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Upload (2020) s01e04 – The Sex Suit

Watching “Upload” do sexy is… uncomfortable. And not just because Allegra Edwards is loathsome and the episode frequently promises she’ll not be around then keeps bringing her back around. She and lead Robbie Amell are in therapy now. They still haven’t had sex because Edwards thinks the suit is gross.

So at some point between last episode and this episode, they had that talk. Maybe it was cut for time. I doubt it but maybe.

Anyway, the big sexy moment in the episode is when Andy Allo has to assist Edwards and Amell when they’re getting jiggy. Turns out part of customer service means giving the Upload digital people… digital arousal assistance.

Do Allo and Amell really have a moment or is she just playing him or is it just part of her job… Eh. Allo and Amell are so obviously destined for romantic collision, even if the show just denies that development it’s still just playing a trope so it’s hard to get particularly invested in any of the episodic roadblocks.

So even though the episode’s often better than usual—script by Aasia LaShay Bullock—there’s no way to get really invested in Amell and Edwards’s therapy exercises or Amell telling Allo he doesn’t really love Edwards anymore and he wishes she wouldn’t have sex with him and on and on. It’s just runtime fodder. “Upload” is full of it.

There are some decent jokes and less Kevin Bigley, which is good, and more Josh Banday (as the night shift assistant), which is also good. Though Banday’s just there. He’s got nothing to do. Banday meanwhile gets material and is mediocre at it. I liked Bigley in the pilot episode too… he’s just pointless. “Upload” can’t even pretend its supporting cast and subplots are actually important, not even when they figure into murder plots.

The show’s a great example of streaming’s very low bar to clear acceptable.

Upload (2020) s01e03 – The Funeral

This episode opens with a Rupert “Tilford” (cough, cough, Murdoch)—played by Creed from “The Office”—paying to get his Upload mind put into a clone body. And he dies. More than any episode so far, this episode of “Upload” felt a little like they were trying for Robocop humor.

It’s better than Robocop 3 at least.

But we also find out Robbie Amell and Allegra Edwards were counting on that process—called, obviously, Download—to get Amell resurrected.

Someone should really work out how “Upload,” “Westworld,” and “Devs” exist in the same universe.

So the Rupert stuff comes up again later on in the episode, which is set at Amell’s funeral, where we find out he doesn’t have the friends he thought he had but his college girlfriends all come out to see him because he was the only MIT bro with any play.

The girlfriends aren’t there for Amell, rather his virtual assistant, Andy Allo. Well, wait, she’s his actual assistant, just for his virtual life. She goes to his funeral because she’s started to crush on him. And gets to see fiancée Edwards threaten to delete Amell from existence because she owns his account after all.

We get to check in with some of Amell’s family, but not really. The funeral scene is about Edwards being terrible and being terrible to Amell and Allo seeing it all. “Upload” has some pretty basic plotting.

Though, given that basic plotting, it’s surprising when the episode forgets to resolve the subplot about Edwards getting a sex suit so she and Amell can have some private time after his funeral. It’s not ghoulish, it’s hip.

But she thinks the suits are gross and didn’t get one but never tells Amell. Or never tells him in front of the cameras so it just seems like a plot hole.

The best thing in the episode is probably Elizabeth Bowen, as Amell’s cousin who’s investigating his death. She’s weird and funny about it, whereas the other weirdness goes without much comment.

I mean, the episode is all Edwards shrieking. There’s only so much it could ever do.

To Die For (1995, Gus Van Sant)

To Die For’s got one of those effortlessly smooth but obviously intricate narrative structures. Screenwriter Buck Henry is adapting a novel, which author Joyce Maynard structured with many different first person accounts. Van Sant and Henry and editor Curtiss Clayton keep the sense of different perspectives—including some interview sessions where someone is obviously making a documentary, maybe not even necessarily the same documentary between interviewees—but the film’s never actually first person. There’s always a narrative distance. Because To Die For only shows so much of its characters. They’re all still mysteries at the end. The film’s got a very definite, very dark sense of humor and it’s never clear just how much Van Sant and Henry are bending reality.

For example, Tim Hopper and Michael Rispoli’s almost entirely dialogue-free police detectives. They’re absurdly intense, emphasis on the absurd. Only Van Sant never plays them for laughs. They cut through the film, their absurd unreality somehow realer than what’s been going on in the film.

To Die For is about cable access weatherperson Nicole Kidman seducing a teenage boy (Joaquin Phoenix) to kill her husband (Matt Dillon). The first act of the movie covers the basic setup and then how Kidman and Dillon got together and how their families clash. Dillon’s Italian, Kidman’s a WASP. It’s quite wonderfully never clear what attracted Kidman to Dillon. Apparently she really did “go wild” for him, but then he got in the way of her career. In addition to her nightly weather duties, Kidman’s making a documentary about local teenagers, including Phoenix. Once Dillon decides it’s time for Kidman to start popping out babies—he gave her a year—well, Kidman starts having sex (apparently a lot of sex, which isn’t initially clear and adds a bunch of layers to things in hindsight) with Phoenix, the end plan being getting Phoenix to kill Dillon.

The film almost entirely shows Kidman’s planning the murder from Phoenix and Alison Folland’s perspectives. Folland is one of the other teenagers in the documentary. Kidman’s documentary, not the pseudo-documentary narrative device. Casey Affleck is the third kid. Folland just wants a friend, Phoenix is in love, Affleck is an ass. They’re all poor, all neglected or abused, all dumb. Affleck gets assigned the project (by Henry, who cameos as their school teacher), but Folland and Phoenix sign up. They’re the only two in the class who don’t see Kidman is a little too much. There’s something clearly off about her.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, that off is she’s an undiagnosed sociopath, something no one suspects—including her—because her parents have spoiled her for so long. Their pampering of Kidman hid it, which the film momentarily and brilliantly addresses when Kidman freaks out dad Kurtwood Smith, who until then seems like it’s completely aware of her peculiar personality. Kidman’s obsessed with wanting to be a newscaster, which motivates every action until she realizes she doesn’t have to be a newscaster to be famous. It’s another of the film’s awesome little character development moments, when Van Sant and Henry reveal they’ve been discreetly layering in an arc, using the pseudo-documentary structure to give it some extra kick. Sometimes for humor (not laughs, humor), sometimes just because.

There are seven concurrent narrative layers. They all take place sometime after the events. There’s Illeana Douglas (as Dillon’s sister who always knew Kidman was bad news); she’s being interview for a documentary. There’s Phoenix in prison. There’s Folland not in prison. Then there’s the parents on a daytime talk show—just the straight talk show footage—Smith and Holland Taylor as Kidman’s parents, Dan Hedaya and Maria Tucci as Dillon’s. Susan Traylor plays Kidman’s sister, who never has anything to say but always has this knowing look. There’s Wayne Knight as Kidman’s boss at the TV station. Then there are the flashbacks. And, finally, there’s Kidman narrating to the camera.

Only she’s not confessing so her material is very different. The reality she presents is very different from what we see transpire. Maybe it’s never clear with Taylor, but Smith seems to know Kidman’s guilty.

Listing the best performances in the film is basically just like listing the cast. Kidman and Phoenix are both phenomenal. And even though they have a bunch of scenes together and Kidman’s manipulating him and Phoenix is bewitched, their character arcs are entirely separate and so are their performances. They don’t have “chemistry” because it’s not possible for them to have it in those conditions. Folland’s great. Douglas is great. Knight’s great. Smith’s great. Affleck, Dillon, Hedaya, Taylor, Tucci; they’re all good. They just can’t compare. They don’t get the material, though there’s always this implicit material. Like Traylor’s looks, whatever they mean.

Good photography from Eric Alan Edwards, good production design from Missy Stewart, perfectly matched Danny Elfman score (it’s a constant, emotive, supportive but never ambitious score). To Die For’s technicals excel. Everything about it excels, especially Kidman, especially Phoenix, especially Van Sant, and especially Henry.

It’s gang busters.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Gus Van Sant; screenplay by Buck Henry, based on the novel by Joyce Maynard; director of photography, Eric Alan Edwards; edited by Curtiss Clayton; production designer, Missy Stewart; music by Danny Elfman; produced by Laura Ziskin; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring Nicole Kidman (Suzanne Stone), Joaquin Phoenix (Jimmy Emmett), Alison Folland (Lydia Mertz), Casey Affleck (Russel Hines), Illeana Douglas (Janice Maretto), Wayne Knight (Ed Grant), Kurtwood Smith (Earl Stone), Holland Taylor (Carol Stone), Dan Hedaya (Joe Maretto), Maria Tucci (Angela Maretto), Susan Traylor (Faye Stone), Tim Hopper (Mike Warden), Michael Rispoli (Ben DeLuca), Gerry Quigley (George), Buck Henry (Mr. H. Finlaysson), and Matt Dillon (Larry Maretto).

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La Bamba (1987, Luis Valdez)

La Bamba is a perfectly adequate biopic of fifties rock and roll singer Ritchie Valens, who died at seventeen in a plane crash. Very twenty-five year-old Lou Diamond Phillips plays Valens. He’s adequate. He lip-synchs all right, though the performances (Los Lobos covers Valens’s songs) almost never sound right acoustically. When Phillips shows off his skills to his garage band, for instance, it clearly wasn’t recorded in a garage. But whatever. It’s perfectly adequate.

Ditto the supporting cast. Esai Morales is Phillips’s older half-brother, who’s narratively responsible for everything in the movie–he moves Phillips and mom Rosanna DeSoto (who’s obviously way too young to be their mother) from a migrant community in Northern California down to the Los Angeles area at the beginning of the movie. He brings Elizabeth Peña along too. Peña was Phillips’s love interest before Morales arrives. One look at Morales, however, and she dumps the ostensibly younger Phillips. By the time the film’s jumped ahead after the move, Morales is an abusive drunken pot runner.

Despite bookending the movie and being responsible for so much, Morales doesn’t get to do much. No one really gets to do much in director Valdez’s script, of course. Morales has amazing illustrating abilities, which La Bamba promotes into a second act subplot to apparently fill time, because it goes nowhere. It’s a vehicle for Morales’s eventual breakdown about being jealous of Phillips. It’s a dramatically inert breakdown; it’s fairly clear early on no one’s going to give a standout performance or have some amazing part. Sure, Morales has more to do than almost anyone else, but Valdez doesn’t give him anything. Valdez also isn’t great at directing his actors.

He’s adequate. Enough.

Besides Morales and Peña (who really gets squat), DeSoto doesn’t have an arc outside being Phillips’s fiercely supportive mom. She has three younger children she’s raising, who she never has any significant scenes with. Or even insignificant ones with the baby, who disappears after a while. Then there’s Danielle von Zerneck as Phillips’s girlfriend. Her racist dad (Sam Anderson) doesn’t like her dating a Hispanic kid, though it’s never clear the dad finds out he’s Hispanic just brown. He eventually has problems with Phillips for playing rock and roll more than anything else.

von Zerneck and Phillips have no chemistry but muscle through their subplot–it’s barely a subplot, she’s a narrative prop–all right. The period costumes and cars do some of the heavy lifting; Vincent M. Cresciman’s production design is good.

Joe Pantoliano is similarly fine–and similarly a narrative prop–as the record guy who discovers Phillips.

Valdez’s direction, outside his disinterest in his actors’ performances and some blocking issues cinematographer Adam Greenberg really should’ve corrected, is… you guessed it… perfectly adequate. When Phillips finally performs the title track, the scene’s more effective than usual but only because, well, it’s La Bamba. It’s a great song.

Unfortunately La Bamba, the movie, is lukewarm. And really, really comfortable never being anything but.

Stardust (2007, Matthew Vaughn)

Stardust has a problem with overconfidence. The overconfidence in the CG is one thing, but would be easily excusable if director Vaughn didn’t double down and go through tedious effects sequences. Ben Davis’s photography keeps Stardust lush, whether in the magic world or the real world–but that lushness doesn’t help with the CG. The CG is excessive and exuberent–it’s always supposed to be obvious–it’s just not good enough. The CG, technically, isn’t there.

The other overconfidence is the stunt casting.

The film starts in a prologue setting things up. England. Nineteenth century. There’s a small English town with a nearby wall. No one can cross the wall. There’s a nonagenarian (David Kelly) who wields a staff to keep people away. One day, intrepid young man Ben Barnes crosses the wall and gets seduced by a mystery woman.

Nine months later, he gets a baby. Eighteen years later, the baby has grown into “protagonist” Charlie Cox. Stardust, from its narration (by Ian McKellen, natch), is going to be about Cox embracing his destiny as a hero. Until then, he’s just going to make a fool of himself for town beauty Sienna Miller. Cox wants to marry Miller, Miller wants to marry Henry Cavill. But then they see a falling star and Cox gets Miller to promise to through Cavill over for him if he gets her the star.

Except it’s not just a falling star, it’s also the ruby necklace of the King of the magic world, called Stormhold. Stardust doesn’t get into the nitty gritty, like how can this magical world exist across a wall in England and what would’ve happened to it in the hundred years between the movie’s present action and its release date. Because it’s just fantasy. Vaughn and co-writer Jane Goldman don’t have to take any responsility for character if they keep it just genre.

The scene setting up Stormhold is where the stunt casting starts. Peter O’Toole is the dying king, Rupert Everett is his presumed heir. Presumed because O’Toole’s sons have to kill one another for the throne. The ghosts of the defeated princes hang around and watch the film’s events, sometimes offering commentary. They’re fun ghosts, even if they were all trying to kill one another and the film’s heroes.

In the biggest of the prince roles is Mark Strong. He’s not stunt casting. He’s got Inigo Montoya’s hair and Count Rugen’s personality.

So the star falls. Except since it lands in magic land, it’s not a hunk of space metal, it’s Claire Danes. Stars are sentient and they watch the earth because human beings’ love is unique throughout the cosmos. Vaughn and Goldman’s dialogue, which is so entirely expository it’s an accomplishment, is about as obvious and artless as that sentence. Vaughn seems to think he can get away with it because of Davis’s photography, the CGI, and Ilan Eshkeri’s enthusiastic, original, and not great, not bad score. He’s wrong.

Anyway. Cox finds Danes and kidnaps her. He’s going to let her go after he brings her to Miller. Danes points out the questionable behavior of kidnapping someone for a gift, but Cox doesn’t care. His character to this point is: half-prince of magic land, personal failure (he wasn’t good in school at anything, including fencing), and just fired shop boy. Cox doesn’t even get to dwell on being half-magic. He’s too busy dragging Danes through the woods.

Oh, and Danes has the necklace.

So Strong and the other princes are looking for the necklace. Because O’Toole says they don’t just need to kill each other, they also have to get the necklace.

And then Michelle Pfeiffer is a witch looking for Danes to kill her and eat her heart to make herself young. Pfeiffer’s got two sisters, Joanna Scanlan and Sarah Alexander, who ought to be stunt casting and aren’t. The makeup on the witches is decrepit faces, but not overly so on the bodies. Like Vaughn didn’t want to be too gross. The witches get played for laughs occasionally, so they can’t be too visually unsettling.

Pfeiffer is terrible with Scanlan and Alexander. Maybe she can’t figure out how to act under the makeup. Once she gets out on her own (and out of the makeup), she slowly gets better. By the end of the movie, she’s almost good, even with some makeup back. She has zero chemistry with Scanlan and Alexander, which doesn’t help things.

Of course, Vaughn doesn’t direct for that sort of thing. Chemistry. Pah. Danes falls for Cox after he saves her from Pfeiffer’s inital trap and Danes decides to help him win Miller’s hand, delivering herself as a gift. Because she really, deep down, loves Cox. Danes, I mean. She’s sacrificing herself. It might make sense if Danes had her stars watch earth because of perfect human love monologue early on, but it’s end of the second act stuff. She’s just making poor choices as far as anyone knows until then.

She also has a unicorn for a while.

Eventually Danes and Cox end up on Robert De Niro’s sky pirate ship. De Niro should be Stardust’s stunt casting at its worst. He’s a closest, effeminate, aging, anglophile gay sky pirate. He has to hide everything from his crew of tough sky pirates. They mine lightning to sell to Ricky Gervais (who’s actually the worst stunting casting). They capture Danes and Cox and De Niro confides in the young couple.

He teaches them to dance, he teaches Cox how to sword fight, he does a makeover on Cox, giving him some romance novel cover hair. He also gives them new outfits.

So then they’re ready for the multiple showdowns–Strong and the princes, Pfeiffer and the witches, Melanie Hill’s traveling salesperson witch who has enslaved Cox’s mom (Kate Magowan). But Cox isn’t look for his mom, because he forgot about her once he kidnapped Danes and he never comes back to it.

Cox is a bad kid. No spoilers, but Nathaniel Parker (as the grown-up dad) gets a shockingly thankless part. You’d think being raised by a single dad in nineteenth century small village England would have an effect on Cox’s character, but since he doesn’t get a character until he gets the hair cut… you’d be wrong.

There’s also a thing where Vaughn’s “magical” direction of magic land is exactly the same as his idealized English village. Cox is just traveling through Disney movies, one without magic to one with magic.

Cox never gets to be the protagonist. Top-billed Danes doesn’t either. They both play second fiddle to the bigger name stars, Pfeiffer and De Niro. Where it’s unfair is how Strong gets to do his own thing without Pfeiffer or De Niro and isn’t even a serious antagonist.

Cox and Danes are fine. Their writing is often lousy. De Niro is not fine. It’s an insensitive, if enthusiastic, caricature. Vaughn’s poor direction of actors is most obvious with De Niro. De Niro’s vamping it up and Vaughn directs it all to beg for a laugh. Ha. Robert De Niro is a miserable, closest gay guy who’s worried his only friends will ostracize or kill him if they know he’s gay. But, hey, it’s De Niro in drag.

Then there’s how Danes is a simply damsel, even if she’s an anthropomorphized luminous spheroid of plasma. Cox is the hero prince, even if he’s been passive in every single one of his scenes. Vaughn needed some confidence in his leads.

Stardust is occasionally amusing, when the bad performances and bad writing aren’t too overwhelming. Danes and Cox are quite likable. The movie’s just got a weak script and lacking direction.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Matthew Vaughn; screenplay by Jane Goldman and Vaughn, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman; director of photography, Ben Davis; edited by Jon Harris; music by Ilan Eshkeri; production designer, Gavin Bouquet; produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Michael Dreyer, Gaiman, and Vaughn; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Charlie Cox (Tristan Thorn), Claire Danes (Yvaine), Robert De Niro (Captain Shakespeare of the Caspartine), Michelle Pfeiffer (Lamia), Mark Strong (Prince Septimus), Sienna Miller (Victoria Forester), Melanie Hill (Ditchwater Sal), Ricky Gervais (Ferdy), Kate Magowan (Princess Una), Joanna Scanlan (Mormo), Sarah Alexander (Empusa), Jason Flemyng (Prince Primus), Rupert Everett (Prince Secundus), Nathaniel Parker (Dunstan Thorn), Henry Cavill (Humphrey), David Kelly (the Wall Guard), and Peter O’Toole (the King); narrated by Ian McKellen.

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Love on the Run (1936, W.S. Van Dyke)

Joan Crawford is top-billed in Love on the Run. Unfortunately, she has absolutely nothing to do in the entire film. Maybe if Clark Gable had something to do besides deceiving everyone (and then rescuing Crawford) the movie might make it through better, but he doesn’t. Love on the Run is eighty somewhat charming minutes of Gable being a lovable cad and Crawford mooning over him. And Franchot Tone. Can’t forget him–the film asks him to play the most thankless third wheel comic relief and he does it. He tries hard and gets no reward, just dumber as the plot requires more and more stupidity from him.

Love on the Run has an inexplicably big scale idea–Gable and Crawford trying to escape saboteurs and newspapermen throughout the French countryside–and small-scale execution. Director Van Dyke rushes through the exterior shots (it’s backlot) with a bunch of “good enough” touches to imply France. He’s trying to get through these shots, not enjoy them. A Continental adventure requires some enthusiasm in the Continent. Crawford does get one great moment where she calls to a dog. You have to see the movie. Unfortunately Van Dyke rushes through the shot–everything is in medium long shot. There’s some nice work from Van Dyke in a train station, but it’s a set; he’s far more comfortable with the interiors, but most of them lack interesting layouts. Van Dyke is competent, but too resigned to the idea of Love on the Run as a quick amusement.

Gable and Crawford, even with a lame script, have a lot of charm. Crawford’s able to fake chemistry when Gable’s just doing a comedy routine at her. When they get sincere, they’re great. But since Gable’s character is such a heel–and Crawford has so little character–there’s no bonding during their courtship. They’re mostly performing, not acting.

And Tone. Poor Tone. He’s the butt of Gable’s jokes and gags (Love on the Run could’ve been slapstick), but Tone works it. He tries really hard not to embarrass himself, really hard to impress. It’s a standout performance in a film not meant to leave much impression.

The supporting cast could be a lot better. Reginald Owen and Mona Barrie are boring as the villains. Maybe if John Lee Mahin, Manuel Seff and Gladys Hurlbut’s screenplay didn’t forget about them for a half hour. But there are a lot of maybes with the screenplay.

Donald Meek has a fantastic bit part as the caretaker of the Palace of Fontainebleau. The Palace of Fontainebleau has no place in Love on the Run because it’s a rush job, but Meek’s outstanding. Sadly, he’s the last significantly joyful moment in Love on the Run and he shows up long before the last act. Love on the Run is a screwball comedy without a good finish. Worse, Crawford is off screen for most of that finish. Gable is checked out for it. Tone is hustling though, his character dumber than ever.

Maybe Love needed a fourth screenwriter.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by W.S. Van Dyke; screenplay by John Lee Mahin, Manuel Seff and Gladys Hurlbut, based on a story by Alan Green and Julian Brodie; director of photography, Oliver T. Marsh; edited by Frank Sullivan; music by Franz Waxman; produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Joan Crawford (Sally Parker), Clark Gable (Michael Anthony), Franchot Tone (Barnabus Pells), Reginald Owen (Baron Otto), Mona Barrie (Baroness Hilda), Ivan Lebedeff (Igor), Charles Judels (Lieutenant of Police), William Demarest (Lees Berger) and Donald Meek (Caretaker).

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THIS POST IS PART OF THE JOAN CRAWFORD BLOGATHON HOSTED BY CRYSTAL OF IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD.

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Penthouse (1933, W.S. Van Dyke)

Penthouse is a lean mystery masquerading as a class melodrama. Most of that class melodrama stuff comes at the front–and is only really ever alluded to later–making the film front-heavy. Unfortunately, so much time goes towards the melodrama, the mystery suffers. Luckily, there’s a whole bunch of charm–from the cast, from the script, from director Van Dyke–and it makes up for the uneasy narrative.

Warner Baxter is a blue blood lawyer who discovers his passion is for helping the unjustly accused professional criminal. The criminal can’t be guilty of the crime he’s charged with. The film opens with Baxter successfully defending Nat Pendleton’s mob boss. Pendleton’s fantastic. He’s part of the film’s comic relief, but he’s also conveys danger.

Penthouse doesn’t seem to have much of a budget–it’s that lean mystery, after all–so there aren’t a lot of big set pieces. Danger and drama usually play out in conversation. It’s a talky lean mystery, so it’s good screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett do so well with the dialogue.

Baxter can make any line engaging. He easily breezes through most of the mystery stuff at the end as he distracts from the film’s lack of a big third act finish, but when his material’s good, he’s outstanding. There’s not a lot of time in the script to establish Baxter. His girl (Martha Sleeper) breaks his heart and the film follows her instead of him–because the melodrama. Baxter’s just getting hammered, much to the chagrin of both Pendleton (in addition to being a client, he’s a pal) and Charles Butterworth (as Baxter’s suffering butler).

Only then the film doesn’t stick with Sleeper, but follows Phillips Holmes as her other suitor, then shifts to Mae Clarke as Holmes’s illicit lover. By the time C. Henry Gordon shows up–as Clarke’s ex and Pendleton’s criminal rival–one might forget there was someone else in the opening titles, second-billed, in fact. Myrna Loy. She doesn’t even show up until the second act, which isn’t ideal because there’s only an hour left.

Loy’s sort of a mob moll, sort of not. It’s unclear; Goodrich and Hackett get a lot of amazing innuendo into the script but barely any details. Penthouse isn’t supposed to make sense, it’s supposed to entertain. When it’s too busy trying to build to entertaining points–Loy and Baxter flirt wonderfully but when it comes time for them to make actual sweet talk, it’s all off. Goodrich and Hackett awkwardly combine their romantic melodrama into mystery deduction scenes. It never gels. Maybe because Baxter treating Loy as disposable doesn’t make any sense.

But they’re still great together in most of their scenes and both of them generate a bunch of goodwill on their own. Loy and Butterworth are wonderful together, for example.

Van Dyke’s got some good direction in the film, usually involving Clarke or Loy. He doesn’t try as much in the other scenes, just keeps it brisk. He does seem to get bored occasionally. There’s one fifteen minute stretch in the second act it feels like nothing but two shots between different characters sitting (or walking to some other place to sit).

Penthouse is an uneven, but still successful outing. Another thirty minutes or so, a little more of a budget, a little better editing from Robert Kern (though maybe Van Dyke didn’t have the time for more coverage), it probably would’ve been better. With Loy, Baxter and Pendleton (and Butterworth)–and Van Dyke’s able direction–it works pretty well.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by W.S. Van Dyke; screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, based on a story by Arthur Somers Roche; directors of photography, Lucien N. Andriot and Harold Rosson; edited by Robert Kern; music by William Axt; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Warner Baxter (Jackson Durant), Myrna Loy (Gertie Waxted), Nat Pendleton (Tony Gazotti), C. Henry Gordon (Jim Crelliman), Martha Sleeper (Sue Leonard), Charles Butterworth (Layton), Phillips Holmes (Tom Siddall) and Mae Clarke (Mimi Montagne).


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THIS POST IS PART OF THE CLASSIC SYMBIOTIC COLLABORATIONS BLOGATHON HOSTED BY THERESA OF CINEMAVEN'S ESSAYS FROM THE COUCH.

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Shadow of the Thin Man (1941, W.S. Van Dyke)

Shadow of the Thin Man has a healthy mix of comedy and mystery. The resolution to mystery is a little lacking at the end, but the film moves so smoothly until then it’s easily forgivable. And there is one amusing final twist (along with a good final joke).

Most of the comedy comes from William Powell playing responsible parent. Myrna Loy doesn’t have any scenes alone with their son, Richard Hall; instead, she has scenes commenting on Powell’s behavior around Hall. Thanks to Van Dyke’s direction–he excels in the oddest set pieces in Shadow, with a comedic merry-go-round sequence being a standout–the film always implies Loy’s active parenting without ever having to show it.

Why not show it? Because it’s nowhere near as funny as Powell’s.

As for the mystery, Powell and Loy keep stumbling into murder investigations. Eventually they take a more enterprising role. There are a lot of suspects and suspicious characters, ranging from the likable Barry Nelson and Donna Reed to Loring Smith and Joseph Anthony’s racketeers. None of the suspects, save Stella Adler, are particularly good but they’re all decent. The script doesn’t do the actors any favors. Anthony in particularly doesn’t get enough screen time.

Instead, Irving Brecher and Harry Kurnitz’s script concentrates on the investigation and how Powell and Loy make discoveries. The mystery’s resolution isn’t spectacular, but the journey to it is rather good. Van Dyke’s pacing, both for tension and comedy, is outstanding.

Shadow is a fine time.

Another Thin Man (1939, W.S. Van Dyke)

Another Thin Man is a peculiar blend of old dark house mystery and the Thin Man style of murder mystery. Most of the first half of the film is the old dark house mystery, with healthy doses of humor thrown.

Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s screenplay brings William Powell and Myrna Loy to New York from elsewhere, stopping off in the city long enough to establish them having a baby and to set up some events for the finish, before sending them out to Long Island. Once there, Powell gets roped into helping C. Aubrey Smith, who’s had some murder threats against him.

The film has three distinct phases. That first phase, the continuation of the Thin Man series, emphasizing the relationship between Powell and Loy, then that old dark house phase. Once the final phase comes around–when the action moves back to New York–the film starts to feel a little long. Supporting cast members haven’t just been dropping like flies, new ones keep getting introduced.

Director Van Dyke doesn’t really make an effort to unify the film’s tone. In the city, it feels one way, on Long Island, it feels like an entirely different picture. The script hurries events too much, never taking time to develop anything.

Sadly, the primary supporting cast lacks standouts–Harry Bellaver, Abner Biberman and Marjorie Main are the strongest and they’re in small parts.

Weak editing from Fredrick Y. Smith too.

More of the film works out than not; its missed opportunities are easily forgotten.

After the Thin Man (1936, W.S. Van Dyke)

There is very little economy to After the Thin Man; instead, screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and director W.S. Van Dyke act with rampant abandon. The first twenty or so minutes of the film is just audience gratification–it’s a sequel to a popular film and the filmmakers are giving the audience what they want. They’re doing it well, sure, but it doesn’t have much to do with the eventual narrative.

Instead, Goodrich, Hackett and Van Dyke stage massive comedic set pieces, whether it’s William Powell and Myrna Loy getting home to a surprise party in their honor where no one notices them or Asta the dog’s rather amusing (and beautifully staged) domestic problems.

The murder mystery itself doesn’t start until about a half hour in. The plotting of the film is significant too–it’s a direct sequel to the previous movie and the first sixty-seven minutes are continuous. Once Powell and Loy finally get to go to sleep, there are only about forty minutes left. Strangely enough, the only time the film plods is during those forty minutes. The last twenty minutes breeze by, but some of the investigating is too full of exposition to move well.

Lots of great supporting performances–Joseph Calleia, Elissa Landi, James Stewart, Jessie Ralph, Levine, Penny Singleton. The script gives the supporting cast lots to do.

Technically, Van Dyke and editor Robert Kern do have problems with disconcerting cuts to close-ups–and then not cutting to Loy in the finale–but otherwise, the film’s a fantastic time.