Ace in the Hole

Kirk Douglas is the disgraced urban newspaper reporter who shows up in Albuquerque looking for a newspaper job that will let him get back into the game, even if from the bottom, simply to have a chance at a 'big story' to propel him back to the limelight and New York. He whiles away a year, and on his way to cover a rattlesnake competition, happens upon the story he has been waiting for: a man has fallen into a cave while searching for Indian artifacts, and, if managed correctly, will the "human interest" story that will grab everyone's attention.

Dated, a little naive, reliant on stereotypes, but still, after sixty years, works, because it relies on good acting. Douglas plays the cynical, amoral Chuck Tatum with aplomb. Jan Sterling plays the wife of the fallen-into-the cave hunter, and Ray Teal plays the sheriff who works with Tatum to maximize the benefits derived from the circus that develops. Both actors are recognizable. Good movie.

Off the map

I'd give it a 75% mark, out of a hundred. Quirky story of a famiuly living off the grid in New Mexico. They get by on less than $5,000 a year, from the man's veterans benefits and their selling of stuff. They get some things and services they need through barter. They home-school their daughter.

As the movie opens young Bo is exploring her world as her mother, Arlene, struggles to hold the family together amidst her husband Charley's deep depression. Their friend George visits, hangs out silentlym eats, and takes Bo out fishing. Into this life enters an IRS agent. Finding Arlene naked gardening, he is enraptured, and then stung by a bee, falling into a deep fevered illness.

There is a lot of melodrama, Charley's depression and Arlene's quirkiness not so much explored as exposed; William's psyche is troubled by a memory he begins to believe is not real, but it is not altogether clear why; only Bo's role works well. The movie promises to be more than it becomes, and falls flat.