ROMAN POLANSKI

It is often difficult to separate a person’s talent from his personal life. “Controversial” doesn’t even begin to cover director Roman Polanski., still directing at age 87. . He avoided Nazi concentration camps during World War II by hiding with sympathetic Catholic families. In 1969 his wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered in his home by the Charles Manson gang. Then he was convicted of the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl and fled to Europe. He has fought extradition and refused to return to America. 

So, he did not return to the U.S. to accept his Oscar for Best Director for The Pianist (2002). This splendid film stars Adrien Brody as a world-class concert pianist who hides from the Nazis throughout the war. The set pieces of a ravaged Warsaw are amazing, and this memorable film is accomplished with very little dialogue. It is a directorial masterpiece. 

Almost 50 years ago, Mr. Polanski directed Chinatown (1974), with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in one of the best private-eye films every made. This noirish classic holds up really well with many scenes that ring through the years. 

Even further back, Roman Polanski brought us Rosemary’s Baby (1968), a film so scary I still get a chill just writing about it. If you think these modern teen-age slasher flicks are scary, check out this story of gradually increasing doom and hold onto your socks.

Tess (1980) is a superb rendering of Thomas Hardy’s classic Tess of the D’Urbervilles, with Natasha Kinski (later Polanski’s wife) in the title role, a girl trying to claw her way up from poverty to the upper class.  

Carnage (2011) features four fine actors. John C. Reilly, Christopher Waitz, Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet. They are the parents of two boys who got into a playground fight in which one got slightly hurt. The parents meet to sort things out and things go from okay to not. 

The Ghost Writer (2011) stars Ewan MacGregor, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton, Pierce Brosnan and Olivia Williams. It involves a ghost writer hired to write the biography of a famous politician.  It is too incredibly complicated to outline here, but director Polanski keeps it understandable and moving along. 

Some of Mr. Polanski’s other films of note include Knife In The Water (1958, a Polish menage a trois both thrilling and scary), Frantic (1988, with Harrison Ford as an American diplomat whose wife is the victim of an unlikely kidnaping), and Death and the Maiden (1998) with Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver in another directorial gem reproduced from a very claustrophobic play. Alas, Polanski’s most recent effort, An Officer and a Spy (2019) just isn’t very good. 

By the way, there are definitely two sides to the extradition controversy. For a balanced view, check out Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008).

All of the films in this column are available on DVD. All are strictly for grown-ups.

                                 GOOD MOVIES YOU MAY NEVER HAVE HEARD OF

                                                             Part 2

Here’s another batch of really good films that slipped under the radar when they came out.

Philomena (2013) stars the legendary Judi Dench. As an Irish teenager Philomena became pregnant and was sent to a convent for unwed mothers. She had a little boy and they lived together for three years. Then the nuns found an adoptive family, he left with them, and she never saw him again. The movie is about her search for her boy after 40 plus years of separation. Steve Coogan is quite good as a journalist helping her look for her son. Movies don’t get much better than this. 

The Class (2009) is a fine French film about a high school teacher who gets into trouble from an offhand remark he makes during a class .With all the hubub about political correctness, it seems right out of the headlines though it is 12 years old. It manages to balance precisely on the edge between sympathy for the guy and understanding what all the fuss is about. The teacher is played by Francois Begaudeau, a real school teacher who wrote the screenplay. The students are not professional actors, and you feel you are in the classroom with them. It should probably be required viewing for every educator. 

Ruby Sparks (2012) is a wonder. Written by and starring Zoe Kazan, it features Paul Dano as a struggling novelist. He had a big hit with his first book but is now completely blocked from writing another. His therapist (Elliott Gould) says to write a page about someone who likes his dog. The writer has a dream in which he meets Ruby Sparks in the park and she says she likes his dog. So he starts writing about her. Then one day she shows up in his kitchen, possibly as a real person. That’s all I’m going to tell you!

Yet another French entry in this list is the enigmatic and altogether engaging Certified Copy (2011). The marvelous Juliette Binoche meets British unknown William Shimell, who has recently published a book about the difference between originals and copies in the world of art. They agree to meet the next day and go to lunch together in a small Tuscan village. Then the fun starts. Did they really just meet? Or is something else going on here? It is fun to try to figure out, and your guess is as good as any. 

The Square (2010) is from Australia. It is a classic “one bad thing always leads to something worse” movie. A construction company owner tries to hide an affair he is having with the wife of an employee. They hire a thug to burn down her house while they are at a company Christmas party to provide an alibi. Their perfect plan goes horribly wrong, and like the Tar Baby, the more they struggle to right things the worse it gets. 

All of the movies in this article are available on DVD, though some of them may be hard to find. All are for adults. 

                                GOOD MOVIES YOU MAY NEVER HAVE HEARD OF

                                                                    Part 1

This is the first of a projected series of articles featuring really good movies that didn’t get much play or recognition. 

Julianne Moore is always interesting, and is at the top of her game as The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio.  She tries to keep things running in a house with too many children and not enough money by entering contests. She is quite good at it, though most of the prizes are small. Older viewers will remember this time in American history when slogan-writing and catchphrase invention could win you big prizes. Woody Harrelson is good as always as the haphazard husband who works a little and drinks a lot. 

I absolutely loved Every Little Step; it was my number 1 movie of 2009. Okay, you have to also love the play A Chorus Line (which I obviously do). This is a sterling documentary about the try-outs for the revival of the play. The stories of the dancers and the triumph and tragedy of the selections are riveting. By the way, the movie of A Chorus Line is not really very good. 

Beezus is the nickname Ramona stuck her older sister with (mispronouncing her real name, Beatrice) in Ramona and Beezus.  Eleven-year-old Joey King is just completely charming as Ramona, a well-intentioned little girl whose every plan goes terribly (and humorously) wrong. Selena Gomez is well-cast as the long-suffering older sister. I was prepared to hate this bit of fluff but wound up really liking it. 

I just love perfect crime movies and Love Crime is a pip. It’s a French film, and most of the actors are French, but Brit Kristin Scott Thomas blends in perfectly as the boss from Hell. She employs Isabelle Guerin and greatly enjoys humiliating and embarrassing the young woman. There is a twist and another twist (my lips are sealed).

Once upon a time there was an obscure American folk singer named Sixto Rodriguez. He was known only in a small area of Detroit. He got a couple of good reviews and made a couple of CDs that flopped. He was a loner, nearly a hermit. Incredibly, his songs became mega-hits in, of all places, South Africa. Searching For Sugar Man is the story of how his fans in South Africa tracked him down and brought him to their country.  He was immediately a huge star, much to the surprise of his few fans back in Detroit and to himself. 

All of the movies in this article are available on DVD but may be hard to find. All except Love Crime are fine for all ages, factoring in boredom quotient for littlies. 

                                                            HOLD THE PHONE

Sometimes I think that not only does everyone have a cell phone, they are all talking on them at the same time. They say lots of young people don’t even bother with land line phones any more (so how will we find them in the phone book?) Well, there haven’t always been mobile phones. I thought it would be fun to look at some very good movies that depend on the plot device of a land line phone. Warning to young people- (to me that’s anyone under 50) you must keep thinking: THERE ARE NO CELL PHONES!

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) is one heckuva thriller written, scored and  directed by not-yet-famous John Carpenter with actors you’ve never heard of. Precinct 13 in Los Angeles is scheduled for closing and has only a skeleton staff. But cops from there kill several members of the Street Thunder gang. The gang vows revenge and launches an all-out attack on the building. They cut the phone lines and the electricity and those inside must fend for themselves as there’s no way to summons help. For want of a phone, okay? There is a 2005 version with Lawrence Fishburne and in that one somehow the cell phones are jammed (?). Anyway, it’s not as good. 

Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder (1954) is a cracker jack suspenser with Ray Milland, Grace Kelly and Bob Cummings. The plot hangs on a telephone call to pull  Ms. Kelly into the living room where the killer awaits. But things do not go as planned because the phone call is mistimed. The story also depends on a hidden key and who does or doesn’t know where it is. That’s all I’ll tell!

The phone gimmick in The Spiral Staircase (1946) is not that the phone doesn’t work, but that the endangered young woman (Dorothy McGuire) in the creepy old house is unable to speak because she’s been traumatized by the death of her parents. As the killer advances, the suspense builds. For God’s sake, say something!

The Lives of Others (2006) is a German film made well after the wall came down. It chronicles the East German Secret Police’s tapping the phones of a prominent playwright and keeping him under surveillance. He knows they’re doing this and his efforts to avoid their attention is riveting. 

The Telephone (1988) features Whoopi Goldberg who may or may not be making a bunch of prank calls on her land line phone, and the phone company’s efforts to repossess her phone. It’s not that good, but I’m running out of phone movies. 

All of the films in this article are available on DVD. All are for adults.