Don't Play Us Cheap

Rhetta Hughes and Joe Keyes Jr.

Melvin Van Peebles' Don't Play Us Cheap, from 1973 , is his most overlooked and underrated flick. Part of this is due to the film's unusual origins and part due to its release or lack thereof. Peebles originally published the story as a French language novel entitled La fête à Harlem. The project, in each of its iterations, centers on a Harlem apartment where Miss Maybell (Esther Rolle) is hosting a Saturday night bring a bottle party with dancing, appetizers, and a grand feast. The guests sing and raise a rumpus, rejoicing in each other's company. Two interlopers are welcomed, but they turn out to be imps, ordered by Satan to disrupt the festivities. However, the sheer good-heartedness of the partygoers upend their plans.

Peebles had adapted the novel into a stage musical which briefly played San Francisco in 1970. Peebles filmed the production soon after, but was unable to find a distributor. He next mounted the play on Broadway, with largely the same cast that is in the film, where it had a fairly successful run. The film had a token, if you will excuse the expression, release and then languished in obscurity for decades. The ramshackle nature of the film and its weirdness probably scared off the major film studios, but it is Peebles' funky nerve that makes it resound today. Peebles doesn't open up the material, but turns it inside out. We view the apartment not just from a proscenium view, but from multiple points of view, including that of the denizens of the underworld. Numerous cinematic and theatrical techniques are used to reinforce the mood of bonhomie: a black and white segment, theatrical tableaux, shots through window frames, everything including the kitchen sink. I do think Peebles does indulge his love of superimpositions too much, but Peebles is trying to conjure the antic hilarity of his characters and I feel he largely succeeds.

Part of the reason is Peebles was able to attract a talented ensemble who were all impressive vocalists. Rhetta Hughes had been a backup vocalist with such luminaries as "Bobby Blue" Bland and Bob Dylan. Avon Long, who gives the film's most outstanding performance, had sung at the Cotton Club and played Sportin' Life in a Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess. Since, as you can probably tell from my description, the plot is slight, the film functions more as a musical revue with roots, fully exposed, in vaudeville and minstrelsy. Peebles' songs draw as much from show tunes as they do from soul. What is fully modern is the extremely funky costumes which remind me of the illustrations Pedro Bell provided for Funkadelic albums of this period. Don't Play Us Cheap  is as much a product of post-Sly Afro-American street culture as Miles Davis' On the Corner and as much a stylistic ragamuffin as that album.      

Giants and Toys

Hitomi Nozoe

Yasuzô Masumura's Giants and Toys is a 1958 Japanese satire of consumer capitalism. The film's plot machinations are centered around three generations of men who work as flacks for the publicity department of a Tokyo based sweets company. Their company, World Confectionary, has hit a sales slump and the P.R. whizzes must concoct a new It girl to center their next campaign around. They happen upon Kyōko (Hitomi Nozoe), an innocent gamin from a poverty stricken family. Kyōko has the raffish charm of a tomboy, we even see her playing stick ball at one point, that translates well through the lens of a beatnik photographer played by the marvelous Yûnosuke Itô. Kyōko becomes a media sensation, but loses her innocent charm in the process. The advertising men who engineered her rise all suffer from their devotion to their career at the expense of their personal lives.

Jonathan Rosenbaum has noted that Giants and Toys is evocative of Frank Tashlin's work which is an understatement, if anything. Masumura's color, wide-screen compositions resemble the cartoonish elasticity of Tashlin's work. Furthermore, the screenplay for Giants and Toys intersects with those of The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? on so many themes that one can't help but think that this is a case of imitation standing in for flattery: the films all share critiques of the modern capitalistic work ethic, satirize advertising and modern media (especially television), and utilize pop music. Giants and Toys even steals a bit of milk jug japery that Tashlin employed to draw attention to the bust size of Jayne Mansfield. The shadow of American culture is acknowledged by the characters in Giants and Toys. The lack of nationalist self-esteem is striking from a culture that bristled with chauvinism before its defeat in World War 2. "America is Japan," one character remarks ruefully.

Giants and Toys also shares the major flaw of Tashlin's work: its cartoonish visual dexterity is stressed to the detriment of the dimensionality of his characters. Very few of the characters in Giants and Toys exist beyond their one dimensional functioning within the plot. I cared very little for those caught up in corporate espionage and subterfuge in the film. Still, the visuals are occasionally dazzling. Giants and Toys is currently streaming on Kanopy.

Ziegfeld Follies

Lucille Ball and feline friends

Producer Arthur Freed wanted Ziegfeld Follies to reflect the wide-ranging revue that impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. brought to Broadway in the early years of the 20th century. He succeeded in that the film is as scattershot as the original Follies undoubtably were. The film is a portent of the variety shows that were a staple of the early days of television. Comedy sketches alternate with lavish musical numbers with no attempt to craft a narrative. William Powell, who starred in MGM's The Great Ziegfeld, a Best Picture Oscar winner and huge hit for the studio, impersonates the showman again in a brief prologue. The producer has earned his reward in heaven and gives his benediction to the MGM players who he lauds for invoking the spirit of the old burlesque days. This translates to MGM using the film to plug their rising and established stars. The only true Ziegfeld performer in this film is Fanny Brice, who appears in a skit directed by Roy del Ruth that features Hume Cronyn and William Frawley. It is middling Brice, but I'm very glad it exists. 

The majority of the film was directed by Vincente Minelli with assists from Charles Walters, Robert Lewis, Lemuel Ayers, George Sidney and whoever was free on the MGM lot. The Minelli numbers are the film's highlights, especially the sequences with Fred Astaire and a boffo number with Judy Garland which originally was going to feature Greer Garson; but disaster was averted on that one. Minelli was in between Yolanda and the Thief and The Pirate and shoots here with full confidence, the former department store dresser (like Warhol) indulging his love of expressive color and bricolage. The pas de deux between Astaire and Gene Kelly gets most of the ink, but I think the standout number is the "dramatic pantomime" Limehouse Blues which features Astaire and Lucille Bremer. The casting of the two as Chinese emigres in London's Chinatown may cause one pause, as do a number of racist and sexist emanations from the film, but the result is sublimity, up there with the finest moments in Meet Me in St. Louis or Some Came Running.

The rest, while not quite dross, is decidedly a mixed bag. I've never found Red Skelton funny and his skit did not convert me. Keenan Wynn fares a little better. There is a number from La Traviata that's OK, if a little incongruous. MGM would hit paydirt a bit later by signing Mario Lanza. I always like seeing and hearing Lena Horne. In comparison, Kathryn Grayson seems anodyne. I like then new faces Bremer and Virginia O'Brien, but they both would soon get the axe from the studio. The appeal of Esther Williams continues to escape me, but Cyd Charisse has a nice dance cameo. Ziegfeld Follies grossed well, but could not meet its exorbitant production costs. Many snafus dogged the production, including a malfunctioning bubble machine.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Tales and Songs

Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs deservedly won the Palme d'Or at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival over such disparate films as The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Coming Home, Empire of Passion, Midnight Express, Pretty Baby, The Shout, An Unmarried Woman, Violette Nozière, and Who'll Stop the Rain. I am not overly enamored with neorealism, so a three hour film about Lombardy peasants working for a landowner in 1898 would seemingly not float my boat. However, Olmi's unobtrusive craft and compelling story had me glued to the screen for the entire film. Olmi synchs his film with the naturalistic and Catholic rhythms of life that feudal peasants lived for centuries. The tragic ending of the film augurs the modern era and the death of that way of life.

Olmi seems to have been inspired by the mystical Christian neorealism of Roberto Rossellini. As in the work of Rossellini and fellow nutty Christian Robert Bresson, Olmi use non-professional actors for verisimilitude. The adherence to the numerous rituals of Catholicism both bonds the peasantry and provides spiritual comfort. This is also true when the peasant families congregate in a barn to swap songs and tales before bed. Running parallel to these rites are those of nature. Indeed, The Tree of Wooden Clogs is a veritable fertility rite in of itself. We get birth, death, austere courtship, the sowing of seeds, and harvest. Olmi uses repeated shots of people looking out through windows, but all they see is time passing. The lack of heat in their abodes is stressed. They huddle around a flame to warm their bones. A flame of humanity that, like this film, sheds heat and light even in the dark, cold future.

Short Term 12

Kaitlyn Dever and Brie Larson in Short Term 12

Destin Daniel Cretton's Short Term 12 is a better than average drama that suffers from a fatal case of the cutes. It is an indie flick about a short-term residential treatment facility where the lines become blurred between staff members and patients. The bonding scenes are not as icky as they could be thanks to Cretton's restraint and the talents of Brie Larson, LaKeith Stanfield, and Kaitlyn Dever. However, Cretton frames his everyday tragedies as if this were a M*A*S*H* like ensemble comedy. The effect is jarring. There is much more than a spoonful of sugar making the medicine go down when the film ends with an adolescent charge running out of detention with a Superman cape on. (11/25/16)

Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse

                     
Lukas Feigelfeld's Hagazussa is a decidedly creepy horror film set in the Alps during the15th Century. The 2018 film is a fairly impressive debut feature debut from the Austrian writer and director. Hagazussa is visually stunning, but dramatically a little sluggish. The film shows, in four parts, vignettes from the life of a simple goat herder who lives on the fringes of society in a remote cabin. Albrun is an outcast from Christian society and is derided by her neighbors, as her mother was before her, as a witch. When Albrun is raped by a local, she takes her revenge in a fiendishly clever manner. What follows is even more horrifying and the film climaxes in fiery fashion with one of the most striking long shots of recent vintage.

Feigelfeld conjures a past that is both strange and sinister, sometimes at the cost of narrative coherence. What he is able to picture, which should be at the heart of any period horror film set in this period, is the conflict between paganism and Christianity. Interestingly, the parish priest is quite tolerant of the pagan leanings of both Albrun and her mother. He realizes that prescence of an outcast like Albrun only increases the religious fervor of his own flock. Albrun is presented, none too subtly, as a scapegoat for the community at large. Feigelfeld also invests his film with traces of the Lorelei myth, though the analogy is a little murky. As Albrun, Alexsandra Cwen offers a bold and forceful performance in a film with very little dialogue. Hagazussa works better as a visual tone poem than as a straightforward story, but there are enough powerful moments to make me look forward to Feigelfeld's next effort.

The Careless Years

 

Dean Stockwell and Natalie Trundy

Arthur Hiller's The Careless Years is a dreary and conformist teen romance from 1957. Jerry (Dean Stockwell) and Emily (Natalie Trundy) become sweethearts while attending Santa Monica High School. They come from differing social backgrounds with Jerry's Dad working in a garage. Emily's parents are more upper crust and expect Emily to attend college after graduating from high school. Jerry, frustrated because Emily draws the line at heavy petting, broaches the subject of an elopement. Both of their parents object to this idea and, eventually, Emily knuckles under and agrees to go away to college. She pledges to write to Jerry, but bourgeoise conformity triumphs over romance at the end of The Careless Years.

Emily's mother is played by Barbara Billingsley who ended up playing another model of traditional feminine conformity as Theodore Cleaver's mother on Leave It to Beaver. Billingsley's character mouths the ethos of the screenwriters, decrying such totems of modernity as psychology and sleeping pills. What is one to make of the scene in which Emily and her mother both try on the same dress at a department sore? Mom tries on the dress second and pronounces that it suits herself better. From the film's viewpoint, I suppose, mother knows best, but I found it creepy. John Larch, another familiar face for those who owned a television in the 20th century. offers a solid performance. Ms. Trundy, not so much. She had a slim film and television career, but appeared in four Planet of the Apes movies because the second of her five husbands was Arthur P. Jacobs, producer of the simian epics.

The main reason to watch the picture is Dean Stockwell's brooding performance. Stockwell was just beginning to emerge out of his child star period. The role, sort of a neutered James Dean, is not a perfect fit. Stockwell never possessed the sexual magnetism of a Dean, but found his niche as a supporting player. However, whatever energy that emerges from this very dull film is almost solely to the restless poetry of Stockwell's work. Something that certainly can not be said of Hiller's efforts, which are lifeless. Even at seventy minutes, the film is turgid with little drama or snap to the proceedings. The Canadian director would stay afloat in Hollywood for almost fifty years, directing more commercial disasters (Penelope, Man of La Mancha, WC Fields and Me) than hits (Love Story, Silver Streak). The good films that bear his credit (The Hospital, The In-Laws) seemed to have succeeded despite him. Tellingly, Hiller did not direct another feature film for six years after The Careless Years failed to make an impact commercially or critically.

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Patrice Lumumba

Johan Grimonprez's Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat is a documentary that focuses on the machinations that led to the overthrow and death of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1961. Grimonprez places this story within the context of the rise of the non-aligned nations of that era which were struggling to free themselves from the shackles of colonialism. The "soundtrack" part of the film features, mostly, American jazz musicians unleashing titanic performances. The keynote piece is Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, released in 1960 and an attempt is made to link the Afro-American struggle for civil rights with emerging African nations attempts to free themselves from the yoke of European rule. Less successful, is Grimonprez's attempts to show how overseas tours by US jazz performers, funded by CIA front groups, distracted those abroad from the Western intelligence community's international chicanery. People abroad were not so easily hornswoggled, even in that far off time.

I did like the lack of narration in the documentary. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat paints too broad a canvas for Grimonprez to lump his disparate threads into one monolithic narrative. He takes care to list his sources, though I think his cherry picking of said sources displays his bias. The manifold sins of the CIA are fully explored while the KGB rates nary a mention. Grimonprez unquestioningly displays speeches by Khrushchev and Castro supporting the non-aligned nations with little to no context. Now Grimonprez has previously explored the paranoia of the Cold War era in his documentary Double Take, so he may not have wanted to repeat himself. However, he paints a false binary view of the US: we see a lying Eisenhower and a truth telling Malcolm X. King and Kennedy never appear. I also think Grimonprez downplays Belgian culpability in the death of Lumumba and the severe cruelty of the Belgian rule of the Congo before 1960. Grimonprez does indeed hail from Belgium and the film provides a cursory looks at Belgian culture, such as it is. Much as I adore the film's footage of US jazz giants, I would have preferred to hear more from the African artists like Franco and OK Jazz that are featured far too briefly.

Despite my little Bichon Frisé reservations, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat is an enjoyable film with a vivid gallery of talking heads that fly by swiftly, despite the film's length, because Grimonprez marshals an enormous amount of sound and imagery into a fairly digestible package.  I swam willingly in the stream of its powerful, if somewhat one-dimensional screed. Sometimes the effect verges on overload, I didn't see the point of juxtaposing Khrushchev speaking at the UN with shots of children enjoying a puppet show except for the most obvious point. I did appreciate the segments featuring Andrée Blouin and In Koli Jean Bofane, the author of the searing Congo Inc. It is the rich mineral deposits of the southern Congo, as Bofane points out, that have caught the focus of the world's great powers. A day after China's cessation of rare mineral exports to the US, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat looks even more pertinent.

Les chambres rouges

Juliette Gariépy

Pascal Plante's Les chambres rouges (Red Rooms) is one of the more compelling and technically interesting films of the past few years. Set in Montreal, the picture commences with the criminal trial of a serial killer named Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) who is accused of torturing and killing three young women. The film's main character, Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), is in attendance and it becomes obvious that she is obsessed with the case. Kelly-Ann lives a hermit-like existence in a sleek high-rise, making a very good living modeling and playing online poker. She befriends a fellow trial groupie named Clementine (Laurie Babin) who thinks Chevalier has been framed. Clementine is a drifter from the sticks who gladly accepts Kelly-Anne promise of shelter. However, Kelly-Anne, who is a techno wiz, reveals to Clementine that she has copies of the videos of two of the murders, acquired with her hacking skills on the dark web on what are referred to as red rooms.

These videos were shown at the trial, but only in camera with the exclusion of spectators. Naturally, Clementine wants to see what is forbidden, but it upends her. She finally grasps Chevalier's perfidy and disassociates herself from the trial and Kelly-Anne. Kelly-Anne's attendance at the trial does not go unnoticed and her modeling career suffers. She loses herself to her obsession, even dressing up as one of the victims. She is sucked into a media vortex and reacts in a, somewhat justifiably, paranoid fashion much like the protagonist in this film's main influence, David Cronenberg's Videodrome. The themes of surveillance and loss of identity that underpinned that film are very much in evidence in Les chambres rouges. Plante shares with Cronenberg a clinical and very Canadian rationalism that is contrasted with more unconscious forces in their scenarios. In Les chambres rouges, the blinding white light of the courtroom, where truth and justice are sought, is contrasted with Kelly-Anne's dark lair where she consorts with the pitch black elements of the world wide web.

The gaze of Pascal's camera is largely an objective one. Sleek camera movements eye the participants in this drama in all their three dimensionality, even when they are playing a "role" in court, but also neutrally. The exception occurs when Kelly-Anne shows up in court dressed as one of the victims and is promptly ejected. As the bailiffs manhandle her out of court, the camera point of view shifts to her perspective. She sees Chevalier acknowledge both her and her complicity, like Manson to one of his chicks. As with Clementine's moment of realization, this changes Kelly-Anne's perspective, but, unlike Clementine, not her obsession with the case. She devotes herself, in her own twisted fashion, to bring justice to Chevalier. 

The Lady of Shallot by Elizabeth Siddal

One aspect of Les chambres rouges that intrigued me was the use of motifs and references from Arthurian legend. In the film, Guinevere is an AI computer assistant to Kelly-Anne. Kelly-Anne's internet moniker is "Lady of Shallot" who, if I remember my Tennyson, also spends a lot of time cooped up in a tower. Chivalric crests come into (cos)play and the murderer is, of course, named for the French word for knight. A very errant knight, I suppose. The dark web is rendered as modern necromancy in which all shapes, including the shape of truth, can be hacked and fracked into fractals. The rituals and romance of Arthurian legend are debased in Les chambres rouges. Pascal seems to intimate that truth is as illusory in the modern world as the Grail. All we are left with are the hollow rituals of streaming news and talk shows, mere phantasms of truth and bodyguards to lies.

The Edge of the World

Belle Chrysall and Eric Berry

Michael Powell's The Edge of the World, from 1937, is the first of his films to bear a personal stamp. Set on the island of Foula just west of the Shetland archipelago, the film is concerned thematically with the depopulation of the outer islands of Scotland. Two clans react differently to their dying way of life in which the island folk subsist on fishing, sheep herding, and crofting. The split in the community on whether to continue their seemingly doomed way of life leads to tragedy, particularly for Powell's young lovers Ruth (Belle Chrysall) and Andrew (Niall Macginnis). Throughout the picture, Powell's reverence for the traditional rural life of Great Britain emanates from the screen. 

That reverence is balanced with a frank depiction of the hardships brought by living on the island. Powell employs a documentary approach that verges on neo-realism. Indeed, a majority of the film's players were non-professional. The toil of those he depicts is stressed whether they are islanders laboriously extracting peat, shepherds climbing down steep rock to rescue their flock or coal stokers plying their trade on fishing trawlers. Powell regards them objectively, but with compassion and that makes all the difference. The expressionism of his later work makes only fleeting appearances, particularly when a superimposition of waves crashing on the island's rocky shore is layered over the face of Ruth as she contemplates suicide.

The plot of The Edge of the World is laden with melodramatic elements: two falls to doom from a rocky cliff, stern patriarchs, an unplanned pregnancy, an emergency tracheotomy, and, of course, a storm tossed sea. All of this crammed into 80 minutes! Powell contrasts this with moments of repose and reflection amidst the flora and fauna. Parishioners and their dogs wait patiently during an interminable sermon. A dance celebrates the birth of a child. Mankind resides with both sheep and hawks, life and death in a beauteous and terrifying setting. An essential film.

A Complete Unknown

Timothée Chalamet

James Mangold's A Complete Unknown is a satisfying film, worthy of the plaudits it has received. The script by Mangold and Jay Cocks, based on Elijah Ward's Dylan Goes Electric, wisely restricts its purview to the four years between Dylan's move to New York City and his plugged in performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The focus is on the embrace of Dylan by the folk music community and Dylan's eventual estrangement from the orthodoxies of that movement. Even with the film's narrow focus, there is a lot left out: no Ramblin' Jack Elliott, no Paul Clayton, no Mavis Staples, no Suze Rotolo abortion, no Tom Paine Award speech, no Beatles, and no drugs. Naturally, you can't include everything in a two hour film, though I kinda feel the absence of Bob's copious consumption of reefer and speed in this period was the price Mangold had to pay for Dylan's cooperation. Nevertheless, Dylan's pallor and nocturnal habits in the second half of the film provide enough of a clue to what was going on with Bobby after he hit it big.

Even with the director of Walk the Line at the helm, I honestly thought that this project was going to be the usual biopic debacle. Surely Chalamet was too tall and too lightweight of a performer to portray the Nobel laureate. I stand corrected. Chalamet fully inhabits his role and is especially convincing as a musical performer. Even Dylan detractors like Leonard Maltin can grok the songs now that the nasal whine of the Bobster is lessened. As good as Chalamet is, for me the outstanding performance of the film is Edward Norton's uncanny impersonation of Pete Seeger. Norton's rendering of Seeger's basic decency and timbre is completely dead on. Indeed, A Complete Unknown is a feast of supporting performances that conjure the historical figures without resorting to impersonation: including Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, Dan Fogler as Albert Grossman, Will Harrison as Bob Neuwirth, and Norman Leo Butz as Alan Lomax. The only actor I was not satisfied with was Elle Fanning as the Suze Rotolo stand-in called here by the name of Sylvie Russo. This is not entirely Fanning's fault. Rotolo was an Italian-American red diaper baby and Fanning just seems too much of a WASP for the role. If I have a slight criticism of the film is that its heavy use of recreated musical performances tends to ameliorate the drive of the narrative. When the script shows real life events intersecting with the legend of Bob Deity, like the sequence of Dylan regarding his neighbors watching President Kennedy address on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Mangold's subtle touch reaps dividends. I'm a big Dylan fan, so the more poetic musings of a Martin Scorsese or a Todd Haynes to me better capture the complexities and profundity of the subject. However, if someone who was ignorant of the life and work of the bard from Hibbing wanted to watch a film to learn about the man and his music, I'd unhesitatingly recommend A Complete Unknown.  

Rebel Ridge

 

Aaron Pierre

I came away a lot less excited about Jeremy Saulnier's Rebel Ridge than most. Aaron Pierre plays Terry, an ex-Marine driving his ten speed alone through Louisiana (!), with $30,000 in bail money (!) to spring a cousin from jail. The corrupt local cops pull him over, throw him in the hoosegow on trumped up charges, and confiscate his loot. Terry spends the rest of the film trying to reclaim his money and spring his cousin. His only help comes from a courthouse clerk played by AnnaSophia Robb. Snooping by the two triggers a showdown with the Sheriff (Don Johnson) after a wearying series of subterfuges and double crosses. Terry, a martial arts expert, tries to avoid killing the police officers hunting him, so we get the crunch of bone instead of the splatter of brain. Progress?

I have enjoyed most of Saulnier's previous films, but what I appreciated in them is what is most lacking in Rebel Ridge: tautness and restraint. The film is 131 minutes, but could have been improved were it 40 minutes shorter. Rebel Ridge is an B picture inflated with pretension. The message seems to be that there are racist and corrupt members of the constabulary in the deep south. As they say in New Orleans, quelle surprise! A cutting edge statement, for 1947. Saulnier's skill as a director makes most of the non-lethal whup-ass watchable, but his self written narrative is hokey. Maybe I should cut the guy some slack because Rebel Ridge was a troubled shoot, delayed by COVID and other problems. John Boyega, originally cast as Terry, left the project after a month of filming and his character appears in nearly every scene. I appreciated Aaron Pierre's understated performance and felt that it helped ground a film prone to hysteric overkill. Pierre seems to realize that his character's mythic aura need not be proclaimed loudly. He is nonchalant even plucking, bare handed, a fish from a stream. I also liked Ms. Robb, who showed promise early in both Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Bridge to Terabithia. Most of the other actors are fine, but Saulnier indulges his veterans. Don Johnson is pure cornpone as the sheriff and James Cromwell muffs his accent as a judge. Overall, Rebel Ridge is not bad, but it is certainly not good. 

Hickey & Boggs

Bill Cosby and Robert Culp

Robert Culp's Hickey and Boggs, from 1972, is a mediocre LA based noir with Bill Cosby (Hickey) and Culp (Boggs) as private investigators. The project was a reteaming of the pair who had starred together in the lightweight television espionage series I Spy. Cosby had insisted that Culp direct as a condition for participating on the film. This brought mixed results. Culp excels in the dialogue free exposition sequences, but flubs the film's action sequences. The ensemble scenes, mostly focusing on the film's cops busting Hickey and Boggs' chops, are lively, but Culp is so indulgent with his cast that Vincent Gardenia and Robert Gandan over act badly. There are a number of good performance by faces familiar to those who revere 1970s American cinema: Rosalind Cash, Michael Moriarty, Ed Lautner, and James Woods.

The film's script, which has Hickey and Boggs investigating a missing woman sought by both the police and the mob, was the first Walter Hill screenplay to be produced and is the film's major asset. However, Hill envisioned a seamier picture than what resulted. He thought that the ideal casting would have been Jason Robards (as Hickey) and Strother Martin. Cosby and Culp have a pleasant, PG rated cameraderie that is somewhat at odds with the picture's milieu. When the lead actors are confronted with darker moments in the script, Boggs' drinking and Hickey's losing a loved one, they flounder. Still, I felt Hickey and Boggs is better than its rather dire reputation. Most people can probably live without it, but fans of 1970s noir should check it out.