The Killers: adapted by Anthony Veiller, John Huston, and Richard Brooks from the short story by Ernest Hemingway; directed by Robert Siodmak; starring Burt Lancaster (Swede), Ava Gardner (Kitty Collins), and Edmond O'Brien (Jim Reardon) (1946): Burt Lancaster managed to get first billing in his first movie, but it's Edmond O'Brien's investigation of the death of Lancaster's character that drives the plot. And that plot owes more to Citizen Kane than to the Hemingway story that inspired the movie. Capable direction and a sharp script make this a fine early example of film noir. Recommended.
Bullitt: adapted by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner from the nove Mute Witness by Robert L. Fish; directed by Peter Yates; starring Steve McQueen (Frank Bullitt), Jacqueline Bissett (Cathy), and Robert Vaughn (Walter Chalmers) (1968): On the plus side, Bullitt has its iconic, 10+ minute car chase and a stoic, macho yet sensitive leading turn by Steve McQueen. On the negative side, the plot is a bit thin, Jacqueline Bissett is wasted in the thankless role of McQueen's girlfriend, and certain aspects of the police work in the movie stagger the imagination. Only three officers total assigned to witness protection? And how the Hell does McQueen get to stay on the case after the literally explosive (and improbably dead-innocent-bystander-free) result of that iconic chase? Oh, well. For those who enjoy film continuity errors, count the number of times Bullitt passes the same slow-moving green car during the car chase. For those who enjoy standard transmission, listen to all the shifting! Recommended.
Night Moves: written by Alan Sharp; directed by Arthur Penn; starring Gene Hackman (Harry Moseby), Jennifer Warren (Paula), Susan Clark (Ellen Moseby), James Woods (Quentin), Kenneth Mars (Nick), and Melanie Griffith (Delly) (1975): Grungy, sun-bleached, almost quintessentially 1970's film noir. Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) directs in a fast-paced manner that requires quick wits to keep up with at times as he leaps from scene to scene. Gene Hackman is suitably grumpy and world-weary as our private detective whose unusual (for the genre) back-story is that he was an NFL player. Early turns from James Woods and Melanie Griffith and a remarkable amount of casual nudity are some of the highlights. Recommended.
Stranger on the Third Floor: written by Frank Paros and Nathanael West; directed by Boris Ingster; starring John McGuire (Mike), Margaret Tallichet (Jane), and Peter Lorre (The Stranger) (1940): RKO B-movie burned off the last two days of Peter Lorre's contract with the studio -- top-billed, he only has one speaking scene. Instead, the protagonists are reporter John McGuire and plucky girlfriend Margaret Tallichet. There's murder afoot in New York! An extremely expressionistic nightmare sequence made me wonder if director Boris Ingster was yet another German director who had fled Nazi Germany for Hollywood. He wasn't, but the sequence sure suggests such a conclusion. Lightly recommended. Also, only about an hour long.
12 Years a Slave: adapted by John Ridley from the memoir by Solomon Northup; directed by Steve McQueen; starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (Solomon Northup), Paul Giamatti (Freeman), Benedict Cumberbatch (Ford), Paul Dano (Tibeats), Michael Fassbender (Edwin Epps), Lupita Nyong'o (Patsey), Alfre Woodard (Mistress Shaw) and Brad Pitt (Bass) (2013): A terrific film with terrific writing, directing, and acting throughout. This should really win Oscars for director, picture, adapted screenplay, actor (Ejiofor), supporting actor (Fassbender), and supporting actress (a harrowing Lupita Nyong'o). Will it? Probably not. Nonetheless, I think this is probably the best drama of at least the last five years. Certainly the most affecting, harrowing, and moving movie.
Really, there's not a lot more to say. There's a lot less on-screen violence and blood than most reviews lead one to believe. It's the skill of the writing and direction that make this so. In a weird way, Ejiofor's Solomon Northup, a free Northern African-American kidnapped and sold into slavery in the early 1840's, is the ultimate real-world Hitchcock hero, the ultimate Wrong Man. And McQueen deploys the principles perfected by Hitchcock to augment our identification with Northup, our horror at his situation, and our loathing of the system he's trapped within.
There's a nearly wordless scene involving the aftermath of a near-lynching that is as perfect a visual metaphor for the horrors of slavery as anything in any film I can think of -- and the metaphor remains a literal scene of horror as well, one focused on the suffering of a character we've grown to admire and the brave kindness of one person.
There are a lot of other great scenes. There's a soundscape that sometimes menaces the viewer-listener in a manner reminiscent of the non-diegetic industrial-slaughter-house sounds of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though the sounds here are those of a steam engine heard from within the hold by the kidnapped men and women.
There's Fassbender, as a horribly explicable monster; and Benedict Cumberbatch, as a slave-owner who knows that what he's doing is wrong; there's Lupita Nyong'o, making dolls from corn-husks, whose unsurpassed excellence in picking cotton protects her from exactly nothing in the way of Fassbender's monstrosity. There's Brad Pitt as a Canadian who is just good enough without being super-heroic or being made the focus of the film's goodness, the White Saviour.
There's a scene at the end that Spielberg and most other modern film-makers would have botched with over-length and crushing mawkishness, but which everyone involved here gives us sparingly and underplayed and movingly perfect because the movie knows how to pull back just that little bit to give its characters and its world their necessary emotional space. This is as about as good as a serious movie gets. Highly recommended.
