Deborah Lipp

Bunny Lake is Missing (1965) 9/10
Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) drops off her four-year old daughter Bunny for her first day of school, just a few days after moving to London from America. When Bunny disappears and no one can recall seeing her, the police inspector (Laurence Olivier) begins to suspect that Bunny never existed at all. Directed by Otto Preminger.

Until two weeks ago, I had never heard of this movie, then, in rapid succession, it came up in two different conversations (one about films of 1965, and one about the title designs of Saul Bass) and was shown on TCM. So I had to see it. And…wow.

Most of this movie is a mystery; a slow build of tension and confusion. It feels more like a Hitchcock movie than anything else; a blonde woman slowly falling apart, a victim disbelieved, kind, unhelpful police, vaguely threatening oddballs. Ultimately, it resolves into a thriller, when the mystery is revealed and the danger becomes plain.

Ann and Steven (Keir Dullea) are brother and sister. That they live together with Ann’s “illegitimate” daughter strikes the police as odd. The landlord (Noel Coward), is also odd; he lets himself into the flat whenever he pleases, is somewhat well known, and may be “a pervert” (which Olivier dismisses as impossible with “He’s on the BBC”). The nursery school is a chaotic nightmare (the sort of place that absolutely terrified me when I had a toddler; it seems downright likely that such a school would lose children). The school is in an enormous old Victorian building (a former private home or hotel or something) and at the top is a flat, where lives the retired founder, whom Steven refers to as the “resident witch.” She studies the nightmares of children, playing recordings of their voices recounting their terrors for a book she is writing.

At first, Ann, alone and then with Steven, searches the school herself. This is a terrifying sequence, in the way that ordinary, blasé things can be terrifying. The rambling home has ten thousand places a child could hide or be lost. The staff is uncooperative, hostile, strange, or absent. The director is in the hospital. The teacher had a dental emergency and left her class mid-morning. The cook who was temporarily watching Bunny stormed out and cannot be found. Crowds of children, complaining parents, room after room…if you’re a parent, you cannot watch this scene without recalling every time your own child was missing for five minutes, and as Bunny remains missing, your heart clutches tighter and tighter.

Then the police are called, and question everyone, bring dogs, all that. They want a photograph of Bunny. At first, Ann explains that not everything has arrived yet from America, but then she remembers that Bunny’s passport is at the flat. And now the mystery deepens, because the flat has been emptied of everything that Bunny owned. There are two toothbrushes at the sink where earlier there had been three. There is no nightgown, no bathrobe, no doll. The police begin to suspect that Bunny is imaginary, that Ann is insane.

Of course, Ann acts increasingly insane. Is it because it’s true? Or is it normal to be more and more panicky when your child is missing? Either could be the case.

The story is a slow build. I never figured out the answer to the mystery until the movie was good and ready to show me, and it was definitely a satisfying conclusion. There are plot holes, but they are very small; plot pinholes, really.

Olivier has little to do; nothing that requires a gifted actor. But the atmosphere, the characters, the filming, and the script all add up to an excellent, atmospheric film.

Amistad (1997) 6/10
On a slave ship heading for America, the captive Africans rebel, led by Cinque (Djimon Hounsou). Recaptured once they reach the United States, two abolitionists (Morgan Freeman and Stellan Skarsgård) hire an attorney (Matthew McConaughey) to defend the Africans. The case goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it is argued by John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins). Directed by Stephen Spielberg.

I don’t know, I feel like not liking Amistad is probably like not liking apple pie or my Mom or Family Values or cute babies. But Geez Pete, I’m sorry. I really do love my Mom, you know.

Amistad is an exercise in self-importance. Everyone in it is hyper-aware that they are in an Important Historical Drama and This Story Must Be Told. It really is that heavily capitalized throughout. Freeman proves that he can be a Magical Negro even in a movie with lots of other blacks. Hopkins validates the Academy’s ability to nominate a great actor’s worst performance. And by the way, John William’s score sucks.

Look, this is kind of a beautiful story. It’s definitely a page from history that very few Americans are taught. It’s a fascinating and complex story that deserved to be told. It’s just that the filmmakers were far too self-aware of all that. The two and a half hour runtime felt interminable. At least 30 minutes were consumed by Dramatic Close-ups, Meaningful Slo-Mo, and Moments When the Music Swells. Seriously. The score punctuated every important moment with HUGE swells, often with a choir of quasi-religious voices going WILD WITH JOY. It was really all too much. I watched it alone and felt like blushing.

The period is captured beautifully. The visuals are stunning. The time spent on the slave ship is breathtaking and incredibly disturbing. The politics of the events; the attitude of President Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne) and of other politicians towards Adams, the maneuvering between North and South, between the U.S. and Spain, all of this is enormously interesting. And clearly it didn’t need to be, it could have stopped the movie cold, but it added flesh and sense to the tale. I admire the sweep of the film, to take on so much complexity and so many facets of the story and still create something cohesive. Spielberg is certainly a professional!

Kudos to Matthew McConaughey for holding his own among a bunch of heavy hitters and keeping his shirt on, to David Paymer for being one of Hollywood’s true work horses, and to Hounsou for a dignified and clear performance.

I highly recommend reading a book or encylopedia entry about this incident, and avoiding the film.

The Tin Star (1957) 9/10
Bounty hunter Morg Hickman (Henry Fonda) agrees to teach inexperienced young sheriff Ben Owens (Anthony Perkins) what he knows about being a sheriff. Directed by Anthony Mann.

A man rides into town with a dead body on a pack mule. He is watched nervously by the townspeople. He finds the sheriff’s office and explains he is a bounty hunter and there is a reward on the deceased. The sheriff arranges to have someone who knew the wanted man confirm his identity, and writes to the railroad company who offered the reward to let them know it is being claimed. The bounty hunter has the sheriff write up an agreement of the claim before turning over the body.

If you haven’t seen The Tin Star, you’ve never seen a scene like this before. Perhaps you’ve seen a Western where the hero marched the criminal to town to collect a reward, or perhaps you’ve seen a body picked up and carried back for a reward, but even that is rare. The crux of a reward on someone’s head in a Western is that someone is hunted, and someone is hunting; the point is the hunt, the adventure, the shootout, not what happens afterwards.

The Tin Star cares about what happens afterwards. It cares about the rule of law and the letter of the law, and it asks if the law can truly protect us, can truly replace violent lawlessness, and then it asks how.

There’s exciting adventure here, a posse, a fire, murder, prejudice, and romance, but it all continues to loop around to the question of law. A posse is lawful, but it can be an excuse for a mob scene, and the town elders who want the law enforced aren’t willing to ride out with their guns to do so, leaving the dangerous and criminal to take the lead.

Fonda is despised for being a bounty hunter, and for killing a criminal who was cousin to Bart Bogardus (Neville Brand) the leader of the town low-lifes. Turned away from the hotel, he befriends a young boy and ends up guest to the boy’s mother, Nona (Betsy Palmer). Nona’s husband was an Indian, the boy is a half-breed, and Fonda must confront his own prejudice against them both. But again, we loop around to the law—does the law protect the despised half-breeds as well? Fonda can overcome his hatred because he believes in the law, and because he likes this woman, but local law enforcement is reluctant to do the same.

Anthony Mann made dark Westerns about people with haunted pasts and embittered presents. The Tin Star is dark, and Fonda is haunted, but for Mann, this is lighter fare. Here the characters have hope of changing, and reason is more important than psychology.

Fonda was once a sheriff, but he holds a bitter secret. He can teach Perkins what he knows, and most of what he knows is when not to shoot, when not to confront, and how to confront without ending in killing. When he helps Perkins hunt down a murderer, he is able to recall the values he once cherished; values that made him a sheriff in the first place.

Fonda is excellent, of course, and this is Tony Perkins before Psycho, when he was cast as innocent hearthtrobs, not crazed killers. The mostly unknowns who populate the town are solid; even Mary Webster as Perkins’s girlfriend isn’t too annoying.

Wow.

Never mind.

The Warriors (1979) 7/10
At a meeting of all New York gangs, the respected organizer is murdered and The Warriors wrongfully accused. Now, unarmed, they’ve got to get from the Bronx to their home turf in Coney Island—the entire length of the city—with every gang in New York after them.

“Warriors…come out and plaaaaay-aay!“

So here’s the thing. There’s this famously obscure movie made in 1979 about New York gangs, kind of cult/sleeper. And I thought I’d seen it until a friend of mine started using the above quote as a sig line, and said it was from The Warriors. I didn’t know that line.

Turned out I’d seen The Wanderers. I hate when that happens.

So I finally caught up with The Warriors. It’s a dark vision of a nightmare New York in which the gangs wander the streets in scary clown makeup, bright colors from costume shops made dark by the accompanying weapons and the total incongruity. The “Baseball Furies” wear Yankee pinstripes and full-face makeup and carry baseball bats. The “Punks” wear overalls and rollerskates. The Warriors themselves are relatively conservative in decorated leather vests, but the overall effect is still of swatches of terrifying color, painted like graffiti across city life.

The acting here runs the gamut from very bad to a little bit bad, and some of the events are incredibly stupid. It’s a little difficult to remember that, for the majority of the movie, most of The Warriors don’t realize that there’s a coordinated call out to go after them, so that they wander blankly into traps.

But it doesn’t matter. There’s a raw energy that drives the film forward, and a sense of unreality to the location shooting. New York, filmed in a particular way, and particularly at this period of time, can look like a dystopic science fiction set, like it really is Beneath the Planet of the Apes in the cavernous subways. The Warriors captures that heightened sensibility, the way raw reality feels dreamlike.

It’s not surprising to learn that The Warriors is based on an ancient Greek tale. It works as a mythical journey, bringing the young gang members face to face with themselves as they travel the long (over 32 miles) way on foot and by subway. Along the way they will be challenged, humiliated, tempted, and pursued.

For new readers, here’s a reminder about how I use my rating scale:
10 or 9: A must-see. I judge a film for what it is, so a great heist movie can get a 10 for being great, even if it isn’t a movie of Transcendent Importance.
8 or 7: See it, but flawed.
6 or 5: Maybe see it if it appeals to you. Definitely flawed or very inconsistent.
4 or 3: Don’t see it.
2 or 1: You’ll hate yourself if you see it. There may be sickness.