Monthly Archives: January 2021

First Noir of the Year: The Killers

First Noir of the Year: The Killers

There are so many lauded classic noirs that I haven’t yet seen and on Sunday evening one more was scratched off the list with The Killers.

Directed by Robert Siodmak and debuting Burt Lancaster The Killers is adapted from a short story by Ernest Hemingway though as is par for the industry the screenplay differs significantly from the source material. With additional stars Edmund O’Brien and Ava Gardner, The Killers is a taunt exploration of a man’s life following his violent murder. With its fragmented flashback construction, the film is very nearly a noir Citizen Kane but with a more definitive conclusion.

The film opens with a pair of hired killers, including a wonderfully menacing performance by William Conrad, arriving in the early morning hours into the town of Brentwood New Jersey.  Locating their target, the ‘Swede,’ they gun him down in his boarding house room and though warned of the assassins’ approach Swede neither flees nor fights for his life but seemingly accepts his murder as punishment. The rest of the film follows Insurance investigator Reardon (O’Brien) as he tries to discover the murdered man real identity and the reason for his killing. An investigation that reopens old crimes and romances prompting fresh threats.

Released in 1946 The Killers is a wonderful example of film noirwith its morally ambiguous central character played by then unknown Burt Lancaster, its dark moody cinematography, and its sharp punchy dialog the films deftly explores the underside of American life and how closely intertwined the criminal world was with the rest of society. In addition to launching Lancaster’s career the film also propelled Gardner from relative obscurity to star with her compelling and captivating performance as Kitty, the obsessive interest of both the Swede and one of the city’s gangland bosses.

Nominated for a slew of Academy awards in 1947 including best Director, Editing, Screenplay, The Killers has been included in the National Film registry.

The Killers is available for rent via VOD and is currently streaming for free on the Roku channel Film Movie Classics.

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An Open Letter to Senators: Romney, Murkowski, and Sasse

The United States of America joined in the first World War to ‘Make the world safe for Democracy.’

We fought in the Second World War to defeat fascism in the west and in the east, liberating millions of people and bringing them into the light of self-governance.

We stood with the United Nations and saved the people of South Korean from subjugation by the anti-democratic forces of communism.

Our nation stood guard and paid with both blood and treasure to defend the free world against the tyranny of Soviet Communism defending the rights of all people to self-determination.

In the struggle for self-determination and democratic ideals the Republican Party led the way, always ready to defend democracy.

Today, that party stands against democracy.

It stands against free, fair, and legitimate elections favoring power over principle. GOP’s leading voices are calling to the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans, to subvert and overthrow an election that they lost for the ego and greed of one man, to make a mockery of a century of defending freedom, and the leadership of the party shows no intention to rebuke or punish those throwing aside our most cherished ideal, self-determination.

The new Senate is coming into session and normally the decision with which party to caucus is scarcely a decision at all, but these are scarcely normal times. To caucus with the Republican Party is to reward that party for its anti-democratic behavior with an extension of the power it is already abusing.

No reduction of marginal tax rates will erase that fact.

No amount of sensible de-regulation will defend our elections.

No appeal to traditional values will restore the defense of democracy.

If you caucus with the Republican party the good works you have done will be destroyed and you will simply be part of the machinery griding to dust what has been built for generations. That is a deeply unpleasant fact.

If you caucus with the Democratic Party, the entire conservative community will turn on you like ravenous wolves and it is likely that you will lose your positions and your offices, but you will not be destitute, none of you, and it is best to remember that hundreds of thousands of Americans have died for these rights and these ideals and now it is your turn to sacrifice so much less than they did.

The choice is yours and yours alone.

You three have the power, no matter the outcome of tomorrow’s election, to decide the course of this nation and your party and for better or worse it is what you will be remembered for.

 

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First Review of 2021: Wonder Woman 84

First Review of 2021: Wonder Woman 84

It is said that every movie is made three times, first when it is written as a script, second when it is photographed, and third when it is edited. In principle the stages allow for revisions the bring the final film closed to the ideal that had propelled the project but often diverging voices, power struggles, and a lack of focus allows the stages to muddy the waters and create chaos instead of coherence. This appears the be the case with Wonder Woman 84.

Except for a prolog set in the indeterminate time when Diana was a child, and really this sequence would have been better and easier to suspend disbelief for had they portrayed her as a young teen instead, the film takes place 66 years after the close of the previous entry in the franchise. Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) lives as a historical expert at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. still mourning the loss of her love Steve Trevor in 1918. Kristen Wiig plays Barbara Minerva a cliche version of a woman overlooked and ignored by the world while Pedro Pascal plays Max Lord the central villain of the piece conman and television personality the propels what passes as the central plot of the movie.

Drowning itself in the period’s clothing and style, Wonder Woman 84 is a mess. Elaborate and expensive sequences take place that have no function in furthering the plot or developing the characters. No thought is present for the actual consequences of the choices the writers made when they crafted the script. The special effects suffer from the issue that the digital characters seem to lack weight and float when they should not and perhaps worse of all the plot suffers from that most horrid comic book trope Powers ex machina, with Wonder Woman developing sudden abilities that exist solely to resolve an immediate plot complication and are then discarded.

I found it impossible to surrender myself to the story and was constantly reminded the artifice with repeated errors of the type. Wonder Woman I found to be charming and fun though far from perfect and its sequel, though far from the dour, depressing, Objectivist works of the Snyder Batman and Superman films, I cannot recommend at all.

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