Frank's Movie Log

Left Bank proffers an interesting story about Marie, a promising track star who suffers an unexpected health setback. She moves into her new boyfriend’s Left Bank apartment to recover. Finding herself with an abundance of free time, Marie investigates the former tenant’s unexplained disappearance. Continue reading...

Solid melodrama set in the boxing world. Ayres plays the titular Iron Man, a lightweight pugilist with a blind spot for opportunistic Harlow. Armstrong underplays a meaty role as Ayres’s manager.

Set 10-years after Hatchet III, Crowley returns to terrorize the survivors of a plane crash. This entry regresses to the first two films’ visual style, betraying its rushed production at every turn. Its meta-context regulates Crowley to a plot device versus the central focus. The result feels like an “Elseworlds” entry versus a true continuation of the franchise. Not a total burn, but disappointing.

I’d long considered X2: X-Men United superior to the first film. Revisiting it, I’m not so sure. The opening set piece with Alan Cumming launching a teleport assault on the White House still thrills, but the film never matches this height. Continue reading...

A married couple picks up a college-age hitchhiker and invites him aboard their sailboat for an overnight outing in Poland’s Lake District. Nothing happens, yet everything happens. Continue reading...

I watched The Utah Kid because it features an early performance from Boris Karloff. As a solid B-oater with competent leads and above-average photography and stunts, it surprised me. Cringe-worthy dialogue may litter the clunky script, which has the titular outlaw Kid fall for a woman kidnapped by his outlaw gang, but the barroom brawl’s choreography proved a standout, as did the Kid’s bloody bullet wound. For his part, Karloff proves forgettable as an evil henchman.

Piercing concerns a troubled family man driven to seek out a stranger to fulfill a dark desire. But like Roger Ebert said, “It’s not what a film is about, but how it is about it.” Continue reading...

Jack Lemmon’s feature debut. He plays Pete, an aspiring documentary filmmaker who chances on Judy Holliday’s character in Central Park. Holliday plays Gladys Glover, a naïve—and somewhat ditzy—former girdle model yearning for fame. Spying an open billboard in Columbus Circle, she uses her life’s savings to plaster her name on it for three months. Continue reading...

Port of Call proffers a social outrage drama akin to Bergman’s earlier It Rains on Our Love, but lacks that film’s sense of whimsy. Jönsson charms as a troubled factory girl desperate to escape her life, but I struggled with Eklund as a dock worker who can’t forgive Jönsson’s past. His stoic countenance through most of the film borders on opaque, robbing his talky, emotive third-act tirade of its impact. Given the similarities to It Rains on Our Love, this feels like a step backward for Bergman.

Powell plays an American ex-pat living in Paris. A gentleman in outward appearance, he’s the secret publisher of a well-read scandal sheet, and earns his living blackmailing wealthy tourists to keep their names out of it. A chance meeting with his latest mark’s niece—played by Lombard—forces him to reconsider his life. Continue reading...