My Week of Movie Watching

Night at the Museum – Battle of the Smithsonian – Cluttered title, cluttered movie. All the main characters are back from the original, plus a bunch of new ones – Al Capone, Napoleon, Ivan the Terrible, General Custer, Amelia Earhart, and a nasty Pharaoh (Hank Azaria). The problem is, it seems like there’s not enough time to get everyone on the screen. A couple of decent laughs, but overall, a disappointment.

Innocents with Dirty Hands – Claude Chabrols’ 1975 take on Double Indemnity, with Rod Steiger as the cuckolded husband and Romy Schneider as his unfaithful wife. This one is very well done, with a couple of major twists in plot. Perhaps one too many. Chabrol being Chabrol, IwDH is a pretty sexy little piece of work. If you are a red-blooded male type, I defy you to watch Schneiders’ first two minutes in this film, and not feel a major fire in your loins.

I Confess – My first viewing of this lesser-known Hitchcock. Montgomery Clift plays a priest who hears a murderer’s confession, then finds himself accused of the murder. Clift is a bit wooden in this film, and the circumstantial evidence that leads to his accusal is contrived, but I recommend it anyway. It’s a great rendering of the common Hitchcockian theme of the man falsely accused. In this case, the actual murderer doesn’t seem to harbour much guilt, but his wife certainly does, and the film builds some good tension around her. Karl Malden stars as the investigating detective. An added note is that the film is set in Quebec City, and contains some great visuals of that beautiful town.