Sparkling Cyanide (1983)

 

    Sparkling Cyanide (1983) [D: Robert Michael Lewis. Anthony Andrews, Deborah Raffin, Pamela Bellwood] Transplanted to Los Angeles, with a British private eye and a local cop co-operating on the case, this isn’t Agatha Christie’s story, but it’s close enough to give us what all Christies supply: plentiful red herrings, numerous misinterpretations, and the slow revelation of the essential facts. There’s even the scene in which the sleuth gets all the suspects together and sifts through the clues to arrive at the truth. This version was made for TV, which means it softened and even avoided the dark subtexts. This makes for a rather bland movie, competently acted, photographed, and scripted, but lacking the sense of evil that pervades all of Christie’s stories, and which more recent adaptations take pains to show. **

Destry Rides Again (1939)

     Destry Rides Again (1939) [ D: George Marshall. James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich] The town of Bottle Neck is ruled by gangsters. Frenchy (Marlene Dietrich) is in league with them, and assists in defrauding a rancher of his property in a crooked card game. The sheriff who goes to investigate is killed, replaced by a drunk, who calls in Destry (James Stewart), the son of his old friend. But Destry doesn’t like guns. That’s the setup.
     So how will Destry tame the town? He does it by showing he’s a crack shot, but mostly by insisting he will enforce the law, and doing so even when he knows that the law favours the crooks. That insistence on law enables him to arrest the murderer of the previous sheriff, but when it gets out that he’s called in a federal judge to try the case, there is the inevitable gunfight. Frenchy, who is after all an immoral woman, dies protecting Destry.
     A nicely done movie which no longer seems mold-breaking. Hailed as a classic, it offered Stewart his first starring role, Dietrich’s come-back role.A mix of silliness and cliches masquerading as humour, well done photography, and an intelligent script add up to a pleasant hour and a half. It’s supposed to be a comic Western, and it does offer some laughs. But I have no desire to watch it again. **1/2

The Genius Within (2009)

      The Genius Within (2009) A bio of Gould that pays homage to his music, but focuses on his love life. He fell in love with Cornelia Foss, and she with him, so she moved her children to Toronto, and for a while it seemed they might marry. But Gould became increasingly dependent on his anti-depressant meds, and eventually she returned to her husband. Gould died of a series of strokes in 1982 at the age of 50. His death hit the children especially hard.
     An above average documentary, with reminiscences by Cornelia, the children, Lorne Tulk (the sound engineer on Gould’s recordings), and other friends and acquaintances. The biographer speaks a few times, and confesses that there’s a mystery he was not able to penetrate. This remark is echoed by other people. In the end, what remains is Gould’s music, and  the impression of a life that was perhaps less fulfilling emotionally than it might have been.
     Does the genius of Gould’s interpretations of Bach match the cost of his and others’ emotional pain? Perhaps. Everybody must balance the costs and gains of his life. Gould came to accept the cost, enjoying his time at the family cottage, and in playful impersonations of imaginary figures, recorded in photographs. Hearing his second recordings of the Goldberg Variations, I imagined scenes from a movie, of figures in a cityscape at night, together but alone, wandering in and out of lights and shadows, while some unknown hunters close in on them with dispassionate intensity, preparing for the kill. ***

Julie & Julia (2009)

      Julie & Julia (2009) [D:Nora Ephron. Amy Adams, Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci]
     A mostly pleasant account of how Julie Powell cooks and blogs her way through Julia Child’s book over one year, alternating with Child’s career as cook and author.
     In 2002, Julie Powell decided to cook her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blog about it over 365 days. Her story is alternates with Julia Child’s, beginning with a posting to Paris with her foreign service husband Paul, attending a Cordon Blue cooking school, and so on. Powell later wrote a book about her year of cooking, Child wrote an autobiography, these form the basis for the screenplay.
     The food was gorgeous, I wanted to eat it. The story unfolds slowly, the cross-cutting between Powell’s and Child’s lives works. We need to know something about the history of the 1950s to fully understand Child’s story; the movie makes me want to read her book. Powell’s story has an oddly 60's feel to it, even though it’s set in early 2000s New York.
     Adams as Julie Powell is appealing, even though her marriage to Eric (Chris Messina) is a little too good to be true. Tucci as Paul Child is cool, calm, and collected, and very supportive of Julia, not surprising considering the fabulous food she cooks for him. Meryl Streep as Julia Child is irritating. She’s not acting, she’s impersonating, and the result is a caricature. At one point, Julie and Eric watch a Saturday Night Live parody of Julia’s cooking show, and there’s really not much difference between that Julia and Streep’s version.
     There’s no question that Julia was one of the people who moved food from being a more or less inoffensive fuel to a central pleasure of life. She was a larger than life figure, but the nuances of her character and her relationships with friends and family are barely hinted at here. We need a well-done biopic of this amazing woman. I liked Powell’s decision to straighten herself out by assigning herself a year-long task, but I don’t feel any desire to know more about her. I would like to enjoy some of Julia’s dishes. **½

Murder on the Orient Express (2001, TV)

     Murder on the Orient Express (2001, TV) A modernised version, with cell-phones even, and the current touristy Venice-Simplon Orient Express, which in fact no longer runs to Istanbul. The Poirot here is laid back and almost sleepy, he lacks that rage to know that is Poirot’s essence, and even more he lacks the ruthless conviction that murderers must be brought to justice. The result is a vaguely pleasant way to pass a couple of hours. The movie doesn’t demand much of the viewer. Poirot’s sleepiness is matched by the almost soporific pace of the narrative, the sloppy placing of the red herrings, the almost complete lack of urgency, the perfunctory cross-cutting between scenes that are supposed to reveal important clues or misdirections. A couple of the usual mistakes in depicting railways don’t help: one stock scene of a passing train shows an American locomotive. *

And Then There Were None (1945)

      And Then There Were None (1945) [D: Rene Clair. Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston] This movie is based on Christie’s stage-play, not the book, which explains that I didn’t recognise all the plot points. It’s also a typical Hollywood adaptation, well done photography, ominous music signalling that it’s time to watch the screen instead of munching popcorn, and so on. I can’t tell how much the script departs from Christie’s, the rather static blocking of the characters and surprisingly clunky narrative pace feels like a holdover from the stage. The story itself is typical Christie, with red herrings well placed. The unravelling of the group of guests as they realise that the murderer must be one of them doesn’t feel quite right. However, the mix of distrust and wary trust is difficult to make plausible, and this was not intended as an Oscar contender. An OK 80-odd minutes of entertainment. **

Johnny Hart. B.C.: Great Zot, I’m Beautiful (1971)

     Johnny Hart. B.C.: Great Zot, I’m Beautiful (1971) A dinosaur gazing at its reflection in a stream does the Narcissus thing. That’s one sign that Hart is a literate and witty comic strip author. Most of the strips collected here rely on visual, verbal, and conceptual puns, one sometimes gets the point only on a double take. Other strips rely on bizarre logic: “How do go about sell underarm deodorant without getting too offensive?” asks Wiley. “Try keeping your elbows close to you sides,” answers Peter.  And that sample will have to do. You may find a copy of a B.C. collection in a yard sale, if you do, snap it up. ***