died and that his 11-year-old son Max (Dakota Goyo) needs him. Well, if Charlie didn't need dough. he'd ignore the order to appear in court and let his flesh and blood be taken in as a ward of the state. Luckily, he knows his wealthy in-laws desperately want to adopt the child so he grudgingly shows up and makes a back room deal. He "sells" his son to the in-laws for $100,000.

Alas, he must agree to take the kid for the summer as the in-laws have a previously scheduled and very extended European vacation ahead of them. With a whack of cash in hand, he hightails over to his on-again-off-again girlfriend Bailey (Evangeline Lily), the owner of a ramshackle robot training gym and robot mechanic. His plan is to dump the kid in her care while he buys a new robot to hit the circuits again.

What a guy! He's a loser, a gambler, an itinerant no-account AND he's happy to abandon his kid after the death of his mother - not just once, but twice. And this is just the first twenty minutes or so of Real Steel. Plenty of running time for more uncaring, anti-social behaviour. BUT, also plenty more running time for - YOU GUESSED IT!!! - REDEMPTION!!!

Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Here's the deal. Within the context of contemporary American studio pictures, characters like Charlie almost never exist. Oh sure, there's occasionally a few meagre nods to "darkness" in such recent boxing pictures as Warrior and the overrated The Fighter, but Charlie is truly a character whose soul belongs to that great era of 70s cinema where central male characters could be major pricks, but we kind of liked them in spite of this.

And sure, while even Real Steel charges predictably to those inevitable moments where he re-connects with his child, his girlfriend and with the help, love and support of both, clambers out of the gutter and eventually becomes a winner again, what keeps it going is a first-rate script, great performances and superb direction. More importantly, it's a BIG picture - bigger than life!!! Big emotions! Big battles! High stakes! It has the scope of a great studio picture, but it actually feels like it's been made by people who know and love movies.

Watching the movie, I had two odd feelings pulsing through me - one, that I was loving every second of the picture and two, that I KNEW it was the kind of picture - exactly the kind of picture in terms of plot, theme AND craft - that I'd have absolutely loved as a kid. It's a wonderful, tingly feeling to be watching a big studio picture as an adult that allows you to experience a flawed mature central character against the backdrop of pure fantasy - engineered with precision and heart.

The Real Steel screenplay does not only tap into familiar territory in terms of great uplifting boxing pictures of the past, but it also comes from the seed of a very dark place - THE TWILIGHT ZONE! The picture's inspiration is from one of the greatest episodes of Rod Serling's extraordinary television anthology series. From his own short story "Steel", Richard Matheson - arguably one of the best, if not THE best genre writer of the 20th century - wrote the sad, dark tale of a washed-up ex-boxer (played by Lee-FUCKING-Marvin) who, like Hugh Jackman's character in Real Steel is trolling the dregs of a robot boxing circuit and has to make some tough decisions when faced with the possibility of losing what precious little he's got. It's an astounding episode - one that devastated me as a kid when I first saw it, haunted me for years and still gets to me whenever I see it again.

Where this new feature film parts company with the original source, however, is that it's set in a world where people have become bored watching human beings fight and actually prefer seeing machines do the battle. Matheson's story is set in a future where human boxing matches have been outlawed altogether. The latter, while plausible to Hollywood Liberals in the 50s and 60s and, in fact to many of those watching at the time, would not work as well in a contemporary context since it's become so clear that the Great Unwashed will never really tire of watching destruction, but in a world of cel phones, computers, the internet, Playbox, Wii, Twitter and other electronically mediated forms of living, I'd buy that people could get bored and stupid enough to want to see huge cool-looking robots kicking each others steely butts.

And it's the fight scenes of Real Steel that provide all the necessary set-pieces to give us some rock 'em sock 'em action (not unlike the old Rock' Em Sock 'Em Robots we all used to play with as kids) on a mega scale. The robots have personality and are designed so brilliantly that they are completely recognizable as distinct entities (unlike the mish-mash of robots in the Transformers pictures). This probably has a lot to do with the fact that the robots are puppets controlled by humans with digital enhancements and are not PURELY digital, but in fairness to director Shawn Levy, his cinematographer Mauro Fiore (Avatar) and editor Dean Zimmerman, the Real Steel fight scenes are gorgeously choreographed, shot and cut. We actually get to see the choreography of the fights instead of all the close-to-medium-shot herky-jerky shooting and cutting so many films resort to.

Most importantly, the screenplay by John Gatins is NOT action packed with just fight scenes. It has - gulp - characters, a compelling (if familiar) tale and what's surprising - especially given the two-hour-plus running time - is that it's never boring and seems actually much shorter. The bottom line is that the movie has enough well-etched breathing space to allow for action scenes that have emotional resonance to the characters and plot (and hence, for us) instead of serving merely as grinding, noisy, visceral thrills. That said, it also hits the sort of satisfying demographically-influenced check-marks to ensure big success. Jackman is a driven handsome tough-as-nails prick hero in need of redemption, his girlfriend is a babe, the villain (mouth-watering Olga Fonda) is a babe and the kid - yeah, he's cute. Real cute - especially when he does hip-hop moves with the robot. On paper, something like that would sicken me, but in execution, it works.

These, of course, are hallmarks of great studio pictures in any age and I'm actually pleased to see they're not abandoned. It's all part of a great package. We get an uplifting action picture for the whole family - for kids AND kids of ALL ages.

For me, the true revelation in Real Steel is Hugh Jackman. He's a terrific actor with definite screen presence, but the "negative" characteristics of his character are what he attacks with a vengeance. He's such a prick that we hope he won't be. At times, he embodies the sort of figure that might have haunted John Huston's world of tank-town punch-drunk losers in Fat City and yet, here he is in a movie from the director of (!!!!!) Night at the Museum, executive produced by Spielberg and from a division of Disney Studios.

That's pretty fucking cool.

Star Wars

Star Wars (1977) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness

****

By Alan Bacchus

I can’t believe it either. I’ve been running this blog for almost 5 years and this is the first time I’m discussing Star Wars. While the mixed results of the three newest films and the general over-analysis of the entire Star Wars world threatened to tarnish the reputation of this film, the original 1977 Star Wars is still a magnificent piece of entertainment - it's simply untouchable. Back then it was a risky venture for George Lucas, who, like a true artist, threw caution to the wind for the sake of his vision – that is, a popcorn movie space opera told with the deep emotional resonance of classical mythology, but with the gleeful attitude of the hokey sci-fi serials of the '50s.

Sure, the elaborate costumes, creatures, special effects and cool lightsabers command our attention, but let’s not look past the stunning visual design and visual compositions from Lucas’s superb cinematic eye. Back then George Lucas was an inspired filmmaker. His previous two pictures, THX 1138 and American Graffiti, were stylistically and aesthetically different, but both were pinnacles of perfection with regard to composition. To clarify, by composition I mean the placement of the camera to frame a shot and the arrangement of characters, background, props and other set decorations within that shot to convey meaning and emotion. Whatever deficiencies Lucas has with dialogue and directing actors he makes up for in pathos, emotion and drama within his frames.

In Star Wars, his compositions are David Lean-epic. The opening shot, of course, which starts on the small passenger ship, slowly revealing the gargantuan Imperial destroyer chasing them down echoes Stanley Kubrick’s epic reveal of his spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But in Star Wars, the juxtaposition of the tiny rebel ship against the giant ship behind it conveys the good vs. evil battle that will rage on for the entire series.

This expression of theme through composition returns at the midpoint of the film when Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon gets sucked into the Death Star by the tractor beam. Lucas uses a David and Goliath metaphor with the enormous gaping mouth of the Death Star over and above the tiny Falcon slowly creeping into the frame.

Another one of my favourite scenes is the Obi Wan/Darth Vader lightsaber fight. It's a monumental battle of jedis and old rivals from years past in one final dual. The fight plays out in a frame-within-a-frame against the magnificent backdrop of the Death Star docking bay. While the actual choreography of action is rudimentary compared to the later battles in the subsequent movies, the stakes and drama of the battle complemented by Lucas's superb composition and direction of the scene equal anything else in the series.

On the pristine and unbelievably perfect Blu-ray transfers, Lucas's magnificent use of light within his frames sparkles as much as any of the recent movies. The interior design of the Death Star, for instance, is filled with source lights embedded into the walls, roof and floor. And the reflective surfaces of Darth Vader’s helmet or the shiny Death Star flooring are no accident either. This is production value and polish (literally) from what was a comparative medium-to-low budget made to look many times more expensive than it was.

And lastly, the lightsabers themselves, which we take for granted now because they're so ingrained in our popular culture, must have been monumentally cool when seen on the big screen for the first time. The bright red and blue glowing swords are still mesmerizing to watch on screen no matter when they’re used.

The ability and courage of George Lucas to boldly stand his real actors up against enlarged puppets and other outrageous Halloween-style costuming with complete seriousness can not be taken for granted. Under anyone else's watch, other than say Mr. Spielberg, who was also at the top of his game then, Star Wars would likely have been a complete failure. Thank God it wasn’t.

Star Wars is available on Blu-ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life (2011) dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn

***½

By Alan Bacchus

On second viewing Terrence Malick's divisive headscratcher has certainly elevated a notch towards greatness. But considering my consistent glum opinion of The New World,I wasn't convinced I'd swing back this way. However, The Tree of Life is different. While I appreciated the ambitiousness in theme and often astounding execution of such vision, there was a repetitiveness in the second half that tarnished this 'masterpiece'. And yet, on this second go 'round this block of the story clicked in place perfectly.

I refer to the guts of the film wherein, after the eye-opening montage sequence depicting the creation of earth leading into the birth and rearing of Sean Penn's character, Jack, the film settles down into a contained story of Jack's upbringing at age 12 by his saintly mother and rock hard father. On first viewing this half of the film seemed like an endlessly repetitive series of boyhood frolicking told with the disjointed dreamlike visual style of Malick.

But there's actually a subtle structural form to Malick's frolicking, which fits directly into his overall arc of life, death and rebirth. At first we don't see Brad Pitt's character at all involved in Jack's life. Instead, it's the mother rearing the boy from infancy to childhood. Malick dramatically shifts focus to the father at this pivotal moment in his life when the boy must turn into a man, thrusting his own ideals, motivations and discplinary tactics. Jack's relationship with his father is structured with the ebbs and flows of the boy's complex emotions. For example, there's a long sequence when the father is abroad on business, which becomes a time of joyous respite from the tough disciplinarian rigour. There's also a key sequence where Jack discovers a sexual infatuation before he can even understand what sex is. And before the loopy 'Eternity' sequence that ends the film, the arc of Jack's boyhood is completed with his father's comeuppance, which, on second viewing, is wholly satisfying and complete.

I still haven't figured the final act, which attempts to echo the final sequence in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey - a spiritual journey into the afterlife wherein Jack reconciles his bitter emotions towards his father and the death of his brother. Elder Jack's journey across those rocky landscapes and uniting with the characters from his past on the shallow ocean bed still feels contrived and on-the-nose compared to the remarkable sense of realism and authenticity we saw before these moments. But who knows? Maybe on my third viewing this scene will click into place as well.

Click HERE for my original review.

Tree of Life is avavilable on Blu-ray and DVD from EOne Entertainment in Canada.

Three (Drei)

Three (2010) dir. Tom Tykwer
Starring: Devid Striesow, Sophie Rois, Sebastian Schipper, Senta Dorothea Kirschner, Karl Alexander Seidel

***

By Alan Bacchus

Reposted from TIFF 2010

Tom Tykwer returns with a wholly German film, a distinct change of pace. Equal parts comedy, romance and drama but not a romantic comedy, about three people who form a sexual threesome as complicated as it gets in cinema, or in life.

Hanna (Rois) is with Simon (Schipper), a long relationship, yet they remain unmarried and certainly without the sexual spark of old. Hanna meets Adam at a conference on stem cell research, one thing leads to another and well you know. Then Simon meets Adam, by chance, shortly after he has surgery for testicular cancer. In one of the most audacious love scenes of late Tykwer shows Adam court Simon in the change room of the fitness club using Simon’s surgery scar as the first move/icebreaker, then ends the scene with the yuckiest money shot since Crash.

A farsical and supremely entertaining series of deceptions betwen Simon, Hanna and Adam ensue - like a German comedy of errors, which is probably an oxymoron.

I can’t believe this story hasn’t been done before, particularly as a Hollywood romcom. Under Tykwer’s direction he’s constantly battling between taking his characters seriously and exploiting the ridiculousness of the absurd concept. As such the potential of the concept is never quite reached. Other than the coincidental meeting between Adam and Simon, it’s a tight screenplay. Each of the characters act and react as we’d expect considering how complex their knotting situation is.

As usual it’s sharp looking and beautiful images on screen. Tykwer's compositions, camera movement, lighting are pristine and gorgeous. He doesn’t fully abandon the visual or narrative flourishes. There’s extensive split screen usage in a few montage scenes, sequences I could have lived without, but not enough to distract from the core emotions.

The finale is typical of Tykwer and doesn’t disappoint. Tykwer evens the scales on each of his characters, each has equal narrative weight, each one is wrong, each is right. No one’s really to blame for their own action. A perfect circle of accountability. There’s a philosophical completeness to this threesome as well, like three pieces of a puzzle which is incomplete unless all three are together. And in the final glorious scene, Tykwer hits home this metaphor with pure cinematic delight, like only he can.

And as far the rating goes - three stars. could it have been anything else??

Moneyball

Moneyball (2011) dir. Bennett Miller
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright

***½

By Alan Bacchus

There’s a strong feeling or connection to The Social Network in this film. Sure Aaron Sorkin is a co-writer, and sure it depicts an insider view of the business side of a popular entertainment industry, but thematically Billy Beane and Mark Zuckerberg are like two sides of the same coin. While diametrically opposed in age, looks and charisma, they are both ambitious new millennium businessmen subverting the anachronistic stubbornness of their old world establishments.

For Mark Zuckerberg it was Harvard and the elitist old boys club that eluded him, and for Billy Beane it’s the institution of baseball - America’s past time and its long standing traditions of sportsmanship and integrity. What makes baseball such a dynamic sport is the combination of physical precision on the field and the detailed statistical analysis available for almost every aspect of the game, a sport in which the long standing consistency of the game means players across eras are comparable more than in any other sport.

In Moneyball Brad Pitt depicts the situation of real-life Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane, who in 2002 finds himself up against this tradition due to an inadequate salary budget causing him to lose his three best players to other richer teams. Beane changes history by looking outside of the box to a new school of baseball analysts, who, through the analysis of statistics, find undervalued players and thus maximizing their winning potential. Michael Lewis’s non-fiction novel, which served as the basis for the film, was indeed a baseball nerd story. But under the pen of Steve Zaillian and Mr. Sorkin, the direction of Bennett Miller and the overall production guidance of producer Brad Pitt, Moneyball is a thoroughly entertaining combination of sports movie-dramatics, underdog melodrama and a tender father-daughter drama.

Beane’s relationship with Yale economics grad, Peter Brand (Hill), who becomes Beane’s statistics guru and brains behind the new regime, results in most of the comedy. The appearance of the pudgy, unathletic baseball nerd entering an ego-fuelled world of sports and its ubermen plays for fun comedy. Otherwise, Beane’s journey is filled with conflict at every corner. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as the old school Art Howe, who refuses to be taught new tricks is spot on. Same with the stodgy old baseball scouts who judge a player on looks, 'feelings' and other non-statistical criteria. It perhaps dumbs down the contribution of this old guard but serves the picture well.

Brad Pitt single-handedly holds down this picture arguably better than any film he's ever been. His handsome conservative look and affable and easy-going personality lead to maximum leading man charm. It's the type of charm that can go overlooked critically but is essential to the success of a film.

While the baseball story succeeds handsomely, there's also a number of missed opportunities. Other than Pitt and his daughter, his relationships with the other characters provides insufficient drama and closure. Peter Brand in particular is sorely underdeveloped as a character. Same with Beane's tempestuous relationship with Art Howe, which is left hanging and not reconciled.

That said, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts in this case. It's a lengthy running time, which never drags, leaving us with good wholesome feelings of satisfaction and inspiration at the end.

My Life as a Dog

My Life as a Dog (1988) dir. Lasse Halstrom
Starring: Anton Glanzelius, Tomas von Brömssen, Anki Lidén, Kicki Rundgren

***½

By Alan Bacchus

This tender coming of age film represents the highwater mark for stories about children but made for adults. It also served to introduced Hollywood to Lasse Hallstrom and for good and bad give birth to a career of mature yet schmaltzy youth-oriented melodramas (Cider House Rules, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape). If you describe a movie as Lasse Hallstrom-like we all know what that means.

But aside from an early career directing ABBA videos, his feature career began in Sweden with this picture. Ingmaer is a typical 12 year old living in working class Swedish family doing everything he can to get in trouble. But with his mother slowly dying from TB, he’s sent to his Uncle’s house in the country to live for the summer. Naturally it’s devastating, not only leaving his mother, brother and his friends, but the countryside, a seemingly dull uneventful place devoid of excitement.

Once there Ingmar is ingratiated with a number of eccentric small town characters. The most endearing relationship is formed with the local bully Saga, but who eventually reveals to be a girl pretending to be a boy so she can box with other boys for sport.

Rather than a narrative of cause and effect scenes, the events in Ingmar life occurs like fractured memories of someone looking back on history with nostalgic reflection. This is the strength of the film, the ability of Hallstrom to truly convey the complexities of youth with the filter of adulthood. Hallstrom delicately moves us through broad silliness to strong emotional drama without ever making us feel manipulated or jerked around.

Connecting Ingmaer's outlook on these events is his dreamy voiceover which relates his trauma with that of the poor dog Laika who who sent into space by the Russians in 1957. The metaphor of Laika leaving home against his will is sharp. Ingmar compares the cruelty of allowing Laika to literally starve to death over course of her journey in space to his own banishment. The extremity of this comparison is comical but relatable from a child’s point of view.

The warm earth-tones of Jörgen Persson’s cinematography and Lasse Westfelt’s production design rounds out the wistful and poignant reflections of youth. My Life as a Dog rightfully sits next to comparable masterpieces as The 400 Blows and Mon Oncle Antoine.

My Life as a Dog is available on Blu-Ray from The Criterion Collection

Genova

Genova (2008) dir. Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Colin Firth, Catherine Keener, Willa Holland, Perla Haney-Jardine, Hope Davis

**½

By Alan Bacchus

This 2008 Michael Winterbottom film, unreleased in North America for years, finally arose earlier this year timed with the awards buzz for Colin Firth. It's a decidedly grim story about a family dealing with the death of their mother. Winterbottom adequately applies his on-location immersion modus operandi to this film, but the grim material is missing a spark of optimism to keep its audience from drowning in excessive grief.

The opening scene is played out with ominous tension. Winterbottom shows the tragic car accident that takes the life of the devoted mother and wife (Hope Davis) to Joe (Colin Firth) and his two daughters, Kelly (Willa Holland) and Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine). After the funeral, Joe decides to uproot the kids and move them to Genova, Italy where he has been offered a teaching job.

Once in Italy, it’s a culture shock for the kids. Kelly is a typical teenager and thus despises having to hang around her father and her pre-teen sister. At every opportunity she abandons Mary and Joe to exercise her burgeoning sexuality with local Italian boys. Mary, the youngest, is having the most difficulty with the loss. Her only method of coping is her waking visions of her ghostly mother, which keep her safe when she's alone. Catherine Keener plays Joe’s friend, who guides them around the city and acts as their surrogate mother. Unfortunately for the family, the city of Genova acts as both an enabler and an inhibitor to the grieving process.

Winterbottom and his crew appeared to have had a wonderful time filming the movie. The location is stunning and serves as a great promotional piece for Genovese tourism. Marcel Zyskind, Winterbottom’s frequent collaborator, lenses the film with a light and mobile handheld digital camera. While the colours becomes muted by the video-ness of the image, the camera is free to move covertly through the public streets interacting with real live Italian pedestrians.

At times, the documentary-like location shooting can feel self-conscious and draws attention to itself. Winterbottom, listed as a co-editor, often cuts randomly to locals in the background who seem unaware they’re being filmed. While it’s authentic, it’s also an obvious attempt to be authentic, when authenticity isn’t required.

The heart of the story is how each of the family members deals with the mother’s death. Kelly’s coming-of-age story is the most accessible because it’s structured with a traditional and familiar character arc. Unlike some of his other films, Winterbottom keeps the content PG13. Some tasteful skin is flashed, just enough to remind us of those days of innocent love and sexual discovery. Both Joe and Mary are characterized with less completeness. Joe ‘reacts’ more than ‘acts’. Once he’s in Genova he’s a passive character and does nothing to advance the story. Mary drives the film. All the tension and action is motivated by her decisions. But Mary serves more as a device than a developing character.

Winterbottom crafts only a couple of ‘cinematic’ set-piece scenes of danger – both involve Mary getting lost. The finale is a contrived conversion of the three characters. It’s a clichéd scene, which we’ve seen in a number of Hollywood genre films. Though it seems out of place for Winterbottom’s free-form techniques, I certainly welcomed the satisfying suspenseful climax.

Genova frustrates because Winterbottom never adequately defines his characters’ goals and instead lingers too long with the grief. I’m still questioning if it’s a coming-of-age story, a thriller or an art house mood film. It’s all and none of the above. Whatever it is, we desperately need a spark of optimism.

Tell No One

Tell No One (2008) dir. Guillaume Canet
Starring: François Cluzet, Marie-Josée Croze, André Dussollier, Kristin Scott-Thomas

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Tell No One, a French whodunit mystery, does just about everything right. It’s an airtight thriller from that Hitchcockian point of view of a man accused of a crime he didn’t commit. By their very nature, most whodunits have to end the same way with a lame expository speech that connects all the pieces of the puzzle. Because Tell No One can’t avoid this hurdle it’s a * short of truly succeeding. But for three quarters of the film it's pot-boiling, plot-thickening mystery at its best.

Alexandre Beck (Francois Cluzet) is a doctor whose wife, Margot (Marie-Josee Croze), was murdered eight years ago. On the anniversary of her death Alex receives an email from Margot. What? How is this possible? I’ll end the plot synopsis here because this is all you really need to know to get entangled in the complex games of deception, murder and revenge that unravel themselves masterfully.

The author of the novel is Harlan Coben, a name I only knew from a bus ad, which referred to him as “the modern master of the hook and twist." I’m still not sure what a ‘hook and twist’ is, but I remembered his name. Looking him up on Wikipedia revealed that he is a prolific author of mystery novels – the disposable paperback type you’d see in an airport or gas station.

And so it comes as no surprise that Tell No One contains not an ounce of character development or theme or metaphor, just plot - 100% snaking, twisting and coiling plot. But Coben does it very well, and he dots his i's, crosses his t’s and fills all the plot holes. There’s certainly talent in doing that because I’ve seen too many thrillers that couldn’t plug their plot holes.

Writer/Director Canet has lots of fun with Coben’s thrill ride. He relishes teasing us with information, then revealing a secret, then twisting it into something else. Since we’re in the shoes of Francois, as he discovers information so do we. He’s a resourceful hero, much like Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. Not only is he a suspect in the re-investigation of his wife’s murder, he’s searching for that very person who’s supposed to be dead. Though there’s very little traditional action, Alex is constantly in conflict, evading cops and thugs and figuring out all the angles. Late in the second act though, Canet does give us one fantastic and lengthy chase scene, which had me gasping in several places at Alex’s numerous near-misses.

While the plot unravels itself masterfully, it has a lot of trouble wrapping itself up. The real skill in the genre is finding a satisfactory resolution without resorting to what I call that “Scooby Doo” scene where an expository confession speech ties up all the loose threads and mysteries in the film. In Tell No One Coben and Canet dig themselves such a deep trough of plot, it’s impossible to dig themselves out without cheating. So we do get that speech I was dreading. And since it’s the ending of the film, it leaves a sour taste in an otherwise fantastic film.

Take Shelter

Take Shelter (2011) dir. Jeff Nichols
Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Wingham, Katy Mixon, Kathy Baker

****

By Alan Bacchus

Reposted from Sundance 2011 Coverage

Despite being barely distributed, Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories was like a force of nature - a film and a filmmaker the cinema world at large just couldn’t ignore, and as such found its audience. As a second film, Nichols shows remarkable confidence with a story less easily definable than the ‘revenge’ drama of Shotgun Stories. Take Shelter is ambitious, complex and deceptive, a serious and painful domestic drama about paranoid psychosis with brain teasing philosophical themes.

What’s eating Curtis La Forche? He’s a regular Midwestern husband and father to a young daughter who is deaf. Nagging Curtis is a series of increasingly disturbing nightmares, not just disposable dreams, but premonitions perhaps, which can even manifest themselves into a physical reality.

Afraid of turning into his mother, who in Curtis’s youth was hospitalized with paranoid schizophrenia, Curtis quietly goes through the steps to diagnosis his disorder. As Curtis’s delusions increase in intensity threatening to financially corrupt his family, a strong spiritual force pushes him to create a storm shelter in his backyard. Why? If Curtis knows he’s suffering from delusions, why does he commit to such a useless endeavour? And why does his wife allow this to happen?

The family commitment to Curtis’s endeavour is the heart and soul of the film, and represents the prevailing theme - a spiritual commitment to something intangible and a feeling that you are doing the right thing.

Curtis’s dream sequences show some rather robust skills in horror and suspense. The surreal and random nature in which these sequences occur reminds us of Adrian Lyne’s work in Jacob’s Ladder. Perhaps the most stunning sequence occurs when Curtis and his daughter are caught in the house during a storm so violent it lifts the furniture up into the air - a scene rendered in Inception-like super slow motion. Other scares provide more than enough shocks to keep us on edge at all times.

The most frightening aspect of the film though is Curtis’s real-world descent into paranoid schizophrenia. Nichols treats this delicately and with realism, outside of any genre-based superficiality. Curtis’s ailment is serious, and we feel every moment of pain for him and his family.

I’ve mentioned Jacob’s Ladder, but tonally the film to which it perhaps compares best is M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable. Take Shelter is a carefully-paced narrative that simmers before paying off the tension with a couple of superlative dramatic scenes. The first comes in the lunchroom, which features a very angry Michael Shannon letting loose, and the second is in the emotional climax inside the storm shelter. Especially in the latter scene, Nichols’ keen awareness of rendering a climax worthy of a lengthy set-up shows cinematic skill. And then there’s the denouement, which elevates the film and its themes to another level. It might divide audiences, but his desire not to settle with the conventional is also another sign of greatness. Take Shelter is one helluva ride.

3 Women

3 Women (1977) dir. Robert Altman
Starring: Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule, Robert Fortier

****

By Alan Bacchus

Of the dozen or so films from the remarkable output of Robert Altman in the 1970s, 3 Women is my favourite. It's a beguiling psychodrama about the obsessiveness and possessiveness of the personality of one woman over another in a dreary California town. It’s been said this film was born in a dream Altman had as he was preparing for his wife’s impending delivery of their baby. As such, it’s a rare film from Altman that is completely original and written solely by him. He also gets solo producer credit, thus rendering this film a true auteur effort and as singular a vision as anything in his filmography.

Sissy Spacek plays Pinky, a peculiar young girl recently hired by a seniors' home to provide care for elderly patients. Immediately she’s smitten with a self-styled ingenue, Millie Lammoreaux (Duvall), who walks around the facility like she’s the bee’s knees with a cocky self-confidence that covers up some latent social insecurities. When Pinky sees Millie’s advertisement for a roommate, she quickly snaps it up and enters Millie’s life.

Most of the picture is played either in the seniors' home or in Millie’s apartment complex, a distinctly Californian motel-style complex filled with vagabonds and various other West Coast swingers. It doesn’t take long for Millie to become agitated by Pinky’s homely habits and social leaching. The relationship weakens to the point where Pinky attempts suicide, which she survives. But this curiously turns her into a new person, as she adopts the personality of Millie and forms a strange symbiotic relationship with a pregnant woman from the complex (Rule).

Shelley Duvall is magnificent as a chatterbox whose every line serves to mask an internal fear of some sort. Her performance features delicious dialogue loaded with subtext, which she delivers in an unusual monotone style. I can’t help but think Duvall’s wide-eyed naiveté combined with Altman’s morose languid pacing might have influenced the casting and tone of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Altman is at the top of his game directing his trademark observational camera to look at Millie one way, then in a remarkable shift changing our perspective dramatically. It's a screenplay as deviously crafted as his technical camera work and sound design. The first shift occurs near the midpoint when we see Millie’s bubble of self-confidence destroyed for the first time by her snobby neighbours.

The second dramatic shift occurs after Pinky’s recovery, as Altman takes a cue from Henri-Georges Cluziot in Diabolique or Ingmar Bergman in Persona by merging Pinky with Millie in a surreal, dreamlike phasing of reality for both characters. The sanity of both girls comes into question resulting in an intellectually dizzying finale that ultimately ends in a truly beguiling but satisfying question mark in the final frame.

Truth be told, I’ve never been a fan of Altman. His deliberate style is spotty for me, working marvellously in The Player, but oddly never landing well for his most revered work, Nashville. Yet here this 'distant' style, including long zooms and slow panning across characters and conversations, creates a palpable tension and gets under your skin like nothing else he's done. Altman masterfully uses counterpoint to amplify this tension. For example, watch how Altman follows Duvall’s incessant chattering while panning away to Spacek ogling her every move and word from afar. Not a word of Duvall’s dialogue matters, narratively speaking, but it’s the silent reaction shot of Spacek that tells us everything we need to know in the scene.

At 124 minutes, it’s a long, brooding and tonally ambitious film that's challenging to sit through for those with attention deficits. But the film pays off handsomely in a painful and emotionally intense third act.

3 Women is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) dir. Michael Bay
Starring: Shia Leboeuf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich

***

By Alan Bacchus

Here we go again – another round of Bay-bashing. And really, it’s so easy to hate this stuff. Certainly in this latest chapter of the Transformers ‘saga’, as before, it's more mind-numbing beat downs of sight and sound. Metal machines pounding each other endlessly, hyper-active human characters talking a mile a minute, American patriotism gone wild.

I had fun with the first film, if anything simply to watch what I had once thought was an unfilmable franchise turned into an impressive array of top notch special effects and eye-popping real world explosions, stunts and action. There were even some genuinely likeable and fun characters to enjoy, namely Sam Witwicky’s affable mom and dad.

By the second film, the repetition wore out its welcome very quickly – like after the first five minutes – thus rendering the theatrical experience assaulting. Even Sam's parents were annoying.

And so, with little expectations other than the smattering of lenient critics calling it the ‘best of the series’, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a pleasant surprise. Sure, it clocks in at two-and-a-half hours, but it moves quickly.

Writer Ehren Kruger’s chief improvement is a simplification in character and plot. The opening establishes the reason for the title, Dark of the Moon – a fun riff on history, wherein Kruger postulates that the reason for the Apollo mission was to investigate and recover a downed alien spacecraft from the early ‘60s. Bay and company have fun with these conspiracy theories, including a jaunt to Chernobyl, and they plot out a fun backstory, which seems to erase what was established in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. So, objection here.

In the present, our hero Sam Witwicky is out of school looking for a job but frustrated that his hero status has been shoved under the rug by the government to cover up the presence of the Transformers robots. The Decepticons still exist in hiding and are plotting a scheme by which they can recover an important artifact from the Moon to revive the body of a long lost Autobot leader. This old robot does come to life in the form of ‘Sentinel Prime’ (voiced well by Leonard Nimoy), who may or may not be working for the Decepticons. Ultimately, the evil robots aim to construct a giant portal that would bring the entire planet of Cybertron to Earth for the purposes of intergalactic colonization.

Surprisingly in the cinema, Transformers worked well in 3-D. Most of the problems with this new medium have been corrected by Mr. Bay – there’s little, if any, ‘double imaging’, the brightness level was normal, the 3-D process accepted Bay’s kinetic action scenes well and I got no headaches! What an improvement from Avatar.

Because of the 3-D process, Bay’s shooting style was significantly toned down, for the better. Longer, wider shots tend to improve the scope of the spectacle aids. In full action, the robots were actually discernible, and for the first time in the series it wasn’t just a swash of colour and light blurred across the screen. In fact, this film might just have the least amount of action with much of it back-ended during the Chicago siege sequence. Bay takes his time and lets humour push the film into the third act when it gets wild and crazy. Arguably the best sequence involves very little robot action. It’s a fun adventure for Sam and his military team sliding across a Chicago building toppling over on its side.

Strong new characters add some freshness where the old ones had become stale. Frances McDormand’s tight-ass Chief of Staff character is fun, and she’s one of three Coen Bros. alum (including mainstay John Turturro) going along with the fun. Burn After Reading’s John Malkovich goes over-the-top in a role as Sam Witwicky’s looney boss. The ubiquitous Ken Jeong does what he does best as an equally looney conspiracy nut. And Alan Tudyk is just plain batshit crazy as a German assistant to John Turturro.

The new Megan Fox, Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, is a marked improvement. She actually might have some acting chops, and she certainly has a better funny bone than Ms. Fox had in the series.

Considering the license to print money this series has become, like the Pirates series, I don't doubt we will see more Transformers movies in the future. But thankfully, I doubt we’ll see Michael Bay back at the helm. Instead, he’ll likely be moving on to more creatively inspiring directorial ventures. We’ll see.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment

World Film Series - MGM Limited Edition Collection: It Rains In My Village & A Quiet Place in the Country

It Rains In My Village (1969) dir. Aleksandr Petrovic
Starring: Ivan Paluch, Annie Girardot, Mija Aleksic, Eva Ras

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

A simple minded young woman begs for food from a rail worker who's been ogling her. Dangling a bit of his lunch as if it were a carrot before a horse, he leads her into a field and rapes her. Later, she staggers through the woods gnawing on a crust of bread and another man drags her into the bushes and rapes her. After satisfying his urges, he takes her to a wedding celebration where she is encouraged to humiliate herself for the amusement of all the townsfolk gathered there and is furthermore urged to humiliate the bride by removing the newly married woman's veil and headpiece and wear it while dancing to the music of a traveling Gypsy folk band. Much later on in the movie, the bruised, bloody, savagely beaten corpse of the same mute, mentally challenged young woman lies on a wooden bench in a filthy shack, her eyes frozen - open in terror - her last emotion before the last beat of her heart.

This is Serbia.

The young woman's name is Goca (Eva Ras) and while she is not the protagonist of Alexandr Petrovic's powerful, semi-neo-realist drama It Rains In My Village, it is her heart and soul that seems most central to the despair related in the narrative.

Telling the simple tale of a handsome, shy swine herder Trijsha (Ivan Paluch) who is drunkenly duped by his equally jack-hammered buddies at the local bar into marrying the mute, mentally challenged Goca, this is a film that never holds back in exposing the brutal, ignorant alcohol-fueled misery of life in a Serbian village in 1968. This is a patriarchal world where women are seen, but not heard - save for their fake cries of ecstasy while being drunkenly ploughed or the cries of pain and terror as they're beaten by their Neanderthal husbands.

Goca, being mute, cannot scream. Her eyes, however, tell tales beyond any words.

Trijsha toils with his herd of swine, spending as much time away from his wife and their eventual newborn child as possible. He spends downtime in the bar, bowling with his buddies on the rickety makeshift alley and drinking.

Always drinking.

Booze is the only thing that seems to numb the pain, but it never really does the trick. Trijsha falls madly in love with Reza (Annie Girardot) the new teacher who comes to town. She's from the city, and unlike the local women, she's her own woman. She takes whomever and whatever she wants - using her beauty and seemingly insatiable appetite for sex. Trijsha's stud qualities keeps her amused for awhile, but when she dumps him for a new succession of suitors, he drinks himself blind, beats his wife to death, drinks more, passes out and allows his elderly father to take the rap for the murder.

Other than booze, the only other thing that seems to mean anything to anyone in the village are the folk songs of their ancestors - played by gypsy musicians at weddings and in the local bar. Folk music fills the open air and permeates the spirits of the men as they continue to lead the brutal, aimless lives.

Though they live under the shadow of Communism, the Orthodox Church still, in its blessed patriarchy, reigns over all and whatever spare money anyone has goes to rebuilding the church - a ramshackle, bombed-out mess from the war. Their pathetic attempts to hold a Communist Party meeting is an excuse to drink and discuss what they need from the party. The needs are for the collective, so to speak, but they're self-serving and certainly no in the supposed spirit of the movement.

The village teems with mud, puddles and pigs (not just the men). Life plods along, punctuated by occasional bursts of violence and the denizens of the village hurling insults at each other - fuelled by macho posturing and, of course, booze. This is life as it was during Communism, but it's obvious it always was this way and would, in fact remain - long after the fall of Communism..

In life, squalor, ignorance and repression breeds more of the same and this is easily one of the most savage indictments of poverty I've ever seen. It's also a raw, unflinching portrait of life in Eastern Europe - a life that is sadly, not much different now. (Hey, it's not just Serbia. Recent trips to Ukraine suggest this way of life permeates many other Slavic countries. Life was always cheap in the "Old Country" and continues thus. Watching this movie made in 1968 shocked me as I felt like I was wandering through villages in contemporary Ukraine.)

Director Petrovic brings his roots in the documentary tradition to full bear in this classic of Eastern European cinema. My longtime e-pal and colleague Michael Brooke recently reminded me of the great Petrovic picture I Even Met Happy Gypsies and how Emir Kusturica owed his entire career to that movie. That is indisputable. Certainly all through It Rains In My Village, Kusturica was always in my mind. God knows I love Kusturica, and It Rains In My Village is a film that had a similar emotional response from me, though frankly, I found it had even more resonance than even my favourite Kusturica Underground. The performances Petrovic elicits in Village aren't pitched as high and, in fact, there are few films that feature a performance as delicate and exquisite as that delivered by Eva Ras as the doomed Goca. For me, it's on a par with some of the best work from Giulietta Masina. Like the aforementioned Petrovic picture I Even Met Happy Gypsies, It Rains In My Village was in competition for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, but seems to be largely forgotten.

This must change.

It Rains In My Village is definitely an important work to be seen. It's available as part of the on-demand MGM Limited Edition Collection DVD-Rs. Its subtitles have been poorly translated and given that folk music is so important to the movie, it's a shame nobody bothered to translate any of the songs sung by the gypsy bands in the film. My knowledge of Ukrainian and Russian are rudimentary enough that I was able to make out the gist of the songs due to the similarity of many words in Serbian, but I know I was missing many of the subtleties and poetic qualities of the lyrics. This movie, if not all of the work by Petrovic deserves better than this and one hopes that wither Criterion or Kino will dive in to the rescue. The picture transfer comes from a mediocre source, but the grain is clearly intentional, so this is not as much an issue. The bottom line is that this is yet another film that deserves to be seen properly, but for now, it's available for rent or sale in this watchable version at very few specialty video stores and can be purchased in a no-frills edition online. In Toronto, Canada the best places to purchase such titles directly in a retail setting are at the Sunrise Records flagship store at Yonge and Dundas and the resurrected Starstruck Video at Dundas and Tomken.


A Quiet Place In The Country (1968) dir. Elio Petri
Starring: Franco Nero, Vanessa Redgrave

**

By Greg Klymkiw

This is a strange, perverse, but ultimately pretentious Repulsion-styled thriller with Franco Nero as an artist who is going completely out of his mind and may or may not be haunted by the ghost of a woman he may or may not have murdered. His patron is a wealthy woman played by Vanessa Redgrave. He may or may not be having sex with her. The movie is replete with plenty of cool images, an amazing Ennio Morricone score and more nudity from Vanessa Redgrave than I ever thought humanly possibly. And it's great nudity, too. What a babe!

That said, I really couldn't make any sense of this. It's not suspenseful enough to work fully as a thriller - especially since its plot is such a mess - and it's not much of an art house item (or is, depending upon how you feel about arthouse picture) as it feels annoyingly, boneheadedly precious.

As a "head" film in the tradition of Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo or Holy Mountain, it also doesn't really cut the mustard since it never feels like it's about ANYTHING. Whether one is willing to acknowledge that Jodorowsky makes movies that ARE about something is not at issue here, they at least feel like they MIGHT be about something.

A Quiet Place in the Country is an overwrought acid trip that I ultimately didn't "get", but it's a definite curiosity piece and well worth seeing on that basis alone.

I might actually even watch it again.

Just to see if I missed something.

Just to see if it might be better than I'm giving it credit for. Or not.

It still makes for compelling viewing. One can't say that about too many movies as flawed and head-scratching as this one is. And it's one of the only films I find Vanessa Redgrave to be really sexy in.

Genuinely sexy.

That's something, mais non?

A Quiet Place in the Country is also part of the MGM DVD-R on-demand series. It's a decent transfer from excellent source material and available either through special order online or at specialty video retailers. In Toronto, Canada the best places to purchase such titles directly in a retail setting are at the Sunrise Records flagship store at Yonge and Dundas and the resurrected Starstruck Video at Dundas and Tomken.

One Man's Way

One Man's Way (1964) dir, Denis Sanders
Starring: Don Murray, Diana Hyland, William Windom, Carol Ohmart, Virginia Christine, Veronica Cartwright, Butch Patrick and Tom Skerritt

***

By Greg Klymkiw

"GOD DOESN’T MAKE THINGS WRONG. WE MAKE OURSELVES WRONG. BUT HE MADE YOU RIGHT. HE DIDN’T MAKE YOU WRONG. IF YOU HAMPER YOURSELF WITH FEARS THEN YOU WILL MAKE YOURSELF WEAK. THIS IS THE FIRST DAY IN MY FIRST CHURCH AND FOR ME, THIS IS INDEED A DAY THE LORD HATH MADE. THE LORD HAD HIS EYE ON ME AND HE CALLED TO ME TO BE A MINISTER. GOD SPOKE TO ME AND SAID: 'NORMAN, I HAVE COME SO THAT YOU MAY HAVE LIFE AND HAVE IT MORE ABUNDANTLY' AND I, NORMAN VINCENT PEALE, GIVE IT TO YOU RIGHT NOW."
- Don Murray as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale in One Man's Way

Are there any late Baby Boomers or early Generation X types who do NOT remember seeing well-worn, dog-eared copies of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's huge best selling book "The Power of Positive Thinking" resting handily on their Dad's desk, book shelf, night table or bathroom reading rack? As a kid, I used to try diving into it, but found the book dull as dishwater. My Dad was, if I do say so myself, a brilliant marketing man who promoted beer in Canada at a time when traditional advertising of alcoholic beverages was illegal and rigorous promotional tie-ins (usually through sports - both amateur and professional) needed to be devised. In his wide territory, he made his company's flagship beer Number One and also tied the company into numerous world hockey championships. When I asked Dad about the book, he referred to it as the Bible for all successful businessmen and added, "It's one of the reasons your old Dad is the best goddamn beer salesman in the country."

Years later, I read Peale's book. Dad was right. It was super inspirational and full of numerous tips for success. It rocked. But for some reason, though, I never equated the book with Judeo-Christian beliefs and values. Maybe when you're brought up in that tradition, you just don't notice that sort of thing as much.

Or maybe, this was Dr. Peale's secret to success in his own life.

One Man's Way was, I must admit, a revelation to me in more ways than one. It's an old-fashioned biopic in the grandest Hollywood tradition, but for some reason, I'd neither seen it before, nor even heard of it. I'm glad, however, to have finally caught up with it. The movie answers more than a few questions I had as a kid about Dr. Peale, but it's also revelatory with respect to its star, Don Murray.

As Norman Vincent Peale, Murray is absolutely electrifying. In fact, it made me realize what a great actor he was. (He's currently in his 80s and still working.) But in his 20s and 30s, with that weird mixture of baby face, square-jawed tough man and blessed with the most piercing eyes, one has to wonder why he never became a bigger star. In the early 1950s he was a constant presence on the stage as well as numerous live television dramas during the Golden Age of American TV. In feature films he etched indelible portraits in Bus Stop (opposite Marilyn Monroe), A Hatful of Rain, Advise and Consent, Baby The Rain Must Fall and perhaps most memorably in The Hoodlum Priest. Then, through much of the late 60s and onwards, most of his work was in television - much of it fine, but often relegated to roles of cops, cowboys, politicians and lawyers (of the seediest kind). That said, his role as the villain in the 70s theatrical feature Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (the terrific Arthur P. Jacobs production that was woefully re-tooled as Rise of the Planet of the Apes) was and still is utterly delectable and creepy.

In One Man's Way, though, is where you really get a sense of how brilliantly he commanded the attention of a camera lens. He drew it towards him like a moth to a flame and as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Don Murray was totally on fire.

Directed by Denis Sanders, it has no strong auteurist imprint, but the proceedings are handled with the sort of proficiency needed to move the fine script by John (The Invaders) Bloch and Eleanore (Imitation of Life) Griffin forward and to capture Murray's blistering powerhouse performance as the preacher with a calling to change the lives of men everywhere.

The movie begins with Norman as boy engaging in fisticuffs with another lad during a church service and publicly embarrassing his Minister Dad (William Windom). Even worse is when Norman announces in front of his father's congregation that he doesn't believe in God and Dad orders him "out of God's House." Norman runs away, much to the horror of Mom (Virginia Christine), but Dad knows his son all too well. Sure enough, Norman sneaks into God's House and engages in a heart to heart with the Lord and then Dad. He's back in God's bosom, but vows that he'll never be a preacher like Dad.

Flash forward many years later and Norman (Don Murray) is working as a news reporter with a comely wise-acre hot-chick photographer (Carol Ohmart). They cover a brutal domestic murder and Norman starts to get a bad taste in his mouth. He admits to his editor he might not be cut out for journalism. His editor and female WeeGee-style partner are aghast since Norman is apparently a great writer.

Norman's response is simple: "I feel like I'm watching children playing in tall grass as a snake is about to strike. What do I do? I pull out my notepad."

And, as Hollywood would have it, a huge explosion rocks the neighbourhood on the heels of Norman's utterance of self-loathing. A gas explosion round the corner has blown half a building to rubble and the lone survivor is a little girl (Veronica Cartwright) perched at the top, too terrified to cross a plank of wood that's been extended to the next building in order to rescue her.

What's the son of a Preacher Man to do? He talks the child to safety with all the evangelical fervour of a man born to minister God's Word. He reminds the little girl that God is always "there with you". He quotes God's words: “I am with you always” Alas, this doesn't quite do the trick and the child screams and bawls when another explosion rocks what little of the teetering building is left. Well, now's the time to make God's word really count and Norman (via Murray's inspired, crazed delivery) passionately, almost mantra-like, orders the child to use God to help herself.

“Crawl along the board," he cries out. "It's a bridge, a bridge that God Himself provided. It's good [dramatic pause] and strong [another dramatic pause] and [then shouting with joy] plenty wide. Just say to yourself, 'With God’s help I can do it, with God’s help I AM doing it. GOD AND I ARE DOING IT.” (I'll refrain from any blasphemous jokes about God doing it with Veronica Cartwright, though it's very tempting.)

She repeats the words over and over as she crosses God's good, strong and plenty wide bridge. (I'll refrain from any blasphemous gags about the phallic qualities of the good, strong and plenty wide bridge, though the temptation is great.)

And Don Murray as Norman, his eyes bulging, his stiff jaw jutting and his million dollar smile beaming, screams out: "YOU AND GOD HAVE DONE IT!" (Ditto on blasphemous innuendo, though Eve be dangling that apple twixt her fingers before me.)

It's safe to assume that Norman Vincent Peale has heard the calling of the Lord. He turns in his "sword and shield" (pen and notepad), goes to the seminary, argues with all of his teachers, graduates with flying colours and is sent to minister the University Methodist Church in Rhode Island. Here he immediately wins over his flock with his own passionate interpretation of Psalms 118:24 - an appropriate opener to be sure: "This is the day the Lord hath made. And he made it for you and for me,” he bellows.

Earning a doctorate he moves to a physically larger church in Syracuse which has fallen on hard times. He begins to do everything in his power to promote the church. Every person he meets in the streets he cajoles into coming to worship. He even inadvertently asks a Jewish man to join the church. When the fellow of God's Chosen People reveals his religion, Norman insists: "Go visit your Rabbi, then. He’s a great guy. I met him just the other day." He adds with the wink of a used car salesman: "Your Rabbi and I, we both work for the same boss, you know. Shalom!"

Norman drives attendance to record levels and he works like a madman to eliminate the mortgage on the Church. He does, of course, butt heads with the Deacons who are appalled that Norman has had the "poor taste" to adorn the entire town with colourful flyers bearing the following copy:

"Lost Your Gal? In a Lurch?
Don’t Panic, Pal. Go To Church!"

One of the spluttering Deacons declares: "You cannot build the house of the Lord on the foundation of the Devil."

Norman uses Christ to defend his methods and says that the Sermon on the Mount was how the Word was spread back in the olden days, but now, "God has given us other ways to get to men’s hearts."

For Norman, these other ways are ad copy.

And, of course, Norman finds love. He pursues Ruth (the wonderful late Diana Hyland), a beautiful, young college girl who spurns his advances thinking that a "good time gal" like her would never click with a Man of the Cloth. This is nonsense, however. Especially in Hollywood terms. They not only meet cute (she rear-ends his car), but as Norman himself says, "God’s most potent chemistry is when the attraction is mutual." And it most certainly is.

Hyland, by the way is extremely fetching in this role. She too toiled mostly in television during her career which was tragically cut short when she died of cancer. Most audiences will remember her from The Boy in the Plastic Bubble which she starred in with John Travolta. She and Travolta became a passionate item in real life (she was 17 years older than he was) and apparently, he was with her when she died and furthermore, was so traumatized by her passing that he wasn't seriously involved with any woman until he married Kelly Preston many years later. Rumour mongers and tabloids insist both she and Preston are beards to mask his purported gay proclivities. Whatever the truth, she was stunningly gorgeous, had great screen presence and in One Man's Way, she fills the love-interest role with sauciness and passion.

The remainder of the film details Norman taking over a huge Church in New York where he continues his hucksterism to boost attendance, becomes a popular radio personality, an advice columnist in Look Magazine and then puts the Lord's Words into his own and writes his bestselling self-help book "The Power of Positive Thinking".

The conflict between Norman and the established old guard of organized religion here takes centre stage and it's a fight to the finish. And WHAT a finish! Norman, on the verge of resigning is witness to one of God's miracles! Surely this will convince him to stay in the pulpit "for as long as God needs me."

This movie is one rip-snorting entertainment. The accent is on a driven iconoclast and in many ways the picture can work as either an affirmation of God or simply an affirmation of One Man's power.

Either way, it's an immensely uplifting picture and Don Murray gives such a great performance, one can only wonder why he wandered (mostly) through the vast wasteland of network television for the next four decades.

Perhaps, as Norman Vincent Peale and his ilk would say, it was God's Will.

One Man's Way is another recent release from the MGM Archives. It appears that most, if not all of these titles are not actual MGM productions (those are now part of the Warner Brothers library), but are rather all the independent films MGM picked up for distribution. The movie exists as an on-demand DVD-R. It's a no-frills affair with a premium price and a straight-up transfer. Happily, the source material is in excellent shape and the film looks pretty decent on a big monitor. This is especially a blessing since the movie is shot in full-bodied black and white by the legendary Director of Photography Ernest Laszlo (D.O.A., The Big Knife, Judgement at Nuremberg, Kiss Me Deadly, Stalag 17, While The City Sleeps, etc.) Like all on-demand archives titles, only a few retailers stock any titles at all (in Toronto, Canada the Yonge-Dundas Sunrise Records and the newly-resurrected Starstruck Video at Dundas and Tomken stock them) and the only other option is online ordering which not only costs the premium price but shipping and handling. I have a feeling, however, that this title is going to sell very well and ultimately demanded its own proper release.