the epitome of a decade, a drunken piano-player, and another flawed sequel

Desperately Seeking Susan: (1985. dir: Susan Seidelman) One of the few undisputably totemic movies of the 80s, Desperately Seeking Susan is a major player in that "girls-just-wanna-have-fun", cautiously pre-Lipstick-Feminist movement, and it's the one that redirected Madonna from superstar into movie star. (It's the best role she ever had, because she's playing herself, and using her own wardrobe.) Boasting cameos from '80s cult luminaries Richard Hell, Ann Magnuson, Rockets Redglare, Annie Golden, John Lurie and Stephen Wright, it is the place to go if you're looking to learn anything about the pop culture or aesthetics of that decade. It also, though, has a charming story to tell and an anemic, nascent-but-fetching, pre-Thelma-and-Louise girl-power dynamic. In its original ending, in fact, the Roseanne Arquette and Madonna characters disappear to travel the world together, leaving their respective girl-toys (Aidan Quinn and Robert Joy) pining at the lunch counter, waiting for them to call. It's hard to believe now, but in that pre-Courtney Love era, Madonna was busy redefining sexuality for a generation of girls just coming of age, with her mix of lingerie and men's boxer shorts, her controversial hybrid of Boy-Toy and power-bitch. The scene in which she blow-dries her armpits in the subway station restroom reminds me of a moment in Jane Campion's strange and unforgettable Portrait of a Lady in which the delicate heroine sniffs her own shoe before putting it on, a wonderfully jarring reminder of the earthy pungency of female flesh which so often gets fastidiously obscured onscreen.

Everyone is young and gorgeous, with Quinn never sexier, Arquette never more adorable (did I say this was a feminist venture?), and young versions of John Turturro and Giancarlo Esposito in minor roles, both already fully in charge of presence and charisma. Will Patton is there as a truly slimy villain, but my favorite moment belongs to Laurie Metcalf as a rich woman who catches her brother and her lover comfort-eating in a time of stress and rails at them, "Why don't you take a valium like a normal person?"

Black Angel: (1946. dir: Roy William Neill) It's noir time in Los Angeles, and Dan Duryea is just perfect as a heartbroken drunk of a piano-player scorned into despair by his fatale, estranged wife. Peter Lorre is, likewise, about perfect as the droll, unflappable club-owner who may or may not have murdered aforesaid wife. Alas, that's about it for the perfect. It's based on a Cornell Woolrich book, and so needs to be much darker from the outset. Any Woolrich book is a long descent down a mirthless stairway into hell, as is this one, and the tone Neill sets is much too light to communicate properly the thick, tenebrous heart of the thing. June Vincent fails to fascinate in the female lead, a chanteuse-housewife trying to clear her falsely-accused, two-timing husband's good (well, mediocre) name by teaming up with Duryea to collar the real bad man.

This was director Neill's last venture, having made his name early in cinematic history and found later, steady work helming the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series. As far as the noir goes, he gets the lighting right, and a certain aloofness of delivery, a certain cold, jadedness of character, but ultimately misses the target by allowing too much metaphorical daylight in through those slanty, noir blinds.

Alien Resurrection: (1997. dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet) The first Alien movie was one of the best films ever made. The second was a whole different beast, a blockbuster epic adventure, but masterfully done, managing while staying true to the original to expand it into something which, if not as great, is still a rollicking and lasting success. The third, cobbled together like a Frankenstein's monster from various scripts and fallen-away directors, fell into David Fincher's then-cinematically-virgin hands and was an undeniable failure, but an interesting one, with a lousy script, a phenomenal cast, and some interesting choices.

The fourth is another bold failure. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children previously, Amelie afterwards), it imposes his quirk-and-style-over-substance sensibility over a script by a pre-Buffy Joss Whedon. You wouldn't guess it was Joss' without knowing, but once you do know, you can see the Betty as an early sketch of the beloved Firefly-class boat Serenity, as well as the beginnings of Jayne Cobb in Ron Perlman's Johner. (After Ripley tearfully destroys a lab filled with tragic proto-Ripley cloning experiments, Johner is genuinely puzzled over the waste of ammunition: "Huh. Must be a chick thing.")

The point is, when it was over, I thought, "Why is this a bad movie?", since it has much of interest in it. The actors are intriguing (Sigourney Weaver, Michael Wincott, Perlman, Winona Ryder, Brad Dourif, Jeunet staple Dominique Pignon), the story is told in potentially interesting turns. What it lacks, in the end, is any sense that the universe of the film stretches beyond the edges of the screen, beyond the parameters of each scene. It is a conglomeration of set-pieces, with no jarring visual or aural dissonance to pull us out of the production design, and yet the ensemble, for all its talent, never sparks into life. In the first movie, on the Nostromo, there is no question from the first waking moments that the crew-members have previously interacted, with recognized friendships and interpersonal frictions and all the bedevilments which arise from the forced intimacy of long-term space travel. Despite an effort to create it, that's what's missing here. The amities and enmities seem contrived, the interactions lacking that elusive spark of divine fire which would lift an otherwise fair-to-middlin' venture into the realm of the lasting. Because Whedon is involved, it brings to mind the crushing discrepancy between the candescent life of Firefly and the awkward misfire that was its cinematic sequel, Serenity. It's possible that Joss needs the continuity of a series, that he doesn't have the necessary expositionary talents for a two-hour movie. (Alright, Avengers was OK, but we all know much of that stuff already. Nobody needs to have Bruce Banner explained to them; he walks onscreen and even little kids and grandmas know what's up.)

jazz noir, a disturbing halloween, and the chronicle of a french revolution

All Night Long: (1962. dir: Basil Dearden) Criterion has lately recognized English director Dearden's groundbreaking work in a series called "London Underground", works which explored and documented London's seamier underside during the fifties and sixties, the shadow London which went unacknowledged by the BBC. Dearden's bolder ventures included the important Dirk Bogarde films the Blue Lamp and Victim, dealing respectively with crime and homosexuality, and Sapphire, which dug into racism and anti-miscegenation.

All Night Long is a portrait of England's jazz community using the plot of Othello to surprisingly good effect. The setting is an all-night jam in honor of the first-year anniversary of esteemed piano-player Aurelius Rex (Paul Harris) and his retired singer-wife Delia (Marti Stevens). As the music and champagne flow, faux-Iago and drummer Johnnie Cousin (Patrick McGoohan) tries to convince Delia to front his new band, and, when that fails, sets up a complex of machinations to break up her marriage. The characters are interesting,and both the photography and performances are good (special mention to Keith Michell as the good-hearted and wronged pot-head band-manager Cass. Michell would a few years later become my own template for the royal wife-killer in one of the very first Masterpiece Theatre productions ever, the Six Wives of Henry VIII). Most surprisingly, the script is a good one, incorporating lingo of the time without becoming slave to it, and tamping the high melodrama down into a jumping pulse building to a believable climax.

On top of it all, the music running constantly behind the action transports you back in time. This is the kind of jam session where a guy who looks like your junior high science teacher sits down at the piano and you realize it's Dave Brubeck, and the cat on bass is called Mingus.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Satan's Little Helper: (2005. dir: Jeff Lieberman) Alternating between the lame, the funny, and the downright disturbing, this ultra-low-budget horror outing is strong on suspense and character, probably leaving behind a good hunk of its natural audience. When the gore came, I found it upsetting. The mime abilities of the mute villain are unsettling. Kathryn Winnick (Lagertha in the Vikings) is already a full-fledged movie star, very good in a difficult role, and Amanda Plummer brings her usual eccentricity to provide the needed depth to the maternal figure. This is a family under siege, and the women have to take charge, although not as successfully as one might like. It's also a satirical statement, not only about the debilitating power which super-desensitizing computer games wield over pliable, young minds, but also about the ready agency which we afford to the clothing a person wears. (It's Halloween, and the little boy believes that the guy dressed like Satan really is him, then the same guy dressed as Jesus really is God, then the same guy dressed as a cop... you get it. It's unsettling.) When this director gets a little money thrown his way, he's a fellow to watch.

Something in the Air: (2012. dir: Olivier Assayas) I get it. It was a brilliant time to be alive and an intellectual, the 60s and early 70s in Paris. Now every French director of an entire generation is making his film about coming of age during that heady time of anarchy in the streets, opium in the pipes, and free love everywhere else. (If you want to have a film festival, see also Phillippe Garrel's Regular Lovers and Bertolucci's the Dreamers.)

The trouble with making a movie based in your own (highly romanticized) experience is that you don't know what to leave out, so all these movies are too long. This one, Apres Mai, to use its original title, is my favorite. I particularly like the ending (very minor spoiler alert here), with the main character moving to London to work as gopher on a film about Nazis fighting dinosaurs.

The good thing about these films is the care that goes into the details. You really do feel you're walking through a different age in France. The bad part is that political anarchist kids are, probably by definition, grossly self-righteous and humourless. (And the kids in the Dreamers are just too smug to be borne. Too damned French, perhaps. I couldn't finish it, so it's possible that life cuts them down to size by the roll of the end credits.) Still, solely in the interest of time travel, these films taken together are a fascinating experience, with occasional, exhilarating highs alleviating the more consistent sense of petty annoyance.