Picnic at Hanging Rock

Still continuing a few reviews of films that take place in a hotter climate than where I am now, here's my take on the classic, both cult and otherwise, directed by Peter Weir, Picnic at Hanging Rock.  It takes place in late 1800s.  Students at a girls school in Australia go on a picnic, ostensibly to study the local geography, at a site called Hanging Rock.  One student, Sara, a girl who has a slightly lesbian love for a classmate, and a nervous teacher, are not allowed to attend per the headmistress (the headmistress perhaps has a bias toward them).  The girls overall are seen as very obsessive about romance and moon-y, and the trip takes place on Valentine's Day, but since it is "down under" the weather is pretty hot this time of year.

Two teachers chaperone, one is the masculine though female mathematics teacher and the other is the very feminine French teacher (Helen Morse).  Being a hot day many of them nap near the rock formation while four girls explore.  These girls are seen by two boys nearby, a visiting Brit Michael who sees the beautiful Miranda, and his young valet who happens to be the brother of Sara, the girl left behind; the siblings are orphans so Sara's financial status is below that of her classmates, which may play into the headmistress' bias of her.

Three of the four wandering girls in a sort of dream state go into a crevice in the rocks, and three of them the math teacher go missing, while the fourth becomes hysterical and can remember nothing or very little of the event or what happened.  Searches are made and the boys and others give witness statements, but nothing can be explained.

Michael becomes a bit obsessive about finding Miranda and makes an attempt to do so.  Later one of the girls reappear but she can remember nothing.  There are many unexplained answers.  Families start removing their daughters from the school.  Although she is losing a lot of students, the headmistress also forces Sara, the orphan, out of the school since her patron has been unable to make payments.  Sara is later found under tragic circumstances.

The Night Listener

This is a story written by Armistead Maupin, most famous as the author of the Tales in the City stories, and based on a real life experience of his. It is a thriller so it's very unlike his signature piece.

The film stars Robin Williams as a radio talk show monologuist Gabriel who spins stories about his life, usually embellishing them, although he claims to his audience they are facts. The film has a dark and somewhat bleak tone and Gabriel's voice reflects this.  His lover Jess (Bobby Cannavale) can no longer take Gabriel's behavior in their relationship, i.e. always on the lookout for something about the couple to spin into a story for his show. Jess feels this is becoming more intrusive, and feels Gabriel is not committed to the relationship for the right reasons.  Jess leaves just when another friend (Joe Morton) gives him an amateur memoir written by a teen fan of his radio show named Pete (Rory Culkin). Pete's memoir talks about his troubled life of having been sexually abused by his parents and other personal tragedies. Gabriel is moved by his story and starts a telelphone friendship with Pete and eventually his foster mother Donna (Toni Collette).

After a telephone encounter, someone suggests they are the same person. Gabriel is not convinced this but when he tells his secretary (Sandra Oh), she puts more doubts in his head. A couple of instances where face-to-face meetings with Pete fall through makes Gabriel more suspicious than he wants to be, leading him to try to find Pete, and Donna, to prove to himself they both exist.

The American Friend

Suspense author Patricia Highsmith's character of Tom Ripley has been played by several actors in several films, even in a French movie.  In this version, Dennis Hopper is Ripley, in Germany pretending to be an art expert and selling paintings of a dead artist that are in fact forgeries he had created. He befriends an artists' framer Zimmerman (Bruno Ganz) and uses the man's illness to convince him to commit some killings.

He dupes Zimmerman that his illness is terminal, and allows him to accept the hits for money to provide for his wife and son after he dies. At first Zimmerman is nervous, and although he becomes more bold, he still is depressed about his fate and botches his second hit, causing an innocent man to be killed. When suspicions arise over this last crime, he and Ripley wait in a country house for the men who will be coming after them.

Hammett

This is a decent but fictional story about Dashiell Hammett, played here by Frederick Forrest. Directed by Wim Wenders, but was revamped and partly reshot by Francis Ford Coppola (although FFC picked WW to direct this, I think there was eventually some conflict between them).

In San Francisco in the time of his mystery novels, Hammett here is a writer who has just about finished his next book, where he imagines people from his real life as characters. But his manuscript is stolen, so while on the trail of it, he comes across organized crime in San Francisco's Chinatown that is linked to several powerful men in the city.

Red Hill

Sometimes I like a good action movie that is not too taxing, yet still highbrow enough to satisfy my artistic sensibilities.  This modern Australian western/police suspense story, although it has many old fashioned western movie aesthetics,  has some gripping action and a couple of sympathetic characters who are opposite sides of the same coin. 

Young cop Shane Cooper (Ryan Kwanten) has been voluntarily transferred to a countryside town, with his heavily pregnant wife. The reason at first is not explained why he elected to move to a smaller municipality. On his first day at work, there is an accident at a prison some miles away, and a murderer escapes, Eddie (Tom E. Lewis), an aborigine who was put away by Red Hill's sheriff Bill (Steve Bisley). We see the police department is pretty much an old boys network and Bill makes it clear to Shane that he is not very welcome. Bill's close-minded attitude also means he aims to lock down Red Hill and kill Eddie on sight if he comes, implying he is in the right to use such force because Eddie wants revenge for putting him away. Unfortunately for them, Eddie is a superior native tracker and bests the posse again and again, except for Shane, who for some reason he lets go at a critical moment when he sees they share something in common. During a long day and night as they first hunt Eddie, then become the hunted, Shane discovers some secrets of the town and has to decide who's side he is on.

Free event: Midnight Lace

The Northbrook Public Library offers a weekly film program. Tomorrow they are screening Midnight Lace, a thriller starring Doris Day whose sanity is questioned.

Midnight Lace
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
1:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Northbrook Public Library
1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook, IL

Clay Pigeons

Clay (Joaquin Phoenix) seems to have an unnamed enemy who's framing him for the deaths of several women. He did know of the first killing, by a spurned lover, where Clay in a panic gets rid of the body.

He meets puppy dog-friendly truck driver Lester (Vincent Vaughan) and while fishing with him, a body floats up in the lake, terrifying Clay. The body, though, was not killed in the same manner as the first killing, which puzzles him. When another body is found, the FBI are called in (Janeane Garafalo, Phil Morris) to help the obviously bewildered and incapable small town police.

Clay needs to find the real killer, as the police keep finding that he has connections to the women.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I keep typing "Taylor" when referring to this film. My fingers just don't want to hit the I!  It is based on a John Le Carre novel of the same name.

George Smiley (Oldman), a retired spy, has been asked to return to investigate on the downlow, a long-hidden and high up mole in the Circle, the British spy ring Smiley used to work for. (They were the precursor to MI5.) The four suspects are played by Toby Jones, Colin Firth, Ciaran Hinds and David Dencik, and each seems to be hiding something.

Lady on a Train

Here's another old movie that takes place during the Christmas holidays.  It is based on a novel by Leslie Charteris, noted for being the author of the Simon Templar aka The Saint stories.  Lady on a Train stars actress/snger Deanna Durbin in one of her adult roles.  During Christmastime, Durbin is a train passenger Nikki, and while her train is stopped, she looks inside a building and sees a murder. She tries to convince the police what she saw was real, but they don't because she reads a lot of crime novels and they think she's making it up. It is a typical amateur detective movie.  She decides to investigate on her own, finds out who the dead man is, sneaks into his house, and--being mistaken for his mistress, a nightclub singer--is told she inherits his estate.

Nikki tries to get a mystery writer (David Bruce) to help her. Ralph Bellamy plays the nice nephew of the dead man who could care less about the money. There's also another ne'er do well nephew and a disapproving aunt. At the same time Nikki's trying to evade another member of the family who is after some evidence.

Every now and again she breaks into song (Night and Day by Cole Porter is the one I remember from watching this on TV years ago), even taking time for a costume change and new hairstyle even though the bad guys are still after her.

The film is more screwball comedy than murder mystery. It even has Edward Everett Horton, who played Fred Astaire's comical second fiddle in a lot of the early Astaire & Rogers films. William Frawley has a small part as a desk sergeant at the police station.

It manages to keep you guessing who the murder is and the contrivances are not too major--modern romantic comedies are just as fluffy. This is a light comedy with some good singing by Durbin.

Texas Killing Fields

The story is loosely based on real events--bodies of dead girls and young women have been turning up in a boggy area of Texas City, known as the "killing fields," for nearly three decades. The latest killings are being investigated by three police detectives, Brian Heigh (Jefferey Dean Morgan) and his partner Mike Souder (Sam Worthington), and Mike's ex wife from another jurisdiction, Pam Stall (Jessica Chastain). Due to where bodies are being found, both Heigh/Souder and Stall call on each other to help although it is against regulations to work in each other's jurisdiction. But the three seem very passionate about solving these crimes, understanding the urgency of getting this solved.

Free event: The Silence of the Lambs

Word association: fava beans and chianti = ??  The Silence of the Lambs of course.  I'm not sure what connection it has with Chicago history, but it is being screened by the Chicago History Museum as a lead up to Halloween.  Perhaps the association with history is that the killer in the book the movie is based on, was based on several real life serial killers.

The screening takes place apparently outdoors so be sure to dress for evening weather.


The Silence of the Lambs
Wednesday, October 12, 2011

6:00 p.m.

Chicago History Museum
1601 N. Clark Street

Some comments on War Games

War Games is one of those movies I always watch when it comes on tv. I'm sure you have one or some of those too. I re-watched it when the anniversary edition DVD came out a few years ago. It was then I noticed a very young Michael Madsen and John Spencer as the silo operators at the prologue of the movie.

The film also had me wonder what Dabney Coleman has been up to, I hadn't heard much about him lately (since then he has co-starred in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire).

Matthew Broderick is very good as the teen hacker who gets over his head when he hacks into the NORAD computer, potentially starting WW3. Ally Sheedy is a little annoying as "the girl" he is trying to impress, but I don't know what other teen actress options they had back then. John Hurt is also good as the reclusive scientist, that typical sort that feels remorse inventing something that the government uses for destructive means.

The film just shows you how far along computers and technology have come, although the technology was portrayed as state of the art, the screens were were still primitive and memory limits were tiny compare to what we have now (the commentary track mentioned computers then had 256 K! Some files are even bigger than that, I can't imagine a whole computer could be that small).

There are many other character actors such as Barry Corbin as the bombastic colonel at NORAD and Maury Chaykin as a slobbery computer programmer.

Straw Dogs

I was able to watch a preview screening of the new Straw Dogs last night. It's been a year or two since I saw the original movie. The two movies follow pretty much the same plot and elements. In fact, the new version says it's based on the previous movie and not the original book. I am comparing the current film with my remembrance of the last time I saw the original, so my memory may be a bit flawed.