Brainstorm (William Conrad, 1965)

Cast: Jeffrey Hunter, Anne Francis, Dana Andrews, Viveca Lindfors, Stacy Harris, Kathie Browne, Philip Pine, Michael Pate, Robert McQueeney, Strother Martin. Screenplay: Mann Rubin, Lawrence B. Marcus. Cinematography: Sam Leavitt. Art direction: Robert Emmet Smith. Film editing: William H. Ziegler. Music: George Duning.

The vertiginous Brainstorm starts off in one direction, with the sadistic industrialist Cort Benson (Dana Andrews) gaslighting his employee, Jim Grayam (Jeffrey Hunter), who is having an affair with Benson's wife, Lorrie (Anne Francis). But then it turns in another direction: Benson may be trying to make Grayam think he's going mad, but Grayam may actually be insane. He plots an intricate scheme to kill Benson and get away with it, and he almost does. It's a whipsaw premise for a thriller that in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock might have been a classic. Unfortunately, William Conrad was a better character actor than director, and he doesn't quite bring it off. Part of the problem is that Hunter is a little too handsome for the role and doesn't balance the attractiveness of Grayam with enough darkness: We ought to feel more ambivalent about the character from the start. The script has some distracting inconsistencies of plot and character that a more sure-footed director might have overcome, the way Hitchcock covers up the plot holes in Vertigo (1958). There are still some good performances, especially from Viveca Lindfors as a psychiatrist who plays her own ambivalent role in Grayam's case. I think it's the off-balance narrative that has allowed Brainstorm to develop into something of a cult film after its initial rejection from the critics. 

Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay, 1999)

 

Cast: William Eadie, Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews, Michelle Stewart, Lynne Ramsay Jr., Leanne Mullen, John Miller, Thomas McTaggart, Jackie Quinn, James Ramsay. Screenplay: Lynne Ramsay. Cinematography: Alwin H. Küchler. Production design: Jane Morton. Film editing: Lucia Zucchetti. Music: Rachel Portman.

Ratcatcher is a mostly neo-realist film about a boy growing up in a Glasgow slum in 1973. I say "mostly" because writer-director Lynne Ramsay, in her first feature, isn't a conventionally realist filmmaker. She allows for moments of mystery and fantasy, but they don't sugarcoat the bleakness of life in this depressed part of the city as it goes through a garbage strike and a housing crisis. James (William Eadie) is a 12-year-old boy in a barely functioning family that's waiting for an opening in a public housing development that will take them out of their crumbling neighborhood. A small canal runs through the area, and at the film's beginning, James and another boy play and scuffle in it. The other boy drowns. Ramsay never lets us know whether James is directly responsible for the boy's death, but he didn't call for help, and never admits that he had a part in it. The death has ironic echoes throughout the film, as James dreams of escaping from the neighborhood. It's a film in which small cruelties abound, reflecting the larger cruelty of an economy that fails to work for everyone. Rachel Portman's score adds just the right bittersweet tone to Ramsay's narrative. 

Noises Off (Peter Bogdanovich, 1992)

Cast: Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Denholm Elliott, Julie Hagerty, Marilu Henner, Mark Linn-Baker, Christopher Reeve, John Ritter, Nicollette Sheridan. Screenplay: Marty Kaplan, based on a play by Michael Frayn. Cinematography: Tim Suhrstedt. Production design: Norman Newberry. Film editing: Lisa Day. 

Classic farce is all about timing, entrances and exits and gags executed with mechanical precision, which is why a play like Michael Frayn's Noises Off works best on stage, where the only point of view is the audience's. But movies are all about motion and montage and seeing things from different angles, which is why Peter Bogdanovich's Noises Off doesn't achieve its full effect on screen. The funniest scenes in the film are the ones in which the camera stands still for long takes in which the performers can execute the action without being interrupted by a cut or a pan or a zoom. There aren't enough of these moments in the movie. That said, it's still a very funny movie, exactly what you'd expect from comic actors like Carol Burnett and John Ritter, from old pros like Michael Caine and Denholm Elliott, and even from surprises like Christopher Reeve, who fits into the ensemble smoothly. But if you've ever seen Noises Off on stage, you know how much better Frayn's gimmick of deconstructing a farce -- seeing it first in rehearsal, then from backstage, and finally in a disastrous but hilarious botched performance -- works there, where it belongs. 

The Canyons (Paul Schrader, 2013)

 

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, James Deen, Nolan Gerard Funk, Amanda Brooks, Tenille Houston, Gus Van Sant, Jarod Einsohn, Danny Wylde, Victor of Aquitaine. Screenplay: Bret Easton Ellis. Cinematography: John Paul DeFazio. Production design: Stephanie J. Gordon. Film editing: Tom Silano. Music: Brendan Canning. 

Notoriety is a double-edged sword. Lindsay Lohan's tabloid headlines and James Deen's career in porn got them cast in a movie, The Canyons, by the respected director Paul Schrader. But the movie's own notoriety, its reputation for badness, did nothing to further a comeback for Lohan or an emergence into respectability for Deen. (Subsequent accusations that Deen was a serial rapist didn't help.) It's not, I think, quite as badly acted as some say: Lohan gives a more than competent performance and Deen has a wolfish presence that lends his character credibility. Schrader is skilled at creating an atmosphere of moral decay that almost makes the movie into the fable about contemporary Los Angeles that it wants to be and its title suggests. But it was made on the cheap with an inadequate supporting cast, and it never comes to life as either erotic drama or social commentary. 

The Legend of Hell House (John Hough, 1973)

Cast: Clive Revill, Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Gayle Hunnicutt, Roland Culver, Peter Bowles, Michael Gough. Screenplay: Richard Matheson, based on his novel. Cinematography: Alan Hume. Art direction: Robert Jones. Film editing: Geoffrey Foot. Music: Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson. 

There are those who are so fond of horror movies that they'll accept almost anything as long as it provides the necessary creep factor. But I am not one of them, so I found The Legend of Hell House silly and dull, with an exceptionally preposterous ending. It's the usual haunted house nonsense, with a group of "researchers" who spend nights investigating the paranormal reported to be rife in the creepy old mansion. In this case there's Dr. Barrett (Clive Revill),  a physicist who purports to believe that ghosts and such are natural phenomena -- something to do with electricity -- and brings along a machine that's supposed to neutralize them. His wife, Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), insists on joining him, and they're accompanied by two mediums, Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) and Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowall). Fischer has been there before, many years ago, in a similar exploration in which everyone was killed or maimed except him. It's a mark of the screenplay's ineptness that we never get a full explanation of why he decided to return, except that he and Barrett and Tanner have each been promised £100,000 if they can expel the spooks. None of the characters is particularly likable, so we don't have much invested in their survival. Neither the writer nor the director is skilled at building suspense, and the result is a marshaling of clichés unleavened by wit.  

Waiting Women (Ingmar Bergman, 1952)

Cast: Anita Björk, Eva Dahlbeck, Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Gunnar Björstrand, Karl-Arne Holmsten, Jarl Kulle, Aino Taube, Håkan Westergren, Gerd Andersson, Björn Bjelfvenstarm. Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman, Gun Grut. Cinematography: Gunnar Fischer. Production design: Nils Svenwall. Film editing: Oscar Rosander. Music: Erik Nordgren. 

Ingmar Bergman's Waiting Women is also known by its slightly racier American title, Secrets of Women. Both titles are apt. Four women are waiting at the summer home of the Lobelius family for their husbands to arrive. Each is married to one of the four Lobelius brothers, who run the family business. When Annette (Aino Taube) complains about the lack of intimacy in her marriage to Paul (Håkan Westergren), the other three respond with stories about their marriages. Rakel (Anita Björk) tells how her confession to an affair with an old flame caused her husband, Eugen (Karl-Arne Holmsten), to threaten suicide. Marta (Maj-Britt Nilsson) tells of her affair with the youngest of the Lobelius brothers, Martin (Birger Malmsten), who wanted to break free from the family business and become an artist in Paris. Marta discovered that she was pregnant with Martin's child, but when she went to tell him, his brothers had just arrived to tell him that their father has died and he's needed back home to run the company. She decided to have the baby on her own, but Martin returned to marry her. The oldest, Karin (Eva Dahlbeck), tells of attending a party with her husband, Fredrik (Gunnar Björnstrand), who scolded her on the way home afterward for wearing a dress that he thinks is too décolleté. We have already seen how pompous Fredrik can be in the scene in which the brothers try to persuade Martin to give up la vie bohème and join the business, but Fredrik loosens up a lot when he and Karin are trapped overnight in an elevator. It's one of Bergman's best early films, with his usual bittersweet comedy touch that he would perfect in Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), though it's decidedly pre-feminist in its outlook: Contemporary viewers may wonder why marriage seems to be the only object in view for these intelligent women.  

The Chase (Arthur Penn, 1966)

Cast: Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, E.G. Marshall, Angie Dickinson, Janice Rule, Miriam Hopkins, Martha Hyer, Richard Bradford, Robert Duvall, James Fox, Diana Hyland, Henry Hull, Jocelyn Brando. Screenplay: Lillian Hellman, based on a novel by Horton Foote. Cinematography: Joseph LaShelle. Production design: Richard Day. Film editing: Gene Milford. Music: John Barry.

Bad movies are often fun to watch anyway, and most of the people involved with The Chase, including director Arthur Penn, screenwriter Lillian Hellman, and star Marlon Brando, agreed that it was a bad movie. Brando let his opinion show, giving a sluggish performance that validates the old criticism that he mumbled his lines. Hellman had her script taken away and rewritten, and Penn struggled to deal with an ill-conceived project. The chief interest the film generates today is seeing actors like Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, and Robert Duvall on the brink of major stardom. There's a good deal of miscasting, including E.G. Mashall as the boss of a small town that seems to be in Texas or Louisiana. Marshall lacks the ruthless aura that the character needs. Angie Dickinson is wasted as the loving and dutiful wife of the town sheriff played by Brando. And Redford feels out of place in the role of Bubber Reeves, the town bad boy who escapes from prison (it's never quite clear what he did to be sent there) and stirs a manhunt, a lynch mob, and a conflagration in a junkyard. The town itself is a hotbed where everyone sleeps with everyone else's spouse and goes orgiastic on the Saturday night when the news of Bubber's escape breaks. It's a silly and lurid movie, but a little too long to be entertainingly bad.