Category Archives: Movies

The ‘Dead Men’ Project: Film, 1 The Bribe

Having acquired the DVD from San Diego City Library my quest to watch every movie in the compilation comedy Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid begins with the lowest scoring movie, 1949’s The Bribe, starring Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, and Vincent Price.

MGM

Federal Agent Rigby (Taylor) is sent far from any US jurisdiction to a small island off Central America and the fishing hamlet of Carlotta to investigate a criminal ring smuggling war surplus aircraft engines onto the international black market. Had the feature opened this way it might have been a better movie, instead it begins with the most tired of film noir tropes, particularly when done badly, the voice-over. To make this overused technique even less appealing the voice-over is spoken in second person. So, everything we see Rigby narrating that he did he describes ‘you’ did. I myself have never found a piece of fiction where the second person works, it always keeps me at a distance, unable to submerge myself in the story being told, either in prose or in cinema.

Anyway, Rigby finds the married couple that the fed believe are running the smuggling operation, Elizabeth (Gardner) a nightclub singer and Hinton (John Hodiak) her drunkard of a husband. Naturally, Rigby falls for Elizabeth and she for him though the production code keeps their mutual feelings chaste. Rigby’s cover as someone simply looking for sport fishing had apparently the half-life of one of James Bond’s covers and he is approached by Bealer (Laughton) who offers him a bribe of 10,000 dollars to simply leave the island. The real bribe of the title however, is the threat to drag Elizabeth down with the criminals when she had actually been ignorant of it all unless Rigby ‘plays ball.’

At one point the movie makes extensive use of rear-screen projection so performers on a boat set might appear to be out on the open sea, marlin fishing. While this technique may have been acceptable to audiences of the 40s and 50s to modern eyes it screams its tricks like a poor stage magician. Which is a shame as the sequence boasts what in better handled hands could have been a tense and dynamic scene of attempted assassination.

There are no real surprises, or twisty plot reveals and if The Bribe didn’t boast a cast of well-established stars by 1949’s reckoning, it would be an adequate ‘B-Picture.’ The only real standout moment in the movie is the final chase when Rigby pursues the ringleader Carwood (Price) through a festival and into a massive ground-level firework display. Some shots are clearly the leads, Taylor and Price, dashing through exploding fireworks and others are stunt performers with their features well hidden. Elements of this climax were used in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and are what intrigued me the most, igniting my curiosity to see just how and why such a scene occurred.

The DVD is going back to the library and while The Bribe made for a passable lunch time viewing it is not a noir that is going to live for very long in my head or my heart.

Movie Review: Dracula (2025)

Dracula, written by Bram Stoker and published in 1897, is one of the most adapted pieces of fiction in the English canon rivaled, perhaps, only by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The number of

SND

adaptations and the various media are almost beyond count. The famed vampire has been in London’s swinging 70s scenes, hunted the darkened streets and bayous of Louisiana, stalked victims aboard starships in deep space, and even blackmailed into hunting down criminals like a superhero (Dracula Returns, Robert Lory.) But after waves and truly out-there reimaginings filmmakers returned time and time again to the Stoker original novel, its 19th turning into the 20th century setting, and adapting once again that primal source material.

Filmmaker Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, The Professional, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, to cite a few) has released his own take on literature’s most famous vampire. Written, produced, and directed by Besson, Dracula, released in other markets as Dracula: A Love Story, is so loosely bound by the source material as to stretch to breaking the very definition of adaptation. (It causes me to remember that there was once a screen adaptation of a Shakespearean play with credit Additional Dialog by William Shakespeare.) People familiar with the novel Dracula will recognize a fragment of a scene here and there that echoes something of what Stoker penned, but nothing more than a faint and nearly imperceptible shadow of that original text. Gone is Doctor Abraham Van Helsing, replaced by Christoph Waltz (the principal reason I ventured to see this feature) as a priest, part of a Vatican-ordained order of vampire hunters. Following in the recent canon alterations (or desecrations depending upon your point of view) Dracula (Caleb Landry Jones) once again is portrayed as a man so tormented by the loss of his true love at the hands of his enemy that he has forsaken the Church and God, that he is cursed with the terrible affliction of vampirism, leaving him to haunt the centuries searching for the reincarnation of his lost love. Much of the film’s runtime, 2 hours and 9 minutes, is dedicated to Dracula’s backstory, following him through four centuries of searching and loss. Given that the film’s main action takes place after all of that backstory, this creates in the film a powerful sense that the movie is mostly exposition. This Dracula shares a thematic element with del Toro’s Frankenstein, a deep sympathy for the monster at the center of the tale. While it can be argued that Shelley imbued her text with such feelings for the creation, no such sentiment is in Stoker’s novel. This is the inevitable consequence once you introduce any hint of a tragic origin for the famed vampire. By the end of the film Besson abandons any considerations for the Count’s numerous and slaughtered victims, keeping his sympathy entirely for a vampire with whom Besson has crafted a nobility absent from the source material. This rendition, in addition to transplanting the story from England to Paris, contains mind-control perfumes, elaborate choreographed dances with scores of performers, and culminates with the Austro-Hungarian Empire assaulting Castle Dracula with troops and cannon.

On the plus side, Caleb Landry Jones turns in a performance that sold me, for the most part, on his portrayal as an Eastern European nobleman. To my untrained ear I detected no flaw in his accent and his bearing and delivery all contributed positively to the air of a man for whom power was a birthright. I do wish that hair and make-up had dyed his hair black, a blonde Transylvanian nobleman did stretch my credulity as much as the count being a master chemist whipping up mind-control perfumes.

Besson’s Dracula does strike me as the most thematically Christian rendition of the material. Most vampire movies and television programs will use the cross warding as a gimmick, a way for the characters to save themselves when confronted by a thing that vastly overpowers them, but here the story and its resolution actually turns on Christian theology.

And that made the final resolution unacceptable to me for what is yet another rendition of the ‘red shirt’ problem. In my final section I will spoil the ending of the film so you can bail out here, knowing that I cannot recommend this movie at theatrical prices, at best wait for it to come a streaming service you already subscribe to.

After the army and assorted characters have successfully assaulted and gained entrance to the castle, and after Dracula had slaughtered literally scores of men, Waltz’s priest confronts the vampire and implores him to renounce his heresy. For Dracula to accept God’s love and forgiveness, which Dracula does and then allows the priest to destroy him with a silver stake.

So, Dracula, a vile and evil creature who for hundreds of years has visited terror and death on the people of Europe, is in the end forgiven and granted absolution even as he stands in a hallway littered with the corpses of men he killed. These nameless characters died not to end a great evil, and in the end their sacrifices achieved nothing. It was not by their blood and lives that the Priest walked into the castle. They were mere spectacle, giving the conclusion some action.

It is Christian to believe that honest and true repentance will grant you God’s absolution, but it makes for a terrible movie ending and it is particularly rankling when once again we are being asked to accept a monster as subject of our sympathy and empathy.

The Spy Spectrum

While the Spy craze of the 60s is long behind us with only the property that ignited that boom, Bond, James Bond, still commands the attention of popular culture — that phrase always implies to me that there is an unpopular culture. Stories of spies and espionage continue to be written and produced. In my opinion there is a spectrum upon which stories of the covert services are told and the ends of that spectrum are anchored by the authors that towered over the field during the height of the ‘spy boom’, Ian Fleming and John le Carré.

Ian Fleming created James Bond, the first novel, Casino Royale, written just before Fleming’s marriage with the author plucking the character’s name off a birding book because he felt the name had a grey forgettable quality to it. While that originating novel had a few not too spectacular gadgets and battled the spy services of the Soviet Union not global criminal empires it wasn’t long before those elements were introduced, then became mainstay tropes of Bond’s adventures. Bond’s stories are adventures, filled with colorful characters, beautiful willing women, fantastic technology and always with clear heroics both in the nature of the threat and the heroic people fighting evil, unredeemable bad guys. (We will set aside that in Casino Royale Bond in the confines of his private thoughts muses on the ‘sweet tang of rape’ an aspect of the character that was mercifully never translated to the screen.)

John le Carré, real name David Cornwell, crafted espionage fiction that very much reflected the real world. His characters were not the fantasy of ‘gentlemen spies’ but working people trying to do their best in a system that in order to achieve its goals often employed the same despicable tactics of the enemy until recognizing one from the other became nearly impossible. Disillusionment is a common theme in le Carré’s work, work which questioned whether our methods define us no matter the nobility of our ends. What gadgets exist in le Carré’s world are ones that actually exist or at the very least are very possible, here you will not find powerful electro-magnets that can pull boats to you from yards away. Heroes often find at the end of the missions not that they have triumphed over evil but rather that they have employed evil, often for questionable results. It is a world so thoroughly gray one wonders if any color can be found anywhere.

The explosive success of the Bond movies dictated that swarms of spy thrillers would flood the screen chasing that sweet, sweet box office money. Most of these, The ‘Matt Helm’ and ‘Flint’ movies sit quite comfortably near the Fleming end of the spectrum, attempting to dazzle the audience with derring-do and fantastic gadgets. Len Deighton’s ‘Harry Palmer’ series mixed the style of Fleming’s fantastic plot with le Carré’s cynicism placing this series near the middle of the spectrum. Get Smart the successful spy parody series is clearly at the Fleming point, if not far beyond it. It would be difficult to imagine a similar program for le Carré’s style of fiction, after all how funny can a parody of the dark, cynical, and morally gray world of le Carré be?

Slow Horses, currently adapted into a quite successful series on Apple TV, hews closer to le Carré than to Fleming, there is a distinct lack of gadgets, and the world the characters inhabit very much mirrors the gray and morally questionable world that is found in works such as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but overlaid with a modern ironic sense. Here there isn’t the common mistake of confusing cynicism for wisdom, but rather a recognition of the flawed world, the flawed systems, but an understanding that beyond all that somethings are right and somethings are wrong.

I find this spectrum a very handy method of classifying espionage fiction, how likely it is to resonate with me. It’s even applicable at the espionage genre is adapted in all sorts of new and exciting way, such as Charle Stross’ Laundry Series which clearly take it’s parody aspects from Fleming with all sorts of fantastical gadget, combined with a sharp satire of office and corporate culture while battling Lovecraftian forces beyond comprehension.

The spy trope is alive and well, even if we don’t have as many as we used to and its pleasing that we still get both our glorious heroes inspired by Fleming and dark cynical take that follow le Carré.

The ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid’ Project

When I went to the theater with my friend Ray in 1982 to see Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, it was not because I was a deep fan of detective movies or film noir. Steve Martin and Carl Reiner were enough of a selling point to motivate me to see this comedy, and it’s something I never regretted.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is both a satire and a salute to the detective and film noir films of the 1940s and 1950s, with Steve Martin as Rigby Reardon hired by Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) to investigate the mysterious death of her father, a famous scientist. Rigby’s investigation brings him into contact with numerous shady and dangerous characters before leading him to a cadre of Nazis in South America bent on continuing the war with America.

What makes this film special is that it’s a collage project with most of the shady and dangerous characters that Martin interacts with as Rigby carefully edited scenes from classic movies of the period. By careful use of over-the-shoulder shots, sets and costumes crafted to duplicate those seen in the archival footage, and sometimes the use of doubles photographed without their faces visible, the illusion that Martin is actually in these scenes is delivered with a degree of sophistication that’s impressive.

A few years after seeing and thoroughly enjoying this movie in my Introduction to Cinematography course I was exposed to some of the more important films that Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid used in its collages and my fascination with film noir began.

Last month I got the idea it might be fun to make it a challenge to watch every one of the 19 classic movies that this film borrowed clips from. By my own count, I’ve seen eight, leaving eleven yet to be experienced. I made a list, organized it by IMDB ratings, and decided to start from the lowest rated and work my way to the highest, skipping none—making this a mix of films new to me and old favorites.

Double Indemnity (1944) – 8.3
2. White Heat (1949) – 8.1
3. Suspicion (1941) – 8.1
4. The Killers (1946) – 8.0
5. The Lost Weekend (1945) – 8.0
6. In a Lonely Place (1950) – 8.0
7. Notorious (1946) – 7.9
8. The Big Sleep (1946) – 7.8
9. Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) – 7.7
10. Dark Passage (1947) – 7.6
11. The Glass Key (1942) – 7.6
12. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) – 7.6
13. I Walk Alone (1947) – 7.4
14. This Gun for Hire (1942) – 7.3
15. Humoresque (1946) – 7.3
16. Deception (1946) – 7.2
17. Johnny Eager (1941) – 7.1
18. Keeper of the Flame (1942) – 6.9
19. The Bribe (1949) – 6.8

My project ran into immediate trouble.

The Bribe, which fascinated me most from the clips utilized by Reiner and Martin, was not streaming anywhere, nor was it available even as a video-on-demand (VOD) rental. There had been a single release on DVD 16 years ago in 2010 and long out of print.

I didn’t want to abandon this project—it seemed fun to me—but I also hated the idea of skipping some of the films that violated the very essence of the endeavor. Surrender seemed to be the only option until I remembered one tiny little fact: the San Diego Library System has DVDs.

A quick search of the catalog revealed that they had two copies of The Bribe on disc, and so soon, my friends, I will begin the climb up that list as my 2026 cinematic venture.

It Should Not Be Titanic versus L. A. Confidential

As we approach the Academy Awards once again, the discussion turns to snubs and the films that should have won Best Picture, with lively debate centered on 1997’s Best Picture winner, Titanic, and the beloved loser that year, the neo-noir L.A. Confidential.

L.A. Confidential is a complex story with intertwined story arcs of passion, corruption, ambition, and organized crime in post-War Los Angeles as it attempts to build a ‘modern’ police force. Adapted from James Ellroy’s doorstop of a novel with a bewildering number of characters and a pace that demands the audience keeps up as the twisty plot is slowly revealed, the script is a miracle of adaptation.

Titanic is an epic of motion picture wizardry, a tale of star-crossed lovers from opposite ends of society who meet and discover themselves aboard the famed and doomed ocean liner as it makes its fateful transatlantic crossing. Ridiculed both within and without the industry for its massive production and its legendary cost overruns, many believed before its release that it would signal the end of James Cameron’s ‘Golden Boy’ image as he finally suffered a disastrous box office bomb. Though the script suffers from cardboard villains and trite, clichéd dialogue, the movie became the most successful motion picture in history, losing that crown to another James Cameron film, Avatar.

The problem with the award is that it’s a singular honor when in fact there should be two awards at the top honoring outstanding achievement in motion pictures.

There should be Best Film, which in 1997, I would award to L.A. Confidential. This would be an award which judges the picture based on its themes, its writing, its story, and how those elements synthesize. It would be an award to recognize the artistry that explores the nature of humanity and the human soul. This award should go to the producers, the people responsible for finding and developing the story from concept, through however many writers and directors are involved, to final form.

The companion award should be Best Production. This would recognize outstanding achievement in the production of a motion picture, the mastery of coordinating hundreds of skilled artists and craftsmen. The nearly impossible task of maintaining such an army and keeping it focused on an artistic vision and realizing that artistic vision. Titanic is a near perfect example of a film that shows a real mastery of production along with all three of The Lord of the Rings installments. This is a director’s award, the person tasked with guiding the day to day work of that vast army.

Sadly, that is not the world we inhabit.

Helen of Troy Wasn’t Real

Later this year we’ll get Christopher Nolan’s next epic and chronologically scrambled film, his adaptation of The Odyssey. I’m a fan of Nolan’s work, in general, Interstellar mistakes cynicism for wisdom — a fault that often appears when he works with his brother Jonathan — so I expect to put my butt in the theater when this is released.

Rumors have slipped out and I do not believe that they have been verified that Nolan has cast actor Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, the mythical reason for the war and destruction of Troy. As Ms. Nyong’o is far from the Aryan ideal of feminine beauty, the usual quarters of the internet have released their hateful monkeys, pretending to be aghast at this ‘historical inaccuracy.’

Daniel Benavides – Creative Commons License

First off, Helen of Troy is a fictional character. There is no ‘historical accuracy’ in any casting of her. She probably doesn’t look like how Homer or anyone of his time would have pictured the subject of the epics, but that hardly matters. Beauty and what is considered beautiful is such a slippery concept, shifting so quickly from culture to culture and, hell, from year to year within the same culture. No, the intense ‘debate’ has little to do with history and much more to do with weak and scared people needing something, particularly culture, to reassure them that they are the best in the universe and that their pale skin is evidence of that fact. ( I am pretty damned pale myself, but all that really means is that I consider the sun an evil force.)

This is not the first time we have been subjected to this vile nastiness cosplaying as ‘accuracy.’

When Marvel released Thor in 2011, there were the same cries and thumping of sunken chests over the casting of Idris Elba as Heimdall. Again, we were assaulted with the argument it wasn’t ‘accurate’ as though Heimdall existed in reality and not simply the product of mead-induced story-telling.

1989’s Batman saw the same thing erupt, though with far less notoriety due to that being the pre-internet age, with the casting of Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent. Again, a fictional character though this time one with a history of being depicted visually.

Lupita Nyong’o is not only a fantastically attractive person, she is a highly skilled and proficient actor, someone who has mastered her craft. If she is playing Helen of Troy, I will be perfectly fine with that and will find it far, far easier to suspend my disbelief than when I was assailed with Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist.

Movie Review: Three Strangers (1946)

Counted among Warner Brothers’ film noir catalog, Three Strangers shares a thematic aspect with The Night Has a Thousand Eyes in that it is a noir with a strong atmosphere of the supernatural about it.

Warner Brothers Studios

A mysterious woman wordlessly lures a man to her apartment in London. Once inside another man, obviously intoxicated, rises from the sofa. The woman explains that she also invited this gentleman, again without knowing anything about him, even his name. She speedily explains that at least for the moment, they must not reveal their names or anything about themselves to each other. In her apartment she has a statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin and at midnight as the new year begins, it is said that the goddess will open her eyes and grant a wish to three strangers, provided that they wish for the same thing. They agree to wish for money via a lottery ticket for the national horse race. They sign the ticket, making it a contract amongst themselves, using a blotter to obscure their names as they sign so no one sees another’s name.

They wait for midnight, gazing at the candle-lit statuette. The hour is struck, and a wind extinguishes the flame, plunging the room into darkness. By the time the candle is relit, the hour has passed. Then Crystal Shackleford (Geraldine Fitzgerald), who can now safely reveal her name, insists that she saw the statuette’s eyes open, as the myth insisted. The first man, Jerome Arbutny (Sydney Greenstreet) insists he saw no such thing, with the third person, Johnny West (Peter Lorre) taking no serious part in the debate if the eye opened or not. The three go their separate ways, Arbutny cynical that anything serious has transpired, West willing to believe but more interested in more drink to fuel his alcoholism, and Shackleford devout in her faith that this idol will bring about fortune for them all.

The rest of the film follows the three through their troubled lives. Arbutny has embezzled funds from a trust he manages for an eccentric widowed peer, the discovery of which will ruin him financially and reputationally. West, in a drunken stupor, was shanghaied into being a lookout for a burglary that went badly and ended with the murder of a police officer. Shackleford instigated the entire affair in hope of winning back her husband who, after unspecified marital difficulties, has taken an extended business trip to Canada. Each person’s life spirals more and more out of control. Arbutny finds no source of funds to cover his theft and his client is now suspicious. West ends up taking the fall for the murder one of his compatriots committed, and Shackleford’s husband returns, demanding a divorce so he may marry his new love. When the lottery ticket turns out to have drawn not only the name of a horse in the race but one favored to win, the film turns to its final act without ever addressing if it had been mere chance or supernatural forces at work as the characters suffer the consequences of their choices.

Three Strangers is an fascionating sort of film noir. Produced in 1946, it is early in that genre’s formation, so the dipping into the supernatural is not an attempt to revitalize a form but one that rose organically when John Huston conceived the story. It is a film I have heard of for quite some time and this week finally got around to watching. In terms of film noir, there are better movies that I will revisit much more often than this one, but it is also interesting enough to warrant watching and with a collection of characters that are entertaining with all their faults; Icy the woman who loves West despite his drinking, Gabby their accomplice in the robbery who is a brute but one with a code and the clerks working in Arbunty’s office all give the film charm and depth. . I really like how the supernatural—not only Kwan Yin but the spirits of the dead visiting their loved ones—is handled so deftly that it can be mere coincidence or actual evidence that there is much more to the world than what we can see, hear, and touch. Three Strangers is a gritty crime noir that suggests perhaps the world is not as material as it appears.

Remaking the Exorcist

After the box office failure of Exorcist: Believer, which Universal, who had acquired the rights from Warner Brothers had hoped to revitalize the franchise and launch a new horror trilogy, the project was taken away from its director, David Gordon Green.

A new film currently known simply as The Exorcist has been handed to the reigning prince of cinematic horror, Mike Flanagan.

While there are some Flanagan projects that I have found to be inspired and masterfully crafted, in particular Doctor Sleep a sequel to The Shining that manages to honor both the original source material and the cinematic legacy, I have serious doubts about yet another Exorcist project. The Exorcist, in my opinion, should have never had any sequels and the concept of a ‘franchise’ is utterly repellant.

First off, a horror franchise is a deeply difficult thing. Oh, there are tons and tons of them about and every studio dreams of having a run that is like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, or Scream, but what horror existed in those movies quickly vanished with the sequels. To me those movies ceased to horrify and only titillated with more and more elaborate methods of murders combined with advancing practical effects. I can’t remember ever being disturbed by these sequels and horror should disturb you emotionally not inspire cheers from gore as spectacle.

The second reason I am highly skeptical of an Exorcist franchise is that this story, this tale, was never constructed for that sort of open-ended treatment. The Exorcist, both novel and screenplay, was William Peter Blatty’s method of dealing with his own crisis of faith. It was not a cash grab, but a work produced by a devoted Catholic who found his own way thorny and used fiction to explore answers to his deep theological questions. While the rest of the world considered The Exorcist a horror novel and film, Blatty and director William Friedkin, did not, treating the material as a theological mystery. With the exception of Blatty’s work with the novel Legion adapted into The Exorcist III, none of the sequels possessed the deep questioning nature of the original source material, they pursued effects and shock value, making them ultimately forgettable. yet another sequel to The Exorcist is the last thing cinema requires.

Little is actually known about Flanagan’s project and rumor has suggested that instead of a sequel he may be remaking the original film, a new adaptation of the novel.

This too would be a mistake.

Since its publication I have read the novel the Exorcist three or four times. I do not count it among my favorite books, but it is fascinating and an interesting glimpse into the time it was written. The script and motion picture are excellent adaptations, some of the best. Nearly all of the novel’s core story and more importantly questions are there, particularly with the final revisions later released. If this is a re-adaptation of the novel I fail to see what they can include that wasn’t in the original film’s take. What was left out deserved to be left out. Audiences, even in the 70s and more so today, would laugh at Father Karras’ quest to prove that it was telekinesis that moved the objects and not demonic possession. (Really, in the 70s psychic powers were all the rage in fiction and in the culture.)

The 1973 film was a miracle of adaptation, in script, in direction, and in casting. It was lightning in a bottle that I doubt even Flanagan can recreate.

Classic Movie Review: Little Caesar (1931)

Last week I watched a YouTuber movie reactor watch Soylent Green for the first time. That film was the very last movie with Edward G. Robinson a film star whose career stretched back to the very start of the sync-sound era of motion pictures. After viewing the reaction, I had a hankering to watch another film with Edward G. Robinson and instead of pulling Double Indemnity from my collection I decided to go with the movie that launched Robinson as a star Little Caesar.

Warner Bros Studios

Released in 1931, Little Caesar is most definitely a pre-code movie. We meet Caesar Enrico ‘Rico’ Bandello (Edward G. Robinson) as he and his buddy Joe (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) rob a gas station, in the process murdering the attendant. Unlike Joe, Rico has no traces of remorse as they eat supper in an isolated diner following the horrid crime. Ambitious for more than petty robberies, the murder isn’t even on his mind, Rico drags Joe to the ‘big city’ where he quickly joins a mob and begins his meteoric rise (isn’t it ironic that we use ‘meteoric rise’ when meteors are most known for falling) to the top of the city’s organized crime community followed by his equally swift downfall.

Little Caesar is part of the Blu-Ray boxed set The Ultimate Gangster Collection. With its release in 1931, this film is an example of just how quickly Hollywood adopted synchronized sound into their productions. While the quality of the sound still needed improvement, the production capability was there and aside from the occasional use of title cards as deployed in silent movies, Little Caesar looks and sounds very much like the films that would follow for the rest of the decade. As a ‘pre-code’ movie, Little Caesar is a bold tale that follows its lead character as he murders his way to fame and fortune with a downfall that was not engineered by the police forces of the ‘big city’ but rather by betrayal from a friend.

Of course, this was the movie that made a star of Edward G. Robinson, and while he did play gangsters again, most notability in Key Largo, Robinson escaped typecasting and his career stretched from the 1930s into the early 1970s. If you watch classic Looney Tunes cartoons and see Bug Bunny facing off against a gangster, that gangster is a parody of Robinson’s performance in Little Caesar, which set the template for the genre.

At an hour and seventeen minutes, Little Caesar had little time for a ‘realistic’ climb to greatness for Rico and instead swiftly moves the character along, only stopping for an occasional bit of detailed action. Aside from Rico and Joe, the characters are flat, serving more as elements of plot than living breathing people and one should not go into watching this film with modern sensibilities about writing and psychological realism, but one should watch Little Caesar.

Movie Review: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

The newest installment in the 28 Days Later, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, directed by Nia DeCosta, opened this weekend, and my sweetie-wife and I attended a Sunday matinee.

Bone Temple picks up just a very short time after the ending of the previous franchise entry with that film’s protagonist, 12-year-old Spike, a captive of the ‘Jimmies,’ a tiny, deranged band of sadistic marauders led by Jimmy, a man who survived the outbreak since childhood and now believes himself to be the embodiment of Satan’s will on Earth.

Sony Pictures

In a parallel plotline the movie follows Dr. Ian Kelson, also a character carried over from the previous movie, as he continues his isolated life amid the grand ossuary of towering bone that he constructed to honor the dead. Kelson’s experiments with the infected lead him to a sort of friendship with a massive, infected man. When a member of the Jimmies spies Kelson, dancing with an infected, they mistake him for Satan himself setting the two forces into conflict for the film’s final act.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is a fine and perfectly serviceable follow-up to 28 Years Later. It is competently directed by Nia DeCosta and with a script by Alex Garland, the originator of the franchise, that has no serious plot holes, consistent believable characters, along with moments of action, horrific violence, and humor. And yet, for all that the best praise I can give this production is that it is ‘fine.’ Garland, who so often explores large ideas and questions with his writing, think 2024’s Civil War,Ex Machina, or the mind twisting Men, does very little of that with this movie. The deepest theme I can pull out of The Bone Temple is that some people are good and try to be of service to others, some are bad and seek pleasure in the pain that they can inflict on others, and many, if not most, are simply trying to survive a cruel and indifferent world. This is hardly the sort of statement one would expect from the scriptwriter of Annihilation.

As a horror film, whatever that phrase might mean to you, The Bone Temple, for me, does not deliver. I enjoyed the film, but more as a drama and character study than a genre film. Mind you, a genre film can be a great drama and character study while delivering the terror, unease, and apprehension that makes for a great horror film. Midsommar is a terrific example of the film that does that, as does The Haunting (the original not the action movie remake.) The real horror that is presented in The Bone Temple is the horror that people do to each other, that people are the real monsters, but that has been a subtext of the zombie movie since its inception with Night of the Living Dead and this movie breaks no real ground in that regard.

The performances in the film are competent. Alfie Williams (Spike) is given far less to do this time around than in the last movie where his character and his choices drove the narrative. Jack O’Connell (Jimmy) delivers a perfectly by the book portrayal of the sadistic psychopath, but Garland’s script aside from a minor trait of actually believing he is the son of Satan gives Jimmy nothing that steps outside of the well-trod path of the cinematic psychopath. It is in Ralph Fiennes’ (Kelson) portrayal of the kind doctor lost in a mad world that gives the film its depth. It is from Kelson that we see humanity and humor and a truly unforgettable musical video performance.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is worth seeing, particularly if you are a fan of Ralph Fiennes, but I doubt that the film will linger long in your memory.

Robert Mitchell Evans

Literary Saboteur