“In nuclear research, there is no room for lone wolves.”

IMDB lists the budget of this sci-fi meller as an estimated $105,000. Considering how much 1953 dollars were capable of buying on an independent production, that figure seems a sizable over-estimation. The camerawork is good, it has capable performers and a number of sets, but the big stuff is borrowed from a 1934 German film called GOLD, and much stock footage is also used. This is about as threadbare a decent fright film as I can recall until the turn-of-the-century cycle begun with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

THE MAGNETIC MONSTER is the brainchild of Curt Siodmak, who can’t stop reminding us that he is indeed a brain (not DONOVAN’S BRAIN, also his). The film is meant to exist primarily in the realm of scientific ideas, such things not being subject to budgetary restraints. We hear an introductory voice over intoning about modern science, and the potential threats to mankind there in, which would make Nigel Kneal’s head spin. The script is the work of Siodmak and Ivan Tors, but having known Siodmak, I can certainly feel his voice throughout, but there’s only so much sci-fi-chatter one can absorb if one is going to a movie to see something happen. The big act Two crisis, a building imploding, is talked about in the protagonist’s home and never seen (not even its aftermath). The big third act extravaganza, while effective, is the aforementioned borrowed footage.

Richard Carlson, the film’s lead, plays an earnest member of the Office of Scientific Investigation, uncovering potential worldwide atomic threats. We see him with his doting, pregnant wife periodically , so as to lend a domestic, human side to his character, and to introduce a thread of concern about the fate of an unknowing population, vulnerable fetuses, etc., should the threat become a cataclysm. He’s solid, though best when intent on solving the planet-imperiling problem, and less effective when playing the concerned hubby.

Leonard Mudie plays Dr. Denker, a rogue scientist who is lugging around a dangerously unstable element in a briefcase ( REPO MAN anyone?) . He ends up dying of radio-active poisoning on a plane, lending the film such a convincing air of thespian honesty that the gears reverse and the narrative becomes quite compelling, and also upsetting (everyone on the plane is probably contaminated to some degree, a la Mike and Velda in KISS ME DEADLY). From that point on we’ve got a real investment in what’s going to happen. I also liked Mudie two years later as the old health club concierge who gets slapped around mercilessly by bully/gumshoe Ralph Meeker in none other than KISS ME DEADLY.

King Donovan is Carlson’s right hand man, Dan Forbes. Laid-back and contemplative, but devoted to his job, he still somehow manages to communicate a sense of doubt about the usefulness of what these A(for atom)-Men are up to, Carlson included. Playing it real, he gives the spine of the film another solid disc to sit on. He would turn in a highly memorable performance three years later in the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Off-celluloid he was married to Sid Caesar’s TV partner, comedienne Imogene Coca, until his death in 1987.

On the downside cast-wise, Byron Foulger, an interesting character actor who plays agitation well, with tremors in his voice as its pitch rises under duress, feels played to elicit amusement from the audience. Even though he’s a prissy boss, there’s an unwanted caricaturishness in his first act setup of the crisis. Once the A-Men investigate the floor above his store and find a human arm protruding from underneath a pile of boxes, things begin to get grim, and the airplane sequence erases any early missteps in casting/direction.

The tone is docu-drama. Long takes. Voice over. Often newsreel-like grain. One library footage scene of jet planes refueling in mid-air was used to considerably more surreal effect by Stanley Kubrick in the title sequence of DOCTOR STRANGELOVE.

The tight shots of family planning between Carlson and Byron are slightly painful but also integral. And the eponymous monster, with its unleashed appetite, anticipates the hopefully-just-paranoid fears at large today about current scientific experiments which might create an earth-swallowing black hole.

There were a number of super-low budget theatrical releases around this time. Excluding Roger Corman’s vast repertoire, others that come to mind are ROCKETSHIP XM (budget est. $94,000) and FIVE (written, produced and directed by Arch Oboler, and shot in a Frank Lloyd Wright house for invaluable, non-art-directed production value). These three are all of lasting value. Soft historically, perhaps, but worthy nonetheless. And most similar is GOG, very much carved out of the same mold, by some of the same key people, for a budget of $150,000 more allowing for color and the ability to use all their own effects, props, and sets. These two are reviewed currently on FIR’s site, and they belong together for etermity.

GOG. Sounds like…

Remember THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL? The giant robot that walks out of the flying saucer, capable of destroying the earth with a flick of its visor? Its name was Gort. Sounds like…

Now, I don’t know that Ivan Tors picked up on the religious undertones of the Robert Wise film. The critics sure didn’t at the time. Neither did Wise or his producer Julian Blaustein. But three years later and we’ve got another robot with a similar moniker. I’m just sayin’….

GOG was a scary flick for kids. I went to see it several times back in ’54 in 3D. The idea of technology turning on its creators as if it were alive was really frightening. The 3D wasn’t great as I recall, still it’s too bad that, according to IMBD (bolstered by the fact that the film has never played in 3D at the Film Forum in NYC), the one remaining matching set of 3D reels is both faded and out of registration.

I don’t remember the color being this lovely, so maybe what we’ve lost in gimmickry, we’ve gained in picture quality. The art department did a nice and dedicated job thinking out the results of all the applied research. Lighting is a bit TV in its generality, but that isn’t overly bothersome, and probably suits an underground installation.

The plot: in an underground advanced science lab, the individual projects seem to be turning against the technicians, resulting in some nasty deaths by freezing, centrifuge acceleration, extreme sound vibrations, etc. Government investigator Richard Egan comes to visit, looking for an answer to the growing threat. There is no second act demarcation, just a long series of visits to the various experimental chambers to observe the scientists work their wonders, followed by instances in which these experiments turn on their creators. The eponymous robot and his twin brother Magog are introduced about 40 minutes in, and once we see them, we know they’re going to figure into the climax in some insidious way.

The oddly episodic nature of the narrative lives or dies on viewer interest in each new experiment, and on the casting choices. For the most part, I liked the casting, particularly stalwart, practically humorless Egan (LOVE ME TENDER, THE 300 SPARTANS) who lends the proceedings some gravitas. Herbert (PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, THE FLY) Marshall as lab boss Dr. Van Ness, and Austrian John Wengraf as a cold, egomaniacal scientist responsible for the supercomputer and his pet robots, are also grounded and engaging. Wengraf is particularly well cast physically – there are veins standing out all over his forehead, which somehow suggests his high intelligence. And even more interesting, unfriendly as he is, he’s likeable. When the Doctor Who-like robots turn on the humans, he keeps his cool to the bitter end.

Even after all those viewings back in the 50s, I thought the suggestion was that some outer space intelligence was responsible for all the mayhem. Now, I’m not so sure. It seems like someone abroad might have been futzing around with NOVAC, the installation’s super-computer. Several homing devices are discovered hidden in the lab, and although the enemy rocket flying over head is destroyed, no one is ever assigned the blame for placing the miniature devices in the lab. I wonder if, in a longer cut, the saboteur was revealed. In any case, in retrospect it seems more like a commie plot, typical of the times, after all.

As with the same company’s previous (1953), smaller, B&W film THE MAGNETIC MONSTER, GOG’s screenwriters take great pride in trying to entertain us with serious meditations on scientific progress and theory. I can tell you that as a ten year old, all that mumbo jumbo didn’t bother me one bit, or hinder my involvement in the story. Today, though the script’s cerebral speculation is hit and miss, it is laudable that Tors was spearheading a couple of sci-fi flicks such as these. Much of the science still holds up (IBM is on display…as is a Coca Cola mcahine – product promotion I would assume) while other aspects have been invalidated, but that’s okay. 2001 will probably have a hit/miss ratio as well when we catch up to its ideas in practice.

If you can take a double-bill of striking sameness, these two titles, released recently, within a month of each other, from the MGM archives (unintentionally, perhaps) would be a kind of ultimate pairing.

Like Wow, Bam, Boffo and Hotsy-Totsy! Please excuse me if my prose style is a little giddy but I’ve just seen BOMBSHELL, Victor Fleming’s exercise in pure zany pleasure expressed through a camera style that makes the dialectical montage of Sergei Eisenstein look shy and retiring, not to mention trumping by almost a decade the speed-crazed, overlapping dialogue of Howard Hawks’ HIS GIRL FRIDAY. A luscious valentine to Jean Harlow’s peroxide-tinged All-American womanhood as well as a send-up of movie-making in a manner that would seem positively avant-garde if the film wasn’t produced at MGM, that bastion of Hollywood political and aesthetic conservatism, BOMBSHELL may be 78 years old but is nonetheless up to the minute in sensibility.

The movie zings and wings its way through the chaotic but nonetheless joyous life of Hollywood star Lola Burns (Jean Harlow), her extended, leech-like family (Frank Morgan plays her bumbling con-man of a father, Ted Healy her drunken brother, Una Merkel her two-faced secretary) and Lola’s love-hate relationship with Monarch Studios’ cutthroat press agent “Space” Hanlon (Lee Tracy), whose behavior might best be described as a cross between Count Dracula’s and an amorous bunny on amphetamines. Mr. Fleming’s exploration of the thin line between egotism and what one might call life’s banana peels imbues Ms. Harlow’s and Mr. Tracy’s haphazard dance of attraction/repulsion with a laugh-out loud hilarity.

Mr. Fleming also pulls the rug out from under the audience both visually and narratively, adding immensely to the film’s humor as well as to its visual zest. Lola spends her life pretending to be someone else, which causes her to search for authenticity, except everyone she meets is a fake. In an ironic turnaround, the film suggests that this talent for phoniness is in fact the most authentic thing about both Lola and the people that surround her. The air becomes thick with aphorisms delivered by character actors at the top of their game, playing simultaneously fictional archetypes but also themselves. (For instance, at one point the very proper C. Aubrey Smith, dressed as a British aristocrat, turns towards the camera and asks, “How come Lewis Stone always gets these parts?”) Actual behind-the-scenes production footage from Mr. Fleming and Ms. Harlow’s previous film together, RED DUST, is inserted into the mix. Various production people at MGM have walk-on cameos, as well as real-life Hollywood celebrities, such as Coconut Grove bandleader Gus Arnheim and champion boxer Primo Carnera. The film expresses a confusion of fictional and everyday states of being sixty years before French philosophers brought this contemporary phenomena to our attention. Where do the movies end and life begin, the film seems to ask. Is this reality, performance, or something in between? Then again, does it really matter?

One is most impressed by the seeming effortlessness of it all. The editing sweeps us into the thick of things, as well as sweeping us off our feet, with an extraordinary sense of precision. If BOMBSHELL doesn’t resemble life as we know it, the film certainly maintains the informality, not to mention humor, of a wild weekend with old friends. For instance, Lola says to her maid: “Your day off is sure brutal on your lingerie,” or there’s Lola’s exchange with the new butler over a glass of orange juice: “His name was Summers and your name is Winters. Are butlers always in season?” Characters come and go in a swirl of invective and manic movement, speaking in a hyper-exaggerated style that mixes advertising slogans with street poetry. “Your hair is like a field of silver daises,” a passerby tells Lola. “I’d like to run barefoot through it.”

In addition to the spontaneity of Mr. Fleming’s direction is the anchoring of the story in a very specific Hollywood reality, fixed by the silvery light captured by Harold Rosson’s luminous cinematography. What one remembers most are the myriad details: the manicured tangle of rose bushes adjoining Lola Burns’ insanely white mansion, the absurd number of staircases that people run up and down with continually raised voices, and when Lola attempts to escape to a resort in the desert, the shimmering sands underfoot, so clean and reflective it appears one can see for miles.

At the center of this self-referential parade of confusion, avarice and mixed motives is Ms. Harlow, who simply shines through the film grain in a surfeit of authentic niceness. The more shrill Lola Burns becomes, the more she entangles what she desires with how she feels her public expects her to behave, the more charming is Ms. Harlow’s screen presence. How this was achieved I have no idea, but it creates yet another immensely entertaining level to the film’s interplay between acting and being, fiction and self-delusion, authenticity and subterfuge.

Yes, I know I’m making BOMBSHELL seem decidedly post-modern, but why not? Pre-code is often more advanced, both stylistically as well as philosophically, not to mention more fun, than the films being made today. Just look at Ernst Lubitsch’s DESIGN FOR LIVING (1934), which was released by Criterion a few weeks ago, a romantic comedy that deals with an open, loving relationship between two men and a woman, as a shining example of that very principle.

Of course, Victor Fleming is known today, if at all, as the director of GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WIZARD OF OZ, two lumbering, over-produced films from 1939 that, in spite of their occasional felicities, are the antithesis of personal cinema. Warner Archive is to be commended for releasing this dazzling, inebriating, deliciously directed bonbon of a movie, so deadpan and deceptively bright that its cinematic brilliance takes one by surprise. While BOMBSHELL may be Victor Fleming’s greatest work (and arguably the most personal and idiosyncratic film ever made at MGM in the 1930′s) it’s by no means an anomaly. There’s the previously mentioned RED DUST, TREASURE ISLAND, CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS and A GUY NAMED JOE, as well as a number of deceptively effortless and deliriously subversive silent comedies, especially WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY starring Douglas Fairbanks.

The Warner Archive’s remastered transfer of Mr. Fleming and Ms. Harlow’s magnum opus, while far from perfect and exhibiting occasional bouts of medium grain and hairline scratches, is still quite beautiful. The white silk dresses and flesh tones gleam, as they would in a fine grain nitrate print. Black levels are generous, and the detail, especially in the long shots of Lola’s mansion filled with shouting studio hacks, assistant make-up artists and hanger-ons, as well as the leaves of palm trees on the streets of Beverly Hills, is stupendous. The sound is extremely clean and natural sounding for a film of this vintage with no hiss that I could discern, allowing one to hear the zingers that pepper the dialogue very clearly. As is usual with a Warner Archive release, there are no subtitles, and the only extra is a trailer with Spanish titles, though the dialogue is in English.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

WHERE’S VELDA?

The complete, two-season, 78-episode collection is certainly an exciting event. At first there appeared to be more wrong with it than there was right with it, but for Mike Hammer completists it would, under any circumstances, represent a wonderful unearthing from the treasure troves of early TV.

Initially it felt like a low-rent series, shot quickly, with few takes and insufficient coverage. In the premiere episode – ‘The High Cost of Dying’ – which should be a showcase for what the series is capable of, one of the key actresses (Lynn Allen) flubbed her lines a few times, but rather than go for another take, she and Darren McGavin just kept on gamely plugging away. The dialogue felt clumsily faux-noir (McGavin’s voice over narration sounded as if he was rehearsing for KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER, the horror-noir series which would come his way two decades later). McGavin himself, giving it his best, still seldom radiated the sympathetic notes he was capable of, at least not in that opening episode. And the score was a bit clunky, often mickey-mousing the action. But most distressing of all was the absence of Velda. What Mike Hammer film or series would be complete without her? I hoped that she would show up in the second season, but no such luck.

I then ventured into the second season, to see how the production quality had progressed. The title I chose was ‘”Requiem For a Sucker”. Sounded good, but was pretty much the same quality of the first season premiere. Flaccid and forgettable.

And yet there were nice elements too. Despite a disclaimer refrain about the quality of the materials used, the image was quite nice. There were occasional sound drop-outs, but they barely broke the pace.

Tight as the budgets must have been, the productions managed to fit in nice location work around New York City, as well as in upstate locales, etc., particularly effective as it transported me back to a world over fifty years gone.

Directors tended to be TV journeymen, revolving to keep the schedule going. Boris Sagal worked on many TV series over the years, including Rod Taylor’s ‘Hong Kong,’ which has yet to surface, and boasts one of the most violent fight scenes ever created for the tube (in the episode called ‘Colonel Cat’). But probably Sagal’s ticket to immortality was 1971′s THE OMEGA MAN with Charlton Heston, a camp classic version of Richard Matheson’s ‘I Am Legend.’

The box covers boast about guest stars such as Angie Dickinson, Barbara Bain, Robert Vaughn, Hershel Bernardi, and DeForest Kelley, but overlook such 50s ‘B’ icons as Gloria Talbot, Joan Taylor, Robert Clarke, Allison Hayes, Yvette Vickers, Madlyn Rhue, Tom Neal, Dorothy Provine, and Abby Dalton.

Now Yvette Vickers, who was barely an actress but quite a looker, appeared in some cheapo delights like ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES. She also posed for Playboy, quite wonderfully. Today, sadly, and from today onward, she’ll be remembered for her demise, up in the Hollywood hills, lying on the floor while a nearby standing heater cooked the juices out of her for a year before her mummified body was discovered. Naturally I had to skip to this episode, partially out of morbid curiosity, but also because I liked her looks back in the day.

Well, it’s a good thing I did. ‘Scar and Garter’ was a really fun episode. It didn’t have as much of a rushed feeling, the location manager did a great job securing a quirky, ‘B’-level SUNSET BOULEVARD location, and the script was loaded with mouth-dropping surprises and details. The director of this one was Lawrence Dobkin, who had acted in countless TV shows (as well as features such as THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS) and directed quite a few episodics. I wondered if, knowing the grueling schedule they were up against, the MIKE HAMMER staff & crew didn’t decide to pull a John Ford – two for you, churned out passionlessly, then one for us, treated with care on all levels. Because this one was awfully good, and it was probably even more impressive in ’58.

And Yvette? Well, acting may not have been one of her strengths, but she sure looked great.

I decided that since I’d been third time lucky, maybe I should stay in the game a little longer. This time I went for Allison Hayes in “Mere Maid”, directed by our old friend Boris Sagal, who hadn’t done well by the material in the pilot episode…or maybe it was the material that hadn’t done well by him. But this time we had a strong script with a great first act. Hammer is taking a weekend off upstate at a picturesque lake, and a flirty little mermaid lures him over to her side of the pond where all the wealthy weekenders are hanging out. The plot breaks loose from there, and emotions run pretty wild. Hammer gets to smooch up another doll, and figures out the sly manipulations behind a murder. There’s an obviously staged climactic fist-fight, but otherwise it’s a solid episode, and Ms. Hayes wasn’t at all bad.

I couldn’t stop now. I had to have a gander at Gloria Talbott. Who can ever forget her in I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE, with her striking, pointed features… Well she’s lovely in this one, too (aged 27), and it’s a fine supporting cast. James Westerfield as a corrupt DA was cut out of the M. Emmet Walsh mold, and he’s really solid, as are H.M Wynant as Deputy Moran and Rusty Lane as Sheriff Al Miller. The cinematography is the best yet, with rich blacks and whites, and the narrative generates real fear about Hammer’s safety when he butts heads with purveyors of small town corruption. There was that name again – Boris Sagal. I guess I had to cut the guy a break. Two for three. That’s a good deal in my book.

“Look at the Old Man Go” was next on my hit list. I was captivated from the get-go as it was filmed in my upper West Side Manhattan neighborhood. I’d forgotten why I chose it until I realized that I’d been looking at a very young Angie Dickinson (also aged 27) for a few minutes without even recognizing her. And while she’s good in the episode, and changes flashy outfits several times, the plot was far too convoluted for my nighttime viewing brain. At one point, one of the key players says she can’t follow what’s happening anymore. Amen. And yet it starts off wild like a good noir should, and it’s a plenty fun episode. Reminded me of noirs like THE BIG SLEEP, the ones that keep you involved but in the end it isn’t at all clear what just went down.

As you can imagine, in its attempt to be true to Spillane’s immortal protagonist, there are healthy doses of macho machinations and compromised women in trouble. The general depiction of women in the series is an amusing sign of the accepted behavior and social attitudes of the times, but also it’s as Spillane might have wished it. He so despised KISS ME DEADLY for tampering with his hero. This series tries a bit harder to adhere to the author’s tenets. No matter how rough and chauvinistic Mike was, he did have ethics and often upbraided his clients for asking him to do things that were ethically inappropriate. McGavin definitely portrays that guy. Ralph Meeker’s Hammer wouldn’t have given unethical behavior a second thought.

But I’d love to know what the heck happened to Velda?

Puts you on the ledge.

Remember when Sam Worthington was the next big thing after AVATAR? Remember when he outshone Christian Bale in TERMINATOR SALVATION? In my reality, Bale’s fantastic recorded outburst – rendered to dance music – was due to his frustration over his hapless role as John Connor. He knew Worthington had the better part. (Bale Out – RevoLucian’s Christian Bale Remix!) The director of TERMINATOR SALVATION McG liked the remix and put a copy of it on his iPod, and Bale said he had heard the remix and thought “they did a good job”.

Anyhow, Worthington is back as “the man on a ledge.” A former cop, he escapes from prison during a day leave for his father’s funeral. He’s innocent. We quickly know he’s up to something when he doesn’t pay for his Manhattan hotel room with a credit card, but the concierge isn’t suspicious, so why should we be? But when he cleans off all his fingerprints from his room service breakfast, we know he’s got a plan.

Nick Cassidy (Worthington) climbs out on the ledge and becomes a New York City sensation. This being The Big Apple of Corporate Evil and Personal Depravity, a crowd quickly assembles demanding he jump. It beats waiting for the 51st Street Lexington Avenue train.

First on the scene is beefy, badly dressed veteran detective Jack Dougherty (Edward Burns, whose TV commercial for his new movie NEWLYWEDS is on more times than Progressive’s “Flo”. I chant his line: “How do you spell ‘vasectomy’?” all day long). Hey, it’s Jack’s day job, so he wants the guy to jump and stop clogging up Manhattan traffic.

Next to arrive is burned-out police negotiator/psychologist Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks). We know she’s burned-out because she sleeps late, takes aspirin when waking up, and is wearing a full face of makeup and has bed-sex tousled hair. It’s Lydia’s scene to command and her job to get the “jumper” down.

It takes a while for Lydia to find out who the “jumper” is since TV cameras poised on him do not seem to get a good picture of his face. He’s not recognizable as the man behind the diamond heist of the century? Seems Nick stole the largest diamond ever – a 44 carat 4C (cut, color, clarity, carat weight) stone owned by wealthy real estate titan David Englander (Ed Harris, appropriately aged but showing off the body of a 22 year old). Apparently crushed into a million little engagement rings, Englander’s insurance company paid off the claim. Nick believes the diamond is safely hidden in Englander’s impenetrable vault.

Lydia has a backstory that made her a pariah in the police community. A cop “jumped” on her watch. Now she is tasked with Jumper No. 2.

While Nick is causing mayhem on the ledge, his scrappy brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) are across the street shaming Ethan Hawke, Jason Bourne, and even old-timer James Bond. They laugh at MacGyver.

MacGyver: If I had some duct tape, I could fix that.

Ha! Joey and Angie are master criminals. Big-haired bombshell Angie’s background as a thief, bomb expert, and electrical genius were bred when she began her life of crime breaking into empty houses as a high-schooler on Staten Island. They squabble like teenagers hitchhiking to the prom. Sure Joey wants to help his bro, but was he the best lover Angie ever had?

Directed by Asger Leth, MAN ON A LEDGE puts you on the ledge. It’s “[your name here] on a ledge” and I kept having to look away every time Nick peered down at the crowd or twisted his body talking to Lydia. I would have slipped just because of the wind up there on the 52nd floor. For this reason alone, MAN ON A LEDGE delivers.

Looking for Leth’s and screenwriter Pablo F. Fenjves past credits, imdb.com has this highly interesting “Trivia” on Fenjves: “Lived next door to the house on 875 South Bundy Drive in Brentwood, where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered. On the evening of June 12, 1994, Fenjves was the first neighbor to hear Nicole’s dog barking at around 10:15 pm.”

Tense, high speed action but with terrible acting, especially Ribisi and J.K. Simmons.

Remember how terrific Mark Wahlberg was in THE DEPARTED and THE FIGHTER? In both, Wahlberg had strong directors. However, not here. You loved J.K. Simmons in BURN AFTER READING and JUNO. The only one who comes out of CONTRABAND with any dignity is my personal favorite – so far he can do no wrong – Ben Foster. Remember the homoerotic element Foster infused into 3:10 TO YUMA?

Without question, Giovanni Ribisi and Simmons go way overboard with their characters. No matter how many weird characters Ribisi plays (THE RUM DIARY, FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX), I keep seeing him desperately trying to erase his performance in THE OTHER SISTER.

They are all here working hard to sabotage Baltasar Kormákur’s CONTRABAND.

In THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’S Actors Roundtable Discussion (December 2011), THR asks George Clooney, “Do you think you were bad and have become better?”

Clooney: I think scripts make people better. Direction makes people better. You can find a lot of projects where actors were tremendously good in one project, but you’ll see them not work necessarily well in others. I think scripts make a huge difference in that department.

Yes, a strong director certainly helps.

Alfred Hitchcock said: “The better the villain, the better the picture”.

Ribisi plays Tim Biggs, an almost homeless drug kingpin. Biggs is a feared, big money drug lord who lives in squalor. The only thing missing from Biggs is missing teeth. Ribisi gives Biggs a weird high-pitched, screechy Daffy Duck voice. He is almost upstaged by Simmons (The Captain) who keeps going in and out of a hybrid New Orleans accent.

Chris Farraday (Wahlberg) was the greatest smuggler there ever was. We know this because people keep introducing him that way. But what happened to all the money he earned from smuggling? He and his family live in a middle-class dump, his wife works as a hairdresser, and he is struggling with his contractor business. Farraday has a mantra. All he keeps saying to his wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) – throughout the absurd heist – is “I love you”. After the tenth time, I said, “I get it. You love her.”

Chris’s dumb and scrappy brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) throws Brigg’s nearly million dollars of cocaine overboard when custom agents intercept the shipment. It falls to Chris to pay off Andy’s debt and save Kate and his two boys from being whacked by Biggs.

Chris gets his best friend and fellow former smuggler Sebastian (Ben Foster) to put together the usual “one last job”. Chris, Andy, and Danny (Lukas Haas) get crew jobs on a ship going to Panama. Guess who is onboard? All of Chris’s former crew. Chris, who is against drug smuggling on ethical grounds, plans on bringing back millions in counterfeit bills.

As we all know, in an action movie, time must be running out. Here, the clock ticks with only an hour stopover in Panama. Luckily, with no traffic on the streets of Panama, Chris runs into some problems with crazy international counterfeiter Gonzalo (Diego Luna). When Andy slips away with the cash for the phony bills, Gonzalo demands Chris and Danny slam into an armored truck he is going to rob. Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, there are plot twists, reversals and rug-pulls.

Written by Óskar Jónasson, Arnaldur Indrioason and Aaron Guzikowski, CONTRABAND is based on a 2008 Icelandic thriller which starred this film’s director, Baltasar Kormákur. Kormákur knows how to stage tension but he cannot direct his cast. He is talented, but with seasoned American actors, and with Wahlberg as a producer, you have to hold the reins tight.

“John le Carré’s Cold War Spy Drama, timed to the feature film remake.”

I am such a fan of the Focus Features film version of TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY starring Gary Oldman (as seasoned spy George Smiley) and directed by Tomas Alfredson, I just HAD to watch the original 1979 BBC television version “Based On The John le Carré Classic That Redefined The Spy Thriller” (the 2011 movie’s tagline).

Acorn Media’s 3 DVD set (approx. 324 mins.) of the six-part miniseries features the worldly Sir Alec Guinness as bespectacled superspy George Smiley (filmed in between Guinness’s career-defining role as Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first two Star Wars films), a thinking man’s James Bond who’s called out of retirement by “Control” (Alexander Knox) to find a “mole” that the Soviets have planted in the MI6′s “The Circus.”

The “Circus” is the highest echelon of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Control, the Circus Chief, assigns code names to the senior intelligence officers under suspicion of being a Soviet mole, with the intention that should an agent called Prideaux uncover information about the identity of the mole he can relay it back using an easy-to-recall code the mole is unaware of.

The iconic “Circus” members are all here: Percy Alleline, Toby Esterhase, Roy Bland, Bill Haydon, and of course, Jim Prideaux (who botched up an assignment and sets the crisis in motion), and wild card “scalphunter” Ricki Tarr (played in the feature film by Tom Hardy in a lousy blond wig).

Having watched the 2011 film a few times I couldn’t help comparing it to the miniseries. Alec Guinness’s George Smiley is about a decade older – whiter, and more talkative and charming – than the brooding, always contemplating darker portrayal by the fabulous Gary Oldman. As the miniseries is over five hours long, Smiley has a lot more room for speeches!

The tightly-constructed two hour movie ties scenes, events, expositions quickly and skillfully, whereas the miniseries can take its time, developing plot lines, discussing characters and events more in depth, revealing full scenes that might have only been mentioned in the movie.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a great series to watch, an engaging television experience for fans of the spy genre. I’m looking forward to watching the sequel, Smiley’s People with Alec Guinness’s return as George Smiley, also from Acorn Media (and now the book is required reading for me!)

The DVD set features a half hour interview with John le Carré and a glossary of characters and spy terms.

“We’re still blaming mothers.” – Joyce Flint, Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is riveting, frightening, and hard to forget. Tilda Swinton is emotionally raw. It is a breathtaking performance. The 2 boys who play Kevin as a toddler (Rock Duer) and as a 6-8 year old (Jasper Newell) are fantastic – where do they find these children?

Then there is Ezra Miller as Kevin as a teen. He is seductively terrifying.

Eva (Swinton) has been emotionally made empty. Her teen son Kevin went on a well-planned and executed high school killing rampage. Forced to still live in the community shattered by the massacre so she can visit Kevin in jail, she is a pariah.

The question of guilt – are the parents guilty when their children turn into serial killers? Should we blame them? Six months after the Columbine Massacre, polls showed 85 percent of Americans held the parents responsible for the shooters’ acts.

Just like Joyce Flint, Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother, Eva is condemned as a “Monster Maker”.

Eva leads a solitary life in a small run-down house. Like Joyce Flint after Dahmer’s arrest, no one will hire Eva. Finally she lands a job in a travel agency, but her co-workers refuse to even look at her. As Eva relives everything that happened, we go back through her horrifying ordeal to the beginning.

Eva was a free spirit travelling around the world in a hippie idealistic way. She married Franklin (John C. Reilly) and they moved into a New York City downtown loft. In a foreshadowing of what will come, having a child does not look to be a joyous event for Eva. We see her in the hospital room immediately after the birth. She is frozen. She is empty of feeling.

Eva cannot bond with her baby. He cries constantly. Eva can offer the baby no comfort. Kevin exhausts her with his crying.

“Mommy was happy before Kevin came along.”

It all seems to begin or end with Mother. “Serial murderers are frequently found to have unusual or unnatural relationships with their mothers,” notes Steven Egger in his book The Killers Among Us.

Eva and Franklin move to a large suburban house with Kevin. Eva stays home trying to teach the toddler, who refuses to speak.

Kevin does not wear pants, only a diaper. He refuses to be toilet trained as he becomes older. He delights in making his mother change his feces-soiled diapers. He is cruel and verbally abusive to Eva and destroys her “room of her own” that she has lovingly decorated. In a fury, she pushes him, injuring his arm. At the hospital, Kevin lies for his mother. Now, whenever he wants something, he strokes his arm. He’s got Eva guilt-ridden and frightened.

Kevin forms a loving bond with his father to spite his mother.

The Macdonald triad (also known as the triad of sociopathy), first identified by J.M. Macdonald in 1963, is a set of three behavioral characteristics that are associated with sociopathic behavior. The triad links animal cruelty (A disturbing red flag. Animals are often seen as “practice” for killing humans.), obsession with fire setting (Pyromania is often sexually stimulating. The dramatic destruction of property feeds the same perverse need to destroy another human), and finally, persistent bedwetting past the age of five leads to violent behaviors, particularly homicidal behavior. Bed Witting is the most intimate of these “triad” symptoms, and is less likely to be willfully divulged. By some estimates, 60% of multiple murderers wet their beds past adolescence.

Kenneth Bianchi, The Hillside Strangler, was a child loner, with many problems. One clinical report said that “the boy drips urine in his pants, doesn’t make friends very easily and has twitches. The other children make fun of him.”

Kevin is dangerous. So why in the world does Eva get pregnant again? I was afraid Kevin would drop his baby sister Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich) or harm her in some way.

When Kevin becomes a teen, his sport of choice, encouraged by his father, is archery. He has become a very good archer. It is possibly a risky sport that neither parent considers.

Eva and Franklin need to talk about Kevin. But they never do.

Kevin’s killing spree – as horrific as it is – is solely meant to destroy his mother’s life. Even though he is incarcerated, he is the winner. He left his mother alive intentionally so she would suffer.

Parents know their children. Children with problems want their parents to know. They hide nothing. Why should they?

Should we blame the parents? Yes, because they saw all the signs and looked the other way.

On Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at two Columbine High School senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and 1 teacher. They also injured 21 other students directly, and three people were injured while attempting to escape. The pair then committed suicide. The Harris and Klebold families have not spoken publicly about what they did or didn’t know leading up to Columbine.

Oh really?

Dylan was depressed. His parents knew this, though not the extent of it. And it wasn’t because they weren’t around. Dylan’s father worked from home and saw his son every day. Wasn’t his father at all curious about what he was up to?

Eric was troubled and his parents were well aware of it. He broke into a van, he was found making pipe bombs and setting them off for fun — and they took steps to address this. He was enrolled in a program for juvenile offenders, he was taken to a psychiatrist and given both therapy and medication.

But they were not watching Eric closely enough, were they?

Swinton’s performance is outstanding. Her face expresses Eva’s abject misery. She has lost her body. Her clothes hang on her. She is numb as she drags herself through life, living only to see Kevin during visiting hours. They sit motionless across from each other.

Lynne Ramsay has delivered a very troubling movie. Ramsay’s skill as a director brings a real dread to the story. Her handling of “the young Kevins” is masterful. Ramsay and co-screenwriter Rory Stewart Kinnear adapted Lionel Shrivers 2003 novel.

Swinton’s stark gaunt appearance aids dramatically in expressing Eva’s state of mind. Swinton has given an Academy Award performance and clearly challenges the performances of Glenn Close in ALBERT NOBBS and Meryl Streep in THE IRON LADY.

Considering so many films use child actors, an Academy Award should honor one child under 8 years old for recognition.

Beginning March 15, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold made a series of videotapes specifically addressing the attack they planned, and expressing their reasons. Known as The Basement Tapes, since filmed in Eric’s basement bedroom, as of 2010 the tapes have never been released, or leaked, even in part.

In the farewell video Eric left for his parents, he quoted Shakespeare: “Good wombs have borne bad sons.”

What kept this one down in the vaults all these years? QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (FIVE MILLIION YEARS TO EARTH) and QUATERMASS 2 (ENEMY FROM SPACE) have both been in release for quite a while. And now that it’s out, although it bears its original UK release title, I miss it’s American moniker, THE CREEPING UNKNOWN. I saw it several times back in 1956, so the US title has sentimental value for me.

This was a pivotal production for Hammer Films, adapting the popular early Brit TV series into a no-kids-allowed theatrical version. It did great business and steered them away from film noir quota-quickies and into sci-fi-horror and, shortly thereafter, into the Gothic Horror field that would be their bread-and-butter and their legacy.

Val Guest adapted the script and strove to give the film its documentary sensibility whenever possible. He also introduced the Frankenstein-monster-and-little-Maria sequence about midway through, a nice touch, which would be reprised yet again in CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. There’s only one false note in the entire 82-minute running time, and that is when a drunken female derelict comes into the police station complaining about seeing a monstrous thing. There’s an artificial comic tone to this scene that I’ve noticed in other Hammer films, as if they felt it was a necessary rhythmic break – but they were almost always mistaken.

Nigel Kneale, the author of the original broadcast series’, was so affronted by American actor Brian Donlevy’s brusque, egomaniacal take on his beloved creation that he ranted about it for the rest of his life. Personally I love Donlevy in this, and in its sequel. I think he very much embraced the cold, self-involved and not necessarily humanistic image the Brits had of scientists following the war, a group not to be trusted (along with military and certain governmental types). QUATERMASS AND THE PIT has them all, except that in that 1967 film Quatermass is humanized by Andrew Keir, more in line with how Kneale envisioned him.

In THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, three men go up into space, but only one comes back, and he’s not who he was when he left. Richard Wordsworth plays Victor Carroon, the doomed astronaut taken over by some monstrous force that has designs on our planet, with a surprising range of emotions. The film has its quotient of creepiness, scares, and upsetting makeup effects. It also has intelligent dialogue, and a strong directorial hand that keeps it moving quickly through its 82 minutes, by far my favorite running time when I was a kid.

I show this film every year in my History of Horror class at the School of Visual Arts, and they always ‘get it’ and enjoy it, applauding appreciatively after it ends. It’s gratifying to see this little sci-fi thriller working its wonders 50+ years since its debut.

Sex and incest. Michael Fassbinder electrifies. Unfairly an NC-17 movie.

It’s called SHAME. But what is shameful in this straightforward story?

Should Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender) feel “shame” that he is so sexually charismatic that New York women want to have sex with him after meeting him for 10 minutes in a bar? A woman he is briefly introduced to at a bar offers him a ride home, only to willingly have sex with him minutes later in an alley.

How many New Yorkers would be ashamed of having one-night stands?

Isn’t texting considered “Dates 1 thru 3” these days?

Should Brandon feel “shame” because he masturbates in his office bathroom? Tell me guys have never done that.

Is it “shame” to masturbate at home to online porn? Not according to the millions of porn enthusiasts who troll the millions of porn sites online.

Should you feel “shame” if you hire prostitutes? Why not ask the thousands of “hobbyists” – the new, friendly word for “johns”? Escorts and strip clubs are currently very popular forms of entertainment.

Is it necessary to feel “shame” because you take advantage of the anonymous sex offered all over Manhattan?

Is “gay” sex shameful?

It is “shame” if you were forced to have sex with your sister or sexually abused by a parent and turn to a sibling for comfort through sexual intimacy?

That is what the film SHAME is about for me.

Brandon (and star Fassbender) has all the requisite sexual attractiveness to women perfected through evolution. His body – a relatively narrow waist, a V-shaped torso, and broad shoulders are characteristically indicative of good genes. He is tall, athletic, with powerful legs. He has a high-degree of facial symmetry indicating high testosterone during fetal growth (smart mating also does help here). A strong masculine nose, a wide forehead, high cheekbones and a strong jaw all make Brandon’s sexual conquests not conquests at all. He is also a man of few words – another good evolutionary trait. And Brandon is well-endowed.

So is Brandon a compulsive sexual addict or just damn lucky?

SHAME opens with Brandon getting up in the morning walking in front of the camera nude. This aggressive positioning of the camera puts the viewer in an intentional state of mind. We are intimidated by Brandon.

Brandon’s apartment is featureless. You cannot know anything about him by walking through his apartment. You cannot uncover his secret by chance. He wants it that way.

Sitting across from a young pretty woman on a train wordlessly dramatizes how Brandon communicates his sexual intent. It is a forceful, challenging scene.
Brandon’s answering machine is filled with messages from a woman pleading with him to see her. He keeps turning off the machine. She has called constantly. It is clear to us that this is one of his many one-night stands who keeps begging him to see her again. He is sick and tired of hearing from her.

Coming home from work one afternoon he finds a girl showering in his bathroom. Shocked, he demands to know why she is there. She stands there naked while they argue. He gave her the key, she says. Brandon throws her a towel she barely uses to cover herself with. The next morning he is making her breakfast. She is wearing a short, flimsy cover-up clearly showing her breasts. She is Sissy (Carey Mulligan). Brandon’s sister. She needs a place to stay. She reminds him they only have each other and Brandon has always taken care of her.

I don’t have a brother. Is this kind of nudity between male and female siblings usual?

Brandon allows Sissy, a nightclub “singer” to crash for a few days on his couch. She is messy and disrupts his highly organized sterile lifestyle. When he takes his married boss, David Foster (James Badge Dale) to hear Sissy sing, she immediately goes to bed with his boss in Brandon’s bed and then inappropriately calls David at work.

Sissy walks in on Brandon masturbating. He puts on a small towel and furiously jumps on top of her on the couch. The towel nearly comes off as they argue and he yells at her. He hates her and demands she leaves.

Yeah, brothers behave like that all the time with their sisters.

Brandon goes on a date with an attractive woman at work. When Marianne (Nicole Betharie) asks him about his relationships and commitments, he is uncomfortable. He does not understand monogamy and his longest relationship was – he lies – four months. She is judgmental, something Brandon has always protected himself from. Later when they are about to have sex, she is sexually dominant and it looks like Brandon is in for a romantic sexual encounter – but he cannot perform. He knows this cannot be a one-off sexual encounter.

He immediately hires a prostitute and has sex with her standing up in front of a wall of glass windows.

(According to IMDb: The sex scene with Michael Fassbender and a woman on the window was actually filmed above a busy street during the day. Spectators watched while the two actors, in the nude, smiled and waved at them between takes.)

Unlike Patrick Bateman’s (AMERICAN PSYCHO) rodeo-riding threesome orgasm, Brandon’s threesome is hungry lust on his part and, when finally climaxing, he is clearly in orgiastic pain. He has to break through something painful to achieve orgasm.

Sissy is no walk in the park. She has numerous scars on her arms from past suicide attempts. When David asks about the scars, she says, “Oh just…when I was a kid I was bored.”

Whatever pain they share, Sissy is more up front about it. She has accepted the trauma and has the marks to prove she survived it.

I read an interview with SHAME’s director Steve McQueen who states categorically that SHAME is about sexual addiction. He interviewed many sex addicts and did tons of research.

Well, if McQueen, who I think is a sensational, absolutely riveting and bold director, really wanted to make a film about sex addicts, he would not have chosen Michael Fassbender as his star.

This is McQueen’s and Fassbender’s second collaboration and it is a film that cannot be dismissed. Fassbender surrenders to McQueen and submerges himself in his character.