IN: Review: Gabe Ryan (Frankie Thomas) gets out of reform school and goes back to the slums. His sister (Ann Sheridan) does her best to keep him out of trouble, but it just seems to follow him. Aside from his associations with the Termite gang, Gabe is followed by real-life gangsters who have a scheme to set fire to random buildings to collect the insurance. They need someone to blame for the arson, and Gabe is it. It is up to the Termites to work the law in their favor and give the gangsters their just desserts.

The the scene that introduces the Dead End Kids is really quite good. The boys wander on over to the new resident's furniture on the street, and proceed to make it their own. They talk to each other in phoney posh accents and talk about drinking tea together; Bernard Punsley takes a nap in a chair. The boys then proceed to start a fight with the new boy, but after he proves himself a good fighter, they ask him to join their club.

The initiation scene is rather good too, filled with mischief that seems dangerous at first, but is really rather clever and innocent.

Later, when Billy Halop studies to become the boy mayor, he has a dream about schoolwork. This is wonderfully staged, with tiny holograms of the kids walking on his face and firing questions at him.

Angels Wash Their Faces is a great title because it plays off of the success of Angels With Dirty Faces, and really tells what the kids are doing. Notorious for bad behavior on and off the set, these boys make nice in this film. But rather than seem disingenuous, it makes for some great laughs. This is a preview of what many of the boys would become in The Bowery Boys series. We even get a few garbled words from Leo Gorcey.
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OUT: positive

IN: Review: This is a movie about animal cruelty. Under the guise of a marathon race, we see depictions of extreme animal abuse, including literally running a horse to death IN SLOW MOTION. The guy who did this then has his conscience spiritually cleansed by the flames from the burial/burning of the horse, which of course is still dead, having been tortured to death. This is one of the sickest, slimiest movies I've ever had the displeasure of viewing. As Gene Hackman and James Coburn near the finish line on their DYING animals, we're supposed to admire their spirit for finishing the race. I'd like to put the producers and director in a marathon race; I'll decide when they're finished, probably about 20 minutes after they stop breathing.
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OUT: negative

IN: Review: After watching two of his silent shorts, 'Elena and her Men (1956)' is my first feature-length film from French director Jean Renoir, and I quite enjoyed it. However, I didn't watch the film for Renoir, but for star Ingrid Bergman, who at age 41 still radiated unsurpassed beauty, elegance and charm. Throughout the early 1950s, following her scandalous marriage to Italian Roberto Rossellini, Bergman temporarily fell out of public favour. Her next five films, directed by her husband, were unsuccessful in the United States, and I suspect that Renoir's latest release did little to enhance Bergman's popularity with English-speaking audiences {however, she did regain her former success with an Oscar in the same year's 'Anastasia (1956)'}. She stars as Elena Sokorowska, a Polish princess who sees herself as a guardian angel of sorts, bringing success and recognition to promising men everywhere, before promptly abandoning them. While working her lucky charms to aid the political aspirations of the distinguished General Francois Rollan (Jean Marais), she finds herself falling into a love that she won't be able to walk away from. This vaguely-political film works well as either a satire or a romantic comedy, as long as you don't take it too seriously; it's purely lighthearted romantic fluff.

Filmed in vibrant Technicolor, 'Elena and her Men' looks terrific as well, a flurry of bright colours, characters and costumes. Bergman's Polish princess is dreamy and somewhat self-absorbed, not in an unlikable way, but hardly a woman of high principles and convictions. She is persuaded by a team of bumbling government conspirators to convince General Rollan to stage a coup d'etat, knowingly exploiting his love for her in order to satisfy her own delusions as a "guardian angel." Perhaps the film's only legitimately virtuous character is Henri de Chevincourt (Mel Ferrer, then Audrey Hepburn's husband), who ignores everybody else's selfish secondary motives and pursues Elena for love, and love alone. This, Renoir proudly suggests, is what the true French do best. 'Elena and her Men' also attempts, with moderate success, to expose the superficiality of upper-class French liaisons, through the clumsy philandering of Eugene (Jacques Jouanneau), who can't make love to his servant mistress without his fiance walking in on them. For these sequences, Renoir was obviously trying for the madcap sort of humour that you might find in a Marx Brothers film, but the film itself is so relaxed and laid-back that the energy just isn't there.
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OUT: positive

IN: Review: Hard to categorize the film - perhaps it's an avant garde spy thriller? Mother Night is a very good Vonnegut novel, and most certainly one of his easiest novels to adapt into a feature length film. The film adaptation is very faithful to the original book. The "indie" approach to how this film was produced is probably more effective than having a big Hollywood studio financing it. These days, I doubt an intelligent novel like Mother Night would ever get the green light from the big Hollywood grindhouses. And normally that is too bad, but not in this case. Mother Night has tight direction and a solid cast. Nick Nolte who seems to be getting better roles as he gets older, still has that "everyman" persona that allows him to take on a wide range of different characters. Sheryl Lee is beautiful and great as always. I always thought she deserved better than she got out of the entertainment industry. I guess making your debut as a dead girl (Twin Peaks)with little air time isn't the choicest of roles, even if the TV show becomes a minor phenomenon. Anyway this film is totally enjoyable and you don't have to read the book to understand the movie. In fact, given today's geopolitical realities, the novel's premise may appear dated, and some younger viewers with little knowledge of history will be utterly confused by the events unfolding (I am talking to you, fellow Americans who are students and scoring the lowest in the industrialized world in geography, history, and lord knows what other subjects!).
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positive