Groundhog Day (1993) *****

It’s really nice to rediscover a classic. I had honestly forgotten how much fun “Groundhog Day” is, and how much of an existentialist classic it is. Everybody knows this film, right? Bill Murray plays Phil, a narcissistic regional TV weatherman with aspirations for the big networks. He gets sent with his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) for yet another Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, an assignment that Phil hates. He looks forward to being a big-time network weatherman and letting someone else cover the small-town kitsch of Groundhog Day. After doing their report, Phil and his team get stuck in Punxsutawney by a blizzard. He spends another night in his quaint bed and breakfast, and he awakens the next day to…another Groundhog Day. He encounters all the same people, conversations and events as the day before. He is understandably disoriented, and when he tries to discuss the situation with his coworkers, they naturally think he has gone crazy, but no problem, because the next day everyone except Phil forgets everything, and it’s 6 a.m. on Groundhog Day again. This happens again and again and again, as Phil goes through various fascinating stages of dealing with his situation.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that, in its own way, “Groundhog Day” is as ingenious a meditation on the human condition as the classic Franz Kafka/Orson Welles film “The Trial.” Both films address existence from a perspective that we are each headed toward an inevitable conclusion, no matter what we do along the way. In “The Trial” (and in existentialist philosophy), that conclusion is death and nonexistence. In “Groundhog Day,” the conclusion of each day is that Phil simply wakes up at the beginning of another Groundhog Day, no matter what he has done on the previous go-round. It is fascinating to watch him deal with this reality in various ways, first with nihilism, then hedonism, then through a misguided attempt to trick Rita into loving him, using accumulated knowledge about her interests and personality. Finally, Phil reaches a place where he decides that if he is going to have to live the same day over and over, he will simply try to live it well, being the best person he can be.

I saw this film back when it was released, and I remember it being intriguing, but in my mind I think I categorized it as mostly a Bill Murray comedy. I’m certain that it will be filed in the Romantic Comedy section of your local video store. Netflix lists it as “Romantic Comedy/Fantasy.” Fantasy is probably closer to the appropriate genre, but I think Inspirational might be more on the money. The Netflix summary says that Phil “realizes he's doomed to repeat Groundhog Day until he learns that his actions can affect the outcome,” but they’ve got it wrong. Much like the protagonist in “The Trial,” Phil never gets any explanation for what has happened to him, and the fact is that he repeats Groundhog Day until he learns that his actions CANNOT affect the outcome, but that being a good person is worthwhile anyway. This is the challenge faced by atheists and agnostics: how to find meaning in a life that may simply end, without being judged by a higher power. “Groundhog Day” delivers its message with humor, but the message is intense, nonetheless.

Murray has had a number of nuanced, provocative roles in his somewhat under-rated career. “Rushmore” and "Lost in Translation" are a couple of good ones. “Groundhog Day” may not necessarily feature Murray’s best acting, but the more I think about it, the more I think it is his best film.

5 stars out of 5

A Single Man (2009)

There are great movies, and then there are great performances. “A Single Man” isn’t a particularly great movie, although it is competently done for a Sundance-type movie by a rookie director (fashion designer Tom Ford). The film does, however, feature a great performance by Colin Firth. He plays George, an English professor frozen by grief 8 months after the death of Jim, his lover and life partner of 16 years. George has decided to kill himself, and the movie follows him on what is to be his last day. The universe is not content to let George simply fade away, however. As he goes about tidying up his affairs, giving a last lecture, and having dinner with his best friend (played by Julianne Moore), he keeps having run-ins with people who seem determined to drag him back from the edge of despair. Finally, it is one of George’s students, a thoughtful, and optimistic young man (Nicholas Hoult) named Kenny, who makes George dare to consider being happy again. As Kenny puts it, “You never know what’s going to come next.”

“A Single Man” is exactly what it should be, a small, thoughtful movie that you just know is based on a book by somebody (Christopher Isherwood, in fact). It is, perhaps, a bit too full of scenes where men stare searchingly into each others’ eyes, but otherwise it makes a fine, intellectual-chick-flick. What takes the film beyond that status is Colin Firth’s acting. He is absolutely perfect in this movie. He is temperamentally the obvious choice for George, having played so many other restrained, extremely British types. In scene after scene, Firth speaks volumes with just a subtle change in facial or body position. He adeptly takes us inside the despair of this buttoned-down, closed-off character and makes us feel joy when George’s ice starts to melt.

3.5 stars

District 9 (2009) ****1/2

You simply have to see “District 9.” This relatively low-budget, sci-fi thriller may be the most gripping film of the year. This is definitely one where 8 bucks gets you the whole seat, but you’ll only need the edge!

In the near-future setting of “District 9,” an alien spaceship comes to earth and settles in the sky over, of all places, Johannesburg, South Africa. Then, nothing. No attack, no “We come in peace,” no musical scales. The ship just sits there while the world bickers over what to do. After months, the South Africans send commandos to cut their way in, where they find a million aliens starving and living in squalor. The film explains all of this retrospectively, through interviews, which go on to describe how the aliens are ferried down to the ground and fed. Unfortunately, pity for the aliens quickly gives way to fear and suspicion. Managing a million refugees of any kind is a challenge, and when the starving, desperate masses are bizarre-looking, tentacled creatures (soon nicknamed “prawns” due to their resemblance to shrimp) with an unknown language, problems are bound to ensue. The aliens are soon surrounded by fences and guards; District 9 becomes essentially a concentration camp; and quickly the opportunity to establish true communication with the prawns is lost. The prawns build themselves shelters which form into a shanty town; Johannesburg finds itself with another impoverished minority group; and human-alien interaction devolves into the spheres of crime, law enforcement, and exploitation.

Into this morass is thrown Alien Affairs agent Wikus Van De Merwe (newcomer Sharlto Copley). Wikus is a loveably dorky bureaucrat who gets assigned the job of relocating the “prawns” to a reservation miles from human habitation. He provides comic relief with his sweater vest and clipboard, trying to boss around military commandos, but he is capable of surprisingly callous cruelty because he views the aliens as nothing more than animals. That begins to change when he gets exposed to a substance that begins to slowly turn him into one of them.

Sharlto deserves some credit, by the way, for a really excellent performance in his first feature film. He is on-screen for probably 90% of the movie, and he is as funny as he is intense. His next film looks to be the “A-Team” movie, which I don’t know if I’ll be watching, but I do hope to see this guy again.

“District 9” is the kind of movie that makes me feel good about the future of movies. On a budget of $30 million (probably less than the marketing budget alone for “Avatar”), first-time director Neill Blomkamp has made an action movie that is vigorously entertaining and thought-provoking. The story is obviously inspired by South Africa’s racially fraught history, but the lessons translate equally well to the American experience with the Indians, or even to the screwed-up events surrounding Hurricane Katrina. The point that struck me the most in the film was how, when finally presented with intelligent, alien life, humans so quickly gave up on understanding and settled for contempt and exploitation.

The story behind the story of this film is that Blomkamp wrote and made a short film about the aliens called “Alive in Joburg,” which came to the attention of “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson. Jackson recognized a fellow genius and tapped Blomkamp to direct a Halo adaptation. When that movie fell through, Jackson apparently offered Blomkamp the chance to turn “Alive in Joburg” into a full-length feature, and thank goodness he did. In a season when all the attention is on movies in 3D, it is nice to see that filmmakers can still entertain us just by making the characters and the story three-dimensional.

4.5 stars out of 5

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008)

The hardest thing about watching “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” is convincing yourself that this is a real documentary about a real band, rather than a parody. The similarities to “This is Spinal Tap” are absolutely uncanny. This is a story of aging rockers who delude themselves that their day is not done. Their attempt at a European tour is a depressing shambles. They speak in bizarre non-sequiturs: Fan - “Why aren’t you playing better venues?” Drummer - “I can answer that in two words, no, three, ‘We haven’t got good management.’” Strangest of all, Anvil’s drummer is named Robb Reiner. Who was the director of “This is Spinal Tap?” Wait for it….Rob Reiner. The film really seems for a while like a straight-faced put-on, an inside joke for rock documentary fans, but from what I can tell, the band Anvil and the story are real.

Drummer Robb Reiner and Guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow started Anvil in the ‘70’s, and the band was one of the vanguard of the metal movement that peaked with bands like Metallica. Much as the New York Dolls are considered a lesser known proto-punk band, Anvil was apparently the cutting edge of heavy metal in the early ‘80’s. This documentary features testimonials from members of Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax about how Anvil influenced them. The band never quite broke into the big time, however, probably because they are Canadian. I’ll bet they were notorious for cancelling gigs to go eat fries and gravy.

“Anvil! The Story of Anvil” finds Robb and Lips working menial jobs in their home of Ontario, living for the occasional tiny gig, turning fifty, and still chasing that elusive rock and roll dream. A European fan named Tiziana writes to offer to manage them on a tour of Europe, where they are supposedly still big stars. That turns into the farce mentioned earlier. Then they rekindle a relationship with their old producer, Chris “CT” Tsangarides. They borrow enough money to have CT produce their thirteenth album, “This is Thirteen,” but ultimately fail to get any record labels interested in their self-produced effort. And so it goes, a constant series of ups and downs, with the ups being illusory, and the downs representing reality.

The thing is, the story could be depressing, but somehow Lips’s childlike optimism carries us along and keeps his band-mates going, from one fading glimmer of hope to the next. Robb is more of a realist, and he frequently threatens to give up the dream and quit. Lips comes across as something of an idiot savant, or maybe just an idiot, but it is nice to see these guys’ wives and some of their family support them. In one heartwarming scene, Lips’s sister loans him a sizable sum to help produce their album. In another scene, Rob’s wife chastises his sister for suggesting that he should give up playing. Still sporting ‘80’s hair and wearing a rock t-shirt, Mrs. Reiner says, “We love the music and the bands. This is just what we do.”

“This is just what we do.” To me, that is the theme of this film. Many would look at the guys in Anvil and shake their heads at the folly of aging rockers still trying to “make it.” The thing is, what else are these guys going to do? Some people watch TV in the evenings, or go bowling, but when the guys in Anvil get off work, they pick up their instruments and play. Lips might seem deluded to some, but I think he is actually very wise. If you are lucky enough to have a dream, you should hold onto it. In this life, it isn’t achieving your dream that is the greatest thing; it is having a dream to chase.

Lips sums it up quite well himself:

“For all this horrible shit that I gotta go through, I’ve got Anvil that gives me my happiness.
The way I look at it, really, is that it could never be worse than what it already is. If it never got better, that’s the way that it is. It could only get better.
On the other hand, if it did get worse, at least this time, after all’s said and done, I can say that All has been said and done, instead of ‘I’ve left a lot of things undone.’”

An interesting post-script is that due to the critical and popular success of “Anvil: The Story of Anvil,” the band has enjoyed a massive resurgence. Heavy Metal isn’t exactly en vogue now, but there are still enough fans around that Anvil is now playing to packed houses and earning enough, finally, to quit their day jobs.

5 stars

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Good revenge flicks have a few rules. Number 1 is that the bad guys have to commit an atrocity so bad that it will justify all the mayhem that is to come. “Inglourious Basterds” is about Nazis, so no problem there. The hero or heroes are then empowered to engage in wholesale slaughter, but Rule Number 2 is that they only hurt or kill people who deserve it. Rule 3 is that the story must stay at least minimally plausible. I’m all for movies that engage in total flight of fancy, obvious fairy tales like “Edward Scissorhands” or “The American Astronaut.” That tone isn’t right for a revenge movie, though, because it distracts from the audience’s ability to project ourselves into the role of the hero, dispensing simple justice to people who rarely seem to get what is coming to them in the real world. That is the cathartic value of a revenge movie, and for me, “Inglourious Basterds” failed to provide that because the movie violates rules 2 and 3.

The story is of a group of American commandos, all Jewish, who volunteer to be dropped into Nazi-occupied France to carry out a war of terror against the German occupiers. Their mission, according to leader Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), is “killin’ Nazis.” It’s a great fantasy setup, really. How many people, past and present, Jewish and otherwise, would love the idea of engaging in guerrilla warfare against the Nazis? Who wouldn’t want to kill Nazis? The Basterds, as they are called, pursue their job with gusto, gaining infamy among the Germans for their brutality, which includes beating captives to death with a baseball bat and carving swastikas onto the foreheads of those they release. Then the dream assignment comes along. The entire German high command, including der Fuhrer himself, is set to attend a German propaganda film premiere in Paris. They set out to help a British secret service agent blow the place up. On top of all that, the Basterds aren’t the only ones with plans to destroy the place.

The acting is generally excellent. Melanie Laurent is particularly good as Shosanna, the only surviving member of a Jewish family slaughtered by “Jew Hunter” Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Landa, a chillingly astute Nazi detective, is the best character in the film, although there are occasions where he breaks into a bizarre clownishness that ill-suits the tone of the rest of his performance. Brad Pitt fits himself pretty well into Tarantino mode, although his Southern accent leaves something to be desired.

Now for those rules I mentioned. First, Rule 2, which says that the heroes must be just. If the Basterds stuck to killing and torturing hard-core Nazis, the movie would be all right. There is one scene I cannot get past, however. The Basterds have successfully ambushed a small German patrol, and they are interrogating three prisoners, trying to find out about the location of another patrol. When the German sergeant rightfully refuses to betray his fellows, he is threatened cruelly, and then beaten to death with a baseball bat. This is a Tarantino movie, so of course the entire scene is especially graphic. Now if this were Adolph Hitler being bludgeoned, or even a concentration camp guard, I’d be okay with it. These are just low-level, regular German army grunts, though, and it is disturbing, to say the least, to watch our protagonists torture and kill them. Perhaps Tarantino was actually trying to make a point about the nature of war and violence, but in any event, this scene ruins the movie as a revenge flick.

Lest you think I am simply squeamish, I would like to compare the baseball bat murder to the Marsalis Wallace rape scene in “Pulp Fiction.” That scene probably wouldn’t be considered quite as shockingly graphic today, but when the movie came out, the scene had people walking out of theaters. The deal was, though, the movie had earned the right to show us that. The entire buildup of Butch’s story line made it inevitable that he would grab that sword and go back to help Wallace, despite the fact that they were trying to kill each other in the previous scene. If that meant that we had to see a glimpse of homosexual rape, it fit the story, and in the end, justice was done and the right people were killed. Nothing in “Inglourious Basterds” justifies the baseball bat scene. We all know that the Germans committed atrocities, but these particular Germans are just soldiers as far as we can tell. If the Basterds killed Germans in battle, then fine. If they had to kill those prisoners, then they could have given them a quick, clean death. Their cruel tactics in that scene are unfitting in what is otherwise a cathartic revenge fantasy.

That brings us to how the film breaks Rule 3, the one about being at least somewhat plausible. “Inglourious Basterds” is way too much of a fantasy. I had heard that it was a “re-imagining” of WWII, but I never guessed just how re-imagined it is. Even so, I wouldn’t have minded the big-concept style if Tarantino had bothered to make the plot even remotely plausible, but this is the ’70’s porno version of a revenge movie. (The doorbell rings, and it's a couple of Nazis having an argument about who is better at killing Jews. They want you to judge, and by the way, would you mind holding their baseball bat for them?) Tarantino has always been a master of respecting plot details and dialogue, but in “Basterds” he treats these things as minor signposts on the road to “killin’ Nazis.”

Some have suggested that the film is Tarantino's parody of other movies, that this is his version of a western or a Charles Bronson flick. Maybe that is his intention. "Kill Bill" was his version of a kung-fu movie, and "Grindhouse" was his parody of, well, grindhouse movies. I guess I just don't like this mission Tarantino is on. I liked it better when he was making good movies rather than making fun of bad ones.

I am a bit puzzled at the awards-season attention “Inglourious Basterds” is receiving. The movie is very well-acted, and it’s worth seeing just for the performances by Diane Kruger (as a German movie star turned Allied spy), Melanie Laurent, and especially Christoph Waltz. This is a movie with great acting, but a flawed script and, frankly, uninspired direction. I suppose you could try to credit the film as an over-the-top comedy, but the movie invests too much and requires too much investment from the audience to get off that lightly. I have been a big fan of some of Quentin Tarantino’s work, but I was disappointed by “Inglourious Basterds,” and I like it less the more I think about it.

2 stars out of 5.

Julie and Julia (2009)

It seems redundant to praise this movie. Everyone with a keyboard has talked about how nice it is that Hollywood made a good movie for women, and how great Meryl Streep is as Julia Child, and so on. They’re right, too. “Julie and Julia” really is that good.

The film is based on the blog-turned-book by Julie Powell about her yearlong project to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s classic, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Her story pretty much follows the standard stunt-memoir formula. First she is tentative-but-excited at having come up with the idea and embarking on the adventure. She makes good headway for a while. Then there’s the part where she is overwhelmed by the enormity of the task, and has a good cry. Then there’s the part where the project puts her marriage at risk. After months of struggle, she completes the project and comes to some sort of peace with it and with the changes it has made in her life. Finally, the book offers come rolling in. It’s the dream of every over-sharing, self-absorbed blogger in the world. Don’t get me wrong, though, it’s fun stuff.

Meanwhile, the film also tells Julia Child’s story: how she moved to Paris with her husband, and, inspired by the wonderful food, decided to enroll in a famous French cooking school. She wound up becoming a cooking instructor, which led to her writing her famous cookbook. The book was something of a magnum opus, but once it was finally published, it revolutionized the American palate and led to Child’s cooking show and lasting fame.

The more compelling parts of the movie are the Julia Child parts. I really have to hand it to Meryl Streep here, she is amazing as Child. (The way she disappears into the role reminds me of Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of Ray Charles in “Ray.”) Nothing particularly intense happens to Julia (or to Julie) in the course of the movie, but nonetheless, Child’s love affair with her husband and with food makes for a good story. If Streep wins some awards for this role, they will be well deserved.

4 stars out of 5

500 Days of Summer (2009)

Love in the movies is always the same, right? Boy and girl meet in some adorable way and fall into a love that is perfect, mutual, and all-important. They usually have to overcome some obstacles to be together, and the movie may even give us a tragic ending where they are permanently separated by death or circumstances, but their love is eternal. The most important thing in the world is that the Boy and the Girl, who were Meant For Each Other can Be Together. If that can be achieved, then Everything Will Work Out.

Real love, of course, is complicated. It is probably made even more complicated by Hollywood’s efforts, which have trained so many of us to expect the Hollywood version of love. “500 Days of Summer” explores, in a small way, a more realistic version of love. It’s a love story where the Boy and the Girl love each other, just not equally.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Tom, a greeting card writer who falls head-over-heels for Summer (Zooey Deschanel). It’s easy to see why. There are lots of beautiful actresses with big, blue eyes, but Ms. Deschanel has a certain fresh, quirky quality that makes her irresistible. She isn’t, strictly speaking, the sexiest actress, but I can’t imagine a guy who wouldn’t want her to be his girlfriend. (She reminds me of Molly Ringwald in that.) Anyway, Summer and Tom hit it off and date for a blissful while. Since the movie jumps back and forth in time, I’m not really ruining anything for you by revealing that Summer tires of the relationship before Tom does. Instead of the standard movie where Tom Gets Her Back, this is a movie about Tom Getting Past It.

No new ground is really covered here. Breakup movies aren’t as common as standard romances, but if there can be said to be a Breakup Movie formula, “500 Days of Summer” follows the formula. Tom gets advice from his wacky roommates and his ridiculously wise little sister. He mopes, breaks stuff, etc., and ultimately he uses the breakup as a transformative experience that gets his life back on track. Standard stuff, but nicely done, with charming performances by Levitt and Deschanel. The film has some good humor, it handles the serious bits with class, and it’s a nice little piece of entertainment.

3.5 stars

Children of Men (2006) ****

Proving that a movie doesn’t have to be fun to watch to be brilliant, “Children of Men” is a dark work of genius. The story centers around the terrifying conceit that humanity has lost the ability to reproduce. This is ironic considering that so many of our problems today seem to be caused by excessive reproduction. “Children of Men” hypothesizes that all these problems would be that much worse if we weren’t kept sane by the hope embodied in the next generation. This dystopian, near-future sci-fi movie paints the earth as pretty similar to the world of today, but dominated by the existentialist hopelessness of an entire race of humans who face the likelihood that they are the end of the line.

Clive Owen is Theo, one of the unhopeful masses. He gets kidnapped by terrorists working for his ex, played with revolutionary style by Julianne Moore, and recruited for a shocking mission: to help smuggle the only known pregnant woman in the world out of England and into the hands of some trustworthy doctors. Calloused as he is, Theo takes the job for money, but during the nightmarish journey he rediscovers his humanity.

“Children of Men” gets so many things right. First of all, the actors are universally excellent. I’m not necessarily a big Clive Owen fan, but he really nails this one. Likewise, Julianne Moore is very convincing as an insurgent leader, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is chilling as one of her lieutenants. Michael Caine is wonderful in a small role as Theo’s dad. Another thing the film gets right is the Big Concept. This is science fiction, after all. “Children of Men” does a great job taking this concept, that the entire human race could suddenly become sterile, and envisioning our world under those conditions. The action sequences are also pretty good.

This is not, by any stretch, a date movie, but on a night when you are up for a serious, seriously good movie, “Children of Men” is worth seeing.

4 stars

Pretty in Pink (1986)

I know it’s hard to believe that anyone in the free world hasn’t seen “Pretty in Pink,” but I actually just saw the movie. I know, bizarre, huh? The thing is, I think there are just some movies, even iconic ones like this, that you miss out on if you don’t see them when they come out. This film came out in 1986. It isn’t like five years later, when I was in college, I had friends saying, “Hey, why don’t we hang out and watch ‘Pretty in Pink’?” So the years went by, and now I finally got around to seeing it.

Molly Ringwald plays Andie, a smart girl from the wrong side of the tracks who gets picked on by the rich bitches at her high school and who finds herself having to chose between 2 guys. On the one hand, there is Duckie (Jon Cryer), her lifelong best friend and fellow outcast, whom she thinks of as a brother. On the other hand is Blaine (Andrew McCarthy), a funny, mysterious, charmingly sincere, good-looking, rich kid. If anyone watching this movie actually had any doubt in their mind whom Andie would choose, then they deserve some kind of award for actually knowing less about women than I do. In any event, Duckie has this secret crush on Andie but lacks the walnuts to even ask her to Prom. Blaine, meanwhile, comes on really strong at first, but winds up ditching Andie under pressure from his preppy friends, including an asshole named Steff (James Spader.) With prospects like these, I think Andie should just remain a virgin until college.

I didn’t like “Pretty in Pink” nearly as much as “The Breakfast Club” or “16 Candles.” This movie is way more of a chick flick, by which I mean that the entire movie is about which of these two guys Andie is going to date. As I said already, I was rooting for neither. Duckie is nerdily cool, and a good friend, but Andie has no chemistry with him. She has tons of chemistry with Blaine, but I found it impossible to root for the guy. He seems nice, but then why does he hang out with a stereotypical rich jerk like Steff? Plus, a guy named Blaine really ought to have a stronger chin. Harry Dean Stanton is sympathetic as Andie’s single father, but, like all the male characters in the film, he is just not quite respectable.

Probably the most likable character is Andie’s boss Iona, played with sexy panache by Annie Potts. She is a hipster who lives in Chinatown, owns a record store, and changes her hair daily. She’s a mother figure for Andie, and she provides Andie with evidence that being a single woman is not the end of the world. This is a message that young women need to hear, and Iona sent it long before “Sex and the City.”

Come to think of it, “Sex and the City” and “Pretty in Pink” share a feminine, feminist attitude. They are both about strong, independent women who are doing the heavy lifting in their lives while also being pretty in pink.

3.5 stars out of 5

Bay of Angels (La baie des anges) 1963

It has been a while since we watched a Jeanne Moreau movie, so we took Netflix’s suggestion for “Bay of Angels.” Big mistake! This Jacques Demy creation is a bleak depiction of gambling addiction, more public service announcement than entertainment.

Claude Mann plays Jean, a young man newly introduced to gambling by a friend. Tired of his conservative life, he takes a vacation, intent on expanding his horizons and living a little dangerously. He meets Jacqueline (Jeanne Moreau) in a casino and gets sucked into her roller-coaster life of compulsive gambling.

Jacques Demy has some charming little movies, like “Lola” and “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” This film, though, is just painful to watch. When Jean and Jacqueline win, you know they are just going to lose it all again, and you know from the beginning that Jacqueline is never going to change. The only real question is whether or not Jean will become a gambling addict or win his way free of the situation. Unfortunately, the film never really makes us care enough about Jean to generate much suspense. Basically, the story is one predictable, bad outcome after another, without any real drama or action. The ending feels very tacked-on, as well. To top it all off, Jeanne Moreau looks cheap and ragged-out as a platinum blond.

An interesting noir could have been made out of this basic premise. Instead, “Bay of Angels” is a boring character study about one character who is unlikable (Jacqueline) and one who is not really developed (Jean).

1 star