Monster March: The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

The Invisible Man Returns is something of a misnomer. The eponymous Invisible Man doesn’t actually return in this film; instead, we meet his visible brother, who shares the invisibility serum with a third man. More deceptive, though, is the promise that The Invisible Man Returns will be just as good as The Invisible Man. While the Universal Monsters had a series of winners in Frankenstein sequels, The Invisible Man Returns is a tragic snooze, retreading too much of its predecessor’s ground while squandering the perfectly good Vincent Price.

Geoffrey Radcliffe (Vincent Price) is sentenced to death for murdering his brother, despite his vehement protestations of innocence. While his cousin Richard Cobb (Cedric Hardwicke) consoles his fiancée Helen (Nan Grey), Geoffrey receives a visit in prison from Dr. Frank Griffin (John Sutton), the brother of the infamous and invisible Jack Griffin. Frank gives Geoffrey an injection of the same serum that turned Jack invisible, giving Geoffrey time to escape prison – and hopefully, before the serum’s madness kicks in, clear his name.

 

Just about the only place where The Invisible Man Returns transcends the original is, rightly enough, in its special effects. Seven years after the original Invisible Man dazzled us with effects that still hold up, Invisible Man Returns wisely ups the ante with a number of exceptional invisibility sequences, even when we consider the fact that this movie is more than eighty years old. Chiefly, Returns sets a number of its invisible-man shenanigans in broad daylight, including one mesmerizing sequence in which the invisible Geoffrey borrows clothing from a nearby scarecrow. Other shots are a little less technically sophisticated, including moving shrubbery and floating tree branches, but director Joe May also gets a few good kicks in when we glimpse this film’s Invisible Man amid smoke and rain – two conditions Jack Griffin took great care to avoid.

 

Aside from the special effects, the key to any good Invisible Man film is the voice of the titular man. Since we can’t, obviously, see the man, his performance relies so much on the voice alone. Claude Rains was a masterful choice, his precise mannerisms giving way to delightful fits of madness. In Returns, we have an equal auditory treasure in Vincent Price (though, at 29, his voice doesn’t have all the character and flavor you might be expecting). Whether cradling his beloved or toasting his own megalomania, even behind bandages and a heavy dressing gown, Price is fantastically equipped for the part. In short, Price is a hoot, all the more so in a potentially thankless role where he’s unseen until the very final moments of the film.

 

If you feel like you’ve read that sentence before, don’t be alarmed. The ending to The Invisible Man Returns is indeed nearly identical to the ending of The Invisible Man. In fact, a great deal of this sequel bears more than a passing resemblance to the 1933 original. There’s a healthy bit of narrative invention in the addition of a procedural plot in which Geoffrey sets out to prove his innocence, but it also ends up creating the same climax – an all-hands manhunt set in inclement weather. There’s a standout second act set in Richard Cobb’s mansion, a kind of closed-door mystery in which Geoffrey could be anywhere (or nowhere), and as the police go from room to room in search of their invisibly quarry, Cedric Hardwicke gets to slip from sanity into nail-biting paranoia.

 

Unfortunately, though, the successful moments in The Invisible Man Returns are few and far between. Unlike its predecessor, there is never really any doubt that Geoffrey will overcome his madness long enough to identify the real killer. (Indeed, you might even say that the onset of madness helps, as he assumes a kind of master criminal mentality in order to unravel the mystery.) While Geoffrey (and Price) do seem to be having a great deal of fun with their newfound ability, that revelry doesn’t always translate to the audience as it did in the original Invisible Man. Instead, at times the hijinks feel like distractions on the way to solving the murder – which, I might add, it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out who among the cast is suspiciously uninterested in the matter of Geoffrey’s innocence.

 

At 81 minutes long, The Invisible Man Returns is a bit too similar to its forbearer, overlong and unable to conceal the acts of light plagiarism. I suppose that I wanted Vincent Price to be more like Claude Rains or even (and more to the point) more like the Vincent Price of the 1960s. We do see some of that in the film, but – appropriately enough – the really good stuff is for the most part out of sight. Geoffrey Radcliffe is, for example, no Dr. Phibes, nor is he even quite Jack Griffin. More importantly, though, The Invisible Man Returns is no Invisible Man. Despite its few moments of fun, anyone can see that. 

The Invisible Man Returns is not rated. Directed by Joe May. Written by Lester Cole, Curt Siodmak, and Joe May. Starring Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, Nan Grey, John Sutton, Cecil Kellaway, and Alan Napier.

Tune in tomorrow for Franken-Friday, with Bride of Frankenstein (1935) starring Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, and Elsa Lanchester.

Next week for See-Thru Thursday, parachute behind enemy lines with the Invisible Agent (1942), starring Jon Hall, Peter Lorre, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke.

Monday at the Movies - August 20, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a murder/suicide.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) – Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel isn’t quite a remake of the 1974 Sidney Lumet version, starring Albert Finney, but it doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from its predecessor; it doesn’t misstep, to be sure, but one comes away feeling very much underwhelmed by the sense of having seen all of this already. Branagh all but drowns in a veritable river of ham as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, perfectly suited to the detective’s (well-earned) ego but overly distracting with an exaggerated accent (compare, for one, to Judi Dench’s subtle accent as the Princess Dragomiroff). It doesn’t help that I can’t get past the mustache, which suggests that Kurt Russell is owed a royalty check. Because the film makes only cosmetic changes to the plot, it all feels rather inevitable, losing a great deal of suspense in the build-up toward solving the murder, and comes off like two hours of “Kenneth Branagh and Friends” – which, don’t get me wrong, is a roundtable I’d certainly watch week after week. Johnny Depp is suitably smarmy as murder victim Edward Ratchett, while Daisy Ridley proves she’s got a long and fruitful career ahead of her once she’s done with Star Wars. The aforementioned Judi Dench is resplendent as an imperious royal, while Branagh’s affection for Derek Jacobi is more than apparent in a warm interview sequence. If you’re a fan of anyone in the cast of all-stars – which includes also Willem Dafoe, Josh Gad, Penélope Cruz, and Michelle Pfeiffer – it’s worth a look, but there is little about this Murder that is particularly imperative. 

Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018) – Perhaps it is just the circumstances of how I watched it, but Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay really feels like a Saturday morning cartoon for grown-ups (I watched on a Sunday, though). I say grown-ups, because Hell to Pay is unflinchingly adult in its objectionable content, almost to the point of being unnecessarily graphic. Don’t get me wrong, a Suicide Squad movie ought to be violent – maybe I’m just getting too old for this sort of thing – but there’s more blood here than anticipated, even from its R-rating. What I did appreciate, however, was the film’s strong connection to one of Gail Simone’s better Secret Six storylines, here appropriated so that Amanda Waller (Vanessa Williams) sends Deadshot (Christian Slater), Harley Quinn (Tara Strong), and the rest of the Suicide Squad in search of a magical, literal “Get Out of Hell Free” card. Part of the fun of a movie like this is that you never know quite who’s going to show up, as the filmmakers dig deep into DC’s stable of characters; Professor Zoom and Doctor Fate show up, though not in the ways you’re expecting, while Professor Pyg and Scandal Savage appear exactly as you’d imagine. All of this is inside baseball for those of us who live in the superhero dugout, particularly the film’s late-second-act surprise tie to another animated film (spoilers?), and I don’t imagine Hell to Pay will hold much appeal for anyone not already invested in the premise or its characters, but the curiosity of a big star like Christian Slater doing a voice might be incentive enough to check out this strange and gruesome flick.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

The Nice Guys (2016)

After two Iron Man films, Jon Favreau retired to a more personal film with Chef, which seems to have rejuvenated his creative batteries while remaining an entertaining movie in its own right. Likewise, three years after Iron Man 3 it’s Shane Black’s turn to scale back for a smaller film – misplaced, perhaps, in the summer blockbuster season (I can’t help thinking it’d have performed better financially in, say, October), but right up there with Hail, Caesar! in terms of laughs per minute.

Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling star as errant private eyes whose paths cross on a missing persons case before the case turns into an apparent murder (or, as it turns out, murders) reaching as high as the head of the Department of Justice (Kim Basinger). It’s a 1970s extravaganza, from the music and locations to the politics and pornography; hat-tip to Angourie Rice as Gosling’s daughter, overeager and spirited despite her father’s protestations.

I’ve been a fan of Shane Black’s going as far back as my first viewing of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and his clever screenplay on The Monster Squad. Of course, the former had a lot to do with Robert Downey Jr. in a starring role, but that has a lot to do with the fact that RDJ is naturally adept at delivering the kind of lines that Black writers – quick-witted, dryly sarcastic, and unapologetically buffoonish when need be. Throw in the buddy cop element (lest we forget, Black screenwrote Lethal Weapon), and you’re well on your way to The Nice Guys.

Another way to put it would be to think of The Nice Guys as “Thomas Pynchon’s Big Lebowski,” juxtaposing the neo-noir aesthetics of the Coen Brothers with Pynchon’s penchant for the absurd, Inherent Vice if it starred a pair of detectives. Yet for all the twists and turns that analogy might lead you to expect, The Nice Guys is never less than straightforward, its mystery meandering but never straying while wrinkling in a nice bit of ambiguity just because the final reel (in brief, is someone lying about the truth of the case?).

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was a success because of the unlikely chemistry between the extreme personalities of RDJ and Val Kilmer (the latter in an uproarious turn as Gay Perry), and The Nice Guys continues that pattern by joining Crowe and Gosling in a successful combination of thuggish straight man Crowe and waggish clown Gosling. While Crowe gets in his fair share of punchlines and confident one-liners, it’s Gosling who runs away with the film’s funniest moments (some playing off his daughter, in an entry for “World’s Nuttiest Approach to Parenting”).

Unfortunately, it seems that The Nice Guys is flying under the commercial radar, though critically it’s hovering around 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps The Nice Guys will find its audience on DVD, and hopefully so because this is a film that is a guaranteed bad-mood-killer. Hail, Caesar! gave me an unending grin on my face, but The Nice Guys goes for the comedic jugular and left me wheezing with laughter throughout much of the picture.

The Nice Guys is rated R for “violence, sexuality, nudity, language and brief drug use.” Definitely a hard R between the violence (gunfights, fistfights, people getting hit with cars and falling off buildings), profanity (F-bombs aplenty), and nudity (topless and nude women in the opening scene and in an extended party scene).

Gone Girl (2014)

Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl walked a fine line between pulpy page-turner and thematic depth, grappling with important issues while never losing the breakneck pacing shared by some of its shallower neighbors on the bookshelf.  With Flynn adapting the novel into a screenplay for director David Fincher, though, Gone Girl has well and truly arrived.

On their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) comes home to find his house disheveled and his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) missing.  A media hurricane ensues, in part because Amy was the subject of a series of children’s books authored by her parents, but largely due to Nick’s suspicious behavior during the first 48 hours.  What’s more, Nick is oddly evasive while helping the police follow the clues Amy left for their anniversary scavenger hunt.  As the film also reveals Amy’s diary entries, it asks:  Did Nick kill his wife?

As you saw from the summary paragraph, I’m going to do my best not to spoil any of the labyrinthine twists in the plot.  In fact, the surprises in the film are so well navigated that I almost wish I hadn’t read the book first.  There’s an element of almost unsettling tension in the film, even for a book-reader, and to that end I have to give kudos to Flynn for neatly adapting the structure and narrative of her novel into a finely tuned screenplay.  At two and a half hours, I was never bored because the movie keeps turning and churning, meticulously crafted with all the tightness of a boa constrictor wrapping itself around you.

I could attribute much of the success of Gone Girl to the stellar cast, as well.  Neil Patrick Harris is divinely unsettling as Amy’s suicidal first boyfriend, and who would have guessed that Tyler Perry’s turn as smarmy defense attorney Tanner Bolt would have been very nearly my favorite performance in the film?  (He certainly gets the best line, a perfect tension-popper right near the end of the film.)  That honor, though, goes to Rosamund Pike, who I’d say is looking at a very real Best Actress nomination once awards season rolls around.  Her Amy is even better than the character I’d imagined, her uncanny stares giving her the ice queen quality for which Hitchcock would have killed.  Affleck is a fine choice, too, but he’s exactly the Nick I pictured in my head; the film is Pike’s, and she owns it.

The individualist in me squeals with delight, though, at the fact that this film ultimately feels like the vision of a single person, plainly the product of the unmistakable eye of David Fincher.  For my money (noncontroversial claim ahead), Fincher has never made a bad movie, so the winning streak continues.  I love it when filmmakers so thoroughly retain their own style across projects, and as I grow older I’m really invested in movies that have that je-ne-sais-quoi “look” to them.  Christopher Nolan does it quite well, especially with Wally Pfister (and, because of the Pfister connection, Transcendence had the Nolan-look, too), and David Fincher is the other master of a consistent, distinctive look.  Marked by half-dim lighting and a loving lather of shadows, Fincher’s work always communicates visually the themes he intends to develop in the film proper.  Of course, the vaguely unsettling score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross has become a Fincher staple; as sore as I still am about it defeating Inception at the Oscars, the Reznor/Ross score for The Social Network suited the movie snugly.

This is a Fincher movie, with all the promise and directorial grace that Fincher brings to the table, and I think we can even understand it as part of a thematic trilogy, with The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, about sociopaths and the carnage they leave in their wake.  The novel was a little bit more about the mutually destructive consequences of a dishonest long-term relationship, but the Fincher treatment is heavily inflected by the director’s own consistent theme of the banality of evil and the quotidian lurkings of the savage.  Where the novel emphasized the dishonesty of its first-person narrators to broaden the range of suspicion in Amy’s disappearance, Fincher’s adaptation focuses more on the performance of normalcy, demonstrating that the suburbs is a site for disguise and deceit.  Nick might be lying when he says he’s innocent, but so might his neighbor, who parlays a friendship with Amy into a tour of the talk show circuit.

There’s so much more to say about the movie, and maybe this isn’t the venue for it.  This is a film that needs to be discussed, among people who’ve been through it.  It’s an experience that shouldn’t be spoiled, maybe up to and including by the source material itself.  I’d like to revisit this film once the spoiler embargo is lifted, but in the meantime I’ll probably be going back to the Fincher well and hit up some of my DVDs.  For you, dear reader, if you’ve enjoyed any of Fincher’s recent work, Gone Girl demands to be seen.

Gone Girl is rated R for “a scene of bloody violence, some strong sexual content/nudity, and language.”  A throat is cut in a very graphic sequence, covering both killer and victim in blood, but the color is manipulated so it looks more black than red.  We see one woman topless twice, another nude from the side in the shower, and two male rear ends.  Language consists of a few F-bombs and one monologue revolving around a crude anatomical synecdoche for a woman.

Oh, hey, tomorrow is the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month!  Former Fincher collaborator Daniel Craig makes his MI6 debut in Casino Royale, so be back on Tuesday.

Monday at the Movies - October 21, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  What’s more Halloween than a murder mystery?

Clue (1985) – Can we draw a line from here to Peter Berg’s Battleship?  Movies based on board games sound like evidence for the death of the imagination in Hollywood, and while the case isn’t quite so bleak with Clue I will say that the movie is significantly less funny than I remembered it.  Anchored by Tim Curry’s extremely immersive performance as butler Wadsworth (at least, in some of the film’s multiple endings), Clue is a comedic update on the whodunit board game, teasing us with Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard, Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, and Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White, among others.  The film is, however, almost entirely Curry’s – and well done there, since his post-Rocky Horror screen presence is more than enough to hold our attention rapt.  This isn’t a laugh-out-loud comedy like, say, The Hangover, since the laughs are more subtle (often from an underplayed line by Kahn or a facial contort from Michael McKean’s Mr. Green).  The film’s last twenty minutes, in which Wadsworth recaps the night’s events in order to identify the killer, may sound a bit tedious (and indeed the play-by-play repetition sometimes errs on the side of redundancy) but is actually the source of the film’s strongest laughs, resulting from some madcap physical comedy, shouted refrains, and the wink-nod revelation that “Communism was just a red herring.”  Redeemed by strong comedic performances that occlude the occasional laughlesness, Clue is a solid B-level comedy that leaves a better impression than it actually makes.  (Disclosures:  my rosy recollections may have led me to be disappointed, and the fact that my moviegoing partner on this one fell asleep may factor into my disenchantment.)

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - April 1, 2013

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Even though it's April Fool's Day, no joke - this is a movie that could be reviewed in a single word:  “perfect.”  (Don’t worry, you’ll get the other 249, as well!)

The Maltese Falcon (1941) – As well as a directorial debut and a book-to-screen adaptation, The Maltese Falcon is the curious case of the remake that’s better than the original (is it the only one?).  Director John Huston takes the Dashiell Hammett book of the same name and films it virtually word-for-word, casting Humphrey Bogart in a star-making role as private eye Sam Spade.  It’s your classic MacGuffin film, where the object of pursuit is less important than the characters who pursue it, and here The Maltese Falcon shines with an amazingly engaging set of protagonists and antagonists who are all in it for themselves – even if it means double-crossing each other to get there.  Spade gets embroiled in a search for the fabled “Black Bird,” though he’s not sure who really wants it or why; in hot pursuit of the jeweled statue, Spade becomes embroiled in a sundry cast of characters including a charismatic pathological liar (Mary Astor), an effete but well-mannered criminal (Peter Lorre), and a garrulous gentleman (Sydney Greenstreet) whose vocabulary is matched only by his girth.  The Maltese Falcon is perfect on a number of levels – perfect cast, perfect direction (which practically reinvents noir before your eyes), perfect script that wastes not a single shot in relentless pursuit of the plot.  Huston has made something really remarkable film here, almost the noir version of Seinfeld, in which essentially nothing happens while four ostensible allies scramble over each other to come out on top.  On first watch, the pursuit is all; on second watch, you’ll be able to appreciate the performances now that you know who’s after what at which point.  On third watch?  You’ll be saying the dialogue along with them.  The Maltese Falcon is that perfect crystallization of earnestness and infectiousness, a movie instantly rewatchable time and again.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

In a Lonely Place (1950)

I love Humphrey Bogart, and I "get" deconstructionism, but In a Lonely Place proves that the two just don't belong together.

Director Nicholas Ray helms this self-conscious, self-reflective look at Hollywood during a changing of the guard - the younger generation is starting to take over, much to the chagrin of aging screenwriter Dixon Steele (Bogart). Looking for a hit to revitalize his careeer, Dixon finds himself adapting a dud of a novel while romancing the girl next door (Gloria Grahame) and dodging a rep as the prime suspect in the murder of a hatcheck girl who went home with him. That's the film in a nutshell, but factor in the defining character trait for Dixon - a temper a short as the mayor of Munchkin City.

In many ways, In a Lonely Place could be described as a cross between The Big Sleep and Barton Fink. There's the same MacGuffin of a mystery with the character-driven focus on a Hollywood screenwriter. The difference is that both films in comparison were intentionally purposeless, with the ambiguity and off-kilter nature as a functioning element of the work, not as a distraction. In a Lonely Place begins as a murder mystery, becomes a romantic dramedy in the middle, and concludes as a dystopic dissection of the relationship between Bogart and Grahame, but it does so unevenly, with the audience just settling into the idea of the film as A before the film becomes B. As such, it's difficult to get a bead on the movie.

Bogart's performance is grade-A, as always. Though the plot meanders, there's something compelling about Bogart's performance; the switch from hard-boiled noir to simmering violent passion is a little more palatable in the deft hands of an actor of Bogart's impeccable credentials. Grahame isn't bad, but it's fairly obvious (and subsequently disappointing) she's subbing for Lauren Bacall, who I think is fabulous - especially when paired with Bogart. The rest of the supporting cast float in and out without any real significance; indeed, the roles could have been played by anyone.

What's most problematic about the film is its script. Chekhov has that wonderful line about guns in plays - if it's on the wall in the first act, it has to fire by the time the final act is concluded. In a Lonely Place never actually fires a lot of guns that it hangs on the wall. For example, the murdered girl cries "Help! Help!" several times in Dixon's apartment before she leaves for the evening; though Dixon expresses worry that she'll be heard by the neighbors - particularly because we know at least one is spying on him - no mention is made of this vital clue that might convict Dixon in the eyes of the police. Later, an unseen character is described as a UCLA student; when newspaper headlines carry a story about a young man from UCLA being beaten by one of the principal characters, one would expect these two story threads to intermingle, but no soap. Consequently, larger plot threads get dropped prematurely; the murder mystery all but disappears until a confession that comes in the final minutes of the film, problematizing the viewer's relationship to this A-to-B-to-C flick.

I'd hardly give In a Lonely Place an A. Bogart's performance is top-grade as always, particularly if you like to see him playing against type. Me, I prefer him as his type; there's a reason that "the Bogart character" has become archetypal, and deconstructing that archetype seems like a blatant exercise in intellectualism. The social critique of the changing tenor in Hollywood is intriguing and merits further study, but I'm not sure that Bogart needed to be anatomized the way that he is in this film. He does a good job, but ultimately it's not his strongest work.

The MPAA weren't handing out letter grades in 1950, but by today's standards In a Lonely Place would probably rank a PG for mild violence and moderate thematic content.

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

I think that Sorry, Wrong Number and I had a bad connection - not that I was ever tempted to hang up.

Director Anatole Litvak adapts Lucille Fletcher's classic radio drama into a 90-minute thriller starring Barbara Stanwyck as the bedridden Leona Stevenson-Cotterell, who overhears a telephone conversation in which two mysterious men plot the murder of an innocent woman. The premise seems simple, but in true film noir tradition there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the secrets that Leona and her mysteriously absent husband (Burt Lancaster) are keeping. Through a series of phone calls (and flashbacks), the awful truth comes out.

I'll freely admit that I hadn't heard the radio play before watching this movie. (Prep work isn't exactly my forte when it comes to this site, loyal reader.) So I was coming into this one fresh, ready for a film noir twist but also prepared to play along until the ending happened. This isn't the best noir out there - I'm a devout fan of The Big Sleep, mystifying though much of it is - but Litvak does an adequate job of keeping the movie going while not losing sight of the urgency of the murder to be committed at 11:15. It's not much of a mystery, true, but the why is more important (and more surprising) than the who and what.

Stanwyck and Lancaster are serviceable in their roles as the not-so-happily married couple, though at times Stanwyck borders on overacting (though she does a fine job of creating a simultaneously sympathetic and loathsome heiress) while Lancaster underplays what should be a more devastated part. As items submitted from the 1940s, though, and from a genre that highly prizes stylization, this is to be expected and so does not detract from the overall enjoyment of the picture.

What does, sadly, hurt Sorry, Wrong Number is that it is a touch too long. Some of the flashback scenes overstay their welcome, unnecessarily belaboring a few points (such as the courtship or the chemist's dream of owning horses). Perhaps this is the fault of the script, adapted from a nonvisual medium, or perhaps this is the fault of Litvak, who fails to yell "Cut!" when scenes run overlong. In the hands of, say, Hitchcock, this one might have been a ballpark favorite (I'll have to have a look at Dial M for Murder now to see what Hitch does with a similar premise), but as it stands, a few lines get crossed with Sorry, Wrong Number.

That said, if you can make it through a moderately drawn-out initial 70 minutes, the last 20 minutes - in which the reality behind the overheard phone call is revealed and its staggering consequences play out in brutal real time - are solid gold. In top film noir tradition, the film's final reel makes brilliant use of shadows, shouting, and snappy cuts to build a white-knuckle tension and a staggering climax we all saw coming but hoped wasn't so. That's the genius, I suppose, of the film - like The Taking of Pelham 123, Sorry, Wrong Number did a bang-up job of convincing me how it wouldn't end... and then ended just like it was supposed to. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

It's like a great dessert after an okay main course.

Sorry, Wrong Number made it to theaters before the MPAA carved out their ratings stamps, but this is definitely PG fare. As a 40s flick, this one is fairly innocuous, without any on-screen violence - the tension and the action is all in your head.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

As a once-was fan of the iconic and long-running Chris Carter sci-fi series, the announcement that a new X-Files film was en route made a small part of me giggly with excitement. Most of me, though, had moved on, wishing more that Sydney Bristow (from the long-since cancelled Alias) or even just Jack Bauer or the cast of Lost might show up in cinemaplexes. (Heck, I'll take that Arrested Development film any day, Ron Howard.)

So my concerns that perhaps I'd outgrown the paranormal excursions of FBI Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) stuck with me for the entire runtime of the film. The film picks up a few years after the series concluded, with Mulder & Scully officially retired from the FBI. But when a shady ex-con priest (Billy Connolly, who's occasionally spooky) has a vision of an abducted FBI agent, the Feds call in the original paranormal specialists, and the X-Files are re-opened once more.

The film tries to stand on its own, with only essential information carried over from the original series - Mulder is the believer, Scully the skeptic. But there are brief references peppered throughout the film that novices (and X-Files apostates like myself) will crane their brains to understand. Additionally, a major cast member from the original series makes a brief return near the finish of the film, but only fans of the TV show will find this cast appearance of any merit; others will query why the dramatic music and camera angle.

As someone whose memories of the series were fairly fuzzy, I realized that the film feels a lot like an episode of the series and is paced in much the same way. However, the movie is twice as long as an episode of the television show and at times feels like it. It's as though the filmmakers had only an hour of material and had to pad their script with longing gazes, dramatic panoramic aerial shots, and almost too many retreads of the "I believe/I don't believe" dialogue that X-heads have come to cherish as much as the Cigarette-Smoking Man (who sadly doesn't make an appearance here) loves his smokes.

Duchovny and Anderson (who's decried her difficulty remounting the "unicycle" of her character) step comfortably into their characters like a kicked-in pair of shoes, comfortable and familiar despite showing a few signs of aging. But the performances are strong, the characterizations convincing (if hit home a tad too much), and the chemistry still striking. The best performance, though he's only given a bit to work with, is Connolly's supporting role as Father Joe, the allegedly psychic priest with a damning past. The downturn, though, is that much of Connolly's performance is shrouded in "Is he or isn't he?" ambiguity, which the actor does well to play both sides and never truly give the audience a leg up on any one theory. As "new" agents, Amanda Peet and Xzibit do little more than become a younger Mulder and Scully, and their characterizations are neither convincing nor compelling.

Part of the main problem of the film, though it's an interesting if a bit overlong, is its ambiguity. When done right (Mulholland Drive on film, Watchmen in text), ambiguity can be a thought-provoking technique which keeps the audience thinking long after the credits - or the back cover - fall into place. However, I doubt I'll be thinking about the moral ramifications of some of the film's factors. I had fun watching the film - I enjoyed the film's sci-fi aspect and the gory subplot suitable for the TV series - but it's not something I'd put on my favorites list.

Diehard fans of the TV show, though, will probably love it. For me, I think I'll stick with the other film that opened on July 18, 2008.

Courtesy of the MPAA, The X-Files: I Want to Believe is rated "PG-13 for violent and disturbing content and thematic material." The film is more disturbing than violent (although there's some depiction of unorthodox medical practices), with a few well-crafted kidnapping-centric scenes that recall Demme's The Silence of the Lambs. I'm still at a loss as to what "thematic material" is, so I suppose this refers to the movie having a plot, drama, and suspense.

After the Thin Man (1936)

I can only think of a few sequels that were better than the original - The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Goldfinger, High School Musical 2 (joking, of course - the first was better). Now we ought to add W.S. Van Dyke's sequel to The Thin Man - the appropriately titled After the Thin Man - to that list.

Is this the first sequel in film history? Mmm, probably not - Bride of Frankenstein predates this one by a year. But the degree to which this movie improves on the original is something for which modern-day sequels could learn a thing or two; pay attention, Joel Schumacher, because your Batman movies were the lousiest sequels this side of Caddyshack II.

Capitalizing on the popularity of Nick & Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy), After the Thin Man takes the focus off the mystery and shines a spotlight squarely on the never-inebriated Charles detectives. Upon being invited to a dinner party, the Charleses learn that Nora's cousin's husband has gone missing. Though he's found easily enough, a murder mystery quickly develops with a shady cast of suspects through which Nick has to wade at his wife's insistence - despite their promise to leave sleuthing behind.

While I said I laughed the whole way through Planet Terror, it's a different kind of laughter that permeated my experience with this movie. The dialogue is smart and witty, effortlessly funny, and fueled by engrossing performances. Based on a story by Dashiell Hammett, After the Thin Man realizes that the magic of the first movie wasn't in the nail-biting mystery surrounding Clyde Wynant, but it was the interplay between Powell and Loy, which is successfully amped up here. This is a formula that Blake Edwards would repeat with A Shot in the Dark, realizing that the key to The Pink Panther's success rested not with David Niven's suave jewel thief but with Peter Sellers's hysterically bumbling turn as Jacques Clouseau.

The supporting cast is great, too. James Stewart is the stand-out name of the back-up cast, since he went on to a much larger career than most anyone in the movie, but the movie is populated with character actors and incredibly slippery suspects. Asta the terrier gets a pretty solid role, too; I don't want to spoil his subplot, but let's just say I'm surprised the filmmakers got away with this joke in 1936. *wink wink*

But the stars are unquestionably Powell and Loy, whose chemistry is something that today's supercouples can only envy - sorry, Brangelina. You can tell these two really love each other - even though Nick has Nora put into lock-up after he doesn't acknowledge her as his wife. The banter between the two of these is delightful, snappier than most of the dialogue in Juno, and the film's last line - "And you call yourself a detective!" - is the cleverest set-up for a sequel since "Luke, I am your father!"

The Thin Man (1934)

They just don't make them like The Thin Man nowadays...

In adapting Dashiell Hammett's last novel, director W.S. Van Dyke found the perfect screen pair in William Powell and Myrna Loy - heck, toss in Asta the terrier while you're at it. As Nick and Nora Charles, Powell and Loy are delightful, bearing on-screen chemistry of which most other pairs only dream. Though I haven't yet seen any of the five sequels to this movie, I'm sure I'll check them out, if only for the positively adorable pairing of Nick & Nora.

There's a mystery here somewhere about the disappearance of Clyde Wynant, the eponymous "Thin Man," but the real star is the joke-for-joke and drink-for-drink marriage of Nick and Nora Charles, wealthy socialites who can hold their liquor and banter like no other in town. Though everyone assumes Nick is on the Wynant case, Nick would much rather drink martinis and walk Asta than solve murders. Of course, once he gets on the case, it's open-and-shut.

As a mystery movie, The Thin Man isn't anything special, but at least it's easier to understand than The Big Sleep, the notoriously puzzling Bogart mystery noir by Raymond Chandler. As I said, though, the mystery isn't the star attraction, and once the killer is revealed there's no further discussion of the crime. It seems that there are two films going on at once - the plotline of Wynant's disappearance and the screwball comedy between the Charleses. The second is infinitely more interesting, without a scene elapsing without at least one belly laugh.

Of course, it says something that, no matter the irrelevance of the mystery to the overall enjoyability of the movie (similar to the Charlie Chan movie series, of which the Sidney Toler films come more highly recommended from yours truly), I'm watching this movie almost 75 years after its debut - and enjoying it.

Now I sure don't think alcoholism is funny, but Nick & Nora aren't alcoholics. They must have a wooden leg or something, especially Nick, whose ability to outdrink his wife predates the drinking contest episode of Arrested Development by about 70 years. I can't remember how much of the snappy dialogue is preserved from the original novel, but screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich have done a great job of crafting witty repartee.

Powell is delightfully suave as Nick Charles, the detective-by-insistence, and Loy is positively adorable as his wife Nora, whose love for her husband is as distinct as the two twin beds they sleep in. Please, God, don't let anyone try to remake this movie. Even as I write this, some Hollywood bonehead is working on a remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still with (ugh) Keanu Reeves replacing Michael Rennie.

So, George Clooney, keep your hands off The Thin Man. Because I know people will mention your name. Just don't do it. Leave perfection well enough alone.

North by Northwest (1959)

I've always said that my favorite film from Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock was his voyeurism drama Rear Window (1954). Then I graduated to loving Shadow of a Doubt (1943), doubtless because I was a budding Joseph Cotten fan at the time. This spring I had the opportunity to re-view Hitch's 1960 masterpiece Psycho and declared it my favorite.

Now that I've had the pleasure of finally seeing the master chase film North by Northwest, I'm reconsidering my list. I'm contemplating throwing it out altogether due to the sheer impossibility of choosing a favorite from among these. And I haven't seen enough Hitch, I know, to fairly assess the entire canon. More gems, I'm sure, await me.

As Madison Avenue exec Roger Thornhill, Cary Grant finds himself enmeshed in a world of espionage, all thanks to a case of mistaken identity. Superspy Vandamm (James Mason, whose voice I now realize Eddie Izzard has perfected in his imitative routines) confuses Thornhill for CIA operative George Kaplan, and the chase is on: Thornhill is off to find the real Kaplan with the help of femme fatale Eve Kendall (the radiant Eva Marie Saint), while Vandamm wants to stop Thornhill/Kaplan from thwarting the dastardly smuggling of secrets.

In some ways, this is, as screenwriter Ernest Lehman remarked, "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures." It's a sweeping epic across America, unlike anything Hitch had done before. The suspense is non pareil, the score by Bernard Herrmann thoroughly rousing, and the direction extraordinarily gifted. This was Cary Grant's last film with Hitchcock, and the two - as if knowing this was their final collaboration - have thrown everything into the movie.

The brilliance of the film lies in the film's ability to thrust us directly into Thornhill's shoes. Like the hapless ad exec, we have no idea who George Kaplan is, and we have even less idea what he has to do with the whole story. As Thornhill pieces together the stray tidbits of information he gets, so do we. However, very early on, we learn something that Thornhill doesn't: George Kaplan isn't real. This is the ultimate MacGuffin, Hitchcock's favorite film device - the plot element that drives the story and characters forward but is ultimately inconsequential (think the $40,000 in Psycho or the eponymous Maltese Falcon from 1941). The characters are ultimately chasing a ghost, yet it's not the ghost that holds the weight of the story. It's how firmly characters believe in the ghost that truly matters.

I tend to be a more passive filmgoer than most; that is to say, it's very seldom that a movie gets me physically riled up. Of course, emotions run high when I'm watching a movie, and I'm not embarassed to say that film has made me cry as many times as it's made me laugh. Yet by the end of North by Northwest and its (in)famous grapple atop Mount Rushmore, my heart was racing. Take that, Jack Bauer - this is the ultimate spy story.

So much literature has been exhausted in lauding Hitchcock for his masterful direction, yet I must beg permission for a few more words of praise. The direction here is perfect, never allowing the viewer to forget important plot elements such as the pistol loaded with blanks. And of course, for sheer potent sexual suggestion, nothing beats the film's closing shot of a train driving into a tunnel. It says a lot that no one's beaten this imagery, the strongest in subtle erotic imagery since the dual cigarettes in 1942's Now, Voyager.

If it's a no-holds-barred thrill ride you're after, I can't think of a better one than North by Northwest. Coming before James Bond, Jason Bourne, and all those other similarly-initialed superspies, I can't help but feel that this was a pioneer film from which a lot of espionage dramas have taken their cues. You'll be surprised at how familiar the film seems, yet you'll be dazzled by how immersive the experience is.

Just keep an eye on the MacGuffin.