Your dog is outside, running around with a knife in his mouth.

Another Thin Man

(1939)

It would be perfectly reasonable to assume the introduction of a sprog to a husband and wife detective duo would be the death knell for a series. A sign that sentimentality and generally goo-iness have taken over. Nothing could be further from the truth in this third outing for The Thin Man series, an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Farewell Murder. Nicky Jr. is absolutely not central to the story, and our couple are as refreshingly flippant in their discussion of him as they are towards their own relationship (i.e. they don’t need to keep saying they love him). This is also the most densely plotted mystery, so far. I didn’t figure out the perpetrator, but the fun of a Thin Man movie is more the antics of Nick (William Powell) and Nora (Myrna Loy) getting to the reveal than the reveal itself, and this one is hugely satisfying in that regard.

As in After the Thin Man, Nick and Nora are called to investigate goings on at a house with an entourage of possible mis-doers. This time, the murder doesn’t take place until after they arrive. Colonel McFay (C. Aubrey Smith) summons Nick convinced that his ex-employee Mr Church, who has been sending him threats, means to do him in. When McFay is murdered, Church seems like the obvious suspect so we, and Nick, know it must be someone else.

A really good murder mystery ought probably to be constructed in such a manner that an intelligent viewer can deduce the perpetrator through the trail of breadcrumbs while dodging the red herrings littered across the narrative. Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, returning on screenplay duties, fail in that regard. There’s a terribly clumsy scene in which one character reveals their relationship to another, as if it’s going to hold some importance. It never does, but it works as a simple distracting tactic. Likewise, there is the occasional element of oblique strangeness. We assume Mr Church’s premonitory dreams are simply a means for him to justify his foul deeds, but it becomes clear he actually believes he has this ability.

The police are several steps behind Nick as usual, and we see the return of Lieutenant Guild (Nat Pendleton) who rather surprisingly reveals he has always had a thing for Nora. It’s Otto Slack’s DA Van Slack who presides over the investigation, however. Nick’s withering response to police stopping his car at night and shining a torch searchingly (“Those are my feet”) about sums it up.

The couple’s general dispositions are alive and well. Nick is still on the sauce, but less prominently. There are a few references (“Oh, we had a lovely trip. Nick was sober in Kansas City”) and a nice moment where Nora pickpockets the key to the drinks cabinet, supplying it to her grateful husband (he has been refused alcohol as McFay wants him to have a clear mind). At one point she explains how she got rid of a clutch of reporters by telling them they were out of scotch (“What a gruesome idea” responds Nick). Nick’s as laidback as ever, only roused to fisticuffs when Church threatens Nicky Jr (the rotter!) We also get more of Nora’s wry delight in Nick’s underworld acquaintances (“Your father has such lovely friends”). In this case dimwit Creeps (Harry Bellaver) holds Nick no ill will for incarcerating him (“Why should I? It took a genius to outsmart me”).

Nora: How did you know I was here?

Nick: I saw a group of men standing around a table. I knew there was one woman in the world who could attract men like that. A woman with a lot of money.

There’s also the usual playful jealously on display. Nora learns of Nick’s playboy style (“Was he really like that? I always thought he was bragging”) and, on being left high-and-dry by Nick who gives her the slips to do some lone investigating for the third film in a row, we find her at the club he is visiting, surrounded by a throng of would-be suitors. They make them selves scarce when Nora exclaims, “I wont stay in quarantine. I don’t care who catches it”. There are also allusions to very un-Hayes Code slack morals when Nick refuses an offer from Virgina Gray’s moll by saying he is married (“That don’t mean a thing and you know it”).

Gatekeeper: What’s the idea with the kid?

Nick: Well, we have a dog, and he was lonesome. That was the idea, wasn’t it mummy?

Against the odds, the presence of Nicky Jr doesn’t become an irritation, and the casual language of Nick and Nora concerning their offspring belies their devotion (“We sort of like him. We might as well, we’re stuck with him”). The indulgence, once again, is reserved for adorable Asta who not only looks after Nicky Jr and is fascinated by a skunk (“It’s another kind of cat!” Nick warns him) but also makes off with a murder weapon (“What do you think he is? A moth?” asks Nick, observing the police aren’t going to catch Asta by waving strange lights about in the dark).

Halfway through the series and The Thin Man shows no signs of a deterioration in quality. Indeed, I think Another Thin Man just edges After the Thin Man. It isn’t as smoothly plotted, but it benefits from being less obvious. Goodrich and Hackett are firing on all cylinders with the repartee, and Powell and Loy are perfection. Then series was already five years old at this point, and it’s a rarity not to see annual cash grab sequels of variable quality (Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes for example) in properties around this time. The next picture would be released two years later, just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

****

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

I can’t be the worst. What about that hotdog one?

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) (SPOILERS) It would have been a merciful release, had the title card “ The End ”, flashing on screen a little before the ninety-minute mark, not been a false dawn. True, I would still have been unable to swab the bloody dildoes fight from my mind, but at least Everything Everywhere All at Once would have been short. Indeed, by the actual end I was put in mind of a line spoken by co-star James Wong in one of his most indelible roles: “ Now this really pisses me off to no end ”. Or to put it another way, Everything Everywhere All at Once rubbed me up the wrong which way quite a lot of most of the time.

We’ve got the best ball and chain in the world. Your ass.

Wedlock (1991) (SPOILERS) The futuristic prison movie seemed possessed of a particular cachet around this time, quite possibly sparked by the grisly possibilities of hi-tech disincentives to escape. On that front, HBO TV movie Wedlock more than delivers its FX money shot. Elsewhere, it’s less sure of itself, rather fumbling when it exchanges prison tropes for fugitives-on-the-run ones.

Drank the red. Good for you.

Morbius (2022) (SPOILERS) Generic isn’t necessarily a slur. Not if, by implication, it’s suggestive of the kind of movie made twenty years ago, when the alternative is the kind of super-woke content Disney currently prioritises. Unfortunately, after a reasonable first hour, Morbius descends so resignedly into such unmoderated formula that you’re left with a too-clear image of Sony’s Spider-Verse when it lacks a larger-than-life performer (Tom Hardy, for example) at the centre of any given vehicle.

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

So, you’re telling me that NASA is going to kill the President of the United States with an earthquake?

Conspiracy Theory (1997) (SPOILERS) Mel Gibson’s official rehabilitation occurred with the announcement of 2016’s Oscar nominations, when Hacksaw Ridge garnered six nods, including Mel as director. Obviously, many refuse to be persuaded that there’s any legitimate atonement for the things someone says. They probably weren’t even convinced by Mel’s appearance in Daddy’s Home 2 , an act of abject obeisance if ever there was one. In other circles, though, Gibbo, or Mad Mel, is venerated as a saviour unsullied by the depraved Hollywood machine, one of the brave few who would not allow them to take his freedom. Or at least, his values. Of course, that’s frequently based on alleged comments he made, ones it’s highly likely he didn’t. But doesn’t that rather appeal to the premise of his 23-year-old star vehicle Conspiracy Theory , in which “ A good conspiracy theory is an unproveable one ”?

He doesn’t want to lead you. He just wants you to follow.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) (SPOILERS) The general failing of the prequel concept is a fairly self-evident one; it’s spurred by the desire to cash in, rather than to tell a story. This is why so few prequels, in any form, are worth the viewer/reader/listener’s time, in and of themselves. At best, they tend to be something of a well-rehearsed fait accompli. In the movie medium, even when there is material that withstands closer inspection (the Star Wars prequels; The Hobbit , if you like), the execution ends up botched. With Fantastic Beasts , there was never a whiff of such lofty purpose, and each subsequent sequel to the first prequel has succeeded only in drawing attention to its prosaic function: keeping franchise flag flying, even at half-mast. Hence Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore , belatedly arriving after twice the envisaged gap between instalments and course-correcting none of the problems present in The Crimes of Grindelwald .

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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