The Lady Vanishes: 1938 thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock
and starring Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, and May Whitty. Young Iris is waiting with her fellow
passengers to board a train through pre-war Europe when she receives a severe
bump on the noggin. She’s helped into
her car by the sweet, elderly Miss Froy, who she shares a cup of tea and a nice
conversation with before blacking out.
When she comes to she can’t find Miss Froy, and everyone else on the train claims they've never seen her.
She enlists the help of a charmingly caddish musician named Gilbert, who
agrees to help her solve the mystery – and perhaps save all their lives.
It’s
a great early Hitchcock movie, slightly lighter on its feet than others. Lockwood and Redgrave have a nice adversarial
chemistry, there are plenty of twists and turns, and it involves just enough
humor and weirdness to keep it from getting too dark. It’s also the first film appearance of the
British cricket-obsessed comic duo Charters & Caldicott, who you may
remember if you’ve also seen Night Train
to Munich, an indirect sequel to The
Lady Vanishes.
On Her Majesty’s
Secret Service: 1969 Bond action
film directed by Peter R. Hunt and starring George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly
Savalas, Gabriele Ferzetti, and Ilse Steppat.
James Bond is on the trail of the nefarious Ernst Blofeld, the head of
the international terrorist organization SPECTRE. On a tip from his current paramour’s father,
he gains entry to Blofeld’s clinical allergy research institute (okay . . .) by
posing as a genealogist (sure . . .) who has come to secure Blofeld’s claim as
a Count or Viscount or whatever. Fine. Bond quickly surmises that the lovely young female
patients are being brainwashed at night in a plot to distribute biological
weapons around the globe. Also Diana
Rigg is there.
It’s definitely the weirdest
older-period Bond movie. I’m a big fan
of the Connery and Moore and Craig eras, and never had much use for the others. I continue to stand firm in that
feeling. It’s too long, especially
during the action sequences that have this strange frenetic desperation. It was Lazenby’s only turn as Bond, which I
completely understand because this movie is a hilarious mess. The real bright spot for me was Telly
Sevalas, who I totally buy as a smooth-talking mastermind but not an expert
skier.
Sneakers: 1992 comedic/dramatic caper directed by Phil
Alden Robinson and starring Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, Mary
McDonnell, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, and David Strathairn. Martin Bishop is a former hacktivist (shut
up, it’s a perfectly cromulent word) who leads an unlikely team of security
specialists that assist companies in beefing up their surveillance. Martin is approached by the NSA and they
offer to expunge his hacking record if he recovers a package from a
mathematician. His team succeeds, but
when the mathematician is killed things go haywire and suddenly they don’t know
who to trust – were those guys even with the NSA? And could Martin’s former partner-in-hack be
involved with all of this somehow?
It’s
just delightful. Kingsley can really
pull off crazy, Dan Aykroyd’s nickname is Mother and it tickles me, Phoenix is
adorable, Strathairn can pretty much do no wrong in my eyes, Donal Logan wears
a white turtleneck under a cream blazer – I could go on. It’s the height of early ‘90s spy heist caper
excellence and you should definitely see it.
The Road: 2009 post-apocalyptic drama directed by John
Hillcoat and starring Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, and
Robert Duvall. In an unspecified time
after an unspecified cataclysmic world event a man and his son are on a
meandering quest towards the South, and have to contend with thieves, hunger,
cannibals, and roaming violent gangs.
I couldn’t finish it; it was just
way too upsetting. I gave it a shot
because of Viggo, but after feeling nauseously stressed to the point of tears
for the second time in 20 minutes I turned it off. The book by Cormac McCarthy manages to be
both heartbreaking and heartwarming, both uplifting and soul-crushing, and is one
of the best books I’ve ever read seriously period. It’s something I imagine is much harder to
capture on film. Skip it, and read the
book.
The Jeffrey Dahmer Files: 2013 documentary about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, directed by Chris James Thompson. It follows the last months in Dahmer’s life before he was arrested, and features interviews with a former neighbor and some of the officials who worked on the case. I thought the dramatic reenactments were well done and for the most part spared the more gruesome specifics. It’s fascinating – but I wouldn’t bother unless you have an interest in criminal psychology and can stomach the gory details of serial murder.
