DINNER RUSH. Access Motion Picture Group, US, 2001. Danny Aiello, John Rothman, Frank Bongiorno, Lexie Sperduto, Zainab Jah, Alex Corrado. Director: Bob Giraldi.

   Dinner Rush isn’t your typical Hollywood fare; in fact, this independent feature is fairly unorthodox in its style and presentation. Set almost exclusively over the course of one night at a trendy downtown Italian restaurant in Manhattan, the movie follows a coterie of employees and customers as they navigate a series of challenges.

   Central to the story is the chef’s father and restaurant owner, bookmaker Louis Cropa (Danny Aiello). Cropa, after years of taking bets, wants out of the illicit trade. But it’s not going to be so easy. Not only does he have to look after Duncan (Kirk Acevedo), restaurant’s sous-chef and a compulsive gambler who’s up to his neck in debt. He also has to face down a squeeze play by two Queens mobsters who have shown up at his restaurant for the evening.

   Bookmarking the film are two killings, one at the very beginning when Cropa’s partner is murdered and a second one at the end, when the entire point of the evening is finally revealed. In between, the viewer is treated to both the petty dramas that unfold in a high-stakes kitchen and to an almost anthropological study of the types of patrons who frequent expensive, well-reviewed eateries. As I said, unorthodox.

   The film benefits tremendously from a very talented cast, including Mark Margolis (Breaking Bad) as an art critic; Walt MacPherson (Homicide: Life on the Street) as a detective; and Summer Phoenix as a waitress whose art adorns the wall of the restaurant.

   Even though there were times when I questioned what exactly it was I was watching, overall I enjoyed this one a lot. It’s different, to be sure and reminded me to some extent of David Mamet’s work.

THE TRIAL. Astor Pictures Corporation, France, 1962, as Le procès. Astor Pictures Corporation, US, 1963. Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Akim Tamiroff, Orson Welles. Based on the novel by Franz Kafka. Written and directed by Orson Welles.

   Anthony Perkins (in a post-Psycho role) portrays Josef K. or just K. in Orson Welles’s cinematic adaptation of Frank Kafka’s novel, Der Prozess. K. is a mild mannered clerk. He is somewhat neurotic, but not overtly so. One day, out of the clear blue sky, two government agents – police – arrive in his apartment at dawn and notify him that he’s been arrested.

   His crime? They won’t say. In fact, throughout the running time of the entire film, neither K., nor the viewer, will learn what it is that K. has been accused of. As such, the movie becomes a parable about a singular man – an “everyman” – facing impossible odds in a cold, bureaucratic state that deems him as an enemy for reasons never revealed.

   Filmed in a stunning black & white that relies heavily on elements of both German Expressionism and film noir, this paranoid, nightmarish thriller is a Welles creation through and through. Not only did Welles write and direct the work, he also starred in it as Albert Hastler or The Advocate. An obese man with health issues, The Advocate is a womanizer and a scoundrel. He is supposed to be taking K.’s side in the proceedings, but seems little interested in justice and far more in power for power’s sake.

   During his nightmarish journey, K. encounters an array of oddball characters, including his nightclub-dancing neighbor (Jeanne Moreau) and The Advocate’s assistant/sometime lover, Leni (Romy Schneider).

   In many ways, however, the people he meets seem less important than the places where he meets them. The set design and on location settings are spectacularly haunting; there is simply no way to adequately verbally describe what must be seen. What must be felt. The German Expressionist influence here can’t be overstated.

   Despite its downbeat mood, I enjoyed watching The Trial immensely. Sometimes scenes don’t work at all. But that’s okay. It’s a bold work of film-making and deserves your attention. Perkins was perfectly cast here.

SHOPWORN. Columbia, 1932. Barbara Stanwyck, Regis Toomey, Zasu Pitts. Director: Nick Grinde.

   In this Columbia pre-Code romantic drama, Barbara Stanwyck portrays Kitty Lane, a waitress who falls in love with David Livingston, an upper crust university student (Regis Toomey). The latter’s overbearing mother disapproves, to put it mildly. To separate the lovebirds, her friend, a prominent judge, creates a bogus charge against Kitty, alleging a public morals violation.

   That gets Kitty  sent to a women’s reformatory. After she gets out, however, she doesn’t return to her humble job at the diner. Instead, she becomes a world famous showgirl. Years later, David (Toomey) shows up at her doorstep. He’s still madly in love with her. But his mother, who now owns a gun, is still adamantly opposed to having Kitty as her daughter-in-law.

   Truth be told, there’s not a whole lot to recommend about Shopworn. It’s not that the movie is completely abysmal or anything like that; it’s just rather tedious with a color by numbers type of script that gives the viewer the bare minimum of drama and conflict but nothing more. It’s anemic.

   Overall assessment: Stanwyck takes her role seriously, but the overall product remains something of a dud.

PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER. 20th Century Fox, 1935. Victor McLaglen, Freddie Bartholomew, Gloria Stuart, Michael Whalen, C. Henry Gordon Based on the story “Gentlemen, the King,” by Damon Runyon. Directed by Tay Garnett.

   Well done mix of adventure, sentiment, and comedy finds ex-Marine Colonel Michael Donovan (Victor McLaglen) at the nadir of his career as a soldier of fortune around the world, from Siam to Nicaragua, playing bodyguard to American playboy George Foster (Michael Whalen) in Paris. After rescuing Foster from his own profligate ways in a comic Paris night club brawl, Donovan dumps the unconscious playboy at their hotel room, where two men show up with a proposition.

   It seems one of those comic opera kingdoms so popular in the era in the Ruritania/Graustark mode need Donovan to kidnap their popular king so they can carry off their revolution (“We are not Bolsheviks or National Socialists…”) and then return the king to his throne once the crooks who have control of the country are gone. Donovan is a little disappointed he won’t be leading the army in the revolution, or at least assassinating the king, but the money offered is $50,000 and even covers hospitalization.

   So we are off to the comic opera land of castles and intrigue where Donovan and Foster kidnap the monarch only to discover his majesty King Peter II is a child (Freddie Bartholomew). Forced to also kidnap Countess Sonia (Gloria Stuart), who Foster flirted with at a costume ball they attended to get the lay of the land, they successfully make off with the King while Gino (C. Henry Gordon), leader of the military junta that holds power, desperately seeks them.

   As you might guess from Damon Runyon’s name in the credits Donovan and Foster were originally a pair of Chicago gangsters in the story, and the screenplay refers to that with King Peter initially thinks they are just that, and that Donovan might be Dillinger. Peter is absolutely thrilled at the idea of being kidnapped and having an adventure rather than the dull old life of a king, even a young one.

   This would make an interesting double feature with My Pal The King, in which cowboy Tom Mix and his traveling Wild West show help King Mickey Rooney stay in power in yet another Ruriatanian setting.

   There are no surprises here. Donovan is crazy about the kid who proves game (he calls the boy “Campaigner” and the boy calls him “Soldier”) and Foster and Countess Sonia fall in love. The bloodless revolution succeeds, and everything seems to be going fine until a camp of Romany peoples camped near the place they are hiding Peter inform Gino of their whereabouts, and in short order McLaglen and Foster are captured, imprisoned and ordered to be executed despite the King proclaiming they are to be freed.

   Before being captured Donovan and Peter make a cross country escape trying to reach the palace and the leaders of the Revolution.

   It seems the King recognizes that the revolution was right and should be in power and plans to support it, and Gino can’t have that so he plans to execute the King by firing squad and blame the two Americans for his death.

   Luckily Sonia learns of the plan in time to free Donovan, but can he take on two hundred and fifty armed men with just Foster’s help until help can arrive?

   Well, maybe, because all along he has been telling some pretty tall tales about doing something just like that wielding an 88 pound Maxim machine gun in his arms (“You have to understand Irish-Americans can do some pretty uncanny things when they’re riled…”), and while no one quite believes him, including Peter, it’s the only chance King Peter has.

   Fast-paced and running under eighty minutes the film is handsomely decked out with costume balls, castles, and chalets in the mountains, while Tay Garnett keeps a tight hand on the reigns and McLaglen, the screenplay by Gene Fowler is snappy and finds a nice balance between the disparate elements of action, comedy, and sentiment, and McLaglen and Bartholomew have real chemistry together. Whether that was real or forced it works and is enough that the scenes between them are funny and charming rather than grating and annoying, and that is the difference between a film like this working or not.

   It plays like Adventure, Argosy, Blue Book, and Popular (one half expects Hope’s Rudolf Rassendayl, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barney Custer, and Joseph Louis Vance’s Terence O’Rourke to show up).

   Granted it also has about as much logic and realism as those too, but it makes up for that by never pretending for a minute to be anything than a rousing story well told, a tall tale for grown-ups.

   Tears are kept to a minimum and while there are a few misty eyes before the ending, they are appropriate to the rousing finale which ends as all good Ruritanian romances should. amid trumpets, fanfare, and in this case the Marine Hymn.

A CANTERBURY TALE. Archers, UK, 1944. Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price, and John Sweet. Written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

   A true original, made by England’s premier filmmakers at the height of their genius. A wartime film infused with… well… not so much with patriotism as with a deeply-felt but unspoken love of a country and its people. Plus a hint of romance and a dollop of detection, played to perfection by a cast that radiates charm but never oozes with it.

   What mystery there is concerns a small-town villain known only as The Glue Man, who stalks young girls out late at night, sneaks up on them in the dark (this was the time of blitzkrieg and blackouts) and pours glue in their hair.

   Sounds like very little to hang a movie on, and in fact the filmmakers tip the audience off early on as to the identity of the sticky miscreant. And while the cast goes through the motions of detection and pursuit, the movie itself dawdles innocently on the quiet charm of simple folk rooted to the soil or uprooted by War.

   The principal roles are wonderfully played, But Powell and Pressburger take as much care over characters whose hour upon the screen is brief indeed — to wonderful effect!

   From a pugnacious Station Man unseen in the dark, to a beefy, pipe-puffing sergeant at a lecture, a garage owner, an organist at a cathedral…. We watch the stars play out the story against a background of characters who seem to be stars of their own movies in some alternative cinematic universe.

   This is, in short, a film you must not miss— Yes You: that guy out there peering at the screen. I’m talking to you, Buddy. Find this movie and watch it!
   

JUROR #2. Nicholas Hoult, Zoey Deutch, Megan Mieduch, Toni Collette, J. K. Simmons, Kiefer Sutherland. Director: Clint Eastwood.

   Juror #2 starts with a premise and then runs with it to the very end. Magazine writer and recovering alcoholic Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) is called for jury duty in Savannah, Georgia. It doesn’t take him long, however, to realize that the defendant, former drug dealer James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso), is most certainly innocent, and that he himself was the accidental perpetrator of the crime in question.

   The state’s official version of events is that Sythe, after a public fight with his girlfriend (Francesca Eastwood), followed her down a dark, rainy two lane highway, bashed her head in, and dumped her in a ditch. What the state doesn’t know is that Kemp, juror number two, accidentally killed the victim that same night, thinking that he had hit a deer with his vehicle.

   That’s the set-up. What follows for the next ninety minutes or so is a taut courtroom drama and thriller that doesn’t waste a minute of your time. The viewer gets to witness not only the jury deliberations, with Kemp trying to bend the jury to his will, but also the contest between an ambitious prosecutor (Toni Collette) and the overworked public defender (Chris Messina), tasked with a thankless job.

   Filling out the cast are J.K. Simmons as a juror who turns out to be a retired police detective from the Midwest who has doubts about the case, Kiefer Sutherland as a lawyer who is also Kemp’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, and Zoey Deutch as Kemp’s pregnant wife who wants to believe that her husband is a good man. All three are excellent in their roles. One only wishes Simmons had a more prominent role. His character simply disappears after a while.

   Overall, a solid, comparatively apolitical work by director Clint Eastwood that doesn’t remotely dumb things down for a mass audience. It’s a mature, sophisticated film that is able to both appeal to both one’s emotions and intellect without being pretentious or preachy. It’s not flashy and there’s not a lot of action, but it’s worth your time.

VIRTUE. Columbia Pictures, 1932. Carole Lombard, Pat O’Brien, Mayo Methot, Jack La Rue, Shirley Grey, Ward Bond. Director: Edward Buzzell.

   A Columbia pre-Code production, Virtue is a well constructed romantic melodrama/crime film that doesn’t remotely feel dated. Directed by Edward Buzzell, who lent his tradecraft to both Marx Brothers films and musicals, the film stars Pat O’Brien and Carolyn Lombard as a working class New York City couple who run into their fare share of trouble after they get married at town hall.

   O’Brien portrays ambitious cab driver Jimmy Doyle who hopes to own his own gas station one day. Lombard portrays Mae, a prostitute who stays in the city despite a court order for her to leave town. Although Mae hopes to turn a new leaf and leave her old one behind, it’s only a matter of time before her past catches up with her.

   Doyle, for his part, is never quite able to reconcile with his wife’s past in the oldest profession. Mae, on the other hand, still isn’t able to shake off her former work associates and ends up being conned out of her money by Gert (Shirley Grey), another ex-prostitute. When Mae attempts to get money back from Gert, she ends up getting framed for murder by lowlife Toots (Jack La Rue).

   Just a fair warning: the crime aspect of the film really comes at the end of the movie, so it takes some patience to get there. But it’s worth the wait.

   The film also benefits from the presence of Ward Bond who portrays Doyle’s close friend. When I think of Bond, I tend to associate him with westerns (and for good reason), but here he portrays a fellow NYC cab driver. He doesn’t have a huge role, but his character is pivotal to how the crime/murder aspect of the plot is resolved.

   Overall assessment: an above average movie with great chemistry among the two leads.
   

ALASKA SEAS. Paramount Pictures, 1954. Robert Ryan, Jan Sterling, Brian Keith, Gene Barry. Screenwriters: Walter Doniger & Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Homes). Director: Jerry Hopper.

   Directed by Jerry Hopper, this mediocre remake of the box office hit Spawn of the North (1938) is about rustling. Just not cattle. Here, it’s salmon that’s been rustled by rival fishermen. Ryan stars as Matt Kelly, a rugged ruffian who, when released from jail for poaching, returns to his small fishing village in hopes of getting back into the salmon trade.

   Little does he know how much has changed since he left. Not only has the government changed the regulations regarding fishing, but his close friend Jim (Brian Keith) is now engaged to his love interest Nikki (Jan Sterling). Complicating matters further in this tiny outpost is the criminally minded Verne Williams (Gene Barry) who makes Kelly a tempting offer to get involved in the illicit salmon business.

   In terms of direction and narrative, it’s all very pedestrian from beginning to end. There are some good moments, but overall there is not a lot of energy here Even though with a cast as good as this one, there really should be. One last thing. If you’ve ever wanted to see Robert Ryan interact with a trained seal in a bathtub, then Alaska Seas might just be the motion picture you’re looking for.

   Verdict: great cast, including Timothy Carey in a supporting role, but a somewhat flat story that you’ve seen in westerns sundry times before done with much greater effect.

STRANGE FASCINATION. Columbia Pictures, 1952. Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas, Mona Barrie, Rick Vallin, Karen Sharpe . Written, directed and produced by Hugo Haas.

   This one really isn’t noir, but it’s got noir-ish features, I guess in the sense that it has an impending sense of doom, a femme fatale (to some degree), and a portrait of a man on a downward spiral.

   The fatalistic plot follows Central European concert pianist Paul Marvan (Hugo Haas) as he makes his way to America, falls madly in love with a nightclub dancer half his age (Cleo Moore), and then proceeds to make bad decision after bad decision, ultimately ruining both his marriage and his professional life. It’s a decent enough work to be sure, but the plot is a little too simple for its own good.

   A lower budget auteurist work if there ever was one, Strange Fascination has Czech-Jewish filmmaker Hugo Haas’s imprint all over it. Not only does he star in this moody drama film, he wrote, directed, and produced it. So it’s safe to say that everything in the film is his work and his alone.

   To his credit, his portrayal of Paul Marvan is spot-on; Haas disappears completely into the role and imbues it with energy. He’s compulsively watchable. But otherwise, Strange Fascination is a somewhat languid affair, never quite able to deliver the punches it so desperately needs.
   

STRANGERS KISS. Orion, 1983. Peter Coyote, Victoria Tennant, Blaine Novak, Dan Shor, Richard Romanus, and Linda Kerridge. Written by Blaine Novak & Matthew Chapman. Directed by Matthew Chapman.

   A niche film, but accessible, engaging, intelligent — and Funny!

   About 30 years before Strangers Kiss was made, an eager young would-be filmmaker borrowed money, assembled a cast of non-actors, investors and their relatives, scarfed up one professional actor and somehow cobbled a movie together.

   No, not Ed Wood and Plan 9 from Outer Space. The laying of that egg was immortalized in a movie of its own, a decade later. This film is about the somewhat more talented Stanley Kubrick, and the movie was Killer’s Kiss, reviewed here: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=18638

   So if you’re still with me, Strangers Kill is loosely based on the making of Killer’s Kiss. For purposes of the plot, and to give the thing a sense of movement and suspense, they provide the leading lady/heroine with a loan shark/movie-investor for a near-husband, and Richard Romanus gives the character a hairy machismo that contrasts very well with Blaine Novak’s laid-back virility as her co-star /would-be lover.

   But these three, good as they are, compete for our attention with a vivid array of sub-Hollywood types, hangers-on or drop-outs from the fringes of the tinseltown dream, limping Kharis-like from ruin to ruin…

   Lyrical, ain’t I?

   Seriously, folks, the minor characters are well-drawn, and the bigger roles are played with commitment and deft comic timing. Dan Shor does an amazing — and very funny — job as a beleaguered producer in an abusive relationship with the director, played by Peter Coyote as a mercurial megalomaniac. The scenes of Coyote plowing through the film like a mulching mower, while Shor bags up the remains are a delight to watch, funny and deeply-felt at the same time.

   Finally, for a movie about movie-making, this is surprisingly intelligent. Director Matthew Chapman evokes the seedy back-lot milieu, and lovingly recreates scenes and set-ups from the earlier film. And best of all, ((WARNING!)) after teetering at the edge of melodrama for most of its running time, Strangers wraps with everyone acting like grown-ups, resolving their conflicts (or not) with a low-key maturity that surprised me more than many an action-film!