I Watched The Jackie Robinson Story

Posted on October 29, 2018 by Dazzling Erin

Since I was pretty much indifferent to who won the World Series this year (Congratulations, Boston), I’ve been watching baseball movies instead. I just finished watching The Jackie Robinson Story.

The Jackie Robinson Story was made in 1950, back when Robinson was still playing second base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The movie not only tells the story of how Jackie Robinson became the first black man to play in the major leagues but it also stars Jackie Robinson as himself!

Starting with Jackie’s childhood in Pasadena, the movie follows Jackie as he attends UCLA, serves a brief stint in the Army, and then plays baseball on an all African-American team (Jackie played for the Kansas City Monarchs but, in the movie, the team is renamed the Black Panthers!) before eventually getting signed to join the Dodgers and integrate major league baseball. While the movie skips over a lot of Jackie’s early life, it doesn’t gloss over the prejudice that he encountered at every step of the way. When he wins a scholarship to UCLA, people complain that the college has already recruited too many black athletes. Even when he’s a star player in the Negro Leagues, he still has to ask permission to enter and use the washroom in a diner. And when he joins the Dodgers, riots are threatened if he plays anywhere in the South. During one game, his wife (Ruby Dee) overhears the whites in the stands talking about how “the Lodge” is going to visit Jackie. Through it all, Jackie Robinson keeps his cool and refuses to give the racists the satisfaction of getting to him. Jackie answers every bigoted comment with the crack of his bat, leaving no doubt that he belongs in the major leagues.

Jackie Robinson was a great baseball player and a great man. He wasn’t a great actor and, in this movie, he comes across as being stiff and nervous whenever he has to play any dialogue scenes. But then he swings a bat or catches a ball and it doesn’t matter that he can’t act. Jackie Robinson was an amazing player and it’s still exciting to watch footage of him today.

The Jackie Robinson Story is a rousing, feel-good baseball movie and a condemnation of racism and bigotry, in all of its insidious forms.

Jackie Robinson

Horror Film Review: Cat People (dir by Paul Schrader)

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before I get around to actually reviewing Paul Schrader’s 1982 reimagining of Cat People, I’m going to suggest that you take a few minutes to watch the film’s opening credits. Say what you will about Schrader’s Cat People, it has a great opening, one that perfectly sets up the rest of the film.

In this version of Cat People, Irena (Natassja Kinski) is a naive young woman (and virgin) who, after the death of her parents, has spent most of her previous life in foster care. Irena travels to New Orleans, where she reconnects with her older brother, Paul (Malcolm McDowell). From the minute that Irena meets her brother and his housekeeper (Ruby Dee), it’s obvious that something is off. When Paul looks at her, he does so with an unsettling intensity. At night, while Irena sleeps, Paul wanders the dark streets of New Orleans.

One morning, Irena wakes up to discover that Paul is missing. Having nothing else to do, Irena wanders around New Orleans. When she visits the zoo, she feels an immediate connection to a caged panther who stares at her with a familiar intensity. It turns out that the panther was captured the previous night, after he mysteriously appeared in a sleazy motel and mauled a prostitute.

It’s at the zoo that Irena meets zookeeper Oliver Yates (John Heard). Oliver gets Irena a job working at the zoo gift shop. where Irena is befriended by Oliver’s co-worker, Alice (Annette O’Toole). One day, Irena witnesses the panther kill another zookeeper before it then escapes from its cage.

That night, Paul suddenly shows up in Irena’s bedroom. He explains to her that they are a cursed species. Having sex causes them to turn into panthers and the only way to avoid the curse is through incest. A terrified Irena flees her brother and soon finds herself living with and falling in love with the increasingly obsessive Oliver, all the while knowing that giving herself to him physically will lead to her transformation.

From the very first second of the film. Schrader’s Cat People is an exercise in pure style. If the original Cat People was largely distinguished by its restraint, Schrader’s version is all about excess. Everything that was merely suggested in the original is made explicit in this version. As tempting as it may be to try, it’s somewhat pointless to try to compare these two versions. Though they may both be about a woman who turns into a panther when she has sex, they are two very different films.

Schrader’s Cat People walks a very fine line between moodiness and absurdity, which is perhaps why I enjoyed it. Making great use of both the sultry New Orleans setting and Giorgio Moroder’s atmospheric score, Cat People is compulsively dream-like and enjoyably over-the-top. Cat People is often described as being an example of a movie that could have only been made in the coked up 80s and truly, this is one of those films that’s so excessive that it’s becomes fascinating to watch.

(I think that often we are too quick to assume that excess is necessarily a bad thing. If you can’t be excessive when you’ve got Malcolm McDowell playing an incest-minded cat person in New Orleans, when can you be excessive?)

Schrader’s Cat People may not have much in common with the original version but the film’s best scene is the only one that is a direct recreation of a scene from the original. In fact, in recreating the scene where Alice is menaced while swimming in a public pool, Schrader actually improves on the original. Brilliantly performed by both Annette O’Toole and Natassja Kinski (whose cat-like features made her perfect for the role of Irena), it’s the only scene in the film that can truly be called scary. Starting with a tracking shock that follows Alice as she jogs, the stalking scene is practically a master class in effective horror cinema. If nothing else, you should see Cat People for that one scene.

And you should also see it for the wonderful soundtrack! Let’s end this review with David Bowie’s theme song, which you may also remember from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

Embracing The Melodrama #22: The Incident (dir by Larry Peerce)

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1967 film The Incident could just as easily have been called Train of Fools. Much like Ship of Fools, it’s an ensemble piece in which a group of people — all of whom represent different aspect of modern society — find themselves trapped in their chosen mode of transportation and forced to deal with intrusions from the outside world.

That intrusion comes in the form of two sociopaths who have decided to spend the entire ride tormenting their fellow passengers. The more dominant of the two is Joe (played by Tony Musante, who would later star in Dario Argento’s Bird With The Crystal Plumage), who the film hints might also be a pedophile. His partner is Artie (Martin Sheen), who is less intelligent than Joe but just as viscous. (And yes,even though he does a good job in the role, it is odd to see an intelligent and reportedly very nice actor like Martin Sheen playing a character who is both so evil and so stupid.)

Among the passengers:

Bill (Ed McMahon) and Helen (Diana Van Der Vills) are only on the train because Bill refused to pay the extra money to take a taxi back home. Now, they’re stuck on the train with their young daughter who, in one of the film’s more disturbing scenes, Joe starts to show an interest in.

Teenage Alice (Donna Mills) is on a date with the far more sexually experienced Tony (Victor Arnold). When Joe and Artie start to harass her, her date proves himself to be pretty much useless.

Douglas McCann (Gary Merrill) is a recovering alcoholic who, before Artie and Joe got on the train, was spending most of his time scornfully watching Kenneth (Robert Otis), a gay man who previously attempted to pick Doug up at the train station and who will eventually fall victim to one of Artie’s crueler jokes.

Muriel Purvis (Jan Sterling) resents her meek husband, Harry (Mike Kellin) and see the entire incident as another excuse to cast doubts upon his manhood.

Sam and Bertha Beckerman (played by Jack Gilford and Thelma Ritter) are an elderly Jewish couple who, over the course of a lifetime, have already had to deal with far too many bullies. Sam’s attempt to stand up to Joe and Artie results in both he and his wife being trapped on the train.

Arnold (Brock Peters) and Joan (Ruby Dee) are the only black people on the train. Arnold, at first, enjoys watching the white people fight among each other and even turns down a chance to get off the train because he finds it to be so entertaining. But finally, Joe turns on him as well.

And then there’s the two soldiers, streetwise Phil (Robert Bannard) and his best friend, Felix (Beau Bridges). Felix speaks with a soft Southern accent and has a broken arm.

And finally, there’s the bum. When we first see the bum (Henry Proach) he is asleep. He doesn’t even wake up when Joe and Artie attempt to set him on fire.

One-by-one, Joe and Artie attack and humiliate every single person on the train. The other passengers, for the most part, remain passive. Even when some try to stand up to Joe and Artie, their fellow passengers don’t offer to help. It’s only when one last passenger finally stands up to the two that the rest of them show any reaction at all and even then, it’s not necessarily the reaction that anyone was hoping for.

The Incident, which shows up on TCM occasionally, is a heavy-handed but effective look at what happens when good people choose to do nothing in the face of evil. Joe and Artie can be viewed as stand-ins for any number of distasteful groups or ideologies and both Tony Musante and Martin Sheen are believable as dangerous (if occasionally moronic) petty criminals. For that matter, the entire film is well-acted with the entire cast managing to bring life to characters that, in lesser hands, could have come across as being one-dimensional. The entire film basically takes place in that one subway car but fortunately, the harsh black-and-white cinematography and the continually roaming camera all come together to keep things visually interesting.

The Incident may not be a great film (it’s occasionally bit too stagey and, after watching the first 30 minutes, you’ll be able to guess how the movie is going to end) but it’s still one to keep an eye out for.