by Elvis Presley (1957)

Blue Christmas is a rare sad Christmas song that was performed by tons of people but made oh so popular by the great Elvis Presley. Though, to be honest, lately I’ve grown very, very fond of the indie rock darling Bright Eyes version. Please forgive its inclusion in a phone company commercial.

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Posted on December 20, 2009

For a long time I kind of felt less than inclined to actually watch Strangers on a Train, having been so clued in on the plot from the many films that are inspired by and reference it, but there's real joy to be had, even if you know what's going to happen, in watching a Hitchcock film that's so perfectly on; there are some ingenious visual sequences here that prove again (as if it were ever disputed) that he can be an amazing master of film making with clever simplicity.

Aside from the iconic directing, the dandyish performance by Robert Walker as crazy Bruno is spectacular. In a favorite scene, he claims to be late for an appointment fully dressed in slippers and a robe, and saunters off with a smirk upstairs. There are few villains more fun to watch on screen while still maintaining a genuine feel of insanity and danger under behind their pearly whites.

Bruno's foil, the male lead (played by Farley Granger), is perfectly fine as a dumb tennis player with a reasonably pretty and politically connected new girlfriend. But again, it's the villainy role that's the juiciest: the slutty, mean-spirited and, critically, bespectacled Kasey Rogers (billed as Laura Elliott) is great as a woman that you can actually imagine yourself wanting to kill.

The film is based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, whose work is always prime for great adaptations (see the Talented Mr Ripley), though there is one major difference in the book's plot?

Here's the trailer

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Posted on August 17, 2009

Angel Heart is nothing if not divisive, managing a strange balance between campy, sly humor (DeNiro chews it up as a “Louis Cyphre” – literally, and not too hard to figure out, “Lucifer”) and a dedication to taking itself seriously as a genre piece (the genre in question being?occult noir). It's a film both extremely crude and intricate that splits audiences in half: for every person who does not care for it, you're likely to find somebody else who counts it among their favorite films.

It's overwhelmed by the controversial appearance of a very sexed up young Lisa Bonet in a very un-Cosby like role, a performance as alarming upon the film's release in 1987 as it remains in most viewers' memories. Aside from the very graphic sexuality (which nearly earned the movie an X rating), the particulars of the plot tend to have been forgotten by most viewers over the years; I recalled the mood much more vividly than any plot particulars.

It's too bad, in a way, because the story (which I was really excited to learn was based upon a novel called Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, author of Brix Pick Gray Matters) is, on one hand, pretty straight forward. It's also pretty compelling, even as the final twists and turns delve into deeper, pulpier areas. When demons reclaim souls with special effect yellow eyes that would have worked fine decades earlier, these days they're just daring you to giggle even as you hunker under the palpable dread and muck that the rest of the movie has so effectively conjured up.

When it comes to building atmosphere and creating beautiful images, director Alan Parker is a master. Mickey Rourke, who, in the late '80s still looked human, is perfect as rumpled private detective Harry Angel. Roger Ebert wrote eloquently of his performance, “Rourke occupies the center of the film like a violent unmade bed.”

You really have to give yourself over to the movie to enjoy it, and roll with both the surprises and the obvious. Once you accept it on its own terms, you'll discover an underrated cult classic that it still (at the very least) far more interesting than most new releases you're likely to come across.

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Posted on May 25, 2009