September Blu-ray Capsule Reviews

by Tony Dayoub

My apologies for leaving this website barren for the past two weeks. After the heightened activity of the Blogathon — and before it picks up again here next week with my reviews of entries from this year's New York Film Festival — I frankly needed a break. I've still been receiving plenty of Blu-rays to review, though. Here are some capsule reviews of my favorite ones released this past month.

Scenes from the Class Struggle in New Providence

The economics of Win Win, the wry recession-era comedy now out on Blu-ray and DVD

by Tony Dayoub

Win Win stars Paul Giamatti as Mike Flaherty, an attorney whose private practice focuses on care for the elderly. In the afternoons, Mike co-coaches New Providence High School’s wrestling team with his office mate Vig (Jeffrey Tambor). Stretched thin financially, Mike has started having panic attacks on his doctor-prescribed jogs with best friend Terry (Bobby Cannavale). Mike’s money troubles inform his questionable move to take on the guardianship for his dementia-stricken client, Leo (Burt Young)...

CONTINUE READING AT NOMAD EDITIONS: WIDE SCREEN

The X-Factor

How X-Men: First Class Made Michael Fassbender a Star

by Tony Dayoub

Just out on Blu-ray and DVD, X-Men: First Class is Matthew Vaughn’s clever 1960s-era spinoff from Fox’s popular mutant superhero franchise. Based on the Marvel comics created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, X-Men posits a world where the infinite variety of super-powered homo superiors, the next step in human evolution, are being persecuted by the increasingly suspicious homo sapiens — us. Though the initial two films helmed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) tied the mutants’ quest for acceptance to the same battle being fought by today’s LGBT community, X-Men: First Class backtracks to its most primal disagreement, the one between its two lead characters. Appropriately enough, the movie this time finds its thematic touchstone in the civil rights struggle: telepath Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), like Martin Luther King Jr., believes humanity will only accept mutants through peaceful coexistence, at least as peaceful as it can be when fighting dastardly super-villains like Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon); Xavier’s friendly rival and master of magnetism, Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender), is closer in spirit to the more militant Malcolm X, who believed coexistence must be fought for “by any means necessary.” Lehnsherr, the man who would be Magneto, is automatically then a far juicier role, and for Fassbender, a star-making turn.

CONTINUE READING AT NOMAD EDITIONS: WIDE SCREEN

Movie Review: Drive (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

Awright, what movie did everyone else see? Because the overhyped Drive is a shallow film as hollow as its cardboard characters. Yes, I said "characters," with an "s." Not simply content to make his nameless lead character — the Driver (Ryan Gosling), we'll call him (as the press materials do) — a cipher, director Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson) populates his film with empty, soulless vessels doubling for actual people. There's the nice-girl-who-got-involved-with-the-wrong-guy, the older-version-of-our-lead-who-sports-a-symbolically-loaded-disability, the down-on-his-luck-ex-con-who-wants-to-get-out-after-one-last-job, etc. (If I'm not careful, this whole review may degenerate into a series of etceteras.) In this world, style overrides substance, surface trumps depth, and personalities are so thin that the existence of the story's players seems to cease whenever they disappear offscreen.

RIP Cliff Robertson

by Tony Dayoub

"The year you win an Oscar is the fastest year in a Hollywood actor's life. Twelve months later they ask, 'Who won the Oscar last year?'"

-The often overlooked, but never forgotten, Cliff Robertson, Oscar
winner for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Charly (1968)

Recommended Films - Picnic, Gidget, Underworld U.S.A., PT 109, Sunday in New York, Charly, J.W. Coop, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Three Days of the Condor, Obsession, Star 80, Brainstorm, Spider-Man

Recommended TV - The Twilight Zone: "A Hundred Yards over the Rim" and "The Dummy," Batman: "Come Back, Shame" and "It's How You Play the Game,"

Nicholas Ray Blogathon Postscript

by Tony Dayoub

Happy Friday. You'll notice I put up a poll on the sidebar, in which I ask readers to pick no more than 3 of their favorite Nicholas Ray movies. Unscientific, I know, but it's just for fun. I was so busy during the actual past 4 days, the poll idea didn't occur to me. So I'll leave this up for a week and see what develops. Feel free to discuss in this post's comment thread.

Someone suggested it would be great if they were all in one post, so after the jump, I have gathered all the links submitted to me during the blogathon, plus a few I found on my own. Enjoy!

Born to Be Bad (1950)

by Farran Smith Nehme (aka The Self-Styled Siren)

The Siren has been wondering what it would have been like to kiss Nicholas Ray in 1950.

From this you should not deduce that the Siren has a crush on the man. She likes her sex symbols on the louche side, but not quite that louche. Still, as she watched Robert Ryan lay one on Joan Fontaine for the sixth or seventh time in Born to Be Bad, the Siren found the thought crowding out all attempts at more formal analysis. Back goes Fontaine’s head, way back, so far back Ryan could undoubtedly have told us whether she still had her wisdom teeth. Up go Fontaine’s arms as Ryan embraces some part of her that the camera is tactfully cutting off. Down comes Ryan’s mouth on hers, until you can see that he doesn’t part his hair. Just before the Siren started in on her Ray-kissing reverie, she was reminded of the morning that she was watching a backyard bird-feeder and saw a hawk close its talons on a chickadee, then fly off to have its own breakfast elsewhere...

CONTINUE READING AT SELF-STYLED SIREN

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Considering Ray Elsewhere in the Blogosphere - Day 4

by Tony Dayoub

Wow, I couldn't have timed it better if I tried. On this final day I received a bunch of first-time contributions from some of my favorite bloggers. These are the bloggers that I read and learn a lot from. So I highly recommend perusing through all of today's submissions.

In Re: Nicholas Ray

by Richard Brody

The first thing to say about the legacy of Nicholas Ray—the subject of an article by Patricia Cohen in today’s Times—is that, even in the absence on home video of some of his crucial movies, including “Johnny Guitar” and “The Lusty Men,” those that are around, such as “Bigger Than Life,” “In a Lonely Place,” “Bitter Victory,” “They Live by Night,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” and “Party Girl,” should suffice to assure that the legacy is recognized as one of the key artistic achievements in the history of cinema. The performances alone—James Dean’s in “Rebel,” Humphrey Bogart’s in “In a Lonely Place,” and, above all, Sterling Hayden’s turn in “Johnny Guitar” (perhaps the single coolest performance in all Hollywood history, the closest thing in movies to what Miles Davis was doing in jazz at exactly that moment) prove Ray to have been a director of a uniquely vulnerable and sensitive artistic temperament...

CONTINUE READING AT THE NEW YORKER'S BLOG, THE FRONT ROW

Richard T. Jameson on Bigger Than Life

This entry is a bit unusual. Richard T. Jameson is a personal hero of mine. He was editor of what, in my opinion, is still the best run of Film Comment (1990-2000). He now writes for outlets like MSN Movies, Parallax View, and the Queen Anne and Magnolia News, which hosts his online movie magaine, Straight Shooting. We correspond occasionally, and he submitted a write-up on Bigger Than Life which I can't post any part of here because it was done as work-for-hire. But I can link to it, and it is worth a read.

Thank you, Richard.

READ AT AMAZON.COM

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Bigger Than Life (1956) and Its Influence on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

by Tony Dayoub

In his films, Nicholas Ray often contemplates the psychodynamic turbulence hidden behind facades of normalcy. Bigger Than Life, with its focus on the degradation of patriarch Ed Avery (James Mason) speaks to the repression which plagues the seemingly typical fifties nuclear family. In this way the movie looks forward to those of another director, David Lynch. Though Lynch has explored similar themes throughout his work, most notably in Blue Velvet (1986), it is in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me where Bigger Than Life's influence is most strongly felt.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Considering Ray Elsewhere in the Blogosphere - Day 3

by Tony Dayoub

Welcome to Day 3 of the Nicholas Ray Blogathon. We wrap up tomorrow, so today will be the last day I'll be accepting submissions (unless we've pre-arranged something). So keep them coming, and let all your friends know about the wonderful posts going up here from all corners of the web.

Here's what I've got today:

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Hot Blood (1956)

by Tony Dayoub

Those who've wished Nicholas Ray would turn his eye for color towards that most saturated of genres, the musical, can see the result in Hot Blood. And it's... not that great. Coming off the success of Rebel Without a Cause doubtless allowed the often embattled director to pursue his creative whims unopposed. And in this case, he turned to a project on the Romani—more popularly referred to by the derogatory term of Gypsies—long enough in development that the majority of the research was done by Ray's first wife, Jean Evans, whom he had divorced in 1940. Hot Blood began life as the sort of ethnography that one might be able to place next to other works of his like 1952's The Lusty Men (about rodeo riders) or 1961's The Savage Innocents (the Inuits). Except that Ray's affinity for folk music and his burgeoning foray into color cinematography likely got in the way and muddled this romance up. "Good" and "bad" are relative, though. For Jane Russell, this was probably a "good" picture. For Cornel Wilde, this was probably a not-so-"good" movie. And for Ray, with plenty of flawed features to be found in his filmography, this was still most definitely a "bad" one. And to think, it's sandwiched right between two of his best motion pictures, Rebel and Bigger Than Life. Still, its influence can obviously be found in at least two ethnic musicals, West Side Story (1961) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). I'd even argue that its presence is felt in a scene from the James Bond series, the lurid gypsy catfight setpiece in From Russia With Love (1963) (featuring a young Martine Beswick).

Since I've said about all I have to say on Hot Blood, let's look at its pretty screen captures, after the jump...

Interview with Author Patrick McGilligan

by John Greco

An excerpt:

...In 1951, Ray was divorcing Gloria Grahame, his second wife. His career seemed to be spiraling downward, becoming a Mr. Fix-It for Howard Hughes, working on films like "Jet Pilot," "Macao," "His Kind of Woman" and "The Racket." The one personal film that did come out of this period was "The Lusty Men," a work thematically right for Ray, with Robert Mitchum as an itinerant sensitive loser who comes to learn, you can’t go home again.

AT THE END OF HIS RKO CONTRACT RAY WAS ABLE TO TURN "THE LUSTY MEN" INTO ANOTHER PERSONAL STATEMENT. HE CONNECTED WITH THE MATERIAL IN A WAY THAT WASN’T TRUE OF "BORN TO BE BAD," "A WOMAN’S SECRET" OR "FLYING LEATHERNECKS." HE BENEFITED FROM THE INPUT OF PRODUCER JERRY WALD, WHO HAD CREATED THE IDEA FOR THE FILM. EVEN THOUGH RAY AND WALD HAD AN UNEASY RELATIONSHIP, RAY HAD MORE CREATIVE LEEWAY THAN USUAL. THE DIRECTOR ALSO ESTABLISHED A SPECIAL CLOSENESS WITH ROBERT MITCHUM. RAY NEEDED TO BOND WITH HIS USUALLY MALE STARS, AND WHENEVER HE HAD WHAT I CALL IN THE BOOK A 'TWO-MAN CLUB' (RAY AND BOGART, OR MITCHUM, OR JAMES DEAN, OR JAMES MASON TO AN EXTENT) THE FILM WAS ELEVATED.

There was plenty of innovative use of the camera by Ray in this film. You write about how he strapped a 16mm camera on to a bronco rider giving us a view of what it’s like to ride a wild horse. There are plenty of other instances of his unique use of the camera which I find to be one of his most poetic.

THE FILM HAD A POETIC CAMERAMAN, REMEMBER, IN LEE GARMES, AND RAY WAS ALWAYS SHREWD ABOUT PICKING HIS CAMERAMEN. RAY WAS FEARLESS IN TERMS OF HIS VISUAL DESIGN AND BORED BY THE STANDARD ESTABLISHING SHOT, TWO-SHOT, CLOSE-UP KIND OF COVERAGE. THERE ARE MANY EXAMPLES – THE HELICOPTER SHOTS AT THE BEGINNING OF "THEY LIVE BY NIGHT," THE CAMERA STRAPPED ON BRONCS IN "THE LUSTY MEN," THE TILTED SHOTS AND EXTREME ANGLES OF "REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE." WHEN RAY IDENTIFIED WITH THE MATERIAL, HIS VISION WAS PARTICULARLY INTENSE AND YOU SEE THIS IN CODED COLOR SCHEMES AS WELL AS UNUSUAL CAMERAWORK...

CONTINUE READING AT TWENTY FOUR FRAMES

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

by Tony Dayoub

Rebel Without a Cause is one film of which so much has been written I hardly have anything new to contribute. Whether it's the legendary tales that have sprung up around the cult of its star, James Dean, the mysterious curse (proposed by some) which took its three leads' lives prematurely or the film's embrace of the explosive Method style of acting you can find a multitude of essays which pick the film apart from any number of perspectives. Continuing my look at the Nicholas Ray's work, I'd like to look at the director's collaborative relationship with Dean.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Knock on Any Door (1949) and Run for Cover (1955)

by Tony Dayoub

Two of the harder to find films to watch in Nicholas Ray's oeuvre both star future svengali to statuesque blonde starlets, John Derek (The Ten Commandments): the social conscience/proto-youth film Knock on Any Door, and the Western Run for Cover (now easy to view on Netflix streaming, albeit in the wrong aspect ratio). Knock on Any Door is both a precursor to Rebel Without a Cause and its opposite number. Its misguided juveniles are from the bad part of town and far enough down the road of delinquency as to be considered hopeless. Run for Cover is the last of Ray's Western trilogy which began with The Lusty Men (1952). (Ray's The True Story of Jesse James would come later and is quite different from his previous oaters). But as different as each sounds from the other, the fact that the two are tied together by Derek's casting is just one indication of how close Knock on Any Door and Run for Cover are thematically.

Nicholas Ray and the Nifty Fifties

by Richard Brody

I was talking yesterday about the glories that emerged, almost daily, from Hollywood in the nineteen-fifties (which made that decade, for that matter, a richer source of cinematic treasure than the vaunted post-“Bonnie and Clyde” “New Hollywood” of the late sixties and seventies). Well, let’s not bury the lede: tonight, our friends at AltScreen remind us, at 7 and 9:30, Clearview Chelsea will show one of that era’s masterworks, Nicholas Ray’s “Johnny Guitar,” from 1954—a Western that’s pulled to the breaking point on vectors of love, sex, power, and violence, and is one of the most grievous of DVD absences...

CONTINUE READING AT THE NEW YORKER'S BLOG, THE FRONT ROW

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Johnny Guitar (1954)

by Tony Dayoub

To say that Johnny Guitar is simply a Western is to ignore its quite substantial and not overly implicit meaning. Indeed much of what is going on in Nicholas Ray's film is happening underneath its shallow—and by this, I don't mean banal—surface. But to read Bosley Crowther's New York Times review of May 28, 1954, one would expect this film to be just another horse opera, and a rather weak one at that.

...Joan Crawford plays essentially the role that Van Heflin played in Shane...The only big difference in the character, as plainly rewritten for her, is that now it falls in love with the ex-gunfighter, whom Sterling Hayden here plays.

But this condescension to Miss Crawford and her technically recognized sex does nothing more for the picture than give it some academic aspects of romance. No more femininity comes from her than from the rugged Mr. Heflin in Shane. For the lady, as usual, is as sexless as the lions on the public library steps and as sharp and romantically forbidding as a package of unwrapped razor blades.

Ouch, I think I cut myself with one of Crowther's metaphorical shavers.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Considering Ray Elsewhere in the Blogosphere - Day 2

by Tony Dayoub

Well, so far the Nicholas Ray Blogathon is quite a success. Lots of readers are stopping by and clicking on the links to read each submission. Many writers I admire are contributing. And I'm reading plenty of interesting work from new writers I hadn't been familiar with (though I'm already behind so please bear with me).

Those looking to contribute, feel free to keep sending links to your work in. No surprise here, I've got a lot of gaps for some of Ray's later work, post-Bigger Than Life.

I know I promised some additional links that had not been personally submitted to me, but this is more exhausting than it looks. Look for those in a later post near the end of the Blogathon.

Here's what I've got today:

Woman Error

by David Cairns

...I leapt at the chance to view and write about the only Ray film I’d never watched at all, the reputedly minor opus known as A WOMAN’S SECRET.

I went in expecting little — programmers like KNOCK ON ANY DOOR, RUN FOR COVER and BORN TO BE BAD are perfectly enjoyable, but don’t let Ray flex his cinematic muscles much — as with the very different Von Sternberg, for whom Ray subbed on MACAO, he didn’t seem to commit fully to films that didn’t excite him. But I enjoyed this one: the titular SECRET is ambiguous, the tone uncertain, the structure wobbly, but all that adds a kind of intrigue and unpredictability to a first viewing. I’d never call this a major film, but it’s pleasingly flaky, and it doesn’t give up its mysteries...

CONTINUE READING AT SHADOWPLAY

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Flying Leathernecks (1951)

by Tony Dayoub

Another aviation-centered picture from billionaire Howard Hughes, Flying Leathernecks is also an uncharacteristic feature from director Nicholas Ray. Set during World War II's Battle of Guadalcanal, it essentially boils down to a two-hander pitting the stalwart John Wayne (Sands of Iwo Jima) against the pugnacious Robert Ryan (On Dangerous Ground). Given its use of an incredible amount of actual war footage, I'm assuming the story was built around the footage used (especially with such unique images as a pilot bailing out of a downed aircraft). So it's funny to think of a left-leaning maverick like Ray having to conform to all of these elements—a notoriously demanding eccentric as his studio chief, an equally iconic star who no doubt had demands of his own (both right-wingers) and the limitations demanded by such specific footage—in order to complete the war movie.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: On Dangerous Ground (1952)

by Tony Dayoub

Of all of Nicholas Ray's films, On Dangerous Ground may be the most difficult one for me to objectively get a handle on. It's my favorite of his films because of the duality of Robert Ryan's performance as Jim Wilson, a cop at wit's end with regard to the infectious nature of the corruption and violence he faces on the streets every day. On one hand, a virtuous true believer in the law, and on the other, an enforcer so efficient he will flout the rules to get his man, the short-tempered Wilson can be seen as a natural extension of Bogart's Dix Steele at the end of Ray's last film, In a Lonely Place (though released afterwards, Ground was filmed before Flying Leathernecks). In Ground, Wilson begins at the point where we left Steele in the previous film: an outsider aware of his capacity for violence, unable or unwilling to control his behavior, and resigned to the fact that he should stay away from the rest of polite society. However, reminders like an errant comment from a flirtatious counter-girl at the drugstore, scoffing at the idea of going out with a cop, still sting Wilson.

Nicholas Ray: Rebel at any cost

by Carrie Rickey

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Raymond Nicholas Kienzle, whose nom de camera was Nicholas Ray. While Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is his most famous title, his filmography is crowded with rebels, beginning with Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell as the young outlaws in They Live By Night (1948) to John Derek's juvenile delinquent in Knock on Any Door (whose ambition is to "Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse" to Jeffrey Hunter's Jesus in King of Kings (1961)...

CONTINUE READING AT THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER'S BLOG, FLICKgrrl

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: In a Lonely Place (1950)

by Tony Dayoub

In a Lonely Place is a coincident film within the careers of Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca), Gloria Grahame (The Bad and the Beautiful), and director Nicholas Ray; despite being an adaptation of a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, it is the most personal film for each of the three. For Bogart, the character of alcoholic screenwriter Dixon Steele revealed the real-life vulnerability and mercurial temper that afflicted the actor. In Graham's case, the film highlighted some of her insecurities vis-a-vis her marriage to Ray. And in regards to Ray, its story of a romance gone off the rails paralleled the slow disintegration of his relationship with Grahame while giving us a glimpse into Hollywood's early days.

UPDATED 9/7 - Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Considering Ray Elsewhere in the Blogosphere - Day 1

by Tony Dayoub

So we'll see how submissions go today, but my plan (which will stay fluid) is this: Each day, I'll post links to pieces submitted by other writers on some of the films I plan on covering that day. Occasionally I'll highlight a submission by a notable film writer with its own post. Lastly, at the end of each day, I'll to try to post links to other pieces that have cropped up recently around the net in honor of Nicholas Ray's Centennial.

Here's what I've got today:

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: Born to Be Bad (1950)

by Tony Dayoub

A lot of the fun found in Born to Be Bad, a minor film by Nicholas Ray to be sure, is in watching Joan Fontaine subvert her sweet screen persona to play the manipulative Christabel Caine. From the moment she bursts into the life of her publisher uncle's employee, Donna (Joan Leslie)—the jaded city girl Christabel is staying with until she gets her footing in San Francisco—small-town Christabel's default mode of advancing in society is a sort of clumsy, saccharine method of laying love-traps around vain, rich men whose latent attraction to her blinds them to her motives. What else can explain how Donna's fiance, Curtis (Zachary Scott), is the only one to fall for the excessively honeydrippy Christabel?

Opening Shots: They Live By Night

by Jim Emerson

Nicholas Ray's directorial debut, "They Live By Night" (1949), begins like a trailer and then slams us right into the opening titles of the feature. An attractive young couple (Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell) are nestling in close-up by the flickering light of a fireplace. They smile, they kiss, and then something off-screen (and unheard on the soundtrack, though signaled by an jarring shift in the musical score) causes them to react with fear and alarm...

CONTINUE READING AT THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES'S BLOG, SCANNERS

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: They Live By Night (1949)

by Tony Dayoub

I'm still amazed that They Live by Night is Nicholas Ray's directorial debut. It is an innovative and accomplished piece of work from a man whose previous film experience mainly consisted of assisting Elia Kazan on A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Of course, Ray had spent some time acting in the Group Theatre, roamed much of the U.S. while documenting folk music for the Library of Congress, worked in radio, and even directed a Broadway musical. So at 36, what he most contributed to They Live by Night was life experience. Perhaps this is why one feels that the movie's young couple on the run is doomed to failure: because Ray takes an almost nostalgic perspective in the way he approaches the story, as if recalling better times. Harsh at some points, yet gauzily expressionistic in others, They Live by Night is a romantic fever dream which, as the cliche goes, burns twice as bright if only half as long.

You Can't Handle the Truth

Historical extras on its Blu-ray edition fail to make the case for The Conspirator

by Tony Dayoub

Just out on Blu-ray and DVD, Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, about the plot surrounding Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, is the American Film Company’s debut feature. Throughout much of the new disc’s extras, the company touts itself as a production house interested in shepherding stories mined from the annals of American history in the most accurate way possible. And while watching the bounty of special features included in the Deluxe Edition Blu-ray disc, an American history nut like me would find ample evidence that Redford’s 2010 film had been vetted by numerous historians. Included are 10 featurettes that dig into specific aspects of the movie, like the production design, costuming, or its main characters. The hour-long documentary, “The Plot to Kill Lincoln,” provides the historical background behind The Conspirator’s inciting incident in exhaustive detail. A viewing of the disc’s main feature, however, proves that if the facts contradict the story the filmmakers want to tell, truth will still lose out to fiction...

CONTINUE READING AT NOMAD EDITIONS: WIDE SCREEN