“I was angry about seeing so many movies with naked women and never seeing a naked guy. So when I shot the sex scene between Stacy and Damone in the poolhouse, I wanted it to be uncomfortable. She was naked, so I wanted to show the guy naked too. And the ratings board said, ‘You do that and you’ll get an X rating.’ I said, ‘How come you can see all these naked ladies in movies?’ And they said, ‘Because the female organ is not aggressive, but the male organ is.’ So what? Should we shoot it? Whatever. But I was a very cranky young lady, and the idea of compromising makes you crazy.” Amy Heckerling in Sean Penn: His Life and Times by Richard T. Kelly

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Directed by Amy Heckerling
Screenplay by Cameron Crowe, based on his novel
Produced by Irving Azoff, Art Linson
90 minutes

A guerrilla handbook to growing up in America, Fast Times at Ridgemont High should have been the last word in high school movies for a while, just like The Outlaw Josey Wales put a nail in the pine box carting around the western genre in 1976. Fast Times didn’t set out to perform last rites on the teenager movie per se, but is such an exhilarating, A-to-Z tour of familiar landscapes that it’s a wonder John Hughes found any territory to carve out for himself. Rather than an incursion by adults into the world of teenagers, Fast Times feels like an inside job. The project was the brainwave of Cameron Crowe, a prodigal 22-year-old Rolling Stone reporter whose publisher David Obst suggested that the only way to uncover what high school kids were all about these days was to actually go back to high school.

So in the fall of 1979, Crowe returned home to his parents in San Diego and received front office permission from Clairemont High School to enroll as a student. Crowe’s surveillance culminated in six characters: a middle class brother and sister, her sexually experienced friend, a nerd, a music obsessed ticket scalper and a stoned surfer. At the end of the school year, Crowe approached his subjects and revealed he was writing a book. At the time, they were indifferent. Universal Pictures grabbed the film rights and put Crowe to work on a script with Art Linson, a producer Crowe had met reporting from the set of American Hot Wax in 1975. In the search for a director, Linson recalled an AFI student thesis he’d seen titled Getting It Over With and offered the job to Amy Heckerling, a 27-year-old who’d yet to direct a feature film.

What qualifies as a plot goes like this: Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh) works at Perry’s Pizza in the mall. When a foxy looking stereo salesman asks her out, Stacy’s friend Linda (Phoebe Cates) encourages her to be sexually aggressive with him. Mark Ratner (Brian Backer) is assistant to the assistant manager of the movie theater and shares his ardor for Stacy with the smooth talking Mike Damone (Robert Romanus), who dispenses love advice to the geek. Stacy’s brother Brad (Judge Reinhold) is employee of the month at “All America Burger” but after blowing his cool with a customer, suffers the indignity of accepting work at “Captain Hook Fish ‘n Chips”. Stoner Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) rejects the concerns of his peers, but runs afoul with history teacher Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) in a battle of wills that spans the entire school year.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High shoves other high school movies aside like wimps because Crowe and Heckerling inject so much honesty into the film: laugh out loud honesty, quirky honesty, tender honesty, brutal honesty. It’s not a war documentary, but it sometimes feels like it could be. Rather than turn predictable, Fast Times samples from several  genres. The duels between Spicoli and Mr. Hand are like highlights from a stoner comedy, while Heckerling isn’t kidding around with Jennifer Jason Leigh’s sex scenes, opting for stark realism. What lingers through all of this is how court jester Spicoli suggests there may be more to growing up than consumerism and sex. Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards and Nicolas Cage (billed as Nicolas Coppola) made early career appearances.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 148,349 users: 76% for Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

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“Portmanteau” is French for “coat rack”. Lewis Carroll appropriated the word in 1871 for Through The Looking Glass to explain two words merged into one; “chortle” is a portmanteau Carroll invented, while “Internet”, “blog” and “sexploitation” are three he did not. In the month of January, I’ll take a look at portmanteau films, where we find different coats hanging in the same closet, whether tailored by one filmmaker or the collaborative effort of several.

Coffee and Cigarettes (2004)
Directed by Jim Jarmsuch
Written by Jim Jarmusch
Produced by Joanna Vicente, Jason Kliot, Birgit Staudt (segments: Renée, No Problem, Somewhere In California), Demetra J. MacBride (segment: Somewhere In California), Rudd Simmons (segment: Twins), Jim Stark (segments: Strange To Meet You, Twins)
96 minutes

Like a dry erase board in a marketplace of digital product, Coffee and Cigarettes is borderline prosaic and yet somehow, completely enthralling. In 1986, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch was contracted by Saturday Night Live to make a 5-minute short. Given two weeks, Jarmusch grabbed Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright while they were in New York, riffed off their contrasting personas in a rehearsal and shot the results the next day. Titled Coffee and Cigarettes, the avant-garde absurdity faded into late night TV, but Jarmusch enjoyed himself so much that after making Mystery Train in 1989, he shot another short, with Steve Buscemi and Cinqué Lee & Joie Lee. Jarmusch’s hobby filmmaking — pairing actors or musicians that amused him in rudimentary, black & white vignettes — continued in 1993 with Iggy Pop and Tom Waits. Two more shorts (Renée and No Problem) were made later that decade in New York.

After Jarmusch knocked out six shorts over a two-week span in 2002, he had enough material to fill a feature film. Screened at the 2003 Venice Film Festival, Coffee and Cigarettes opened in Italy in March 2004, followed by limited release in the U.S. courtesy United Artists in May 2004. Dry enough to start a brushfire, Jarmusch’s portmanteau film is not for everybody, with pregnant pauses and gentle tomfoolery sure to annoy as many viewers as it amuses. What Jarmusch offers between the cracks is reality programming for the arthouse, playfully mocking celebrity interviews or what passes for casual conversation in coffeehouses these days. The film’s biggest delights are vignettes taking residents of different star systems and seating them at the same table: Iggy Pop with Tom Waits, The GZA & RZA from Wu-Tang Clan with Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett with Cate Blanchett.

Over the course of 11 scenes, actors, musicians and actors playing characters get to know each other over breaks for coffee and cigarettes. Roberto Benigni comprehends so little of what Steven Wright says to him that he agrees to take the comedian’s dental appointment. Oil and water brother-sister twins (Cinqué Lee, Joie Lee) are harangued by the pet theories of an Elvis loving waiter (Steve Buscemi) in Memphis, while somewhere in California, Iggy Pop tries to keep polite conversation with Tom Waits at a tiki bar. Joe Rigano and Vinny Vella berate each other to quit drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes while a silent Vinny Vella Jr. begs money off his old man. A young woman (Renee French) browsing firearms catalogs does her best to keep an over eager busboy (E.J. Rodriguez) away from refilling her coffee.

Continuing the dialogue or lack thereof, two friends (Alex Descas, Isaach De Bankolé) meet for coffee and cigarettes, with the former trying to convince the latter that nothing is wrong. Taking a break in a hotel lobby from press interviews upstairs, Cate Blanchett tries to relate to her black sheep cousin Shelly (Cate Blanchett). Jack White demonstrates his “Tesla air transformer” to his “sister” Meg White, who offers mechanical advice when her bandmate’s doodad breaks down. In Los Angeles, Alfred Molina introduces himself to Steve Coogan over tea, presenting the comedian with some startling information he’s compiled. Back in New York, The GZA meets up with his cousin and fellow Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA at a diner, where they discover Bill Murray busing tables. Finally, William Rice and Taylor Mead share a toast.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 11,088 users: 75% for Coffee and Cigarettes

Metacritic “Metascore” average among 35 leading critics: 65 for Coffee and Cigarettes

What do you say?

“Portmanteau” is French for “coat rack”. Lewis Carroll appropriated the word in 1871 for Through The Looking Glass to explain two words merged into one; “chortle” is a portmanteau Carroll invented, while “Internet”, “blog” and “sexploitation” are three he did not. In the month of January, I’ll take a look at portmanteau films, where we find different coats hanging in the same closet, whether tailored by one filmmaker or the collaborative effort of several.

Four Rooms (1995)
Directed by Allison Anders (segment: The Missing Ingredient), Alexandre Rockwell (segment: The Wrong Man), Robert Rodriguez (segment: The Misbehavers), Quentin Tarantino (segment: The Man From Hollywood)
Written by Allison Anders (segment: The Missing Ingredient), Alexandre Rockwell (segment: The Wrong Man), Robert Rodriguez (segment: The Misbehavers), Quentin Tarantino (segment: The Man From Hollywood)
Produced by Lawrence Bender
97 minutes

A victory lap by the studio that brought you Pulp Ficton, Four Rooms turns into a demolition derby. Alexandre Rockwell hit upon the idea for a portmanteau film tied together by the hijinks of a bellhop on New Year’s Eve after he befriended Allison Anders and Quentin Tarantino at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, where their career calling cards In The Soup, Gas Food Lodging and Reservoir Dogs were on the bill (Robert Rodriguez joined the club when he met Rockwell and Tarantino at the Toronto Film Festival with his calling card El Mariachi). The role of the bellhop was conceived with Steve Buscemi in mind, but when he declined, Tim Roth took the part. With Miramax Films footing a budget that settled at $4 million, Four Rooms was rushed into production while Tarantino was being crowned master of the universe on the press tour for Pulp Fiction in the fall of 1994.

Author Peter Biskind’s account — in Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film — was that Four Rooms was produced in complete acrimony, with studio co-chairman Harvey Weinstein taking a 160-minute cut and lopping over an hour off, eviscerating segments by Anders and Rockwell, who blamed the toxic end product on the hubris of Tarantino. Officially the worst effort “QT” has yet written and directed, the concept behind Four Rooms is completely (and refreshingly) bug nuts to begin with, as if Jerry Schatzberg, Elaine May, George Lucas & Steven Spielberg agreed to make an anthology film together in 1976. There are excellent ideas at play here, an animated title sequence for instance, but like almost everything else in the movie, it’s indicative of how rushed the whole enterprise appears. Rodriguez’s contribution is far and away the most coherent.

On New Year’s Eve at the once glorious “Hotel Mon Signor” in Los Angeles, the crusty bellhop (Marc Lawrence) passes the torch to his heir apparent, Ted (Tim Roth), advising him to “stay clear of night clerks, hookers, kids and married arguments.” In the first of four misadventures, Ted escorts a coven of witches (Valeria Golino, Madonna, Alicia Witt, Sammi Davis, Lili Taylor) to the honeymoon suite, where their ritual to resurrect a 1950s pinup queen from the afterlife hits a snag and requires the aloof Eva (Ione Skye) to elicit a specimen from Ted. Summoned to refill the ice for a Yuppie party in Room 404, Ted then bumbles into a room where a deranged husband (David Proval) has bound and gagged his wife Angela (Jennifer Beals) and lies in wait with a gun for her supposed lover to join them.

In Room 309, a couple (Antonio Banderas, Tamlyn Tomita) depart for a night on the town. The man offers Ted $300 to check on his children (Danny Verduzco, Lana McKissak) every 30 minutes. Making it $500, the “pain the ass” kids torment Ted by discovering a hypodermic needle and the body of a hooker in the room. On the brink of quitting, Ted phones the apartment of his boss, where a stoner (Marisa Tomei) answers and tries to lift his spirits. The boss (Kathy Griffin) talks Ted into staying long enough to service the penthouse, where movie star Chester Rush (Quentin Tarantino) has requested a block of wood, a bucket of ice and a meat cleaver. Chester’s love for “The Man From Rio” episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents has inspired a wager with his assistant (Paul Calderon) that Ted discovers he has a role in.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 14,449 users: 72% for Four Rooms

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten movies that pass.

Summer Hours (2008)
Directed by Olivier Assayas
Written by Olivier Assayas
Produced by Marin Karmitz, Nathanaël Karmitz, Charles Gillibert
103 minutes

Taking the scenic route through a story with remarkably deep and affecting ideas, Summer Hours books us passage with the most ordinary family seen on film or television all year. The film leapt from notes filmmaker Olivier Assayas scribbled about how art that once meant something very tangible to an artist inevitably ends up locked in the exhibit case of a museum. Ironically, the project was intended as a short to be sponsored by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. When the Ministry of Culture pulled financing, Assayas got his script to veteran producer Marin Karmitz. With Summer Hours meeting the approval of the typically fussy French film industry — it was French language, with French actors, shot exclusively in France — a budget of €5.6 million ($7.6 million USD) was raised with much less grief than Assayas’s previous feature Boarding Gate.

Premiering March 2008 in France, Summer Hours screened at the Toronto Film Festival in September and the New York Film Festival in October. Despite receiving some of the best reviews of the year, the film received a very limited release May 2009 in the U.S. While its idyllic pace and seeming lack of earth shattering drama didn’t go over well with distributors, Summer Hours paints a bittersweet portrait of a family moving so fast that only the very old and very young seem to notice something being lost. Assayas demonstrates enough confidence in his cast and in the quiet observations of his script that the everyday nature of the film becomes its strength. Director of photography Eric Gautier helps lend a home movie intimacy, while the Musée d’Orsay opened its doors to filming as well as loaning the production its cultural artifacts.

At her country estate, Hélène Berthier (Edith Scob) welcomes her children and their families for her 75^th birthday. Frédéric (Charles Berling) is an economics professor who lives in Paris. Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) is an art designer who now resides in New York while Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), his wife and three children have relocated to China for his job with Puma. They’re heirs to a handful of artifacts — including the house and two priceless paintings by Corot — that belonged to their great-uncle Paul Berthier, a renowned artist. Hélène annoys Frédéric by instructing him what to do with each object once she’s gone. The son announces his intent to keep the house and its items in the family, which Hélène sees as improbable. Housekeeper Eloise (Isabelle Sadoyan) confides to Frédéric that despite her energy, his mother has been depressed lately.

When Hélène passes away, her children reunite for the funeral. As their mother suspected, Adrienne expresses no desire to live in France while Jérémie has been promoted and in need of money, also prefers to sell the house and its treasures. Frédéric laments the verdict to his wife (Dominique Reymond), particularly the loss of the Corot paintings, which he envisioned passing down to his children Sylvie (Alice de Lencquesaing) and Pierre (Emile Berling), teenagers who express little interest in bric-a-brac from another era. Donating several pieces to the Musee d’Orlay to avoid estate taxes, Frédéric doubts whether a vase that once held flowers still means anything locked in an exhibition case. He grants his teens permission to throw a graduation party at the country house before its lease expires and even Sylvie begins to sense something is being lost.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 3,670 users: 60% for Summer Hours

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 84 for Summer Hours

What do you say?

The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten recent movies that pass.

Orphan (2009)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Screenplay by David Leslie Johnson, story by Alex Mace
Produced by Joel Silver, Susan Downey, Jennifer Davisson Killoran, Leonardo DiCaprio
123 minutes

Orphan has been given a body of sophisticated allure but in an effort to fit in with the crowd, its brain is trailer trash. An executive named Alex Mace with Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way sketched a 10-page treatment, the first three pages of which detailed the past of a sinister orphan named Esther. That material became the basis for a screenplay David Leslie Johnson won the job of adapting. Johnson’s chief inspiration was The Bad Seed, which he referred to as “the quintessential evil kid movie.” Warner Bros. suggested that project would be straight up the alley of Joel Silver’s B-movie shingle Dark Castle Entertainment. Silver hired Jaume Collet-Serra — who got his start in commercials and music videos and made his feature film debut with Dark Castle’s remake of House of Wax — to direct.

Johnson and Collet-Serra were fans of Roman Polanski’s psychological thrillers, but don’t have the nerve to develop their characters, deploy wit or let ambiguity work its black magic. Instead, their ambitions seem to begin and end with the slasher movie, with Esther taking over wherever Chucky left off, but without any of the lil bastard’s glee. Following the rules Roger Ebert laid down for The Idiot Plot, Orphan would be over in 5 minutes if every adult in the story wasn’t an idiot. Vera Farmiga is the saving grace of the project, which is so laughable in its pretense that it would be impossible to sit through without her. Working with a better cast than Elisha Cuthbert or Paris Hilton this time out, Collet-Serra is doing a poor man’s version of Seven designed primarily to give 13-year-olds in the cafeteria something to debate the stupidity of.

Following the stillbirth of her third child, composer Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) works to overcome issues of alcohol abuse and depression, attending counseling with her therapist (Margo Martindale). Residing in picture perfect Connecticut with her architect husband John (Peter Sarsgaard), 11-year-old Danny (Jimmy Bennett) and deaf 6-year-old Max (Aryana Engineer), Kate decides she’s ready to adopt. Visiting a girl’s orphanage, Kate and John connect with a beguiling 9-year-old named Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), who paints and seems to keep her own company. Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder) explains that Esther is from Russia originally and that the family who brought her to America died in a house fire. The sister adds that Esther is uncommonly bright, mature for her age and a bit of a princess.

Adopted by the Colemans, Esther is resented by Danny due to the attention his father lavishes on the girl. She insists on wearing pilgrim attire to school and pitches a fit when a bitch classmate grabs the ribbon Esther keeps around her neck. Kate begins to ponder Esther’s trustworthiness when that classmate mysteriously slips off a fort and breaks her ankle. Max knows that the girl was pushed, but keeps it a secret. Sister Abigail pays a house call to reveal the history of accidents that seem to follow Esther wherever she goes.  Esther uses Max to lure the sister to her death. The hellion hides the evidence in a treehouse and when she catches Danny spying on her, threatens to cut his thing off if he tells. As Kate’s suspicion of her adopted daughter grows, both her husband and her therapist begin to question the woman’s sanity.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 72,046 users: 65% for Orphan

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 42 for Orphan

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Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

The Pianist (2002)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the book The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 by Wladyslaw Szpilman
Produced by Roman Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde
150 minutes

A tale of an urban castaway that’s as powerful as it is restrained, The Pianist was Roman Polanski’s finest work in two decades. Originally published in 1946 under the title Death of a City, Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoir of survival detailed the classical pianist’s six years under Nazi occupation in Warsaw. Seizing upon the book as his next film, Polanski selected South African born playwright and screenwriter Ronald Harwood — whose play Taking Sides also featured a composer caught in the maelstrom of World War II — to adapt a screenplay. France’s Le Studio Canal largely financed the €38 million (roughly $33 million) production in association with England’s Cadre Films and after Joseph Fiennes declined the role in order to remain on the British stage, Polanski arrived on Adrien Brody to portray Szpilman. The actor went from 160 to 130 pounds in six weeks to prepare for the part.

Filmed at Babelsburg Studios in Berlin, with additional shooting in the Braga district outside Warsaw, what sets The Pianist apart from WWII dramas like Saving Private Ryan or Enemy At the Gates is its simplicity and grace. Written immediately after the occupation, Szpilman’s story is resplendent in detail and confident enough in its truth not to employ artificiality or unearned sentiments. Turning genre conventions on their head, we meet Jews who are less than virtuous and at least one German who is more than pure evil, creating a landscape that provokes thought and feeling. A tale of genocide, the irony is that Polanski’s craftsmanship is so solid we wish the story kept going. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, Adrien Brody (Best Actor), Ronald Harwood (Best Adapted Screenplay) and Roman Polanski (Best Director) all won Oscars.

In Warsaw of September 1939, pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is performing Chopin’s Nocturne in C Sharp minor for Polish radio when German artillery shells hit the city. Szpilman’s violinist father (Frank Finlay), mother (Maureen Lipman), younger brother Henryk (Ed Stoppard) and two grown sisters (Julia Rayner, Jessica Kate Meyer) rejoice with the news that Britain and France have declared war on Germany, but Poland quickly falls under Nazi control. Szpilman has time to take an adoring cellist named Dorota (Emilia Fox) for coffee before the city’s 360,000 Jews are evicted from their homes and sealed inside a ghetto in October 1940. Szpilman finds employment as a piano player in an upper class Jewish café and along with Henryk, rejects an offer from a family friend named Heller (Roy Smiles) to join the Jewish Ghetto Police.

When Henryk is arrested, Szpilman appeals to Heller’s ego to secure his brother’s release. He keeps his family from being deported by obtaining employment certificates for them, but these prove worthless when in August 1942, the Szpilmans are herded onto trains bound for Treblinka. Heller pulls Szpilman off the line, sparing his life, but the pianist never sees his family again. He survives by joining a Jewish work detail and buys enough time to arrange for his escape. Harbored by friends, Szpilman is reunited with Dorota, now married and expecting a child. Once the Polish uprising begins in August 1944, he’s near the brink of famine. Scrounging for food in the deserted city, Szpilman comes to face to face with Captain Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann). Instead of being shot, the pianist is rewarded by an act of kindness after the German officer hears his music.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 107,318 users: 94% for The Pianist

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 85 for The Pianist

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

The Innocents (1961)
Directed by Jack Clayton
Screenplay by William Archibald and Truman Capote and John Mortimer, based on the novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Produced by Jack Clayton
100 minutes

Submitted in the category of greatest horror movies you’ve never seen is The Innocents, Jack Clayton’s exquisite, heart in a vise adaptation of The Turn of the Screw. The 1898 novella by Henry James had inspired a Broadway play by William Archibald in 1950 (titled The Innocents) and an NBC television drama starring Ingrid Bergman and directed by John Frankenheimer in 1959. Public domain in the United States, 20^th Century Fox owned international rights to James’ story and launched a film version as a British production. Archibald adapted his play, but once Clayton chose the project as his sophomore directorial effort, the director hired John Mortimer to contribute to the story. Clayton then turned to Truman Capote to flesh out a script, utilizing much of James’ dialogue but tweaking some of the action.

The Innocents is a thrill because it exercises artistic restraint, obscuring its images with space and shadow and inviting the audience to give the horrors substance. Under orders to shoot with “Cinemascope” anamorphic lenses Fox had developed and publicized, director of photography Freddie Francis (who’d move into the director’s chair for 15 years until David Lynch recruited him to light The Elephant Man in the same dreamlike fashion) generated claustrophobia with a special lens filter that created an iris effect, clouding the edges of the frame. The child performances are devilish, while Deborah Kerr is just nervous enough to imply that her character may not have both her oars in the water. Like Ridley Scott at his best, Clayton lavishes the film in striking detail and mood with a script that never strays into any blind alleys.

Unwilling to raise his orphaned niece and nephew, a London based man about town (Michael Redgrave) interviews Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) for the position. Inexperienced as a governess, Miss Giddens seems to care enough about children for an uncle seeking a speedy replacement for the previous governess Miss Jessel, who has died. Sent to his country estate in Bly — which her employer describes as “a rather large, a rather lonely place” — Miss Giddens is relieved to get along so well with her adventurous young charge Flora (Pamela Franklin). The genial housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins) confirms that like their uncle, the children can be quite charming and persuasive. When Flora’s brother Miles (Martin Stephens) is suddenly expelled from boarding school, he arrives at Bly for the summer, just as his sister oddly mentioned he would the night before.

Strange things begin to occur at Bly. Under glare of the sun, Miss Giddens spots a man watching her from a tower top. Climbing the stairs, she finds Miles playing there, alone; Mrs. Grose claims that other than two maids and a gardener, no one else shares the estate with them. Playing hide and seek with the children, Miss Giddens glimpses a woman wandering the corridor and while hiding downstairs, she comes face to face with the apparition she spotted on the tower, peering at her through a window. The man she describes to Mrs. Grose is confirmed to be Peter Quint (Peter Wyngarde), an ill-tempered valet who suffered a fatal fall outside that window. Discovering that Miss Jessel drowned herself after Quint’s death, Miss Giddens becomes convinced that the spirits have taken possession of the children in a bid to be reunited from beyond the grave.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 130 users: 86% for The Innocents

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes.

Here’s Part 1 of a bill featuring our friends the pod people.

Body Snatchers (1993)
Directed by Abel Ferrara
Screenplay by Stuart Gordon & Dennis Paoli and Nicholas St. John, screen story by Raymond Cistheri and Larry Cohen, based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
Produced by Robert H. Solo
87 minutes

With a mean and lean resume that included Ms. 45, the pilot episode of Crime Story, King of New York and The Bad Lieutenant, director Abel Ferrara was as bold a bet as any to bring a point of view to the third film adaptation of Jack Finney’s 1954 sci-fi novel The Body Snatchers. With Warner Bros. footing a $13 million bill, shooting wrapped in April 1992 … then nothing happened. Invited to the Cannes Film Festival in May 1993, Body Snatchers opened later that year in France and Germany before the studio snuck it into a dozen U.S. theaters in January 1994. According to Ferrara, the film fell victim to new studio management that had no stake in its success. At 87 minutes, it’s easy to imagine outtakes laying in a vault somewhere that might give the movie depth, but with few exceptions, it’s a flat, lazy effort given a shoddy release platform to match.

Body Snatchers isn’t so much a clunker as it just moseys around the block before the driver puts it back in the garage. Making a military base the landing site of the pods this time around, the script ignores what might have been a potent examination of the nuclear family and its meltdown to focus instead on faceless men in uniform who were acting like pods to begin with. Dinner table concerns in Smallville, USA seem as alien to Ferrara as alien beings and not much energy or thought is put into making either of them very compelling.  The makeup effects by the father and son tandem of Thomas & Barney Burman are excellent. There’s also pleasure in watching the shit hit the fan without a single computer generated image, but casting an actor as gifted off-the-cuff as R. Lee Ermey is indicative of how poorly managed this entire project was.

When her father Steve Malone (Terry Kinney) is dispatched to a U.S. Army base to inspect chemical and biological weapons containment for the EPA, teenager Marti (Gabrielle Anwar) is welcomed by a wild-eyed infantryman who grabs her in a gas station bathroom and warns “They get you when you sleep” before he disappears. Ill at ease with her stepmother Carol (Meg Tilly), Marti marks time on base befriending a heavy metal girl (Christine Elise). At work, Steve is approached by Captain Collins (Forest Whitaker) head of the base medical corps, who reports patients with extreme delusional fixations in his infirmary. Some of them are afraid to sleep. Marti’s 4-year-old half brother Andy (Reilly Murphy) even bolts his preschool when everyone in his class but him produces the same finger painting.

Retrieving Andy and bringing him home to his sister is chopper pilot Tim Young (Billy Wirth). Before the flyboy and the new girl in town can get better acquainted, Andy walks in on his mom decaying in bed, replaced by an imitation exhibiting zero emotion. Marti is almost replicated by an alien pod sprouting in the attic above her. Steve grabs his children and bolts on foot, despite the growing realization that almost everyone on the base has been replaced by an alien invader. This includes General Platt (R. Lee Ermey) who has trucks loaded with pods bound for army bases all over the country. The survivors attempt to stay awake long enough to do something about it.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 170 users: 62% for Body Snatchers

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Gran Torino (2008)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Nick Schenk, story by Dave Johannson & Nick Schenk
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Robert Lorenz, Bill Gerber
116 minutes

Gran Torino belongs in the pocket full of great Clint Eastwood films. This story seems so tailored to his persona as an actor and his partialities as a filmmaker that it’s impossible to consider anyone else in the lead role. Paul Newman as Dirty Harry? Steve McQueen as Josey Wales? Tom Cruise as Frank Horrigan from In The Line of Fire? No way. And Walt Kowalski is a part that seems like it was just waiting there for Eastwood to age into at 78. Written on spec by an aspiring screenwriter in Minnesota named Nick Schenk who listened when old farts like Walt came into the liquor warehouse where he worked and who also had Hmong co-workers on a night shift with him at a videotape company, if Gran Torino is the last performance of Eastwood’s career, he couldn’t have picked a richer note to go out on.

Instead of a stock movie with a paint-by-numbers appeal, Schenk — who got writing help from a buddy named Dave Johannson — seems to have cut this raw but completely resonant drama from life, where men widowed by war, the auto plant and finally their wives find something that still needs the attention of their considerable knowledge and skills. The movie has the conviction not to wimp out on its characters, introducing Walt as more virulent than some actual racists, giving the movie both power and a point of view. The performances (particularly by Christopher Carley as a young Catholic priest and Ahney Her as the teenage daughter Walt sort of adopts) are a surprise and completely refreshing, while Eastwood’s visual palette and pacing marry shadow and substance (Tom Stern lit the picture) and are absolutely striking.

Following the funeral of his wife, retired Detroit auto assemblyman and Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) settles into a life of grizzled solitude, maintaining his vintage 1972 Ford Gran Torino in a neighborhood that much to Walt’s dismay has been abandoned by white flight and repopulated by Hmong immigrants from southeast Asia. Walt is hostile towards practically everybody, from the baby faced Father Janovich (Christopher Carley) his wife instructed to watch over him, to his two estranged sons, to his grandkids, to “zipperheads” and “spooks”. Walt is downright inhospitable to the young man of the house next door, Thao Lor (Bee Vang), a shy Hmong teenager badgered by his strong willed sister Sue (Ahney Her).

Pressured by his derelict cousin Spider (Doua Moua) to join a Hmong gang, Thao is sent to steal Walt’s Gran Torino as an initiation.  Walt scares the boy off by falling in his garage and discharging his M-1 service rifle. When Spider and his crew return to discipline their new recruit and a scuffle breaks out, Walt runs the gangbangers off with his rifle. Hailed as a hero by his neighbors and their people, Walt is gradually broken out of his bitter shell by Sue. To correct the disgrace he’s brought to the family, Thao is loaned out to Walt for odd jobs, but it’s Walt who takes the kid under his wing, helping him land a construction job and encouraging him to pursue a girl he’s interested in named Youa (Choua Kue). When Spider and his crew refuse to leave the family alone, Walt sees one last problem for him to fix.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 206 users: 80% for Gran Torino

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 72 for Gran Torino

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The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Richard LaGravenese, based on the novel by Robert James Waller
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Kathleen Kennedy
135 minutes

For every expletive harnessed in the disparagement of The Bridges of Madison County as it sold 50 million copies in Wal-Marts worldwide — Meryl Streep reportedly loathed the clumsily written novel, referring to it as “a crime to literature” — the opposite could describe the film adaptation, given nuance by screenwriter Richard LaGravense and directed by Clint Eastwood with a full bloom perhaps carried over from Unforgiven and A Perfect World. It’s an unhurried and thoughtful love story in spite of growing from the same magic beans as Robert James Waller’s publishing sensation. Screen rights were purchased by Amblin Entertainment for perhaps Steven Spielberg to direct this fantasy of a bored housewife lifted into rapture by the appearance of a Clint Eastwood type in her driveway.

No matter how incredulous the setup, what’s effective and even moving about The Bridges of Madison County is that Meryl Streep is so gifted and Eastwood’s direction of her so assured that a real sense of longing is imparted; it doesn’t have to be longing for a National Geographic photographer that visited your farmhouse while your family was away, it could a romantic pang for anything or anybody. The script is skillfully bookended by grown children applying their late mother’s discoveries to their own lives and is colored by a powerful, low key musical score by saxophonist and composer Lennie Niehaus, as well as vintage blues tunes by Dinah Washington, Johnny Hartman and Irene Kral. The result is a film that never asks for any emotional investment it doesn’t earn and earn well.

Carolyn Johnson (Annie Corley) and her brother Michael (Victor Slezak) convene at an Iowa farmhouse for the reading of their late mother Francesca’s will. The first surprise is that instead of a burial in the plot purchased by her late husband, Francesca wishes to be cremated and her ashes thrown from a local covered bridge. The opening of a safe deposit box reveals radiant photos of their mother the children have never seen, as well as a letter from a man who was her lover, a photographer for National Geographic named Robert Kincaid; upon his death, he left most of his belongings to Francesca and requested his ashes be scattered from the same bridge their mother wishes to be. A key directs the children to a trunk, in which Francesca has left her children three journals revealing how she came to meet Kincaid.

Moving back to 1965, Francesca (Meryl Streep) — who grew up in Italy and came to Iowa with a serviceman (Jim Haynie) she met there — is given four days of peace when her husband and two teenagers head to the Illinois State Fair. Francesca receives a visitor in Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood), a photographer searching for a covered bridge for a National Geographic story. Offering to take him there herself, Francesca is drawn to Kincaid’s free spirit and creativity, qualities less than abundant in rural Iowa. He seems drawn to her passion and sense of humor, qualities even rarer in his trips around the world. She invites him to dinner and an affair quickly blossoms. Given the choice of leaving Iowa with Robert, Francesca ultimately makes a decision she lives with for the rest of her life.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 39 users: 90% for The Bridges of Madison County

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 66 for The Bridges of Madison County

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