Stabbing Stupidity (2006)

Director: Paul DeNigris
Stars: Lindsay Marlin, Steve Briscoe, Louie Palmieri, Vince Reign and Laura Durant

Stabbing Stupidity is a lot shorter than The Long Shot, running about four minutes plus credits, but it's the peach of the shorts on the Cowboy Dreams DVD. In fact it's one of the best short films I've seen in a long time and I've screened a hundred of them in the last month. The concept is simple, centred on a young lady called Janet who has been conned into dinner with her highly inappropriate boss but finds an escape in her imagination. Writer Steve Briscoe and director Paul DeNigris riff on it superbly in a variety of ways and I still had a grin on my face on my fourth time through. Briscoe dominates here, not just because he wrote the script and its delightfully playful dialogue, but because he plays the boorish boss too with his Playboy cufflinks and even gets to sing over the end credits. DeNigris plays with technique from behind the camera, almost as an unseen dance partner with the leading lady, Lindsey Marlin, who shines through the fourth wall.

There's much worthy of praise here, but what I found most impressive was the fact that Stabbing Stupidity could so easily have spun way out of control, just because of how fun it was. This could have been a four minute film stuck in a twenty minute running time, but it isn't. It's lean and not a second longer than it should be. One of the biggest indicators for out of control filmmaking is when the director gets to edit his own picture, as DeNigris does here, because it gives them free rein to shoot as much as they like and leave in as much as they like. Usually that's a bad idea, but here DeNigris proves the exception to the rule. It plays out like clockwork. Almost every line does something, whether it be to build character, hit a punchline or set up a gimmick. Marlin and Briscoe hit every mark like professional comedians and DeNigris is right there to underline them. It's an exercise in technique, simultaneously violent and hilarious, and women will love it.

The Long Shot (2006)

Director: Paul DeNigris
Stars: Christopher Loftus, Christine Bierman and Michael DeNigris

After The Hard Way, which almost felt like a two minute clip from a longer movie, The Long Shot felt more like an entire feature crunched professionally down into nineteen minutes. It's a really ambitious picture however you look at it, not least that it's a long short. It has a large cast, which includes quite a few faces I recognise from the local film scene. While few of them get much time to develop characters, the script helps a surprisingly large amount of them do that. The story is a strong one with a clear progression, story arcs for more than one character and even room for a silent segment in which words aren't needed to explain what's going on. The camera moves well and there was obviously a lot of time spent in the editing room to segue the many cuts together. It's notable that the camera speed changes with the story: initially it's slow and smooth as things start to come together, but gets frantic when they go south again. It feels like it could be studied.

We follow Matt, a college football star fallen on hard times because of gambling. He owes two hundred large and he has no way out of the mess he's in. That's until Jim gives him a tip that he shouldn't ignore: just one more bet and he'll be free and clear. Of course, if it was that simple, this wouldn't run nineteen minutes and Matt gets to work his way through more ups and downs than you might expect in a feature length movie. I really liked this one. The dialogue is clever: often humorous, often serious and often switching from one to the other in a flash. The story is careful to set up certain expectations, some of which lead us in certain directions, others away from them, but all cleverly enough to ensure that the ending is both expected and surprising. The script was obviously crafted. A second viewing highlights many lines that make sense first time through but have double meanings revealed only with hindsight.

In fact, it's so consistently good that it's hard to find fault. Sure, a few performances may have benefitted from another take here and there, but it's obvious that everyone's having fun and that's contagious. Christopher Loftus is a capable lead, earning his only credit at IMDb, but he's outshone by the story he's careened through. Christine Bierman is good as his girlfriend but she isn't the focus of the picture. Michael DeNigris is a little tongue tied on occasion playing a gem of a character called Salvatore 'The Razor' Giletti, whose name alone tells you everything you want to know about him. He has perhaps more fun than anyone in the cast though, with a few asides that show great timing. In a much smaller role, Bivas Biswas shines as a bookie playing chess in the Arizona heat. The scale of the production means that they're all really part of an ensemble cast adding different textures to a solid story, which is the big winner here.

The Hard Way (2005)

Director: Paul DeNigris
Stars: Steve Cooper and Steve Briscoe

In 2009, Steve Briscoe wrote and Paul DeNigris directed the sublime short film Cowboy Dreams, with a cast to die for, including Bill Engvall and Danny Trejo. It was a leisurely piece, establishing a setting that we've seen many times before but then leading us slowly but surely into surreality and a gloriously unexpected set of lines from Trejo. This film, shot in 1999 for a Briscoe comedy special but turned into a standalone short in 2005, feels like an early draft version, with a similar concept but without the budget, the stars or the dialogue to bring it to life, let alone the level of technical skill involved. The lighting, sound and camerawork are notably weaker and the opening credits are terrible. Had the later film never been made this would have been an OK amateur short, but it pales in comparison in every way. Worthy only as an extra feature on the Cowboy Dreams DVD to see how the concept evolved over time, fortunately that's where I got to see it.

I have no idea how easy it is to get hold of this DVD but it's a great little disc, worth it for Cowboy Dreams alone, of course, but with a revealing documentary about the making of that film and no less than five earlier shorts to boot. DeNigris is a professor of film at the University of Advancing Technology in Glendale, AZ, and most of the cast and crew of his films have graduated from his classes. Watching a number of their shorts back to back is enough to see how they and he have progressed over the years. This is the earliest and the weakest of perhaps eight DeNigris films I've seen but it and Cowboy Dreams are the most easily compared. It's obvious that the pair of characters here were split up into many for the later film, adding depth all around. Expertise of cast and crew does the rest. I think that if Briscoe and DeNigris could travel back in time with the knowledge they have now, they wouldn't make this better, they'd make Cowboy Dreams instead.

Rituals (1977)

Director: Peter Carter
Stars: Hal Holbrook, Lawrence Dane, Robin Gammell, Ken James and Gary Reineke

Sometimes it's impossible not to watch a movie without imaging what it would be like if remade nowadays. Rituals is yet another story about a group of people leaving civilisation behind to find more than they expected in the middle of nowhere: you've seen it before and you'll see it again, but how? If shot today, the five protagonists would be young and gorgeous, happy to strip buck naked whenever possible; but in Rituals they're five middle aged male doctors, fishing barefoot. Nowadays they'd be partying it on down all night; but here they merely enjoy being out of their comfort zone. In 2012 one would film the others in footage to be found once everyone's dead; but in 1977 found footage thankfully hadn't been invented yet so the style is natural and doesn't induce motion sickness. Rituals even opens with a very 1970s easy listening theme rather than the rap or metal soundtrack you'd get today. Only beer and pot are constants over 40 years.

The most obvious difference is that instead of being a slasher flick whose death scenes are the only things to really pay attention to, here there's suspense and substance. The most obvious film to raise as a comparison is Deliverance, made five years earlier, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are five doctors here because there were only four businessmen in that film. Beyond having middle aged men hunted down a river within a wilderness, both films are fundamentally about guilt, though that's handled differently in each film. Deliverance spoke most prominently to guilt that the main characters develop over the course of the film because of actions taken within it, while Rituals speaks to less defined guilt from the past, which adds a sense of mystery to the picture. What do these doctors have to feel guilty about? That isn't just a question for us, it's one that they have to ask themselves too.

Certainly Rituals isn't as accomplished a film as Deliverance but it's still worthy of mention in the same breath and it has much to offer on its own merits. The story is a tough and unrelenting one that never lets up on its characters, mentally or physically, and it did no less on the actors. The budget didn't stretch to special effects, so the cast were called upon to actually do what we see them do in the film, albeit with safety nets to avoid the sort of catastrophic outcomes that await the characters. They really do walk through a swamp, have a bee hive thrown at them and fight in dangerous rapids. The budget didn't even allow for multiple takes in many instances, so often the scenes we see were captured in a single shot, avoiding a slick edge to the action but aiding the natural feel. Also helping this was the decision to shoot the film chronologically, so leads Hal Holbrook and Lawrence Dane really do get more and more grizzled as time runs on.

Holbrook plays Harry, a talented surgeon and ethical doctor who is still coming to terms with the death of his father, a drunk he had written off. A Vietnam veteran, he knows a thing or two about survival and it helps that he's the pragmatic one of the bunch, quiet and down to earth, usually getting the last word. Dane is the unfortunately named Mitzi, the loud one of the bunch. When things start going south, he throws out bad ideas at the least provocation. When they continue that way, he's the one who wants to give up, argue about how bad everything is or blame the others. He took care of Harry's dad's when the time came but is obviously uncomfortable with his own ethics as pertains to his work. Rounding out the five are Ken James as the routine Abel and a pair of brothers, Martin and DJ, played by Robin Gammell and Gary Reineke respectively. DJ is an irascible voice of reason, while Martin calls himself 'an independent alcoholic.'

They're dropped in a heavily forested area that the Indians poetically call the Cauldron of the Moon. It's only fifteen miles to civilisation but they're hardly well prepared for anything beyond their most basic expectations. The first step into chaos is when their boots are stolen while they fish. DJ had told them all to bring spare pairs but, of course, nobody did. None of them expected to be stalked through the wilderness by a crazed killer, naturally, but Martin's backpack is full of Scotch and toilet paper. It wouldn't bode well for him even if the killer hadn't shown up, which of course he does. We don't see him until the end and don't find out who he is until close to that point, which also adds mystery, but he makes his presence very apparent through a set of setpiece actions. It's pretty obvious that whenever these doctors go to sleep, the killer is going to have something memorably nasty ready for them when they wake up.

I grew up watching Murder, Mystery, Suspense on British TV, which was a timeslot dedicated for the most part to American films featuring one or more of those attributes. Most were probably made during the seventies, possibly for TV, and to my young and inexperienced eyes they felt like tame equivalents to the outrageous horror novels I was devouring. More recently I've often wondered how good they actually were, whether I didn't appreciate suspense as much as gore at the time and if I wouldn't find them tame today. Maybe I'll never know but every time I see an American thriller that obviously dates itself to the seventies, I ask myself those questions again. This one stands up very well indeed with some memorable shock scenes, a gruelling pace and a number of gorgeous long shots. Some almost hide the leads in distance, others turn close ups into long shots with easy camera movements and one makes the cresting of a hill truly powerful.

Of the cast and crew, I was only really familiar with Hal Holbrook, who had made his name on TV with four Emmy wins out of twelve nominations, but was instantly recognisable in many films. I don't know if I remember him best from Magnum Force, Capricorn One or The Fog, perhaps even Fletch Lives. He hopped genres continually. Lawrence Dane got the part of Mitzi because he also produced the film, but he knew which character would work for him as an actor and he was right. The others get far less opportunity to demonstrate their acting chops but they do exactly what they should. Writer Ian Sutherland and director Peter Carter obviously enjoyed working together, as they teamed up for another film, Highpoint, in 1982, just before Carter died of a heart attack. A comedy featuring the highest stunt fall ever shot for a movie, it wasn't as successful as this. I wonder if, had he lived, they'd have returned to darker material like this that they did so well.

Time Again (2011)

Director: Ray Karwel
Stars: Scott F Evans, John T Woods, Angela Rachelle, Tara Smoker and Gigi Perreau

Director Ray Karwel kindly sent me a screener of his indie time travel/action feature Time Again to review back in September and, given the subject matter, I wish I could conjure up some sort of time travel shenanigans of my own to post a review back then. As it stands, I'd have to settle for changing the date of this post and that would just be cheating. So, my apologies to Ray for the delay and to any readers I still have after a particularly empty last six months. Hopefully all the things that have kept me from writing for so long are taken care of now and I can be much more prolific in 2012. I'm especially happy to get back into a routine with Time Again, as indie science fiction features are something of an endangered species nowadays. Anyone who has screened submissions for genre film festivals knows that there are ten horror pictures for every science fiction movie and there are twenty sci-fi shorts for every feature.

It helps that this is a decent film too, certainly if you consider its budget which is somewhere on the south side of not a heck of a lot. Its flaws are not the usual ones that come along with a lack of money: there's nothing wrong with the lighting, the pace or the dialogue for a start. It's rare to see an indie sci-fi feature that doesn't fail on at least one of those fronts, if not more, and I can happily report that this is an exception to that rule. That isn't to say it looks like a Hollywood epic because it doesn't. The camerawork isn't as slick as we expect, Karwel making up for that in the editing room; the music is generic, obviously public domain; the stunts, while refreshingly done by the actors themselves, are too obviously set up; and a couple of the actors can't stop smiling. Yet the engaging story and the fast pace go a long way towards making up for all those flaws. Hollywood nailed pace long ago but still has a habit of forgetting about the story. This has both.

It centres around a set of four coins minted by a Roman priest for Augustus Caesar at the point the Christian calendar was being established and they have the power to revisit the past to make different choices with the power of hindsight, like a pack of magic undo buttons. It's both a cool MacGuffin and the mechanism by which a waitress by the name of Marlo tries to save the life of her sister, Sam. As Marlo, Angela Rachelle proves a capable lead, not only because she's terminally cute but because she successfully grows as a character along with the story. Initially she's very much a waste of space little sister, so we're surprised to realise that we'll be watching her rather than Sam, but Marlo becomes much more than her beginning while Sam becomes just a prop for her to work with. Rachelle seems to be getting steady work as an actress but she deserves bigger and better parts and surely this performance can only help that to happen.

The acting is surprisingly capable for a low budget action film without anyone we recognise and with a story that by definition makes everyone's job harder. Only Marlo gets to progress through the film in a chronological fashion, allowing Rachelle the opportunity to build her character. The rest are given to us in fragments, their parts broken up by a story that leaps around in a number of different timelines over a period of six months. This means that most of the actors are tasked with establishing their roles in mere snatches of time that might be duplicated, replayed a little differently or entirely undone later on in the film. It's tough to get involved with characters when we see them running through the same lines and scenes over and over again, as it's far easier to sit back and imagine them as props for Rachelle to play with. Needless to say, some of the actors are more successful than others in making their presence known.

Scott F Evans is perhaps the standout as Mr Way, a Los Angeles crime boss. Sure, some of his lines seem a little too cool but for the most part his biggest problem is how hands on he has to get as the lack of budget is most obvious when counting extras. Similarly, John T Woods, who is ostensibly tasked with playing a likeable cop called Det Lym, is most taxed when he realises that he's actually the entire LAPD (the SWAT team don't count: they're the worst thing in the entire film). Robert Pike Daniel, whose IMDb headshots suggest he's stereotyped in stern, emotionless roles, is pleasantly genial as a boss who every waitress surely wishes they worked for. Dan Lookabill is just as pleasant as Marlo and Sam's dad, perhaps highlighting that Ray Karwel might just be a big softy at heart who wanted to make his action film as filled with feelgood moments as with bullets. If so, he succeeded. It's a happy action movie.

The biggest name is perhaps the most surprising one, a French-American child actor from the forties and fifties called Gigi Perreau. I probably last saw her in 1945's Voice of the Whistler, a William Castle picture she made at the ripe old age of four, two years after Mervyn LeRoy began her career as the title character's bilingual daughter in Madame Curie. She brings an agreeable sense of quirkiness to Time Again as an unnamed old lady (unnamed for a very good reason) who only gets a few scenes but nonetheless serves as the oil that keeps the story in motion. I wonder how Karwel talked her into this picture. Sure, she has a vast amount of experience, with 35 films behind her before she turned 21 in 1961, but she promptly retired from the screen at that point to focus on stage direction instead. I'm happy she graced us with her presence once more and I may need to dust off Journey to the Center of Time or Hell on Wheels in celebration.

The best reason to see Time Again is for the script. Karwel is one of three writers, who deserve as much praise for their attention to detail when dealing with time travel paradoxes as they do shame for not counting bullets or for use of overly convenient props. This is a well thought out, story based, time travel movie and those are rare creatures indeed. No, you shouldn't blink early on or you may do as I did and conflate a dead character with a live one, thus confusing yourself royally for a little while; but once established, it gets more intriguing the longer it runs and the foreknowledge that accompanies a repeat viewing makes it feel tighter still. I found some subtle establishing shots second time through that I'd missed previously. Any picture that works on a first viewing but still improves on a second is a keeper, especially when suspense is a key factor, and I'd happily come back again for a third watch.

The most annoying part of the script is that almost everyone has a generic one syllable name, which means that we have to pay just a little more attention to be sure of who's doing what to whom, especially in those quick changing early scenes. Perhaps Ray Karwel's background as an editor, starting out on the Asylum's version of War of the Worlds, helps him to see things clearer outside the traditional linear timeline of a story without distinctive names as cues. As the job of an editor is often to fix what everyone else has done wrong, they pick up an inherent grasp of what's good and bad in a picture. As editors become writers and directors, they often approach their films with an eye for detail so lacking in others. Karwel doesn't achieve what fellow editor Mike Flanagan did with Absentia, but after this engaging first time out as a writer, producer and director I'd like to see what's next. More budget and consistency could give us a treat.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Director: Guy Ritchie
Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and Mark Strong

This time last year I was watching Arthur Wontner play Sherlock Holmes for the first time in the 1931 British film The Sleeping Cardinal. Now the family have talked me into something a little more recent and modern, namely Robert Downey Jr playing Sherlock Holmes for the first time in the self titled Guy Ritchie movie from 2009. I tend to get burned by modern blockbusters but a few friends, especially within the steampunk scene, have spoken highly of this version, at least on some fronts. Now's my chance to find out if I need to shout at them next time I see them and ignore any further suggestions they might make. After all, when I think Robert Downey Jr, I think Tony Stark, not Sherlock Holmes. When I think Guy Ritchie, I think of how awesome his pictures were before he met Madonna, not of how he could turn the innovative gimmickry of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels into a Holmes movie. Well, the game's afoot!

There is gimmickry before we even get the title screen: slow motion and fast editing as Holmes and Watson stop Lord Blackwood from committing his sixth murder. That's mild stuff for Guy Ritchie though and things improve quickly. His version of Holmes's rooms at 221B Baker St are believable: quirky, dusty and disorganised, but not so much so that the great detective doesn't know exactly where everything is. Downey is quirky, dusty and disorganised himself as Holmes, which is refreshing, but he's still quite obviously himself. Much has been said of how this Holmes is a pugilist, but that doesn't bother me. Ritchie puts his start/stop editing to use effectively, by bringing the scientific method into his fight scenes. I was more impressed by quieter moments though, such as when Holmes deduces the history of Watson's girl and gets a glass of wine in his face for his trouble. He simply ignores it and gets on with his meal. It's beneath his concern.

So Holmes is a solid characterisation, an interesting take on the most portrayed character of all time. I like the gleam in his eye, the deceptive disorganisation and his playful nature. I didn't like the fact that in front of all of it was obviously Robert Downey Jr. Jude Law succeeds a little better on that front as Watson, though perhaps that's partly because I've seen a lot less of him in the past than I have Downey. He's not as quick as Holmes, naturally, but he's no bumbling fool in the vein of Nigel Green's approach to the role or those who followed him. It helps that Law is really a Londoner, thus a lot more believable in Victorian London than Downey, whose accent isn't quite what it should be. Downey is more fun to watch but too wild to buy into. At least he's a notably original creation, unlike Lord Blackwood, who is painted too closely from Hannibal Lector's cloth for my liking, Mark Strong also channelling the young Christopher Lee in his megalomania.

There's much to like here for those without firm preconceptions in what they expect from a Sherlock Holmes picture. The sets are superb, from grand visions like a nascent Tower Bridge to the little details of street life. This Victorian London is suitably dirty, from the streets to the sky via all sorts of locations in between, not least a particularly grimy jail. To ensure that we get the point, the tones used are suitably subdued, sometimes so dark that we can believe that they're lit by gaslight. Of course not all the sets are down and dirty. There are plenty more in upper class buildings and pseudo-Masonic lodges and they're just as solid. It certainly doesn't hurt to have a budget sometimes and this one had $90m to play with. I enjoyed the music, both the classical and the folk sides. There's frequent action, though to inconsistent effect (the boat scene and the finalé being far too predictable) and for every action scene there's another full of deductions.

Where it falls down is in being the first film in a deliberate franchise, something that Warner Bros obviously planned for all along. Thus we get a lot of Holmes and Watson but only a glimpse of a slew of other recognisable names. Lestrade gets a mere handful of scenes, Moriarty is seen only in shadow, Mycroft appears in name only and we see Mrs Hudson only once, early in the picture. We are given quite a lot of Irene Adler though, the one woman who outsmarted Holmes in Conan Doyle's stories. It's a shame that she's notably disappointing, with a promising introduction quickly devolving into a damsel in distress and a woman continually outmanouevred by others. I liked Eddie Marsan a lot, as Lestrade, but other notable actors get far too little screen time, especially James Fox and Geraldine James. Fox does get a good death scene at least and James returns as Mrs Hudson in the first sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

All in all, I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but mostly on the surface when the CGI wasn't too obvious or the action too clichéd. For the most part it looked right and it felt right, but it didn't allow us much opportunity to play along ourselves and try to figure things out before Watson. It instead used what little Guy Ritchie gimmickry it had to provide explanations to us along with whichever characters are on screen at the time. In short it's the ride you might expect rather than the sort of detective story you might want, though on that front at least it's a worthy one, with far more attention given to its setting than most. Downey and Law make it a fun and engaging ride and if Rachel McAdams is given a poor part to play with as Irene Adler, she does bring feminine charm into the testosterone filled proceedings. I'd have preferred a different film in a lot of ways, but I enjoyed this nonetheless and won't have too many qualms about watching the sequel.

The Hoodlum (1951)

Director: Max Nosseck
Stars: Lawrence Tierney, Allene Roberts, Marjorie Riordan and Edward Tierney

It's dark, it's tense, it's 1951 and the film is called The Hoodlum. Yes, this is a Lawrence Tierney B-movie, which means it's going to be a tough ride. Tierney was a tough character, not just on screen but off it too, as Quentin Tarantino found out the hard way while making Reservoir Dogs. Here he's Vincent Lubeck, a career criminal who seems to only do two things: commit crimes and get caught. He begins this film in jail, up for parole after serving five years for armed robbery. The warden totally doesn't want to know, but his mother pleads for his release, with the dubious explanation that he fights the whole world. Well, that's Tierney through and through. We know that if mama doesn't persuade the board, we wouldn't have a movie, so out comes Lubeck to work at the gas station his brother has put a down payment on from his father's life insurance. Unfortunately it's right opposite the Fidelity Bank so guess how long Lubeck takes to turn...

Tierney is exactly what you'd expect if you've seen him in anything, especially from this era. He looks like handsome leading man material, but he's all darkness, like a coiled spring just waiting to explode on someone, anyone, maybe you. I love these roles of his because they exude danger the way few could manage, even in the noir era. A lot of actors could handle the grittiness but didn't feel dangerous. Tierney was dangerous just walking on screen. The fact that he sounded like George Raft trying to be Humphrey Bogart was merely the icing on the cake. What makes this particular film stand out isn't what he does as Vincent Lubeck, though he does it well, it's the fact that his screen brother, Johnny Lubeck, is played by his real one, Edward Tierney, making his first and only credited appearance under that name. He did find some success in Germany later under the name of Ed Tracy, but it's clear here that he isn't the talent his brother was.

The story is by Sam Neuman and Nat Tanchuck, and what I've seen of their work elsewhere isn't too impressive. For instance, Tanchuck's previous film was Chained for Life, a horrendous biopic of Daisy and Violet Hilton that didn't even benefit from the Siamese twins playing themselves. When a sensationalist biopic can't even live up to the levels of reality, it's an abject failure. Yet here they wrote a tight film, only a minute over an hour long and shot on an independent budget by director Max Nosseck, his second of four films with Tierney after Dillinger six years earlier. It isn't particularly groundbreaking, but it's a satisfying and often tense B movie that packs a lot into a small space, not least another powerful showing from Tierney. He leaves a notable trail of destruction in his wake here, only his immigrant mother able to tear him a new one when it's too late. Neuman and Tanchuck wrote a great death scene for Lisa Golm as Mrs Lubeck.

In fact, The Hoodlum builds well for everyone. The more obvious scenes are early on, as the film struggles to get going on whatever budget the independent Jack Schwarz Productions could bring to bear. The actors are capable but hardly Oscar-worthy. The uncredited Gene Roth is the standout early on as the prison warden who doesn't want Lubeck released, but he chews his way through a small part with gusto, somehow reminding of both Raymond Burr and William Castle as he shows Lubeck the electric chair. Edward Tierney is initially subdued and careful as Johnny; Allene Roberts is suitably innocent as his girl, Rosa, who Vincent naturally targets; and Marjorie Riordan is a sultry bank secretary who flirts with him while he pumps her gas. It's once all hell has broken loose that they get their moments to shine, though none as brightly as Golm. After her, it's Marjorie Riordan who gets the best scene. She deserved a bigger part.

The Hoodlum has gone unseen for many years, hardly surprising given its obscurity and status as an independent picture in a time when those were rare creatures indeed. After its original theatrical run, courtesy of United Artists, in 1951, it didn't see theatres again until almost half a century later when a new print was made. It certainly doesn't deserve to remain in obscurity, as it's a thoroughly entertaining piece. It stands up as an indie noir, as a Lawrence Tierney picture and as the one time he acted alongside one of his brothers. He never worked with Edward again and never shared the screen with his other brother, Scott Brady, even though both had prolific film careers. Scott's ran for 63 films from 1948 to 1984, when he played the sheriff in Gremlins. Lawrence Tierney notched up 64, but in a much longer period from 1943 to 2000, mostly because he was so difficult a man to work with. It's hard to believe he's been gone for over a decade though.

Thor (2011)

Director: Kenneth Branagh
Stars: Chris Hemsworth and Anthony Hopkins

It didn't take a lot to realise that I'm hardly the intended audience for this film. I asked a question of everyone who saw it early on that nobody understood, even those who were paid to review it. I simply wanted to know how Tadanobu Asano did in his first English language film. Having now seen Thor, I can understand the blank faces I got in response. He is utterly wasted in this film, far beyond anything I could have imagined. If viewers didn't know who he was, which is pretty likely for anyone not up on modern Japanese cinema, this certainly wouldn't have helped. He's almost not in the film at all and when he is, he's doing precisely nothing. Given that his next English language film is a screen adaptation of the game of Battleships (no, I'm not kidding), I can hardly be hopeful for a new international career, let alone my dream of seeing him playing opposite Johnny Depp in a quirky and artful drama. What a heartbreaking waste of talent.

The biggest problem Thor has, and it has many, is that Tadanobu Asano is not alone. I spent the near two hour running time being mildly disappointed, even though I came in with precisely no expectations, not having any background with the Marvel character at all. Yet when the ride was over and my brain reengaged, mild disappointment gradually built to the level of bewilderment. The more I thought about Thor, the less there was to think about. It reached the point where I'm not sure that there's anything at all in this film of any substance, leaving it as a two hour trailer for The Avengers. It isn't just Tadanobu Asano, it's everything else. Everyone and everything in this film is a heartbreaking waste of talent. I'm a long-standing fan of B-movie exploitation and yet I can't think of a single film that wasted my time more. I've seen worse films, to be sure, but I enjoyed the majority far more than this. This was literally two hours of my life I won't get back.

The story begins in Puente Antigua, as a continuation from the end of Iron Man 2, a capable if predictable Marvel blockbuster, as Thor arrives on the planet Earth to encounter a strange breed of human: field astrophysicists. Then we hop back to 965 AD so Anthony Hopkins can provide a primer on Norse mythology: frost giants, Asgard, aliens, Mjolnir, the whole thing. Yeah, aliens. These Norse gods are aliens who just hop down to Earth once in a while from Asgard to play at being gods. Earth is one of the nine realms, each accessible through some sort of Stargate. It's all very dark, very CGI and very Star Trek. Kenneth Branagh, a surprising choice of director to shoot a Marvel blockbuster, doesn't have the epic flair that Peter Jackson demonstrated in Lord of the Rings or the ability to focus on detail like Zack Snyder in 300. A few shots suggest we're in a spaceship but it's just the camera movements.

Anthony Hopkins looks like Anthony Hopkins in an Odin suit. Sometimes being a star can only be an obstacle to a performance. He does what you expect Hopkins to do, but by the end of this film I found that I hadn't disliked one of his performances this much since Red Dragon. In this version of Norse mythology, Odin, the king of Asgard, is the mighty warrior you might expect, but one who has fallen back into being a soft spoken peacemaker of a Norse god. I was waiting for him to cry havoc and let loose the berserkers, only to materialise a table to sit round and compromise. In comparison, his son Thor, about to take over as king, struts to the throne as if he was a WWE wrestler approaching the ring. Chris Hemsworth plays him rather like Brad Pitt would play Iron Man, only a little less flippant. I expected the We Will Rock You chant from A Knight's Tale. His brother Loki is jealous, scheming and ultimately forgettable. He may be the least villain ever.

The setup, within this shiny but obviously entirely CGI environment, is predictable. Loki invites the frost giants to show up and interrupt the ceremony, all on the sly of course. Odin forbids any reaction but Thor takes the Stargate to Jotunheim to piss them off anyway and his father has to calm things down. This action is enough to shift Thor in his esteem from his imminent heir to an undesirable element who he promptly strips of his powers and hurls down to Earth for the field astrophysicists to hit with their van. He does throw his mighty hammer Mjolnir after him, with an accompanying oath that its power will only manifest when his son is once more worthy. Even as this CGI action unfolds, I couldn't help but wonder that if it was this easy to outmanoeuver Thor, just why Loki hadn't got rid of him years before. However thinking about plot holes in this film is a dangerous business: there are more holes than plot.

The story from here is pretty obvious. Thor goes to get his hammer but SHIELD gets there first. Loki plots and schemes. Odin is removed from the field of play. Thor's buddies go to help him. Cue the battle. Cue the redemption scene. Cue the comeback. Cue the credits. It's all acutely disappointing, all the more so because there's no attempt to build any substance around it. Just as Asgard is a shiny bundle of CGI that never contains anyone without a direct purpose for being in a scene, Earth is apparently a single street in a single town entirely surrounded by desert, in which only the main characters have any function and then only very specific ones. Jane Foster, the lead astrophysicist, is there only as a token love interest. Her mentor, Dr Erik Selvig, is there because he knows Norse mythology. Her assistant, Darcy Lewis, is there for comic relief, which, unbelievably, amounts to one poor joke repeated twice. SHIELD are there to look impressive.

To be fair, the actors were capable, however dumb their parts were. Natalie Portman is solid as the love interest, but casting Natalie Portman as merely a love interest is like taking Mjolnir to crack a nut. She is painfully wasted in a throwaway role that feels all the more so because she does everything she can to embue it with meaning. Her acting chops merely highlight how the many other talented actors in this film didn't do the same, through their own fault or not. Rene Russo, Stellan Skarsgård and Tadanobu Asano are massive talents who get varying degrees of not a heck of a lot to do. Kat Dennings brings a weak periodic laugh but she's worth more than that. In this film only Thor really gets more to do than the extras who run around Puente Antigua looking scared, and they are only a hair's breadth above the frost giants, who are suitably sinister, but like everything in Jotunheim nothing more than shiny and meaningless CGI.

That leaves Hemsworth, Hopkins and Hiddleston, a triple H if you will, someone who would have looked a little less Hollywood than Hemsworth. Fortunately he does a decent job, once he wakes up in the hospital on Earth. Before that he's acutely annoying, but as a stranger in a strange land he's less cocky and more arrogant in a good sense, simply aware of how powerful he is. Depth arrives when he can't pick up Mjolnir, as that awareness falls away and he becomes fragile and unsure, obviously alien emotions to him. As the film revolves entirely around him, his showing is an anchor for the threadbare storyline. Without it, this would have been even more lacking than it is. Certainly Odin and Loki are nothing to focus on. Hopkins is unable to do anything with a bad part except make it worse and Tom Hiddleston, as Loki, is stuck playing a weak villain who gets weak scenes to be weak in. It's hardly surprising to find that he's weak and utterly forgettable.

Bizarrely the only character I can praise is that of Heimdall, guardian of the Bifrost, the Stargate that serves as the public transit system between worlds. This is bizarre because while actors like Ray Stevenson may look like Norse gods, only Heimdall feels like one, yet he's played by a black English actor, Idris Elba. It's a strange casting choice that is wrong on every level there is, except the actual performance that Elba delivers. He provides the only epicness that the film can boast. He epitomises timeless power, something sadly lacking in a film rooted in Norse mythology and shot by Kenneth Branagh who guided many of the actors through references to Shakespeare. It's amazing how empty this film is given that its character inspirations come from archetypes like Falstaff, Cassius and Edmund from King Lear, along with Peter O'Toole and Errol Flynn. Most took their roles because of Branagh's presence, some before there was a script. That speaks volumes.

Perhaps most surprising was that for a summer blockbuster, especially one based on a Marvel comic book character, there's not a lot of actual action, and when it arrives it's embarrassing. In the early scenes, everything is CGI and hard to see. Towards the end, when the film equivalent of a boss arrives to devastate the town, like a '50s sci fi monster, the battle is quick and lacking. Of the five warriors there, only three get shots in. The victory makes no sense. Even the moment in which Thor proves himself inevitably worthy was played badly. It read to me far more that the superhero in this film really isn't Thor at all, it's his hammer Mjolnir. It's at once Superman's cape and Batman's gadgets, but I never got the impression that Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne would die without those artefacts. Without Mjolnir, Thor is less than nothing. There's a final battle with Loki which shows off more CGI and relies on a deus ex machina. It's all embarrassing.

What surprises me is how much success Thor has managed to achieve, namely a gross of almost $450m and apparent critical acclaim from numerous fronts, including many who I'd expected would have hated it. Last time a superhero movie was made by a director pulled from the world of international art cinema rather than that of Hollywood blockbusters, the fans rebelled. Many good things have been said about Ang Lee's Hulk, but I haven't heard any from comic book fans. Here, those comic book fans seem to like it, if not outright love it and ache for the inevitable sequel. Roger Ebert was one of a few detracting critics, claiming that it failed as a movie but succeeded as marketing. Other critics were far more favourable, Richard Roeper even describing it as 'the most entertaining superhero debut since the original Spider-Man'. Adding my small voice to such esteemed company, I hated it with a passion that I haven't felt in a long time.

The Last of Mrs Cheyney (1929)

Director: Sidney Franklin
Stars: Norma Shearer, Basil Rathbone, Herbert Bunston and George Barraud

It's been a while since I've seen the 1937 version of this story, a golden age production featuring an all star cast including Joan Crawford, William Powell, Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan and Nigel Bruce, among others. This predated it by eight years and an entire era, given that this is a precode, albeit one somewhat unique in its timing. The precodes got away with much that the production era simply couldn't, but they built up to their heyday: it's the pictures from 1932 to 1934 that are usually so notable, not the ones from the end of the twenties. This one, from 1929, closer to the silent era than the glory days of Warren William, opens with plenty of sparkling innuendo, much of it sexual. Verbal banter was an art long before this but it was a highlight of the early precodes because of how hard it was to move microphones, a key reason why so many were adapted from plays. Yet it's rare to see one quite so forward quite this early.

Otherwise it feels very late twenties. The early actors are very carefully enunciated, as befits a very early sound film. Only Hedda Hopper sounds remotely natural until Basil Rathbone wanders out of Mrs Cheyney's charity concert and promptly dominates the scene, not only with his clever and deliberate wit but with his effortless voice. He looks scarily young, somehow much younger than he appeared in films made only a year later, though he is buried under a good deal of makeup. He is excellent, matched only by Norma Shearer in the lead role. These two shine in a succession of glorious scenes, both as individual actors full of subtle nuance and as an engaging and charismatic pair. It's a shame that Rathbone's star hadn't yet risen to allow his name to join Shearer's above the title. Their interplay is an enticing to and fro affair, as Mrs Cheyney has Lord Arthur Dilling notably on the hop for a while, only for it to shift back and forth between them.

I can't help but see the film as a collection of these scenes, because they and the two characters they contain are so full of life, while the rest of the film is so sadly lacking. Only George Barraud comes close to the lead couple, as Charles, Cheyney's intriguing butler. Everyone else in the cast is either far too good at being intensely annoying, such as Herbert Bunston and Cyril Chadwick, or too inconsequential to have much presence. Both these actors do their jobs well, as do the various ladies in the cast, but that doesn't make them enjoyable to watch. Late in the film is a breakfast scene, with almost the entire supporting cast bouncing off each other. It's perhaps the only scene in which they any offer any entertainment and then as an ensemble rather than as individuals; yet they're still overshadowed by Basil Rathbone sitting quietly at the end of the table and the underlying attempt to keep the most outrageous events impeccably polite.

The term for such stories was 'comedy of manners' and that's notably more accurate here than usual. It's particularly fascinating to watch the reactions in this story. Certain actions naturally deserve contempt while others warrant forgiveness, though it takes impeccable manners and breeding to appropriately distinguish between the two. Larceny is far less heinous a crime than the abuse of hospitality, it seems, and early dishonesty can be outranked by later honesty, as long as the circumstances are appropriate. In other hands, this would be a crime drama with the MacGuffin the £50,000 string of pearls that Mrs Webley keeps by her bedside at night. Yet this is a comedy of manners with the MacGuffin the true moral character of the thief caught in the act. That's a quaint and fascinating concept, as much so as the bizarre facial acting that goes on between two people who don't look at each other very much. That happens a lot here.

What all this quaintness leaves is a strange anomaly. From one angle it's a notable precode, full of moral ambiguity, with a strong leading lady and plenty of very forward dialogue. Yet instead of the usual modernity of the late precode pictures, full of reaction to the social situations of the time, this looks backward to a past age. So from another angle, it's a stagebound and talkative early sound picture that feels antiquated in its focus on manners, titles and reputations. I don't think I've ever seen such a quintessential mix of both ends of the precode era in a single film before. I'm far more used to seeing the past and future in late twenties movies for a different reason, one that's very apparent here: most of these actors were on their way out, while a few were on their way in. As with many early talkies, it's impossible not to realise which actors would thrive in the sound era, not because we recognise them but because it's just that obvious.

I've been a Rathbone fan for years, but it's been tough to work backwards from his heyday in the code era to his earlier work. While movies like The Bishop Murder Case, The Lady of Scandal and Sin Takes a Holiday were decent and interesting films, for some reason I recall them less than A Notorious Affair, a much worse picture that epitomised the stodgy play-sourced early talkies. It's refreshing to see a dynamic Rathbone here: whether he's in command, attacking with his wit and romancing more emphatically than we might expect, or whether he's forced onto the defensive, battled back by the wit of Mrs Cheyney. It's a great performance, the earliest of his I've seen yet and presumably his sound debut, given that his previous film was three years earlier: a silent Ben Lyon picture called The Great Deception in 1926. The Last of Mrs Cheyney shows us a demonstrative Rathbone six years before stardom and a full decade before Sherlock Holmes.

On the other hand, it took a long while for me to appreciate Norma Shearer. It's easy to see her as important only as the wife of MGM's wunderkind, Irving Thalberg, but that's unfair. She was the female lead in MGM's first production, the Lon Chaney film He Who Gets Slapped, three years before marrying Thalberg, and her precodes demonstrate just how important she was as a strong woman who showed a young female audience how to escape the morals of the previous generation. Never mind overblown late thirties fare like The Women, watch her in precodes, as a succession of sexually active unmarried women, not pretty young things cast adrift in a man's world but sophisticated and experienced divorcées. Hollywood forgot her not for what she could do, but because, as with Warren William, for what she couldn't do any more under the code. This may be the best I've ever seen her, full of nuance and play, especially in the first half of the film.

Now I should go back to the 1937 version, not only to compare the quality of the two films and to see how they treat the same material differently, but to examine how far my understanding of such things has come in the intervening time. I saw the 1937 version early into my exploration of classic Hollywood and remember being impressed, but I can't help but wonder now whether I was really being impressed by the film or my early experiences of people like William Powell and Robert Montgomery. Like many modern viewers, I found that golden age films opened a glorious voyage of discovery, but after seven or eight intensive years of travelling through filmographies, both backwards and sideways, I realise that much of that gold was really gilt and the real magic is often harder to find. I have a feeling that this is going to be a great example, the 1929 version not as slick, not as polished, not as star studded, but a much better film for all that.

The Coward (1915)

Director: Reginald Barker & Thomas H Ince
Stars: Frank Keenan and Charles Ray

Charles Ray had a long career for Thomas Ince, but it was this film that made him a star, which he remained for the rest of the teens and into the twenties. It's easy to see why because, even as Frank Winslow, the coward of the title, he still manages to elicit some of our sympathy, ably demonstrating the torment he suddenly finds himself in as the American Civil War begins. He's pressured from many sides to sign up for the Confederacy, not least that he's the son of stern old Col Jefferson Beverly Winslow. Yet, 'Mother, I am afraid... afraid!' he wails, unable to enlist at the recruiting station. He's wracked with emotion, exhibiting an enticing combination of strength and weakness, and there's plenty of opportunity for Ray to demonstrate his dramatic range. He comes over as a strange cross between Henry Fonda and William Haines. In the end he signs up only because his dad is going to shoot him if he doesn't. How's that for incentive?

Such depth of character is only one reason why The Coward proved eye opening to me. I'm used to movies from the teens faring much better visually than with characterisation. They often had grand sets shot with capable camerawork, but rarely much to populate into them beyond simple generic storylines. Thomas Ince, famed for 1916's Civilization, sits high on the rankings of early American directors, behind only D W Griffith and Cecil B De Mille, but this is the first time I've seen one of his pictures and it certainly stands up far better than I expected. The other surprise is that the film's promise to be 'a dramatic episode of the American Civil War' is achieved not only through drama but through a surprisingly sparing use of intertitles. For the longest time, they serve only to introduce characters or to allow us to read a letter that progresses the story. It takes a long while before we read any dialogue and that's kept to a bare minimum throughout.

Charles Ray shares top billing with Frank Keenan, who plays his father. It's hard to say who gets most screen time, but if it's Keenan it's mostly through the inflexibility of his character casting a shadow over the entire film, as if he were a statue or a ghost perpetually in the background. Col Winslow has all the strength that his son doesn't have, so much so that he only has to stand up to easily dominate a scene. His toughest moments are very subtle ones, such as the one where he waits in his study for his son's decision to enlist, his power demonstrated more through a slow movement of his gun than through any choice of words. Even when his son deserts and he takes his place to keep the family honour intact, the character is too inflexible for Keenan to do much more than allow his eyes to shine in the night or to seethe quietly in the emotional scenes. He plays him well but simply has less chances to emote because of how his character is written.

Meanwhile, Frank gets opportunity after opportunity to build a character, though his story arc is more of a simple fall/rise than a more traditional and complex rise/fall/rise. He gets only a brief few moments before he's exposed as a coward, albeit one with some ambiguity, and what little sympathy he wrings out of us is soon lost as he quickly and surely sinks even lower. Yet there wouldn't be much of a plot if he wasn't given a chance for redemption and that comes through the Yankee command arriving in Cotton Creek, VA and taking up residence in Winslow Hall. He hides in the attic, where he fortuitously overhears massively important enemy secrets that he finally discovers the courage to take action over. There's more to the plot than that, but it gives you a good idea of the story arc that Frank Winslow is carried through. Ray impresses here, both as a coward and something of an action hero, albeit a frantic one.

With the success of this film, Charles Ray found fame, after a few years playing innocent country boys for Ince. He stayed with Ince and did well, but rarely strayed outside the same type of role, formula being even more important in the teens than it is today. Once you found a formula, you stayed with it and milked it as long as you could. Whether it was a growing desire on Ray's part to do something different or a growing egotism, he eventually reached the point of founding his own production company and sinking his entire fortune into a version of The Courtship of Myles Standish in 1923. After it flopped badly, his career never recovered and when he died in 1943 at the age of 52, he had deteriorated through smaller roles to bit parts and eventually extra work on Poverty Row. If he had survived to 1950, he could have been a good choice for one of Norma Desmond's silent bridge partners in Sunset Boulevard.

Frank Keenan didn't find the fame that Ray did, even though he was officially this movie's star. If he's remembered today, it's probably for being Keenan Wynn's grandfather, rather than for his long stage career or for a decade and a half of film work. After a few roles in 1909, he became serious about the movies in 1914, meaning that this was still pretty early for him, even though at 57 he was already older than Charles Ray would ever get. He would make many more pictures, though he didn't survive the silent era and it's doubtful any were particularly different from this. The inflexibility of Col Winslow fit him well, given that he was known as a 'furniture actor', one who was usually so drunk that it was only the furniture that kept him upright. With that in mind, his casting here seems even more appropriate, but the few outdoor scenes more surprising, as he gets at least a few dynamic moments. Maybe those were his sober days.

Nobody else gets a remote opportunity to shine, at least through their own merits. The officers on both sides look the part, but credit is more due to the costume and makeup departments than the actors. The negro servants at Winslow Hall are white actors in blackface, albeit done rather better than usual. The chase scene is impressive for 1914, as are the battle scenes which prove that explosions were as big business almost a century ago as they are today. Yet all this is visual as there's little structure given to the grandeur. We see the South rush into battle but we don't know any more than that they're hitting the North's weakest point. It's about explosions, flags and clouds of smoke, not anything logistical. Yet putting all this together helps to highlight to me yet again that there were filmmakers working before 1920 who could make a picture that stands up to viewing today. Each one I see makes me wonder all the more about what has been lost.