North Face

North Face tells its true story convincingly, and even in the middle of freezing imagery with warmth. This 2008 German film, Nordwand, reminds viewers of the Brad Pitt character in Inglourious Basterds saying "You all like mountain climbing. Now you got a good how I broke my leg mountain climbing story."
On a serious tone in the mid-30s two soldiers are seen leaving service in the Nazi army to pursue their true passion of mountain climbing. The north wall of Eiger. a 13,000-plus peak in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland, is considered one of the most treacherous ascents in the world. Pikes Peak is taller and you can drive to the top. There's no road to the top of Eiger although there are elevated railway lookout posts and resort hotels where non climbers can safely observe the progress of those attempting to navigate the impossibly steep terrain. The same locale was highlighted in the 1970s action film with Clint Eastwood, The Eiger Sanction.
The climber's map shows two ice fields and various other hazards to their quest. Benno Fürmann as Toni Kurz resembles a tall and and lean Euro Viggo Mortensen while his companion Florian Lukas as Andreas Hinterstoisser exhibits a more wiry yet physical acumen. The film chronicles their climb while cutting back and forth to a pretty reporter and her editor who are writing about the event for their newspaper. She knows one of the climbers and their journey becomes personal for her. The news stories, kind of human interest pieces celebrating German athletic accomplishments, are seen as part of the Nazi propaganda machine although the point is made that these people are attempting a kind of human experience that if not spiritual is at least outside of the bounds of political opportunism.
The climbing choreography provides non-stop thrills, the kind of action beats that propel thrillers. Only here the bad guys are the elements. As their mission progresses the two heroes are bruised and weather beaten. What happened on this expedition is a matter of historical record and I won't spoil the gripping conclusion as that's likely to be unfamiliar to domestic viewers.

The Secret of Kells

The Secret of Kells has the distinction of being one of the five best animated films nominated at the recent Oscars, only unlike its Hollywood brethren (Up, Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog) it earned its impressive reputation without the kind of expensive ad campaign easy to reach with a major studio's deep pockets. Make no mistake, The Secret of Kells is a kid's film, yet it's visionary and old fashioned at the same time.
The real Secret of Kells in Ireland is an illuminated manuscript containing the four gospels. To get an idea of what an illuminated manuscript means consider that hundreds of years ago people would travel for months across the known world, just like you or I travel 20-minutes down the street to see a movie, just to look at such a book. The real Secret of Kells book from the 8th century had its cover, studded with gold and jewels torn off during a robbery but the rest of the pages, each one individually decorated, are intact. Since the 17th century the text, approximately 680 pages of calfskin, have been preserved at a church in Ireland. In the movie the mystical book is called the Book of Iona.
The animation is hand drawn although the style seems more primitive than The Princess and the Frog. Yet the story contains more meaning from a historical point of view than say How To Train Your Dragon, which like Kells has a distinct medieval tone. Instead of Vikings and dragons we get monks and cats and that's actually a kind of saving grace. The Secret of Kells isn't about slick perfection so much as it's a prime example of using visual imagery to induce physical emotion.

The Runaways

If The Runaways didn't exist somebody, Courtney Love perhaps, would have to invent them. For sure there were primal femme rockers before the Runaways hit in the 1970s. For instance Wanda Jackson an archetypal singer from the 50s can be heard on The Runaways soundtrack early on in the film while then current queens of the scene like Suzi Quatro are mentioned.
The Runaways wants to be the kind of movie that's known for getting details right rather than pleasing audience expectation. After all the two female leads played by Kristen Stewart (uncannily dead on Joan Jett) and Dakota Fanning (far exceeding anything you can imagine as Cherie Currie) have fans that weren't even born when the events depicted here take place. The Runaways captures the thrill of creating a song on the spot ("Cherry Bomb") not unlike Stone's The Doors did with "Light My Fire," only unlike that film The Runaways isn't concerned with creating mythic heroes out of its increasingly good musicians. The real fan base for The Runaways may well be rockers in their 50s and older who tire at what passes for golden oldies.
The Runaways mashes down lots of history to focus on Jett and Currie with Kim Fowley as the main support. As handled by Michael Shannon the portrayal of the abusive Fowley elicits the trembling anxiety of confronting such a vile yet creative artist combined with a nasty screen villain. Although Fowley's villainy consists of pushing the band off a creative cliff.
A more complete version of the same events are covered in a recent documentary Edgeplay, made by The Runaways later bass player Vicky Blue. That docu contains great home movie footage although the songs are all different than the ones heard in The Runaways, no doubt brought about by rights. So in Edgeplay we get video footage of The Runaways, dressed to the hilt in elastic 70s glam, doing a cover of the Velvet Underground's "Rock and Roll." But in The Runaways you get "Cherry Bomb" plus over the closing credit roll are heard "Bad Reputation" and "I Love Rock 'N Roll" although those higher priced ditties are associated with solo Joan Jett after her Runaway time. Further confirmation of the accuracy, at least in parts, of the characters on display is the documentary The Mayor of Sunset Strip about L.A. disc jockey and club manager Rodney Bingenheimer. In this film the real liife Fowley is particularly arrogant.
While were on a related film kick there's also the all but forgotten 1987 Paul Schrader film Light of Day. In this rock drama, actually an interesting genre twisting that starts out as a musical journey and ends with mom getting cancer and bringing the family together a la Terms of Endearment, Joan Jett and Michael J. Fox are brother and sister who front a once successful band. As Joan says about the headlining band while sitting backstage "They used to open for us, then they got the red costumes and now we open for them."
The Runaways is rock and roll in all its exploitive glory.

City Island

City Island exits as a narrow water community on an island maintained by the Bronx in New York City. It's here the dramedy of City Island, opening at the Angelika this week, plays out. Andy Garcia plays the prison guard paterfamilias of a dysfunctional family. His wife Julianna Margulis (in a bland Victoria Principal wig) as well as two older teens form the everybody-has-something-to-hide Rizzo clan. Emily Mortimer and Alan Arkin add some weight as people Garcia meets in an acting class.
Vince (Garcia) wants to keep his acting class undercover so he tells his wife he's playing poker. Vince's even bigger secret is bringing home a car thief on parole (a hunky Steven Strait) as a sort of live-in carpenter but not telling anyone that he thinks Strait is actually his bastard son that he abandoned from a previous relationship. The legit son has the hots for internet porn and in particular a self-proclaimed 350-pound sex goddess who just happens to live next door. The daughter has dropped out of her first year in college and works as a stripper. All kinds of comic high jinx occurs. This is the kind of film where everybody finds out the collective truth all at once in a big scene at the end.
City Island starts out slow but builds momentum if only because you think Vince will land a walk-on role in a Scorsese film for which he auditioned. City Island isn't totally boring because of adequate direction and interesting location photography that takes in the fact the Rizzos live on an island. I never really laughed out loud but the audience I saw it with roared a couple of times at the more sitcom inspired dialogue.

DVD: Hammer Film Collection

The Icons of Suspense Collection Presents Hammer Films is a 6 film set on 3 DVDs that celebrates some of the lesser known, especially to US audiences, products of Hammer Film Studios. Distributed domestically by Columbia Studios these films range from murder thrillers to robbery capers. The real surprise was not having heard of five of the films and being blown away by three of those five to an extent I wouldn't have thought possible.
I had heard of These Are the Damned, mainly because it was directed by Joseph Losey (in 1961 although not released until 1963)) in the UK after his dealing with the blacklist led to fleeing the United States years earlier. The edit of These Are the Damned in the Hammer set is the uncut version. An allegorical tale that starts off with a motorcycle gang chasing an American tourist only to take a bizarre sci-fi twist with government experiments with radiation and mutant children.
Stop Me Before I Kill! (1961) and Maniac (1963) are run of the mill B-grade thrillers albeit with great locations in seaside and rustic France.
Cash on Demand (1961) immediately grabbed hold on my senses. COD unfolds like a tense psychological drama as a bank heist occurring in real time takes place. Think of it, most films don't unwind in the length of time it takes to watch them, and when they are the mood isn't always concise. In the last several years such films would include Nick of Time (1995) or Tape (2001). More experimental yet noteworthy examples are Russian Ark (shot in one digital take) and Hitchcock's Rope. But I digress.
Cash on Demands pits a weak willed Peter Cushing as a loathsome bank manager who's blackmailed by master criminal Andre Morell. Morell threatens to kill Cushing's wife if he doesn't cooperate. The real time conceit is handled without patronizing the audience and the tension and acting keep you glued to the story.
The Snorkel (1958) just begs to be different and refuses to be pigeon holed by genres. A sociopath kills people with gas while hiding under their floorboards wearing a snorkel with hoses running to fresh air. Gradually the daughter of one of his victims comes to suspect him and yet nobody will believe her.
Never Take Candy From A Stranger (1960) seems like it could've been made yesterday because of the way the story of a child molester unfolds with a matter-of-fact documentary type feel. Set in Canada, we take the point-of-view of a new couple to town, in fact the principal of a school. Their child calmly relates how she and another girl went into so-and-so's house and, well, took their clothes off. At first the parents freak, then they debate whether to pursue charges. Against everyone's advise the case goes to trial and the old man accused is found innocent. In a gripping third act the same old man chases the girl into the woods with the intent to kill them. They certainly didn't make films like this in America in 1960 and frankly very few films nowadays can match the intensity of Never Take Candy From a Stranger. The package includes trailers for the various films all of which are in glorious black-and-white.

DVD: The Abbott and Costello Show

The Abbott and Costello Show ran for two full seasons in the early '50s yet their humor transcends its black-and-white small-screen origins. The complete series of 52 episodes, including prime bonus material that features a 1978 Milton Berle-hosted television special on the duo as well as 1940s-era home movies that Costello made with sound no less, hits the streets April 6 in a 9-DVD box set.
The action of each show is bookended with respective lean and rotund Bud Abbott and Lou Costello talking about the show in front of a theatrical curtain, while A&C's premise revolves around their comic routines. Any plot usually involves hanging on the front steps of their apartment or running into reoccurring characters. One such whacked out character is Stinky (Joe Besser) a 40 year-old man who dresses like a child in Buster Brown get up. The comedy often mines surreal levels of humor even though the presentation is stage bound. Joan Shawlee as twins serving Abbott and Costello leads to confusion with Shawlee alternating behind the kitchen's swinging door, one moment flirting with Lou and offering free cake the next calling him fatso and charging him for desert.
According to booklet notes the monkey, Bingo the Chimp, only lasted a couple of eps because he kept biting Lou. Nonetheless the chimp reaction shots comment on the human activity in a sardonic manner. Even better is an ep with a duck that does the same thing, watching Lou as he attempts to cook a chicken. Obviously because of its age the humor seems dated at times. Yet their best routines bristle with brilliance, like "Who's On First."

DVD slight return: History Channel docs

A series of DVDs from the History Channel takes your mind on the kind of diversion one gets from listening to Coast to Coast AM; a conspiratorial view of historic events. And even if the facts presented in The Real Wolfman, Holy Grail in America, and Jesse James’ Hidden Treasure were true it wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Yet the ring of verisimilitude resounds from the testament of these programs. To wit: an 18th century series of murders in the French town of Gevaudan form the basis for all subsequent fictional accounts of men who turn into animals when the moon is full; a rock with ancient runes, the Kensington Stone, was unearthed in 1898 in Minnesota and may harbor clues that prove the Templar Knights came to America before Columbus bringing with them holy relics; infamous outlaw Jesse James faked his death and funneled stolen gold into the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret Southern org that was waiting to reboot the Civil War. Like the character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance says: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”