September 2021

THE CARD COUNTER (2021)

      Occasionally, if it is to remain a viable art form, movies need to make viewers uncomfortable, explore the dark side of society and introduce characters you’d rather not know.

     Paul Schrader, as both a screenwriter and director, has been doing just that since the mid-70s, when he wrote “Taxi Driver” for Martin Scorsese. In such films as “American Gigolo” (1980), “Patty Hearst” (1988), “Light Sleeper” (1992), “Affliction” (1997), “Auto Focus” (2002) and “First Reformed” (2017)—as director—and his contributions to the screenplays for “Raging Bull” (1980) and “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), he has brought characters and issues to screens that rarely show up in Hollywood pictures.

   Add “Card Counter” to his list of impressive, disturbing films, and William Tell, played with steely precision by Oscar Isaac, to the roster of memorable characters created by this unflinching observer of the human condition.   

    The film tells two stories, simultaneously. While travelling the country playing poker tournaments, having learned to count cards in prison, Tell is recruited to play for big time purses and a spot in the World Series of Poker, by a smooth talking young woman La Linda (a very cool Tiffany Haddish). Around the same time, Cirk (Tye Sheridan), a young man whose father served with Tell in Iraq, tracks down Tell in hopes that he’ll assist him in a revenge plot against the man who was their commanding officer in Abu Ghraib.

      Tell’s prison stretch was for his role in what went on in that U.S. detention center, where he and others followed orders and then took the blame after the scandal was revealed in a CBS News report in 2004.

     As this mismatched, trio traverses the country, following the poker circuit, nothing much happens even as Schrader keep upping the intensity through Tell’s flashbacks to Abu Ghraib. Even watching Tell “prepare” his hotel rooms is disconcerting.

     Schrader, as usual, doesn’t ask audience to warm up to his characters, just to understand their place in the world and Isaac serves him well; convincingly an unpredictable loner with more than a little Travis Bickle in him (Tell keeps a journal like the “Taxi Driver” character.)

     Very quickly, Isaac has established himself as one of the most interesting contemporary actors with a series of chameleon-like roles. He was a mild-mannered folk singer in “Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013), a maniacal AI inventor in “Ex Machina” (2014), a 1970s trucking firm boss dealing with the mob in “A Most Violent Year” (2014), a heroic Resistance pilot in the recent “Star Wars” episodes and the 19^th Century painter Paul Gauguin in “At Eternity’s Gate” (2018).

     The weakest link in “The Card Counter” is the performance (and Schrader’s dialogue for him) of Sheridan. He never convinced me that Tell would find him interesting enough to drag him along, let alone entertain his amateurish revenge plans.

     Chilly and distant, with more poker playing scenes than most viewers need to see, yet it’s hard to turn away from this troubled man and the road Schrader sends him down.

  

THE LAST VOYAGE (1960)

      I have little patience for disaster films (including that ridiculous melodrama “Titanic”), which is probably why I had never taken the time to see this pre-CGI tale of a luxury liner sinking. Turns out, it’s a compelling, startlingly realistic movie that had me completely rivetted. (It was billed at the time as “91 minutes of the most intense suspense in motion picture history.”)

     Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone (both of whom had scored supporting Oscar nominations for “Written on the Wind”—she won) star as the Hendersons, a married couple taking a cruise across the Pacific to Japan with their young daughter. This was to be the Claridon final trip, but it turns out it was one too many. In what has become the clichéd first clue, the pressure gauges skyrocket and soon the engine room is bursting with holes in the hull.

      Jack Kruschen, Edmond O’Brien and Woody Strode are the main engine room guys trying to patch things up while warning the arrogant captain (a perfectly cast George Sanders) that the ship may not stay afloat.

     While Sanders ignores his executive officers’ suggestion to evacuate the passengers, explosions begin to decimate the liner.

     Written and directed by Andrew L. Stone, the film alternates between Cliff Henderson’s frantic attempts to save his family after their quarters are destroyed in one of the explosions and the work by O’Brien and others to save the ship. This is edge-of-your-seat suspense, nonstop action and daring-do that is all the more enthralling knowing this was made long before computers started doing the heavy lifting of special effects. Veteran FX master Augie Lohman—who worked on everything from “The Lost Continent,” a 1951 B film, to “Barbarella” (1968) and “The Cheap Detective” (1978)—earned his only Oscar nomination for “The Last Voyage.”   

     Stone is a fascinating Hollywood success story, having started in the industry during the silent era, making a few shorts and a feature, but mostly working behind the scenes. He never stopped making low-budget pictures and became known for his location shooting, especially in his crime pictures in the 1950s. “A Blueprint for Murder,” “The Night Holds Terror” and “Cry Terror!” are among his well-made noirs. He also directed the all-Black musical “Stormy Weather” in 1943.

    “The Last Voyage” should be on any list of top disaster films for its realistic effects and high-spirited performances, but also should be noted as the rare film from the era that portrays a Black man (Strode) coming to the rescue of a white family. When no other crew member will help, Strode’s Lawson goes above and beyond the call of duty to help.

 

DEATH WATCH (1980)

    I had no idea what this film was about when I started streaming it off the LA County library site; all I knew was that it starred Harvey Keitel and Harry Dean Stanton.

    Based on a 1973 novel by D.G. Compton, the film, set in the near future when humans rarely die of diseases, anticipates the reality television craze that was still more than 10 years away. In this case, an amoral TV producer (Stanton) and a doctor on his payroll convince a woman that she has a fatal illness and has but a few months to live.

     Katherine (European star Romy Schneider, in one of her last roles) seems very accepting of her fate—not even seeking out a second opinion—and, despite her disgust with the producer and his show, signs a contract to have the end of her life filmed. But just before the filming is about to start she disappears into the British countryside.

     What she doesn’t know is that Roddy (Keitel), a seemingly kindly young man she meets by chance, is actually video taping everything she does or says.  He was once blind and his eyesight was replaced by a camera in his head that sends the images he “sees” back to the studio.

     Sounds preposterous and it is for the first 30 minutes of the film, but once Katherine and Roddy are traveling together—she wants to say goodbye to her first husband (Max von Sydow) who lives off the grid—the film becomes more about what makes life worth living and the strength of human relations than its sci-fi trappings.

     Directed by the great French director Bertrand Tavernier, who also adapted the novel with David Rayfiel (“Three Days of the Condor”), “Death Watch” overcomes stilted performances by Keitel and Stanton by virtue of Schneider’s moving portrayal of a woman struggling to find meaning in the world. Just two years later, the 43-year-old Schneider, one of the biggest movie stars in France, died somewhat mysteriously, either of a heart attack or possibly from a sleeping pill overdose

     Tavernier, who died in March at age 79, started out as a film journalist and press agent before becoming an assistant to the revered French director Jean-Pierre Melville. Tavernier went on to make some of the best French films of the 1980s and 90s, including “Coup de Torchon” (1981), “A Sunday in the County” (1984), “Life and Nothing But” (1989) and “L.627” (1992). He is best known in this country for his English-language film “’Round Midnight” (1986), which earned jazz legend Dexter Gordon an Oscar nomination.

     Tavernier’s 2016 documentary “My Journey Through French Cinema” is a thoroughly entertaining survey of the topic, filled with great clips and insightful commentary by this cinematic historian.  

     Twelve years after this movie, “The Real World,” usually cited as the first of modern reality TV shows, first aired, followed by “Survivor” and “Big Brother” later in the decade.

  

THE LAST RUN (1971)

     Just when I thought I’d seen every worthwhile film from the 1970s, I caught this George C. Scott car-chase crime picture on TCM.

    In 1971, Scott was at the top of his game, having won the Oscar for his larger-than-life portrayal of “Patton” (1970) and followed it with his cynical physician in “The Hospital” (1971). On TV, he starred in productions of Arthur Miller’s “The Price” in 1971 and as Rochester in “Jane Eyre” in 1970. In the midst of these high-profile performances, “The Last Run” has mostly been forgotten, rarely mentioned as among the actor’s best work. But it is.

     The movie opens with Scott’s Harry working on his high-powered BMW sports car and then test driving it along a treacherous, Portuguese seaside road before heading to Spain. Turns out, he’s the getaway driver in a prison break, his first “driving” job in nine years.

      It’s quietly established in this superb Alan Sharp (“The Hired Hand” and “Night Moves”) script that Harry sees little to live for; his young son died and his wife has left him. He’s looking for a reason to make life worth living and he seems to find it in Rickard (Tony Musante), the escapee/gunman, and his girlfriend Claudie (Trish Van Devere) after Rickard’s former gang members turn on him.

    I’m not a big fan of long car chases—they take up a quarter of the film---but here they serve as metaphors for Harry’s determination to speed toward his doom. It’s only behind the wheel that he feels in control and finds life temporarily rewarding.

     “The Last Run” could easily have been a B-movie from the 1950s, thus who better to direct than Richard Fleischer, who made two film noir masterpieces, “Armored Car Robbery” (1950) and “The Narrow Margin” (1952). While Fleischer’s later career was filled with some of the worst films ever made—“Che” (1969), “Mandingo” (1975), “The Jazz Singer” (1980) and “Conan the Destroyer” (1984)—his work here shows that given the right material he remained a talented filmmaker. (And it doesn’t hurt that Sven Nykvist serves as the film’s cinematographer.)

     Musante nails the smart-ass tough guy who seems, at first, to be nothing more than a gunsel, but he knows how to keep the upper hand on Harry. (The actor later starred as a detective in the 1973 TV series “Toma”).

    This also may be the only film in which an actor starred with two of his wives. Colleen Dewhurst, who plays a sympathetic prostitute Harry relies on, was married to Scott from 1961 to 1965 and then again from 1967 to 1972. Seven months after their second divorce, Scott married van Devere, whose career from this film forward was almost always as co-star or under the direction (on TV, Broadway and in movies) of Scott. She was married to him for 26 years until his death in 1999.

    Scott’s world-weary, gravelly voice, his thoughtful cadence and seemingly eternally squinting eyes brings Sharp’s fascinating character study alive, turning a straight-forward crime picture (originally a John Huston project) into something much more substantial.

 

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN (1934)

    Few on-screen performers are more important to the early development of the American cinema than Douglas Fairbanks. Though his star faded with the coming of sound, the influence of Fairbanks and his wife Mary Pickford as the first couple of Hollywood cannot be underestimated.

     Along with Charlie Chaplin, Fairbanks defined movie stardom with his oversized personality and athleticism, turning heroes like D’Artagnan, Zorro, Robin Hood and the Thief of Bagdad into versions of himself.

     His last starring role was in this biting satire about the aging Spanish playboy, Don Juan. Trying to avoid a reunion with his wife (the film is filled with jokes about marriage), the still beloved Don Juan slips out of Seville after a young doppelganger is killed in a swordfight by a jealous husband.

    The picture’s centerpiece is the funeral of Don Juan, observed with amusement by Don Juan and his friend. Attended by dozens of women, most who never meet the famous Lothario, they are all inconsolable at his demise.

     Like an actor without a hit film, Don Juan, under an assumed name, leaves town, but doesn’t much like being an undistinguished middle-age man (Fairbanks was 51 and quite thick around the middle). When he returns to Seville, expecting to be hailed as a returning hero, no one can believe it is him. No, say all the women, Don Juan was younger, taller and more handsome. 

    This British-made film, by legendary director-producer Alexander Korda (he produced almost every important UK film from the 1930s and ‘40s), is based on the French play, “L’Homme a la Rose.”

    No doubt, Fairbanks saw the dual joke, on the legend of Don Juan and the legend of Doug Fairbanks, but plays the role to the hilt, unafraid to play the fool.

    It turned out to be a worthy final turn—his only other appearance was as himself in “Ali Baba Goes to Town” (1936)—as he died after a heart attack in 1939 at age 56.    

  

A MAN CALLED ADAM (1966)

   The history of jazz is littered with brilliant musicians whose addiction ruined both their careers and personal lives. This independent picture offers an uncompromising profile of fictional coronet player Adam Johnson (Sammy Davis Jr. at his most anguished), whose drinking, coupled with his anger over the daily racism he encounters, wreaks havoc on his relationships on and off the stage.

    The opening sequence in this Leo Penn-directed film (Sean’s father) immediately defines the temperamental performer: While on a nightclub stage with his band, he loses his cool with a heckler and then walks out on the gig. Then, returning to his apartment (apparently after being on the road for awhile) he flips out because an old man is staying there (Louis Armstrong, playing a legendary trumpeter) along with the man’s granddaughter (a 42-year-old Cicely Tyson still playing a “young lady”).

    It’s a bit confusing as to why they are there, but there’s nothing unclear about Adam’s character. He’s an angry, unpleasant drunk who treats others like they’re fools and practically sexually assaults Tyson’s Claudia. Turns out, Armstrong’s Willie Ferguson is an old friend and mentor to Adams, which he remembers the next morning.

     We are used to seeing Davis, one of the most acclaimed entertainers of the 20^th Century, as a sycophant in Frank Sinatra films or as a slick hipster along side buddy Peter Lawford (who plays an arrogant business manager in this film.) Playing the hard to like, hot-tempered Adam, who manages to hurt everyone he comes in contact with, is a stretch for the singer, but, overall, he creates a convincing character, whose tragic past defines him.

     Armstrong, in addition to being, arguably, America’s greatest musician, had a lengthy career in film, mostly playing himself and usually getting a chance to display his trumpet virtuosity. But he’s done well in straight-acting roles, including with longtime pal Bing Crosby in “Pennies from Heaven” (1936) and as Ralph Meeker’s buddy in “Glory Alley” (1952). Here, he has a couple of poignant scenes as he tries to point Adam on the straight-and-narrow.

      The cast also includes Ossie Davis, a friend who tries to smooth things out after Adam’s inevitable outbursts; Frank Sinatra Jr. as a young trumpeter who Adam takes under his wing; and musicians Mel Torme and Kai Winding as themselves. Needless to say, the score is filled with superb jazz; the great Nat Adderley (brother of Cannonball Adderley) plays Davis’ cornet parts.

       Made in an era when Hollywood rarely examined the lives of African Americans with anything resembling reality (even Sidney Poitier films were typically set in a very white setting), “A Man Called Adam” stands out as presenting both the racist barriers even a successful Black man faced and a lead character with a litany of problems. Lester and Tina Pine penned the edgy script; he went on to write the screenplay for “Claudine” (1974), which earned Diahann Carroll an Oscar nomination.

       Penn, who only made one more feature in his long career—“Judgment in Berlin” (1988)—directed episodes of virtually every important TV series from the mid-1960s to the 1990s (“Dr. Kildare,” “I Spy,” “Bonanza,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” “Kojak,” “Columbo,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “Matlock,” to name a few.)

  

FLAG DAY (2021)

    As a director, Sean Penn is clearly Leo’s son. Despite bigger budgets, his films have all the characteristics of B-movie indies, focused on those on the fringe, struggling to find their place in an often-unwelcoming world.

     At his best, in “The Pledge” (2001) with Jack Nicholson, and “Into the Wild” (2007), about the young man who found a home in the Alaskan wilderness, Penn is a strong director of actors who pushes his performers to dig deep into the emotions of relationships.

     That’s his intention in his newest film, but there just isn’t enough substance to sustain interest in the story of these characters. Too much of the film plays like a two-person acting class exercise.

     Penn plays John Vogel, a failed conman, bank robber, drug addict and wannabe entrepreneur who tries to maintain a relationship with his equally rebellious daughter Jennifer (played by his real-life daughter Dylan). In some ways, the movie could be seen as a father’s vanity project to promote his daughter’s acting career (the 30-year-old has had just a few indie roles). 

    This true story, based on the Jennifer Vogel’s book, keeps repeating the same cycle: Jennifer reaches out to her father, who disappoints her again after they both remember better times. It grows especially tiresome when the director keeps going back to the same car trip when the daughter and (mostly ignored) son were young. The same hazy shots of nostalgia are reused at least four times.

    Jennifer eventually overcomes her horrible childhood (the mother is equally irresponsible and, of course, there’s a sleazy step-father) to become a working journalist. But I had a problem believing that she could gain admission to the University of Minnesota after dropping out of high school and then lying about it on her application. Maybe that was possible in the 90s; today she’d need a 4.0 and tons of extra-curriculars.

     Both Penns give good performances (the cast also includes son Hopper playing his son), but except for close friends of the family, I can’t imagine anyone caring about this predictable, slow-moving story. 

PHOTOS: 

Oscar Isaac in "The Card Counter."

Douglas Fairbanks, with Merle Oberon, in "The Private Life of Don Juan."

Sammy Davis Jr. and Cicely Tyson in "A Man Called Adam."