Al's Omniflick Spotlight: The Nefarious 10

I've made it a point to commemorate my blog milestones and would like to so again by celebrating my 125th posting. I thought it would be fun to list some of my favorite villains from the last 100 years of cinema. Though I abhor lists, my wife suggested the theme to me, which I embraced eagerly after considering the idea for a few moments.

The undertaking is hardly a simple task, given the staggering number of scoundrels and miscreants who populate movie history's rogue's gallery.
Any list could swell well into the hundreds but I've learned from past Spotlight posts that it's better to keep them concise and tidy.
So what criteria did I employ to make my selections? The most obvious was the visceral criterion. I chose villains I hate to love but love to fear. I also tried to stay clear of villains who might appear on an AFI list, such as Darth Vader, Norman Bates or the shark from Jaws though some of my selections might appear there as well.

I ask that female readers please overlook my inclusion of only one villain-ess, as men make up the evil bastard majority in the movie universe. Maybe I'll create a companion list in a future Spotlight devoted solely to the harpies of cinema. You can hold me to it.

My list is brief but I hope you all find it entertaining and stimulating. They appear chronologically. Please feel free to mention some of your favorites in the comments section below.

1. Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre)--From Fritz Lang's M

Fritz Lang's slithery serial killer from his 1931 classic is every bit as menacing and frightening as Hannibal Lecter and maybe more so considering his victims are young children. Peter Lorre was an outstanding casting choice. He never overplays his character and like some villains, he can be dangerously charming. His Beckert could easily make one obsessive about checking locked doors and windows and maybe never allowing one's children out in public.

2. Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer)--From George Cukor's Gaslight

Gregory Anton can mostly be credited for the term Gaslighting, which is defined as one's attempt to make another doubt one's sanity. And no one can employ the tactic quite like Gregory Anton, who nearly robs his wife Paula (beautifully played by Ingrid Bergman) of her mental health for material gain. Boyer is a cunning, malevolent dandy and very unforgettable.

3. Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin (Angela Lansbury)--From John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate

It's entirely appropriate that I would include Angela Lansbury on this list. She also happens to play Charles Boyer's accomplice in Gaslight. Here she is even more manipulative and could easily challenge Lady MacBeth for Machiavellian, scheming superiority. As the wife of Senator John Yerkes Iselin, a presidential hopeful and pawn of powerful communist forces, Mrs. Iselin is the mastermind behind his campaign and provides the brains that counter her husband's bumbling ineptitude. Angela Lansbury is brilliant as a power-mad, treasonous menace who pursues her sinister agenda with a monomaniacal fervor.

4. Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin)--From John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Liberty Valance isn't the crafty, malign individual Eleanor Shaw Iselin or Gregory Anton prove to be; his villainy is of a different flavor. He is vicious, violent and brutal and his presence in any room is enough to silence conversation and intimidate the most stalwart male specimens. His stentorian voice alone could make milk curdle. Though Jimmy Stewart's Ransom Stoddard has the guts and the resolve to face his frightening nemesis, we know he is hopelessly over-matched, outgunned, and over-powered; almost laughably so. Liberty Valance is Lee Marvin's finest performance, in my opinion, and one of John Ford's most memorable characters.

5. Sentenza/Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef)--From Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

As The Bad in the title of Sergio Leone's unforgettable western, Lee Van Cleef's character wastes little time establishing his villainy credentials. Like Liberty Valance, violence is his means to any end but unlike Valance, Sentenza/Angel Eyes' leavens his aggression with Mephistophelian guile in his fox-like pursuit of $200,000 in gold coins. He is the kind of killer who has few qualms about shooting his employer after receiving his pay or murdering without conscience all the male members of a family in their home after sitting down to share a meal with them. Even the way he slices a loaf of bread is delightfully evil. Sentenza/Angel Eyes is Van Cleef's most famous role and one he played with devilish relish.

6. Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski)--From Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Unlike the aforementioned baddies, Don Lope de Aguirre is the only character based on a real-life historic, personage. From what I've read, the real Aguirre was hardly different from the man Klaus Kinski superbly depicts in Herzog's film. As part of a Spanish expedition seeking Eldorado, the mythical city of gold, Aguirre seizes control of the campaign and breaks ties with the Spanish crown. In doing so, his lust for power and gold twists his mind and leaves the expedition terrorized and often bloodied. Kinski's maniacal gaze has few peers in cinema for conveying dangerous insanity. His convincing performance makes us believe Aguirre is the Wrath of God.

7. Noah Cross (John Huston)--From Roman Polanski's Chinatown

If there are still politicians like Noah Cross in America, we're finished as a democracy. Not only does he murder, intimidate and cheat to control the water supply in a drought-ravaged Los Angeles, he has an unholy relationship with his daughter, which rounds out his SOB profile. When he says to Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), "You may think you know what you're dealing with, but, believe me, you don't," the ominous, cryptic statement tells us Gittes has yet to see the size and scope of Cross' corrupt manipulation of the police, Angeleno politics and the real estate market. What is particularly frightening about Cross is that he is accountable to no one and unlike many of the villains that comprise this list, we learn his comeuppance is unlikely. Some evil is just too powerful to overcome.

8. Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper)--From David Lynch's Blue Velvet

Frank Booth, a nitrous oxide-inhaling, demented, violent, murderous fiend from the darkest hell, might get along famously with Liberty Valance. There are very few people he doesn't terrorize and when he first sizes up the innocent and straight-arrow Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), he wastes little time threatening him too. His sexual encounters with Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) consist of mostly nitrous oxide-fueled, sado-masochistic humiliation. He even has a few choice, hostile words for Jeffrey's taste in beer. It's hard to believe that the same man who portrayed the hippie, motorcycle-rider Billy in Easy Rider also inhabits the role of Lynch's creepiest underworld ghoul. Terrific performance of a terrifying monster.

9. Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman)--From Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven

Sometimes bad can wear a sheriff's badge. Little Bill Daggett, keeper of law and order (at least from his own definitions of those abstract concepts) in a frontier town called Big Whiskey, seems more a threat to the public peace than any of the criminals and lawbreakers who come into his muddy municipality. He is lenient to cowboys who slice up a prostitute's face but administers a vicious beating to a former gunslinger (Richard Harris) who violates his town's gun ordinance though said gunman is only guilty of having a shave. Later, his brutal whipping of Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) makes the entire town recoil and flinch. Daggett's crookedness extends literally to his housebuilding, which betrays a comic incompetence. Hackman won an Oscar for his offbeat performance as a violent man with a complicated personality. It is a well-deserved award. Little Bill Daggett is surely one of cinema's great villains.

10. Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz)--From Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds

It is often said that the devil's most potent weapon is his charm. This applies to Colonel Hans Landa; one of the most charming screen-creeps I've even seen. Waltz's performance is exceptional and he too won an Oscar for his portrayal of a sadistic Nazi on the hunt for Jews. Landa is charming until he isn't, when his expression changes from benign amity to malign humorlessness. The scene where Landa discusses the delights of apple strudel with Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) portrays this beautifully. After he waxes rhapsodic for awhile about the perfect strudel, his Luciferian venom abruptly appears as he snuffs out a cigarette in middle of the sweet and delectable-looking dessert. The second time I watched Inglorious Basterds, I almost hated to see Landa get his comeuppance; he's that magnetic.

So there is my very short list of memorable villains. I hope you enjoyed it. Sometime, though not soon, I'll assemble a list of some more bad guys (and gals). I also hope you find the time to visit or revisit some of the characters on the list. They are forever fascinating and mesmerizing.

IMDB links: M, Gaslight, The Manchurian Candidate, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Chinatown, Blue Velvet, Unforgiven and Inglorious Basterds.

Dracula Untold

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Gary Shore/Starring: Luke Evans, Dominic Cooper, Sarah Gadon and Charles Dance

First feature director Gary Shore contributes his own vampire tale to a movie sub-genre that seems to be on the wane, only with more CGI screen filler to further deaden our senses. Dracula Untold isn't the lethally tedious gore opera the dreary previews promised, but like Dracula's victims, it lacks life and blood; figuratively speaking of course.

Luke Evans plays the infamous Vlad the Impaler, a Transylvanian who was forced to fight in the oppressive Turkish army in his youth but now rules his country. And like the historical figure who shares the same name, he delights in impaling his victims.

Vlad and his people live under the constant threat of the Turks, whose aggressive tendencies demand they conscript foreign youth into their armed services. As the Turks press Vlad for soldiers, he defies them, thereby incurring the Turkish leader Mehmed's (Dominic Cooper) wrath. After Prince Vlad dispatches a Turkish unit who comes to collect, he realizes his modest army is no match for Mehmed's forces, which are sure to mobilize after the prince's defiant act.

While the Turkish army assembles for an invasion, Vlad and some of his men scale a rocky mountain-side to reconnoiter. In doing so, they come upon a cave, where something vicious and animal-like kills several of his men. Before Vlad can escape, he sees the face of the killer; a man with an old, ravaged face.

As a Turkish force prepares to invade, Vlad becomes desperate, knowing his people cannot hold out for long against a numerically superior force. Fearing for his people and his son's capture, Vlad seeks out the vampiric creature he encountered in the cave; having witnessed his extraordinary speed and ferocity. As Vlad wanders inside, the man/creature (Charles Dance) comes to him. Vlad explains that he cannot protect his people from the Turks and seeks the power to do so. The vampire explains that once he is bitten, Vlad will have a great yearning for blood and if he feeds within three days, he will become a vampire forever. Seeing few alternatives, Vlad agrees. The vampire bites him, thereby transforming him. He warns Vlad of his susceptibility to anything silver and of course, daylight. Of course the vampire hopes Vlad will feed, which will liberate him from his curse.

As the Turkish army arrives to lay siege, Vlad returns to his people and they begin to realize something is amiss. One of his men notices his aversion to sunlight and begins to grow suspicious. When the Turks assault his castle, Vlad flies to the invading army by way of a CGI-generated swarm of bats and once there, uses his superhuman agility, speed and strength to lay waste to the Turkish army. But his defense is not entirely successful, for the Turks manage to invade his castle and make off with his son while also murdering his wife Mirena (Sarah Gadon). Heartbroken and angry, Vlad relocates the survivors to a castle high in the mountains.

Mehmed holds Vlad's son captive while organizing a larger invasion force. Vlad realizes he cannot oppose Mehmed's army all alone, which necessitates transforming some of his people into vampires, but in doing so, he violates the three-day feeding prohibition, which curses him but releases the master from his undead bondage.

Gathering a large vampire force to meet the enemy, Vlad takes the initiative against the Turkish army and Mehmed, who is well aware of whom he faces.

There are few surprises beyond what the trailer offers. Though this Dracula is compelled to become a vampire for altruistic purposes, little else is of interest in the story. And of course great silliness, abetted by anachronistic clothing and armor more medieval than Renaissance, Transylvanians and Turks who more resemble Anglo-Saxons than near Middle-easterners, and Vlad's kryptonite-like weakness in the presence of silver coins leave the film languishing in a cartoonish limbo.

Dracula Untold is a film I wish had been bad; one campy enough to be funny and maybe self-deprecating. But no, it's only ordinary. It seems to have been mid-wived into existence by a corporate committee with a let's-come-up-with-a-surefire-hit-but-confine-your-ideas-to-how-we-can-make-CGI-look-bitchin' agenda.

First-time director Gary Shore can hardly be blamed for what is essentially a costume/effects fantasy. It can't be classified as horror because it isn't frightening for a moment so let's assign it the moniker Opera of the Undead.

And can any $70 million dollar film simply be without a franchise lying in wait? The studios don't even wait to see box-office revenue anymore; they simply forge ahead with sequels and hope that product familiarity takes hold. The original Star Wars spawned a trilogy because the first film was an unqualified success, which justified expenditures for a saga. Now, even box-office receipts are irrelevant. As long as a movie can sustain sequels, it must, irrespective of artistic vision or commercial success.

I guess this is good news for the cast, especially Luke Evans; whose charisma and talent could better serve a better film. If you would prefer to see the film yourself, then I advise streaming, which shouldn't really detract from its modest visual ambitions. If my take on the film has spooked you into avoiding its big-screen mode, then all the better. You could just have easily taken paper currency from your pocket and let them be carried away in a gust. That might be a better application of one's funds.

Stick that in your coffin, Drac.

The Blue Room (La Chambre Bleue)

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Mathieu Amalric/Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Lea Drucker and Stephanie Cleau

Based on the novel of the same name, The Blue Room is dark and sensuous, with a sophisticated story structure that uses a suspect's deposition as a kind of narration.

Director and star Mathieu Amalric plays Julien Gahyde; a successful manager of a farm machinery company. When we first see him, he is handcuffed and giving testimony to police. We haven't the slightest idea why but as the story proceeds, his situation becomes clearer.

We also see him early on in the naked embrace of a woman not his wife as their bodies lazily entwine. In their deceptively casual conversation that follows their passionate love-making, his lover, Esther Despierre (Stephanie Cleau) coaxes a declaration of love from him. The lovers even draw blood, as Esther bites Julien on the lip, leaving a small wound. Sometime later, when Julien steps to the window, he sees Esther's husband approaching on the street below. He dresses hastily then flees the hotel; driving home hurriedly.

Waiting at his comfortable, modern home are his wife Delphine (Lea Drucker) and his daughter, who offer mundane and safe domesticity. It is difficult to tell whether Delphine suspects Julien but if she does, she doesn't betray it.

As the story progresses, Julien's testimony reveals details about how Julien and Esther became involved. Having known Esther and her husband in their school days, she and Julien find themselves living in the same town. The lovers often see one another in the pharmacy her husband owns, which makes it difficult for Julian and Delphine to avoid Esther.

From further testimony, we learn the two devised a code by which Esther hangs a red towel outside the blue room where their trysts are consummated, to let Julien know when she is ready to see him.

The further the narrative reaches, the more we see Julien's tortured ambivalence; his love for his wife and daughter discourages him from seeing Esther, who attracts and repels him. As their relationship becomes known to the community, Esther's husband dies from a seizure that may or may not have been caused to poisoning, which leads the community to look upon the lovers suspiciously.

After the trial commences, we learn Julien's wife has also died (hence his arrest) by eating poisoned jam, which we often see her enjoying early on in the film. As the lovers arrive for the trial, a media circus erupts while a hostile crowd gathers outside the courthouse.

But the luridness of the crime isn't dwelt upon; after-all, this is French cinema. Instead, Amalric captures Julien and Esther's emotional and psychic states. How Julien sees the two women is the real focus of the film. How do the women contrast? What elusive quality does Esther offer that alternately holds Julien captive and repulses him? While Julien and Esther draw blood, both literally and figuratively from their relationship, his marriage to Delphine is by contrast bloodless and sadly lacking in passion.

Amalric handles the complexities of the narrative skillfully and seamlessly. We're slowly lured into the baffling story, mystified at how a passionate affair could lead to a character's criminal deposition. Amalric keeps us waiting patiently for the mystery to be laid bare but maintains our emotional involvement. I think Henri-Georges Clouzot; the great director of Diabolique would have really appreciated The Blue Room.

Amalric is always a fascinating actor; his wide, alert eyes are very expressive and are a character unto themselves. Both Stephanie Cleau and Lea Drucker compliment Amalric's performance beautifully; the former's queasily single-minded love for Julien leaves one feeling a small measure of revulsion while the latter's stoic resolution stimulates questions about how much she knows about her husband's infidelity and why she endures it.

The Blue Room is an engaging psychological drama but it also has its sensual moments. Amalric's film is both small and behemoth-like; it eschews sensationalism and operatic hyperbole to tell an emotionally rich story. These people aren't beautiful, romantically sentimental images on a screen; they are real people; ones markedly different than the apparitions who inhabit the contrived world of cinematic manufacture.

The Judge

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: David Dobkin/Starring Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga, Vincent D'Onofrio, Billy Bob Thornton, Leighton Meester and Dax Shepard

The Judge is thoroughly Hollywood; which is to say that it has a gimmicky premise, formulaic plot and it's limited ambitions make it excellent content for a flat screen T.V. rather than compelling cinema. There is very little here that doesn't fit into some neat narrative box and though it would like to be a moving drama, it's more a flavorless, toothless, snooze smorgasbord with marquee actors.

Robert Downey Jr. could play Hank Palmer in a coma. Palmer is a brilliant defense attorney practicing in Chicago who can keep the most vile creep from serious jail-time and/or jail. Downey specializes in portraying arrogant jerks. Hank Palmer is Tony Stark without the playful sense of humor and limitless ingenuity.

We first see Palmer discussing a particular case with his opponent in a men's room--that reliable zone of neutrality where attorneys cross verbal sabers. He seems well on his way to successfully defending another low-life without a twinge of regret or a wound to his conscience.

We also see what Palmer's unfortunate home-life is like; an imminent divorce and a semi-neglected child who he loves and hopes to connect with in time.

Palmer receives a call during the trial which necessitates a return to his hometown of Carlinville, Indiana. He is more than happy to leave his wife but is pained by the idea of having to take leave of his daughter.

Carlinville is Hollywood's every-smalltown U.S.A; the mythical, Elysian burg that exists only in the imagination of filmmakers who think people who leave such places are jerks and those who seek a more stimulating urban life are suckers. Palmer is one of those characters that mainstream movies love to pillory; the individual who hates his small town origins and has become something monstrous by embracing big city life. We've seen this con job countless times in cinema; the metropolitan professional needs to return to his smalltown roots to realize what a jackass he or she has been. It's a musty, rusty story device studio heads and producers never seem to discard.

We learn Palmer has returned to his hometown for his mother's funeral but also to reunite with his family, particularly his father Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall), with whom he shares an acrimonious relationship. His father also happens to a judge of 42 years and a crochety one at that.

But Joseph is only one of a pool of skeletons with whom Hank must contend in his hometown: an older brother Glen (Vincent D'Onofrio) whose professional baseball prospects were cut short when a car Hank was driving crashed, permanently injuring his hand and a former girlfriend Samantha Powell (Vera Farmiga), who still carries a torch for him and whose daughter may or may not be his. But his main adversary is Joseph, who can't share a cubic inch of breathable air with his son without figurative blades being drawn.

If Joseph's wife's death weren't enough, Hank learns his father has terminal cancer, which awakens some sympathy in him. And if that also weren't enough for a family to endure, Joseph takes his car out one night and either deliberately or inadvertantly runs a man riding his bike off the road, which results in the cyclist's death. The victim turns out to be a murderer Joseph once judged leniently, and who has just been released from prison. The suspicion of Joseph intentionally assaulting the man to right a wrong becomes a bone of legal contention.

Doesn't this all sound like a desperate attempt to make formula edgy and weighty? And just how dusty are the plot developments and characters? Are we surprised to find an estranged father, a pining former love and a sibling with a serious grievance all waiting for Hank in his hometown? Once the trial begins and Hank becomes his father's lawyer, the prosecuting attorney Dwight Dickham (and just how subtle is that villainous name, eh? Poor Billy Bob Thornton) is yet another character who has some issue with Hank. We learn Hank represented another social dreg in the past who Dickham wanted to put away but escaped a serious conviction. Dickham is out to even the score by proving Hank's father is a killer.

How much would one wager that the father/son conflict will be ironed out after the son tries to prove his father's innocence in court? And will Samantha and Hank mend their frayed relationship? Will Glen forgive Hank for his disabled hand and an aborted baseball career? The director and screenwriter aren't daring enough to leave any loose ends untied.

The film has a few moments that almost spark. Duvall and Downey Jr. share a few scenes where their mutual animosity takes leave of the mapped script to portray something life-like.

The court case also manages one surprise while the verdict is a win/lose outcome that brings little satisfaction to the Palmer family and to an audience expecting something more devastating.

Why the film had to be so slavishly predictable, canned and stubbornly cliched is a puzzle. Just because the story is gimmicky, doesn't mean it has to be dull. Given the exciting previews for films like Interstellar, Birdman, Inherent Vice and Fury, The Judge comes off as something grandma once stitched on a doily. It's old fashioned and offers noone in the cast a nuanced character or dialogue worth uttering. I can't imagine what Duvall and Downey found challenging about the script. Maybe both had cost-prohibitive, home improvement projects their movie salaries addressed nicely.

Of the ten or so patrons in the audience, someone actually clapped afterward. I was tempted to ask the person if the applause was sincere or sarcastic. It could have also been a case of erratic motor activity. But then again, it could have been real. If so, it might be fascinating to learn just what the person found engaging about the movie.

Nah.

Kill the Messenger

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Michael Cuesta/Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Oliver Platt, Tim Blake Nelson, Andy Garcia, Barry Pepper, Michael Sheen and Ray Liotta

Based on the late Gary Webb's book Dark Alliance, director Michael Cuesta's Kill the Messenger tells the true story of a journalist who discovers the CIA is behind Nicaraguan drug trafficking and distribution in American cities. The real meat of the story is how the CIA used the drug-sale proceeds to finance the Contras war against the communist, Nicaraguan government during the eighties. The film also tells how the government subsequently discredited the story and impugned Webb's journalistic integrity.

Jeremy Renner, who shares a producer credit, plays Gary Webb, reporter for the small time newspaper The San Jose Mercury News. His family has moved from Cleveland following a mini-scandal involving Webb and a female colleague on the staff of the local newspaper. Webb's affair with the woman ultimately led to her suicide, which he and his wife Sue (Rosemarie DeWitt) are trying to put behind them.

After writing a story about the government's illegal seizure of drug dealer property, Webb receives a call from a mysterious woman named Coral Baca (portrayed by the stunning Paz Vega), who agrees to meet him in a diner to discuss her drug dealing boyfriend's arrest. Though Coral uses Webb to help free her boyfriend, she gives him a government transcript accidentally forwarded to her which details the testimony of a powerful drug dealer named Danilo Blandon (Yul Vazquez) during a federal trial. The testimony deals indirectly with cocaine and issues of national security involving the CIA. Sensing the story's enormity and its vast implications, Webb brings his idea for a series of articles exposing the CIA's drug connection to his editor Anna Simons (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who in turn enlists executive editor Jerry Ceppos (Oliver Platt) for guidance and oversight. While the editors are naturally wary of the story's legal fallout, they are also well aware of its power and scope.

Webb follows a lead, which brings him face to face with a powerful drug dealer serving time in a Nicaraguan prison named Norwin Meneses (Andy Garcia). Meneses offers more devastating details about cocaine shipments and CIA activities. Webb's investigation leads him further to a Washington higher-up named Fred Weil (Michael Sheen) who confirms the story's validity though not without some ominous warnings.

As one might expect, the government is on Webb's heels and it isn't long before a contingent of dark suits meets with him to bully and scare the journalist into dropping the story. After making a veiled threat, Webb informs them he will print the story. Webb's gutsy decision endangers himself and his family. To facilitate the spread of his story, Webb creates a website called Dark Alliance; an online collection of articles dealing with the scandal.

The story makes an impact in the newsworld, which earns Webb interviews on major network programs and fulsome praise from his editors. But as Webb pursues the story further, his family life suffers, leading to his exile from his home. His son also becomes aware of the Cleveland affair, which causes acute resentment.

As Webb's story becomes mainstream, the government begins to respond to the story. In a cunning turnabout, the government uses the very same news media that exulted in Webb's success. The government is then able to foment anti-Webb sentiment, which helps create a perception of journalistic fraud in the public eye. It is inevitable that all the sources we see Webb interview for his expose recant their stories, leaving him unable to refute the news media and the government's claims of fraud. Webb's diminished stature weakens his editor's moral support and trust.

The hornet's nest Webb disturbs ultimately leads him to resign from his post at the San Jose Mercury News when it becomes clear he no longer carries the confidence of the editorial staff and the paper's legal counsel.

The whole story of Gary Webb and his muckraking article, while fascinating and important, seems out of place in twenty-first century movie houses. There is a whiff of datedness to it. In this new world of terrorist anxieties and Middle-East upheaval, a story about CIA turpitude in Central America seems almost irrelevant. Though the film subtitles inform us that the government finally released documents confirming Webb's story in 1998, the general public was blissfully distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It seems that even a mere decade after the events Webb described in his articles, the public was already inured to their shocking implications. If only Webb had posted his story in 1990 and this film had been made soon after, both would have made a more powerful statement.

Cuesta's movie is hardly dull or bad; it is actually quite interesting but this isn't the era of All the President's Men; we're no longer shocked to learn the CIA or the government has had its grubby hands in filth. Vietnam, Watergate and the Iran/Contra affair have erased any lingering doubts we may still have as to our government's capacity for dishonesty and hypocrisy.

The terrific performances, led by an excellent Jeremy Renner, are many, even when screentime is at a premium for some castmembers. Oliver Platt and Mary Elizbeth Winstead are excellent, as is Rosemarie DeWitt. Michael Sheen, Barry Pepper and Ray Liotta are onscreen for a fly's life but they are memorable. Cuesta also keeps the film's pace steady but urgent. Tension is established and sustained

I liked the way the disclosure of Webb's Cleveland affair is made a kind of moral parallel to the exposure of the CIA's immoral operations. Everyone has some dirt under their carpet but to what degree one is accountable for their wrongs, personal or public, either redeems them or, in the CIA's case, leaves them condemned.

I admire Jeremy Renner for wanting to tell Gary Webb's story. I would hate for Hollywood to stop making movies about muckrakers and I would hate it more if said muckrakers stopped being nosy about government malfeasance. The movie is merely a case of too much too late.

The government report must have given Webb a small sense of satisfaction but even up to his death, he still had his detractors and critics. The subtitles tell us his death in 2004 was sucide though he sustained two bullet wounds to the back of his head (!).

Though well-depicted, well-directed and exceptionally acted, Kill the Messenger left me feeling I had just tried on a shirt I wore back in high school, only to find it out of style and hopelessly ill-fitting. If awards were doled out for meaningful intentions, producer and star Jeremy Renner could win a tall, golden statue, but he'll have to settle and hope for healthy box-office instead.

Annabelle

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: John R. Leonetti/Starring: Annabelle Wallis, Ward Horton, Alfre Woodard and Tony Amendola

Annabelle is a spin-off of 2013's The Conjuring; one of the very few excellently-crafted horror films I've seen in recent years. In that film, Ed and Lorraine Warren (well-played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), who are real life paranormal investigators and collectors of cursed artifacts, figure prominently. An object they made a part of their sinister collection is a doll that also appeared in the film; one with a very creepy and unprepossessing face named Annabelle. Ed and Lorraine do not make an appearance in the spin-off, but the doll assumes a more significant role; one quite unnerving and ultimately frightening.

Director John R. Leonetti, who acquitted himself exceptionally well on The Conjuring as cinematographer, draws from horror cinema's bottomless bag of scare tactics and liberally borrows elements from a host of other films to tell his own. I have no problem with sampling and borrowing and out-and-out theft if the filmmakers can make old seem new. Leonetti ably succeeds; sustaining an atmosphere of dread and suspense without leaving one feeling manipulated and mentally-mugged.

Annabelle Wallis (her first name a eery coincidence, eh?) and Ward Horton play married couple Mia and John; a young-ish couple more or less starting out who are expecting their first child. While Mia stays at home, her husband spends his days working toward his residency. The couple is quite unextraordinary; church-going, bland and harmless. They are a Norman Rockwell portrait of domestic tranquility; one that contrasts sharply with the Manson family T.V. news item Mia watches one evening while she sews. The contrast seems to be some kind of commentary on the ideal of family in American culture; where the sunny notion of 1950s' domestic bliss is at almost hysterical odds with reality. This blemished concept of family is one of the more significant themes in Annabelle. The Manson news story not only establishes time and place in the narrative but also serves as sinister foreshadowing.

As a gift to Mia, John buys a doll for her collection which she places on the shelf.
One night, while the couple sleeps, Mia hears a commotion coming from the home next door. As she looks out of her window into the window of her neighbor's bedroom, she is witness to a horrific murder as their fellow, church-going friends are stabbed to death by a madman. Rousing John from slumber, Mia remains in the house while her husband runs next door. In the squirmy vulnerability of her wait, Mia hears a woman whisper "I love your dolly." Mia turns to see a scary-looking woman holding her doll and while her attention is riveted on the woman, she is attacked from behind by the man she saw attack her neighbors. In the midst of the violent struggle, the man stabs Mia in her swollen abdomen; jeopardizing the baby's life. John returns to fight off the man and before the woman can further menace the couple, she is shot dead by a cop who arrives on the scene. As the woman lay dying with the doll in her arms, a trickle of her blood seeps into the doll's eye socket.

In the days following the traumatic event, Mia recovers in the hospital; her unborn child miraculously unharmed. When she returns home, strange things begin to happen inside the house, specifically with the doll. And as stranger, more disturbing incidents begin to unfold, it becomes increasingly clear to Mia that the doll carries some kind of curse. She asks her husband to dispose of it, which he does.

Shortly thereafter, Mia and John learn that the couple who murdered the neighbors and invaded their home were members of a satanic cult called The Disciples of the Ram. From a T.V. news report, Mia also learns the woman who dripped blood onto and into the doll's body was named Annabelle Higgins, who murdered her own parents with her boyfriend's help. After a frightening occurence involving a fire, which starts after a container of Jiffy-Pop explodes on the stove when the knobs are mysteriously turned on, Mia persuades her husband that they move.

After John and Mia relocate to a new residence in an apartment building, she finds the doll is among the items moved from their old home. Rather than discard it, Mia decides to keep it (very puzzling decision). And after the strange and frightening incidents begin to reoccur, Mia and John seek out the counsel of their priest (Tony Amendola) who informs them dolls can be conduits for malign spirits, though he suggests their tormentor is more a demon than ghost. Mia re-establishes contact with the detective in charge of the Annabelle Higgins case and discovers the couple were seeking to sacrifice someone with the intention of summoning a demon. Eventually, it becomes evident to Mia that Annbelle Higgins' spirit is inhabiting the doll.

When the priest attempts to place the doll inside the sacred confines of his church, he is violently repelled, which leaves him hospitalized. A friend of Mia's named Evelyn (Alfre Woodard), who owns the bookstore next door to her building, learns of her problem and has her own violent run-in with the demon after trying to come to Mia's aid. This leads to a climax that borrows heavily, if not completely, from The Exorcist.

One could almost check off the countless horror movie allusions and stylistic nods that contribute to Annabelle but they are appropriated with skill and imagination.

Some shopworn elements of the horror genre just won't die. Once again, a character in a horror movie thumbs an old book on demons and witchcraft to learn more about the nether-creep menacing her (I wish I could find these books; they always look very interesting) and an arcane symbol (always a symbol!) left on a wall in Mia's home turns out to be the demon's sigil (we've never seen that before, have we?).

The movie also has its share of lapses in logic but overall, it is satisfying horror film and a worthy "prequel" to The Conjuring.

Annabelle Wallis deserves the lion's share of credit for making the film work. She plays Mia with restraint, never succumbing to the hysterics of horror movie acting. Her performance lends the film a great deal of credibility.

In the final shot, we see the doll resting safely (we assume) in Ed and Lorraine Warren's collection. Will other artifacts inspire more films? Could be fun. In the meantime, if you happen to be at a garage sale, you might want to resist the homeowner's eager and insistent exhortations to buy a doll. It just might save your life.

Gone Girl

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: David Fincher/Starring: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Patrick Fugit and Kim Dickens

If you're like me, you may be one of five people in our solar system who hasn't read Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. It might not be surprising to learn a Yanomamo indian living within the densest tangles of the Amazon rainforest has read it. For us five who haven't, we have David Fincher's adaptation.

Fincher has a proven track record with the dark and edgy. But even the talent behind the terrific The Social Network and Zodiac can stumble into silliness, like the hard-to-take-seriously Fight Club and the pointless, time-wasting The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. So in which camp does Gone Girl lie? It pains me to say it's settled comfortably among the latter, which is too bad, considering the film version of the novel has been one of the most anticipated adaptations in recent memory.

How does the film go so wrong? For starters, the first half-hour to forty-five minutes contains the most unnatural sounding, glib dialogue I've heard in awhile. It doesn't help that Fincher can't get the actors to overcome the deficiencies. It also doesn't help that Rosamund Pike, who I assume was trying to lend her character an air of mystery, speaks in such a low, flat voice that not only sounded unnatural but was distracting. It's difficult to establish character when the main female protagonist's utterances calls to mind the Siri voice heard on electronic devices.

It seems almost superfluous to offer a movie synopsis when the plot is probably familiar to everyone in all hemispheres. It is also necessary to say very little because even a small helping of the plot will give most of the movie away.

Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne, a former journalist and college professor who finds himself unemployed and without prospects though he owns a bar which was financed with a chunk of his wife's trust fund. Nick's seemingly perfect mate is Amy (the lovely Rosamund Pike), whose parents are authors of a famous children's series.

When the story begins, we see Nick visiting his watering-hole, where his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) tends bar. As they banter and jive, Nick discusses his five-year anniversary with Amy before he returns home. Upon entering his house, he finds a living room table overturned and broken. Nick phones the police, who arrive soon after. Following Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) and her partner Jim Gilpin's (Patrick Fugit) investigation of the premises, Amy is presumed kidnapped. Among the clues left in the house is a white envelope that reads "clue 1" which Nick explains is part of an anniversary treasure hunt of sorts which was conceived by his wife. The white envelope is one of several the detectives and Nick will find over the course of the story. The envelopes will eventually incriminate him in some manner or another.

As the investigation unfolds, Amy's disappearance becomes fodder for the national media, particularly for tabloidy shows that devour sensational news stories. Initially supportive, the public begins to suspect Nick after a photo begins to circulate of himself posing with a poster of his wife; one that shows him grinning incongruently. Why anyone would be stupid enough to allow themselves to grin in such a situation and be photographed robs the plot of credibility and the film of some logic.

As the public turns against Nick and his guilt becomes a given in their perception, he is forced to hire a hot-shot lawyer who specializes in defending creeps and lowlifes named Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry). Unable to afford the $100,000 retainer fee, Bolt agrees to represent him anyway.

As the anti-Nick sentiment reaches a feverish pitch, evidence accumulates to warrant his arrest. But a dramatic plot-turn reveals his wife is alive and well and hardly the victim of a kidnapping. It becomes abundantly clear she is plotting Nick's downfall.

All through the film, we hear Amy's voice as she narrates a personal diary she keeps which will, like the white envelopes, incriminate Nick and is yet another carefully crafted scheme to ruin him. Amy's history of plotting against her boyfriends and lovers soon comes to light as Nick begins to doubt his wife's kidnapping. At this point in the film, Amy is no longer the victim but a cunning, conniving hellcat who will leave no vindictive stone unturned to send her husband behind bars or to the gallows.

I found her motives somewhat weak and unconvincing. Why she bears a passionate hatred for men seems a little vague and the psychological history that fuels her anger is feeble. I'm sure it comes across plausibly in the novel but Flynn's script doesn't address the issues cogently.

The movie gets better as the story progresses after the terrible dialogue exhausts itself. But it doesn't get much better; only more heated. Much rides on Rosamund Pike's performance, in which she plays a calculating, disturbed psychotic reasonably well but there is something almost vaudevillian about it as if it's all played for laughs. Maybe that's Fincher's intention.

Only the ending is a surprise, as we get some sense of the weird, psychological bond Amy and Nick share though it barely clears the logic crossbar.

I really liked Kim Dickens performance as the tough cop and Tyler Perry in the lawyer role. It's nice to see him play something other than Medea and play it well.

It is interesting to note that apart from Tanner Bolt, all the people who impact Nick's life are women: the lead investigator, the two T.V. personalities who interview Nick, his sister who runs his bar, his mistress and Amy herself. What kind of statement are Flynn--and indirectly Fincher--making about women in society? Is it some kind of message about the transfer of power between the sexes? Nick appears as mostly passive next to the various female personalities. All the women challenge or threaten him at some point in the film, which is also quite interesting. Even the redneck couple who menace and rob Amy are exhorted to do so by the woman, who freely admits her culpability; the husband is merely an instrument. Nick's puzzling decision at the film's end suggests his wife holds a greater influence over him than we're led to believe.

The film didn't leave me with a feeling of unease the way Zodiac or The Social Network did. It made me chuckle derisively a bit and I shook my head, feeling a little perplexed but it elicited little else. If it isn't a good film, at least the ending avoids a happy, blandly conventional resolution.

Flynn has little to worry about; failed adaptations never reflect negatively on the novels. Gone Girl book sales should be remain fairly robust. Maybe I'll give the book a try. Maybe I'll ask the Yanomamo indians if they've seen the movie.