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County Hospital
Sons of the Desert
Flying Deuces
Lawrence of Arabia
Layer Cake
Leave Her to Heaven
The Leopard
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County Hospital 1932 3.5 Laurel, Hardy, Billy Gilbert. Hardy is in the hospital with his broken leg elevated in a huge cast; Laurel comes to visit, and disaster ensues. Usual catastrophic interplay between the two. Laurel has good quiet shticks – eating the hard-boiled egg with his usual quietly fussy mannerism; when embarrassed after the disaster, he is awkward, not knowing what to look at, what to do with his hands, and how to deal with the exasperated Hardy; so he ends up taking off his bowler hat and scratches the top of his head (with the hair sticking up, of course). Pièce de résistance is Laurel causing Gilbert to fall out the window holding on to the rope holding up Hardy’s leg; Hardy is lifted to the ceiling where he dangles helplessly but yelling; Laurel as usual makes things worse when trying to help, and order is restored only when the hospital staff enters to see what the matter is. Hardy is of course frustrated, looking into the camera vainly for sympathy from the audience. Film short ends with poorly photographed driving sequence, in which Laurel, falling to sleep because of the hypodermic he sat on – cannot control the car.


Sons of the Desert 1933 4.0 Laurel, Hardy, Mae Busch. Absolutely hilarious feature length film (68 minutes) on husband/wife relationships. The boys as two hen-pecked husbands, who want to go to the Sons of the Desert convention in Chicago (an obvious satire on the Shriners), but are afraid to ask their wives and they resort to subterfuge (a cruise to Honolulu for Oliver’s health recommended by the veterinarian that Laurel brings in to ‘examine’ the supposedly ill Hardy) to fool them. Wives are real shrews – Laurel’s (‘Honey’) is tall and carries a hunting rifle; Hardy’s (‘Sugar’) is the incomparable Mae Busch, who is an expert at throwing crockery and loses her temper and goes through moods swing as she dominates her husband. More verbal jokes than the short subjects, e.g., Laurel referring to Honey as his “ball and chain” unwittingly in her presence. Some great routines, particularly on the boys’ being terrified of the wives, especially when they return from their ambiguous journey. Hardy has a hold over Laurel since he threatens to tell his wife that Hardy caught him smoking a cigarette! Best scene is when they reveal the truth to their spouses: Laurel is hilarious since he has a hard time telling a lie weeping and blubbering, and Hardy is disgusted with him because he can’t stick to the party line. Lightning strikes them while they are hiding in the attic, presumably because they have lied. In the end Laurel is treated well by his wife since he has told the truth; Busch collects all the crockery in the house and breaks it over Hardy’s head since he did not tell the truth.


Flying Deuces 1939 3.0 Laurel, Hardy, Jean Parker. Produced away from Hal Roach and his crew, but still is fairly funny. Boys in France, Hardy in love with JP, his suit is rejected, joins the Foreign Legion, and they have various adventures. Some personae and approach as early 30s talkies, although dialogue seems more important; the guys also stop twice to do a little music and dance – Laurel “plays” the “harp,” and the two of them do a soft shoe routine in front of the soldiers. Some good gags: Laurel keeps bumping his head on the slanted roof wall, despite Hardy’s protestations and helpfulness; L always walks into walls on the wrong side of doors. L&H do only one of their tit for tat routines (water, laundry iron, etc. when they are supposed to be doing laundry for the Foreign Legion); in any case, Laurel continuously “assaults” Hardy, who does not appreciate, and does at times his patented slow burn. Long final chase scene; first is dull with soldiers pursuing the duo; but then gets more exciting with the boys in an airplane trying to pilot it themselves, with several stalls, corkscrew moves, dives, near misses with ground, etc. (and of course Laurel squealing in terror and hugging Hardy); plane finally crashes and Hardy is killed. Running joke in movie is incarnation. Last scene has Laurel talking to Frances the Talking Mule, who now has the voice of Hardy (he has transmigrated!).


Way Out West 1937 Produced by Hal Roach 3.0 James Finlayson as the boys’ nemesis. The rather late Laurel and Hardy feature doesn’t strike the writer as funny as some of the others. The boys are in the West riding on a donkey to tell a girl she has inherited a gold mine; Finlayson and his wife try to steal the deed from them, and the adventures ensue from their competition. Some good running gags, e.g., Laurel’s ability to light a match by popping out his thumb; he does it three times, but Hardy is not able to imitate…until the very end he shocks himself with a success. A couple of very noisy, hyper-kinetic slapstick sequences, particularly the one in Finlayson’s apartment, where both sides compete violently for the deed; perhaps the funniest part is Stan giggling endlessly while the wife (quite sexy) is trying to extract it from under his shirt. The boys also do a couple of songs, the first one having them dance in a saloon. The best routine is Stan trying to lift Ollie into an upstairs window using block and tackle and the donkey; after several tries, Ollie ends up on the ground, but the donkey ends up on the second floor! A lot of hilarious competitive, tit-for-tat action between the two with Ollie glowering and blustering and Stan looking clueless, scratching his head, etc., although this doesn’t prevent him from getting his little revenge on his partner.


Lawrence of Arabia 1962 David Lean (Britain) 4.0 Peter O’Toole inspired, on the edge, internally riven, but instinctive military genius as Lawrence; Omar Sharif as Ali, his friend and ultimately the measure of his madness; Anthony Quinn as rougher, macho and barbaric Arab leader from different tribe than Ali; Claude Rains with prominent false teeth as clever diplomat accompanying General Allenby; Jack Hawkins marvelous as stiff upper lip but humorous and competent British general in chief, who regularly thanks God that he is not a politician; Anthony Quayle as somewhat priggish staff assistant to Allenby; Jose Ferrer as existential, lonely and perhaps sexually bizarre Turkish general who has Lawrence beaten; Arthur Kennedy as brash and intelligent American journalist who (somewhat cynically?) creates the myth of Lawrence the inspirational military and political genius of the desert; Alec Guinness as a rather too European Prince Faisal, clever and reserved, who seems to end up on top at the end. Extraordinarily epic version of the incipient Arab rising in Arabia during World War I, the Arab rivalry with the British, and the final situation in Damascus where Lawrence, the lesser leaders (Lawrence, Sharif and Quinn) are eclipsed by the power of the British Army (Hawkins) and the sly maneuverings of Faisal (Guinness) – their alliance seems to presage the takeover of Arabia by Faisal in due time. Small things seem weaker – Alec Guinness’ studied Englishness (and make-up?), the somewhat anti-climactic last part of the film – but overall impact is dramatic and overwhelmingly emotional. The epic expanses of the desert, the mountains, etc., are enormously impressive even on a wide computer screen with sharp resolution. The excitement generated by the story carries the film forward – recruiting a bunch of ragtag Bedouins to fight the Turkish army, leading to victories at Aqaba and Demascus. The transformation of the misfit Lawrence into a successful desert warrior adored as a kind of demigod by the tribesmen and prized equally by the British high command. The character of Lawrence is an important focus – a more or less useless misfit in the British Army becomes a dynamic field commander when leading the Arab detachments; a pretty guy with his glowing light blue eyes often appearing like an angel in his white Bedouin robes, riven internally between his excitement at doing something great and his revulsion at the blood he is shedding and his doubts about leading the Arabs only to turn them over to the British (much trembling of lips and jittery eyes); in the end he falls into near nervous collapse after he is beaten by the Turks and after his attempt to take over Damascus collapses in internal chaos and defeat. Not a single female character in the film (thank God no token woman). Memorable scenes: the famous match that cuts to the rising sun over the dunes of the Arabian desert; the destruction of the Turkish train in the desert and the release of the beautiful Arabian horses; the scenes of the defeated Turkish army retreating and then slaughtered by the Bedouin horsemen (and camelmen); the two mirage scenes of or horsemen approaching interminably over the mirage; the ship in the Suez Canal passing unexpectedly behind the dunes announcing the arrival of the near dead Lawrence to Egypt. Possible to become impatient at the end of the almost 4-hour movie; but it has to be the greatest epic!


Layer Cake 2004 Matthew Vaughn (Britain) 2.5 Daniel Craig in his first starring role as gentleman-style drug dealer telling us that he is on the verge of retirement; Colm Meaney as Irish-accented mobster assistant to the boss Jimmy; Kenneth Cranham as Jimmy the underworld boss; Michael Gambon as pretentiously speeched gangster; Sienna Miller as supposedly seductive babe who doesn’t quite make it. Star vehicle for fairly charismatic Daniel Craig: slim, muscular, and handsome (although he sometimes resembles Vladimir Putin), kind of cool and sensible, wants to stay away from the worst of underworld life but he gets drawn in deep. Initially he is persuaded by his associate Jimmy to do a favor for Jimmy’s friend Gambon and rescue his daughter; in the meantime, Craig and his men get mixed up in a deal about ecstasy pills, which have been stolen from a vicious Serbian gang by the nearly insane Duke and his hysterical, drug-pumped girlfriend. The plot is filled with twists and turns – so many that the viewer doesn’t know what is happening, and he gets so far behind that he gives up. There is Jimmy and Colm, Craig and his two men (Craig later gets furious about a murder and executes his boss Jimmy), Gambon and his crowd who are masking a play for the pills, renegade Duke and his shrieking girlfriend, Dragan and his sadistic Serbs who are trying to get their pills back, and the police, about whom we are also rather suspicious. Craig has a momentary romance with Miller (she looks a little like a gawky candidate for top model on TV) but the connection is interrupted when Craig is kidnapped by one of his antagonists. Film is quite violent and has a sense of humor; it moves along at a rapid pace giving one barely a moment to reflect and figure out who is who. The dialogue is incomprehensible to the polite American ear and has to be supplemented with subtitles. The factor in the film that makes it work in some ways is the star quality of Craig, who has weight and the loyalty of the camera. The film ends ironically: Craig meets Jimmy’s former confederates in the same elegant restaurant where he had met Jimmy in the beginning; they expect him to take over the operation (even though he murdered Jimmy?), but in a white suit he announces that he is getting out; he walks through the main dining room, picks up a beaming Sienna Miller, and when the two of them walk out the front door, Craig is shot twice and he lies dying on the steps with blood staining his white coat – the gunman is Miller’s ex-boyfriend murdering out of jealousy; it has nothing to do with drug business!


Leave Her to Heaven 1945 John Stahl 3.0 Gene Tierney icily, scarily and murderously possessive as daughter of wealthy Maine family; Cornel Wilde as normal, pretty dull guy who somehow marries her (he is not able to explain how it happened); Daryl Hickman rather irritating as Wilde’s younger brother, who gets in Tierney’s way; Ray Collins as sensible older family lawyer. Rather bizarre studio product halfway between a soap opera and a film noir. A film noir filmed in blazing Technicolor, where the colors are super-saturated and often unrealistically glowing (reminding one of 50s ‘South Pacific’), but which are capable of conveying the intense and scary beauty of Tierney’s face or the natural beauty of a Maine lake. Tierney is the heart and soul of the film. She is hard to figure out – intensely possessive to the point of murder, on horseback and with a frighteningly manic expression on her face she distributes the ashes of her dead father in New Mexico, she sits idly by in a rowboat as Wilde’s brother drowns in the famous drowning scene, and she throws herself intentionally down the stairs in order to force a miscarriage and get rid of the baby she doesn’t want; she is wildly affectionate with her new husband, who seems often distracted by something – writing, his brother, his Maine house – and does not respond when Tierney is looking for affection; but then she harbors dangerously silent resentment against anyone who she thinks comes between them. Close-ups of her face are memorable – perfect alabaster beauty with long, wavy dark hair, brightly painted red lips, steely hard eyes, triangle-shaped dark glasses that hide her eyes as she watches the boy drown. She commits suicide but sets it up as a murder to frame her sister (Jeanne Crain), who has fallen in love with her husband (innocently of course). Film ends with improbable courtroom scene in which DA bully Vincent price browbeats practically everyone within reach; but of course the tables are suddenly turned and the deceased Tierney is recognized for the monster that she was. The film ends with a gloriously framed Maine lake shot of Wilde and Crain embracing – true love has won out. The film has important noir elements such as the femme fatale, but the non-noir elements predominate – the blazing color, the survival of the male protagonist, the happy, true love ending. One has the impression that the script would have made an excellent noir thriller, if it had been deepened and sharpened and if the film had been shot in black and white.


Lemming 2005 Dominik Moll (France) 3.0 Laurent Lucas as low-key engineer in a high-tech firm in the Toulouse region; Charlotte Gainsbourg cute (although not very pretty) and also low-key and passive as Lucas’ stay-at-home young wife; Charlotte Rampling as take-no-prisoners, angry, sexually aggressive wife of Lucas’ boss; André Dussollier as seemingly straight arrow boss of Lucas, although he likes to have sex with prostitutes. Fascinating, although frustratingly vague follow-up to Moll’s big hit, ‘Harry…’. Film is set in the most normal of circumstances – Lucas working in a high-tech firm in France and returning home every night to his loving and attractive wife in a tastefully decorated home in a leafy French suburban neighborhood. Strange events soon interrupt their equilibrium. A classically unpleasant dinner visit from Rampling and Dussollier (shades of the classic Chabrol: angry arguments and Rampling throwing a glass of wine in her husband’s face) bemuses the young couple; they find a lemming (Norwegian mouse-like rodent) caught in the kitchen drain pipe; Rampling makes sexual advances to Lucas, which he rejects hesitantly; and then she commits hysterical and messy suicide in the couple’s spare bedroom. The film then journeys into the supernatural: Lucas returns from a business trip to find his kitchen crawling with lemmings, only to wake up in the hospital and be told that he was severely injured in an auto accident and the lemming incident must have been a dream; when the couple journeys to Dussollier’s alpine cabin for as rest, Rampling inhabits Gainsbourg’s body and makes passionate love with Lucas; she then returns to their home and appears to Lucas as both herself and Gainsbourg and then has a love affair with Dussollier (!); the jealous Lucas then journeys to Dussollier’s house to murder him, taking care to make it resemble a suicide; he brings a willing Gainsbourg home and then all returns to normal: the couple seems again content, and the script provides a naturalistic explanation for the appearance of the lemmings. The first half of the film is absorbing and fascinating; the director is expert at slowly building tension and suspense coming from the two separate narrative lines – the lemming (the viewer wonders what its symbolism might be) and the scary encounters with the apparently demented Rampling and her normal-seeming husband. The central part of the film is confusing and stimulating: it seems that some supernatural force is at work in the possibility of Rampling’s return from the dead and the confusion of the identities of Rampling and Gainsbourg. The end of the film however is deflating: the murder of Dussollier seems unnecessary and the return to normal at the end takes the steam out of the film, leaving many threads hanging. One wonders whether the theme might be related to the self-destructive tendency of humans (the lemmings plunging off the cliff to their death) or the inevitable disintegration of masrriages (Rampling and Dussollier and the ending cluelessness of Lucas’ and Gainsbourg’s reasltionship). Entertaining, disturbing, although highly ambiguous film.


Leon: the Professional 1994 Luc Besson 3.0 Natalie Portman in her first film at age of 12: terminally cute with her pageboy haircut, strong acting with effective trembling lip portraying a lonely, abandoned, but courageous child; Jean Reno (born in Morocco but raised in France) as ruthlessly efficient professional hit man who saves Portman’s life and acts as her surrogate father; Gary Oldman sneering, snorting, and contorting his face as bloodthirsty, psychotic police detective who is doing a drug business on the side; Danny Aiello as kindly bar/restaurant owner who keeps money for Reno, and then Portman, and doesn’t want to let it go. Over-the-top film with a highly improbable, even absurd, plot but with compelling action sequences and a charismatic performance from the pre-teen, 12-year-old Natalie Portman. Portman is part of a dysfunctional, mixed family that is rubbed out mercilessly by Oldman’s “cops” (really drug dealers) when he suspects the dad of cutting cocaine behind his back; Reno rescues Portman from Oldman’s hit men, and he develops a touching, if somewhat clichéd, paternal relationship with the orphaned Portman; Portman is dead set on revenge, using techniques and weapons taken from Reno, but it is the latter that manages to kill (slaughter) several of Oldman’s underlings; in the final lengthy Armageddon, Reno eventually dies in the bloody shootout, but he takes Oldman with him by strapping explosives to his own body; Portman returns to the private school that her parents had sent her to, and the Headmistress promises to help her “if she doesn’t lie”; the implication is that Portman will turn out ok, although we can anticipate psychological bumps from all she has been through. Portman’s career as a hit person (called “cleaner” in the film) is a bit ridiculous (at least she does not succeed in rubbing out her marks), but the film has strengths. The action sequences are filmed with panache, quick cutting, good make-up, and dramatic accompanying music; and the adorable Portman charms every theatergoer with her classic face, the hair in her face, her adult-like guts and resourcefulness, and her ability to convey loss and anger through facial expressions. Memorable mainly for Portman’s performance.


The Leopard 1965 Luchino Visconti (Italy) 3.5 Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon. Epic treatment of wonderful novel by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. International epic with an American, French and Italian star to make it sell; but a big commercial failure in USA (completely predictable -- which American would sit for three hours to watch a story about the Risorgimento, even with 20 minutes cut from the Italian version?). Seems to remain faithful to theme of novel (the passing of the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie paralleled by the approaching death of the Prince), but changes and simiplifies the plot to "make it work" for the screen. Done in lushly sumptuous color with very bright reds and golds and deep greens, particularly effective in indoor scenes where the deep colors and textures on the walls conjure up a feeling of declining aristocracy. Epic feel in the big sweeping, national theme (Italian unification and the passing of the nobility), the battle scenes where the 'camicie rosse' battle the ineffective Bourbon soldiers in the streets, the sweeping views of the beautiful, stark Sicilian countryside, the incredibly sumptuous costumes in practically every scene, etc. Dubbing in Italian is good; even Lancaster seems to be speaking Italian (and warning, do not watch him speaking his own language in the English language version!). Actors are all good: Lancaster is convincing and noble as the enlightened, existential aristocrat, who carries the weight of his country's and family's history and traditions on his shoulders; Delon is dashing and sympathetic as the nephew Tancredi, who by marrying the bourgeoise Angelica shows that he will be a success in the new Italy; Cardinale is beautiful and spectacular in her 1860s gowns, and does a good job suggesting her sensuality; Concetta (actress?) is pretty but puritanical, dour and colorless, representing the past, the girl that Tancredi leaves behind in order to move into the new order. Visconti goes for the slow epic pace, with extremely long scenes -- for example, the ball scene toward the end has many "empty" moments as we watch the couples dance and admire the spectacular costumes; the battle scenes are too long by American standards. The best scenes are the Prince searching his soul -- shaving in the mirror when Tancredi enters room and is seen reflected in the mirror; his irritated snappy relationship with his house confessor -- the Prince values the Church as a tradition, but he is no firm believer; the scene where he explains that he cannot be a senator under the new Piedmontese system; when he sits in the drawing room and looks at the picture depicting death, and then is comforted by the sensuous Angelica, with whom he has a potential lover's connection as he longs for youth and vitality; the scene with the tear running down his face is a bit sentimental. The ending is disappointing. Instead of the scene changing to much later, showing the decline of the family and using the Death image of the lady dressed in the brown suit, he merely stops on the way home and kneels before the sacrament; somehow an explosion is supposed to suggest death, and he merely walks off the screen.