Quick Takes, December 2024

Alec McCowen and Michael Redgrave in Time Without Pity

Joseph Losey's Time Without Pity, from 1957, is his first distinctive feature after a McCarthy induced exile in Europe. Michael Redgrave's drunken father lurches around London trying to exonerate his son played by Alec McCowen, before a scheduled execution. Hanging straps on the Tube portend doom, but the film is more than a brief against capital punishment. A gallery of frantic, cruel, and impotent males alternatively vie for dominance and beg for expiation. The baroque use of mirrors and windows illuminates Losey's barbed view of shattered families. The first rate cast features Leo McKern, Peter Cushing, Ann Todd, Joan Plowright, Renee Houston, and Lois Maxwell. Shot in coruscating black and white.

I enjoyed M. Night Shyamalan's Trap slightly more than I thought I could. Shorn of the pretentious baggage of most of his features, Trap is an efficient, if workmanlike thriller. Josh Hartnett is effective as a devious killer hiding beneath a goofy dad exterior. I enjoyed the supporting performance by Ariel Donoghue, Alison Pill, Jonathan Langdon, Kid Cudi and, be still my heart, Hayley Mills. The fly in the ointment is Saleka, Shyamalan's daughter, who is distractingly bad as a pop star. 

Justin Harding's Carved, currently streaming on Hulu has been critically received as a cinematic desecration, but I thought it was a goofily fun horror comedy. The film swipes its premise from Toxic Avenger, this time a toxic spill creates a killer pumpkin which terrorizes the denizens of a Maine township. The hurtling pumpkin cam harkens back to early Sam Raimi and the film succeeds in never taking itself too seriously. The young leads are mostly a wash, but veterans like DJ Qualls, Chris Elliott, and the ubiquitous Matty Cardarople are sterling in support.

Brian Netto and Adam Schindler's Don't Move, streaming on Netflix, is yet another run of the mill thriller. The directors show promise. They know and show how to construct a film mechanically, but the two leads fail to lift the material above the routine.

Denis Sanders' War Hunt, from 1962, is a well meaning, but clumsy Korean War film, shot for peanuts. John Saxon stars as a psycho infantryman who has gone over to the dark side while Robert Redford, making his film debut, is a raw recruit undergoing a loss of innocence. The acting is all over the place, but is much more interesting than the scenario or the direction. Sanders' documentary films tend to more distinctive than his patchy work in fictional features. A number of future Hollywood lifers dot the cast: including Sydney Pollack, Tom Skerritt, Charles Aidman, and Gavin MacLeod.

Christy Hall's Daddio is a formulaic two hander in which a cabbie (Sean Penn) and his fare (Dakota Johnson) hash out their problems during a long ride from JFK to midtown Manhattan. Johnson grows more assured with each performance and Penn is always an asset, but Hall's script is predictable and her direction dull.

Even duller is William Keighley's Each Dawn I Die, an anodyne crime melodrama from 1939 starring James Cagney and George Raft; their only pairing in a film in which both were billed above the title. Cagney plays a reporter who is framed by crooked politicos. Upon being sent up the river, Cagney befriends confirmed hood Raft who responds to Cagney's sense of fair play. The bland and irritating Jane Bryan is the token skirt. George Bancroft and Victor Jory are wasted in rote roles. The dialogue is inane and the plot nonsensical. Keighley's refined sincerity is anathema to the gritty textures of a Warners gangster film. Even the inevitable prison riot is lackluster.