Dial M for Murder (1953) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson, John Williams

By Alan Bacchus

Historically Dial M always seems to have gotten the short shrift compared to Hitchcock's later and more revered pictures, such as Rear Window, Vertigo and Psycho. Dial M certainly demands less of its audience than the psychologically intricacies of other films, but it more than makes up for its psychological shortage by being one of Hitchcock's most focused and thus entertaining films.

Hitch confidently has us rooting for the charming but devious Tony Wendice (Milland), a former tennis pro, long since retired but married to the well-off socialite Margot Wendice. Tony’s back story is lightly touched upon, but upon closer examination it reveals his disdain for his wife and his personal insecurities, which have driven him to the point of first degree murder. On the surface it’s Margot’s infidelity with an American writer, Mark Halliday (Cummings), but we can’t help but postulate this scheme as a long con. Perhaps Tony quietly ignored Margot on purpose, which caused her to seek the company of another man, thus indirectly giving Tony permission in his own mind to plan a murder.

Tony’s plan and alibi are impressively elaborate. At first he sets up a former school mate of his, Anthony Swann, a man with a checkered past, with the ability and experience for killing but also naïve enough to be the fall guy if need be. This is all spelled out in one long carefully written and performed dialogue scene between Ray Milland and Anthony Dawson, Tony’s persuasion of Swann being utterly diabolical, nasty and Faustian in its manipulation.

With the plan set and details planned out and expounded to Swann, Hitchcock sets off the Rube Goldberg chain of events, with the audience placed as spectators to Tony’s game of murder. Hitch, of course, throws in a wicked twist when Margot survives the death, causing Tony to improvise a new plan. Hitchcock’s direction of Milland is precise. Every glance and gesture in the fallout of the attempted murder is carefully shot. Milland’s thought process and reaction to every detail of evidence oozes tension and suspense. Here Hitchcock is in full command of his audience: as Tony scrambles to put together a new plan, we desperately want him to get away with it!

Enter the fanciful police chief Inspector Hubbard (Williams), who has a different kind of disaffecting charm masquerading as ice cold intelligence. Hubbard’s dissection of the murder is as quietly surgical as Tony’s scheme. And in between the polite and polished game of mental chess between the Brits is the American mystery writer Halliday, who as a typical American is delightfully bullish with his methods. He backs into Tony’s alibi and accidentally unravels the case.

Stylistically, the film is controlled in the usual Hitchcock fashion. Hitch, like he did with Rope and Lifeboat, voluntarily sequesters himself into one location, the Wendice apartment, finding innumerable ways to shoot the same space over and over again without the feeling of staleness. Most of the film is shot with traditional coverage, thus enhancing the effect of his unusual dramatics angles, specifically his use of the high-angle shot when relaying the geographical details of the plans.

If anything, the 3D effect is underwhelming. For years watching the film in 2D I wondered how Hitch’s use of the seemingly omnipresent table lamp seen in the foreground of many of the shots would look in 3D. Sadly it’s minimal. But the greatest effect is the expansion of the depth of the space/set back into the screen. Thus, instead of objects jumping out at the audience, Hitch's 3D pushes them back into the screen. But this is now the modus operandi of today’s 3D filmmakers, once again proving Alfred Hitchcock’s position way ahead of the curve.

****

Spellbound (1945) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Leo G. Carroll, Rhonda Fleming, Michael Chekhov

****

By Greg Klymkiw

Of the four official collaborations between producer David O. Selznick and director Alfred Hitchcock, I've always considered The Paradine Case the worst, Notorious the most romantic, Rebecca the best and Spellbound the most utterly insane. The latter description of the latter film is entirely appropriate since it's a murder mystery set in an asylum wherein psychoanalysis is utilized to discover deep meaning in a recurring dream (designed, no less, by surrealist Salvador Dali) in order to find out exactly whodunit.

If this isn't insane, then I don't know what is.

Spellbound also has the distinction of being wildly, deliciously melodramatic, almost crazily romantic and when it needs to be, thanks to the genius of the Master himself, nail-bitingly suspenseful.

Selznick was responsible for bringing Hitchcock to America and signing him to a longterm talent contract. For much of their association, Hitchcock was lent out to other studios, which suited him just fine as he was able to do his own thing without having to tolerate (what Hitchcock perceived to be) the constant interference of the famous auteur producer of Gone With The Wind. Of the four aforementioned collaborations, Notorious was eventually sold outright to RKO in the midst of production while the other three proved to be one of the most dynamic producer-director battlefields in movie history.

Hitchcock and Selznick detested each other. Hitch thought of Selznick as a meddling vulgarian whilst Selznick viewed the portly Brit as a mad genius who needed his sure and steady hand (or psychoanalysis, if you will). To this day, Rebecca, a virtually flawless film that more than ably sets the stage for Hitchcock's extremely mature latter work (notably Rear Window and Vertigo) is casually (and sadly) dismissed by the Master of Suspense in the famous interviews with Francois Truffaut as not really being "a Hitchcock film", but rather, "a David O. Selznick film".

In many ways, it seems to me that Spellbound might well have been the most ideal collaboration between the two men. Selznick wanted desperately to make a film that extolled the virtues of psychoanalysis (which he felt had been an enormous help to himself - though there appears to be no proof he ever really "got better" as Selznick's maniacal megalomania followed him to the grave). Hitchcock wanted to make a great suspense film and was certainly drawn to the notion of psychoanalysis being used to unravel a mystery.

Add to this mix, the magnificent talent of Hollywood's best screenwriter Ben Hecht (The Twentieth Century, Nothing Sacred, Gunga Din, The Front Page, Scarface and among many others Wuthering Heights) and Salvador Dali to design the dream sequences and you've got a picture that guaranteed success. (And yes, it was a multi-Oscar-nominee/winner and a huge hit at the box office.)

Hitchcock, purportedly refused to have anything to do with Dali's dream sequences (other than adhering to their imagery as scripted for purposes of the plot) and they were ultimately directed by the ace production designer/director William Cameron Menzies (Gone With The Wind, Things to Come). The hearty cinematic stew that is Spellbound also features a most flavourful ingredient, a great over-the-top score by the legendary Miklos Rozsa - replete with plenty o' theremin usage.

What this ultimately yielded was a wonky, intense, romantic and thoroughly engaging murder mystery wherein the director of an asylum in Vermont, Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll), is being forced into an early retirement to make way for a younger, more vibrant head head-shrinker Dr. Anthony Edwardes (the handsome, sexy, stalwart Gregory Peck). The asylum's ace psychoanalyst, Dr. Constance Peterson (the mouth-wateringly gorgeous Ingrid Bergman) is so committed to her work, that most of her colleagues view her as an impenetrable Ice Goddess. This chilly demeanour, however, stands her in good stead in the results department and she's probably the only person who can adequately handle the asylum's most over-the-top nymphomaniac (Rhonda - "hubba hubba" - Fleming).

But even ice is susceptible to eventually melting and soon, Constance gets definitely hot and bothered and drippingly wet as she succumbs to the rugged, manly charms of Dr. Edwardes. Even more tempting is that on the surface, this stiff rod of manhood is the sort of gentle pansy-boy Constance needs.

Deep down, he is sensitive and most importantly, he is… wait for it - in pain.

Yes, pain!

He needs a good woman for more than amorous attention, he needs her to PSYCHOANALYZE him.

When it becomes plain he's not all he's cracked up to be and might, in fact, be a murderer and impostor, it's up to the head-over-heels healer of heads to solve the mystery lodged in Dr. Edwardes's mind.

This is all, of course handled with Hitchcock's trademark semi-expressionistic aplomb and untouchable knack for rendering suspense of the highest order. There isn't a single performance in the film that isn't spot-on (Leo G. Carroll is suitably and alternately sympathetic and malevolent, whilst Peck acquits himself admirably as the troubled leading man), but it's Ingrid Bergman who really carries the picture. Her transformation from Ice Queen to a sex-drenched psychiatrist with a delightful blend of matronly and whorish qualities is phenomenal. She's mother, lover and doctor - all rolled into one magnificently package. And she's never looked more beautiful. Selznick knew this better than anyone and Hitchcock himself knew all too well how to compose and light for beauty.

In one of Selznick's delightful memos from when he first brought Ingrid Bergman to America he wrote:

"...the difference between a great photographic beauty and an ordinary girl with Miss Bergman lies in proper photography of her – and that this in turn depends not simply on avoiding the bad side of her face; keeping her head down as much as possible; giving her the proper hairdress, giving her the proper mouth make-up, avoiding long shots, so as not to make her look too big, and, even more importantly, but for the same reason, avoiding low cameras on her...but most important of all, on shading her face and invariably going for effect lightings on her."

Damn!

They don't make movies like this anymore!

How Bergman was nominated the same year for an Oscar for her luminous, but limp-in-comparison performance in The Bells of St. Mary's over Spellbound is yet another mystery of the Oscars we all must put up with.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Spellbound is, indeed, spellbinding and it's easily one of the great pictures by both Masters - Selznick and Hitchcock.

"Spellbound" is now available on Blu-Ray via 20th Century Fox/MGM. The copious extras are a mixed bag. A commentary with film historians Thomas Schatz and Charles Ramirez Berg is a real disappointment compared to the great Marian Keane commentary on the Criterion DVD. These guys are all over the place with spotty info and critical analysis bordering on the, shall we be charitable and say, rudimentary. There are a series of docs including one on the film's place as the first to deal with psychoanalysis, a backgrounder on the Salvador Dali sequences, a cool interview with Hitchcock conducted by Peter Bogdanovich and a really delightful doc on Rhonda Fleming. There's a Lux Radio play version of the movie with Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli and a trailer. The movie looks wonderful on Blu-ray, but I have to admit to preferring the care taken with the Criterion DVD transfer which ultimately has a better grain structure and seems closer to 35mm without all the over-crisp qualities that high definition adds/detracts when it comes to older films.

Blue Velvet (1986) dir. David Lynch
Starring: Kyle McLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern

****

By Alan Bacchus

Early on in this film, after we see Kyle McLachlan’s character, Jeffrey Beaumont, find a human ear just sitting there in the pristine high-cut grass in his small Midwestern town, David Lynch’s roving camera magnificently pushes inside the ear. As we move in, Alan Splet’s delicious sound design drones louder and louder, morphing into the prickly sound of insects munching on grass, all of which is amplified and engrossed to creep us out. It’s perhaps the most signature image and sounds of David Lynch’s career, expressing his career-long fascination with finding nightmarish evil behind the fronts of purity and innocence.

After suffering the indignation of failing to deliver on the big budgeted sci-fi franchise in waiting, Dune, in 1986 Lynch seemed go back inward, summoning latent fears and closeted fetishes for inspiration. The result is one of his three or four masterpieces – and the film that first defined the term ‘Lynchian’.

Blue Velvet lays the stylistic and thematic groundwork, which he would expand upon in his later films. Of course, the Lumberton locale, which Lynch opens up and, like his rotten apple visual metaphor, becomes the environment for his seminal Twin Peaks TV series.

The actual plotting of the film, lead character Jeffrey Beaumont's investigation and the movements and motivations of the nefarious elements of the story, quickly fall to the background once Lynch starts the film’s headlong cinematic momentum. Starting with the third visit to the apartment, the film goes deeper into Lynch’s subconscious, and by the time Jeffrey’s fateful night is over we don’t care about who the ‘well-dressed’ man is or who the 'yellow' man is.

The wonder of Blue Velvet lays in Lynch's amazing control of tone. And it doesn’t take him long to hypnotize us. The opening credit sequence is masterful. An ominously dark and brooding music cue laid over his flowing curtain of blue velvet is enchanting. The film then segues into a dreamlike melancholy of the slow-moving rural life in Lumberton.

Throughout the picture Lynch moves us back and forth between these two extremes with supreme confidence and command of the medium.

The performances are typically subdued. Jeffrey isn’t so much a developed character as another pawn for Lynch to use to express his mood. His love story with Sandy allows Lynch to craft his grandiloquent melodramatic set pieces. The house party dance scene, for instance, set to Angelo Badlamenti and Julee Cruise’s swooning dream song, could melt butter. It’s a scene that takes us out of the accelerating criminal plotting for a brief pause of delicious melodrama. Why? Just because. And we love David Lynch because of it.

Sit this scene next to one of Dennis Hopper's maliciously over-the-top sadistic fuck-tirades and it's the cinematic equivalent of bipolar syndrome.

Before Quentin used pop music as a counterpoint to violence Lynch did it masterfully here. Who ever thought Roy Orbison or Ketty Lester could be made so frightening?

Looking back, the reuse of Lynch’s motives in his subsequent films arguably tempers the effect of this film. It’s debatable, but few would doubt the combination of all his motifs reached its zenith in Mulholland Drive – a film more powerful, cynical and therefore haunting than Blue Velvet. And so, watching Blue Velvet for the first time versus watching Blue Velvet after seeing Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire is not the same experience. Thankfully, I still have memories of that first viewing. To this day if I ever here Bobby Vinton crooning Blue Velvet again, it now brings a spine-tingling sense of danger, which, in combination with the sound of nitrous oxide hissing from a gas tank, will likely have me running out the door.

Blue Velvet is available on Blu-ray from MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Dark Alibi (1946) dir. Phil Karlson
Starring: Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Benson Fong, Ben Carter and Teala Loring

***

By Greg Klymkiw

When 20th Century Fox finally decided to give the Charlie Chan series a rest after several years of excellent product (second features with Grade A treatment), the stalwart poverty row company Monogram Pictures grabbed the franchise's torch and generated a series of ultra-low budget Chan adventures. While there isn't a single Monogram Chan that comes close to the even the most run-of-the-mill Fox productions, I still and will always have a special place in my heart for them. A good part of this fondness might well derive from extremely early childhood memories. For whatever reason, it was the Monogram Chans that played endlessly on the bottom dwelling independent American TV station KCND in Pembina, North Dakota that beamed its wonderful signal into Winnipeg to save us from the mostly execrable two Canadian TV stations we received locally. I didn't actually see the Fox Chans until my early teenage years and by then, the Monograms were firmly entrenched within my movie-absorbent brain and the memories, even then, were always warm and fuzzy.

Looking at the Monograms now, I still love them for the aesthetic elements that comprise virtually every picture in their Chan canon. The stock footage for establishing shots, the perfunctory sets, the small number of interior locations with scenes stretched beyond the limit to keep camera and lighting set-ups to a minimum, the lack of any A-list talent on camera (but some very fine character actors in support) and the clearly sub-par writing; all contribute immeasurably to my enjoyment of them. Not that I laugh derisively or take "guilty" pleasure in seeing Grade-Z production values, but rather, I enjoy them the same way one enjoys comfy old slippers long past their age of, shall we say, freshness.

Call them, if you will, the Kraft Dinner Chans.

Most of these pictures retained the services of Sidney Toler (who so expertly took over the role at Fox from Warner Oland and eventually made it exclusively his own) and when Toler was clearly unable to continue due to cancer, Roland Winters took over for six pictures and while not up to Toler and Oland, at least delivered the strangest interpretation of Chan ever set forth on celluloid.

Dark Alibi is one of the very best Monogram productions. In this episode of the franchise, the venerable sleuth of the Asian persuasion coincidentally happens to be leaving the office of an old pal, a public defender who is assailed by the desperate daughter of an innocent man on death row. What's a Chan to do? Well, of course he needs to help the young lass out. And so begins a race against time as Chuckles needs to save the woman's father AND find the real killer. Chan's theory is that someone has figured out how to forge fingerprints. No mean feat. Will Chan do it? You bet he Chan!!! (Kind of like "Bob the Builder" - YES HE CAN!!!)

Several elements are at play in making this the best Monogram Chan.

First and foremost is the fine direction of Phil Karlson who spent many of his early years toiling in the trenches of Monogram and other Poverty Row studios - delivering genre pictures that were always a cut above the rest. In the 50s, Karlson would go on to direct some of the finest noir crime thrillers ever made - most notably The Phenix City Story, Kansas City Confidential, Scandal Sheet and the especially harrowing 99 River Street. In the 60s he made one of Elvis Presley's best, Kid Galahad, and the following decade he made the great 70s noir Framed and one of the biggest vigilante pictures of all time, the original Walking Tall.

With Dark Alibi, Karlson outdoes himself within the typical Monogram constraints. The numerous dialogue scenes, which in many other hands would have been mind-numbingly dull, are rendered with efficiency and style. Karlson's wide and medium compositions are especially well framed and his blocking is always lively and he keeps the dialogue brisk and crackling. He even manages to pull off two first-rate set-pieces; the opening heist with lots of shadow and key light and a terrific sequence involving an eerie, well-stocked theatricasl supply warehouse. There's also a rip snorting prison shootout which is a definite rarity in Chan mysteries and as such is a welcome bonus.

Secondly, the film has a great sense of humour. The comic rapport between Mantan Moreland (playing Birmingham Brown, Chan's loyal driver and manservant) and Chan's Number Three son, Tommy (Benson Fong) is always lively. The two actors clearly had fun playing off each other and by extension, we enjoy it also. Their routines vary from utterly insane conversations punctuated with Chan's deadpan disapproval of their laziness to the two of them getting into a variety of sticky wickets by ignoring Chan's orders for them to sit still. Moreland, the chubby, almost cherubic African-American comedian with bulging pop-eyes gets to play a few scenes with his equally brilliant straight man Benjamin Brown. Their unfinished sentence routines are especially brilliant displays of coming timing and wisely, Karlson shoots them in a simple medium proscenium which is instinctively the right thing to do, but also a nod to the vaudeville style of their gags.

And on the humour front, no Chan picture can be without the hilarious aphorisms spouted by the wise Asian detective. Dark Alibi is full of them. Some of my favourites in the picture include:

"Ancient proverb say: One small wind can raise much dust."

"Honorable grandmother always say: Do not think of future - it come too soon."

"Remember old saying: Earthquake may shatter the rock, but sand upon which rock stood still right there in same old place."

"Skeletons in closets always speak loudest to police."

"Ugliest trade sometimes have moment of joy. Even gravedigger know some people for whom he would do his work with extreme pleasure."

Of course, all of the above are delivered by Toler with a straight face and full portent in his voice, while with others, one catches that tell-tale Toler eye-twinkle. In either case, they're always knee-slappers.

Chan's witty aphorisms and the antics of Mantan Moreland and Number Three Son are often cited, wrongly, as racist. Uh, this is the 40s. It's a different time and place and as such, reflects said time and place. If one responds positively to the Chan series at all, it seems impossible to me how anyone could take serious exception to any of Chan's aphorisms, his son's laziness and Moreland's hilarious antics and line-readings. If anything, one could charge the films with being ethnocentric, but there is none of the implied hatred inherent in the humour that seems to be a necessary ingredient to label something as racist. The humour is gentle and, in its own cockeyed way, rather respectful of Asian and African-American culture. Moreland in particular is a great comic actor - truly great! Denigrating his style of humour by contemporary standards of political correctness frankly detracts from acknowledging his comic genius. That, for me, is far more offensive than any stereotypes Moreland propagates.

Finally, the third element contributing to the picture's lofty position at the top of the Monogram Chan heap is that the script, while hardly a work of genius, delivers a decent mystery with a genuinely surprising conclusion. It also features the aforementioned fingerprint forgery idea which, as ludicrous as it sounds, actually works in a relatively convincing fashion. It is also endowed with a race-against-time structure that definitely heightens the suspense.

Dark Alibi is a solid Monogram Picture, indeed, and an excellent addition to the studio's contribution to the cinematic Chan canon.

Dark Alibi is part of a four film box set from TCM via Warner Home Entertainment. A wise programming choice was to include Toler's last and Winter's first renderings of the role. The transfers are all decent, but one wonders why so much money was lavished on the handsome packaging of the films in a nice cardboard box with great graphics and no effort put into the uninspired menus and lack of decent extras.

The Headless Woman (2008) dir. Lucrecia Martel
Starring: María Onetto, Claudia Cantero, César Bordón, Daniel Genoud

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman, premiered at Cannes in Official Competition to those inexplicable boos, which doesn't necessarily mean they disliked the film, but the critical reception was varied and the film was left empty handed of any awards. On the festival circuit scene it got nowhere near the attention of other high brow international art housers such as Gommorah, A Christmas Tale, The Class, Waltz With Bashir etc. While these other films got picked up for US and North American distribution by the heavier hitters such as Sony Picture Classics, IFC etc, The Headless Woman went nowhere, even topping Indiewire’s annual best ‘undistributed films list' of 2008.

Eventually it was snagged by the smaller Strand Releasing and quickly gained a critical cult following, with art house word of mouth rising in stature, attaining a place as THE art house film to see of that year, even securing a spot at #25 on The Toronto International Film Festival’s respected ‘alternative’ Decade Best of List.

It's no surprise the film took a while to gain traction. At a glance, it's inpenetrable. Few films have shown greater devotion to their ‘point of view’. There’s only a whiff of a story in The Headless Woman and little or no plot, yet it’s a remarkable attempt at execution of a completely unique style of storytelling.

The point of view in question belongs to Veronica (or Vero for short), a middle aged upper class Argentinean woman played brilliantly by María Onetto, whom we meet on the road in her car travelling home. As Martel does throughout the entire film, her camera is lasered in on Vero’s profile, at the wheel when she hits something on the road. She’s shaken and angry, and it isn’t until she drives away from the scene that we see in the distance a dead dog on the road. Yet through the hours and days after Vero is still shaken to the core as we watch her wander through the daily movements of her life in a daze, aloof, barely acknowledging her friends and family.

So what’s eating Vero?

Only midway through the film does Vero confess to her husband that she thinks she may have hit a child, but cannot be sure. As Vero continues these moving through these foggy days and nights we encounter details and snippets of information of the accident, a missing child, a blocked canal due to a carcass stopping the water flow, details which may or may not add up to any closure of Vero’s guilt-ridden angst.

When other characters talk, Martel is always on Vero’s face, observing her reactions. If the description of this film couldn’t get more unappealing, Vero barely has any reaction to the information and events after the accident. Martel is singular in her direction – show the internalized anguish and psychological torment of Vero at all times.

Martel is so vigilant with her point of view, her camera never leaves Maria Onetta’s head – I say ‘head’ instead of 'face', because half the time, it’s the back of her head in focus, or her profile we see instead of her face. Martel barely even shoots below her shoulders. Not since The Dardennes Bros exclusive shot Olivier Gourmet in Le Fils with one medium-close up has a director been so limiting with their camera. But as seen through Martel’s longish lens (which compresses the visual space in perspective ), Onetta is beautified, producing gorgeous and wholly cinematic compositions.

We never really get a satisfactory answers to the mysteries in the film, and the last shot which features the film’s only moment of music suggests an optimism that Vero will emerge from her haze. Or maybe not?

The open endedness shouldn’t come as any surprise considering the intellectual melancholy of Martel’s tone. That doesn’t mean it’s any less satisfying. Hell, I love closure, and hated the The White Ribbon for not providing any but The Headless Woman is a different film and we never feel Martel needed to solve its mystery in order to satisfy us (or at least me), thus earning her the right to leave us hanging.

Shutter Island (2010) dir. Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo Di Caprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams

*1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Despite the opinions of some people who claim this film as a masterpiece (inc. my colleague Blair Stewart who posted the first review HERE) It pains me to give such a low rating to Mr. Scorsese, but other than the abominable New York, New York, Shutter Island is his worst film – an overwrought melodramatic stink bomb, one giant red herring much less clever than it thinks it is.

NOTE: I write this review assuming everyone has seen the movie...needless to say SPOILERS are ahead.

Shame on Marty for stooping so low as to use easy ‘shock’ images of dead children and the Holocaust in the same film. When you strip away Shutter Island, there’s actually nothing going on, and no suspense whatsoever, and so it takes flashbacks to dead children and the Holocaust to provide the meat. Except these moments are not earned by Scorsese because they are parachuted into the script instead of organically fusing itself into the narrative.

For example, Leonardo Di Caprio is crazy, and so since his past is only told to us in brief flashbacks absolutely anything could have happened to him to cause this insanity. Lehane/Scorsese choose two traumatic events – witnessing the Holocaust and having his equally crazy wife kill her own children. This is certainly enough trauma to cause his insanity, but without knowing the character beforehand, seeing how his relationship with his wife could have progressed to the point of her killing her own kids, it feels false and unearned.

Of course my discontent with this film is fundamental to the point of the story. If you can't accept the 'twist' the movie fails. For two thirds Lehane and Scorsese proceed to lay the groundwork for the investigative potboiler of US Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner searching for a missing patient by the name of Rachel Solondo. It’s a rather brooding procedural filled with numerous mysterious details such as cryptic messages on scraps of paper, shifty-eyed administration staff who appear to be hiding information, a mysterious government communist conspiracy, etc.

Then at the two thirds mark the rug is pulled out from under the audience to reveal a completely different journey – that Daniels, is not a Marshal, but a patient of the facility going through some experimental role playing game monitored by his Doctors. Upon first viewing the bombshell didn’t so much shock me as stab me in the back for reversing everything I had invested in the characters in the first place. The twist essentially renders everything before it null and void. Therefore, if you don't accept the twist upon second viewing, the experience of watching this ruse play out is even worse. The twist reveals a number of gaping plot holes which become even more frustrating the second time 'round.

Are we to assume Mark Ruffalo was ‘acting’ the entire movie for the benefit of Daniels? Same with Dr. Crawley and all the other staff?

How did everyone keep a straight face? Was there a group meeting where the other staff members laid out this elaborate game?

And shame on you Marty for resorting to the laughable ‘word jumble’ in the third act to convince us the Leo is crazy. The moment Kingsley reveals the conveniently laid out white board word scramble of Andrew Laeddis – Edward Daniels reduced the film to a notch barely above Hardy Boys or the Da Vinci Code. These cheap tactics might have worked if there was any sense of humour in the picture, unfortunately it's so heavily handed its ultimately a dead weight.

There’s even little in the way of technical flare to entertain me, nothing of the authorship which earns the title 'A Martin Scorsese Film’. Even Robert Richardson’s photography which sparkles with colour and glossiness is beautiful to look at, but too beautiful and has no gothic authenticity.

Shutter Island is Martin Scorsese light, a phoned-in performance from Marty and a stain on his filmography.

Shutter Island is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment

Fuzz (1972) dir. Richard A. Colla
Starring: Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch, Jack Weston, Tom Skerritt, Steve Ihnat, Yul Brynner, Bert Remsen, Charles Martin Smith, Charles Tyner, Don Gordon, Peter Bonerz, Tamara Dobson, Gino Conforti, Gerald Hiken and Uschi Digart

**1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

"Fuzz" is a 70s cop-movie with a light touch that I vaguely recall enjoying when I first saw it in 1972. And now, almost forty (!) years later, I was compelled to take another gander. On one hand, I could see why it was so forgettable, but on the other (and because of its forgettable "qualities") I'm pleased to report that it's an extremely pleasant movie, especially as a relatively familiar entity that I was now viewing with fresh eyes - as if I'd never even seen it before.

There's nothing at all earth-shattering or exceptional about the picture, but it's a blast watching a stalwart 70s cast do their thing against the backdrop of a few days in the life of a ragtag police precinct. Burt Reynolds, Tom Skerritt and Jack Weston are the three cops the picture primarily focuses on. They're all working on a variety of cases- the main ones being a local rapist terrorizing the neighbourhood and trying to nab a pair of teenagers (one of whom is played by American Graffiti's "Terry the Toad", Charles Martin Smith) who are dousing alcoholic bums with gasoline and setting them on fire.

The rape case is an especially hard nut for the cops to crack and the brass decides to bring in a policewoman to do the job. That she is Raquel Welch in her absolute prime is especially good news for the all-male environment of the precinct. I've never seen more gratuitous shots of male characters ogling a female character in my life in one movie. And, what the hell - she does look stunning in the picture. Who wouldn't be ogling her - male or female.

Before the key crime wends its way into the film's plot, the most pressing and persistent issue in the precinct seems to be that two inept painters have taken over the detective room and in addition to impeding the cops' work, they are continually annoying everyone with their corny one-liners and routines which suggest they'd have had a great career as Borscht Belt comics. Gino Conforti and Gerald Hiken are so hilarious they come close to stealing the whole movie.

To make matters worse for this group of detectives is that their precinct has been targeted by a potential crank with a series of extortion demands via telephone - threatening the lives of several city officials. The extortionist, with a voice sounding suspiciously like Yul Brynner's, takes care to note that he chose this precinct because it was the most incompetent.

Well, to the men and WOMAN of the 87th Precinct, them's fighting words - so much so, that they can't shove their heads in the sand and pawn it off on another division (which they'd prefer), but have to be forced by the brass to handle the case in addition to all the small potatoes stuff they're bollixing up.

Yup, it's an adaptation of one of Ed McBain's 87th precinct cop novels that he wrote under the nom-de-plume of Evan Hunter and it's a decent enough film adaptation of that world. As I watched the movie recently, all the McBain books I read as a kid came back to me - not so much the details, but the style and world was quite unique in crime fiction. In the film as in the books, there's a fair bit of time spent on the details of police procedure that many might consider dull, but are, in fact, pretty entertaining - especially when played (mostly) straight for the natural humour inherent in such plodding details.

Brynner, by the way, and not surprisingly, is a great villain and he seems to be having a lot of fun. He spits out his invectives with considerable relish. In one scene, his moll (played by the stunning Tamara "Cleopatra Jones" Dobson) expresses boredom as he plots his crime. He offers to take her out to dinner. When she retires to doll herself up, Brynner, with salacious nastiness plastered on his face, takes a sip of champagne and looks in the direction she's departed to. He remarks to his partners in crime, spitting out each word like a series of drum hits: "A marvelous ... empty ... headed ... bitch!"!

Director Richard A. Colla, a prolific TV director whose camera-jockey skills were put to use on tons of small-screen police procedurals - keeps things moving quite briskly. The one-liners spit fast and furious and at times, the scenes in the precinct itself, are admirably handled with a kind of Robert-Altman-Lite touch. Overlapping dialogue, several conversations going on at one, lots of movement filling the frame, but the camera itself moving only in the most subtle ways are just some of the highlights of the picture. Even Altman stalwart Bert Remsen appears as a beleaguered desk sergeant.

And there are quite a few laughs. One of the funniest comic set pieces is a stakeout sequence with Reynolds (and his great 70s 'stache) and Weston (pudgy and oh-so cute), working undercover as nuns with Skerritt and Welch who are literally under covers in a closed sleeping bag pretending to be lovers (only they DO have a thing for each other). Everything that could go wrong, goes wrong, but in the end, the rag-tag cops get their man.

Another great comic set piece is the kind of politically incorrect gag that could almost never be done today where the guys sick a porky, sex-starved, middle-aged woman with an overactive imagination on Welch. Raquel is investigating a rape and this woman claims to have been raped, so she takes it very seriously while Reynolds, Skerritt and most of the other guys in the precinct are desperately trying to hold in their snorts of laughter while the "victim" (who has obviously visited the precinct many times) describes the most outlandish Harlequin Romance-styled rape perpetrated upon her. (Apologies to the politically correct, but it IS funny!)

Yet another politically incorrect gag involves the station Captain walking in on Raquel in the washroom as she's changing. He stutters and stammers his way through a conversation while trying to keep his eyes off her bounteous pendulums secured in a bra (for the PG-rating, of course, but also because Welch refused to peel down completely in any of her pictures).

In fact, many of the gags in the film ARE politically incorrect and often involve the sexist attitudes of the time (though I suspect not ALL that much has changed - especially within the domain of police precincts).

This all eventually converges during a thoroughly insane climax involving the sort of coincidence that can only happen in movies (yet in reality, often happens in real police work). Every cop gets their man at once and save the day! It's decidedly feel-good, though the ending suggests that the filmmakers anticipated a sequel (which never happened). This involves Yul Brynner as the main villain, "The Deaf Man" who, in the 87th Precinct books, is a recurring master criminal character who keeps trying to challenge the 87th precinct klutzes.

As a movie, "Fuzz" is relocated from Manhattan to Boston, but this doesn't detract at all from the picture. So many great crime pictures have been set in Boston, and even though "Fuzz" is far from anything resembling "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" or "The Departed", director Colla captures enough cool locations that this, in and of itself, is one of the picture's highlights.

Besides, as McBain wrote - in mock "Dragnet" style at the beginning of all his 87th Precinct novels:

"The city in these pages is imaginary. The people, the places are all fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique."

It's the "police routine" that "Fuzz" captures quite nicely. Besides, it's an early 70s cop picture and even lower-drawer efforts in this genre with mild pleasures like this one are usually worth watching - if, however, you like this sort of thing.

I know I do.

"Fuzz" is available on DVD from MGM Home Entertainment.

Rider on the Rain - U.S. title
Le passager de la pluie - French Title (1970) dir. René Clément
Starring: Marlene Jobert, Charles Bronson, Annie Cordie, Gabriele Tinti and Marc Mazza

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

Discovering movies you’ve never seen before is always fun – especially when you, like me, have seen over 30,000 feature films and think (wrongly, of course) that you’ve seen everything worth seeing. When those undiscovered titles are gems like “Rider on the Rain”, A.K.A. “Le passager de la pluie,” the rise of tantalizing gooseflesh is all the more deliciously palpable as it overtakes your body and soul.


This thoroughly entertaining and creepy Euro-trash thriller from the 70s has been kicking around for a long time in North America in a variety of downright awful English-language public domain transfers on both VHS and DVD.

Until recently, however, I had no idea how good it actually it was.

This was not for lack of trying. Alas, the public domain copies I saw were truly abysmal - the cropping distracting, the faded colours hard on the eyes and the English dubbing so sloppy that, on each attempt, I didn’t even made it to the rape scene which, of course means, that I never sat through it long enough to even see Charles Bronson make his first appearance.

I recently, however, came across a Russian DVD release of the exquisite Studio Canal re-mastering of the French-language version with English subtitles (and for those inclined, subtitles in Russian, Spanish, German, Hebrew and a variety of Asian languages). I can now say I have watched the rape scene, Charles Bronson’s entrance and then some.

Directing over thirty films from the late 30s to late 70s, René Clément was truly one of the great French directors, but in recent years especially, his remarkable canon seems to have been largely ignored in favour of those of the Nouvelle Vague ilk and some of the more recent works of Breillat, Noë, Cantet, etc. This is not to say that any of the above needs to be dismissed in favour of Clément, but I do think some sort of major re-assessment and appreciation of his fine output is in order.

That said, he still is deservedly acclaimed in many quarters for the heartbreaking tale of childhood and war “Forbidden Games” (“Jeux interdits”) and the magnificently amoral Patricia Highsmith adaptation “Purple Noon” (“Plein soleil”) which reveals Anthony Minghella’s watchable, 1999 version of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” as the uninspired wank it really is. In addition to the above, Clément delivered the tense, claustrophobia of “Les maudits” and his marvelous post-war crime drama with Jean Gabin “Le mura di Malapaga.”

In this and his other pulp suspense pictures, Clément’s respect and debt to Hitchcock is clear, but subtle - unlike, say, DePalma. Not that I’d ever crap on Brian DePalma, whose work I love dearly, but his approach to Hitchcockian-styled suspense is clearly and deliciously over-the-top, whereas Clément adds a dollop here and a dollop there of Hitch, while maintaining a sense of ambiguity that is all his own. Chabrol, too, is a fine French suspense director, but I tend to find his films more workmanlike than Clément’s and his voice is certainly not as rich and distinctive.

Clément, like Hitch, is fond of recurring visual motifs, but Clément is careful (as Hitch always was) to make sure they are thoroughly integral to the world of HIS narrative. They’re not thrown in willy-nilly.

For example, the references to date and time as well as the clock shots – especially those focusing upon a pendulum either locking in or not moving – are dazzlingly evocative, but they are always used to move the story forward. Also, Clément’s use of colour, light and composition reveals a great visual stylist and, like Hitch, he wields his palette like a master – a born filmmaker, his very DNA hardwired to the art and business of creating cinema.

With “Rider on the Rain”, Clément even uses a stunningly gorgeous ice goddess (albeit a truly Gallic version of a Hitchcockian leading lady) as the central femme fatale. Gamine, red headed, lightly freckled beauty Marlene Jobert appears as Mélancolie Mau (gotta love that name), the beleaguered wife of Tony (the suitably nasty Gabriele Tinti), a downright horrendously repugnant old world sexist pig who questions her every move and keeps her in an iron-clad grip – in spite of his seemingly endless jaunts all over the world as an airline pilot. Mélancolie’s mother, Juliette (a brilliant Annie Cordy) is a self-hating drunk who operates a bar/bowling alley and turns her self-loathing into a weapon against her own child.

These happy people all live in a seaside resort town. As the movie begins, it is the off-season and few souls wander the empty streets. A nasty torrential downpour brings a tall, creepy, bullet-headed stranger (Marc Mazza) to town on a bus that normally wouldn’t even stop at this time of year. The stranger, whose name is Mac Guffyn (get it?), wanders about the town with seeming aimlessness, but soon it’s obvious he’s targeting our heroine, following her everywhere with a steely gaze.

For her part, Mélancolie runs a few errands, including a dress shop visit to pick up a fashionably hot number to adorn her sultry frame for a wedding she’ll be attending the following day. Speaking of hot numbers, it’s not just the clothing that’s delectable – the ravishing Jill Ireland (Mrs. Charles Bronson) has a small role as the dress shop proprietress, primping and preening our gamine heroine whilst Mac Guffyn stares salaciously through the store window. Mrs. Chuck doesn’t see him, but Mélancolie does. She freezes in terror, but does not reveal to anyone that she sees him.

Well, before you can say “rape”, Mélancolie is back home and the oval-domed Mac Guffyn enters quietly, throws her to the bed and savagely forces himself upon her. She eventually passes out, wakes up alone, considers calling the police, but mysteriously doesn’t. Mac Guffyn shows up again. He’s merely been resting up for sloppy seconds. Mélancolie engages in a brutal physical fight with him, grabs a double-barreled shotgun from the basement, shoots him and finally, blood gushing from his chest, he still attempts to get up and our plucky gamine beauty bludgeons the creep to death. Again, for very mysterious reasons, she does not call the police, but instead, drives his body out to a remote cliff and dumps it into the sea.

The next day, as if nothing has happened, she and her sexist pig husband attend a wedding. During the ceremony, she spies the smirking, gorgeously mustachioed Charles Bronson, drilling holes into her with his intense Slavic eyes. At the reception, Bronson introduces himself as Harry Dobbs (Christ! Another great character name that you’ve just gotta love!), an American colonel of seeming disrepute and predatory intentions. For some reason, he knows she’s murdered Mac Guffyn.

For the rest of the movie, a strange cat and mouse game plays out where Dobbs relentlessly tries to get Mélancolie to admit to murder and she does everything in her power to deflect his accusations. There is, of course, more to all this than meets the eye – one layer of mystery lies on top of yet another and Mélancolie finds herself mixed up in something very creepy, dangerous and well beyond her comprehension. As for Dobbs, his intentions remain murky, but as the film progresses, it becomes obvious that both characters are becoming inextricably drawn towards one another.

While the picture is far more ambiguous than Hitchcock would ever tolerate, it’s still a terrifically suspenseful and entertaining mystery thriller. It’s even been suggested in some quarters that the film inspired Jim Morrison to write his evocative hit “Riders on the Storm” and given certain images and plot elements of the picture, it’s not entirely inconceivable. The opening lyrics that comprise the song's eerie refrain definitely mirror Mélancolie’s situation:

Into this house we’re born
Into this world we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone…

The “sins” of Mélancolie’s mother have definitely rubbed off on her, though she’s tried her whole life to live with them and “like a dog without a bone”, she seems ill-equipped to deal with the cards dealt her way, but still manages to persevere – with, of course, a little help from a grinning Cheshire-cat-like Harry Dobbs.

Mac Guffyn, of course, is the literal “rider on the rain” of the English title – a serial killer/sexual deviant who is not unlike Morrison’s evocation of:

… a killer on the road/his brain is squirming like a toad…

And finally, in spite of Mélancolie and Dobbs falling for each other, it’s clearly going to remain unrequited – so much so that they each admit their love to themselves, but not each other and Mélancolie stays with her brutish husband and Harry goes off alone in his sports car. Again, one can imagine Morrison seeing the film and penning the lyrics:

Girl ya gotta love your man
Take him by the hand
Make him understand…
Gotta love your man, yeah!

Certainly even the opening shot of the film feels like it could have inspired Morrison and team – a huge body of water looking like a lake or river as rain drops plop violently on the surface of the water until the wheels of a bus splash into frame, revealing that we’re actually looking at a rain soaked highway through a wide angle lens. This is followed by a series of shots of the bus itself - seemingly bereft of passengers until it stops, then drives away to reveal the trench-coat-adorned Mac Guffyn, standing in the rain and clutching a small ref leather bag.

Furthermore, if there is any truth to Morrison being inspired by the picture, surely such inspiration extended to other members of The Doors. The song “Riders on the Storm” is endowed with one major similarity to Clément’s picture – it’s superbly scored by Francis Lai with a number of evocative themes – many of which feature the kind of varied and sophisticated instrumentations favoured by the band itself. This, by the way, is an original soundtrack album worth owning – rare, but not impossible to track down. It works, not only as film score but also as music that bears both close scrutiny as well as its simple ability to create background mood for just about any social situation one finds oneself in.

In spite of the theorizing about the film’s influence upon Jim Morrison, the point might be moot if centred solely on the title since the English title “Rider on the Rain", translates from the French title “Le passager de la pluie” more literally into “The Passenger of the Rain”. While this, in and of itself, might have also been influential, it’s probably less about the title but Clément’s images and themes that might have had a greater impact upon the late, great Lizard King.

Another interesting aspect of Clément’s film is that it opens with the following quotation from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”:

The pit was very deep, or she fell very slowly, because while she fell, she had time to look around and to wonder what was going to happen next.

This is an apt opening quotation for a number of reasons. Firstly, the movie is endowed with odd dream logic to its narrative structure. Secondly, Mélancolie does indeed experience a long, slow fall/descent. Thirdly, she wanders through the picture with a wide-eyed wonder of a naïf being led by a grinning Cheshire cat – none other than Harry Dobbs and Bronson’s charmingly sardonic visage and performance.

Bronson’s performance, by the way, will be a revelation to those ever who doubted his abilities as an actor. He’s always had considerable star power, but many have ignored the qualities he owned below the skin-deep tough guy exterior. His performance here is so compelling, one wishes he had more roles in his career like this one – roles that could have mined his myriad of thespian gifts.

Marlene Jobert as Mélancolie is also a revelation. In spite of her performance in this and Godard’s “Masculin feminin”, she never quite maintained the stardom of many of her contemporaries in France. Her Mélancolie is, however, nothing short of extraordinary. She takes a complex character and breathes the kind of life into it that makes both her and the role nothing less than unforgettable.

And what a role it is – so sexy and so mysterious, especially early on in the proceedings. For example, some of Mélancolie’s head-scratching moves at the beginning of the film (not calling the police and dumping Mac Guffyn's body – moves that set all the picture's wheels in motion – have often been mistakenly seen as either problematic storytelling and/or ambiguities.

I’d suggest they are neither.

This is, after all, the story of a woman who carries and tries to shed the sins of her mother and is locked in a marriage wherein she is constantly abused into submission and, by her very actions, her journey of self-discovery is responsible for finding what it was she loved in her man in the first place and she learns to work at mining those aspects rather than succumbing to his worst traits and/or running away from them. It’s a blossoming, a maturation process. She confronts everything head-on and takes us on a thrilling serpentine journey of sex, murder, mystery and suspense.

What more could one possibly ask for?

It’s a terrific picture!

See it!

This is a hard movie to get in the original French version. For my part, I wish to thank the Lord Jesus H. Christ for my obsessive frequenting of Russian video stores in North and West Toronto where I found the DVD. The release even appears legit, as I have seen it advertised on Amazon. The Studio Canal version is also available on Amazon. This is probably the best way to see the picture on this side of the Atlantic, especially since there appears no sign of a North American DVD or Blu-ray release of Studio Canal’s pressing.

Whiteout (2009) dir. Dominic Sena
Starring: Kate Beckinsdale, Tom Skerritt and Gabriel Macht

*1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

Antarctica was made for the movies. In spite of this, very few pictures have actually been set against it as a backdrop, so a picture like "Whiteout" sets the bar of anticipation rather high - at least for this fella'. Based on a popular graphic novel and starring Kate (she-of-the-painted-on-wardrobe) Beckinsdale, this mystery thriller set on a research base in that frozen world down, down, down under, had "potential hit" written all over it. Potential, however, is one thing and deliveringthe goods is quite another and "Whiteout" pretty much stinks.

From the earliest film footage of Antarctic expeditions (Amundsen, Byrd, etc.) through to such popular contemporary works as the BBC "Life in the Freezer" series and the insanely popular cutesy-pie-fest "March of the Penguins", the land itself - eerily majestic, filled with wonder and foreboding - has been captured impeccably by so many documentarians. Most recently and powerfully, Werner Herzog delivered the extraordinary Oscar-nominated "Encounters at the End of the World" which focused on those edgy individuals who are drawn to living and working in an environment that is an inhospitable to man as it is a magnet for those who are drawn to its terrible beauty. Surely within the context of a murder mystery like "Whiteout", character would have been a fine anchor to root the story in, but the picture is strictly by-the-numbers in this regard - so much so, that any episode of "Perry Mason" or "Columbo" would have far more interesting character flourishes in one or two minutes of screen time than "Whiteout" has throughout its entire and overlong 101 minutes.

In terms of providing a visual treat to dazzle the eyes, Antarctica is, without question, the Earth's most barren, mysterious, and yet, strangely beautiful continent. A series of islands surrounding a mountainous primary landmass, the Antarctic is topographically not unlike that of the Andes Mountain range in South America, but with one vital difference - Antarctica, unlike the Andes, is buried under an average of one mile of ice. As such, and to coin part of a phrase from W.C. Fields in "The Fatal Glass of Beer", Antarctica is fit for neither man, nor beast - and in spite of its similarities to the Andes, it's definitely no indigenous home to happy, hopping, peak-gambolling mountain-goats and llamas. Its environment (darkness for six months of the year and temperatures that can get as low as those on the moons of Jupiter) is not unlike that of Van Helsing brandishing a crucifix to all those who seek to suck whatever lifeblood it has to offer. I'm one of them, but only in spirit. I've never had the guts to take the Antarctic plunge. Visiting Churchill, Manitoba to see polar bears and to be in the sub-zero northern town where Powell/Pressburger imagined how Nazis might infiltrate North America in their terrific WWII propaganda film "The 49th Parallel" is as inhospitable a world as I've ever brought myself to experience (unless you count the horrifying and decidedly inhospitable night I once spent in Tuscaloosa, Alabama - but that, I'm afraid, is another story.).

This, of course, is what makes Antarctica a superb setting for dramatic motion pictures. It's desolate and beautiful and draws very unique individuals to live and work there. Sadly, much of the dramatic work has been of the "Happy Feet" ilk with the insufferable dancing penguins or, God help us, the surfing penguins in the execrable "Surf's Up". And "Whiteout" errs even more egregiously in that it chooses some of the more uninteresting stand-in locations - they all look cold, but have no real dichotomous terror and beauty.

The best dramatic rendering of the bitterness of Antarctica is unquestionably the profoundly moving 1948 Ealing Studios picture, "Scott of the Antarctic" which features John Mills and a stalwart supporting cast recreating the first ill-fated real-life search for the South Pole. Shot in technicolor and filmed on location in Norway, it's a classic example of British cinema at its finest and during a period of rebirth in the U.K.'s national cinema following World War II. Most importantly, it blends excellent location selection in Norway mixed with effective studio work. "Whiteout" feels like it could have been shot just outside any major northern city. It wasn't, of course, but its filmmakers clearly had no eye for the real cinematic joys inherent in recreating Antarctica.

Then, there is John Carpenter's "The Thing", a true horror classic (and maybe one of the best films of the latter half of the 20th century) - nasty, relentless, grim and endowed with a 70s sensibility amidst the early 80s explosions of stunning makeup effects which, all contribute to making it the finest picture - NOT based on fact - to ever be set in Antarctica. Based on the story "Who Goes There?" and filmed once before by Christian Nyby in the 50s (and under the watchful eye of producer Howard Hawks), Carpenter's "The Thing" centres on the high levels of testosterone on the all-male crew who live on a tiny Antarctic research base as they are plagued, not just by the land itself, but by an utterly grotesque alien monster that could ONLY have survived undetected for in a place like Antarctica. And THIS is something truly cool to imagine - assuming our world HAS been visited by extraterrestrials, Antarctica makes a lot of sense for either a crash landing or even a place of repose for such visitors since it is not only isolated, but bears an ungodly temperature that resembles other worlds in our own solar system.

Even the stupid, but watchable "AVP: Alien vs. Predator" began with the cool idea of an archeological dig at the bottom of the earth that yielded the fruit of the title monsters before amiably, but rather one-notedly descending into Toho-styled monster battles. It might not have had the depth of character inherent in Carpenter's work, but at least it had a fun, pulpy sense of spectacle and not the dour, humourless, plodding approach of "Whiteout".

The fact that "AVP: Alien vs. Predator" is actually better than "Whiteout" should give you an idea how pathetic "Whiteout" actually is.

First and foremost, "Whiteout" fails on a level of narrative. As a murder mystery, it is so bone-headedly obvious who-actually-dunnit. The recipe begins with such ingredients as a police officer with a past she's trying to escape (Beckinsdale) who seems to be surrounded by one asshole after another - save, of course, for the friendly medical officer (Tom Skerrit). So, within fifteen minutes of the picture beginning, you do the math. Murders + every character is an asshole + kindly doctor = Who dunnit? Who else, indeed? It's entirely obvious. And since we know, almost from the beginning who the killer is (not intentional, just the product of bad writing and direction), we at least need a rollercoaster ride to make it all worth the predictable slog. "Whiteout" has nothing going for it in this respect. Purportedly directed by Dominic Sena, the hack whose claim to fame is the dreadful "Swordfish" wherein Halle Berry exposed her magnificent breasts, the movie limps and stutters along in a ho-hum by-the-numbers fashion until the I-saw-that-coming-90-minutes-ago climax.

Beckinsdale is, as always, magnificent scenery (rivalling the dull northern Canadian locations the filmmakers have chosen to use), but she is so stern and humourless that all one can do is admire the wardrobe glued onto her. It's not all her fault. Someone had to write this dull character - in addition to all the other dull characters in the movie. There's this almost by-rote approach to character that suggests how everyone who comes to Antarctica is trying to escape something and/or is just plain crazy. This is so dull and unimaginative and the result of writing that is rooted, not in any sense of reality, but in cliche. Far more interesting is to see people who fit Antarctica like a glove. Then again, for that to work, one needs a director with some visual flourish to tie in just the right physical exterior locations into the narrative - locations that represent a state of mind as much as they do a sense of place.

And, by the way, northern Canada has great locations to stand-in for Antarctica, but it doesn't seem like anyone bothered to try and find which ones they were and furthermore, to match them to the psychological complexity of the characters and narrative.

Oops, I forgot - there is NO psychological complexity. There's no surprise, no drama and no sense of pace.

There is, however, an opportunity to just skip seeing this movie and instead, see some of the pictures mentioned above - they're good, if not great pictures, but they also manage to capture the physical beauty and horror of Antarctica in ways "Whiteout" doesn't even bother trying to imagine.

'Whiteout" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video