Michael Ferris Movies

Bail Jumper is a surrealistic "road movie", bearing traces of the best of Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders-with a bit of David Lynch thrown in. B.J. Spalding and Eszter Balint play a couple of losers, mired in a miserable flyspeck town in Missouri. As Spalding lies in his bed and plays with his guns, Balint spends her waking hours shoplifting, courting immediate incarceration for having recently jumped bail. Deciding to head to New York to seek their fortune (if any), the couple makes the acquaintance of spiritualist Joie Lee, who predicts that "tremendous influences" will be summoned up so long as the two of them remain together. As the couple journeys towards the Big Apple, their trail is marked by innumerable natural disasters, culminating in a tidal wave that engulfs most of Staten Island. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The John O'Hara/Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart Broadway musical Pal Joey created quite a stir during its original theatrical run in 1940. Here we had a heel of a hero who sleeps with a wealthy older woman in order to realize his dream of owning his own nightclub, and who breaks the heart of the girl who truly loves him when she impedes his plans to get ahead. Blossom Time it wasn't. Due to the seamy nature of the plot and the double- and single-entendre song lyrics (especially the original words for "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", which you aren't likely to hear on most mainstream recordings of this tune), Pal Joey could not be faithfully filmed back in the 1940s. Even this 1957 version, made at a time when movie censorship was beginning to relax, was extensively sanitized for public consumption. Ambitious singer/dancer Joey (Frank Sinatra) is still something of a louse, but a redeemable one. The relationship between Joey and his older benefactress Vera Simpson (Rita Hayworth, who was actually a few years younger than Sinatra) is one of implication rather than overt statement. And Joey's true love, chorine Linda English (Kim Novak), is as pure as the driven snow, who vehemently expresses distaste at having to perform a striptease. The Rodgers and Hart songs ("I Could Write a Book" the aforementioned "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered") which seemed so cynical and ironic back in 1940, are given the typically lush, luxurious Hollywood treatment (many of the tunes, notably "There's a Small Hotel", were borrowed from other Rodgers and Hart shows, a not uncommon practice of the time). Pal Joey is nice to look at and consummately performed, but don't expect the bite of the original play, or the John O'Hara short stories which preceded them. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi