Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...

This turned out to be a really impressive overall platter of films. Put these in the other day and just hit play, one disc after another. Turned out to be one of my favorite full days of movies in a long time.

When I saw ROLL BOUNCE last year, I was charmed by it. I think it’s a real solid youth comedy, aimed squarely at a hip 13 year old audience. It was smarter than it had to be, and it was heartfelt. When this film came out, it was marketed as pretty much the same movie, and I didn’t see it in the theater. Having seen it finally, I can say that the marketing didn’t do this movie justice. This is a great little movie. Whatever it is, it’s not ROLL BOUNCE. It’s something very different, and director Chris Robinson, known primarily for music video work before, makes a powerful feature film debut. If you’re going to compare this film to anything, you’d have to compare it to BOYZ IN THE HOOD. In that comparison, I think I prefer ATL.

Honesty wins a lot of credit from me as an audience member. I like it when you know a filmmaker is working from the heart. This isn’t a nostalgia piece... it’s set right now... but it feels just as affectionate as DAZED & CONFUSED or AMERICAN GRAFFITI. It is a coming of age film, but it doesn’t feel like it’s just covering the same old ground the same old way. This movie gets a moment and a group of friends at the end of high school just right. These kids are older than the kids in ROLL BOUNCE, and as a result, this is a more adult film. Frankly, I’m impressed the movie got a PG-13. It’s frank in terms of both sex and drugs, and it doesn’t flinch from the questions it raises. The film’s got an authentic energy that makes it a serious pleasure.

Lauren London does nice work as New New, and rapper Tip “T.I.” Harris is quite good as Rashad, the lead in the film. Together, their chemistry is what makes you invest in a big part of this movie overall. It works. They’re both natural and believable together. Mykelti Williamson, still best known as Bubba in FORREST GUMP, does good supporting work as Uncle George. Evan Ross plays Rashad’s baby brother “Ant,” struggling to find his own way in the world. Antwan Andre Patton, best known as Big Boi from Outkast, makes a really slimy bad guy as Marcus, the guy who gets “Ant” busy on the street selling weed. Overall, the music and the look of the film combined with some really nice performances makes ATL a great sleeper. The Warner Bros. disc has a director’s commentary, a music video by T.I., and a few deleted scenes.

MOVIE: Pretty darn good.

DISC CONTENT: Okay.

DISC QUALITY: Nice.

This 1947 oddity is worth a viewing, but it’s the sort of film that hinges completely on a gimmick, and the gimmick wears out its welcome pretty quickly. It also restricts the narrative in ways that it never overcomes. Still... any detective fiction fan has to see this, because it’s one of the strangest portrayals of Philip Marlowe ever committed to film.

I love that DVD cover. It’s lurid. It’s a lovely piece of key art, and it gets one thing across... that sense of Robert Montgomery staring right at you... that feeling like you’re being looked in the eye. The entire film is told from the POV of Marlowe, with Robert Montgomery both directing the film and playing Marlowe in voice and, occasionally, in person as well. Those are the most awkward bits of the film, the moments where Marlowe simply sits and talks directly into the camera, setting you up for the evidently mind-blowing concept of shooting first-person. Every time it cuts back to Marlowe looking into the camera, the film stops cold in its tracks. It’s the worst move Montgomery makes as a director.

On the other hand, he makes some pretty smart moves as a director when he’s actually shooting the first-person stuff, and that’s what is most fun to watch... his solutions to things, how Marlowe does his snooping. Knowing that it was the actor playing Marlowe who was actually directing the film makes it feel more like you’re in someone’s head, simply sneaking around with them and playing detective. True, a lot of exposition is simply spoken directly into the camera, but there’s some fun femme fatale stuff, there’s a lot of listening through partially opened doors or windows, and the mystery is moderately entertaining to work through. It’s not the reason to buy the recent film noir box by Warner, but it’s a welcome addition to that collection nonetheless.

MOVIE: Good.

DISC CONTENT: One extra, a commentary by Warner regulars Silver and Ursini.

DISC QUALITY: Nice. Excellent print.

Considering it’s a collaboration between John Ford, Merian C. Cooper and John Wayne, I’m surprised it’s taken me until now to see this film, but maybe I’m seeing it at the perfect point in my life for it to just devastate me. I’ve seen the recent anime remake, TOKYO GODFATHERS, but never this original. It’s now one of my favorite of the John Ford/John Wayne films, and one of my favorite overall performances by Wayne, and seeing it is exactly why I watch just as many older films as new ones these days, always hoping to just get blindsided. It’s a genuinely sentimental film by Ford, but seasoned with the grit and the character that marked his best work. The film never gives in and turns to corn thanks to the clean, strong screenplay by Laurence Stallings and Frank S. Nugent. Nugent was one of Ford’s favorite writers, working on eleven of his films including such defining Ford films as SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, FORT APACHE, THE QUIET MAN and THE SEARCHERS. The funny thing is, as much as the word “remake” is rightly vilified at the moment, that’s exactly what this is. This is the 1948 version of the film, and the story was first told by Richard Boleslawski in 1936 in a film starring Walter Brennan and Chester Morris.

I love the bait-and-switch in the film’s structure. The first third of the movie is this sort of amiable buddy comedy about three outlaws who roll into a small town, dead set on robbing it. There’s a great early scene where they spot a local yokel out in his yard, and they stop to chat him up, obviously pumping him for information, only to realize after they’ve made their intentions clear that the guy is the local sheriff, “Buck” Sweet, played by the great Ward Bond. John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz, and Harry Carey Jr. have a charming, easy chemistry at the three friends. As soon as they pull their job and take off, though, the sheriff puts together a posse and heads after them. The posse’s pretty well-organized, and even though they aren’t able to actually catch the outlaws, they’re able to cut them off from all escape routes and, more importantly, from water. The men go for a remote well they know about, their last hope, and they’re delighted when they find it unguarded. That is, delighted until they realize the well’s dry. There are bodies all around it, other people who came to the well and found it dry, all of them dead...

... except a newborn baby. A newborn baby who the three outlaws decide that they’re going to protect no matter what.

The introduction of the child changes the nature of the film completely, and in particular there’s a change in Wayne. He’s great here, and I’m not the biggest Wayne fan in the world. I think he’s got a very particular range, and as he got older, he settled into a shtick. In this film, Wayne gives a really driven, heartfelt performance. The way this child impacts the three men and the posse chasing them is beautifully handled. This film pushed some of the same buttons for me as my favorite new film last year, Gavin Hood’s TSOTSI. It is not a particularly shocking or innovative idea that having a child or being responsible for someone else, someone helpless, can have a huge effect on a person, but when you dramatize it properly, it’s pretty hard to deny as an emotional powerhouse. As shot by the great cinematographer Winston C. Hoch, this is a gorgeous Technicolor production. If I have any complaint, Richard Hageman’s score is a little too heavy on the syrup for me. Still, it’s just a small complaint, and realizing there’s one more Ford film that I love is a genuine pleasure, and I’m sure I’ll revisit this one many times in the future.

MOVIE: Excellent.

DISC CONTENT: Just the film.

DISC QUALITY: Print looks pretty sweet to me.

When I was growing up, Koko the gorilla was fairly famous, and even controversial. At the time, I didn’t understand why anyone would be upset by the notion of teaching a gorilla sign language. I still think the pure idea is a good one. Teaching a gorilla to utilize sign language as a way of speaking from one species to another, crossing a line that had never been crossed with any wild animal before... what’s not fascinating about that? Dr. Penny Patterson was nearly as famous as Koko, the human face of the experiment. She was one of the primary members of the team of people who both taught Koko and also studied her. Watching this movie now, I can see where some of the controversy came from, mostly about the scientific method as utilized by Dr. Patterson and her helpers. There’s an awful lot of leading going on, a lot of cues that they send to Koko basically telling her what to do next. They coach her constantly, and you have to wonder how much of what she does is cognitive and how much is simply aping Patterson’s actions, so to speak. There’s also the notion of what the social experiment is doing to Koko. Her sense of how to communicate undergoes a paradigm shift while she’s working under Patterson’s care, and there’s really no way to return her to a situation after this where she has to interact with other gorillas. That’s sort of heartbreaking, and as you watch Koko in this film, there’s no denying the palpable sense of desperate loneliness, perhaps the clearest thing she communicates in the whole film. Director Barbet Schroeder and cinematographer Nestor Alamendros do exceptional work here, but don’t expect flashy, intrusive technique. This is a very conventionally-shot documentary. Schroeder trusts his subject to carry the day, and Koko steps up, a naturally-born movie star. She appears to be keenly aware of the camera and of being filmed, and it would be hard to deny that she spends much of the running time performing, putting on a show for the filmmakers.

Of course, the thing that remains most compelling about this film nearly 30 years after its release is just how human its star really is. The reason I’m so freaked out by people who want desperately to deny any relationship between us and the animal kingdom is because it’s so impossible to avoid. Koko has a soul. Whatever your definition of a soul is, Koko’s got one. She feels anger, laughter, sorrow, and joy. She not only loves, but she can express it in the abstract. She has empathy for other living things, and she can demonstrate affection. And watching this film, it tears me apart to think of what has been done to gorillas, to their habitat, to their future on this planet. It’s not a zoological crime. Watching this film, it feels more like genocide.

MOVIE: Fascinating.

DISC CONTENT: Good, but succinct.

DISC QUALITY: As good a print as I’m guessing exists.

I saw this film in a theater when I was 17 at a revival of several Cassavetes films, but I hadn’t lived enough to get it then. I bought this Criterion box set as soon as it was released, but until Brett Ratner started blabbing about his burning desire to remake this particular title, I had not made time to watch it again. So thanks for the goad, Brett. And now please stop with your plans immediately. There’s definitely a way to make a slicker, more narratively accessible version of the film, and I have no doubt someone could make a version of this film that could be a mainstream hit, but it’s not going to have the soul that this one does, and it’s not going to have the grime that this one does, and it’s not going to be anything like the work of art that this one is. I find that Cassavetes films take a little warming up to for me. A few of his films I like as soon as I see them, but for the most part, they grow on me over time. Watching two versions of this film in rapid succession really helped me get a handle on what I think of this one, and where I think it stands in the Cassavetes filmography overall. It may well be the film that best sums up for me what is great about this filmmaker, the movie that most clearly encapsulates his voice.

Cosmo Vitelli, played with a bruised dignity by Ben Gazzara, is a great Cassavetes lead. At the start of the film, he’s paying off a debt, and he’s positively giddy at the idea that he’s finally free and clear. To celebrate, he picks up a bunch of the strippers who work at his club, and he takes them to an after-hours card game where he promptly goes $32,000 in debt. The rest of the film is basically Cosmo trying to dig himself out of this fresh debt, well aware that there’s little chance he’ll succeed. He runs this shitty little club in the days before you could just have naked women onstage with nothing else. You had to present it as “art” somehow, so Cosmo’s got music and spoken word and all sorts of other things to dress the show up a bit. He has a familial relationship with all the people who work at the club for him, and he’s protective of them. He knows that if he defaults on his debt, the mobsters he owes the money to will take the club over, and chances are they’ll destroy whatever is special about his place. There’s a way out (the title pretty much gives it away), but Cosmo really has to wrestle with the implications. More than anything, this is a film about holding on to your dreams no matter who tries to tear them down, and it’s deeply moving in a particularly seedy way. There’s a gutter beauty to the entire enterprise. Now, there was a longer version of the film released when it originally hit theaters in 1976, but Cassavetes was never satisfied, feeling like he rushed to get it into theaters. The film barely made any impression on the public during that initial release, and a few years later, when Cassavetes had the chance to re-release it, he recut the film, trimming 20 minutes or so out of it. The result is what I would consider the best possible version of the film. It’s strange to recommend the shorter version, but it really does make a difference, and watching both versions gives you an idea of just how smart an editor Cassavetes could be when given the time to finish his film the right way. The second disc, which features the 1978 director’s cut, also features new interviews with Ben Gazzara and producer Al Ruban that illuminate the process on the picture. There’s an audio interview with Cassavetes that is pretty spectacular, done right after the film’s release. This is a typically well-produced Criterion disc, and one of the great barely-seen films of the ‘70s.

MOVIE: Excellent.

DISC CONTENT: Excellent.

DISC QUALITY: Excellent.

I’m going to do stand-alone reviews of a few films that I’ve always wanted to tackle in-depth this week, Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW and the exquisite new Criterion SEVEN SAMURAI. First up, though, I’ve got reviews of films like JESUS CAMP, THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP, THE FOUNTAIN, and BABEL to finish up. Better get busy, so for now...