Catch-Up Neo-Noir Watch: Layer Cake (2004)

Watched:  05/28/2021

Format:  Amazon Streaming

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2000's

Director:  Matthew Vaughn

For a moment there, Britain was exporting some hip crime movies that Americans decided were a pretty good idea.  For a number of reasons, I missed Layer Cake (2004) when it hit the States in the summer of 2005.  And just never saw it afterwards.  Which is crazy.  We're Daniel Craig fans in this house.

It's a plot-heavy, occasionally cheeky gangster movie that served as an accidentally good pairing with The Brothers Rico, which I'd watched the night before.  Both films are about guys who are doing well enough in legitimate business that they want to leave the life behind them - but in Layer Cake, we aren't there yet.  We're just considering retiring after years packaging and selling cocaine in London when our nameless lead, played by Daniel Craig (and - it's clear this is the movie that inspired someone to give him Bond), gets pulled in as an errand boy by his boss, to find a missing girl and to broker a deal with a wild-card hoodlum who has a million hits of ecstacy he's stumbled into and is looking to sell.  

Noir Watch: The Brothers Rico (1957)

Watched:  05/27/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Phil Karlson

For gangster and crime film fans, there's a lot to like in The Brothers Rico (1957), and I have to wonder how many future gangster pictures were influenced by this one.  A story about family loyalty, gang loyalty, and where the two intersect, it's a tough picture.

Fortunately, it stars Richard Conte, who plays Eddie Rico, the eldest brother, pitch perfect.  A former mob accountant, Eddie's gotten out, left NYC and is running a laundry company handling industrial jobs like hotels.  He's married to a girl from the old neighborhood who talked him into getting out - and he's domesticated and ready to adopt a child when he's reminded he's still taking orders from New York.  And on the heels of that, he finds his brothers have been involved in a hit, and aren't following the mobster playbook.  One of them fell in love and grew a conscience.  

Throw in an old school Italian mother (Argentina Brunetti) who sees her ties to the mob as a good thing for she and her family, when not genuflecting, and it's more than the usual mob story, and hints at what's coming in mob fiction.  

There's no white-knight cop in this, nor any sign of law enforcement.  Nor is there anywhere to go where the New York mob hasn't syndicated operations.  As noir, it's about a character's belief in people, despite the fact they run a system that was always murderous, violent and corrupt.  He may have walked away as a friend in his mind, but he had never truly walked away - especially with his brothers remaining entangled.

There are some phenomenal scenes in the film (Conte waiting all day with the local boss in his hotel room), and Conte's scenes with his mother.

But at the end of the day, the film has a very weird Hollywood ending that just doesn't fit everything we saw before.  And absolutely can't have been what was in the original novel by Simenon or in the original screenplay.  

Still, worth watching.  Sometimes it feels positively modern.

PODCAST: "The Descent" (2005) - a Signal Watch Canon PodCast with SimonUK and Ryan

Watched:  05/18/2021

Format:  Amazon Streaming

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2000's

Director:  Neil Marshall

For more ways to listen

Simon and Ryan delve deep and explore the dark passageways of one of Simon's favourite films. You never know what lurks around all the corners and what we'll take a bite out of next as we ponder the first big success by director Neil Marshall.

The Signal Watch PodCast · 148: "The Descent" (2005) - a Signal Watch Canon Podcast w/ SimonUK and Ryan

Music:

Into the Cavern - David Julyan, The Descent OST

Alone - David Julyan, The Descent OST

Signal Watch Canon:

The Signal Watch PodCast · The Signal Watch Canon

Noir Watch: Phantom Lady (1944)

Watched:  05/22/2021

Format:  BluRay (Arrow)

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Robert Siodmak

Producer:  Joan Harrison

I enjoyed this movie a lot the first time, but *really* liked it on a second viewing.

I just picked up the book Phantom Lady:  Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Woman Behind Hitchcock - and as I finished chapter 1, figured I might as well re-watch another of Harrison's movies.  

The "phantom lady" of the title does not refer to my Canadian girlfriend I swear I had in high school.  Instead - the film follows a man who has hit a sour spot with his wife and is out on the town having a drink, when he meets a woman who is, herself, distraught, but doesn't want to talk about it.  Agreeing not to share names, the two spend an evening on the town (there's no romance, just companionship), but when he arrives home, his wife is dead and the cops are waiting for him.  

No, I don't know how the cops knew to be there.

The man admits he and his wife were quarreling, and when the man can't turn up "the phantom lady", he's off to jail and a swift trial.  

His secretary, Ella Raines, isn't buying it and starts up her own investigation, with the support of cop Thomas Gomez and her boss's best pal, Franchot Tone, just returned from Brazil.

The movie looks great with classic noir high-contrast lighting, but also some interesting ideas in set design (Tone's apartment) and framing (the famed "erotic" drumming sequence).  I don't particularly want to list every scene and how and why it works, but the thread pulling everything together is Ella Raines' "Kansas", the intrepid secretary who won't let injustice lie, at threat to her life and limb - but she's also smarter than the average bear.  

She's no Marlowe - she's operating out of loyalty and a long-hidden love for her employer, not as a professional detective with a sense of duty.  But that makes her interest and drive all the more buyable.  And I think Ella Raines - whose career was curiously short for someone who was starring in good films - is pretty terrific here, playing some challenging stuff.

Anyhoo - glad to watch it again.

Noir Watch: Touch of Evil (1958)

Watched:  05/22/2021

Format:  Noir Alley on DVR

Viewing:  Unknown - 4th?

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Orson Welles

Jesus, this movie.  

For anyone who wants to talk about the great days of America and imagines the 1950's as some period of Leave It To Beaver simplicity, knowing that the era could also produce a movie that every corrupt cop movie has tried to stand up to since is a hell of a reality check.  In an era where even the noir films were being relit for eventual television distribution (less in content than in visuals), Welles' final Hollywood backed opus hits some of the darkest notes in a noir of the entire era.  

I've written before about how anxious Touch of Evil (1958) makes me, and that's still true.  I'd previously attributed most of that anxiety to the frustration and sympathy with Janet Leigh's young bride character who seems to be (a) the only one with a clear-eyed view of the situation, (b) in absolute peril from multiple forms of assault, and (c) utterly ignored by the macho men playing cops and robbers around her - she's an absolute prop, even to her own husband.

SPOILERS

80's Cult Watch: Eating Raoul (1982)

Watched:  05/17/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR from forever ago

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Paul Bartel

Well, I loved this movie.  

Ridiculous, mean-spirited and a lot of fun - what else can you want from a 1980's pop black comedy made on the edge of the Hollywood studio system?  It's also a fascinating time capsule of the long-gone sub-cultures of the 1980's - the Boomer's own fascination with pop-nostalgia and the fetishization of everything from the 50's and early 60's in everything from media to decor to glassware.  

But also the fascination with the oddities of conformity often at odds with the excesses of the 70's and into the 1980's.  

Writer/ Director Paul Bartel plays one half of a husband and wife team - the other half played by former Warhol-girl Mary Woronov.  If I had to explain what the two are playing to a Millennial or Gen-Z'er, it'd be a little difficult to get the full context across, but they're weirdly like two drones from a 1950's sitcom in a sexless marriage sleeping in separate beds - and totally happy-ish.  If only they could raise the money they need for their restaurant.  

Unfortunately, Paul and Mary live in an apartment building that is also filled with swingers parties, which they see as perverse and beyond the pale - but where else could they move with so little money?

One night fate deals them a hand in the form of a swinger's party guest who Paul kills (somewhat nonchalantly) with a cast iron pan when the guest tries to force himself on Mary.  Pocketing the man's money and easily disposing of the body, and inspired by a dominatrix who was at the swinger's party they realize - hey, this could be a business.  And place an ad as a honeytrap so they can knock off "degenerates" and take their money.  Soon, the titular Raoul is involved and assisting in removing the bodies.

Anyway - it's all pretty nuts, and sold completely through Paul and Mary's even-keeled deadpan delivery.  Of course everyone along the way is, in contrast, not matching their energy and LA over-the-top, and it makes for phenomenal intentional camp. 

It's some seriously dark comedy, and the tone is not going to sit well with everyone.  There's also constant and unremarked upon threat of sexual assault to Mary.  And, of course, sociopathic murder every few minutes.  So, just be aware of what you're getting into.

The movie has cameos by Buck Henry, Edie McClurg and Ed Begley Jr.  But, it also stars Robert Beltran as Raoul before he'd go on to play Chakotay on Star Trek Voyager.  

btw - I was actually familiar with the Paul and Mary characters from their brief appearance in opening scenes from the Corman-produced goofy "horror" favorite, The Chopping Mall.  

Thriller Watch: The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)

Watched:  05/16/2021

Format:  TCM on DVR from forever ago

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Peter Godfrey

Well, we often talk about how you can see the roots of Lifetime movies in the films of the past, and I'd certainly argue The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) absolutely fits the bill here.  

SPOILERS

This one wants to be a slow-burn gothic thriller/ murder story, and has a collection of the pieces necessary, but it's so... wacky, it plays better as near-camp in 2021.  Stanwyck is a woman inperiled, but, by god, she's going to look like a million bucks in Edith Head gowns while bed-ridden and menaced by her own husband.  

Knowing nothing about the movie ahead of time, I thought I'd signed us up for a melodrama - which is fine, but not my jam so much - about a man stuck in a loveless marriage who meets a woman he does love.  Instead, we figure our Mr. Carroll has, instead, murdered his first wife with whom he has a ridiculously precocious child, so he will be free to marry Stanwyck.  The slow death of his wife as he poisons her also gives him fuel for a now famous painting of his wife as "The Angel of Death".  

Well, all is well til Bogart starts a tryst with Alexis Smith (who looks amazing here in some outstanding outfits), and he starts up on the "better murder the wife" scheme again.  

I mean, it's the kind of movie where I confidently shouted, "lady, get outta there" at the TV, and felt fine doing so.  It's not that Stanwyck isn't doing a good job of look terrified that her husband is likely slowly murdering her, but that the whole set-up feels kind of bananas and complete with a set of supporting characters that feel like someone shook them out of a pre-war comedy.  

Also - everyone but Bogart is supposed to be English, and for some reason Stanwyck just sounds like Stanwyck.  

I had a good time watching the film - it's paced well, has a lot of tension baked in, and you certainly feel for Stanwyck as she figures out what's happening.  And Smith and Stanwyck's outfits in the overly ornate set are something to behold.  But Bogart is playing wild-eyed crazy and hoo-boy, did he need to dial it back some.   And, of course, his character is The King of Red Flags.

But, at least he got to just be crazy and not have a lot of goofy "we explain crazy as a brain science problem!" couching like we'd see soon after.

And, hey, Alexis Smith can really rock a leopard print coat, is my big takeway from the movie.

Neo-Noir Watch: The Limey (1999)

Watched:  05/16/2021

Format:  Amazon Prime Streaming

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1990's

Director:  Steven Soderbergh

This is a catch-up watch, one of about ten crime movies from this era I didn't see because life is not always what it should be. 

Anyway, I was so distracted, I didn't know who was in the cast or that this was a Soderbergh movie - and I like Soderbergh movies.  All I knew was "Terence Stamp tearing shit up for 90 minutes".  And, indeed, that is true.  But, The Limey (1999) also features Peter Fonda, the perpetually underutilized Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzman, and an uncredited but terrific Bill Duke.  

Noir Watch: I Love Trouble (1948)

Watched:  05/12/2021

Format:  TCM Film Fest

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1940's

Director:   S. Sylvan Simon

I'd actually had a bit of trouble tracking down I Love Trouble (1948), a film I'd seen often referenced in writing about noir, but it just never crossed my path.  I've seen reference to the film being lost for a few decades, but TCM was able to air it as part of the 2021 TCMFF.  Honestly - the print is not great, but I've seen worse.  

The plot itself is a windy murder mystery and from the same school as a Chandler mystery, but with more than a hint of Hammett.  The cast is headlined by Franchot Tone, a guy who was a bug movie star at one point, but I tend to know as "that guy who was married to Joan Crawford in the 1930's"*.  

I absolutely cannot talk about the plot without spoiling the movie - other than it's very much a quality gumshoe caper with all the trimmings.  Tone as our shamus is actually rock solid here.  I liked what he did as "Stuart Bailey" - an enjoyable riff on a familiar sort of tune, and playing the fast-talking PI with the moral code working his way through the underbelly of society.  

He's joined by a bunch of actors you've likely never heard of - although noiristas will remember Janis Carter from Night Editor, Adele Jergens from Armored Car Robbery, Glenda Farrell from Little Caesar, Steven Geray from Gilda, and Tom Powers from... everything.  

I'd love to see this one again sometime to enjoy watching it work rather than keeping up with details of the mystery.  

*I mean, well done sir

Watch Party Watch: Space Truckers (1996)

 

Watched:  05/11/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First (complete viewing)

Decade:  oh, so 1990's

Director:  Stuart Gordon

Way back around 2001 or 2002, one day I noticed a movie called Space Truckers (1996) was showing on HBO.  If you've been hanging around this blog since 2003, then you know:  I immediately tuned over and caught something like 30 minutes of it.

I was shocked to see name actors Stephen Dorff, Dennis Hopper and Debi Mazar in what appeared to be a mid-budget sci-fi comedy that I'd never heard of, galivanting around space in a long-haul space-truck.