Diabolical Danger

We often think of the western as being set in the sunbaked, sand-filled deserts of the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood epics. Turning this idea on its head, Robert Altman takes us into the frontier lands of the wet and snowy northwest (filmed in and around Vancouver, Canada), an equally picturesque yet no less hostile terrain, in the 1971 film McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Riding into town with his bushy beard and no less hairy fur coat, John McCabe (Warren Beatty) is a businessman looking for his next big opportunity. He sees the tiny, half-built town of Presbyterian Church (just over one hundred people) not as a hindrance, but as the perfect location to set up a one stop saloon, gambling den and whorehouse. Hiring some local men, they get to work while he heads off to procure the working girls – purchasing some lower class ladies for the gruff, rough, and equally low class frontier men of the area.

Though today, The Hollywood Ten sounds like a modern take on a superhero movie, for those who know the film history, it has a much darker meaning. Referencing the ten filmmakers who were subpoenaed for being possible Communist dissidents, thought to be subverting the hearts and minds of the American people, they refused to answer questions directly. Focussing on one of the ten, 2015's Trumbo follows the famed screenwriter through the trials and tribulations of this tumultuous time in American history. Directed by Jay Roach (Austin Powers trilogy; Meet the Parents/Meet the Fockers), Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) is a highly intelligent yet cantankerous writer, one of the best in the film industry, circa 1947. An ardent Communist who believes in better working rights and pay for those in Hollywood (as well as many other things), he is married to Cleo (Diane Lane), who, despite her soft spoken nature, is in many ways the strong backbone of the family. They have three children.

There are certain songs that are just conducive to driving – "Baby, You Can Drive My Car" (The Beatles), "Crosstown Traffic" (Jimi Hendrix). . . or, perhaps, if you’re like those in David Cronenberg’s erotic, accident seeking film Crash, "Hit Me Baby One More Time" (Britney Spears). This is the genesis of the new 2017 movie Baby Driver – the soundtrack belongs to the young getaway driver, listening to his playlist as he puts the pedal to the metal and "Lets the Good Times Roll" (The Cars). An impressive example of music in motion, writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead; Hot Fuzz) develops a highly original concept that in some ways feels like a musical. A quasi-form of Mickey Mousing (when music and action match up onscreen), the film is uniformly paired with the tracks heard throughout – edited and sometimes even lip synched/danced to by the characters. Look to the examples of the tunes highlighted above, as I’ve decided to have some fun with this review and interlace the names of different songs throughout – some that are featured in Baby Driver and some that just help describe the story and action.

Perhaps the beginnings of a new sub-genre of horror, André Øvredal’s 2016 offering, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, follows up the similarly set The Corpse of Anna Fritz with another claustrophobic, morgue-centric tale. Perhaps we could drop the ‘rue’ from the classic Edgar Allen Poe tale and call them "Murders in the Morgue". With a cleverly concocted set up, the first half of the film toys with us, introducing not only the main characters, but the little threads that will come into play later on. Beginning with a gruesome murder scene (dead bodies are scattered throughout a house), Sheriff Burke (Michael McElhatton – Roose Bolton in Game of Thrones) is stymied when he discovers a half buried body of a young woman – the only one with not a thing wrong with it (seemingly). In a bizarre twist, it seems like those murdered were trying to escape the abode – and that no one broke in.

At its heart a story about a complex father/daughter relationship, with 2016's Toni Erdmann, writer/director Maren Ade charts her tale down a highly original course as the pair work out their many issues in the most unorthodox of ways. The German motion picture was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards this past year, with many seeing it as the outright favourite. . . it lost to the more politically relevant Iranian film The Salesman – Asghar Farhadi’s second win in this category. Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek) is an all-out kook – a prankster who loves playing games with everyone he meets. Like a child in a man’s body, we first meet Winfried as he receives a package from a courier. Claiming that it is his brother’s (and that he was just released from jail for putting bombs in the mail), he leaves, returning moments later with a new outfit and fake teeth, pretending to be his criminally eccentric sibling.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like for a toilet to be dropped onto a mobster’s head from approximately five stories up, then 1999's Boondock Saints, written and directed by Troy Duffy, may be for you. A rare movie that has been absolutely obliterated by most critics yet loved by an extremely fervent cult following, it is clearly not for everyone. The leads are Catholic Irish American twins, Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy MacManus (Norman Reedus), a pair of impoverished Bostonians who work at a meat packing plant. Friends with a low level Italian mob runner, Rocco – aka ‘Funny Man’ (David Della Rocco), the triumvirate are enjoying a few pints on St. Patrick’s Day when some Russian thugs come into the bar and unceremoniously tell them that it is closed and now under their control. The goons are overrun by the patrons, embarrassed at their own game. It does not take long for the Russians to track down their combatants from the previous night, looking to respond by putting a few bullets into them. The twins are somehow able to fight them off (killing them in the fray), but panic and flee the scene.