Reversal of Fortune

Year 5, Day 98 - 4/8/13 - Movie #1,400

BEFORE: There's no point in going to sleep tonight, we're leaving for the airport at 5 am, and there's really only one way for me to be awake at 5 am.  So I'm all packed, ready to stay up all night and leave first thing.  Another film tonight about a rich husband (maybe) killing his wife - you see the connection, right?  And Frank Langella from "All Good Things" was also in the 1997 version of "Lolita" with Jeremy Irons (last heard in "The Lion King").

THE PLOT:  Wealthy Sunny von Bülow lies brain-dead, husband Claus guilty of attempted murder; but he says he's innocent and hires Alan Dershowitz for his appeal.

AFTER:  I felt this one really let me down - I saved it for #1400 because it seemed like an important film, it got a good score on IMDB, won the Best Actor Oscar and it's listed as one of the "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die" (I've now seen 306 of them).  But it was just plain boring - mostly it's Alan Dershowitz and his law students, debating the finer points of the appeals process of the Rhode Island courts.  Yawn.

The problem is, I think, it's based on a book by Dershowitz, and he was Claus Von Bulow's lawyer for his appeal - the attempt to get his two murder convictions overturned.  So, that's the only part of the process that Dershowitz saw - where the much, much more interesting part would have been the murder trials themselves, or the actions leading up to the attempted murder charge. 

Oh, we see the nights in question - otherwise they'd have hired Glenn Close to just lie comatose in a bed, and then they really wouldn't be getting their money's worth.  The problem is, we see them too many times, and from too many different points of view, and every time another little tidbit of information is revealed, we get to see them yet AGAIN.  Another problem - it's all hearsay.  At the end of the film, are we any closer to parsing what really happened between Claus and Sunny?

By the film's own admission, even if Claus Von Bulow HAD injected Sunny with insulin, so what?  She was on so many other medications, some prescribed and some not, who could even foresee how her body would react?  This is a woman who overdosed on aspirin, a quantity that could really only be self-ingested.

I'll admit that I thought that Claus injecting Sunny with insulin was the most logical cause of her coma, but it's not really that cut and dry, is it?  If he did that, why would he leave the needle behind?  There were plenty of other shady characters who could be held accountable, but you can't hang a criminal trial on convenience, or identifying the most likely party - that's not how our legal system works.

And why make the omniscient comatose patient the narrator of the film, if she's not willing to add any coherent insight?  Without that, it just seems like an odd choice.

Anyway, I'm stepping away from the project for the next week and a half - maybe when I come back I'll have a renewed interest in murder cases.  God knows after 11 days with me on a boat, my wife may want to suffocate me with a pillow.  So if I don't make it back, you're all my witnesses.

Also starring Glenn Close (last heard in "Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil"), Ron Silver (last seen in "Semi-Tough"), Annabella Sciorra (last seen in "Internal Affairs"), Uta Hagen, Fisher Stevens, Christine Baranski (last seen in "Legal Eagles"), Felicity Huffman, Julie Hagerty.

RATING: 3 out of 10 appellate judges

All Good Things

Year 5, Day 97 - 4/7/13 - Movie #1,399

BEFORE: I'm taking two weeks off for vacation, and I started it by going to a beer festival yesterday afternoon, but it was one for a good cause - so I was happy to do my part for charity.  But then I came home and slept for a few hours, so my sleeping schedule is even weirder than usual.  Maybe I can turn this to my advantage, since we're leaving Monday morning for a real trip, so I can pack all day today while clearing out my DVRs (so they won't fill up while I'm gone) and then stay up late watching one more film, and leave early Monday for the airport.

Linking from "Guilty As Sin", Rebecca De Mornay was also in "And God Created Woman" with Frank Langella (last seen in "Unknown"), who appears in today's film.  There's a connection I never thought I'd need to make.

THE PLOT:  Mr. David Marks was suspected but never tried for killing his wife Katie who disappeared in 1982, but the truth is eventually revealed.

AFTER: A good number of films this week have been based on real murder cases - which I didn't realize at first, but it's a solid enough connection to make.  "Compulsion" was based on the Leopold & Loeb case, "In Cold Blood" obviously written by Capote about a real Kansas killing, and "Double Indemnity" was based on a real insurance scam/murder scheme in 1927 in Queens, NY.

This film also is based on real events, though the names have been changed - Robert Durst was the son of a NYC real estate mogul, and his wife disappeared in 1982.  Her case was still unsolved when Durst's best friend, who may have had knowledge about his wife's disappearance was found murdered, and Durst was questioned.  He moved to Texas and began dressing as a woman, and he was arrested when his neighbor turned up dead - Durst was acquitted, claiming self-defense.

The film attempts to make some sense out of the few facts known, and changing the names allows them to speculate about the central character's sanity and motivations.  Was he just a control freak, or mentally unstable?  Was his desire not to have children a factor in his wife's fate, or did he just see her distancing herself from him?  How much was his mother's death a factor in his personality?

Lots of "why", very little "how" - that's OK, I'm down with that.  A mystery is a mystery.  And I credit the filmmakers for using Marks' testimony on the stand as a single efficient framing device, and not jumping back and forth in time with the flashbacks.  There's been entirely too much of that.

The title is a reference to the name of the health food store that the central couple owned, but could also be taken as an ironic commentary on their marriage - as in, all "good" things must come to an end.  There's a lot that's intentionally ambiguous here, but perhaps with good reason.   Even the first half of this film could have been any regular relationship drama, albeit one about people with issues, until you start to realize that those issues could be masking something more sinister.

Also starring Ryan Gosling (last seen in "The Ides of March"), Kirsten Dunst (last seen in "Little Women"), Lily Rabe, Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "50/50"), John Cullum, Nick Offerman (last seen in "21 Jump Street") and Kristen Wiig (last seen in "Bridesmaids"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 blonde wigs

Guilty As Sin

Year 5, Day 96 - 4/6/13 - Movie #1,398

BEFORE:  Lucky yet again, John Forsythe from "In Cold Blood" was also in "And Justice For All" with Jack Warden.  Maybe that's not really luck, since Jack Warden was in a lot of films.

THE PLOT:  A female lawyer takes an accused wife-murderer as a client, but finds herself morally compelled to betray him one way or another.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Jagged Edge" (Movie #763)

AFTER: Well, at least this film's in color - I just watched 5 films in black and white this week, so it's nice to see something a little more visually exciting. I think I've determined that I'm 73% more likely to fall asleep during a black and white film, maybe my retinas get bored or something.

But I barely know where to begin in tearing this one apart, or even breaking it down - it's just so blatant in its stupid obviousness.  Even if I apply everything I've learned about the legal system so far (mostly from "Law & Order", but what the heck...) this fails to make much rational sense.  IF a man kills his wife (I'm not saying he did, but come on...) then he shouldn't even tell his lawyer that he did, no matter how good the lawyer is.  The lawyer has attorney/client privilege, of course, but in order to enter a plea of innocent, he or she has to believe in the client.  Otherwise they're supposed to plead "no contest" or something like that, right?

Here the lawyer doesn't even want to take the case - but this concerns a client who won't take "No" for an answer.  Apparently he asked his wife, "Do you want to be thrown out of a 10th floor window?" and she said "No", and you can guess the rest.  And he's such a Don Juan (Spanish for "Don Johnson") that he's always got another rich older woman lined up to either sleep with, pay for his defense, or both.  And no one seems to notice his pattern, despite all of their unexplained disappearances.

The actors practice two schools of emoting - either over-the-top, or comatose.  And it's hard to believe this was directed by Sidney Lumet, who also directed legal thrillers like "The Verdict" and "12 Angry Men" - somehow "1 Angry Client" doesn't seem like it's in the same league. 

Some have pointed out the similarities to "Jagged Edge", although with that film there was some question about the accused man's guilt - here, not so much.  Is he a stone-cold killer or just a charming, manipulative man?  Well, both, really.  It's just as blatant as the film's title. 

Also starring Don Johnson (last seen in "A Boy and His Dog"), Rebecca De Mornay (last seen in "The Three Musketeers" (1993)), Stephen Lang (last seen in "Avatar"), Ron White, with a cameo from Luis Guzman.

RATING:  2 out of 10 fingerprints

In Cold Blood

Year 5, Day 95 - 4/5/13 - Movie #1,397

BEFORE:  Linking from "Compulsion", Orson Welles was also in the film "The Black Rose" with Robert Blake. 

THE PLOT:  After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality.

FOLLOW-UP TO:  "Capote" (Movie #674)

AFTER: A lot of similarities to last night's film - two male killers, an implied sexual relationship between them, committing murder together.  There's also an implication that the two men, acting together, create this sort of third personality, or group mind, that takes over.  I'm not sure if I've heard of this before, but it kind of explains the actions of criminal partners during bank heists and such.  Also, both films were based on novels that were written about prominent real-life murders.

It feels like I saw a version of this same story as the making of this movie was referenced in "Capote" - they showed Truman Capote meeting with and interviewing convicted killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickock.  You get the feeling that he was perhaps interested in their story because some implied connection, possibly a homosexual one - some kind of relationship between the two killers is hinted at here, but not directly shown.  Perhaps it's just because they were in jail, and we all know what can happen there.

Other than that, this is a rather straightforward story about two killers on the run - only they're not really running, because they seem fairly sure that they've gotten away with their crime.  They don't make much effort to stay out of Kansas, for example, even though for one of them, entering that state constitutes a parole violation.

What I'm struggling with is the passage of time in the film - the time spent avoiding the police after the murder and before the arrest was about a month and a half, and constitutes the vast majority of this film.  By contrast, the killers were incarcerated for five years, (SPOILER ALERT) which constituted several stays of execution, and this period passes by in about 5 minutes of screen time.

The film succeeds, however, in getting into some of the WHY of a murder, rather than just the WHAT.  At first we learn that the criminals are staking out the house in order to rob a farmer's safe, and later, after the full details of that night are eventually revealed, it also delves into some of the mental motivations that may be driving them.  A lot of that seemed to be missing from "Compulsion".

Of course, you can't look at this film now without thinking about Robert Blake, who was later accused in the killing of his own wife.  I should point out he was acquitted at his criminal trial, but then held accountable in a civil trial (Hmm, where have I seen that combination before...?)  It's tough to determine whether life imitated art, or vice versa - or perhaps it's just coincidence.  Killing one's spouse and killing a family on a farm while robbing them could be two vastly different things, after all...(or, maybe not?)

I'd be remiss if I didn't make some reference to the fact that Roger Ebert died yesterday - a true movie reviewer, which is what I am not, nor what I claim to be or hope to become.  Anyway, my paltry 1,397 "reviews" (which, really, they're not) are a drop in the bucket compared to Roger's stats: 7,202 reviews, 3 screenplays and 1 Pulitzer.  I never met the man, but he was a friend of a friend (F of my BFF), so I felt connected tangentially (sorry, Roger, I met him first).

For a much more professional review of today's film, please visit:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19680206/REVIEWS/802060301/1023

In 1968, Ebert said this film was "fantastically powerful despite its flaws" and that "the story itself emerges as bleak and tragic as the day the murders first occured".  He also said that "the actors, Robert Blake and Scott Wilson, are so good they pass beyond performances and almost into life".  It's impossible for anyone to see the future, but whaddaya know - he nailed it.

Also starring Scott Wilson (last seen in "In the Heat of the Night"), John Forsythe, Jeff Corey, Charles McGraw, with a cameo from Will Geer.

RATING: 5 out of 10 deposit bottles

Compulsion

Year 5, Day 94 - 4/4/13 - Movie #1,396

BEFORE: Speaking of Orson Welles, he's in tonight's film somewhere...  Now I know there was a way to link from "Ten Little Indians", what was it?  Ah, Hugh O'Brian was in a film called "The Brass Legend" with Robert Burton, who's got a role in "Compulsion".   A compulsion is an overwhelming, uncontrollable urge, like the need some people have to find links between things.

THE PLOT:  Two wealthy law-school students go on trial for murder in this version of the Leopold-Loeb case.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Murder By Numbers"  (Movie #175)

AFTER:  This is a great opportunity to learn who Leopold and Loeb were - two law students from the University of Chicago who killed a 14-year old boy in 1924, with the apparent motivation to commit the "perfect crime".  That is, to leave no evidence to connect back to them - how did that go?  Since the world knows their identities, I'm guessing not so well.

Both were child progidies, both seemed exceptionally intelligent, both came from affluent families - all of which didn't seem to add up to "murderer" in most people's eyes.  But they got their thrills from committing crimes, starting with petty thefts and working their way up.  Er, down.

Their trial caught the attention of the country in the 1920's, along with the Lindbergh kidnapper and I think the Sacco and Vanzetti case, it was one of those "trial of the century" deals - and they were defended by Clarence Darrow (see also: "Inherit the Wind" and the Scopes monkey trial), famous for his opposition to capital punishment.

Darrow took advantage of a strange quirk of the law - by advising his clients to change their pleas to guilty, he avoided trial by jury (which they probably would have lost) and forced the judge to hear the case and take their mental conditions into account.  

Richard Loeb died in prison, killed by an inmate who claimed he was fending off a sexual advance.  This led Ed Lahey of the Chicago Daily News to create this great obituary line: "Richard Loeb, despite his erudition, today ended his sentence with a proposition."  (This joke KILLS among historical grammarians, or grammatical historians...)  Leopold was released on parole after 33 years in jail.

The film seems to stay pretty true to the real-life story, with Orson Welles in the Clarence Darrow role, while looking a lot like Benny Hill. And by changing only the names of the parties involved they pull the same duplicity that was later made famous by the "Law & Order" franchise - which promotes their shows by claiming the stories are "ripped from the headlines", but then also run a disclaimer stating that the story is not based on real events.  Huh?  Which is it - you can't have it both ways!

As for the motivation of the killers, I'm not sure if I'm buying it.  If their goal was to experience everything in life, including the feeling of killing someone, why not save that one for last?  There are so many other good things to experience - great deli sandwiches, the love of a good woman, cruises to exotic locations.  But if you get caught for murder, you don't get to experience all the other things.  If these guys were so smart, why didn't they realize that?

Also starring Dean Stockwell (last seen in "The Manchurian Candidate" (2004)), Bradford Dillman (last seen in "The Way We Were"), E.G. Marshall (last seen in "Call Northside 777"), Martin Milner (last seen in "Desk Set"), Richard Anderson, Gavin MacLeod (last seen in "Kelly's Heroes"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 typewriter keys

Ten Little Indians (1965)

Year 5, Day 93 - 4/3/13 - Movie #1,395

BEFORE:  The tie-in with "Witness For the Prosecution" is that both films were based on Agatha Christie novels, although this one seems to be more of the suspense-driven murder mystery she was famous for, not just a prominent trial.  For a direct acting connection, Charles Laughton was also in the 1936 film "Rembrandt" with Wilfrid Hyde-White (last seen in "Oh, God! Book II"), who appears in tonight's film.

THE PLOT:  Ten people are invited to an isolated place for the weekend, but one by one, they are being knocked off according to the poem of "Ten Little Indians".

AFTER:  Before I go any further, a note to the IMDB and to Hollywood in general - the title of this film should be "Ten Little Indians", not "Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians".  Certain authors and directors enjoy something that marketers call "name above the title", which refers to their positioning on the movie's poster.  This does not mean that their name belongs WITHIN the title.  A title is a title, and a person is a person - they should not be intertwined.

You might think I'm being too strict about this, but if you let this one slide by, then eventually you end up with "Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion" which has entirely too many apostrophes in it, and also "Tyler Perry's Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor", which is wrong on so many levels, including being much too long.  What I'm trying to say here is that Tyler Perry's name should never be considered as part of the title.  Is the film "Citizen Kane", or "Orson Welles's Citizen Kane"?  I rest my case - if an egomaniac like Welles can keep his name out of his film's title, then so can everyone else.

The problem with "Ten Little Indians" is this factor of 10.  Ten potential murders?  Something's getting lost here, and I think it's the individual murders themselves.  Murder is a BIG deal - the taking of a life, even if that person deserves it, according to your moral code.  An entire film, such as last night's, can be built around ONE murder, and here we've got XX (I'm witholding the actual number, since it's kind of integral to the plot's ending).

This is why I don't watch most horror films - at least not the modern splatter variety (ASIDE: Has someone in the horror genre produced "Splatter-Day Night Fever" yet?  Just putting that out there.).  As exciting as it can be to see someone snuffed out on film, I think it should be used sparingly, for maximum impact, and Hollywood apparently disagrees.

The key thing to bear in mind here, is that all of the people invited to this mountain chalet are there for a reason.  They each have something to hide, in many cases it's the fact that they caused the death of another person - but it's a little unclear who the mysterious owner of the chalet is, or how he knows all of these other people, or how he knows about their past sins.

And this is where the "suspense" angle sort of loses me - the mystery man informs the group (via recorded message) why they're each here, and the famous (and quite racist) nursery rhyme "Ten Little Indians' seems to suggest they're all about to meet their maker in some order, and in some clever and semi-ambiguous ways. 

This is a terrible way to spend one's vacation - if you're constantly being reminded of your mortality by witnessing the deaths of others, and wondering when and how you're going to be killed, just how are you supposed to enjoy your ski trip?  And for God's sake, why do these people continue to spend one more minute in this place?  Wouldn't they all rather be on a cruise or something?

The logic (and the math) gets odder as the film progresses.  If last night's film was a precursor to "Law & Order", then this is the original "Survivor" - though here when they get voted out of the tribe, there's no chance of them being talkative during the reunion show.  That said, however:

NITPICK POINT: As the numbers of living people in the house decrease, the chances of each person being "the killer" increase - but this is only if they believe that the killer walks among them.  Which is only a possibility, not a certainty.  There's still the chance that the killer is operating behind the scenes.  If the killer is definitely masquerading as one of the guests, then an odd thing happens when there are three people left, and an even odder thing when there are two.  Think about it.

Also starring Hugh O'Brian (last seen in "Twins"), Shirley Eaton, Stanley Holloway (last seen in "The Lavender Hill Mob"), Fabian, Leo Genn, Daliah Lavi, Dennis Price, and the voice of Christopher Lee (last seen in "Alice in Wonderland").

RATING: 4 out of 10 snooker balls

Witness for the Prosecution

Year 5, Day 92 - 4/2/13 - Movie #1,394

BEFORE:  The next logical film would be "The Postman Always Rings Twice", since that was also written by James M. Cain, but I don't have a copy of that one.  So, I'm surrendering to a somewhat more random process of selecting the next film - murder is still involved, but I'm not sweating the details.  And I still get lucky - Edward G. Robinson from "Double Indemnity" also appeared in the 1942 film "Tales of Manhattan" with Charles Laughton (last seen in "Mutiny on the Bounty"). 

THE PLOT:  Agatha Christie tale of a man on trial for murder: a trial featuring surprise after surprise.

AFTER: It's not your typical Agatha Christie story, we're all more used to her detective stories featuring Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot - but what is a trial but a detective story played out in a courtroom?  Actually, this film shares quite a bit of plot with "Double Indemnity", which had a woman killing her older husband after taking out an insurance policy on him - here a man is accused of killing his older girlfriend after being named beneficiary in her will.  We'll just replace "claims adjuster" with "judge" and set the thing in the British court system.  Which is great, if you're into the powdered wig thing.

This film was like the original "Law & Order", although once again I'm struck by the appalling lack of criminology on display in the late 1950's.  This was well before DNA was used in court cases, so it's a wonder anything got sufficiently proven.  Great, you found blood type "O" at the scene - which places this guy at the scene, or any of 2 million other people in the U.K. who have that same blood type.  Nice work.  It's also a wonder that anyone commits a crime these days after watching "CSI", which leads you to believe that with half a fingerprint they can identify your second cousin and the street you lived on as a child.

Anyway, without the benefit of DNA or any hard evidence, lawyers (barristers) had to be a lot more crafty and ask all sorts of those twisty questions, hoping to cause the defendant to have a hysterical breakdown and shout "It was me, OK!  I did it, now stop asking me all these tricky questions!".

I could have done without the World War II flashback, which added nothing to the story that we didn't already know.  And the lawyer's heart condition seemed quite a bit over the top.  And then there were about 18 reversals near the end, so that's maybe a few too many.  Finally we get to the truth (or, do we?) and everyone's true nature is revealed - too bad it's off the record.  Now everybody who worked on the case can go on a cruise!  (or, can they?)  Do you really want to see Charles Laughton in Bermuda shorts?

Also starring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Elsa Lanchester,

RATING: 4 out of 10 love letters