LITTLE MEN (2016)

Largely liked by critics; largely ignored by the public, co-writer/director Ira Sachs’ film may be modest to a fault, but the bigger problem is that Sachs wears that modesty like a badge of honor.  (Or is it a hairshirt?)  Focused on new middle-school age pals Jake & Tony (they actually go to different schools), brought together when Jake’s grandfather dies and his parents (mid-list NYC theater actor Greg Kinnear; therapist wife Jennifer Ehle) inherit the Bkln townhouse where Tony’s dressmaker mom (Paulina Garcia) has long run an underperforming storefront shop.  She needs the space; the new owners need a market-value rent; the conflict soon headed to the courts.  It inevitably comes between the two boys’ friendship and everything turns messy,  But under Sachs, that means neat messy, polite messy, fait accompli messy; while withholding the visual backing that should abet his storytelling.  Why no look at the new apartment space?  Why make Garcia’s store look like a alterations/thrift shop, and its proprietress more seamstress than boutique designer?  Was she always this dreary?  Was she ever the promising creative person Kinnear seems to have been as a young actor?  The film's like one of those New Yorker fiction pieces you never get around to reading.  Maybe that’s all Sachs modestly hoped for.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  It’s an uneven film, but George Roy Hill’s THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT/’64 works similar teen tropes from a girls’ mid-‘60s POV.  (Plus Peter Sellers as a concert pianist who loses his place during a modern concerto premiere.)

L'AÎNÉ DES FERCHAUX / MAGNET OF DOOM (1963)

Third, last and least of three consecutive films from writer/director Jean-Pierre Melville with Jean-Paul Belmondo (after LÉON MORIN, PRÊTRE/’61; LE DOULOS/’62) is still a considerable achievement.*  Adapted from a typically character-driven Georges Simenon novel, Melville uses twin prologues to contrast young Belmondo’s failed boxer joining up with elderly Charles Vanel’s amoral  money manipulator banker as traveling assistant.  Fleeing France in a hurry, they land in New York where Vanel empties his security deposit box at one bank, but finds paper securities stuck at another.  Then, it’s all North-to-South Road Pic  with Belmondo steadily chipping away at Vanel’s authority.  And it’s this power struggle arc that interests Simenon; Melville more concerned with the series of encounters & incidents along the way in a race to reach a country without a French extradition treaty.  Neither man much concerned with the outcome once they dead-end in New Orleans.  Some of Melville’s Americans have that ‘Made-in-France’ affect, and a few studio sets (all shot in France) show Melville’s usual lack of concern about production polish.  But with Henri Decal on camera and a Georges Delerue score, Melville largely hides his tight budget, holding fast to his basic idea of an opportunistic Belmondo along for the ride.  The film becoming more compelling by the mile. 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Of the three films, LEON MORIN, PRIEST is the masterpiece.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/10/leon-morin-pretre-leon-morin-priest-1961.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/05/le-doulos-1962.html

AT SWORD’S POINT (1952)

Faux Alexandre Dumas MUSKETEERS follow-up is historical nonsense, but a nifty idea all the same: Dying Queen Anne, worried about young Louis XIV’s safety, wishes her loyal Musketeers were here to protect him.  Turns out, they are!  Or rather, their sons are.  That’d be D'Artagnan Jr., Porthos Jr., Aramis Jr. and Athos Jr.; Cornel Wilde, Alan Hale Jr,. Dan O’Herlihy and Maureen O’Hara.  Bet you spotted the odd ‘man’ out.  O’Hara not the son of Athos, but fierce fighting daughter Claire.  Honor bound to the Queen, who reveals Louis’s secret location only to them, but word gets out when a trusted Countess proves traitor.  It’s all-for-one and one-for-all (except in that bed built for four) to save the monarchy from dastardly usurper Duc de Lavalle (Robert Douglas).  Alas, that villain is defeatable, while the film’s true villain,  new R.K.O. owner/production chief Howard Hughes, is not; already micromanaging the studio to a premature death.  Note this film held back for two years and its short running time (81").  What remains emphasizes sword play over plot & character development.  (How could they miss having the failing Queen mistake the young Musketeers for the old?)  Journeyman director Lewis Allen not much help, either; pedestrian swash and buckle.  And when you’ve got Olympic caliber fencer Cornel Wilde on hand, why not let him show some honest fencing rather than the usual stunts?*  And what’s with the print?  It looks like it went thru the TechniColor rinse cycle with too much softener.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Wilde left the 1936 USA Olympic Fencing Team for a theater job.  Perhaps in consideration of the games location in Nazi Germany and his own Jewish background.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Douglas Fairbanks' final silent, THE IRON MASK/’29, about the best (and certainly the most touching) of all MUSKETEER pics.  Look for the restored version of about 1'45".

BLUE JEANS (1917)

Fascinating, frustrating, unmissable.  Frustrating in that the film’s in pretty rough shape, a dupe with severe nitrate deterioration.  The widely available George Eastman House print, free online, fortunately improves as it goes along.  Much better by the crucial last two reels where Joseph Arthur’s 1890 stage melodrama’s idea of tying the hero to a conveyor belt at a sawmill is filmed to stunning effect.  And note, it’s the guy on the belt and the gal who saves him in the nick of time.  (As if Snidely Whiplash threw the switch and Nell Fenwick saved Dudley Do-Right.)  But how’d we get here?  Briefly, under top silent scripter June Mathis*, hungry orphan Viola Dana meets-cute with handsome young Perry Bascom by stealing his lunch.  On his way to claim his late father’s sawmill from his Step-Uncle, he’s eager to marry Dana and settle down.  But when he gets involved in politics, a previous wife surfaces to denounce him.  She was already married to another, but can he prove it?  And now, Dana’s past is leaking.  Seems her mom ran off with . . . Bascom’s father!  These newlyweds are brother and sister!  Plus, her kindly landlords, who are about to throw her out, discover they are her actual Grandparents.  This but a fraction of the melodrama Mathis has to parse, which she does neatly under the clarifying direction of John H. Collins.  (The fourth of their five collaborations at Metro.)  Collins, who managed to make good films even at Edison*, shows flashes of brilliance here.  The pastoral courtship (though you have to squint) and even more in that sawmill climax.  What advanced editing, closeups and angles. His early death during next year’s Spanish Influenza Epidemic, only 29, a huge loss to cinema.  To Viola Dana, too, as they were husband & wife.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *The late ‘teens/early ‘twenties saw female creatives squeezed out of the film biz.  The two most powerful women left were writers Frances Marion and June Mathis.  Mathis going on to discover Rudolph Valentino with THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE/’21 only to slip when she lost BEN-HUR to the newly configured M-G-M.  Then dying in 1927, only 40.  A new critical study, JUNE MATHIS: THE RISE AND FALL OF A SILENT FILM VISIONARY by Thomas J. Slater details the life & work.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *More Collins from his Edison days.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/09/john-h-collins-edison-films-director.html

WEIRD SCIENCE (1985)

Dreadful.  Hard to believe that even the current crop of writer/director John Hughes acolytes would stand up for this also-ran item.  (And with only eight directing credits, there’s not much product to spare.)  A FRANKENSTEIN sendup (watch for the colorized clip from the ‘31 classic) that morphs into HORNY CAT IN THE HAT, Anthony Michael Hall is Nerd Number One, a high school loser with three ‘funny’ faces for all occasions, while Nerd Number Two Ilan Mitchell-Smith speaks with an adenoidal voice to let us know either puberty or Jerry Lewis is about to show up.  Together, they create Living Doll Kelly LeBrock to cook & strip for them.  (The boys prefer breakfast.)  As big brother Marine, home to keep order, Bill Paxton gets a couple of decent laughs, but the whole idea is deeply creepy even as a teen fantasy with a sentimental copout moral: Be Yourself.  And even worse when aliens show up (don’t ask) and Hughes thinks it funny to have a huge Black guy on hand (at an otherwise All-White teen party) to faint in fear.  Staged and lit to look like a CostCo warehouse, the film may not be Hughes’ worst, but seems so as you watch.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  If you’re trying to boost Hughes’ rep, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF/’86 and PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES/’87 probably make the best case.

DEATH OF NINTENDO (2020)

Don’t be fooled!  This poster ‘reads’ as Animation, but NINTENDO is a Live Action coming-of-age film, and a good one.  Comfortingly conventional/true to the form, yet holding on to enough curious local custom & cultural specificity in time & place (1990s/Philippines) to make it feel freshly caught.*  Best guess is that writer/producer Valerie Castillo Martinez used her own memories of growing up in Manila for details, well caught by director Raya Martin.  A middle-school  summer break; the matriarchal society in charge at home (not a father in sight); some wary mixing between the boy groups and the girl groups.  Our focus on three buds and a neighboring girl who’d rather hang out with these computer game obsessed guys than those pink-fetishing girly girls.  The boys’ passion for the latest Nintendo Cassette Game only exceeded only by a desire not so much to lose their virginity, but their foreskin under the whetstone sharped razor of an unsanctioned tradition-bound country circumciser.  Yikes!  The boys certain this rite of passage a sure way to increase size.   As the youngest looking of the three pals, Noel Comia Jr. especially charming, a kid who doesn’t realize he’s become a handsome prince fit for the pretty new girl in town, but a much better fit for the smartest, Kim Chloie Oquendo as Mimaw, the boys' tagalong pal.  All while earthquakes and power shortages make this a summer to remember.  And doubly interesting to the viewer as a rare chance to see middle-class Filipino life.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Similarly gaining universality thru local specificity, FRENCH KISSES/’09, a coming-of-age film by ARAB OF THE FUTURE graphic novelist Riad Sattouf.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/03/les-beaux-gosses-french-kissers-2009.html

WESTFRONT 1918 (1930)

Shot and released at the same time as Hollywood’s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, this German production from top filmmaker G.W. Pabst uses much the same ingredients: late WWI infantry, the waste of young lives in trench warfare, futile battle action, a disappointing visit home, a girl at the front to embrace, nihilistic finale.  Technically similar too in advances with some astonishingly free camera movement for an Early Talkie and capturing the horrors of war with Pre-Code honesty.  Yet the two films are quite different in tone.  Hollywood director Lewis Milestone, adapting Erich Maria Remarque’s international phenomenon in a far larger production, weeps over humanity where Pabst despairs.  Both films essential.  Three years on, the Nazis gained power and banned both films.  Seven years on, Hollywood made something like a sequel to QUIET in THE ROAD BACK/’37.  Nobody came; and WWII on the horizon.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Now best known for the Louise Brooks silent PANDORA’S BOX/’29, Pabst followed this with a true story of German & French miners working together after an underground explosion in KAMERADSCHAFT/’31.  OR: The 1930 ALL QUIET . . .  - the much acclaimed 2022 remake is best avoided.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/all-quiet-on-wewstern-front-2022.html

AFTER LIFE / WANDAFURU RAIFU (1998)

Early feature from Japanese writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda, already showing masterful control & balance, is a charmed fable about the path to eternity.  A land-mined field if ever there was one.*  Set in a dilapidated workplace (a  former school or factory?) where a motley group of recently dead meet for instruction on their ‘future.’  Given three days to find the one memory in their lives they’d take with them to the beyond, the deceased, young & old, are assisted in their search by seasoned ‘helpers’ stuck in coaching positions thru their own inability to choose that one pure recollection.  Tough, funny and remarkably clear-headed, the film could profitably lose a reel, but is otherwise all but faultless as the dead seek their unique life-defining moment before helping to recreate it on film for a final group screening before . . .  Well, that we aren’t told.  But we do witness a revelation when one of the aides makes a connection that lets him realize his own epiphany, his moment of clarity.  A decision that finally lets him take his leave, saddening a fellow helper yet to find her moment.  But soon the week has come to an end and a new class will need help from the slowly rotating staff of experts.  Simply handled technically, what an eye for still composition Kore-eda has; wonderfully acted; Kore-eda sets the bar in taste, tone and well earned sentiment very high, but knows what he’s doing.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The passage to the hereafter a surprisingly popular subject, particularly during wartime.  Try this two-for-one package that did service in both WW I and II, first as an Early Talkie - OUTWARD BOUND/’30, then, more polished if less touching, remade as BETWEEN TWO WORLDS/’44.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/outward-bound-1930-between-two-worlds.html

ANIMALS (2014)

Directed by Collin Schiffli (his debut feature), but produced, written and starring David Dastmalchian, this is undoubtedly a vanity project.  Perhaps a good one, but still a vanity project.  Something of a ‘70s throwback, it’s all but a druggie two-hander for Dastmalchian and Kim Shaw, his partner in petty crime, hypodermic nirvana and bed.  We join the White middle-class heroin addicts when they’re still high-functioning narcissists.  A period tagline might read: They’re Young; They’re in Love; They’re Junkies.  Seen at comfortable distance, they display chic angularity with the sharply defined features and blotchy skin of those models manqué you might notice standing in the background of an Andy Warhol production shot at ‘The Factory’ in the ‘60s.  By the time they inevitably touch bottom, their faces have collapsed into Meth addict death masks.  Then, unlike the old period cautionaries on glam degradation, the pair, forcibly separated, get help.  One from Mom; one from a remarkably generous/effective/caring Public Care Program.  Clinging to their last chance the way they once clung to their sense of shitty personal entitlement as they conned, robbed and lied their way past bumps in the road during the height of their druggie run.  Bouncing back with a hard to swallow sense of hope hanging in the air, any chance of an honest portrayal now off the table.