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COLUMBO: MIND OVER MAYHEM (1974)

March 26, 2021

(peacock/tubi) You may have heard that Jessica Walter passed away yesterday and, to celebrate her life, I’d like to draw your attention to one of her lesser known roles, that of Margaret Nicholson in COLUMBO’s -Mind Over Mayhem-.

Sadly, -Mind Over Mayhem- is not a classic episode of COLUMBO; it’s probably best known for featuring FORBIDDEN PLANET’s Robby the Robot as government robot MM7, and young Lee Montgomery as a boy genius pointedly named ‘Steve Spelburg’. (Steven Spielburg directed the early COLUMBO episode -Murder by the Book-.) Walter stands out as a young, brilliant, psychologist who happens to be the wife of the victim, Dr. Howard Nicholson (Lew Ayres), an older government chemist. José Ferrer is Dr. Marshall Cahill, the director of a government think tank, who ends up murdering Howard to protect his son (Robert Walker Jr.) from allegations of plagiarism.

Ferrer is a fantastic actor but he makes for a rather lousy villain when compared to indelible Columbo murderers such as Robert Culp or Patrick McGoohan. Ferrer’s cool composure simply doesn’t play too well with Falk’s rhythms. It doesn’t help that the murder itself is sloppier than most, resulting in a rather perfunctory game of cat-and-mouse.

However, even a substandard 70s-era episode of COLUMBO is still worth your time, and it features several amusing bits with Dog, Columbo’s dog, as well as predictably novel interplay between Columbo and MM7/Robby the Robot (including Falk antiquated pronunciation of ‘robut’).

While Waters isn’t featured as heavily as I would have liked, and she’s not playing the sort of boozy ice queen she’d become known for — she would have made a great Columbo murderer — she brings a sense of gravity to the role that gives the character more depth than it otherwise would have. She brought that ability to so many shows — including the previously recommended NAKED CITY and ROUTE 66 — and is one of many reasons why she had such a long and fruitful career.

MIKEY & NICKY (1976

March 9, 2021

(Criterion/HBO MAX/kanopy/tubi/VOD) Elaine May’s exploration of two desperate NYC mobsters (Peter Falk and John Cassavettes) trying to save themselves while using each other is as good as any take on weathered, toxic male friendship as you’re going to get on film.

There are two versions of it out there, but the one streaming is May’s director’s cut which is streamlined, but far more ramshackle (see: https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2020/06/mikey-and-nicky-liner-notes/ for more details). Watch whichever one you can wrangle!

M.F.A. (2017)

March 8, 2021

(Plex/Prime/Tubi/VOD/Vudu)? A revenge thriller from director Natalia Leite (BARE) and actress/writer Leah McKendrick that pairs well with PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN. It’s a stylish tale about assault and baring yourself in your work, unfurls at a fine clip, and is more complex than you might expect.

THE QUIET EARTH (1985)

February 17, 2021

(hoopla/kanopy/tubi/VOD) THE QUIET MAN is a ‘last man on earth’ story (loosely based on Craig Harrison’s novel), one that wouldn’t feel out of place in THE TWILIGHT ZONE, but it justifies its existence by featuring an electric performance from Bruno Lawrence, being set in New Zealand, and by containing a number of interesting and cerebral twists, including one hell of an ending.

There’s a trailer, but it’s essentially a condensed summary of the entire film, so I’d refrain from watching it until -after- viewing the movie.

THE WILD BLUE YONDER (2006)

February 13, 2021

(hoopla/Prime/tubi/VOD) The few folks who saw this film after first being exposed to Werner Herzog via his masterful documentary GRIZZLY MAN must have walked out of the theater feeling very confused. THE WILD BLUE YONDER doesn’t fall into Herzog’s lighthearted docudramas, but instead lands closer to his doomsaying visual photo montages, such as the better known LESSONS OF DARKNESS (1992) which took an abstracted, hellish look at the oil fields and general destruction of nature in Kuwait after the Gulf War.

THE WILD BLUE YONDER goes one step further by bringing in Andromedan extraterrestrial Brad Dourif as your personal tour guide through arctic and NASA footage. Herzog’s always been exceptional at crafting visual narratives, but having Dourif here to verbally stitch the montages together is a real treat. That said, if you’re looking for anything resembling a proper narrative, look elsewhere. My wife and I debate to this day as to whether the Gene Siskel Film Center accidentally played the reels out of order.

NAKED CITY (1958-1963)

February 11, 2021

(Pluto/Roku/tubi/VOD) NAKED CITY was a long-running TV show adapted from the 1948 film THE NAKED CITY, bringing a more grounded police procedural to the small screen, ten years after the film, and seven years after DRAGNET made the leap from radio to TV. While show creator Stirling Silliphant (THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT writer, creator of the previously mentioned ROUTE 66 which was spurred into existence by an episode of NAKED CITY) had nothing to do with the original film, he took to heart the intent of putting NYC and its citizens on display.

The first season features John McIntire and James Franciscus inhabiting the same THE NAKED CITY roles as Lt. Detective Dan Muldoon and Detective Jimmy Halloran although John McIntire quickly grew tired of New York City and the show, so he was written out in a -jawdropping- way, then NAKED CITY was recast and turned from a half-hour show to an hour long, and recast again — this with Paul Burke as the lead detective — and with him it finally found some legs.

The show’s fumbling worked though, as the delay allowed NAKED CITY to capture a completely different New York City than the one portrayed in THE NAKED CITY, a NYC with counterculture, where the youths had started to distrust the police, as opposed to the fantasyland of 60s DRAGNET. (I’ve watched far too much DRAGNET: https://tvannotations.tumblr.com/post/60116769951/dragnet)

Like its modern day companion LAW & ORDER, it made the most of the NYC theater scene and booked a number of extraordinarily talented guest actors who hadn’t been discovered yet, including Cicely Tyson, Peter Falk, Bruce Dern, Suzanne Pleshette, and many more. Even if you ignore the adept location shooting, brisk plotting and deft character work, the show’s worth a watch simply for the faces that pop up.

“There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”

IZZY GETS THE FUCK ACROSS TOWN (2018)

January 27, 2021

(hoopla/peacock/tubi/VOD/Vudu) I don’t know how many favors debut writer/director Christian Papierniak asked to nab this amazing cast, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s now indebted to 80% of LA. I’d watch any film that featured just -one- of the following performers:

Mackenzie Davis
Carrie Coon
Dolly Wells
LaKeith Stanfield
Kyle Kinane
Alia Shawkat
Rob Huebel
Annie Potts

Somehow he managed to wrangle all of ‘em for this chaotic ‘one fuckup’s last gasp at attaining an old flame’ film. I’ll grant that it’s overworked — did we really need inter-titles for every scene? — and if Mackenzie Davis wasn’t the lead the film probably wouldn’t work, but she is and ultimately it does. Also, Mackenzie and Carrie Coon ‘reunite’ and play a HEAVENS TO BETSY cover that features -many- layers and that scene alone is worth the price of admission. (I’ll save you the search.)

“I’m not going to wish you good luck.” “No, no one in their right mind would.”

LUXOR (2020)

January 12, 2021

(hoopla/kanopy/Prime/tubi/VOD) A quiet drama about British Aid doctor, Shea (Andrea Riseborough, MANDY, CHRISTINE), who is currently on leave because she’s ‘seen some things no one should see’. She embarks on a trip to Luxor, Egypt and, quite quickly, runs into her former lover of twenty years ago, Sultan (Karim Saleh, TRANSPARENT, COUNTERPART), who is there on an archeological dig.

While the above may sound like a ‘late-in-life rekindled romance’, it isn’t, although the looks and stumbled phrases they exchange upon seeing each other after so many years ensure they’ll be orbiting each other for the rest of the film. The core is a human story about a woman who is not confident that she will feel broken for the rest of her life. While the undercurrent of revitalized romance is there, it’s just one facet of Shea’s present time.

Quiet tales like these, about people with lived lives, of adult reflection, are rarer and rarer nowadays, and writer/director Zeina Durra (THE IMPERIALISTS ARE STILL ALIVE!) does an exceptional job realizing her script, letting the camera follow the actors and allow the silence to speak volumes.

BLOOD ON HER NAME (2020)

January 6, 2021

(hoopla/Prime/tubi/VOD) This is one hell of a neo-noir thriller. In the wrong hands, this story of mother accidentally murdering a man could have been Lifetime movie, but director/writer Matthew Pope, along with lead Bethany Anne Lind, shape it into a wickedly ruthless tale, then punctuate it with a gut-punch of an ending.

DOGTOOTH (2009)

December 12, 2020

(hoopla/kanopy/Shudder/tubi/VOD) One of the other ‘uncool’ Chicago film fests is the European Union Film Fest, which takes place at the Siskel Film Center. Even I often forget about this one, but back in 2010 I caught wind of this weird Greek film from unknown-to-us director Yorgos Lanthimos (who would go on to direct THE LOBSTER and THE FAVOURITE) that sounded like a batshitcrazy modern New Wave-ish film, and my wife — being Greek — was also intrigued, so we immediately pre-ordered two tickets..

We arrived at the Siskel and were happy to already have tickets, because it was completely sold out — the line wound completely around the upper second floor — and the audience consisted of 80% older Greek couples, clearly there to support Greek film. I whispered to my wife: “Do they know what they’re getting into?”

I say that because most Greek films I’ve attended with my wife have been in-offensive crowd-pleasers, whereas DOGTOOTH actively, -aggressively- is not. It’s a film about shelter, about not letting go, about manufactured culture, about language, about emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual abuse, and even heavier subjects. I was surprised to see that Shudder (a streaming service solely geared towards horror) picked it up and I realized, why yes: it is a Haneke-esque horror film, and not just an incredibly dense, fucked up family drama.

I exited the theater feeling dazzled and bruised, and fully expected the crowd we entered with to have turned against it, especially since they were very quiet during the screening — even the funny parts (of which there are many) — but no! They were ebullient about it! To this day I don’t know whether they liked it (much less enjoyed it — this isn’t a film you ‘enjoy’) but it was a singularly memorable screening for a brilliant film.