Nicholas Ray at Film Forum

The punch-in-the-gut style of director Nicholas Ray (pictured) is in the spotlight at NY's Film Forum, starting with tomorrow's week-long run of 1950's In a Lonely Place, a classic, sad-eyed noir with Humphrey Bogart and Ray's then-wife Gloria Grahame, followed by a two-week festival of some of his best work, including films that the likes of Scorsese, Godard, and Truffaut described as some of their favorites. I heartily concur. Some of the selections include the fast-rising cult movie Bigger Than Life, with James Mason; Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge in the indescribable, must-see Freudian Western Johnny Guitar; the affecting noir of They Live By Night and On Dangerous Ground; the colorful gangster melodrama Party Girl, with Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse; and of course his most famous picture, Rebel Without a Cause. You can't go wrong with much of a well-culled set of choices, including a movie I've never seen, the Budd Schulberg-scripted Wind Across the Everglades, with Christopher Plummer and Burl Ives. (It was ubiquitous on syndicated TV stations back in the day, then vanished in the cable era.) Two lesser-known Rays I like: 1952's The Lusty Men, an excellent rodeo drama, with Robert Mitchum, Arthur Kennedy, and Susan Hayward, and 1957's World War II saga Bitter Victory, with Richard Burton and Curt Jurgens. Pick a few and strap in for turbulence and fireworks.

First rule of Fight Club

It's only a movie, kid.

On TCM: The Case Against Brooklyn

TCM has put my DVR into overdrive these last couple of nights. There were a bunch of rarely shown Stewart Granger pictures on, mostly Westerns--not normally the kind of thing that gets me going, but I had a sudden jones for Stewart. (Richard Brooks' The Last Hunt, with Granger and Robert Taylor, really needs to be on DVD.) And there was also "undercover" night, which brought a cache of movies about undercover cops, like the entertaining B Bunco Squad, out of hiding.

Most enjoyable was 1958's The Case Against Brooklyn, which, as the trailer and poster italicize, is one of those torn-from-the-headlines melodramas, pitting young cop Darren McGavin against a laundry-based protection racket that uses crooked law enforcement officers as muscle. I doubt the filmmakers got much past the Columbia backlot for principal photography (a truck chase is very SoCal in location), but it was fun to hear "Atlantic Avenue" and "Prospect Heights" name-dropped for verisimilitude, and to see my neighborhood portrayed as it was in the bad old days, as a hotbed of vice and corruption. Making the case for Brooklyn was McGavin, a whip-smart actor (always to be remembered as Kolchak: The Night Stalker) in a typically colorful performance. He's Brooklyn, baby.

Great Shakes

The Public Theater has Shakespeare in the Park--the Film Society of Lincoln Center has Shakespeare in the dark, as it begins a two-week series of film adaptations from around the world. The Olivier and Welles chestnuts are there, and also Roman Polanski's stellar 1971 Macbeth (pictured), but the interesting films are further-flung: An Indian Macbeth, and a Kiwi Merchant of Venice, among them. To go or not to go? Go.

Popdose: The Edge of Love

The two ladies vie for the affection of Matthew Rhys' Dylan Thomas in a drama that's truly "smokin'."

Popdose: For All Mankind

Woodstock has Woodstock; the other big event of 40 years ago in summer (other than my younger sister's birth) is beautifully commemorated in Al Reinert's artistic record, in a new edition from Criterion.

Popdose Flashback '89: Cosmic Thing

Recalling a favorite traveling companion from my expat years, when I roamed all around the world.

Popdose: The Hurt Locker

"The best American film of the year to date," now playing in more theaters.

"Shocking facts"

Cinema Styles is hosting a "Spirit of Ed Wood Blog-a-thon" all this week, in honor of the auteur behind the 50-year-old Plan 9 from Outer Space. And make no mistake about it--Wood was an auteur, with a style and signature all his own.

I introduced my classmates to Wood at a public speaking course I took in the 11th grade, in 1982. I was enthralled by Michael and Harry Medved's Golden Turkey Awards, which has come out a year or two earlier. I saw the movie after I had read the book, when it started making the rounds on Philly TV stations that my family could get with the arrival of cable, and it didn't disappoint. Surely this was the worst film ever made. So, when it came time to pick a topic for our final public speaking presentation, I picked, "The Worst Film Ever Made."

And I have to say, I killed. The usual stories that I knew from my limited knowledge of Wood and the movie made for great material. Just quoting from the film was enough to get everyone laughing. Wood's life and legacy were an A+ that day.

But I only got a B+. Why? Because I went over five minutes in my presentation. There was too much funny stuff to cram in and I didn't want to let any of it go. I loved whomping on Plan 9 too much.

In time, I came to change my opinion, as I learned more about Wood, and as my notion of what constituted a "bad" or "worst" movie altered. The bulk of bad movies are simply boring-bad, too dull and inert to raise any response. The worst movies are those that commit the unpardonable sin of putting you to sleep. But Plan 9 , like Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Monster before it, gets the pulse racing and the synapses firing. You feel the guiding hand, however shaky and unsteady. It's utterly unique and eccentric; there's nothing cookie-cutter about it. Its belief in itself is inspiring.

To paraphrase the great Eros, with my ancient, juvenile mind I developed explosives too fast for my mind to conceive of what I was doing. I was a callow teenager, passing on the received wisdom of my ignorant elders. A half-century later, Plan 9 from Outer Space endures as some kind of monument, one that wobbles but never falls down.

Live Design: Twelfth Night in Central Park

Some enchanted evening, Shakespeare-style, as a feisty Anne Hathaway makes merry in the Delacorte production of Twelfth Night.