When I Stop Dreaming

1971. Starring Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepard. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Anyone who has visited my other site, couderaywisconsin.com, knows that I have real affection for my hometown, and for small towns in general. The experience of growing up in such a small town — Couderay had a population of 113 when I lived there — is impossible to describe. As a kid, there was nowhere safer, surrounded by woods and backroads, but also by neighbors who kept an eye on you. But there was soul-crushing boredom for us kids, who watched TV and saw movies and knew of …

1954. Starring Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, like John Ford’s The Searchers, is mentioned so often as an inspiration for other films that to finally see it feels a bit like a cheat — I feel like I know what’s going to happen. But watching 207 minutes of subtitled 16th-century warfare, undoubtedly infused with much cultural significance over the head of this dull Wisconsin boy, was surprisingly entertaining. Takashi Shimura plays Kambei, recruited by desperate farmers to help protect them against a return visit by marauding bandits. The farmers are tempted to …

1965. Starring Ida Kaminska and Jozef Kroner. Directed by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos. The banality of evil is truly underrated. And the desperation and denial of human beings in challenging times remains endlessly fascinating, even when portrayed with some slapstick. In Shop on Main Street, there is plenty of desperation and denial, and evil is gathering strength every day. Antony (Jozef Kroner) likes the simple things in life, wandering around with his dog, doing the occasional carpentry job and a drink now and then. His wife complains about his idleness, his lack of ambition — why can’t he be …

1950. Starring Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark. Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz. Let me be the one-millionth blogger to note that the past week was a transformative week for America. But I think the wisest thing said this week (and said by a wiseass as a wisecrack) was Stephen Colbert’s question to a guest on the Comedy Central election night special: “So, does this mean that racism is over?” Clearly, when No Way Out was made, racism was not a thing of the past. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie that so bluntly portrays racism, and explains it as a …

2008. Starring Scott Speedman, Liv Tyler. Directed by Bryan Bertino. When I was an impressionable kid, I heard about a couple who were friends of some friends of a friend of mine who had been out parking on some country road when they ran out of gas. Being that it was late, and cold, the boy offered to walk back to town and get help, while the girl lay down to sleep, making the best of an inconvenient situation. She woke up hours later to the sound of a gentle scraping, back and forth on the car’s roof. It crossed …

1987. Starring Jenny Wright, Adrian Pasdar. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. On some level in nearly every vampire movie, you are expected to feel a little sorry for the monster. Trapped for eternity (or until some horrible ritualistic death frees them to an unclear afterlife) as a parasite who robs others of life, damned to a solitary, fugitive existence, the vampire seems to be deserve the stake that eventually awaits him. They are pale, hungry, dirty and doomed. Except for when they’re doing something horrific, they seem kind of pathetic. But what about those unfortunate victims of the vampires who are …

1988. Starring Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter Steeges, Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu. Directed by George Sluizer. What has always been frightening to me has been the unknown. Things that happen in full daylight that can’t easily be explained, someone acting just out of the ordinary, a change slight enough that would surprise you if you weren’t paying attention. That may be why The Vanishing is such a haunting film for me. The story begins as a Dutch couple is driving through France on their way to a holiday. It’s clear that their relationship is complex — they laugh, tease each other, kiss, argue. …

1941. Starring Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake. Directed by Preston Sturges. Preston Sturges deserves a national monument. I doubt that he’s going to get one at this point, so maybe I’ll just suggest that his films deserve a renewed round of appreciation. Sturges was a screenwriter and director who packed his scripts with wit, packed his scenes with his stock players, and filled his films with anarchic slapstick, comic misunderstandings and exaggerated reactions. Maybe the best place to begin with him is his masterpiece, “Sullivan’s Travels.” Joel McCrea stars as successful director John L. Sullivan, much beloved for his box-office hits …

1959. Starring Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli. Directed by Georges Franju. This Criterion Collection release includes among its features a mixed trailer of this film (albeit an English-dubbed version) and a two-headed-man low-budget horror film called The Manster. I guess they are kinda thematically related. . .but it must have been a surprise to drive-in horror fans who stayed awake for both movies. Les Yeux Sans Visage, as the French prefer, is a haunting and sad examination of medicine’s inability to repair the past. The Manster, in comparison, looks like a hoot. Pierre Brasseur plays Dr. Génessier, a surgeon whose daughter …