Home Video debut for Josh Pierson's noirish and nutty WHERE SLEEPING DOGS LIE

Honor among thieves certainly has a long and storied history in literature and film, even if, in most cases, you could as easily call it dishonor among thieves. It's one thing when the thieves in question -- two brothers and their friend since childhood -- are relatively smart but quite another when they're dumb-as-they-come. Which is the case with the poorly-titled WHERE SLEEPING DOGS LIE. There are no sleeping dogs lying around anywhere in this movie, even metaphorically speaking, with almost every character about as hyped-up, noisy and attention-deficit-disordered as you could possibly want.

The first full-length feature (after half a dozen shorts) from writer/director Josh Pierson (shown at left), the movie's noticeably lax and lank storytelling and style make it something of an effort to sit through. The plot: Three idiotic, would-be criminals mis-execute a robbery with even worse-then-imaginable results.

Initially, the movie seems a bit promising because it is told piecemeal via scenes that go back and forth in time, but eventually the scenes begin to feel like filler -- in particular those set in a bar, below, in which one brother (Jesse Janzen, above, left) tells the other (Dustin Miller, right) about his big plan.

While some of this seems played for dark laughs, the humor quickly curdles due to the sheer ugliness and stupidity of what's going on. Too dumb to make a decent noir and peopled with characters that pretty much defy credibility, the film simply moves ever forward on its crazy death march.

The third wheel here is played by Tommy Koponen (above), who might garner more sympathy if the script didn't have him constantly whining and at odds with just about everything and everyone. Dialog moves from the expected and mediocre to downright bad, so the performers are hardly given much chance, except to over-emote like crazy. (Some of the speechifying sounds suspiciously like improvisation, in which one of the actors has just discovered the word fuck.) Female roles, as is often the case in these buddy-boy movies, are mere fodder for cliché.

The most impressive role, along with the performance of it, is taken by David J. Espinosa (above, left), as the initial victim of the robbery -- perhaps because his mouth is taped shut for much of the movie so he can't spout too much dialog. (I hope this actor got double pay for having had all that duct tape placed around and then removed from his head and mouth, over and over again!) And what the hell -- even the special-effects fire here looks fake.

From 1091 and running a too-lengthy 96 minutes, Where Sleeping Dogs Lie will hit home video this Tuesday, July 7 -- for purchase (and maybe?) rental. Your move...

USA Blu-ray debut for Alain Corneau's 1979 would-be cult film, SÉRIE NOIRE

Said to have been inspired by the Jim Thompson novel, A Hell of a Woman, the 1979 French film SÉRIE NOIRE was directed and co-adapted (with major help on the latter by Georges Perec) by the late Alain Corneau, a filmmaker whose work TrustMovies has usually very much enjoyed. While everything I've seen by this fellow would qualify as a good deal more than adequate, this film doesn't even come close to that.

Corneau, pictured right, evidently decided to filter Thompson's tale through the sensibility of dark comedy, if not outright farce, leading almost immediately and consistently thereafter to something very close to camp. Worse yet, unintentional camp.

The movie's star, the also late Patrick Dewaere (below), appears to have been given rein to go full-throttle. The result is rather like watching Nicolas Cage at his wildest and worst. In his too-short career, Dewaere was always threatening to go over the top. Here he does it in spades, giving the kind of what-the-fuck performance I should think might have caused the sctors working with him to run for the hills.

The story here involves a seedy salesman (Dewaere) who happens upon an elderly female client who has recently been cheated by another of the salesman's clients. She has a nubile, seemingly nympho neice (the also late Marie Trintignant, below, right) whom she rents out, and to whom our salesman takes an addled fancy. (Just about everything Dewaere does here is addled.)

Our salesman also has a nutty/slutty wife (Myriam Boyer) and a deadpan sleazebag boss (the-best-of-the-lot performance from Bernard Blier, below, right) and yet another client/friend (Andreas Katsulas) who is as crazy as everybody else. And that's a big part of the problem. Everyone is so busy being "out there" there very soon there's no "there" there, as Ms Stein, for other reasons, once surmised. I don't doubt that our world is full of reprobates and hypocrites, myself included, but Mr. Corneau's world here is more like an alternate universe with little of the fun or semi-logic that most of these provide.

You might indeed say that the filmmaker turns the conventions of noir on their head, subverting them into would-be comedy. Yet even by this standard, Serie Noire does not work, but instead takes its place as one of  the biggest major misfires in movie history: no suspense, no real laughs, no credibiity, no nuttin'. Oh, wait:  there is plenty of embarrassment.

"Name me one guy who's been as unlucky as me?" shouts our nitwit protagonist near the film's finale. After watching this far into things, the viewer may want to scream back at him, "Me!"  From Film Movement Classics, in French with English subtitles and running a lengthy 116 minutes, the movie hits the street -- in a fine Blu-ray transfer featuring some very interesting extras (yes, even if you disliked this work as much as I did) -- tomorrow, Tuesday, April 28 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Marcelo Mayen's BULLOCK THE BRUISER screens at NewFilmmakers New York at AFA

Normally, TrustMovies does not cover short films, given the amount of new full-length features he is asked to view and review. But since he was told that BULLOCK THE BRUISER, a film by Marcelo Mayen (shown below), had won "Best Feature" at the Monthly Film Festival, he decided to take a chance. Surprise: Full-length it is not, since it comes in at just 40 minutes. But that, perhaps, is best, since much more might have proven too much, as these minutes pack in every typical trope of the revenge-thriller genre.

Or is this actually a send-up of that genre? Either way, the film keeps toppling over into cliché, while showing us that, yes, violence is clearly the only answer. Along its short journey, Bullock the Bruiser does offer up a very handsome hero, the titular bruiser played by Will Parker (shown below); a fairly typical film-noirish bad girl, played in a bright red wig with not quite enough strength by Alice Dessuant (shown further below); a couple of not-

so-interesting "good" girls, played by Esther van Zyl (in the photo at bottom) and Danielle DeWulf (in the penultimate photo), one of which has already come to a sad end; and a "bad guy" (Max Turner, two photos below) who turns out to be not-so-bad after all.

Mr. Mayen has staged his "action"scenes with all the finesse and inadequacy of Christopher Nolan in his early Batman mode, with the plot, such as it is, made up of mostly exposition with which one character regales another.

So what's the point here? Well, I'd guess, Bullock the Bruiser is supposed to act as a kind of "calling card" short that can show that Mr. Mayen is capable of handling something larger and longer.

Considering the low-intelligence level of so many of our major movies these days, particularly the increasingly would-be super-hero block-busters, I'd say our filmmaker is more than ready to tackle the big league.

Meanwhile, if you'd care to take a look at his work, Bullock the Bruiser will screen, via NewFilmmakers New York, this coming Wednesday, June 7, at 7:30 pm at the Courthouse Theater at Anthology Film Archives.

Blu-ray debut of a 1952 camp classic: Crawford and Palance in David Miller's SUDDEN FEAR

TrustMovies had heard about, though never actually seen, SUDDEN FEAR -- that early 1950s film with Joan Crawford in danger and loving every minute of it. Now that he has finally viewed the movie, he can understand why. Unaccountably drawing some good reviews at the time of its release (and later re-release) (and garnering four Oscar nominations!), the film mostly points up the utter gullibility of mid-20th-Century audiences and critics.

Interestingly enough, Sudden Fear pops along quite smartly and believably for its first 20-30 minutes, as we see a Broadway play in rehearsal, with the playwright (Ms Crawford), having to give a thumbs down to her leading man (Jack Palance, above) and finding a replacement -- over the objections of her producers and director (or maybe agent?) and of course the actor himself.

During this opening period (and even beyond it), the acting is excellent -- from everyone concerned (even Crawford comes off as real) -- and so is the movie's pace, storyline and direction (by David Miller). When the playwright later encounters the actor on a train bound for San Francisco (above), an apology ensues, and a relationship starts to bloom. So far so fine. Mr. Palance is especially sexy and even romantic and endearing (qualities he rarely showed on screen). But, of course, there is much more afoot here.

When the shoe finally drops (in a clever, even-if-we've-been-very-obviously-set-up manner), the idiocy begins. Logic goes the window, while Crawford gives in to every bad acting habit in which she had ever indulged -- and then doubles down on them. The movie quickly turns into unintentional camp of a particularly high order and can be enjoyed in this manner, if not for the increasingly stupid twists and turns of the plot -- which resolves itself in every bit as ludicrous and coincidental way as has all that's come before.

In the cast are luminaries like Gloria Grahame (above) and Mike Connors (when the latter was still known as "Touch"), and the cinematography apes noir, but the movie is so thoroughly heavy-handed and over-the-top that it goes well beyond noir (and all else).

The film also runs 110 minute -- too long for this kind of B-movie nonsense -- and the plot machinations are fed to us in such as obvious, did-you-get-that? Are-you-absolutely-sure? manner that they drag out what ought to be fast and furious into a snail-paced slough.

Still, Sudden Fear is fun -- if you're in a certain mood. After all, no less than François Truffaut is said to have declared the film "A masterpiece of cinema." (But, then, the French can be so perverse, can't they?)

From the Cohen Film Collection,in a new 2K restoration (that looks OK but nothing spectacular), and featuring an audio commentary by film historian Jeremy Arnold, the Blu-ray hits the street this Tuesday, December 13 -- for purchase or rental.

Matthew Ross' FRANK & LOLA: all about love and betrayal and noir and not much else

Matthew Ross (not to be confused with Matt Ross, who recently gave us the wonderful Captain Fantastic) certainly garnered a game cast to star in his new feature, FRANK & LOLA. What film fan would not be interested in seeing a movie with Michael Shannon, Imogen Poots, Michael Nyquist, Emmanuelle Devos and Justin Long? All of these performers (and several others) do their best with what has been set before them. But by the end of this too-long (even at 87 minutes) pastiche of been-there-done-that, you are likely to be tapping your fingers on whatever solid surface is nearby, while muttering, "This was a big nothing."

Mr. Ross, pictured at left, may think he is telling us something important (or even interesting) about love and its discontents, including jealousy, revenge, and the like. But there is nothing here we have not seen elsewhere and handled much better.

Content-wise, and for all its nice sets and locations (Las Vegas and Paris), the movie offers so little new or novel in the plotting that you may feel that there simply must be some big reveal to be expected by film's end. Don't.

Shannon and Poots (shown above and below, left and right, respectively) play hot-n-heavy lovers who barely know each other but fall at-first-sight, then spend the remainder of the movie lying and/or acting like filmdom's biggest fall guy. The effect is nicely acted but distinctly under-whelming. Most ten-year-olds will have a keener idea of the perils of love and lust than is to be found in this film. Ms Devos and Misters Long and Nyqvist add some class and charm to the proceedings, to little avail. This is one of those movies that will have you scratching your head as to why it ever got made -- let alone saw a release on digital HD and VOD.

But here it is. So, if you've a mind, you can find this release, via Paladin and Universal Studios, on VOD at your local cable channel or perhaps streaming somewhere. Good luck.