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.

Knife in the Water (1962)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Jerzy Skolimowski, story by Jakub Goldberg & Roman Polanski
Produced by Stanislaw Zylewicz
94 minutes

The biggest surprise in Knife in the Water is that the filmmaking is so in tune that the script doesn’t need surprises to hold our attention. Five years of study at the Polish Film School in Lodz led Roman Polanski to the idea for a feature length thriller to take place in a confined space, though the backdrop he selected was the Mazury lake district he’d camped and sailed. Receiving a go-ahead from “Kamera” Productions — a state owned film company in Poland — Polanski and his friends Jakub Goldberg and Jerzy Skolimowski finished a script in the summer of 1959. Skolimowski had hit upon the idea for the action to span a 24-hour period. Rejected by the Ministry of Culture on the grounds that the script had no social value, Polanski was given a year to resubmit it. By the spring of 1961, a loosening of Soviet control in the arts permitted Knife in the Water to move forward with Polanski directing.

Opening March 1962, Polish critics slammed Knife in the Water. Premier Wladyslaw Gomulka denounced it as a film that “displayed the kind of thinking for which there is no place anywhere in the Communist world.” But when it was shown at the Venice Film Festival in August, word of mouth began to build. The film arrived in the United States in October 1963 for the first New York Film Festival. A critical sensation, it even picked up an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. Knife in the Water is an antidote to contemporary thrillers stocked with psychos or dead bodies. The subtle power games between the characters build to an inevitable clash while the nautical atmosphere and attractive actors keeps the picture exciting throughout. Krzysztof Komeda composed an elegant jazz musical score that is perfect for the film’s cool decadence.

The married couple of Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) and Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) take a Sunday drive in the countryside. Affluent enough to own a car but just barely able to conceal their contempt for each other, the afternoon suddenly becomes more exciting for the pair when a 19-year-old boy (Zygmunt Malanowicz) hitchhiking in the middle of the road is almost mowed down by Andrzej. The couple gives the kid a ride to a marina, where they plan to take their sailboat out for a day and night on the lake. Seeking to flex his superiority, Andrzej invites the kid to come with them. A drifter more accustomed to the woods than the water, the boy receives training in basic seamanship from Andrzej, a sportswriter and former sailor. Krystyna seems to enjoy the presence of the younger specimen, who reveals a switchblade knife in his possession.

Sensitive to being bossed around and dominated by Andrzej, the boy guts the afternoon out, perhaps due to his attraction for Andrzej’s wife, a skilled bosun in her own right. While husband and wife cavort in the lake — leaving the boy alone on the boat when he claims he can’t swim — the wind suddenly picks up and it’s Krystyna who climbs back into the boat and gets it under control. On their way back to dry land to drop their passenger off, Andrzej runs aground and when it begins to storm, the three of them take shelter for the night below deck. Krystyna and the boy wake early and feeling threatened by the attention she’s given him, Andrzej throws the knife overboard and in the tussle that follows, makes the boy disappear below the waves as well. The couple is forced to then decide what to do.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 1,989 users: 85% for Knife In the Water

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

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 Ninth Gate (1999)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Enrique Urbizu and John Brownjohn & Roman Polanski, based on the novel El Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
Produced by Roman Polanski
133 minutes

Every filmmaker can be excused for making a terrible movie or two. For Roman Polanski, one of those excuses is titled The Ninth Gate. Nine days before photography was set to begin in July 1996 on a black comedy titled The Double, John Travolta dropped out of the dual lead role over creative differences with Polanski. Steve Martin agreed to step in, but the project was scrubbed by Mandalay Pictures before shooting could start. Desperate to get his next film going, Polanski turned to a script adapted by Enrique Urbizu from Arturo Perez-Reverte’s intricately plotted supernatural mystery El Club Dumas. Working with John Brownjohn over the course of the next year, Polanski dumped Perez-Reverte’s subplot about a lost chapter of The Three Musketeers and focusing on more commercial elements, arrived on the title The Ninth Gate.

A Spanish-French co-production financed by Artisan Entertainment at $38 million, The Ninth Gate alternates between a nap and a kind of stupor. Resembling a detective mystery, what’s most mysterious is the lack of clarity over the most basic details, like whether the girl is real or a figment of the protagonist’s imagination. The effect is less artistic and seems more like sloppy filmmaking. Costumed in glasses, goatee and combed back hair in an effort to look adult, Johnny Depp is miscast as a slick book dealer. The talents of cinematographer Darius Khondji (City of Lost Children, Seven) are wasted on a film that looks flat and disinterested throughout. Polanski just never gets anything in tune, settling on bouncy musical cues that recall Elmer Bernstein’s score for Ghostbusters without anything remotely amusing happening on screen.

In present day New York, rare book dealer Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) swindles a four-volume set of Don Quixote printed in 1780 from the family of a dying collector. A wealthy client named Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) — whose collection is devoted to the subject of the devil — hires Corso to appraise his latest acquisition, Aristide Torchia’s 17^th century work The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, which contains engravings Torchia is said to have adapted from the Delomelanicon, a mythical book penned by Lucifer himself. Only two other copies of The Nine Gates exist and Balkan suspects his may be a forgery. After stashing the Torchia with his partner Bernie (James Russo), Corso is visited by Liana Tefler (Lena Olin), widow of the book’s previous owner. Seeking it back, she seduces and attacks Corso, then apparently ransacks his partner’s store and kills him.

Arriving in Toledo, Spain, Corso visits bookbinding Ceniza brothers (José López Rodero in a dual role) who reveal that three of the Torchia’s engravings bear the cryptic initials “LCF”. With a mystery girl (Emmanuelle Seigner) following him, Corso seeks out the owners of the other two books: Victor Fargas (Jack Taylor) in Sintra, Portugal and Baroness Kessler (Barbara Jefford) in Paris, both of whom are killed in rapid succession. Studying their copies of The Nine Gates, Corso notices variations in their “LCF” engravings, illustrations of castle keeps, gateways and keys. He concludes that all three books are genuine and Balkan believes that when the nine “LCF” engravings are reunited, the prince of darkness will be revealed to him. Liana Tefler and her bodyguard manage to steal one of the books, which Corso’s mystery girl appears eager to help him get back.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 52,840 users: 60% for The Ninth Gate

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 44 for The Ninth Gate

What do you say?

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 Ghost Writer (2010)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Robert Harris & Roman Polanski, based on the novel The Ghost by Robert Harris
Produced by Roman Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde
128 minutes

Humming with gleeful malevolence, The Ghost Writer could be considered a throwback to ‘70s political thrillers like The Parallax View or Three Days of the Condor if it wasn’t so much fun. Robert Harris had wanted to write about the relationship between a ghostwriter and a politician for 15 years. He found a story in 2006 when Tony Blair became dogged by war crimes accusations on his way out of 10 Downing Street. Moving one step further, the author imagined a British prime minister who was installed by the CIA and the truth being stumbled onto by the ghostwriter of his memoirs. Envisioned briefly as a stageplay along the lines of Sleuth, it became a novel instead. When Roman Polanski’s $130 million production of the author’s historical thriller Pompeii was shelved in 2007 over financing, Harris sent the director his manuscript for The Ghost.

Harris & Polanski adapted the novel in Paris and Polanski and his producers were able to raise financing from private funding sources in Europe at a budget of €32 million (roughly $45 million). Collaborating with cinematographer Pawel Edelman for the third consecutive film and editor Hervé De Luze for the sixth, Polanski’s expertise with the thriller chimes The Ghost Writer along like a Swiss clock that strikes cuckoo at the top of the hour. Shot at Studio Babelsberg for the interiors and the German island of Sylt for exteriors, the compound and the coastal wilderness where much of the action takes place sets the film apart visually, but it’s insidious wit that makes The Ghost Writer so enjoyable. Not many directors of political thrillers would pause to focus on a Filipino gardener raking leaves in a windstorm. Alexandre Desplat composed the film’s playful musical score.

An unnamed British writer we’ll know only as The Ghost (Ewan McGregor) lunches with his agent (Jon Bernthal) and is put up for the job of rewriting the memoirs of former prime minister Adam Lang when the body of the previous ghostwriter — a loyal aide to the politician — washes up on the shores of New England. A political novice, The Ghost passes the scrutiny of publishing exec John Maddox (James Belushi) and Lang’s D.C. attorney Sidney Kroll (Timothy Hutton) when he promises a memoir that the layperson can relate to. Dispatched to the desolate island of “Old Haven”, where Lang’s publisher has lent him his American vacation compound, The Ghost meets Lang’s personal assistant Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall), his cunning wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) and the charismatic Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) himself.

As The Ghost interviews Lang — a student actor who became interested in politics when he met his wife — the International Criminal Court announces an investigation into the ex-prime minister on charges he approved the kidnap and torture of four terror suspects from Pakistan. As media and human rights activists descend on the island, The Ghost is moved onto the compound for security. He discovers proof that Lang was politically active two years earlier than he claims and that the previous ghostwriter was the one who leaked the human rights scandal to British Prime Minister Richard Rycart (Robert Pugh). Sneaking onto the mainland to interview Lang’s mysterious college mentor Paul Emmett (Tom Wilkinson), The Ghost unravels a plot indicating that Lang may have been recruited and run by the CIA.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 7,950 users: 70% for The Ghost Writer

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 77 for The Ghost Writer

What do you say?

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.

Chinatown (1974)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Robert Towne
Produced by Robert Evans
130 minutes

The only thing really left to debate about Chinatown is whether it belongs among the 25 best films ever made, 10 best or whether it vaults over titles like Citizen Kane or Casablanca as The Best Film Ever Made. According to the legend as repeated by screenwriter Robert Towne, its genesis was a 1969 photo essay in a Los Angeles Times about Raymond Chandler’s L.A. Conceived as a love letter to the vanishing city of his youth and using something as vague as land and water as catalysts, Towne would sell Paramount Pictures production head Robert Evans on his concept for a ‘30s detective mystery and writing with Jack Nicholson in mind, deliver a 178 page script that both intrigued and bewildered director Roman Polanski. Pruning the epic script with Polanski, a point of contention was the ending. The screenwriter wanted good to win the day. The director preferred tragedy.

The power of Chinatown is the care the film takes to recreate Depression Era Los Angeles — which Gittes refers to only half jokingly as “a small town” at one point — and fill it with a complex story that remains mesmerizing no matter how many times it’s replayed. Through stunning production design by Richard Sylbert, a desaturated color scheme that evokes black & white photography and a sensual musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, Chinatown achieves the illusion it was produced in 1947 instead of 1974. Where most whodunits focus on little more than heists or serial killers, Towne weaves an ambitious tale of natural resources, corruption and family scandal that stretches clear into the horizon, much as the city of Los Angeles does. In addition to the sucker punch ending, Polanski contributes a rhythm that enables locations like a city morgue or a retirement home to leap off the screen and feel real.

In Los Angeles of the late 1930s, private detective J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by “Evelyn Mulwray” (Diane Ladd) to verify that her husband Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) — chief of the Department of Water and Power — is having an affair. Gittes shadows Mulwray at City Hall, where the engineer cites safety concerns for his refusal to build a dam that would ease the burden on agriculture, which gripped in a drought are sharing the water supply with the public. Gittes completes his job by snapping photos of Mulwray with a blonde in Echo Park. The photos are mysteriously reprinted in the newspaper and the real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) reveals herself to serve Gittes with a lawsuit. Eager to uncover who set him up, Gittes seeks help from Mrs. Mulwray, who now prefers to drop the matter entirely. Before Gittes can question her husband, Mulwray’s body is pulled out of a reservoir.

Pressed for information by Lt. Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez) — Gittes’ partner when they patrolled the morally ambiguous streets of Chinatown — Gittes is hired by Mrs. Mulwray to solve her husband’s death. Snooping around the reservoir where Mulwray died, Gittes is cornered by two goons (Roy Jenson, Roman Polanski) and has a nostril cut open. Sensing that Mrs. Mulwray is hiding something, Gittes visits her estranged father Noah Cross (John Huston), a power broker who once owned the city’s water supply with Mulwray. His interest lies in finding the girl the private eye photographed with Mulwray and he hires Gittes to do so. A key to the mystery lies in the San Fernando Valley, where farmers are being pressured to sell by an anonymous landowner who stands to make a fortune if the dam project that Mulwray blocked is now approved.

Alex Simon of The Hollywood Interview sat down with Robert Towne on the 35^th anniversary of Chinatown for an exhaustive interview on the development of the script.

Richard Ballad caught up with Roman Polanski 35 years previous for an interview in the August 1974 issue of Penthouse Magazine.

What do you say?

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 Tenant (1976)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Gérard Brach & Roman Polanski, based on the novel Le Locataire chimérique by Roland Topor
Produced by Andrew Braunsberg
126 minutes

Marrying the economy of a student filmmaker with the technical flourish of an Academy Award nominee for Best Director, Roman Polanski’s follow-up to Chinatown is an occasionally freakish problem child. The narrative misbehaves, some of the production choices are uneasy, but this thriller is unforgettable. Based on a 1964 novel by French illustrator Roland Topor, film rights were obtained by Universal Pictures for Jack Clayton to direct. It was picked up by Paramount and while Clayton labored to finish The Great Gatsby, studio chief Robert Evans apparently hooked Polanski into making The Tenant. Shot in Paris with Polanski actually playing the lead role, the second most jarring aspect is that everyone in the cast except Polanski, Melvyn Douglas, Jo Van Fleet and Shelley Winters had their voices dubbed to English for the American prints.

Alfred Hitchcock — who was much more comfortable in front of a camera — never starred in one of his pictures and it’s difficult to justify Polanski directing himself in The Tenant. While Robert DeNiro or Harvey Keitel would have launched this into another realm, watching Polanski duck in and out of scenes gives the film a unique vibe it might not have had with a star. A black sheep relation to Rosemary’s Baby without characters to empathize with, the film is equipped with a wicked black wit, unusual lighting by Sven Nykvist and a disquieting musical score by Philippe Sarde. Unconventional through and through, Polanski uses the film’s peculiarities to lure us into the story rather than alienate us.  An eclectic mix of American character actors and French performers, tongue-in-cheek goofiness and sinister thrill, The Tenant plays more like a wily Sundance entry than a labored Hollywood film.

A young man named Trelkovsky (Roman Polanski) arrives at a Paris apartment building, where he troubles the sullen property manager (Shelley Winters) to show him a room for rent. Garishly decorated and lacking a toilet, The Concierge points to the spot where the previous tenant landed when she jumped out the window. The tenant survived the fall, but The Concierge seems satisfied that she won’t recover. After passing his interview with the building’s owner Monsieur Zy (Melvyn Douglas), Trelkovsky visits Bretonneau Hospital, where the tenant is covered in bandages and cannot speak. At her bedside is Stella (Isabelle Adjani), who becomes even more distraught when her friend lets loose a blood curdling scream and dies. Trelkovsky takes Stella to see Enter the Dragon and after making out in the theater, go their separate ways.

Soon, strange things are afoot at Trelkovsky’s apartment building. Behind a wardrobe, he discovers a hole in the wall containing a whole human tooth. With a view of the toilet across the courtyard, Trelkovsky observes tenants standing still for hours. His neighbor Madame Gaderian (Lila Kedrova) and a disabled daughter knock on his door, fearful that someone has lodged a complaint against them. Later, Madame Dioz (Jo Van Fleet) visits, demanding he add his signature to a petition to evict Madam Gaderian and her son due to the noise. Not certain what she’s talking about, Trelkovsky refuses. Investigating the toilet, he discovers Egyptian hieroglyphics on the wall of the type the previous tenant was obsessed with. He becomes convinced he’s suffering a plot by his neighbors to kill him and with Stella’s help, tries to figure out why.

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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 …

In Cold Blood (1967)
Directed by Richard Brooks
Screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on the book by Truman Capote
Produced by Richard Brooks
134 minutes

Richard Brooks’ screen version of the “non-fiction novel” by Truman Capote opened the same year as The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, so if there’s a debate about which 1967 film had the greatest impact on future of motion pictures, In Cold Blood is not in that debate. The murder of the Clutter family never warrants the thousands of man hours that were dedicated to analyzing and recreating the crime, but the film illustrates how a gifted actor, composer and cinematographer can elevate material into something magnificent. Ignoring suggestions by Columbia Pictures that Steve McQueen & Paul Newman play Perry Smith & Dick Hickock, Brooks cast unknowns in Robert Blake & Scott Wilson and tried to inject as much realism as possible into this true crime story, shooting at some of the actual locations and casting participants in the 1959 murder trial as extras.

Playing a natural born killer itched by the occasional impulse to do good, Robert Blake is brilliant. Quincy Jones composed a jazz score that initially seems inappropriate for heavy drama, but the music keeps the viewer off-balance, unsure of how we’re supposed to feel about what’s happening. The best reason of all to revisit In Cold Blood is the cinematography by Conrad Hall, one of the most vivid examples of the harsh beauty he would become renowned for. In terms of precision, lighting a black & white movie is like being called up to pitch in the majors and Hall was one of the league’s superstars; few movies using monochrome film stock or widescreen framing utilize the medium as gorgeously as In Cold Blood. Largely forgotten in spite of the number of actors he directed to Oscars, Richard Brooks brings intelligence and a point of view to the examination of a motiveless crime.

Stepping off a Greyhound bus in Kansas City with a guitar and most of his possessions in a box, Perry Smith (Robert Blake) makes an urgent call to the Kansas State Penitentiary, hoping the pastor there can put him in touch with a friend whose guidance he desperately needs. Instead, smooth talking ex-con Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) picks him up, violating Perry’s parole by returning him to Kansas. Dick is eager for Perry’s help breaking into a home 400 miles west in the town of Holcomb, where according to a former cellmate of Dick’s, farmer Herbert Clutter has $10,000 or “maybe more” locked in a safe. Chewing Aspirin for chronic leg pain he’s suffered since a motorcycle accident, Perry resists going along with the robbery, but is talked into it by Dick, who has never killed anyone and covets Perry’s experience in that area.

When Clutter, his wife, 16-year-old daughter Nancy (Brenda Currin) and 15-year-old son are found shot to death, FBI agent Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe) begins pursuing leads. With no shotgun shells and no fingerprints to work from, the feds catch a break when Dick’s cellmate comes forward to offer information in exchange for a reward. Dreaming of sunken treasure, Perry drags Dick down to Mexico, a trip his partner finances by cutting phony checks along the way. Missing his gravely ill father (Jeff Corey), Dick compels Perry to return with him to Kansas. Arrested in Las Vegas for a stolen car, the men are interrogated by Agent Dewey and his men. Also hovering around the case is reporter Bill Jensen (Paul Stewart) who is obsessed by the senselessness of the crime and seeks answers of how something like this could happen.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,891 users: 83% for In Cold Blood

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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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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Tightrope (1984)
Directed by Richard Tuggle*
Written by Richard Tuggle
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Fritz Manes
114 minutes

Like a quarter shining in the gutter, Tightrope could stand a polish, but if you catch it on a rainy afternoon or late at night, this unabashed B-movie offers spills and thrills aplenty. Escape From Alcatraz scribe Richard Tuggle took his cue from a series of unsolved rapes in the Bay Area. His research resulted in a cop thriller sold to Clint Eastwood under the condition the screenwriter be allowed to make his directorial debut. Tuggle’s struggles on the set threatened his job security on day 1, but DGA guidelines — amended after Eastwood replaced Philip Kaufman as director of The Outlaw Josey Wales with himself — mandated that Tuggle remain on and receive a credit for directing. Whether you believe Eastwood collaborated with Tuggle from there or it was more likely the other way around, whoever directed Tightrope managed a good film that occasionally flirts with being a very good one.

Tightrope could either be considered a Cannon Films styled cop thriller like Cobra or Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects made with a real script and much better actors, or it could be considered just another Cannon Films styled cop thriller. The business of a serial killing rapist on the loose in a Red Light District is routine, repetitive and almost completely indistinguishable for a hundred other bad movies and TV shows. Where the picture shows life are its domestic scenes — where Eastwood’s chemistry with his 11-year-old daughter Alison glows — and the cop’s relationship with a rape counselor played by Geneviève Bujold. Eastwood relocated the script from San Francisco to New Orleans, and the offbeat French Canadian actress proves as alluring as the city itself. The killer is given no substance, but since the family he menaces is something we care about, at the very least, Tightrope provides a riveting ride to the finish.

In New Orleans, divorced police captain Wes Block (Clint Eastwood) cancels plans to watch the Saints game with his two young daughters (Alison Eastwood, Jennifer Beck) when a prostitute is found strangled to death in her home. When another working girl turns up drowned in a bathhouse, rape counselor Beryl Thibodeaux (Geneviève Bujold) presses Block to involve her office in the investigation. Prowling the brothels of The Big Easy to interview prostitutes, Block finds the time to indulge his dark side with a popsicle sucking tart (Rebecca Perle) and a nurse (Margaret Howell) among others moonlighting in the sex trade. Personal items Block leaves at his nocturnal activities — handcuffs, a necktie — begin to turn up alongside the bodies of the prostitutes he’s frequented.

Once she complains to City Hall about his lack of cooperation, Beryl Thibodeaux receives a visit from Block at the non-profit rape center she runs. The cop later seeks Beryl out at her gym and over an oyster lunch on the Mississippi, bluntly shares his attraction for her. She accepts his invitation to go trick or treating with his girls in the French Quarter and receives their approval to continue dating their dad. Meanwhile, Block and his partner (Dan Hedaya) trace glass fragments at the murder scenes to a local beer bottling plant. The killer responds by visiting Block’s daughters, killing their nanny and almost strangling Block. The cop narrows his manhunt onto one suspect in particular, but while he’s staking out the man’s apartment, the killer goes hunting for Beryl.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 11 users: 82% for Tightrope

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Changeling (2008)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Robert Lorenz
141 minutes

Marketed as more than just “based on a true story” but actually “a true story”, there’s a great piece of pulp fiction lurking beneath Changeling, a breathtaking recreation of early 20^th century Los Angeles and a journey down a dark passage almost too lurid to support the claims of its advertising. That’s the dilemma of this highly touted spec script by J. Michael Straczynski, a career TV writer who was tipped off by a source at City Hall about a long forgotten case of a missing child and massive civic corruption. Ron Howard was eager to direct, until Frost/Nixon caught his attention. Howard’s name on the credits certainly doesn’t buy much critical cache these days, but as directed by Clint Eastwood, Changeling has a jeweler’s eye for historical detail and a rough edge that recalls James Ellroy, not Lifetime Television For Women.

Changeling moves through Los Angeles of yore by street car, where LAPD gun squads mowed through organized crime and women who threatened the department ended up branded as hysterical at best and in mental hospitals at worst. The drama is put into motion by a mass murder so gruesome it might have made Robert Stack piss himself, prime real estate for film noir, but promoted as a true life drama, the film’s intentions seems confused. The cast is superb, with Angelina Jolie’s exquisite features giving a silent film performance in a talkie and Amy Ryan doing work as her two-fisted friend. Unlike L.A. Confidential, the characters are unable to shake themselves out of the rigors of plot, but the fact that Eastwood chalks the sights and feelings of that noir classic so convincingly makes it worth visiting.

On March 10, 1928 in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is called to cover a shift at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, postponing an afternoon with her 9-year-old son Walter (Gatlin Griffith). Returning home to find Walter missing, Christine is unable to marshal the full resources of the LAPD, which according to the weekly radio address of a pastor at St. Paul’s Presbyterian named Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich) ranks as “the most violent, corrupt and incompetent police department this side of the Rocky Mountains”. In July, police captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) notifies Christine that her son has been found alive in Illinois. With the press in attendance as mother and son are reunited at Union Station, Christine does not recognize the boy who gets off the train to be Walter.

Despite assertions by Capt. Jones that Walter’s appearance may have changed due to his ordeal, neither Christine nor her son’s dentist or schoolteacher believe him to be the same boy. When she refuses to accept the LAPD’s conclusion and takes her story public, Jones has Christine interned at a psychiatric hospital. There, a prostitute (Amy Ryan) reveals that most of the women have been committed to keep them from making trouble for the beleaguered LAPD for one reason or another. While Briegleb and powerful attorney S.S. Hahn (Geoff Pierson) rally to her defense, Detective Lester Ybarra (Michael Kelly) begins to unravel the ghoulish case of rancher Gordon Northcott (Jason Butler Harner) who appears to have kidnapped and murdered up to 20 boys before fleeing to Canada. Once captured, Northcott remains dubious as to whether or not Walter was one of his victims.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 191 users: 61% for Changeling

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 63 for Changeling

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Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by John Lee Hancock, based on the book by John Berendt
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Arnold Stiefel
155 minutes

The film adaptation of John Berendt’s Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil — known in Savannah with equal exasperation and pride as “The Book” — may be a tone deaf murder mystery/comedy that never comes together despite a ponderous two and a half hour running time. It may also be a faithful adaptation of a book less enamored with John Grisham style plotting and more devoted to the dissonant rhythms of a town, chock full of eccentrics and historical anecdotes that fascinate despite never really coming together in 400 pages of paperback. What to make of this luxuriously made film by Clint Eastwood is that it’s about the murder trial of an antiques dealer, a fairly flat made-for-TV movie that could have easily taken place in Portland, Maine or Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil transposes scenes straight from the book without managing to capture anything like the feeling of reading the book. It’s a mystery that fails to feel mysterious. The setting is oddly flat, as if Eastwood was more comfortable shooting west of the Continental Divide than in the Deep South. His sensibilities seem to drift toward a feature length Perry Mason episode attempting to press into sheet metal what is strange and exotic in the book. Maybe Alan J. Pakula would have brought something atmospheric and kinky to the film, maybe no director would have. Kevin Spacey brings terrific panache to his performance, but John Cusack is given little to nothing to do as the writer unraveling a ho-hum murder.

Author John Kelso (John Cusack) arrives in Savannah, Georgia on behalf of Town & Country Magazine to write an article on the annual Christmas party of antiques dealer Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), whose civic accomplishments and invitation only social affairs are renowned in the Coastal Empire. Word of Kelso’s assignment gets around, particularly to singer Mandy Nicholls (Alison Eastwood) who lures the author to a party hosted by musician and scalawag Joe Odom (Paul Hipp). Kelso discovers that Williams asked Town & Country for him specifically based on a poorly received novel Kelso wrote, but the author is exposed to a different side of the nouveau riche renovator when the night of the party, Williams shoots his volatile young lover Billy Hanson (Jude Law) to death in self defense.

Exclaiming to his agent that Savannah is like “Gone With the Wind on mescaline”, Kelso ditches his magazine piece to write a book on the Jim Williams trial. Among the characters with a place in the mystery are transvestite entertainer The Lady Chablis (as herself) who insists on accompanying Kelso to a cotillion ball, industrial chemist Luther Driggers (Geoffrey Lewis) who serves as jury foreman despite his veiled threats to poison the city’s water supply, armed and daffy society dame Serena Dawes (Dorothy Loudon) and a “root doctor” named Minerva (Irma P. Hall) who Williams reaches out to for legal assistance along with his obtuse attorney (Jack Thompson). Minerva believes that Billy’s restless spirit must be appeased for Williams to have peace and she sees through the empty space in Kelso’s soul as well.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 29 users: 52% for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 57 for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

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