movies filter: Obscure Object of Desire

Must See 'Roadblock'

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:50:45 GMT

Yes! Some love for the deserving Charles McGraw -- an actor I adore.

Here, from Steve over at the excellent Noir of the Week:

"I consider 'Roadblock' to be Charles McGraw’s best film noir. RKO’s B-movie alternative to Robert Mitchum was certainly in better crime thrillers. 'The Narrow Margin' for one is today considered a classic – and it is. Before becoming a leading man, McGraw appeared as a supporting actor in a slew of films like the great 'T-Men' and 'The Killers.'

"I never doubted McGraw’s acting ability – I always enjoyed in everything he was in. Seeing 'Roadblock' for the first time surprised me however. Who knew he could play a love-sick sucker? McGraw's surprising performance is the reason this one stands out."

Read the entire review of "Roadblock" here.

And now I need to track see "Roadblock." I have it here and I can't wait.

--posted by Kim

Heavenly

Tue, 01 May 2007 19:59:09 GMT

While scrolling through his enormous DVD collection, Matthew Kiernan of Headquarters 10 re-watched a film that many of you have probably never heard of. I had never heard of it. What movie? "Heaven" directed by Scott Reynolds.

Kiernan wrote:

"Scott Reynolds' HEAVEN, a victim of the Miramax dump bin that played one contractually obliging week in L.A. before it was shunted off to video. The film probably would have stayed under my radar if it wasn't for my friend Mitch Davis, programmer for Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival and a longtime supporter of Reynolds' work. Despite the dumping, he was able to schedule the film at the 1999 edition of Fantasia and my friends who attended agreed that it was a film worth seeing. Once I did, later in '99, I found that I couldn't agree more and now, 8 years later, I'm glad to say it holds up very well.

"In a sense, I can understand why HEAVEN got the treatment it did, because if you put it in front of a test audience full of normal folk in Clifton, NJ (one of Mirimax's old testing grounds), they're probably not going to take too kind to it. The story is sometimes told out of sequence and the characters are not always likable. There's a certain amount of violence and unpleasantness to the material, and on top of that, it requires the viewer pay attention and take several leaps of faith. To use one of my favorite expressions, this is not a movie for dumb people. But for everyone else, HEAVEN should prove to be an intriguing entertainment and the kind of movie that movie lovers like to love.

"To give you a basic rundown (while not giving away too much), it's the story of a nasty divorce between architect/gambling addict Joanna Going, perpetuated by her psychiatrist/lover (Patrick Malahide). Thrown into the mix are a strip club owner (Richard Schiff), a bouncer (Karl Urban) and a transvestite stripper named Heaven (Danny Edwards) with the power of second sight. While it's a small movie, it's a big story and Reynolds deftly juggles a lot of plot lines in the air all at once. Personally speaking, I never once lost track of what's going on, but at the same time when I was conditioning myself to expect the odd jump cuts in the narrative I often found the film surprising me by what was and wasn't going to happen. Actually, HEAVEN is full of surprises, which is what's so good about it."

Read his entire celebration of "Heaven" here.

--posted by Kim

Shedding Light on 'Dark of the Sun'

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 20:42:35 GMT

Over at Screengrab, DK Holm offers many compelling reasons to watch Jack Cardiff's 1968 actioner "Dark of the Sun," a movie that also claims Quentin Tarantino as a fan.

Relaying his excitement Holm wrote:

"Recently the old mercenary thriller 'Dark of the Sun' became readily available, and I was delighted. I can throw away the old pan-and-scan dub-of-a-dub VHS tape I've been watching for years and trying to get others to watch. Now I can immerse myself in its widescreen glories (with photography by Edward Scaife, while the film was directed by DP-turned-occasional helmer Jack Cardiff), the sweaty bodies in the Congo, in the horrifying hoards, in Rod Taylor and Jim Brown's relaxed, quiet masculinity (both are underrated screen presences), in Yvette Mimieux's exotic, loyal fragility.

"Why 'Dark of the Sun?' I'm not sure, except that it is perhaps the greatest Saturday matinee movie ever made. Many of its components will be familiar to viewers with a memory that goes back to Stagecoach. There is the mission deep into enemy territory, but with a time limit. There is the noble warrior, the vulnerable love interest, the caustic villain in their midst, ready to betray. There is even the drunk doctor (Kenneth Moore) who has to deliver a baby. It may be derivative, but it may also be the text from which all subsequent action films were derived. Most of all, it is a train movie."

As a fan of Jim Brown, Rod Taylor and the train movie, this all sounds good to me. Read the rest of Holm's spirited take here.

--posted by Kim

Must See Cinema--'Killer Of Sheep'

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:12:51 GMT

Friend, colleague and sparring partner (check for our Tarantino point/counterpoint smackdown early April here at MSN Movies), David Fear reminds people why Charles Burnett's "brilliant" and underseen "Killer of Sheep" deserves to be watched.

From Time Out New York:

"Anyone looking over a list of films that were released 30 years ago would notice that 1977 was a banner year for influential American movies—'Annie Hall,' 'Star Wars,' 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' 'Saturday Night Fever.' But their eyes might skip right over one of the more significant titles, a little-seen work of art that arguably trumps its fellow class-of-’77 members in terms of profundity. That would be 'Killer of Sheep,' Charles Burnett’s brilliant, peerless look at working-class people in Los Angeles, whose vision of everyday life plays like an inner-city 'Song of Myself.'

"If you’ve never heard of Burnett’s masterpiece, you’re not alone. After a mere handful of public screenings, the independent drama failed to attract distributors and quietly disappeared. It would resurface periodically at random revival houses, museums and festivals. Fans such as Steven Soderbergh and David Gordon Green repeatedly referred to it as a classic; the movie was later one of the first to be admitted into the National Film Registry, in 1990. Henry Gayle Sanders, who plays Stan, the slaughterhouse worker whose trials and tribulations make up the story’s emotional center, remembers getting phone calls from friends. 'They kept teasing me: 'Henry, man, you’re a national treasure!’ ' the actor, 64, recalls from Southern California. “'I had no idea what they were talking about until they told me that 'Killer of Sheep' was going to be preserved. Here was this little job that I did when I was starting out, and now it’s in the Library of Congress.'”

Read the rest of Fear's terrific piece here.

--posted by Kim