MONKEY MAN (2024)

When it comes to self-mythologizing vanity projects: Action Movie Division, even Sylvester Stallone takes a back seat to Dev Patel who not only stars, but writes, directs, produces and sweats his way thru loads of ‘wife-beater tees.  (First ripping them apart to expose a fit hirsute bod for ladies in the film to ogle.)  With government & military goons oppressing ‘the people’ (we know they’re bad since they mow down kids at a puppet show . . . they even mow down the puppets!), Patel lives out tales his mother read to him as a child about the legendary monkey-man of justice Hanuman in his own one-against-a-thousand martial arts battles; fashioned in the usual ‘Macbeth Action sequence’ style (full of sound and fury, signifying nothing*).  Eventually confronting the officer he witnessed raping, then murdering his mother; and then in face-to-face conflict against the philosophically inclined Head of State.  He takes a nail to the palm just in case you haven’t caught on to Patel’s Chosen One indulgences.  Or whatever he’d be called in the Indian folkloric elements the film uses.  Credit Patel with bringing this in at a price (he works cheap when it’s his own project!) and then finding an audience for it.  But a depressing success.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *One odd touch in his fights possibly counts as original with Patel regularly using his mighty choppers (big, white, strong) not only to bite off facial features, but to twist short-bladed knives into the jugular.  Yikes!

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG (2020)

Live-action/computer-animation mix of yet one more popular videogame must have seemed something of a risky/expensive joke while in development.*  But with SONIC 3 rocking the current Holiday Box-Office, who’s laughing now?  A deserved hit from the start, it’s only gotten bigger.  (2 and 3 not seen here.)  Gags & action very ADHD, which fits Sonic, stuck on earth where he’s trying to stop Jim Carrey’s diabolical intergalactic strongman from taking over the world.  Fortunately he carries gold ring Black Hole portals with him.  (Doesn’t everyone?)  And, after sorting out their new relationship, gets help from new human pal James Marsden to reestablish order.  Fun, if a little relentless in the manner of the first DEADPOOL/’17, it’s really more reminiscent (make that prescient), unexpectedly so, of EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE/’22 (and not just stylistically).  Even more unexpectedly, it’s a lot more engaging (and certainly less pretentious) than that seriously taken award winner.  Zippy, light-hearted, technically savvy direction by Jeff Fowler (okay, also exhausting) and without a weak link in the cast.  Sonic voiced by Ben Schwartz with James Marsden as his winning pal (crazy young looking at 47), while Jim Carrey is only slightly held back by having to sit for much of the film in a space vehicle.  (A good thing?  Or does it make him play more broadly to make up for the immobility?)  Easy to see why this took off; easy to tell whether or not you’d want try 2 & 3.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, more free association in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/12/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-2022.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Though no joke to its fan base who were appalled at early renderings of Sonic and waged a successful campaign to redesign the character closer to the little computer beastie.

BLITZ (2024)

From British writer/director Steve McQueen, a look at London during the worst of the WWII blitz, with the city being systematically bombed during overnight waves of air attacks by German planes.  The film seen & told largely from the POV of a biracial runaway boy via Dickensian adventures as he tries to find his way home after leaping from an evacuation train, and from his mom, searching the city to find him.  As filmmaking, surprising only in not being surprising, some McQueen fans unhappy with its relative conventionality, but that turns out to be a clever move by McQueen, allowing him to progressively complicate events & situations while neatly upsetting the usual we’re-all-in-this-pulling-together tropes of past tellings, without losing his audience or making social politics the main point of the film.  Agenda-free, it tells the truth before printing the legend.  Technically, some of the CGI effects fail to convince, and a couple of noble characters feel too saintly (they gum up the brisk tone), but McQueen keeps it moving with strikingly fine set pieces (a nightclub sequence & one in an UnderGround station are dillies) and two or three brilliant narrative ellipses that cut out when you don’t expect them to, leaving just enough unsaid to make us participants rather than onlookers.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Double-billing this with John Boorman’s HOPE AND GLORY/’87, his untouchable WWII memoir, is probably unfair.  But it does demonstrate the unique advantage in having your own skin in the game on a child’s POV memory piece.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/hope-and-glory-1987.html

THE SILENT HOUR (2024)

Bypassed thriller was perhaps a little too familiar to break out commercially (suggested ad copy: Just When You Thought Variations On DIE HARD Were Over!), but it’s well-handled by director Brad Anderson and writer Dan Hall along with . . . well, by just about everyone.  (Other than the main villain who’s a lousy actor.)  But the main reason to have a look is for lead actor Joel Kinnaman who’s upped his game in gravitas and empathy to new levels.  A police detective in crisis after being injured in the prologue (an excitingly staged chase between parked & crisscrossing trucks), Kinnaman is told his manageable hearing loss will soon plunge at unexpected moments in & out of complete deafness.  On medical leave, he’s called back to work by his ex-partner to act as interpreter for a deaf witness in a murder case with his admittedly barely adequate deaf ‘signing.’  Young, pretty, an obvious romantic set-up (nicely played by Sandra Mae Frank , the leads perfectly paired),what no one yet knows is that the killers are bent cops with a leak into the investigation.  After that, it’s all hide and seek on ten floors in a building that’s already being cleared out for demolition.  Close calls; elevator shaft getaways; window ledges for quick switches; you get the idea.  With tension exponentially raised by communication problems (phones & hearing problems) as well as the expected gunplay; most twists staying within the bounds of believability.  But the main pleasure comes watching this Joel play with the assured dignity and modest heroism of another Joel, that underrated Golden Age Hollywood star Joel McCrea.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  McCrea was at his peak around WWII, but for a comparison here, try his superior remake of the Walsh/Bogart classic HIGH SIERRA/’40; Westernized as COLORADO TERRITORY/’49, also with Walsh calling the shots.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/12/colorado-territory-1949.html

MIKEY AND NICKY (1976)

Anywhere he went, Mike Nichols was always the smartest guy in the room.  Or was if past comedy partner Elaine May didn’t show up.  Then he’d settle for Silver.  And this may help explain their inflated film reputations, especially among New York-centric cognoscenti.   But if Nichols kept up appearances by sweeping duds under the rug (see: DAY OF THE DOLPHIN; THE FORTUNE; CATCH-22, et al.), May has but four titles and no wiggle room.  Instead, her champions must elevate the last two flame-outs, infamous ISHTAR/’87 and this low-level mob internecine hit job, a crude long-night-of-the-soul affair, into unheralded masterpieces.  Wasn’t it made by the smartest person in the room?  Truth is, inarticulate (even dumb) people have been known to make good films . . . and vice versa.  Here, John Cassavetes, acting loud enough so you can’t miss him, is the mob ‘rat’ roaming New York in hopes of avoiding (or at last delaying) a hit that’s been put on him.  Peter Falk, fellow mid-level mob associate and his only friend, wants to help him . . . maybe.  Falk really wants to help set him up at some obscure location to facilitate the hit.  Claims of realism dissolve in the heavy-handed Method acting seen in so many Cassavetes projects.  (If everyone you know is a Method actor, especially ones hoping to be called on stage for a class critique, I suppose it may ring true.)  And with May shooting 100 feet of film for every 1 used, no surprise to find the film doesn't cut together.  More like cleaning out the fridge and calling the result boeuf bourguignon.  ISHTAR may have been dissed (in spite of a few seriously funny set pieces), but M&N was simply dismissed.  Still around, still utterly hilarious at testimonial speech-making (a niche market to be sure, but Ms. May a genius at it), but Academic dogma now sticks M&N right up there with the usual set of auteur reclamations.  And this time, we can’t even blame the French.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  For this sort of mob rubout/best-friend turncoat story, one that’s deservedly been raised into the canon, try the originally dismissed THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE/’73.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-friends-of-eddie-coyle-1973.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Cassavetes, under the impression he’s not doing enough to steal focus, adds a snort to his laughs, a snort!  Falk quickly spots what Cassavetes is doing and quickly copies it.

RAAT AKELI HAI (2020)

Handsomely mounted murder mystery/police procedural from India (the tone half CHINATOWN/half Agatha Christie whodunnit) is a bit like watching one of those BritBox crime shows where you’re not quite sure who everyone is or why the maid did it, but liked it anyway.  (As if playing a game of CLUE with twice the usual suspects, double the rooms and three lead pipes.)  It starts particularly well as a semi-truck runs a car off the road before finishing off the crawling victims.  It’s followed by a big wedding party where the mother of police detective Jatil Yadav (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) hunts up possible brides for her middle-aged boy.  (Typical blunt response: ‘Your son is much too dark for me!’)  But the main story (which eventually ties in with the double prologue)  involves the murder of a rich politician, possibly by the youthful bride who slept her way into his heart for cash.  Now she’ll inherit all.  Naturally she’s innocent; naturally Siddiqui interested, even protective; naturally the rest of the family want to pin the murder on this interloper and save the family fortune.  But his boss at Police Headquarters wants the case quickly taken care of, the sex worker wife charged and local political grumbling smoothed over.  But with his lead officer being shot at as he digs deeper and that officer's junior partner working against him, the truth may end up buried with the innocent.  The whole family seems involved in the murder either directly or tangentially as class, caste & cultural lines of demarcation come into play.  A fun watch even when you’re a bit lost, and with one of those train station farewell sequences that turns into a romantic epiphany.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *While it does feature a Private Investigator, no one is murdered in Billy Wilder’s LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON/’57.  But its train station finale might have been the model here.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/05/love-in-afternoon-1957.html

G.I. BLUES (1960)

For Elvis Presley, returning to film after completing his two-years military service, it was that old Hollywood story: The Catastrophe of Success.  Quickly signed by producer Hal Wallis after his national tv breakthru, Presley made three films fast enough to beat the draft (one on loan, two very good) that caught a raw side of Presley never to be seen again.  Once back from Germany, the rough edges were largely gone, he now played ‘The King,’ no longer dangerous but safe enough for this film’s babysitting climax.  No wonder Wallis assigned him to child specialist Norman Taurog as his regular director.  And no wonder the films became all pablum.*  They made pots of money, but let the creative tank run dry.  Some at least had tempting song lists; not here.  In this reintroduction, even the classical crossovers he regularly put in the mix were no match for ‘It’s Now Or Never’ (‘O Sole Mio’) nor ‘I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You’ (‘Plaisir d’Amour’), but the instantly forgettable ‘Tonight Is So Right For Love,’ wrenched out of Jacques Offenbach's TALES OF HOFFMAN bacarolle.  And the plot is an old standby, the date (a misused Juliet Prowse) that starts as a sordid bet between soldier boys that turns into tru-love.*  With two years to develop something, this is what Wallis & Co. came up with?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The exception to Presley’s financially successful  buncombe was the film he made, almost by accident, right after this, FLAMING STAR/’60.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/03/flaming-star-1960.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  A walk in the park with Prowse does provide the only visually arresting moment in the pic when the pair stop to watch a Punch & Judy show and Elvis pops up in the puppet proscenium.

A CIELO ABIERTO / UPON OPEN SKY (2023)

Best known for scripting early Road Movies for Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, here Guillermo Arriaga switches gears to write a Road Movie for his two kids, Mariana Arriaga & Santiago Arriaga in a joint directing debut.  And nepo-darlings or no, they all take to the screen in a perfectly natural manner.  Same for a cast of newcomers on this modest revenge saga on a case of unpunished vehicular manslaughter and its aftermath.  It’s 1995, two years after a semi-truck plowed into a car carrying father & 12-yr-old son heading North on a hunting trip.  The older son stayed home, not doing well enough in school to come along, and now obsessed with the accident (if it was an accident) and a kind of survivor’s guilt.  For two years he’s been haunting ‘junker’ lots looking for clues or some connection to follow and now has come up with a name & an address.  Heading North, he’s without much of a plan other than to confront the man.  He’s got the recovered younger brother in tow, as well as a new step-sister they barely know.  He’s also got a gun to back him up, but barely enough cash to get there and back.  For the film, the big problem is that you can guess exactly how the third act is going to play out, but the trip, along with the solid film technique keep you watching.  And while it’s fairly common to shoot a period film in matching period style, the Arriagas skip past the ‘90s indie scene and head farther back stylistically to what you might expect from an ‘70s indies pic.  A decision that pans out for them, perfectly dovetailing with the material and the flat land they pass thru.  A bleak beauty pervading the film’s look.  And if it’s all a bit generous in running time and goes overboard in giving youthful folly the benefit of the doubt, the film doesn’t plead for sympathy and delivers enough eccentric bumps along the way to more than merely hold attention.  (Though you wish they’d take that extra shot to show the food the kids order at diners along the way!)  And when the younger brother, now two years older and nearly a foot taller than he was before the crash, revisits some of the places he'd been, revealing how much he’s grown in two years, it packs an emotional wallop and acknowledgment of loss in a minute or two that films running two-and-a-half hours fail to match.

INTERLUDE (1957)

Second (and least) of three 1930s John M. Stahl films remade in the ‘50s by Douglas Sirk for Universal producer Ross Hunter.  (Hunter likely brought all three to Sirk’s attention.)  The other two much better known and all four films hold interest: MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION/’35 ‘54 and IMITATION OF LIFE/’34; ‘59; but INTERLUDE (WHEN TOMORROW COMES in 1939) doesn’t take nearly as well to Sirk stylistics with its light romance & CinemaScope travelogue elements in & around Salzburg reacting negatively once it receives a Gothic blood transfusion right out of JANE EYRE.  Plain Jane (or rather June) Allyson is an American in Germany who drops the nice all-American doctor everyone assumes she’s going to marry when Rossano Brazzi’s famous symphonic conductor sets eyes on her.  But all ain’t smooth sailing because . . . he’s already married.  (Of course.)  Worse, his wife is rapidly going insane.  (Does that make it okay?)  And as there’s no castle tower to lock her up in, furtive romance is the best Brazzi can offer.  Stahl was luckier with his leads: Irene Dunne & Charles Boyer, just off LOVE AFFAIR/’39, are far more comfortable & charming together; and somehow making Boyer a classical pianist rather than a conductor, adds intimacy to Stahl’s straightforward style on b&w studio sets rather than TechniColor overseas locations.  And Dunne, a waitress who happens to sing Schubert, brings common-sense & common-sensibility to the impossible situation.  Allyson weirdly overdressed all thru the film even feels physically uncomfortable.  To their credit, both films aim for adult tones with unresolved endings, but it sure worked better in ‘39.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Brazzi is better than most actors who pretend to conduct, but why do they all signal on the beat, rather than lead/anticipate?  European conductors in particular almost comically ahead of the musicians response.  (Maybe that’s why they do it this way in film.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  James Cain’s novel was used yet again (INTERLUDE/’68) with Oskar Werner as the conductor (not seen here), but stick to Boyer/Dunne in WHEN TOMORROW COMES.  (Use the MAKSQUIBS Search Box to find the other Stahl/Sirk originals & remakes.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/when-tomorrow-comes-1939.html