Year in Review: 1947

1947 contains some of my favorite films of the 1940s – but it also does seem overall to be a little weaker than other years of the decade (I’m not sure how many other years the bottom two films on this list would have made the cut) – but that’s probably my fault for not having seen a few more.

10. Boomerang (Elia Kazan)
Elia Kazan directed two films in 1947 – one that won the Best Picture Oscar, and this one, and I prefer this one. The film is a courtroom drama starring Dana Andrews as the DA of Bridgeport, Conn, a town rocked when the beloved local priest is gunned down in the street. The manhunt turns up no leads for weeks, then months on end – and then they come across a suspect, a drifter who left town around the time of the murder. The police question him for hours on end, breaking him, put forth a bunch of eyewitness testimony, and has everyone convinced they have the right man. Everyone except for Andrews of course. The film is stylishly directed by Kazan in semi-documentary fashion as it slowly builds it case and then destroys it. Andrews in fine in the lead role, but the best performance is probably by Kazan regular Lee J. Cobb as the stubborn chief of police. A gripping police procedural, following by an even more gripping courtroom drama (which make lack something in the credibility department but is still entertaining), Boomerang is one of Kazan’s better early efforts.

9. A Double Life (George Cukor)
A Double Life is about method acting before the term was really all that well known. The film stars Ronald Colman is his brilliant, Oscar winning turn as a famed Broadway actor who always takes on a little bit of the character he is portraying. Now that he is playing Othello, things are getting out of control. He drives away his wife (Signe Hasso), who is also his co-star, and as the play continues on for months on end, he becomes more jealous, more enraged – eventually leading him to murder his mistress (Shelley Winters) – although he cannot remember it. The film has noir elements – the war within the man character, the dark lighting, the murder, the contrasting worlds between the glamour of the stage and Winters pathetic lifestyle – but I’m not sure it really is noir. Director George Cukor was best known for comedies, but here he brings this dark tale to life – with more than a little help by a brilliant Colman.

8. Quai Des Orfevres (Henri-Georges Clouzut)
Henri-Georges Clouzut was a master French filmmaker, and Quai Des Orfevres is one of his best. He specialized in thrillers, and this film certainly qualifies. It stars Suzy Delair as a woman, who wants to make it as a dance hall singer, and knows that her looks are her best asset and exploits it. This makes her husband, Bernard Blier, extremely jealous. When she pushes things too far, and goes to the house of a wealthy man who wants her, Blier becomes enraged and goes the house himself – and finds his rival dead. The married couple is the most obvious suspects, and neither quite believes it when they both claim to be innocent. The film is stylishly directed by Clouzut – who was better than almost anyone other than Hitchcock at building suspense – but is also extremely well written, full of great dialogue and a plot that twists when we least expect it. Not as well known as Les Diaboliques or The Wages of Fear perhaps, but it should be.

7. Pursued (Raoul Walsh)
Raoul Walsh’s Pursued is kind of like a Western noir. Robert Mitchum stars as Jeb Rand, the adopted son of a farm family. As a child, he watched his entire family murdered in front of his eyes – and although the memory haunts him, he cannot quite remember the details. He falls in love with his adoptive sister (Teresa Wright), but his brother cannot stand him – especially when Mitchum goes off to war and comes back a hero, and their mother (Judith Anderson) insists that a third of everything belongs to Mitchum. Secrets are revealed, violence and murder through the film, and even incest is implied, although never explicitly stated. Pursued is much darker than most Westerns of the time, and perhaps the smartest thing Walsh did was to hire Mitchum, to play his hero, as he delivers a great performance. A strange movie, but one that gets under your skin.

6. Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini)
Almost immediately after WWII ended, Italian filmmakers were addressing the issues of their role in the war – both on the positive and negative sides. But Germany took decades before they would really start to address these issues. Perhaps that’s why, after making two films about Italy (Paisan and Open City), Roberto Rossellini decided to make a film set in Germany. Germany Year Zero is probably the least known of the three films – but in some ways it is my favorite. It is harsh, unrelenting, depressing film about young Edmund – a Germany boy living with his family, and five other families, living in a bombed out building in Berlin. Although still a child, he has the responsibility of trying to keep his family – including his ill father – alive. When he takes something said by an elder too literally, he becomes raked with guilt. Germany Year Zero acted as a reminder, a necessary one at the time, that despite the evil that Germany was responsible for during the war, there were innocents and children there as well – who didn’t deserve the fate they were left to.

5. Brute Force (Jules Dassin)
Before he was blacklisted, Jules Dassin specialized in dark, brooding film noirs like this one. Set in a prison, Brute Force stars Burt Lancaster as a bitter convict who is determined to break out of prison to be with his wife. He has a plan, but needs help. Standing in their way is the sadistic Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn is a wonderfully evil performance), who is just as violent as the men he is sent to guard. The movie has a flashback structure that allows us to see into the lives of the convicts before they were sent to jail, which simply adds to the tragedy of their tail. Dassin was a master stylist, and Brute Force is no exception, as he gives the film a dark, brooding, claustrophobic feel that works with the material. Yes, the social commentary is a little dated, but that doesn’t take away the effect of the film.

4. Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin)
I think many people think of Charlie Chaplin mainly as a silent film director, and then The Great Dictator, and little else. But his Monsieur Verdoux – which he wrote with Orson Welles – is one of his best films, and one of the best dark comedies of the 1940s. He plays a banker who gets fired, and in order to make money for his wife and son, marries wealthy widows and murders them. All of this is played by Chaplin in his great comic style – although there is no Little Tramp here. The film is a marvel of comedic direction by Chaplin, who keeps the movie hilarious even in scenes when he is murdering old women – no small feat. The film may try to tack on a message at the end (as the murderer claims that what did was no different from killing during wartime), but that hardly matters. What does is that for most of its running time Monsieur Verdoux is a brilliant black comedy by a great filmmaker.

3. Black Narcissus (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
I don’t think that Black Narcissus is Powell and Pressburger’s best film – but I do think it is there most beautiful one. A group of Anglican nuns travel to a remote outpost in the Himalayas to set up a hospital, a school and to try and “tame” the local populace. But things don’t go according to plan, and the nuns are drawn deeper into their surroundings, and seduced by them. Deborah Kerr gives one of her best performances as the head nun, trying to forget a failed romance back in Ireland, who becomes increasingly convinced that she is a failure. Also wonderful is Kathleen Byron, as an unstable nun who is jealous of Kerr, and who suffers a violent breakdown as a result. The Oscar winning color cinematography, by Jack Cardiff, is a wonder to behold, the direction flawless and the screenplay is full of underlying sexual tension. I said at the beginning that this isn’t Powell and Pressburger’s best film – for me that is The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp – but its damn close.

2. Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk)
In 1947, Hollywood made two major films about anti-Semitism – one won the Best Picture Oscar, and the other was this one – I prefer this one (even if the source material was about discrimination against gays, not Jews). The film is a harsh, dark, violent film noir in which a soldier is murdered simply because he is Jewish. The film doesn’t skirt the issue, but deals with it head on. The entire cast is great – but particularly the always great Robert Ryan as the murderer, who is cruel, cold and brutal and Gloria Grahame as a pathetic prostitute, although Robert Mitchum is also excellent as one of Ryan’s pals. The cinematography, by veteran J. Roy Hunt, is dark and moody, but also haunting in some of the other scenes. Crossfire isn’t much mentioned today – I think most people write it off as a message movie – and while it is that, it is so much more as well.

1. Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur)
You could argue that Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past is the greatest film noir of all time. Even if it isn’t, it is surely one of the best, and the film that may best represent the genre. Robert Mitchum stars as a seemingly normal gas station owner whose past comes back to haunt him. In a flashback, we see that Mitchum was once a PI, hired by a powerful man (Kirk Douglas) to find his girlfriend (Jane Greer) who shot him and stole $40,000. She wants the girl, and the money back. It doesn’t take Mitchum long to find Greer – but like every poor sap in a film noir, he falls in love with the one girl he shouldn’t leading him into never ending trouble and his own doom. The story is classic noir, and I love the way it unfolds slowly. But the film is more than its story. Jacques Tourner, who got his started directing low budget horror films for Val Lewton, knew how to direct dark films, and this is one of his darkest. I love the use of cigarette smoke in the film – if you ever want to point to a movie that shows cigarettes are cool and sexy, just watch Mitchum and Greer smoke in this movie. It is the performances that really make this movie though. Kirk Douglas is great as the hard nosed bad guy. Jane Greer is one the sexiest, and most troublesome, femme fatales in screen history. And then there’s Mitchum. If anyone was ever made for the dark, cynical world of film noir, than that person is Robert Mitchum who delivered lots of great performances in his career but perhaps none better than this one. This one is a masterpiece.

Just Missed The Top 10: The Bishop’s Wife (Henry Koster), Born to Kill (Robert Wise), The Farmer’s Daughter (H.C. Potter), Gentleman’s Agreement (Elia Kazan), Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway).

Notable Films Missed: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), La Terra Terma (Luchino Visconti), Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton), Odd Man Out (Carol Reed).

Oscar Winner – Best Picture & Director: Gentleman’s Agreement (Elia Kazan)
I kind of back handedly mentioned this film twice in my top ten list, saying it wasn’t as good as Kazan’s other film from this year (Boomerang) nor as good as the other film about anti-Semitism (Crossfire). And while both of those things are true, and Gentlemen’s Agreement is certainly a dated film, I am not as down on it as many critics are. For one thing, I think that you really do need to look at this film – where reporter Gregory Peck disguises himself as Jewish to expose the unspoken anti-Semitism among the upper class – from an historical perspective. Everyone told Peck not to do the film – that it would ruin his career and that no one would like him afterwards. He didn’t care, he made the film anyway. Yes, the film has dated, and doesn’t have the genre trappings of Crossfire to fall back on, but at the time it was a daring film. No, it didn’t deserve to win, but it isn’t as bad as I have heard some critics claim.

Oscar Winner – Best Actor: Ronald Colman, A Double Life
Considering how many actors there are in the Academy, you would think that more actors would win Oscars for playing actors. But other than Colman, the only others I can think of who did was Maggie Smith in California Suite, Katherine Hepburn in Morning Glory, Cate Blanchatt in The Aviator, Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway and perhaps Emil Jannings in The Last Command (he is kind of an actor in the film). But even those films weren’t so much about acting, but about the people. Colman is great is A Double Life as a very committed actor – he doesn’t know how to play a role and not take it home with him. This sounds familiar to people who have heard stories about DeNiro being Travis Bickle throughout the shooting of Taxi Driver, or everyone being scared of Daniel Day Lewis on the set of Gangs of New York. Colman nails the performance – and singlehandedly raises the level of the movie he is in.

Oscar Winner – Best Actress: Loretta Young, The Farmer’s Daughter
I have often complained that the Academy never seems to recognize comedic performances. Die of some strange disease, play mentally challenged or be in a Holocaust film, and the Oscar is yours. Make people laugh, and you don’t have a chance. So it is with mixed feelings that I come to Loretta Young’s Oscar winning performance in The Farmer’s Daughter. The film, about a simple country girl who marries a politician (Joseph Cotton), who ends up running against his hand picked candidate because she thinks he is corrupt. The film is obvious, yet enjoyable fluff, and Young is wonderful, especially in the early scenes with her thick accent. But I also have to say the very thing I always complain about – that the performance lacks a certain weight that to me would make it Oscar worthy. Young is very good in the film, but she didn’t deserve to win.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actor: Edmund Gwenn, Miracle on 34th Street
I think perhaps the reason I have never seen Miracle on 34th Street is because every December I spend most of my movie watching time catching up with films for the current year to make up my top 10 list, that I never have time to watch this – and really who wants to watch a Christmas movie in July? I really should see it, as it is an acknowledged Christmas classic, and I have to admit I am a sucker for those, so perhaps this year I will finally see the film and Gwenn’s performance as Santa. He does look the part.

Oscar Winner – Best Supporting Actress: Celeste Holm, Gentleman’s Agreement
I love Celeste Holm is many of her screen roles – although she preferred Broadway to movies – in particular her work in All About Eve. Her role in Gentlemen’s Agreement is fine – she plays a fashion editor who becomes one of Peck’s allies in his story, and perhaps more as his relationship with Dorothy Maguire grows tenuous as his assignment continues. It is a fine a role, for a great actress, and I do think that she deserves an Oscar. Just not for this performance, where although she is very good, she is not given the opportunity to be great.

Year in Review: 1938

I have to admit I am not fully satisfied with this top ten list. It isn’t that each of the 10 films on here aren’t worthy – its just that I suspect that I really should have The Citadel on this list, but the damn thing isn’t available on DVD. I held out as long as I could, hoping that I could catch on TCM one day – which I plan to do – but until then, this is my list.

10. You Can’t Take it With You (Frank Capra)
You Can’t Take it With You is an utterly delightful comedy by Frank Capra. Upper class James Stewart falls in love with Jean Arthur – the only normal member of her eccentric family. His parents disapprove of the match, but in an attempt to win them over, they are invited to meet her family – and of course everything goes to hell quickly. The cast in the movie is great – not just Stewart and Arthur, but Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer, Spring Byington and everyone else. It isn’t one of Capra’s very best films, but it is fun and breezy, expertly crafted, written and acted. You can’t ask for much more from a movie comedy.

9. Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard)
Before they turned it into the musical My Fair Lady, Pygmallion was a witty play, and a wonderful movie comedy. The story is well known – a snotty professor (Leslie Howard) who specializes in language and accents excepts the challenge of turning a cockney flower girl (Wendy Hiller) into a member of the upper crust by teaching her how to speak properly. The inherent sexism of the play aside (it really is something you have to get over when you watch classic movies – much like the casual racism), the movie is an utter delight. I often thought that Leslie Howard was a little too wussy to be a leading man – but he is perfectly suited for his role here. And Wendy Hiller is hilarious in the film – so much so that it is surprising when she works her way into your heart and breaks it. 1938 had a lot of great comedies – and this one is one of the best.

8. Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz)
To a certain extent, you can claim that Angels with Dirty Faces has a slightly hackened plot – two kids grow up as best friends, but one becomes a gangster (James Cagney) and the other becomes a priest (Pat O’Brien). Cagney saved O’Brien when they were kids – not only his life, but also from the cops, which Cagney could not outrun. Years later, Cagney returns to his old neighbourhood, although O’Brien wants to get him out of his life of crime, he is more concerned with his boys – who idolize Cagney, and seem to be heading down the same path. Corruption is exposed (Humphrey Bogart and George Bancroft are excellent as a shady lawyer and businessman), murders occur, and Cagney is sent to die – once again for protecting his friend. The plot may be well worn by now, but its description doesn’t give you any idea of the film itself – dark, tough, violent, yet with enough of a heart. This movie is Cagney’s – he really is terrific in this film, and he sells his character right down to its haunting final moments. Yes, the plot is well worn, but this film still packs a punch.

7. Holiday (George Cukor)
Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn had terrific chemistry together (just see my number 1 film from this year for further proof). Here they are perfect together. He is a self made man, who wants to live his life as a free spirit, who is conflicted between what he wants, and what his fiancé and her family expects of him. She is his fiance’s sister, who thinks he is perfect just the way he is. They are immediately drawn to each other, but of course there is that pesky business of being engaged to his sister. Of course, since we know who the movie stars are here, there is never any real mystery as to who Grant is going to end up with – but this movie isn’t about plot surprises, but about the free wheeling, witty dialogue that is great in this prime example of screwball comedy. Director George Cukor keeps things moving along splendidly and quickly right up to its inevitable conclusion. Just pure cinematic fun.

6. The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock)
During the 1930s, Alfred Hitchcock made many great thrillers – most of which were far lighter in tone than his films in the 1940s and ‘50s would be and The Lady Vanishes is no exception. The film is about two people (Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood) who meet on a train travelling through Central Europe just before the outbreak of WWII. They meet a fellow British passenger (Dame May Whitty) also returning to England – but after the train stalls, and they wake up, they discover that Whitty is nowhere to be found. Not only that, but everyone on the train thinks that they are making up the story, and that there never was an old lady aboard the train. Of course there was a lady, and of course she is being held captive in some nefarious plot (a classic Hitchcock Macguffin). The film moves along at a brisk pace, is surprising suspenseful, but also has a dose of humor to it. I do prefer darker Hitchcock, but The Lady Vanishes is top notch stuff nonetheless.

5. The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz & William Keighley)
There are some movies that are simply joyous to watch – and The Adventures of Robin Hood is certainly one of those movies. It is a film you watch as a kid and are swept away by its magic – and when you watch it as an adult, you remember what it was like to be that child. There is not a trace of cynicism in the film – no attempt to be historically accurate, or apply psychology to Robin Hood (Errol Flynn). He is simply who he is – a swash buckling adventurer who robs from the rich and gives to the poor. The film has a joyous romance between Robin and Maid Marion – Olivia De Havilland), and the villains – the great Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone twirl their mustaches with great panache. I think what is missing from all the other Robin Hood movies (especially the latest one directed by Ridley Scott which wanted to be Braveheart) is that sense of joy – of wonder that this movie pulls off effortlessly. They take everything so damned seriously.

4. Alexander Nevsky (Sergei Eisenstein)
I know that as a serious film buff, I am supposed to love Sergei Eisenstein. But, as much as I admire the skill and craft in which he assembled his films, the only one of his films I truly love is this one – and yet I’m not sure I could explain why it works for me better than the rest of them do. Perhaps it is because Alexander Nevsky is more simple – more straight forward – than Eisenstein’s other films. It focuses on Alexander (Nikolai Cherkasov) as he rallies the Russian commoners in order to defeat the invading German hordes. The film certainly does reference the politics at the time – the German soldiers were helmets not unlike the soldiers at the time (you can also see swastikas if you’re looking), and like many Soviet films at the time certainly has an anti-religion outlook. In my mind, the film contains some of Eisenstein’s best directing – particularly that final battle on the ice. No, Alexander Nevsky is not as daring as much of Eisenstein’s work, nor as groundbreaking, but to me it is more satisfying. While I admire all of Eisenstein’s films, I truly do love this one.

3. Port of Shadows (Marcel Carne)
Although not quite as famous as Le Jour Se Leve or Children of Paradise, Marcel Carne’s Port of Shadows, written by Jacques Prevert who also wrote the other films, is every bit as good. A classic example of “poetic realism”, Port of Shadows gives Jean Gabin one of his most iconic roles – as an army deserter who comes into a port town wanting to forget his past. He soon falls for the beautiful, innocent Michele Morgan, and has to protect her from the sinister Michel Simon, who is supposed to be her guardian, and the wonderful Pierre Brasseur, a sadistic little gangster. The film brings us up into the their love, and then crashes us back down into doom. The film is highly stylized by Carne – I love the wet streets, the never ending fog and the darkness that cloaks the characters. The film is surprisingly sexual as well, featuring a “sex scene” that would have been unthinkable in a Hollywood film. The performances in the film are all brilliant – I particularly love Gabin, who plays his iconic character, and the wonderful Simon, who could do just about anything. Port of Shadows is a masterpiece.

2. La Bete Humaine (Jean Renoir)
La Bete Humaine is a dark movie about sexual obsession and uncontrollably violent impulses. It stars Jean Gabin in one of his best roles as a train worker who falls in love with the beautiful Simone Simon – the wife of one of his co-workers. Gabin sees Simon and her husband commit a murder on the train, but keeps quiet because of his feelings for Simon. Simon then starts up an affair with him, trying to get him to murder her husband – who she says is cruel and sadistic – and Gabin, much like all those film noir heroes soon to be hitting American screens, is too much of a sap to she through her act. The film is darker, both visually and in terms of its content, than much of Renoir’s work, and his editing and camera work choppier. Yet it all works amazingly well, drawing us into this dark story, and making us follow it down its dark story line. Hollywood would have never made this film in 1938 – it remains one of the most disturbing films of the 1930s.

1. Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks)
Howard Hawks once criticized this – perhaps the best screwball comedy of all time – saying that the problem with the film is that everyone is so wacky that it is impossible for the audience to find an in to the film. Perhaps that is why the film bombed in 1938, and was also a critical flop. But it is also why Bringing Up Baby has lasted so long – and its reputation grown so much. Yes, everyone in the film is crazy – and that’s what makes the film so damned funny. Bringing Up Baby is a movie that never slows down, never lets the pace slacken as he follow as Cary Grant’s scientist has to try and keep up with the crazy Katherine Hepburn – and he can’t, she out of his depth, but he continues to try anyway. The film is surprisingly, visually dark for a comedy, which better brings out the underlying theme of men turning into animals. The film is full of so many wonderful touches, so many throwaway moments of perfection. The entire cast is inspired, especially Grant who was wise enough to try and play his character a little more straight laced, and let Hepburn run completely wild. It is an inspired comedy, an hilarious comedy and a study in just how to direct this type of movie to perfection. No matter what Hawks said, this is perhaps the best film of his career.

Just Missed The Top 10: Jezebel (William Wyler).

Notable Films Missed: Alexander's Ragtime Band (Henry King), The Citadel (King Vidor), Four Daughters (Michael Curtiz), Kentucky (David Butler), Test Pilot (Victor Flemming).

Oscar Winner – Picture & Director: You Can’t Take it With You (Frank Capra).
I’m not quite sure why the Academy gave You Can’t Take it With You the Best Picture and Director Oscar this year. Perhaps its because they loved Capra so much. Perhaps it was because the play on which it was based won the Pulitizer Prize, therefore this comedy was deemed important enough to win. I’m not complaining that it won – it is quite good and better than most of the other nominees I have see, but it’s odd because even back then, they didn’t much care for comedies – even ones with a cast this impressive.

Oscar Winner – Actor: Spencer Tracy, Boys Town
Boys Town is such schmaltz that I had a hard time watching it at times. True, the story of Boys Town – a place for juvenile delinquents run by Tracy’s benevolent priest – is an inspiring one, but they really lay it much too thickly in this film. Tracy is about as good as can be expected in the role – which isn’t saying much. I have often been accused of liking only dark films, which in a way is true, but hell just look at all the lighter films on my top 10 list this year. Boys Town is just too sugary sweet for me.

Oscar Winner – Actress: Bette Davis, Jezebel
The story has become a legend – Bette Davis wanted to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, but they didn’t want her, so she forced her studio buy the rights to this, and cast her in the lead. She wanted to play the stubborn Southern Belle before the other film came out. Given that history, you may expect Jezebel to be not very good – but surprisingly it is quite good. Davis does do a great job as the headstrong Southern woman, whose pride costs her the man she loves (Henry Fonda). Yes, the film, and Davis, lay on the melodrama a little too heavily (especially at the end), but she does do a great job in the role. Should she have won an Oscar? I’m not sure, but she did deserve the nomination.

Oscar Winner – Supporting Actor: Walter Brennan, Kentucky
I haven’t seen David Butler’s horse breeding drama Kentucky – which is about family resentment passed down through the generations, so I cannot comment on Walter Brennan’s performance as apparently a crochety old man (a stretch for him I’m sure). I do love Walter Brennan, but this is a man who won three acting Oscars – more than anyone except for Katherine Hepburn (who has four) and Jack Nicholson (who also has three). Brennan won three largely because at the time, they allowed the Hollywood extras to vote for the prize – and Brennan was one of the only examples of someone who worked his way up through their ranks. I haven’t much about this movie – is it even available on DVD – but will try to catch it if it ever comes on TCM.

Oscar Winner – Supporting Actress: Fay Bainter, Jezebel
Fay Bainter became the first person to be nominated in both the lead (for White Banners) and supporting category in the same year. Up against her Jezebel co-star in the lead category, she didn’t have a chance. But they did give her this award, for playing Davis’ Aunt who tries to convince her to be reasonable. It is a very good performance by Bainter. I’m not sure she should have won an Oscar for it – but undoubtedly the Academy felt with two nominations in the same year, it would simply be cruel not to give her one.

Los Angeles Kings October Recap

Record: 8-3-0
Division Rank: 1
Conference Rank: 1
Goals For: 32(Rank14)
Goals Against: 25 (Rank 5)
Powerplay: 7 for 42 (16.7%, Rank 13)
Penalty Kill: 43 for 48 (89.6%, Rank 5)
Scoring Leaders: Justin Williams (5-6-11), Jarret Stoll (4-6-10), Anze Kopitar (3-6-9), Jack Johnson (0-8-8), Dustin Brown (5-2-7), Ryan Smyth (3-4-7).
Goaltender Stats: Jonathan Quick (7-1-0, 1.84 GAA, .936 SVG). Jonathan Bernier (1-2-0, 2.68 GAA, .910 SVG).

Overall: The Month of October couldn’t have gone much better for the L.A. Kings. At the end of the month their record was 8-3-0 for a total of 16 points, which was good enough to make them the best team in the league at the end of one month of play. Now, I highly doubt that the Kings will remain on top throughout the season – for one thing, keeping up this pace will be next to impossible for them, and for another other teams are going to break out of their mini-slumps and seriously challenge them. I said at the beginning of the season I think the Kings were hoping for second in their division and fourth or fifth overall in the Western Conference – and I still thinks that holds true. The good thing about getting off to such a rapid start is that they won’t have to dig themselves out of a hole. The win-loss record is even more impressive when you consider that two of those losses came on the second half of back to back games, and the third came in the middle of a long road trip against the defending Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks. When you also consider that the Kings had a chance to win all of those games – they have yet to be blown out this season – it gives more reason for optimism.

Injuries: The lone bad spot for the Kings this season has been injuries. Matt Greene started the year on the IR, but has returned from shoulder surgery, ahead of schedule I might add, and hasn’t missed a beat. He is still a tower of strength on the blue line for the Kings. The other preseason injury was to Scott Parse, who was supposed to be a top 6 forward this year. He isn’t back yet, but should be shortly – and will be given an opportunity to prove he belongs, as I think it’s safe to say he’ll be given an opportunity alongside Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown. The biggest injury, of course, was to Drew Doughty who went out with a concussion in the first period of the fifth game of the season, and hasn’t played since. The word is he’ll be back any game now – perhaps as early as this Thursday versus the Lightning, which will be good. The good news is that the Kings looked great without him in the lineup – so imagine how good they’ll be with him.

Offense: The big question mark around this team in the off season was offense – would the Kings be able to generate enough goals. The answer, for now, seems to be yes. The second line of Smyth-Stoll-Williams has been one of the best second lines in the league, and the third line of Ponikarovsky-Handzus-Simmonds has added much needed support. The question mark remains the top line of ?-Kopitar-Brown. I put that ? there, because no one has stuck with the pair of gifted forwards yet. They started with Ryan Smyth, but he has looked great on the second line, so they likely won’t get him back. They played a few games with youngster Andrei Lotkinov, who looked strong, but he is still only 20, and whether he remains with the Kings or heads back to Manchester remains up in the air. The last few games, they have played alongside Brad Richardson, who has done a decent job – but he just isn’t skilled enough to make it his permanent home. Kopitar and Brown have still produced consistently this season – but they need a regular, skilled winger on their side. Hopefully when he returns from injury, Scott Parse can add some skill to their line. The fourth line remains up in the air. I suspect Brad Richardson will find himself back there when Parse comes back if not before. I also suspect that tough guy Kevin Westgarth (who in my mind has done nothing this season, and shouldn’t be playing) and Trevor Lewis will continue to cycle in on the right side. The big question is whether Kyle Clifford or Brayden Schenn (who got off to a great start, even without scoring, but has slowed a bit, whereas Clifford seems to be improving each game) will stick with the Kings, or be sent back to the CHL. If Parse comes back, at least one of them have to go back down, and I suspect so will Lotkinov. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re looking at a fourth line of Richardson-Schenn-Westgarth/Lewis for most of this season – but I really don’t know. The biggest thing is to find a winger to play with Kopitar and Brown – so I expect if Scott Parse either doesn’t return soon, or returns and doesn’t work out, for the rumors to continue to fly every time a gifted offensive player is apparently available.

Defense: The defense has been rock solid this year. New acquisition Willie Mitchell doesn’t seem like he has missed a beat since sitting out the entire second half of last season with concussion problems. He is a solid D-man, who rarely makes mistakes in his own zone, and is difficult to get around. Strangely, he has the Kings lone goal from a defenseman, but that was a fluke. Since Doughty has been out, Matt Greene has stepped in alongside Mitchell – and performed quite well as noted above. Jack Johnson got off to a rough start, but has really stepped up since Doughty has been hurt – his 8 assists lead the team, and although he hasn’t scored yet, it’s only a matter of time. His defensive play has gotten better the last few games as well. Rob Scuderi has been a good partner for him – allowing him to rush, and not worry so much, because like Mitchell, Scuderi is always responsible and hard to beat in his own zone. Davis Drewiskie is a defenseman who has had a hard time sticking with the Kings the past few years – but he seems to have finally come into his own – and will make a great sixth man when Doughty returns. Both Jake Muzzin, who is bound for the AHL when Doughty gets back, and Peter Harrold, have stepped up admirably with injuries, but will see little time if the defense gets back to healthy. For his part, Doughty got off to a slow start offensively – only registering 1 assist in 5 games, but his play was rock solid before he went out, and he remains their best defenseman. When he gets healthy, the Kings will get even better on the back end.

Goaltending: I think a lot of people expected Jonathan Bernier to quickly step up and make himself the number 1 goalie ahead of Jonathan Quick – but that hasn’t happened yet. Bernier has been pretty solid in three starts – despite the 1-2-0 record – but Quick has been great in his 8 games. He leads the league in wins, and has a great GAA and Save Percentage. If he keeps up this play, than Bernier will spend the entire year as the unquestioned number 2 goalie. Quick has been the MVP of many games – including the last two of the month, where the Kings easily could have lost if he hadn’t been great.

Powerplay: The powerplay was awful to start the season - 1 for 20 to be exact. Since then, they have obviously improved quite a bit, although there are still times when it looks lost. Part of the reason is not having Doughty – part of the reason is the rookies Lotkitnov and Schenn who have cycled through the lineup. But overall, they are getting much better. They are ranked 13th, but I expect them to rise to the top 10 at some point this season.

Penalty Kill: The Penalty kill has been great all season – which is why they are ranked 5th. It would be even better, except one of those 5 powerplay goals went into an empty net as the Kings tried to tie a game late. The defense has been great, the shot blocking from the forwards amazing (especially by Poni), and the goalies are making smart plays. I suspect this will be a strength for the Kings all year.

Looking Ahead: The Kings had a busy October – 11 games in 23 days to be exact. Things will be less hectic in November – 12 games in 30 days. But it shouldn’t get any easier. They start off the month against Tampa Bay and Nashville – two of the best teams in the league so far this year. They also face their first game against San Jose – who will surely be the Kings chief rival in the Pacific Division. The good news is they only have to go back to back once all month – whereas they did it three times in October. I think the Kings will look to go 8-4-0 in the month of November, but because they got off to such a rapid start, if they don’t meet that it won’t be deadly. But the Kings will want to keep things rolling – getting off to a great start means nothing if you can’t follow through on it.

DVD Review: The Oath

The Oath *** ½
Directed By: Laura Poitras.
Featuring: Abu Jandal, Salim Hamdam.

The Oath is a fascinating documentary about a man full of contradictions. Abu Jandal was Osama Bin Laden’s personal bodyguard from 1996 to 2000 – when he was arrested and put in jail in his native Yemen. Soon after 9/11, the FBI comes calling on Jandal, who tells them pretty much everything they want to know. His case has even been used as a model on how to extract information from terrorists with torture or “enhanced interrogation techniques” or whatever you want to call them. He was released in 2003 after going through the “discussion” program, where he has to take an oath that he will not be involved in terrorism again. Oaths are big in Islam, and breaking one damns one to hell. But Jandal already broke one Oath when he left Bin Laden in the first place.

The other person in the film is heard but not seen. This is Salim Hamdam, Jandal’s brother in law who he helped recruit. He was arrested and sold to the Americans, who put him in Guantanamo Bay, where he was subject to “enhanced interrogation techniques”, but didn’t give anywhere near the information Jandal did. That’s because according to just about everyone, Hamdam was little more than a paid driver for Bin Laden. He had no knowledge of operations being planned or anything else. He was paid to drive, and he did. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court – where shockingly he won – when the court ruled that what they were doing violated the Geneva Convention. Congress acted quickly and passed a law so that the Government can charge Hamdam with additional crimes – and they do – and soon his is the first case being tried by military tribunal. The result of the case hangs over the film.

Jandal seems to want to have it all. He talks to young men who are interested in becoming jihadists themselves – but his message contradicts itself from session to session – sometimes he seems to be actively recruiting the men (which would be a violation of his second oath) and other times, he seems to be cautioning them. We see him talk to numerous media outlets in the film – both Western and Arab – and he changes what he says in each interview – playing to the audience if you will. He plays to the camera of director Laura Poitras as well – and the one time he seemingly get angry is when he wants her to delete something she recorded the previous day. What did he say? That he didn’t believe that the 9/11 attack was justified as it killed civilians – he would rather meet America on the battlefield. Why is he so ashamed of that remark? Perhaps because it may threaten the media stardom he holds in Yemen.

Jandal is such a fascinating person because you can never quite nail him down on anything. The portrait that finally emerges however would be ironic when compared to Hamdam if it weren’t so tragic. Jandal it seems had a lot of knowledge of what was being tried. He met, and welcomed, each 9/11 hijacker. His job was to great new recruits when they arrived at the camps, and figure out ways to “break them down” to make them more committed. Here is a true terrorist, who we see sit with his family, drive his taxi, talk to new young men who want to martyr themselves for the cause, and everything else. Meanwhile Hamdam, the driver, sits in Guantanamo Bay.

Does Jandal belong in jail? I honestly don’t know. Since being released, he hasn’t really done anything except talk. But when talking to young men who are considering joining Al Qaeda, and by extension killing people, isn’t talking more dangerous than anything else? When asked why he didn’t take part in 9/11 or any other suicide attack, he reasons he could have done so at any time. But he felt his skills were better suited elsewhere. The Oath is a fascinating documentary – that while illuminating the flaws in Bush era policies towards terrorists and the War on Terror itself – also reminds you that there are people out there who want to destroy America. If only we could tell the difference between those who do, and those who simply drive them.

Movie Review: Inside Job

Inside Job ****
Directed By: Charles Ferguson.

It is unlikely that a more important film than Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job will be released this year. Like he did with his debut film, No End in Sight about the War on Terror, Ferguson does an excellent job of showing just what exactly happened to make the economy collapse in 2008 – and why it is likely to happen again. There is not much “new” information in this documentary – but Ferguson distills what is out there into the most important factors, and does an excellent job of making it easy to understand. Wall Street depends on the making everything so complicated that regular people will find it nearly impossible to know what is happening – but Ferguson breaks it down into terms you can understand. He then interviews people – both those who had warned of a problem, and those who contributed to it – and has them explain themselves.

Ferguson however is not Michael Moore – who delights in his stunts and in making fools of his interview subjects. Ferguson stays off camera – although we do hear him questioning his subjects – especially when they say something that he finds appallingly inaccurate and wants to either correct them, or express dismay over what he has just heard. But mainly, he just lays the facts out there for you to see.

You want to know why the subprime mortgage crisis caused such catastrophic things to happen to the economy for example. Here’s why: In the old days, the person who gave you your mortgage had a vested interest in you being able to afford it – because if you didn’t, they lost money. Now what happens is that the people, who give you a mortgage, turn around and sell that mortgage to an investment bank, so they get their money. The Investment bank than packages all these mortgages together, and sells them to investors, who because rating firms, who are paid by the investment banks, have highly rated these investments, making them seem safe. Not only that, but then the Investment Banks turn around an “insure” these mortgages with someone like AIG – meaning that if the mortgage owner defaults, they still get all their money back, and it’s just the individual investors who get screwed. On top of that, there is something called “derivatives”, which essentially means that ANYONE can take out insurance on the mortgage – so every time one mortgage is defaulted on, a firm like AIG has to pay many multiples the actual value of the house back to all those people who took out insurance on it – essentially betting that it would fail in the first place. When you hundreds of millions of dollars in bad mortgages, this adds up pretty quickly, and pretty soon, AIG has no money left, the Investment Banks have no money left, and investors have no money left – and everyone is broke.

The question becomes why this was all allowed to happen – and the answer is simple – deregulation. America used to have pretty tight control on what Investment banks were allowed to do – and no one had even heard of derivatives. Starting in the Reagan years, America started a decade’s long string of deregulations – allowing Investment Banks to engage in riskier and riskier behavior. The Banks didn’t care – they were being run by men who get paid based on current performance, not future performance, so they got away with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses when times were good – and when they collapsed, they could simply walk away.

Lest you think the film is an Anti-Republican screed, it should be pointed out that Ferguson is just as hard on Clinton as he is on Regan and George W. Bush. And he ends his film with a lengthily explanation attacking Barack Obama, who promised major reforms, and has yet to do anything. Not only that, but he has essentially appointed the same people who oversaw the last collapse to oversee the rebuilding plan – meaning that the whole cycle is beginning all over again. This is not a partisan issue – but one that affects every politician on both sides of the aisle.

Inside Job is fascinating, insightful, entertaining and infuriating in equal doses. It’s infuriating because the people responsible for the collapse – the ones who will talk to Ferguson anyway, and many won’t, don’t seem to realize the impact that they have had – and will continue to have. They don’t even see that there is a problem with the system. They continue to want no regulation, because that would inhibit the flow of capital, and in their view, that would hurt the economy. But the economy is already hurt – as Ferguson makes painfully clear. But nothing will ever change, unless the people, who have the power to change it, decide to. And since they have a vested interest in the system remaining the same, it’s likely it never will.

Movie Review: Tamara Drewe

Tamara Drewe * ½
Directed by: Stephen Frears.
Written By: Moira Buffini based on the graphic novel by Posy Simmonds.
Starring: Gemma Arterton (Tamara Drewe), Roger Allam (Nicholas Hardiment), Bill Camp (Glen McCreavy), Dominic Cooper (Ben Sergeant), Luke Evans (Andy Cobb), Tamsin Greig (Beth Hardiment), Jessica Barden (Jody Long), Charlotte Christie (Casey Shaw).

Call it critical bias if you want to, but I have to say I’m pretty damn sick and tired of movie where shallow, superficial, rich snobs prance about the English countryside having various affairs, while trying to be convinced by the filmmakers that it’s all in good fun. Stephen Frears is a wonderful director, but Tamara Drewe is the latest in this string of movies – and its incessant “cleverness” combined with the utter vapidity of all of its characters completely turned me off from the first scene onwards. There really is no one in this movie that I would want to have a cup of coffee with, let alone spend two hours watching.

Well, that’s not exactly true. Gemma Arterton’s title character Tamara Drewe is such a peak physical specimen of female beauty, that you may in fact want to watch her. She is utterly gorgeous – not rail thin like most actresses these days, there’s the slightest jiggle about her, and watching her walk in those skin tight, cutoff jean shorts in the movie (which is the heart of the ad campaign of course) is somewhat mesmerizing. Call me shallow and superficial myself if you want to, but in a movie filled with such loathsome characters – including Drewe herself – watching Arterton move and pose was the only real pleasure I derived from the film.

Despite her performances in Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia earlier this year, Arterton is not a bad actress either – as she proved earlier with The Disappearance of Alice Creed, where she did a remarkable job of maintaining her realistic character even as the movie spun out of control with plot twists. In Tamara Drewe, she really did convince me that her character was as shallow and stupid as she appears to be. So I guess that’s something. And I could say the same thing for the rest of the cast – Roger Allam is a complete asshole in the movie, and he plays it well. Dominic Cooper is a big headed rock star, and he captures that pretty perfectly as well. Luke Evans is not a bad physical specimen himself, and he seems like a lovable lunkhead. These are the three men that Drewe will take as her lovers in this movie – and the people who surround them make up the rest of the cast. Allam runs a writers retreat with his wife (Tamsin Greig, who is perhaps the only sympathetic character in the movie), which happens to be right next door to Drewe’s place – which she hires Evans to fix up. Meanwhile, two teenage girls, who spend all their time obsessing about celebrities (because there is nothing else to do in their small town), find out that Drewe has hooked up with rock star Cooper – and want to meet him. Jessica Barden is particular delights in calling Drewe Plastic (because of her admitted nose job), and fantasizing about Cooper, and finding ways to torment everyone involved.

It’s just I found it impossible to care about any of these characters – they all act purely on their most basest of instincts, with no rhyme or reason to do what they do, and completely oblivious to the consequences for their actions. Yet, for whatever reason, the film decides that Allam is worse than the rest (and I guess he is, but with these people, it’s only by a matter of degrees) and hence the only one deserving of any sort of comeuppance – and a rather grisly one at that, that I supposed I was meant to find funny (I didn’t). Meanwhile, the rest of the characters are paired up and meant to live happily ever after with each other. I suppose if there is a blessing in this, it’s that these miserable characters at least deserve each other – and can spare the rest of humanity their presence.

Perhaps I am being too hard on the film. It does appear that this is precisely the film the makers had envisioned when they set about to make it. But it’s all just so empty and shallow, the characters just so loathsome – and even worse boring – that I just could never care what happened to any of them. If they all had been in that field alongside Allam, I wouldn’t have complained in the least.

Movie Review: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest *** ½
Directed by: Daniel Alfredson.
Written By: Ulf Ryberg based on the novel by Stieg Larsson.
Starring: Michael Nyqvist (Mikael Blomkvist), Noomi Rapace (Lisbeth Salander), Lena Endre (Erika Berger), Annika Hallin (Annika Giannini), Jacob Ericksson (Christer Malm), Sofia Ledarp (Malin Erikson), Anders Ahlbom Rosendahl (Dr. Peter Teleborian), Micke Spreitz (Ronald Niedermann), Georgi Staykov (Alexander Zalachenko), Mirja Turestedt (Monica Figuerola), Niklas Falk (Edklinth), Hans Alfredson (Evert Gullberg), Lennart Hjulström (Fredrik Clinton), Jan Holmquist (Hallberg), Niklas Hjulström (Ekström), Johan Kylén (Inspector Jan Bublanski), Tanja Lorentzon (Sonja Modig), Donald Högberg (Jerker Holmberg), Magnus Krepper (Hans Faste), Michalis Koutsogiannakis (Dragan Armanskij).

The Millennium books by the late Stieg Larsson have entered pop culture like few books not written by Dan Brown seem to these days. And while some have dismissed the novels as more airport junk, not unlike Brown, I have to disagree. Yes, they are thrillers that move at a breakneck pace – but behind all that material are two characters that are complex and interesting on their own. Take away the thriller material from Robert Langdon, and you have nothing left. Take away the thrills for Blomkvist and Salander, and you still have characters you would want to get to know. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest was the third, and least of the three novels, and has now been made into the third, and least of the three movies. I think the reason why it isn’t quite as satisfying as the first two installments is because The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was a self contained thriller, and The Girl Who Played with Fire expanded on the characters whereas this third installment feels more like a long afterword for the second novel – not a lot of “new” stuff happens, but the story wasn’t quite over. As such, the thriller elements have been toned down – and yet both the book and the movie remained fascinating to me.

This third installment is the only one where you really need to know what happened before to understand it. You could have picked up the second installment, and after a little bit of initial confusion been fine, but this one if you don’t know the back-story of Lisbeth, her father, her Neanderthal half brother and everything that happened out there on that farm to end the second film, you’d simply be lost. Larsson, and now the filmmakers, do a good job at making this installment as exciting as possible – introducing a secret government agency trying to cover their own tracks – but this movie does have a lot less action in it than the first two did. This movie is a slow burn of a film leading up to the final confrontation in court between Lisbeth Salander and her accusers. But amazingly, even at two and half hours in length – the film doesn’t drag.

In find though, that other than that I am at a loss for what else to say about the movie. If you are interested in the film, you obviously know the story behind it, so a plot summary seems redundant. And the film features the same great work in front of the camera by Michael Nyqvist as Blomkvist and especially Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth. Rapace has done a remarkable job this whole series – taking a character who is very introverted, who likes to show no weakness or even much emotion to anyone – and yet making her fascinating and complex – not just a zombie. The film is directed by Daniel Alfredson, who also directed the second movie but not the first, and his visual style is adequate – nothing too fancy, but it gets the job done, and the pace is still lightning quick. I did love the final confrontation scene – that I’m sure actress Annika Hallin has been waiting for because she finally gets a chance to let loose. And Anders Ahlbom Rosendahl continues the series’ great casting job with the villainous roles as the evil shrink who helped to railroad Salander when she was a 12 year old.

The film, like the first two, gets the job done. They are extremely faithful to the source material – perhaps trimming things here and there, but the main thrust of the plot remains almost completely intact. I remain very interested in what David Fincher does with this series in the upcoming English remakes. If he simply does what the directors of these Swedish films have done – and essentially film the novels in a straight forward fashion – then it will be a missed opportunity. Because as good as these three Swedish movies have been – and they have been excellent – I think there is more than can be done with them than we’ve so far. And David Fincher, one of the best directors in the world right now, is a perfect filmmaker to do it.