Jean Harlow ! Spencer Tracy ! William Powell ! Myrna Loy ! Four top stars at the top of their game shining bright in LIBELED LADY, a screwball comedy directed by Jack Conway with that trademark MGM gloss. Despite the zany improbability of the script by Maurine Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers, and George Oppenheimer, the crackling, witty dialog gives all four stars (and supporting actor Walter Connolly) plenty of good material.
Here’s the plot: rich heiress Connie Allenbury (Loy) is suing the New York Evening Star for printing a story about her being a husband stealer. Her price: five million! Editor Warren Haggerty (Tracy), after once again blowing off his nuptials to long-time flame Gladys Benton (Harlow), recruits ex-reporter and frenemy Bill Chandler (Powell) in a crazy scheme involving marrying him off to Gladys (and is she pissed!), hop an ocean liner to London, and return with Connie, using his…
What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
Last night, if you were up at 12 midnight and couldn’t get to sleep, you could have turned over to Movies TV and watched the 1988 film, Punchline.
Sally Field is Lilah, a New Jersey housewife who, in between getting her children ready for school and helping her husband (John Goodman) throw dinner parties, is pursuing a career as a stand-up comedian. Everyone says that she has a lot of stage presence but she struggles with her material. She’s even resorted to buying jokes from a seedy man who hangs out in a grimy diner.
Tom Hanks is Steve Gold, the youngest member of a family of doctors. When we first meet Steve, he’s getting kicked out of medical school for cheating on an exam. That’s probably for the best, though. Steve doesn’t want to be a doctor. He wants to make people laugh! Every night, he performs at a comedy club known as the Gas Station. Audiences love him almost as much as he hates himself.
Together … they solve crimes!
No, actually, they don’t. I wish they had but they don’t. Instead, in the tradition ofA Star is Born, Steve ends up mentoring Lilah and helping her develop her own voice as a comedian. Lilah attempts to balance her loyality to her family with her friendship with Steve. It’s not always easy, largely because Steve isn’t exactly emotionally stable. On stage, Steve may be in control but offstage, he’s frequently selfish and self-destructive. Complicating things is the fact that, even as he watches her talent threaten to eclipse his own, Steve thinks he might be falling in love with Lilah.
Punchline is an uneven movie, largely due to the fact that, while one role is perfectly cast, another one most definitely is not. Not surprisingly, Tom Hanks is believable as a stand-up comedian. It’s not just that he’s obviously comfortable on the comedy club stage. Hanks also shows that he knows how to tell a joke. To put it simply, he has good timing. As played by Tom Hanks, you can look at Steve Gold and imagine people actually paying money for him to make them laugh.
But then you’ve got Sally Field. At no point is Sally Field believable as a stand-up comedian. That’s not so much a problem at the beginning of the film when Field is supposed to an inexperienced amateur. But, as the film progresses, we’re asked to believe that Lilah could conceivably win a spot on television over Hanks and there’s nothing about Field’s performance that suggests that would be possible. When we laugh at Sally Field’s jokes, it’s because she’s Sally Field and she’s talking about multiple orgasms. However, the comedy club audience doesn’t know that she’s Sally Field. Instead, they just know that she’s a comedian who has absolutely no timing.
Much like The Comedian and the Showtime TV series I’m Dyin’ Up Here, Punchline is one of those films that really goes overboard with the audience reaction shots. The only thing worse than listening to an unfunny comedian is then being assaulted by a shot or the sound of an audience dying of laughter. If someone’s not funny, showing some random guy doing spit take isn’t going to help. One thing that directors rarely seem to take into account is that laughter is rarely neat. It’s rare that a huge group of people both start and stop laughing at the exact same moment. There’s usually a stray chuckle or two to be heard, both before and after the punchline has been delivered. Even Tom Hanks, who actually is funny in the movie, is sabotaged by one scene where a group of patients at a hospital are way too amused by his act.
The film’s a bit too long and it takes its dramatic moments way too seriously but it’s almost worth watching for Tom Hanks. Hanks plays a real bastard in Punchline but you still care about Steve because he’s a likable bastard. As you watch the film, you hope Steve becomes a star even if he doesn’t really deserve it. I mean, he’s Tom Hanks!
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Today is the first day of summer so these 4 shots all celebrate films about summer vacation!
4 Shots From 4 Summer Films
Race With The Devil (1975, dir by Jack Starrett)
Hitch-Hike (1977, dir by Pasquale Festa Campanile)
When it comes to Robert Zemeckis, there seems to be two different types of film lovers.
There are those who feels that, as a director, Zemeckis makes films where relatively thin and sentimental stories are used as an excuse to show what he can do with CGI.
And then there are those of us who love Zemeckis’s brand of sincere, effects-driven storytelling. I was in tears by the end of The Walk and, as much as I tried to resist, the trailer for Welcome to Marwen brought tears to my mismatched eyes as well.
Of course, it helps to know something about the true story that this film is based on. Welcome to Marwen was inspired by a documentary called Marwencol. Here’s the description of Marwencol‘s plot, which I lifted from Wikipedia because I’m lazy:
On April 8, 2000, Mark Hogancamp was attacked outside of a bar by five men who beat him nearly to death. After nine days in a coma and forty days in the hospital, Mark was discharged with brain damage that left him little memory of his previous life. Unable to afford therapy, Mark creates his own by building a 1/6-scale World War II-era Belgian town in his yard and populating it with dolls representing himself, his friends, and even his attackers. He calls that town “Marwencol,” a portmanteau of the names “Mark,” “Wendy” and “Colleen.”
Mark was initially discovered by photographer David Naugle, who documented and shared his story with Esopus magazine and then his work was shown in a New York art gallery. But having the label of “art” applied to his intensely personal work forces Mark to make a choice between the safety of his fictional town and the real world he’s avoided since his attack.
It’s hard to think of any actor that embodies wounded humanity quite as well as Steve Carell. (You even felt kinda sorry for him in Foxcatcher.) Welcome to Marwen (which was originally announced as The Women of Marwen) has been mentioned as one of two Oscar contenders featuring Steve Carell, the other being Beautiful Boy.
Way back in 2015, Creedwas a huge surprise, a Rocky spin-off that paid homage to the films that came before it while, at the same time, establishing its own identity. After their acclaimed work in Fruitvale Station, Creed made a star out of Michael B. Jordan and definitely led to Ryan Coogler getting the chance to direct Black Panther. It also brought an Oscar nomination for Sylvester Stallone, something that, before the film’s release, nobody thought would ever happen.
Well, we all knew that there would inevitably be a sequel. Today, the trailer for Creed II was released and … well, to be honest, its looks pretty conventional. Coogler did not write or direct the sequel. Instead, the directing was handled by Steve Caple, Jr. while the script was written by Stallone himself. In this one, Creed steps into the ring to fight the son of the man who killed his father. It looks like the film is designed to be crowd pleaser but you have to wonder if it will have any of the attention to detail and the subtle wit that distinguished Coogler’s film.
Oh well. At least it’s always enjoyable to watch Michael B. Jordan did his thing.
I have long contended that the most annoying serial killer of all time was Paul Michael Stephani, a resident of Minneapolis who killed three women in 1980.
Stephani was known as The Weepy-Voiced Killer. (Even his nickname was annoying.) Whenever Stephani committed a murder, he would promptly call 911 and confess while sobbing. As you might expect would happen to someone who was enough of a dumbass to call the police right after murdering someone, Stephani was eventually captured and convicted. Sentenced to 40 years, Stephani died of cancer while in prison and nobody misses him.
Unfortunately, because all of Stephani’s 911 calls were recorded, he’s recently become a very popular subject for true crime shows. It’s not there’s anything particularly interesting about Stephani’s crimes. It’s just that it’s easy (and cheap) to build a show around the sound of him whining on the phone. As someone who probably spends too much time watching true crime realty television, I’ve had to listen to Stephani’s voice more than anyone should ever have to. Making it even worse, there’s currently a show called Evil Calls, which uses a recording of Stephani in its commercials. I’ve actually stopped watching Investigation Discovery just because I’ve gotten so sick of hearing that loser whining, “Please don’t talk, just listen… I’m sorry I killed that girl. I stabbed her 40 times…”
However, the Stephani tapes do provide one valuable service. The sound of Stephani’s pathetic voice reminds us that most serial killers are not the urbanely witty and intelligent figures that we’ve gotten used to seeing in the movies. Most real-life killers are whiny losers who kill for very basic reasons and who are stupid enough to call 911 and confess. Movie killers are a different breed all together.
Take the 1997 mystery Deceiver, for instance.
In Deceiver, Renee Zellweger plays a world weary prostitute. We only see her in flashbacks, largely because she was murdered before the film’s opening scene. Her name was Elizabeth, which brings to mind Elizabeth Short, the legendary Los Angeles murder victim who is better known as the Black Dahlia. Much like the real-life Black Dahlia, Elizabeth’s body was cut into two pieces and left in a park. (According to the film’s imdb trivia section, Elizabeth was also named after Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who pioneered the study of false memories.)
Suspicion immediately falls on James Walter Wayland (Tim Roth). The youngest son of a wealthy and powerful South Carolina family, Wayland is an infamous alcoholic. Wayland admits that he knew Elizabeth. He even took Elizabeth with him to a fancy party, all the better to offend his parents. Wayland may be a black-out drunk with a history of erratic behavior but he also swears that he didn’t kill Elizabeth.
Two detectives are determined to trick Wayland into confessing. Detective Edward Kennesaw (Michael Rooker) is a respected veteran, the type of detective who can get a confession out of almost anyone. His partner is Detective Philip Braxton (Chris Penn), who is a bit less impressive. As we’re informed early in the film, Braxton graduated at the bottom of his high school class and has been waiting for a promotion for quite some time.
From the minute that Kennesaw and Braxton start to interrogate Wayland, it becomes obvious that Wayland is hardly your typical murder suspect. He’s certainly more impressive than the Weepy-Voiced Killer. He’s witty. He’s smart. He’s cocky. He admits to being an alcoholic and to suffering from black outs and seizures but he also claims that, unlike every other man who Elizabeth dealt with, he actually cared about her. Wayland also reveals that he knows some details about Kennesaw and Braxton. He knows about Kennesaw’s troubled marriage to a woman (Rosanna Arquette) who has a history of cheating on him. He knows that Braxton is in debt to a local bookie (Ellen Burstyn). And, as the interrogation continues, Wayland starts to suggest that one of the interrogators is hiding an even darker secret.
Deceiver‘s a frequently fascinating film to watch, even if it’s not always easy to follow. If there’s any film that would seem to demand multiple viewings, it’s this one. The majority of the movie takes place in one darkened room and directors Joan and Josh Pate do a wonderful job capturing the claustrophobia of that setting. (Fortunately, there’s enough flashbacks to keep the film from getting too stagey.) Roth, Rooker, and Penn all give intensely stylized performances. They may not feel realistic but they fit in perfectly with the fever dream atmosphere of the film. Roth, in particular, gives a performance that is both mannered and intriguing. It even feel appropriate that his Southern accent is in no way convincing. It just makes sense that Wayland wouldn’t sound like anyone else in the world.
It’s a heavily stylized film, full of odd dialogue and skewed camera angles. It’s a film that often feels like a journey right to the center of an extremely twisted mind. (Of course, the movie is designed so that you’re never quite sure whose mind you’ve entered.) There’s nothing realistic about it but that’s okay. It’s certainly preferable to watching a movie about The Weepy-Voiced Killer.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Today is Daria Nicolodi’s birthday!
Daria Nicolodi has been called the “unsung hero of Italian horror” and it’s an apt description. Along with starring in several of the films that Dario Argento directed during the first half of his legendary career, Nicolodi also was responsible for the story of and co-wrote the script for Suspiria. (Nicolodi has always said that Suspiria was based on a true story involving one of her ancestors.) Argento’s decision to give the lead role in Suspiria to Jessica Harper, instead of Nicolodi, is often cited as the beginning of the end of their relationship.
(It’s also a shame — actually, a more accurate description would be to say that it’s a goddamn crime — that Nicolodi apparently will not have even as much as a cameo in the upcoming Suspiria remake.)
Nicolodi also appeared in films directed by Mario Bava, Luigi Cozzi, Michele Soavi, and several other distinguished Italian directors. In Scarlet Diva, she was directed by her daughter, Asia Argento.
This edition for 4 Shots From 4 Films is dedicated to Daria Nicolodi!
“Sex farces” were extremely popular during the late 50’s/early 60’s. They were filled with martinis, smarmy innuendoes, and smutty jokes, though no sex ever really happens. The comedies of director Frank Tashlin and the Doris Day/Rock Hudson teamings helped popularize this rom-com subgenre. A good example is BOYS’ NIGHT OUT, a humorous take on suburban mores starring James Garner and Kim Novak.
The premise is pretty simple: four friends commute every day from suburban Connecticut to New York City. They are divorced Garner and his married buddies Howard Duff , Howard Morris , and the ubiquitous Tony Randall, who made a career appearing in these type of films. When the “boys” catch Garner’s boss out with his mistress, they start to daydream what it would be like to get their own love shack going, away from their wives and equipped with a beautiful blonde to do their bidding. Garner balks…
Lisa asked me to do a round-up of all the trailer that were released this week and the first rule of working at Through the Shattered Lens is that when Lisa asks you to do something, you do it.
To start things off, here’s the trailer that everyone was talking about this week. Tim Burton’s live action version of Dumbo looks like it could be something special. I’ve seen a horse fly. I’ve seen a dragon fly. I’ve seen a house fly. And now, on March 29th, 2019, I’ll finally see an elephant fly!
In this next trailer, Benedict Cumberbatch is The Grinch! On November 9th, The Grinch’s heart will grow by three sizes. Hopefully, a cardiologist will be on duty.
Unfriended: Dark Web is either a horror sequel or an extended LifeLock commercial. Unfriended: Dark Web will be infecting a screen near you on July 20th.
Based on the novel by Sarah Waters and directed by Lenny (Room) Abrahamson, The Little Stranger will be visiting theaters on August 31st.
The Nun is being advertised as “the darkest chapter in The Conjuring Universe,” which is apparently now a thing just like the MCU and the DCEU. Say a prayer for us all because The Nun will be hitting screens on September 7th.
If you liked the trailer for The Nun, you might want to go through The Devil’s Doorway with IFC Midnight on July 13th.
If you survive stepping through The Devil’s Doorway, consider pledging to The Row on July 27th.
And finally, coming to DVD soon, It Came From The Desert!
Produced by Martin Bregman, directed by Brian De Palma, written by Oliver Stone, and starring Al Pacino, the 1983 remake of Scarface is one of the best-known, most iconic gangster films ever made. It opened to mixed reviews but it’s gone on to be recognized as a classic. Everyone can quote the script: “Say hello to my little friend!” “In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.” “Say goodnight to the bad guy!”
Scarface starts with one of my favorite opening scenes of all time. Powered by Giorgio Moroder’s score, the opening credits of Scarface play out over footage of the real-life Mariel boatlift. Combined with footage of Fidel Castro ranting that Cuba does not need the Marielitos, this opening gives real-world credibility to everything that follows. We then segue from the actual boatlift to Al Pacino as Tony Montana, answering questions with that shit-eating grin on his face.
Listen to the interrogation scene carefully and you’ll hear both Charles Durning and Dennis Franz, dubbing the lines of the actors who played the immigration agents.
