Screening Log: 7 February 2012

1. Safe House (2012, Daniel Espinosa) Thoroughly stoopid but it has a brute force I responded to. The tussles and chases and whatnot are shot and edited for maximum bone-crunching impact, while the script features so many out-of-nowhere head shots and car crashes that it almost becomes a ZAZ-style parody. I’m not defending the movie, which is another over-plotted inanity that blithely wastes an over-qualified cast (and Ryan Reynolds). Hey, let’s cast Liam Cunningham for a 25-second role. Denzel, when he can be bothered, is detached from the material in bizarrely eccentric ways. He’s a movie or two from the don’t-give-a-fuck-anymore batshit insanity of certain Morgan Freeman roles (e.g., Dreamcatcher). [advance screening]

2. Terror in a Texas Town (1958, Joseph H. Lewis) This was the last film for Lewis, the B-movie legend best cherished for The Big Combo and (most especially) Gun Crazy. A sleepier film than both, laced with a soft guitar score that should never accompany a film with the word “terror” in the title. But that’s appropriate for an oater where the baddie (Nedrick Young) is both a menace and an intense brooder, who commits heinous deeds but with a self-hating melancholy that suggests he’s only evil because, despite efforts to the contrary, he genuinely can’t be anything else. (Chalk that angle up to screenwriter Ben Perry, i.e., Dalton Trumbo.) Remind me to put Sterling Hayden’s in-and-out Swedish accent on a listicle of bad movie accents along with various Rod Steigers. Although he’s still Sterling Motherfucking Hayden. [Netflix Instant]