Film poster for The Brown Bunny – Copyright 2004, Wellspring Media (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In The Brown Bunny (2005), a film he wrote, directed, edited, etc., Vincent Gallo stars as a motorcycle racer whose amatory attachment is to Chloe Sevigny‘s Daisy.  The pair being separated, the racer tracks Daisy down in Los Angeles after purposefully abandoning three female strangers with whom he might have gotten intimate.  The two lovers are messed-up people, one more messed-up than the other.  This is Daisy, a doper and possible tramp. . . The film is evocatively directed—it evokes human isolation—and there are certainly people who do not find it monotonous.  But I do.  And that’s not all.

Gallo considers himself a conservative and, for sure, no sexual liberalism exists in this movie.  And yet it was made, finally, in a pornographic spirit.  A scene of fellatio goes on forever.  It’s distasteful.  Is Gallo trying to say that love and tramp-y, non-marital sex do not go together?  I rather doubt it, but there is no way to know.

A Damsel in Distress (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gracie Allen‘s comedy in the 1937 A Damsel in Distress is easy to take only in small doses, which is what we get (for his part, George Burns is a zero).  Allen, at any rate, is not the movie’s leading lady; Joan Fontaine is, and Fred Astaire the leading man.  Fontaine’s acting, however, is lukewarm, but she has far less to do than Astaire, who is his usual buoyant self.  With his engaging dancing.

The George Stevens-directed Damsel has its shortcomings, but it’s a splendid musical-comedy with Gershwin songs.  Its more or less fun book is mostly a P.G. Wodehouse creation, and its cast (largely American, playing Brits [with accent deficiency]) is winsome.  Stevens does well in maneuvering the dancing Astaire and Fontaine outdoors around multiple trees to the tune of the very pretty “Things Are Looking Up.”  And there is much to like in the wild, comic dance number set in a carnival.  Other Gershwin songs, such as “I Can’t Be Bothered Now” and “A Foggy Day,” are musically and lyrically good.

The best thing about Damsel is that it’s enchanting.

A Damsel in Distress (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gracie Allen‘s comedy in the 1937 A Damsel in Distress is easy to take only in small doses, which is what we get (for his part, George Burns is a zero).  Allen, at any rate, is not the movie’s leading lady; Joan Fontaine is, and Fred Astaire the leading man.  Fontaine’s acting, however, is lukewarm, but she has far less to do than Astaire, who is his usual buoyant self.  With his engaging dancing.

The George Stevens-directed Damsel has its shortcomings, but it’s a splendid musical-comedy with Gershwin songs.  Its more or less fun book is mostly a P.G. Wodehouse creation, and its cast (largely American, playing Brits [with accent deficiency]) is winsome.  Stevens does well in maneuvering the dancing Astaire and Fontaine outdoors around multiple trees to the tune of the very pretty “Things Are Looking Up.”  And there is much to like in the wild, comic dance number set in a carnival.  Other Gershwin songs, such as “I Can’t Be Bothered Now” and “A Foggy Day,” are musically and lyrically good.

The best thing about Damsel is that it’s enchanting.

Harry Kleiner‘s screenplay for the Samuel Fuller film, House of Bamboo (1955), consists of too many coincidences for the plot to hold up well, but it’s interesting to see American gangsters in Tokyo (post-WWII).  What they’re doing is robbing U.S. ammunition trains, and since the trains are guarded by American soldiers and Japanese policemen, I don’t know why the crooks are so successful.  But they are, and so it’s time for military law enforcement to get really active.  They send a man’s man named Eddie (Robert Stack) to infiltrate the gang, and Eddie’s Japanese lady friend, Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), ends up helping in a big way.  At one point we fully expect Mariko to be killed or at least beaten to a pulp, but it doesn’t happen. . . Now that Americans are done fighting the Japanese, they’re having to fight other Americans—hoodlums.

The main hoodlum, Sandy, is enacted with smooth potency by Robert Ryan.  He adds to the high entertainment value of this unique thriller.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Flecks of disrespect toward people who profess to be Christians are found in some of Sam Peckinpah‘s movies (The Deadly Companions, Ride the High Country), and clearly Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) is no exception.  (I’ll give Straw Dogs a pass; it’s different).  But Christians need not be offended by Garrett:  the entire film is unloved pig vomit, not to be taken seriously.

It is easy to mistake the picture for a Bob Dylan musical, with bad songs aplenty—Dylan wrote the, uh, score—but, no, it is of course a Western.  This one, though, is not much enlivened by its scenes of violent action, gripping as these can be.  When it isn’t ludicrous, the material is tired.  The film is inert. . . As many as six film editors worked on it, with Peckinpah typically denied further control of the flick.  If only screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer had been denied any control of it.