Welcome to The Penny-Pinching Cinephile, a weekly spotlight of the best free flicks on the web. ‘Cuz sometimes you gotta eat.
Talk about your toxic relationships. The focus of Criterion‘s slate of free movies on Hulu this week is ‘Bad Romance’ and it doesn’t get any more messed up than Liliana Cavani’s film about the decades-long “love” affair between a concentration camp inmate and her Nazi guard. Lady Gaga, eat your heart out. Anchored by an iconically sexy performance from Charlotte Rampling, The Night Porter‘s done more for SS uniform kink than the Third Reich could have done in a thousand years. Unflinching in its depiction of the couple’s sadomasochistic sex, Cavani’s film has a well-deserved controversial and divisive reputation. Of note, however, are the performances of Rampling and especially Dirk Bogarde as the fastidious and sexually ambiguous former SS officer who now works as the titular night porter in an upscale Viennese hotel. Whatever your opinion of The Night Porter, it’s a film that demands to be seen, at least so you can say you’ve seen it and survived.
Part gangster epic, part Looney Tunes cartoon, Stephen Chow’s off-the-wall kung fu mash-up is one of the craziest–and best–films of the past ten years. It’s like a mad mix tape of awesome genre homage and unbelievable, eye-popping visuals. Fans of Kill Bill and Scott Pilgrim will love the intricately choreographed martial arts insanity, while kung fu noobs will just sit back in awe at the energy and sheer force of will Chow puts into this movie. It may not be the greatest movie ever made, but Kung Fu Hustle is definitely one of the most fun.
3) Detour
Edgar G. Ulmer’s noir masterpiece features one of my favorite lines of all-time, the quintessential summation of all that noir encapsulates: “That’s life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you.” You’ll find that and many more hardboiled gems in Detour, maybe the greatest B film noir and certainly one of the most jaded and pessimistic. Tom Neal’s perpetual five o’clock shadow and omnipresent grimace typify the doomed male protagonist of all film noir–his character is an all-time classic chump. His downfall and detour is Ann Savage’s Vera, the femme fatale to top all femmes fatale. Savage gives a raw, ferral and downright terrifying performance; you wonder how Vera’s psychotic sexual aggressiveness ever passed the censors in 1945. Blackmail, murder and gin-soaked jazz tragedy, Detour really has it all. A must-see.
Watch on Archive.org
From the makers of the original King Kong, The Most Dangerous Game is an awesome adaptation of the short story by Richard Connell. From the opening credits, this movie is dripping with jungle atmosphere, creepy portents and eerie macabre. Taking full advantage of the pre-Code era, stars Joel McCrea and Fay Wray appear in various stages of undress. McCrea is especially beefcake-y post-shipwreck. (He was apparently in the special, sexy kind of shipwreck that rips off the sleeves of a shirt, but leaves the rest of it relatively unscathed). Fay Wray is a competent sidekick who can more than hold her own against the villainous, man-hungry Zaroff. The final hunting sequence is thrillingly edited and bracingly suspenseful. The film is only about an hour long, but uses those few minutes to their maximum, economizing the storytelling and creating a lean and chilling horror/adventure story.
Quite possibly the greatest film currently in the public domain, His Girl Friday is certainly one of the greatest comedies ever made and probably holds the record for fastest dialogue ever spoken in a movie. I don’t know if that’s even a record, but if it is, I think this Howard Hawk’s flick must win the prize. Newspaper reporters and former married couple Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant talk, talk, talk like their lives depend on it. Stories are their business and verbal wit is their currency. The script by Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer and Charles MacArthur (based on Hecht & MacArthur’s play The Font Page), features some of the smartest, fastest dialogue in cinema history. Director Hawks had to film Russell and Grant talking over each other just to fit the script into the runtime. By doing so, he created the apex of the screwball comedy, a classic whose breakneck pacing and rapier wit has kept it fresh and lively for seventy years.
If you’d like to suggest a website or film that’s screening for free, leave us a comment below.
2 thoughts on “The Penny-Pinching Cinephile (2/11/13–2/17/13)”
“The Night Porter” is a film I’ve been meaning to re-watch. I thought it was good and was impressed by Charlotte Rampling’s performance. Yet, I was mixed about it the first time I saw it.
It’s a very difficult film for a number of reasons. I didn’t hate it, but I don’t think I’d revisit it anytime soon.