GUN CRAZY (1950)

After making a name for himself with an atmospheric psychological thriller (MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS/’45), B-pic helmer Joseph H. Lewis seemed poised to move on the A-list.  It never happened.  Instead, Lewis retired young after tv series work in the ‘60s.  But before that, plenty of tasty titles hiding in plain sight in the ‘50s.  None better, nor more influential, than this proto-BONNIE AND CLYDE tale about sexy young couple Peggy Cummings (never so good again) & John Dall, ‘Carny’ sharpshooters who ankle in the face of a jealous boss and hit the road to rob small stores & medium-sized banks before finding a full measure of doom.  And while the duo’s psychological underpinnings now come off as pat & simplistic (reluctant Dall; killer Cummings), that’s about the only non-advanced element in here.  Technically, the film on fire with imagination, from a clever prologue laying out Dall’s youthful delinquency & gun lust (that’s Russ Tamblyn as little Dall), thru frame busting camerawork and an amazing one-shot bank hold-up, made cinema verité style from the back seat of the getaway car as it drives thru a real Midwest town.  No backscreen process effects here for cinematographer Russell Harlan (a classy vet with credits that run from Howard Hawks thru Blake Edwards), on something of a busman’s holiday shooting this little programmer.  (And he’s not the only first-class talent on this road trip, Oscar’d names include composer Victor Young and writers Dalton Trumbo, hiding behind a ‘front,’ and MacKinlay Kantor, author of the source material for BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES.)  Some of Harlan’s setups are really something to see.  Check out the framing on Dall when he unexpectedly shows up, a Wanted Man, on his sister’s front porch, the door blocking all but the upper right side of the screen and most of his head.  A shot none of the ‘majors’ would have let Lewis get away with.

DOUBLE-BILL: You have to wonder if BONNIE AND CLYDE/’67 holds up half as well.  (Not seen here since its release.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Typically, almost no Black roles in here, only a single butcher seen handing steaks to Dall.  ‘Thanks, George,’ he says.  The name a possible allusion (by Trumbo?) to the way all Black Pullman Porters were insultingly called ‘George,’ no matter their real name.   There’s even a pretty good 2002 Showtime film called 10,000 BLACK MEN NAMED GEORGE about them.

DRUK / ANOTHER ROUND (2020)

Freshly thought/freshly felt Male Mid-Life Crisis tale from Danish writer/director Thomas Vinterberg about four high school teachers looking for that lost joie de vivre at work, play & home with first-among-equals Mads Mikkelsen in particularly outstanding form.  The twist has these forty-something bros ‘scientifically’ pursuing a maybe-not-so-crackpot theory that seeks to maintain a slightly elevated blood alcohol level (half the legal driving limit) in order to bring out optimal performance.  And it works for a while, in ways predicable and ‘un,’ before the inevitable crash kicks in when they start testing the boundaries of tolerance.  Yet the film is really no cautionary tale, but somewhat celebratory in spite of missteps, tragedy and regrets.  Shot in something near the old DOGME 95 style restrictions, but not feeling in any way limited by them.  Perhaps because it doesn’t hold them too tightly.  Ending with cathartic rapture that finds Mikkelsen letting out his inner Gene Kelly to rapturous effect.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *And speaking of Gene Kelly, one of his greatest (and least seen) films, IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER/’55, a near-followup to ON THE TOWN, charting, of all things, a Male Mid-Life Crisis for a trio of WWII vets, both films written by SINGING IN THE RAIN’s Comden & Green.  (Note that Mikkelsen is really more Dan Dailey than Kelly here.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/its-always-fair-weather-1955.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Still on Gene Kelly.  The contract couldn’t be worked out, but Kelly had been first choice for Sky Masterson in the regrettable film version of GUYS AND DOLLS/'55.  Hollywood’s been trying to remake the property for decades, and Mikkelsen might be just the guy for it.

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (2021)

Exciting, fact-based drama about a home-grown political assassination against the head of the Black Panther Party, encouraged if not precisely ordered by J. Edgar Hoover at a race-phobic ‘60s FBI.  Led by high-level ‘inside man’ Bill O’Neal, pressured by a FBI ‘handler’ (Jesse Plemons) into the assignment to keep out of jail on various charges, the Fed is able to follow the militants' every move.  Or nearly so since O’Neal becomes a conflicted man, something of a true believer under the friendship/tutelage of Panther evangelist Fred Hampton.  Writer director Shaka King pulls off a neat stylistic trick, giving the film a Blaxploitation vibe that effectively draws on period flavor, much helped by cinematographer Sean Bobbitt’s use of color.  (Less so by Martin Sheen’s starchy J. Edgar Hoover makeup mask.)  And if King’s action chops as director are currently ahead of his narrative instincts (a scorecard might be nice at times), he compensates with personal details, especially in the relationship between Daniel Kaluuya’s Hampton and eventual wife Deborah (Dominique Fishback).  Involving character complications largely missing from LaKieth Stanfield’s turncoat, already at some disadvantage next to the echoes of Yaphet Kotto which acolytes of that great actor will see in Kaluuya.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: I know there are various contractual, financial & status rationales for these things, but 17 producers for this relatively modest film?  Seventeen?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The recent MLK/FBI documentary goes a long way to confirming what’s seen here.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/mlkfbi-2020.html

BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM (1993)

Near the top on any BATMAN film list, this animated feature is a striking success at every level: characterization, origin info, suspense, action set pieces; with gorgeous animation from the opening credits on.  Plus a cherry on the top in its plus perfect All-Star vocal cast, led by Kevin Conroy’s much admired Batman and Mark Hamill’s unbeatable Joker, more traditional than recent interpreters.  He even gets one of those late entries beloved by old-time movie stars.  Smart move as Hamill might otherwise overwhelm a good story which sees Batman alter ego Bruce Wayne meet up with The Gal That Got Away, a certain Andrea Beaumont, a sexy amalgam of Rhonda Fleming’s red hair, Lauren Bacall’s jaw-line and Dorothy Malone’s googly eyes.  Seems her wealthy banker dad got in debt to the Mob, leading to a quick exit and a break in her relationship with Mr. Wayne.  Can these two pick up where they left off so many years ago?  And who is that near doppelgänger of Batman?  The Angel-of-Death Phantasm causing mayhem while letting Batman take the blame . . . or is it credit?  With a great look and a great score backing things up, the film revs up to overdrive to cover a storyline that makes more emotional than narrative sense.  All told, pretty close to comic book nirvana.

DOUBLE-BILL: Getting the tone right is half the BATMAN battle.  See Tim Burton’s 1989 original or THE DARK KNIGHT/’08, second in the Christopher Nolan trio.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A Joker born too soon?  Check out Richard Widmark’s proto-giggler in his debut KISS OF DEATH/’47 or cackling in the omnibus film O. HENRY’S FULL HOUSE/’52.

NOMADLAND (2020)

In her early 60s, after losing her husband, her job, even the factory town she called home, Frances McDormand’s hardscrabble character hits the road with only a van and the bare necessities.  A modern migrant worker, she’s part of a ‘Great Recession’ trend, moving from one temp job to the next (holiday work at Amazon; camp-lot custodian; cafeteria staff; farm harvester) in writer/director/documentarian Chloé Zhao’s followup to her remarkable rodeo-themed THE RIDER/17.  Moving a half-step closer to traditional narrative fiction, but keeping a lot of non-pro types in the people McDormand meets in little episodes along the way, most with similar lives on the move for their own reasons; they're downscale versions of those retirees you read about who live on cruise ships, and just as untethered.  The nature of editing the stories into neat vignettes giving something of a starry-eyed angle to what must be a very hard life.  Too much kindness, too many interesting ‘characters’ to easily swallow.  Not that Zhao bypasses difficulties.  Yet the real problem, at least in comparison to THE RIDER, is that the more traditional narrative sections: McDormand going to her sister’s for help or meeting/later visiting nice, highly appropriate guy pal (David Strathairn, picking up on her prickly personality), aren’t bridged to take us in and out of the different tones in the material.  The more improvisatory feel of real souls met on the road might be from another film and miss the all-of-a-piece, serendipitous  wonder of her earlier work.  Interesting ideas and superb acting, but basically a bifurcated Road Movie down to the last shot.  Less than the sum of its excellent parts.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The more scripted scenes, covering about a third of the running time, might have come out of Paul Mazursky’s senior-citizen-hits-the-road movie HARRY AND TONTO/74, a real time capsule pic, Oscar-winner for Art Carney and holding up surprisingly well. OR: As mentioned above: THE RIDER. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-rider-2017.html

LA LLORONA (2019)

‘La Llorona’ in Latin American folklore: a ghost who roams the waterfront mourning her drowned children.  Cleverly used here by Guatemalan writer/director Jayro Bustamante (too cleverly?) as a way to confront the past sins of an aging Generale, charged with genocide against indigenous peoples, holding out with his family, a guard and housekeeper at his estate after his trial is set aside.  Surrounded by hundreds of angry but peaceful chanting demonstrators calling for justice, it’s a relief inside the compound when a new servant joins them, a village girl, helpful, but with a mysterious air about her . . . La Llorona?  With exotic beauty & otherworldly presence, María Mercedes Coroy pulls off this impossible near-mythic role, so that what could have been a walking cultural cliché (near silence, inner strength, striking waist-length black silky hair) never loses a human core.  Beautifully observed and played on both sides of the camera, there’s unnerving restraint in this haunted tale.  Often alarmingly effective, even when some of the players have one too many dramatically convenient nightmares or act in ways designed to move the story along rather than play out character.  And a truly great moment when the Generale’s wife and daughter are discussing the accusations so compellingly laid out in the opening courtroom prologue (beautifully shot & designed, with the native women wearing scarves over their faces), his guilt apparent to us and to the daughter, though she can’t admit it to herself.  As the mother puts it, ‘I know what you are thinking . . . I FORBID you to think that.’  The truth behind a dictator's power in a nutshell.

THE BUSHER (1919)

Modest feature from 1919, but nicely done.  Charles Ray, who specialized in playing small-town juveniles (often for director Jerome Storm, their OLD-FASHIONED BOY/’20 describes his appeal to a 'T') is baseball mad in this one.  Sneaking away from his chores for a local pickup game and bumping into a pro team stranded between towns, he plays well enough to catch their coach’s attention.  Called to the big leagues, he quickly goes from rube to regular, picking up bad habits and a fast woman before bombing out and returning home to loyal gal Colleen Moore who almost went for local scion John Gilbert.  Fun to see just how advanced film technique was on a standard feature of the day.  Very advanced!  As is most of the surprisingly non-indicative acting.  With the surviving elements good enough to showcase some really fine work by lighting cameraman Chester Lyons, who’d rack up strong credits before dying in 1936 only 51.  Ray’s at his popular peak here and very likeable, but Gilbert also swell as a bit of a cad.  He’d play second-lead to Mary Pickford in the excellent HEART O’ THE HILLS later this year.  So too delightful, fast-rising, funny-face Colleen Moore, soon to be a top silent star, mostly in comedies.*  And while both Gilbert & Moore wouldn’t make the Talkie cut, bowing out in the mid-‘30s, Ray’s fall came even sooner, losing his place as America’s favorite rural youth to Richard Barthelmess in just a few years.  Very pleasing restored edition out of KINO.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Had been trying to see Moore in LILAC TIME/’28, a WWI meller with young Gary Cooper, but unable to find a decent edition.  (It's in mint condition on film.)  Catch it if you can find a decent copy.  Instead, as mentioned above, HEART O’ THE HILLS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/heart-o-hills-1919.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: 1919 was a decisive year for MLB what with the war over and Babe Ruth going to the Yankees.  

BACURAU (2019)

While its common to see apocalypse/living dead/dystopian stories twist themselves into political allegory, Brazilian writer/directors Juliano Dornelles & Kleber Mendonça Filhopics reverse the equation, twisting political allegory into dystopian apocalypse.  Set in a near future where coffins are the only growth industry, a small town in relatively peaceful isolation amid a desolate landscape, comes under attack by inexplicable mercenary thrill killers from the U.S.  Already desperate from a declining stock of water & food, the town turns to rebel forces for help, their savior a self-described ‘gay’ Che Guevara with a taste for bloody vengeance and a disinclination toward wearing shirts.  Cleverly visualized, if relentlessly vague (and running a self-indulgent 131 minutes), the acting ranges from some believably strong stoics among the heroic locals (in Portuguese) to community-theater stiffs among the  mercenaries (in English).  With more realistic gore in the shootouts than you expect (nicely done, too), but no surprises when the people of the earth pick up arms to fight Personified Capitalist Threat.  For better or worse, a Film Fest award magnet; and you’ll see why.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: George A. Romero got these points across without condescending we’re-the-people uplift, in the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD/’68.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: If only the film were as wittily conceived as its fake-out Action Movie Poster.

DOWN AMONG THE SHELTERING PALMS (1952)

Maybe you need to watch the occasional mediocre musical just to show how hard it is to make a great one.  Watching PALMS shows how hard it is even to hit mediocre!  Trying to mimic the lighthearted side of mega-hit SOUTH PACIFIC, still on B’way for the foreseeable future, we get a boatload of horny seamen on a little South Sea isle post-war.  Lots of native gals, too, but the strictest of non-fraternizing orders from the higher ups.  Let the songs and hilarity commence.  Poor Edmund Goulding, on the tail-end of a once stellar directing career, sits on his airless soundstage village while his cast tries too hard, especially normally likeable William Lundigan who hasn’t a clue how to play this stuff*, alternately hugging or pushing away from a trio of dishy dames: slow-to-warm Jane Greer; gossipy Gloria DeHaven; Polynesian princess Mitzi Gaynor . . . Mitzi Gaynor!?  Overplaying only slightly more than she does as the cornfed lead when Rodgers & Hammerstein finally got around to filming SOUTH PACIFIC/’58.  And that’s low-comic/sneeze specialist Billy Gilbert as her Polynesian pappy.  Yikes!  You do get a chance to see what second-in-command David Wayne might have been like as Ensign Pulver in the original stage production of MISTER ROBERTS, and B’way Musical mavens will spot an appalling lift by songsters Harold Arlen & Ralph Blaine in ‘the break’ of a ditty called ‘I’m A Ruler Of A South Sea Island,’ snatched from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s ALLEGRO (it’s the break from ‘You Are Never Alone’) a semi-flop written between CAROUSEL and SOUTH PACIFIC.*  Adding insult to injury, we get one of those Reprise Finales to bring back the refrain of every unmemorable song, including one from the cutting room floor.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *An attractive player when given half a chance, Lundigan was already on the downside of his film career.  Yet, he’s at his considerable best just a year back, under Henry King’s patient, caring direction in one of King’s typically fine Americana pieces, I’D CLIMB THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN/’51, with Susan Hayward, also at her best.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/05/id-climb-highest-mountain-1951.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Two years on, Harold Arlen (with lyricist Ira Gershwin) covered himself in glory with A STAR IS BORN.  Begging the question: Do composers work just as hard when they know it’s a lost cause?  Might there be a ‘lost’ good tune in here?

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED (1939)

Ronald Colman, whose combination of box-office clout & prestige allowed him to roam the Hollywood ‘majors’ for bespoke vehicles like few stars of his day, went to Paramount for two exceptional literary properties: Rudyard Kipling’s LIGHT following hard on a fantasia about rabble-rousing 15th Century French poet François Villon in IF I WERE KING/’38.*  Neither quite hits its potential, largely due to miscast directors, yet both such whales-of-a-tale, and Colman such splendid company, they’re unmissable.  (It hardly matters that Colman is twice the age of his character in the book.)  Kipling’s first long-form work has a great narrative thru-line after its childhood prologue, as Colman’s war correspondent artist moves from battle in the Sudan to study & dissipation in Port Said, then sudden commercial success in London.  Poised between Madonna & whore in the form of now grown childhood friend/fellow artist Maisie (Muriel Angelus), and his correspondent friend’s street pickup, Bessie (Ida Lupino), whom he uses as model for his magnum opus, ‘Melancholia.’  In different ways, they each fail him nearly as completely as his fading eyesight, his main support coming from male war correspondent chums led by Walter Huston.  Kipling’s attitude perhaps less misogynist than fear of the unknown.  (Note the rare use of a ‘bromantic’ renunciation speech from Colman to Huston.)  Loaded with ‘boy’s own’ adventure tropes, the film, while relatively faithful to the book, skips over Maisie’s talented red-headed roommate, as well as much of the exciting blindman’s journey back to the front.  (Why replace a ride thru enemy territory shared with an unreliable guide on a two-humped Bactrian camel for galloping horses?)  We also miss a sense of spaciousness in William Wellman’s blunt direction and there’s little sweep to Victor Young’s unusually insensitive score.  But even with lesser elements, it’s close enough to let Colman & Kipling get their effects across.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *On the whole, IF I WERE KING, with it’s very special Preston Sturges screenplay, is the one to try first.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/05/if-i-were-king-1938.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Our previous post had a musician lose his hearing; here a painter goes blind.  What next?  A baker’s lost sense of taste, a perfumier’s sense of smell, a masseuse’s touch?

SOUND OF METAL (2019)

Expectedly good/unexpectedly traditional.  Documentarian Darius Marder makes a confident mainstream debut in this elegantly devised Five Stages of Grief story about a heavy-metal drummer facing profound hearing loss.  Left by caring partner Olivia Cooke (his lover & lead singer*) to work thru the crisis at a communal facility for the deaf, he’s able to get past his initial defensive stance with ‘tough love’ leadership and his natural gifts as musician which aid him at picking up language skills and working with deaf children at the adjoining school.  But it’s not enough to bring his old life back which is all the impulsive young man truly cares about.  Riz Ahmed is pretty remarkable as the drummer.  Giving a performance entirely free of grandstanding effects yet not missing any of the rage & passion, right up to (and thru) the film’s honestly unresolved, easy-on-the-uplift, bittersweet ending.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Cooke & Ahmed travel alone as singer & drummer; if there’s a band, we never meet them.  Do they pick up local musicians at every stop?   And in the real world of contracts & financial commitments, their manager probably would have simply lined up a replacement drummer.  Perhaps too prosaic a touch.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/Overcoming Adversity Dept.: In classical music, the best known percussion soloist (really the only percussionist with name recognition) is Evelyn Glennie, a deaf musician who ‘hears’ thru stage floor boards by performing barefoot.

CAGE OF GOLD (1950)

Irresistibly drawn to charismatic fortune-hunter David Farrar, Jean Simmons drops steady beau James Donald for marriage, pregnancy & quick desertion from this scoundrel.  Turning to Donald, she’s still not truly over Farrar when his death is reported in a plane crash during his latest confidence racket/smuggling operation.  Four year later, now happily married, the perfect moment for her ‘dead’ husband to show up on her doorstep and threaten blackmail.  Wildly underrated Brit noir, cunningly structured (excellent use of touchstone elements) and neatly directed by Basil Dearden, it’s loaded with pea-souper atmosphere & tasty London & Paris locations, great cinematographer Douglas Slocombe showing a decidedly inky side.  With standout turns in every role (look for Bernard Lee, Herbert Lom, Madeleine Lebeau in support), Simmons tends to work ahead of the story at first, but soon finds her groove.  And Farrar is simply mammoth as an amoral threat, constantly on the hunt for an angle & a fast score; yet completely believable in utterly ‘owning’ the women he casually uses before tossing them aside for a chance at grabbing the next golden ring.  Super.

DOUBLE-BILL: Basil Dearden followed up on the London waterfront for another fine Brit noir in POOL OF LONDON/’51.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/06/pool-of-london-1951.html

UNDER EIGHTEEN (1931)

Don’t be fooled by the bait-and-switch title, provocative even by the standards of Pre-Code Warner Bros.  Little under-age naughtiness, though leading lady Marian Marsh, who’d soon slip off the radar, was indeed eighteen in 1931.  Instead, a NYC tenement drama, close on the heels of King Vidor’s superior adaptation of Elmer Rice’s Pulitzer Prize winning STREET SCENE out a few months earlier, the likely reason for a naturalistic tone from director Archie Mayo in the first two acts, before he gives way to showmanship and a triple-whammy Happy Days Are Here Again finale.  Marsh, kid sister of unhappily married Anita Page, brought low by the Depression and just getting by as a fashion house seamstress, cancels wedding plans to butter-and-egg man Regis Toomey* after seeing Page’s unemployed husband (Norman Foster) knock her around.  Hoping to raise cash to cover Page’s divorce costs, Marsh heads to the penthouse aerie of the ladykiller/B’way producer she met at work, Warren William.  But before she ‘gives in’ to him, once-and-future fiancé Toomey shows up for a show down.  The melodramatic last act is Ladies’ Magazine fluff of the period, sticking out all the more so next to the trenchant down-at-the-heels realism of what’s come before.  Cinematographer Barney McGill’s use of low-angle establishing shots lends low-rent chic to some scenes, but the raw economics of a family’s collapse is always apparent.  Never more so than in a fascinating bit of dialog covering the cost of finding a divorce lawyer for sister Page after Foster gives her a black eye.  Speaking almost in code to avoid saying the word ‘divorce,’ you’d think the subject was the even more verboten issue of abortion.  (Or was that the original intention?)  On the whole, the film not really good enough, but still quite watchable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *The phrase Butter-and-Egg-Man, as in a solid, dependable, slightly boring marriage prospect, was popularized in the 1925 George S. Kaufman play of that name.  Here, Regis Toomey’s butter-and-egg-man actually IS a butter-and-egg-man, driving a grocery delivery truck for a living.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above, STREET SCENE/’31.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/street-scene-1931.html

WELCOME TO CHECHNYA (2020)

Hard to watch, but terrific documentary on the horrific situation for the LGBTQ+ Community in the Russian Republic of Chechnya, where official, unofficial & family persecution is not just condoned/ignored, but encouraged.  Writer/director David France runs his film largely out of a bare-bones secret-shelter/group-home on the outskirts of Moscow, where a small group of poorly-funded, but stubborn Gay Rights Activists park freshly smuggled refugees while they try to find a country willing to accept them as political refugees.  Footage taken inside Chechnya is mostly hidden-camera material of actual escapes, in some cases using a new digital system that alters faces to protect against identification with a ‘painted,’ slightly dulled, but lifelike face instead of the usual blurring effects, maintaining emotional connection with the victim as they adjust to new lives & identities.  A wait that may take months of near isolation, with government agents regularly on the hunt just outside.  In one case, the family of Russian Maxim Lapunov, illegally detained & tortured while on work assignment in Chechnya, are also forced to leave for an unnamed European country.  (Canada seems first choice, while the U.S.A. has accepted exactly zero refugees.)   An intensely moving scene has Maxim, summoning the courage to return to Russia to testify in court, ‘shedding’ his digital face.  A simple, but devastating effect.  The good works are impressive, but the problem far too large for a single organization held together with paper & glue, especially when members have to flee the country for their own safety.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The film needs a fuller discussion of the Chechnya-Muslim influence pushing the agenda.  Are things any better in the surrounding Russian territories?  And Vladimir Putin’s pet ‘strongman,’ Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov: Symptom or Disease?   The man an obvious sociopath.  As Lenin put it: ‘What Is To Be Done?’

WOLFWALKERS (2020)

In spite of a warm reception, third time’s not the charm for indie Irish animator Tomm Moore after SECRET OF THE KELLS and SONG OF THE SEA raised expectations with their 2D handcrafted folkloric charm.*   The detailed backgrounds, Celtic runes and painterly look remain, along with striking set pieces and new inside-the-panel/split-screen visuals, effectively borrowed from action comic books.  But the film sinks on a messy, repetitive storyline and misconceived/unappealing character development & design.  Our eponymous wolfwalker (call her Mebh Óg MacTíre) comes embedded with a pack of wolves terrifying Kilkerry Ireland in 1650.  And it’s young Robyn Goodfellowe, at first eager to help her father hunt them out of existence, who has a change of heart upon meeting Mebh in her human form.  Soon Robyn’s trying to change hearts & minds in the village and to stop her father before the killing starts.  Moore and his writers develop a sort of Peter Pan/Wendy dynamic between young girl and young wolfwalker as they bond in forest gambols.  (Definite Sapphic notes flooding the air.)  And there’s also a Captain Hook figure in the Lord Protector, certain he can tame the whole pack after trapping Mebh’s wolf mother.  None of this particularly well thought out, the wolf figures and their human counterparts somehow existing in form at the same time, while the girlfriends are equally whiny & teenage-headstrong annoying.  Worse, the wolfwalker art design looks neither human or wolf.  More of a lion cub.  Meantime, poor Sean Bean, the one ‘name’ in the vocal cast, plays the girl’s hunter/father as if he were dubbing Liam Neeson, hushfully growling every line.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: While this is worth a look on graphics alone, Moore is far better represented by his second film, SONG OF THE SEA/’14.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/06/song-of-sea-2014.html

PARASITE / GISAENGCHUNG (2019)

The unsettling modern class warfare of a Michael Haneke parable meets the rude, precise elegance of Blake Edwards slapstick in this award-winner for Korean writer/director Bong Joon Ho.*  While hardly his best (there are at least three I’d place in front), it’s a fine, funny deep-dish affair, loaded with laughs, terror and thoughtful absurdities, fully worthy of all the attention, cash & acclaim.  Plus, it never hurts a film to keep getting better as it goes along.  The setup has a family of ne’er-do-well grifters moving in on a matching upper-class clan, finessing quick exits for the current staff thru creative lies & suggestion as they take over all positions: tutors, housekeeper, chauffeur.  If the film has a fault, it’s in this first half where the ‘Haves’ are too conveniently gullible/naive and domestic usurper ‘Have-Nots’ too competent at every task.  It’d be a lot less work to simply get real jobs.  No doubt, the point, deceitfulness in their nature.  But things really click into place in the second half when the former housekeeper returns to pick up something she forgot . . . and how.   No spoilers, but we wind up with three groups vying for the prize and, while you know something’s gotta give, you may not be prepared for how this Korean Society Dam bursts.  Beautifully staged in hilarious multiplane comic action, rhythmic narrative paybacks & repetitions, and more than enough gore to settle the score . . . permanently.   An audacious delight.  (Note: Family Friendly, but NOT a kiddie film!)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *For Haneke FUNNY GAMES (the 1997 original); for Edwards THE PARTY/’68.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-party-1968.html

BEYOND THE FOREST (1949)

A career-threatening flop in its day (Bette Davis fought her way out of a long-term Warners contract before it opened); a ‘60s ‘Camp’ Classic when an older Davis became something of a gay icon (it supplied Edward Albee with Martha’s ‘What a dump’ line in WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF); more recently earning grudging admiration for just how far it pushes the envelop; Davis herself nailed the problem noting that at 40 she was twice the age her character should have been and that the small-town doctor/husband she’s so desperate to run away from needed pug-ugly Eugene Palette, not gentlemanly Joseph Cotten.  Right as far as it goes, assuming you’re aiming for the conventional melodrama in Leonore Coffee’s MidWest MADAME BOVARY script*.  Only director King Vidor wasn’t shooting for conventional but jonesing for Fever Dream.  So too his other 1949 film, Ayn Rand’s slightly bonkers THE FOUNTAINHEAD.  And of the two, this one gets closer to the mark possibly because Rand’s refusal to bend on her many eruptions of didactic/philosophic dialog put a mine field of dramatic obstacles in the actor’s path.  Here, with Davis in a fright wig of long black tresses (and yet how fashionable she looks when it’s pulled back!), the film can’t account for the infatuation of Doc Cotten or David Brian’s Chicago-based millionaire lover.  No matter, there’s subconscious dream logic to the visual texture, especially in the magnificent final set piece as cinematographer Robert Burks’ red-filtered b&w lensing accompanies Davis on her final mile as she attempts to catch that midnight train to Chicago.  If only rest of the film had more than fleeting grace notes of contact to match this apotheosis.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Also from 1949, Vincente Minnelli’s take on MADAME BOVARY (the original Flaubert, or something like it) with Jennifer Jones, Van Heflin & Louis Jourdan in the Davis, Cotten, Brian spots.  (It’s apotheosis comes early in a high society waltz.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/04/madame-bovary-1949.html  OR: King Vidor reprising themes & visual compulsions in RUBY GENTRY/’52 with Jennifer Jones and Charlton Heston.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/ruby-gentry-1952.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Judging by our poster, Italians intuitively understood this strange film better than Hollywood who simply played up the bad, bad Bette angle.

THE WHITE TIGER (2021)

Feel-Good/Feel-Bad Indian social drama, from ‘acclaimed’ writer/director Ramin Bahrani (see poster, though credits leave the adjective unsubstantiated*), comes split in the middle between Uplifting Striver Tale and Neo-Noir Capitalist Cautionary; an overloaded plate that shows Bahrani with more ambition than talent.  (Echoing the character arc of our caste-bound protagonist.)  Adarsh Gourav is the young go-getter, sole earner of a large indigent family.  Pumped on one side to send money home to his squalid country kin, squeezed on the other by his politically connected city masters, Gourav is loyalty itself.  Especially to the ‘modern’ young married couple he chauffeurs, not fully aware of just how keyed they are into a corrupt system of government bribes.  Money finding its way to parties from all points on the political spectrum.  But a tragedy midway in signals a sea change from subservient default mode, revealing unexpected personal ambition and a Machievellian streak to his nature.  Told in not-quite linear flashback as Gourav writes himself a letter of introduction to the visiting Chinese Premier, a structural device no more convincing than his abrupt turn to the dark side, the film a ‘curate’s egg’ that resists coming together in spite of being loaded with promise & talent.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Bahrani’s last few features (not seen here) came & went in a flash.  Any suggestions for that 'acclaim’ attribution welcome in COMMENTS.

KANASHIMI NO BELLADONNA / BELLADONNA OF SADNESS (1973)

Inscrutable Japanese animation, like a folk legend though based on a 19th Century French novel, tells a compellingly unsavory tale of sex, abasement and revenge set in Feudal Japan where young lovers Jean & Jeanne come up nine cows short of the ten needed to avoid Droit du Seigneur upon their wedding.  And not just the Lord; it takes a village to deflower this maid, the visualization stylized, yet graphic.  Psychologically & physically rent by the brutal custom, Jeanne refuses Jean’s offer to start anew on the farm, running off to seek payback, now using sex as bait, helped by Satan himself for guidance.  Shot in a bewilderingly mixed-up style of limited animation that ranges from Aubrey Beardsley to Little Annie Fannie in design, animated influences spanning FANTASIA to YELLOW SUBMARINE, director Eiichi Yamamoto pushes boundaries of sense & taste like an attention deprived Community College underachiever, holding your interest while overloading on sensory perception.  An original cut reportedly incorporated stolen ‘live’ sex footage between the activated still drawings and animated action, a tactic that just might have worked here.  It also might have made getting a release difficult.  In the event, the film bankrupted Yamamoto’s studio, but a cult following has led to a restoration.  Perhaps it plays differently when seen alongside two earlier films that make up a trilogy: A THOUSAND & ONE NIGHTS/’69 and CLEOPATRA/’70 (neither seen here).

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED (1976)

Considered square & old-fashioned even when it came out, director John Sturges harkens back to his own GREAT ESCAPE/’63 in this final film, with solid, slightly stiff, one-step-at-a-time craftsmanship now a major part of its appeal.  A late entry in the WWII ‘impossible mission’ sweepstakes, from an empty Jack Higgins’ bestseller, adapted by Tom Mankiewicz (Joseph’s son, the one hack in the family writing dynasty), the preposterous concept (kidnap Winton Churchill for Der Fuhrer) boosted by having the tale told from the German side.  More German than Nazi, as mission leader Michael Caine receives a whitewash of an intro with a noble (if doomed) attempt at helping a Jewish prisoner escape from a ‘death train.’  Loaded with names (Anthony Quayle, Donald Pleasence, Jean Marsh, Jenny Agutter, an impressively young Treat Williams, an impressively tubby Larry Hagman) with no one phoning it in; while Caine’s co-stars Robert Duvall puts on a light German accent as a more traditional Nazi officer* and Donald Sutherland plays with a whiskey-soaked Irish brogue in hopes of covering up his character’s political expedience.  A big handsome production, back-loaded with action/suspense to keep you watching, but ultimately the writing (story and dialogue) holds this one to second-tier status.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: *It was Duvall’s year for trying on European accents, German here, British for SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION.  Did he ever try again?  And note that someone in the film mentions that Caine, though German, speaks with a perfect English accent.  Michael Caine?  This Cockney never sounds quite so phony as when he tries speaking like a toff.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-seven-per-cent-solution-1976.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Perhaps the squarest of them all, GUNS OF NAVARONE/’61, built like a brick shithouse by director J. Lee Thompson, and making uncanny good use of an unbeatable top-tier cast.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-guns-of-navarone-1961.html

THE MAN FROM YESTERDAY (1932)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.  1918: WWI nurse Claudette Colbert impulsively marries British Captain Clive Brook shortly before he must catch a train back to the front.  (Never fear, it’s Pre-Code Paramount, so just enough time to consummate things in the back of a Paris Taxi!  Nothing graphic, but still pretty clear.)  Four years on, Claudette’s a presumed widow with kid, finally taking the plunge with that nice Dr. Charles Boyer when guess who shows up.  Alive, if not particularly well after being gassed, he’s recuperating with help from loyal Yankee Andy Devine and still searching for the wife.  Now that he’s found her, what’s an invalided vet to do?  Especially when he believes she’s offering  loyalty rather than love.  Berthold Viertel’s stiff direction does little for Karl Struss’s dark, handsome lensing, but there’s fun seeing the three glam leads in early, confident form.  (Check out Colbert’s patterned Travis Banton outfit with matching head scarf!)  Especially Boyer during his initial Hollywood foray, testing the waters at various studios (leads in alternate French-language versions of major releases or support in English-language A-list pics).  This might be his largest English-language role yet, his accent still thicker than crème fraîse.  Even with a rushed ending that leaves him inexplicably off-screen, still devastating and camera-ready in a way the imperturbable Brook never quite managed.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Back at M-G-M for his next gig, Boyer was even more devastating in a cameo spot against Jean Harlow’s RED-HEADED WOMAN/’32. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/04/red-headed-woman-1932.html

THE PLAGUE DOGS (1982)

‘Eagerly anticipated’ hardly does justice to the clamor surrounding Richard Adams’ followup to the publishing phenomenon that was WATERSHIP DOWN.  (SHARDIK, in-between, doesn’t feature anthropomorphized talking animal protagonists.)  In the event, PLAGUE DOGS, the doomed odyssey of two laboratory dogs, escaped from some mysterious animal experiment station in England's Lake District and possible plague carriers, had a lesser order of success.  So too with the matched pair of hand-drawn artisan animated features written, produced & directed by Martin Rosen, his only credits as writer/director.  Doomed dogs at large no match for a tough, if ultimately uplifting, myth-making bunny tale.  Yet a case can be made that DOGS is more suitable for film treatment; the story less fanciful, more focused, less reliant on providence more on the dogs maturing personalities.  Same for ‘The Tod,’ the clever/honorable fox who wises up our already damaged specimens, little terrier ‘Snitter’ (sympathetically voiced by John Hurt) and big labrador ‘Rowf’ (gruffly voiced by Christopher Benjamin) to life in the wild.  Pessimistic and physically dark, or is before its shattering finale, yet filled with a different sort of beauty when not bursting normal bounds of animation with shocking violence.  The complete 103" cut a tougher watch then the safe-for-tv 82" release.  (Note our Family Friendly label doesn’t mean a Kiddie Pic.  Best for 12 and up.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Over-stuffed, but still Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghilbi’s PRINCESS MONONOKE/’97 has a level of violence & terror to match PLAGUE DOGS.  OR: WATERSHIP DOWN/'78  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/watership-down-1978.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Back in his early Disney days, Brad Bird (later THE IRON GIANT, THE INCREDIBLES, RATATOUILLE, the best of the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies) took a break to work on this.  (IRON GIANT showing particular influence.)

NEVER STEAL ANYTHING SMALL (1959)

Rarely seen New York Waterfront musical is too odd to ignore.  Written by Charles Lederer as his third & last directing gig, it’s based on an unproduced play by Maxwell Anderson & Rouben Mamoulian.  (And what a shame Mamoulian, fresh off directing SILK STOCKINGS/’57, isn’t calling the shots.)  SPOILERS!  The off-kilter story has James Cagney, in his last song-and-dance turn*, using force to grab the reins of the dockworkers’ union, then using the perks of his new position to woo the pretty young wife of his handsome young house lawyer (Shirley Jones; Roger Smith), even hiring aggressive redhead gal-pal Cara Williams as Smith’s secretary with benefits.  So when Cagney’s caught lifting freight off one of his boats, he’s happy to let Smith take the fall for him . . . if only it didn’t make the guy look like a hero to the union members.  (Ending the film just when things are starting to get interesting.)  Less musical then cockeyed dramedy with a few songs folded in & color-coordinated sets, you can see how this might have worked in a big production number for Cara & Cagney, set in an EastmanColored shiny bright showroom of European sports cars of the day.  If only the songs had pizzazz to match the settings.  In its favor, Cagney is positively gleeful, and the little remembered Ms. Williams very 1950s Va-Va-Voom.  But the sheer weirdness of the thing (like accented Mafia bossman Nehemiah Persoff aping Lee J. Cobb in ON THE WATERFRONT/’54) ain’t enough to bring this mediocrity to life.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: City Hall politics was in the musical comedy air of 1959 with Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick’s FIORELLO! (never filmed) a smash on B’way.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Cagney almost made two more musicals, nearly coming out of retirement when Jack Warner offered him cockney ne’er-do-well Alfred P. Doolittle in MY FAIR LADY/’64; as well as John Ford’s disastrous remake of WHAT PRICE GLORY?/’52, developed as a musical (note Cagney’s partnered with song-and-dance man Dan Dailey), but which wound up losing all but one of it’s songs.

BROWN OF HARVARD (1926)

Popular juvenile actor William Haines, a Roaring ‘Twenties icon in his day (racoon coat and all), something of a gay icon later on (mostly for opting out of the Hollywood game), found stardom and his largely unchanging character arc in this film.  Well-liked and envied, he’s the good-natured cut-up whose behavior soon tips into obnoxious, self-centered overkill, finally going too far even for his pals and the special girl he figures he’s entitled to.  Hitting bottom, he’ll suddenly do the right thing (a big win, a sacrifice, a brave action), avoiding disgrace by inches in the last reel, proving he’s a ‘right guy’ when the chips are down.  Here, the formula is at its freshest; so too our star at 26 as the new kid at Harvard.  His bravado screws up the rowing team, but he’ll be back next year to lead the drive at the Yale/Harvard football classic, even letting his rival take the ball in.  What a guy!  Though BROWN can’t touch the two films surrounding it: the formula at its very best under George W. Hill’s direction in GO TELL THE MARINES/’27 with Lon Chaney; and, even better if sadly unavailable, as the boy who left his home town to make good only to come back for the girl he left behind in John Stahl’s superb MEMORY LANE/’26, with striking work from Eleanor Boardman & Conrad Nagel.  But there’s a wild card unique to BROWN, a gently touching relationship with nerdy roommate Jack Pickford.  Modern day viewers find gay subtext in the friendship, but it’s more one-way hero worship, even when Haines rubs liniment on his sick roomie’s chest.  What the pairing really offers is a rare early sympathetic note to Haines’ abrasive character, giving him extra leeway on the selfish behavior that can be such a turnoff in his other films.  Action & psychology neatly handled by workhorse M-G-M megger Jack Conway.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: More on Haines, here:  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/03/navy-blues-1929-are-you-listening-1932.html

IDIOT'S DELIGHT (1939)

While probably too topical for revival, playwright Robert E. Sherwood and The Lunts had a big Pulitzer Prize winning hit camouflaging this 1936 political stress test for Europe behind a wickedly funny opposites-attract romance involving Lynn Fontanne’s decidedly inauthentic stateless Russian & Alfred Lunt’s third-rate vaudevillian stuck between borders somewhere in The Alps.  With them, an assortment of unwilling guests hoping to split before war breaks out and the bombs start falling.  (And so much more political stress in ‘39, when the film was made, than ‘36.)  The gang's all here (in personified form): Radical Left-Wing Pacifist; Munitions Tycoon; Research Scientist; Honeymoon Couple confronting war service; each at the mercy of the government's ambivalent Master of Visas, controlling destinations & destinies.  Nodding at G.B. Shaw dialectics (MISALLIANCE; MAJOR BARBARA), it’s the showmanship factor of Lunt’s song-and-dance act, plus his putative past (make that pass) with Fontanne’s character before the applied accent, that really sold this.  Yet the film (it’s Sherwood’s own adaptation) wastes the first third on the post-WWI stage career of Clark Gable (charismatically charming in the Lunt role) and the vaudeville circuit meet-up with the pre-Russian Norma Shearer (aping Ms. Fontanne, unbecoming blonde wig & all, minus sophisticated comedy technique*).  Worse, the prologue removes any surprise factor, and gives director Clarence Brown little time for more than a sketch of the other voices.  Peacenik Burgess Meredith suffers most.  But with Edward Arnold, Charles Coburn (taking over from Sydney Greenstreet on B’way), Laura Hope Crews & Joseph Schildkraut, the film certainly has turns worth watching.  None topping Gable & Gals stomping thru Irving Berlin’s ‘Puttin On the Ritz.’  He’s not exactly bad, but hilarious because he’s trying so hard.  If only his other 1939 film weren’t GONE WITH THE WIND, this might get more attention.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: No doubt, Alan Jay Lerner (of MY FAIR LADY fame) picked up on the Shavian tone when he musicalized this as DANCE A LITTLE CLOSER, his one-night flop which at least has some nice things in his songs with composer Charles Strouse.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Telling that in her major scene with Edward Arnold in their hotel suite, director Brown often leaves the camera on Arnold’s impassive face during Shearer’s big speeches.

NO. 7 CHERRY LANE / JÌYUÁNTÁI QIHÀO (2019)

Staggeringly beautiful/insufferably slow.  A period piece from Hong Kong director Yonfan, his first animated work, made in a beguiling style all his own mixing various hand-drawn techniques (cut-outs for multi-plane dimension effects, matting real smoke & fire onto flat animated images, a rangy palette of ultra-saturated color to moody b&w), particularly ravishing in overhead shots with shifting perspectives (every staircase an adventure) and in blissful cinematic recreations of three Simone Signoret films: ROOM AT THE TOP/’59; AMOURS CÉLÈBRES/’61; SHIP OF FOOLS/’65; the first & last rendered as if charcoal sketches out of the Vincent Van Gogh playbook.  All going on in 1967 Hong Kong, as students take to the streets in Mao jackets to support Communist China.  Yet a far more livable city than today.  And where a matched pair of university students play ‘air’ tennis before showering off their physical perfection under watchful eyes.  (They seem used to it.)  One of the two, Ziming, our main protagonist, off to tutor English to maturing high schooler Meiling, but finding more of a connection to youthful mother Mrs. Yu, later his movie date.  The look, story & changing times all fascinating, plus hosts of amusing side characters.  But be forewarned, the action moves as if underwater, sometimes to grand romantic effect (think Kar-Wai Wong at half-speed), sometimes not.  And while you may wish you were more fully pulled into Yonfan’s orbit, even at remove, it’s a singular achievement.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Signoret’s ROOM AT THE TOP and SHIP OF FOOLS hardly live up to the aura Yonfan confers on them, but SHIP does boast an unusual look that helps counter Stanley Kramer’s typically coarse megging.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/03/ship-of-fools-1965.html

OR: *Release your understandable impatience with Bob & Ray in their famous Slow Talkers of America bit from this old TONIGHT SHOW clip:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2g_TCYuIAM