THE WARRIORS (1979)

Often confused with THE WANDERERS, Philip Kaufman/Richard Price’s less fanciful Rumble-in-the-Bronx/’60s Coming-of-Age tale, out five months later, Walter Hill’s Gangapalooza  Cos-Play romp, inspired by a Greek legend, happens over one long night in what might be called the imaginary here-and-now.*  That’s where Coney Island’s WARRIORS, sporting signature leatherette vests (undershirt optional depending on ab definition), grab the graffiti marked NYC subway going to the big Gang Pow Wow in the Bronx, No Weapons Allowed!  But when violence inevitably breaks out, it’s every gang for itself and the defenseless Warriors have to strategize a safe way home thru one enemy territory after another,  The Bronx, Manhattan and finally safe turf in Brooklyn . . . if they all make it.  Along the way, Martial Art fights, romance (real & feigned), all while misplaced blame puts them in harms way.  (In truth, the most dangerous place they go to is the subway Men’s Room.  Yikes!)  And speaking of territory, writer/director Hill is a bit out of his.  Optical printer wipes to change scenes?  Teenybopper music-video violence?  But he seems to be having almost as good a time as the costumer, decking out the gangs in various themed outfits.  (Check out the Goth Clown Baseball Team Gang.)  Too bad the cast missed finding a big breakout star.  Delicate hunk Michael Beck quickly lost his mojo with next year’s ZANADU.  Yet somehow, knowing most of the cast only for this film helps rather than hurts.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, THE WANDERERS.  Not so much alike after all.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-wanderers-1979.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The most stylized element in the film is 100% real.  The famous ‘70s-era NYC Subway Map of Massimo Vignelli.

CITIZEN K (2019)

This fine, even important, documentary on Russia (circa - 2000 - 2020): starts with the ‘Wild West’ Democracy of the early 2000s, then on to the Rise of the Oligarches and ‘Order’ (seven men holding 50% of Russia’s wealth), and finally the takeover by President Vladimir Putin, was too little seen.  (Though with NetFlix, who really knows?)  Centered on the Dostoevskian trials of possibly the biggest of the thieving Oligarches, oil mogul Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he is, at best, a deeply flawed messenger.  (But, hey, it’s Russia, you take what you can.)  It begins with President Boris Yeltsin, an unraveling comic tragedy, running for reelection against regrouped Communists, bringing in former Berlin KGB man Vladimir Putin as aide/heir apparent.  (Putin looking, if possible, even more like a rodent than he does now.  He might be auditioning for 007 super-villain.)  But with the government out of cash, and no one getting paid or pensioned, a backroom deal borrows funds from those seven super-rich oligarches who quickly buy up bankrupt Russian industry & utilities, pennies on the dollar.  (Kopeks on the Ruble?)  Including Mikhail Khodorkovsky.  But Putin tightens his political noose till the oligarches take the money and run . . . mostly to London.  Only Khodorkovsky stays.  Going into politics as a Democracy pushing opponent, earning jail time and, apparently, a conscience.  Told via news clips and fresh interviews with many a likely suspect and muckraking reporter, the story unexpectedly easy to follow thanks to clear narrative organizing (and generous on screen title cards) by writer/director Alex Gibney and editor Michael J. Palmer.  More timely than ever.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Of course, the question the film can’t answer, is why Russians put up with this level of dysfunctional government, corruption and misery.  Vodka?   That’s how they put up with it.  But ignorance, disinformation and stupidity help.  Watch the person-on-street interviews to see how they even surpass their American counterparts in willful Know-Nothngness.

PRANCER (1989)

In the disheartening world of modern cinematic Christmas uplift, PRANCER (nearing the 40 year mark) is considered something of a new classic.  (But then, so is LOVE ACTUALLY.)  A generous rating might be passable.  Oddly the basic story, single-parent kid starts to believe in a mythical Christmas character and sees her life go topsy-turvy for the better, is also the logline for an honest-to-goodness Christmas Classic, MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET.  The one from 1947, not the glossy ‘94 remake.  The big substitution is bringing in wounded reindeer Prancer for MIRACLE's self-proclaimed (delusional?) Santa Claus.  But whereas this film has no other plot to speak of, the surprise hit from ‘47 is loaded with subplots buttressing the CLAUS action: romance for the single parent; competitive capitalism going all warm & fuzzy; courtroom drama; even the frigging Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Without something similar, the texture’s awful thin on PRANCER, right from the start.  And that’s before a botched have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too ending.  Still, there’s nice work from Sam Elliott as the single parent running the family apple farm (substituting for Maureen O’Hara’s Mom in ‘47); and fun stunt casting with Michael Constantine & Abe Vigoda making real character turns out of throwaway roles.  On the other hand, director John Hancock* shows little control over Rebecca Harrell’s positive-thinker, not a patch on Natalie Wood’s depressed little girl in ‘47 (Wood a knockout child actor), or in taming Cloris Leachman, unable to pivot from nasty Miss  Havisham to mentoring Miss Moffat as the lady neighbor.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Though it has the lower IMDb.com rating, lots of comments show a preference toward the belated sequel PRANCER RETURNS/’01 (not seen here).  OR: Go for the unexpectedly entertaining (i.e. not too sappy) MIRACLE ON 34 TH STREET/’47.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *If the name John Hancock rings a bell, it’s likely because he directed the fondly remembered BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY/’73; a film better remembered than reseen.

BEFORE NIGHT FALLS (2000)

Hard to believe it’s been twenty-five years since Javier Bardem had his international breakthru as Cuban dissident-writer Reinaldo Arenas in this artful bio-pic.  Less hard to believe how well it’s held up as it was rightly acclaimed on release, only the second film from Julian Schnabel, segueing from high art to occasional film director.  For Arenas, child of the Cuban revolution, it wasn’t long before enthusiasm turned to persecution on two fronts, as an independent thinking writer and as part of a briefly burgeoning, soon underground, gay scene around Havana.  Schnabel, using a semi-linear, impressionistic style that suggests as much as it states, follows Arenas as he realizes he has to leave this new Cuba where he’s both imprisoned on trumped up charges (sexual/political) and forced to smuggle manuscripts out of the country for publication.  A grim situation, yet the film is neither a downer nor a suspenseful triumph of publishing intrigue, but a journalistic memory piece tethered to a political system that tries but cannot smother his voice, determination or friendships.  Schnabel brings remarkable control to the film, especially, as might be expected from his background, in color and texture, without undercutting a fluid visual style and unerring casting.  Not that everything works: the use of Spanish-accented English remains debatable as is Johnny Depp’s double stunt casting.  (Pretty funny though - Double drag: femme cross-dressing in jail, then as a Desk Sargent with a come-on vibe toward Arenas.)  But it’s Bardem who pulls everything together, mostly with his arresting physicality, the bone structure, the way the light catches his facial plains, like some handsome Cubist dream portrait, that ultimately make this so special.  It’s a plus that the guy can act, but what an objet d’art for the camera.  He knows it, too, which can get him into trouble, but certainly not here, not yet.*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Though sparing with docu footage of Castro, it still makes the case of what a crashing bore he was regardless of politics.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Bardem’s face a great argument that you don’t need spectacle and fancy effects to justify watching on a big screen to get the full experience.

LIGHT OF THE WORLD (2025)

Like the Deluxe Illustrated Jesus for Kids your Great Aunt gave you for Christmas instead of the sports-gear you wanted, an oversized tome left unopened in its original shrink wrap on your bedroom bookshelf till college & the donation box called.  But had you looked inside at the heavy-gage glossy paper, you’d have found what LIGHT offers, a rather handsome, posterized version of The Gospel According to Market Research, a Bowdlerized Biblical primer on Jesus and his Merry Disciples joyfully spreading ‘the word’ in Judea, wandering ‘J-Pop’ stars (that's 'Jesus-Pop'), offering magic tricks that are real.  (Cute guys hip enough to make a JAWS reference.)  Fleshed out in pretty hand-drawn animation, and boasting a Band-of-Brothers vibe, it’s reasonably effective at hitting some of the early highlights in the canon.  But once we’ve crossed into Jerusalem, with Jesus now proclaiming himself King Messiah, the cherry-picked happy incidents have no way to pivot toward the disturbing last act.  (This telling hardly alone in tripping up here.)  Glib explanations on cause & effect in place of The Sermon on the Mount, the confrontation and riot at the Temple/Marketplace, et al.  What, you wonder, could anyone possibly object to from this winning clean-cut crew?  You may also start wondering why no one in here has skin tones darker than Mediterranean ‘olive.’  And as to those chalk-white Romans?  As usual, they're pretty much let off the hook as if the moviemakers were still proselytizing . . . oh.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Released months after THE KING OF KINGS/’25, another Jesus-for-Kids animation with a much starrier vocal cast, if IMDb.com can be believed, each film budgeted at 20 mill, but KING grossing nearly 80 mill to LIGHT’s disappointing 4.  Perhaps there is a limit to the Up-With Christianity market.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-king-of-kings-2025.html

WANTED MAN (2024)

File under Who Knew?  Dolph Lundgren, permanently tagged as Sylvester Stallone’s ROCKY IV adversary (a massive 6'5" to Sly’s bulked up 5'9", a blink would have K.O.’d) has had a surprisingly varied career even within the action hero roles he’s been stuck playing.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised this engineering Fulbright scholar has always had more than one arrow in his quiver, writing, producing and for the past two decades, directing low-ball action fare, presumably for the foreign market, now as streamers.  This one, generic as its title, perfectly acceptable product that could have been pitched at Clint Eastwood circa GRAN TORINO.*  (The prejudice Mexican-centered rather than Asian.)  Its neat parabolic plot sees Lundgren’s aging xenophobic cop in disgrace for violence and racial putdowns.  He’s saved from being fired by accepting  a trade-off assignment to pickup a pair of Mexican hookers South of the Border, witnesses to a drug cartel bust gone wrong and multiple dead DEA agents.  But those third parties at the sting operation weren’t Cartel Bad Guys, but cops in disguise, corrupt officers on both sides of the border.  So when the pickup also heads south (while driving north) and the body count erupts, who can you trust to call for help?  Okay, fresh this ain’t, and some technical issues bother.  (In particular, the dubbing, especially in the first three reels, might be out of an early ‘60s Italian post-production synch lab.)  But Lundgren stages the violent set pieces with aplomb (and readable logistics), earns props for brusquely killing off the film’s most likable character, and at 67, let’s himself look plenty beat up, enough to pas as a weary, but still powerful police presence.  Kelsey Grammer one of a few ‘names’ who show up.  Fine, though having someone so prominent in a smallish role sort of gives the plot away.  No cheering then, but no reason to hold your nose.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Sure enough, Lundgren says he tried to get this going in 2008. The year TURINO came out.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/05/gran-torino-2008.html

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967)

Few things date more quickly than ‘Progressive’ Hollywood films.  Often as not, passé before they hit the screen.  So all credit to this racially-charged murder procedural that plunks a top Black Detective from Philly, PA into a high-profile/Deep-South/small-town homicide investigation.  The film, one of the great entertainments in a competitive year of change in Hollywood (topping BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE GRADUATE, GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER and, of all things, DOCTOR DOLITTLE for Best Pic Oscar®) remains remarkably lively, well-observed and unembarrassing.  Four reasons why: a twisty murder mystery, not just scaffolding for current affairs; superbly caught atmosphere and inconspicuously imaginative craftsmanship from director Norman Jewison and cinematographer Norman Wexler*; Rod Steiger’s unexpectedly layered Southern-Fried Police Chief; and naturally Sidney Poitier’s stubborn/proud Northern Detective from his annus mirabilis*, whose on screen strengths (slow-burn dignity, gravitas & grace, intelligent vibe, reserved physicality, elegance) can sometimes hold him back, but here are a perfect fit.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Wexler’s changing palette & saturation levels, a masterclass in technique and a tutorial in the rise of ‘60s visual sophistication in Stateside filming standards.  Imagine what Lew Wasserman’s Universal Studios would have done to his negative at the time.  But also compare with today’s standard desaturated wash of autumnal gloom.  Just check out the railway station scene midway in that consists entirely of different shades of grey.  So, of course, cinematography the one major craft award where HEAT wasn’t even nominated come Oscar season.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Poitier hit the movie star trifecta in ‘67 with three huge hits: TO SIR WITH LOVE (Black American teacher wins over White lower-class British school kids; plus hit pop tune!); Love is color-blind DINNER; and this.  Note: DINNER had a staged release and was (God help us) second highest grosser in ‘68.

ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES (1943)

It took a World War to make (and sustain) the unlikely stardom of TechniColor beauty Maria Montez.  The campy, exotic adventure films she made for Universal in the ‘40s, especially when co-starred with blandly handsome Jon Hall and impish Sabu, were a perfect fit for wartime anxiety.  And though she continued making films till her early death in 1951 (only 41), her time had already passed.  ALI BABA, from 1943 now seems her best, certainly the best introduction, but is perhaps less well known than the ones with Sabu.  (Turhan Bey takes over his regular spot, and quite well.)  Easy to see why it holds up so well since, after a prologue that has the young Caliph watch his father’s murder, discover the secret cave of the Forty Thieves and get newly christened (if that’s the right word for an Arabic fable!) as Ali Baba, the bulk of the film, neatly paced by director Arthur Lubin, is pretty much lifted story beat by story beat/character by character from Warners' THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/’38.*  Even Jon Hall, bringing Errol Flynn dash to his grown up Ali Baba, Andy Devine in for Alan Hale, a public rescue from certain death, a dastardly usurper . . . and so on.  Alas, Montez ain’t no Olivia de Havilland in the kidnaped princess turned helpmate/lover department.  But then, who is?*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See for yourself in ROBIN HOOD with the whole unbeatable Warner Bros gang.   (Note: Hold off on more Montez; her films best seen in long-spaced intervals.) https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-adventures-of-robin-hood-1938.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Another ripoff comes when the outlaws sing their fighting song while riding thru the desert on horseback.  These guys not only robbing the wealthy Khan villians, but also composer Sigmund Romberg whose ‘Riff Song’ from his operetta THE DESERT SONG serves as a too close for comfort inspiration.

VIGILANTE FORCE (1976)

Twenty-five years before the horrible Brothers Weinstein, public face Harvey/backroom Bob, a similar dynamic played between the pleasant Brothers Corman, B-pic King Roger, front-man and stealth distributor of classy foreign cineasts, while kid brother Gene mostly content to stick with unassuming action junk such as this, one of a short series produced by Gene, on his own, for M-G-M release in the '70s..  And they don’t come much junkier than this tale of a terrorized town where locals hire a clean-up specialist only to discover that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.  (Heck, that’s almost SEVEN SAMURAI, no?)  Vietnam vet Kris Kristofferson’s the one-man wrecking crew (and closet sociopath) who simply replaces the current gang of shoot-em-up brawlers with a new protection racket of business-backed thugs.  It’ll take kid brother Jan-Michael Vincent to organize the town against KK and take back the town from the corrupt vigilante force who took back the town from the previous bad guys. Writer/director George Armitage manages to make a 30-day shoot look like they had 21, though art director Jack Fisk (with uncredited assistance from wife Sissy Spacek) somehow conjures convincing small-town flavor.  But who can explain what a hot property like Kristofferson (just off two Sam Peckinpah pics and about to start Streisand’s STAR IS BORN remake) is doing here.  (The filmmakers so surprised he showed up on set, they apparently forgot to buy him shirts!)  Jan-Michael Vincent shows the natural screen presence that somehow never quite put him in the top tier, while in a smaller part, pal Andrew Stevens makes a real impression even if Armitage throws away his sacrifice at the climax.  Guess he was too busy lifting James Cagney’s WHITE HEAT/’49 finish to bother.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  IMDb says this is a remake of Blaxploitation pic BUCKSTOWN/’75.  (Not seen here.)  And it does seem something of a precursor to popular guilty pleasure ROAD HOUSE/’86.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/08/road-house-1989.html

LE RAILWAY DE LA MORT / THE RAILWAY OF DEATH (1912)

Director Jean Durand amassed over 250 credits, mostly shorts/mostly for Gaumont, peaking in the pre-war years and out of the biz by his mid-40s before sound came in.  He must have been a handy guy to have around in those early days, churning out comedies that mixed Mack Sennett clownish eccentrics with Georges Méliès technical trickery (and nearly as tiresome); adventuress romances courtesy of daring wife Berthe Dagmar, who liked to work with wild/exotic animals; serials (none seen here); and tales of the untamed American West filmed in France (Pommes Frites Westerns?), as here.  Standing head & shoulders above anything else we’ve seen from Durand, and something of an astonishment for 1912, it’s a worthy precursor of the last two reels of Erich von Stroheim’s famously mutilated (but still phenomenal) GREED/’24.*  The two reeler (at least the 17minutes we have of it; 1912 two-reelers could last nearly a half hour using a slow cranking speed), opens in medias res, with a dying man discovered in a field by a pair of presumably prospecting partners.  His dying secret the exact location of a gold load, not ore, but a cache of gold nuggets.  Only problem, the 50/50 share the men had sworn to, lands in a notebook one of the ‘pals’ holds in the inner breast pocket of his jacket.  So the race is on, largely by train to claim the prize.  And the stunting (including fights on the roof  of a moving train) are gasp inducing.  No effects here, no cutaways or stunt doubles.  Just a couple of regular guys holding on for their lives before a nihilistic ending Stroheim would have okayed.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, the basic situation raised to the heights in GREED.   OR:  A selection of Jean Durand is out on a Gaumont Treasures DVD (Vol. 2/Disc 2).  But if you can deal with French-Only title cards, here’s a link to the same print of RAILWAY sans translation.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/greed-1924.html   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raWCzOg_X14

GERONIMO! (1939)

Born 1829; died 1909.  That’s all you need to know to figure out what a raw deal and what a load of historical hooey Apache warrior Geronimo got in the movies.  This early try starts encouragingly (that exclamatory title!), with backhanded admiration on screen (‘The Story of a Great Enemy’), and in hiring Native American Chief Thundercloud to play him.  But after an opening scene at the White House where a sympathetic President Grant notes broken treaties, starvation rationing, crooked suppliers and a near official policy clash between the peace pedaling Indian Affairs Bureau and Army extermination practices, it’s business as usual for the rest of the film.  In fact, the story’s hardly about Geronimo at all.  Instead, Grant forces reluctant martinet General Ralph Morgan to enforce peace policies he doesn't believe in, while also  unaware estranged son William Henry has been assigned to the unit.  The rest is almost entirely dysfunctional father/son issues alternating with dysfunctional attitudes between the ‘regular’ army guys already out there and the interloping/clueless General.  Journeyman director Paul Sloane, given a slightly above average B-pic budget (lots of process and stock footage in here), can’t get us interested in the familial drama, allowing Capt. Preston Foster and schlubby aide Andy Devine whatever heroics & swagger available.  Indeed, Devine, for once, gets to play last man standing.  Oh, and Geronimo?  In this one, he’s killed about four decades before the fact.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  The Martinet General/Regular Army conflict, along with the estranged father/son drama proved perfect material for the first and third films in John Ford’s classic Cavalry Trilogy: FORT APACHE/’48 and RIO GRANDE/’50.   OR: 1962 GERONIMO. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/rio-grande-1950.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/01/geronimo-1962.html

THE COMPLEAT BEATLES (1982)

Straightforward, unpretentious and unauthorized, this succinct Beatles docu has all you really need to know about John, Paul, George and Ringo, seen plain before mythology took over.  Basically a cut-and-paste job (a good one) by director Patrick Montgomery and editor Pamela Page (well narrated by Malcolm McDowel), buttressed with purpose-made interviews from a fair sampling of on-the-scene witnesses: Gerry (and the Pacemakers) Marsden, L.P. producer George Martin, et al.  Without finger pointing and with no ax to grind (nice to see Ringo get his due), the film is particularly refreshing in not polishing up every track and image to pristine state.  Instead, capturing some of pleasure in pulling out a slightly dinged up original pressing to listen to rather than some over-refined digital replacement/remix.  All in a couple of hours.  (THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY, currently in streaming rotation goes on for 10 hours.)  Best insight comes in noting just how quickly John’s voice broke down doing live shows.  Did that factor into the boys taking on Abbey Road studio hermitage?  Worst is the usual fawning over SGT. PEPPER.  Anyone around at the time can (off the top of their head) reel off five or six titles they’d put on the turntable before it.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  As mentioned in this NYTimes piece, the film is floating all over the internet.  The rights situation must be confusing as hell.  Most seem to be taken from decent VHS copies and are surprisingly watchable.    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/movies/other-beatles-documentary.html   

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The Beatles’ first Stateside visit turns NYC upside down in Robert Zemeckis’s debut pic, I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND/’78.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-wanna-hold-your-hand-1978.html

IT ALL CAME TRUE (1940)

Standard line on Humphrey Bogart’s move from the ranks of leading contract players to A-list stardom has him plucked for bigger things in '41 by Raoul Walsh and then John Huston for the one-two punch of HIGH SIERRA and THE MALTESE FALCON.  But before that, home studio Warners had already singled him out after years of second lead hoods in big pics and top-billed leads in programmers.  In hindsight, this film looks like his career pivot point.*  Lewis Seiler is the blunt, journeyman director who can’t take the cutes out of the set-up, an aging Irish Darlin’ with a failing Manhattan boarding house filled with ancient ex-performers who gets a lifeline when her darling boy (Jeffrey Lynn) comes home with his guest, underworld gangster/club owner/employer Bogart, desperate for an unlikely hideout after shooting someone.  Niece Ann Sheridan, a singer who’s worked for Bogie, already staying there.  Both men have their eyes on Sheridan.  (Who wouldn’t, she even gets to sing a few numbers in her own warmly musical voice when a bored Bogie converts the brownstone into an intimate Gay ‘90s club.  Just what any gangster on the lam would do.)  Hokey, but also silly fun; plus a great turn from Felix Bressart as a retired magician who doesn’t know his revived act is getting big laughs because his dated routine is so darn corny.  But the main thing to watch is how Bogart transitions right before your eyes into a sympathetic lead.  Heck, he even gets the big renunciation scene at the end so he can play fairy godfather to the lovers.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Basically, the same renunciation bit James Cagney played two years back for Raoul Walsh in THE ROARING TWENTIES/’39, giving the very same Jeffrey Lynn the love of his life.  Plus Bogart as the second lead baddie . . . sans redemption.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-roaring-twenties-1939.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A later reissue reshot the opening title card, upping Bogart from third to first billed.

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (2025)

With the notable exceptions of CABARET and CHICAGO*, B’way lyricist Fred Ebb & composer John Kander mostly turned out near misses that had good concepts, catchy scores, short runs and cult cast albums to keep their reps alive.  KISS, probably the best of these, still comes up short in Bill Condon’s heartfelt, but commercially DOA film adaptation.  Based on Manuel Puig’s novel (as was the 1985 William Hurt/Raul Julia film, uncredited here), it’s a sort of Queer Scheherazade with two prisoners of the Argentine military dictatorship in for Sultan and Storyteller.  Sharing a cell and an evolving friendship, Valentin, Diego Luna’s macho revolutionary political prisoner, and Molina, Tonatiuh’s effeminate informer, in on a vice charge, survive the misery of incarceration with nightly story recitations by Molina of the OTT romantic musical melodramas he loves and which now help take them out of the prison reality of  torture, poisoned food and isolation.  Under Condon (under Kander & Ebb for that matter,  the conceit only works sporadically, unsure how directly to reflect or comment.  Something the film points out all too well, highlighting the one musical number that pulls the whole concept together, ‘Where You Are.’ since it does exactly what the rest of the film only hints at doing.  Condon & Co. merely distracting when they mean to distance, in the Brechtian sense.  ‘Where You Are’ also exceptional because, while Molina is infatuated with lush TechniColor, this number, is lit & costumed to mimic glossy b&w showstoppers of the’30s,  using the natural abstraction of b&w to enhance a dialectic between audience & screen without need of forcing the conceit on us.  No complaints about the two leading men: Diego Luna’s Valentin gaining nuance and offering acceptance thru suffering; Tonatiuh’s Molina, pitched a bit high in the opening, but soon showing his best form and wide-ranging talent.  As the woman of their movie dreams (in multiple roles), Jennifer Lopez is proficient, sabotaged by leftover costume designs from Chita Rivera’s B’way run and by make-up that turns her into a wide-mouth ringer of musical comedy cult fave Dolores Gray whom you may recall from IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER/’55 and DESIGNING WOMAN/’57.*  Intentional?

LINK:  *Speaking of CHICAGO/Speaking of Dolores Gray: ‘IF,’ a comic ballad/tortured torch song (Jule Styne; Betty Comden & Adolph Green) introduced on B’way by Gray in TWO ON THE AISLE, is like a précis of CHICAGO, shrunk down from 2.5 hours to 3.5 minutes.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1XoR-fuzvY   

CONTEST:  For unknown reasons, two references to an earlier ‘concept musical,’ LADY IN THE DARK are in here.  Spot them and send your answer via our COMMENTS Box.  The first correct answer wins a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of the streaming film of your choice.

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1994)

Faux Stephen King, but not faux John Carpenter in what is probably the best of his later films.*  Producer and occasional writer Michael De Luca gets credit for the script on this Stephen King pastiche about best-selling horror author and King rival Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow in a purposefully unbecoming wig).  His immense sales & cultural influence a lifeline to publisher Charlton Heston (well cast) and editor Julie Carmen (less well cast).  With Cane’s latest manuscript way overdue, but scheduled to hit the stores soon, they can’t even locate him.  That’s how insurance investigator Sam Neill (terrific) gets involved, hunting him up along with editor Carmen through directions more imaginary than real.  A lot like his books, getting weirder and scarier as the searchers find they’re driving into a living horror fable right out of his fevered brain.  Threatening small-town rubes, unspeakably gory monsters, it’s more maze than amazing.  Yet the best scare, the only one that really shows Carpenter still in top form, is a simple one that sees Neill hot-wiring a car to make an escape only to discover no matter how far or fast he goes into uncharted territory, you wind up right back where you started from.  Pure Lewis Carroll logic.  He’ll  have to go twice as fast to get anywhere.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Not having seen all of Carpenter’s later work, use the COMMENTS Box to let us know if we’ve missed something good.  Thanks.

LOOK IN ANY WINDOW (1961)

Since coming to Hollywood with Orson Welles’ Mercury Players, William Alland had done a bit of everything.  As an actor, he’s the shadowy reporter on the hunt for ‘Rosebud’ in CITIZEN KANE/’41.  Post-WWII service, he wrote & produced B-pics with little distinction till finding his niche at Universal in Sci-Fi & horror: IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE/’53; CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON./’54; THIS ISLAND EARTH/55; THE MOLE PEOPLE/’56 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-mole-people-1956.html), et al.  But he only directed once; this micro-budget seven-day quickie meant to establish rising ‘Teen Idol’ Paul Anka as a new Sal Mineo.  (Physically, the young Anka more proto-Dustin Hoffman.*)  In this debut, the poor kid’s in a bad way: Manly Mom Ruth Roman, busy emasculating unemployed Dipso-Dad Alex Nicol, is hankering for wealthy horndog neighbor Jack Cassidy.  Jack’s ignoring his wife who’s contemplating a coffee-fueled tête-à-tête with that widowed Euro-neighbor next door.  Meanwhile Gigi Perreau, Cassidy’s boy-curious teen daughter fights off a hot rod boyfriend to make nice with unthreatening soft-rod Anka.  But once he gets into Pop’s liquor supply, Anka comes on too strong.  (If Gigi weren’t stronger than drunk Paul, those shattered wine glasses already put out for  tomorrow’s big Fourth of July pool party might not have been just symbolic.  Yikes!  (Or is it mazel-tov?)  No wonder the kid is acting out as the pervy local Peeping Tom.  Enter Detectives Tweedledum and Tweedledee, one ready to force an old-school confession from any suspect, the other all modern psychology, understanding the kid’s depraved because he’s deprived as WEST SIDE STORY’s Officer Krupke might have put it.  Presented in a smeary/lo-fi image, the film lists no cinematographer (who’d want to take credit?); with generally lousy tech work to match.  Where has this sleazy, sticky-to-the-touch, campy Midnite Madness Movie been hiding?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Anka didn’t turn into a Mineo or a Hoffman, but he did write the film’s theme song.

THE BALLAD OF LEFTY BROWN (2017)

With a decent Olde Timey Western story, a more than decent Olde Timey cast, even real Olde Timey 35mm film in the camera, this Montana-set tale of horse rustling, inheritance, State politics, railroad rights, murder & revenge ought to be better.  Briefly: After Montana’s first Senator-Elect Peter Fonda is ambushed hunting for a horse thief on his land, his body is brought home to wife Kathy Baker by longtime ranch-hand pal Lefty Brown (Bill Pullman).  Vowing to catch & punish the killers, Pullman finds this was no simple heist, but part of a complicated political power grab that leads all the way up to . . .  Well, we’ll leave it at that.  On the way, old friends will switch sides, invisible assassins will take shots, and he’ll join forces with youthful antagonist Stephen Alan Seder (a local Montanan in a winning debut).  So what’s the film’s problem?  Sum it up in three jobs & two words: writer/producer/director Jared Moshe.  Rare to see this level of sheer incompetence, especially in direction, what with all the professional protection on set.  Though, at first it can be hard to spot behind the modern taste for a constantly moving camera.  Since you never hold on ‘the right shot,’ you barely notice the ‘wrong’ ones while literally covering your tracks.  But with so much uncoordinated logistics in action set pieces that have to add up to have effect (sieges, shoot outs, stand-offs), it becomes impossible to miss.  (Plus, there’s a horribly misjudged ‘neck-tie party’ finale.)  So, unless you’ve got a hankering to see Bill Pullman go full old-codger Walter Brennan (admittedly rather entertaining), pass.*

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Though usually found in splashy supporting roles (with three Oscars to show for it), Brennan’s last win was more of a leading role against Gary Cooper in William Wyler’s THE WESTERNER    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-westerner-1940.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *F.W. Murnau revolutionized the moving camera shot & tracking with THE LAST LAUGH/’24.  But the modern taste for mindless continuous camera movement likely grew out of MTV music videos in the ‘80s.  After that, the deluge.

TAKE OUT (2004)

Multi-Oscar’d for ANORA/’24, this micro-budget indie was effectively writer/director Sean Baker’s debut feature.  (An earlier film barely distributed.)  Baker, who also shoots his films, has Shih-Ching Tsou, now his regular producer, credited as co-writer/director* in this simple, story, strongly handled in quasi-documentary fashion (much of it caught on-the-fly in ‘stolen’ location work) following a thumpingly miserable day for illegal Chinese immigrant Ming Ding.  Up to his neck in loan shark debt, he’s woken by goons before heading to the storefront Chinatown joint where he’s the main bicycle delivery guy.  Borrowing just over half the payment he needs to raise from his few friends, he largely takes on all that night’s deliveries (thru a rain-soaked night) to reach his goal.  The bulk of the film consisting of interpersonal relationships in a tiny professional kitchen (seen-it-all manager, two taciturn cooks and a fellow delivery pal taking it easy to let Ming earn extra tips).  Their work a dance of speed & efficiency in a tight space.  But it's mostly dangerous bike runs thru slick/crowded streets before quick one-on-one interchanges with scores of customers.  Tiny Black-Out sketches where Ming (with little English) hopes for decent tips.  And it’s here that Baker really shows his evenhanded tactics as dramatist.  No matter how penny-pinching, curmudgeonly, or decent, each one treated as a real person, care and consideration given to all.  Even when there’s a mix-up between chicken or beef.  You’ve got to go back to the very early Jonathan Demme of CITIZEN’S BAND/’77 and MELVIN AND HOWARD/’80 to find its nonjudgmental like in American film.  Here, even with a touch of melodrama to set up the touching ending (a debatable choice BTW), Baker’s already giving benefit of the doubt to just about everyone on screen.  Shot in low-resolution digital that fits the material, he’s since learned how to add physical beauty, as appropriate, to the mix.*  But as fiimmaker, Baker was pretty much all there right from the start.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For those who might find ANORA a bit too scorching, THE FLORIDA PROJECT may be the better Baker entry point.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-florida-project-2017.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Apparently self-funded by Baker and Tsou, the film had what sounds like a fabulous twenty-to-one return on its budget.  Then again, when the total budget is about $3000 . . .

FRANKENSTEIN (2025)

In spite of claims for this new version of the old Mary Shelly shocker: frank, faithful, ‘real,’ in the long list of film adaptations of THE NEW PROMETHEUS, the final moral of FRANKENSTEIN has always been the same: the dangers of man playing God.  Or has been till now.  This time, the classic myth on man & monster teaches a new lesson: Beware of Passion Projects.  Sure, there are exceptions like John Huston’s THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING/’75, but you’re far more likely to get Francis Ford Coppola’s MEGALOPOLIS/’24.  (Not seen here; but then, not seen anywhere.*)  And Guillermo del Toro falls right into the trap with this heavy-laden FRANKENSTEIN.  Immediately hailed by critics and viewers before its speedy skedaddle to NetFlix streaming, it’s a cross between a Tim Burton ‘goth’ rehash and an over-dressed Franco Zeffirelli extravagance that can’t be bothered with a mere God & Man conflict.  In fact, we skip right past the human element to hit up John Carpenter’s THE THING/’82 for resurrection.  (Or if you insist, Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby’s THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD/’51.)  Hence our North Pole prologue.  And del Toro doesn’t even bring his specific vision alive, ‘practical’ sets warring against model work and rubbery CGI wolves, sheep and stunting.  Acting little better . . . or rather, so inconsistent in style, it’s all but impossible to adjust between high theatrical camp and mumbling method.  (But credit for getting dramatic milage out of Oscar Isaac’s bad doctor at nearly a foot shorter than towering Jacobi Elordi’s ‘Creature.’  And since commercial results have been buried in the Black Hole of NetFlix mystery numbers game, there’s little chance this gifted writer/director will take a Francis Ford Coppola lesson from it.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Without any claims toward ‘accuracy,' surprise yourself with the 1931 original.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/frankenstein-1931.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Even Alfred Hitchcock was restrained from giving in to his longtime passion project, the otherworldly MARY ROSE, by a clause in his ‘60s Universal contract that allowed him to make any project he fancied, funded by up to 5 mill by Universal, except MARY ROSE.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Of course, The Monster is Dr. Frankenstein’s personal passion project.  And look how that turned out.

BACKSTABBING FOR BEGINNERS (2018)

Excellent, if barely released film from Danish writer/director Per Fly.  A true story of espionage, violence, diplomacy & love in the run-up to the Iraqi War.  United Nations centered, and more Graham Greene than John Le Carré with Fly refusing to overload for shock or suspense the way most Iraqi projects do.*  The story largely behind the scenes where the action lies in diplomatic maneuvers.  The coming conflict not about land or Sunni/Shiite belief, not even government control, but about dollars.  Oodles of it from various oil supplies and oil suppliers, here stemming from a reasonably corrupt U.N. project that trades a cut of oil revenues for food.  But first, an obscene amount siphoned off before distribution, 30 to 60 percent taken in the form of bribes or ‘honorariums’ before what's left filters down to the ’needy.’  Ben Kingsley, in towering form, runs the program, a master player whose naïf assistant (an almost distractingly handsome Theo James) is raised to second in the initiative after the suspicious death of his immediate superior.  James, an idealistic type whose father died in a Mid-East terrorist bombing, is learning on the job as Kingsley consistently compromises principle (and percentage) to get what he can networking thru a seemingly incomprehensible system of bribery.  But James soon finds himself playing the game himself, working just the sort of balancing act he’d hoped to quickly faze out.  All further complicated by a U.N. official trying to kill the Oil for Food program (Jacqueline Bisset, excellent, and her face surgically untouched - hurrah!), and by Belçim Bilgin’s beautiful Kurdish activist who may simply be using James for her own political purposes.  With relationship and loyalties in constant flux, it’s the most unsentimental education in global power politics imaginable.  Yet easy to follow and fashioned without special pleading or cheap exploitation.  Business as usual in a faraway war being leveraged for personal gain.  Each setback a new opportunity.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Try THE QUIET AMERICAN/’02, where Greene used Vietnam as his petri dish in war and morality.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-quiet-american-1958-2002.html

THE PACKAGE (1989)

Reasonably effective, if commercially unsuccessful, throwback to those politically paranoid early’70s thrillers sees Master Sargent Gene Hackman losing his ‘package,’ hard-ass army man Tommy Lee Jones, on his way back from Germany to a court-martial in Chicago.  Only problem, Jones ain’t who he says he is, and the Men’s Room donnybrook that allows Jones to escape was carefully planned.  Part of an elaborate conspiracy between right-wing Ruskie and Americanski officers to stop (at any cost!) the implementation of a post-Cold War anti-nuclear peace treaty.  With an assassination to top things off.  Got that?  Neatly run about two-thirds of the way (script from non-prolific John Bishop; faceless direction by the highly prolific Andrew Davis*).  Johanna Cassidy gets slim pickings as Hackman’s supportive ‘ex,’ but Dennis Franz brings welcome verisimilitude as a streetwise/helpful Chicago cop (the brief look at his family homelife the best things in here), and John Heard giving away whatever mystery there is as a chilly desk-jockey Colonel out to nail the field-savvy Hackman. But the fun abruptly stops in the middle of the third act when Hackman makes a lame escape and the film suddenly starts to cherry-pick story beats from THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE/’62 and THE DAY OF THE JACKAL/’73, films in an entirely different league than this workaday number.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Directors John McTiernan and this film’s Andrew Davis must have been short-listed on all the same ‘safe’ A-list Hollywood thrillers of the late-‘80s and ‘90s.  Solid, if faceless professionals, McTiernan broke out on DIE HARD/’88’s; Davis on THE FUGITIVE/’93.   Of the two, McTiernan perhaps with a bit more filmmaking personality, Davis with the longer run near the top.  (Or do I have them reversed?)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  CANDIDATE and JACKAL refer to the original films, not their unhappy remakes.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-manchurian-candidate-1962.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/06/day-of-jackal-1973.html

LE COUPERET / THE AX (2005)

From the Donald Westlake novel, a satiric black comedy on modern business practices, written & directed by, of all people, politically-minded, Greek-born/French-based Costa-Gavras, of Z/’69 and MISSING/’82.  (And note, a Korean remake, NO OTHER CHOICE/’25, on the horizon.*)  A cleverly lethal fable about solid company man José Garcia downsized out of his cushy job as top exec at a paper manufacturing company.  Now in his forties, with wife, two kids and a mortgage, he’s two years on the job hunt and coming up empty.  Too many mid-level types trying for the same few positions.  Nothing to do but eliminate the competition . . . literally! Make that lethally.  Collecting resumes thru a phony job search ad, he culls replies to find likely hires and moves fast to bump off the best and improve his chances.  Costa-Gavras no comedy technician (don’t hold your breath for compound gags), but he does get his points & laughs across by loudly charging forward.  With nice complications at home with the family and nice suspense when he hits the road for hits.  José Garcia’s dispensable exec carries the film as the sort of hangdog optimist Alberto Sordi brilliantly overplayed in ‘60s Italian films and Jack Lemmon annoyingly overplayed in ‘70s Hollywood.  (Garcia even looks a bit like Lemmon.)  A tricky postman-always-rings-twice ending isn’t properly set up, but the film mostly comes across.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Easy to imagine a wilder, weirder, funnier version catching fire in ways this one doesn’t.  Perhaps the Korean remake will take us there.

BLIND ALLEY (1939)

Though better known by its 1948 remake (THE DARK PAST/’48 - William Holden; Lee J. Cobb - dir. Rudolph Maté*), the first version of James Warwick’s B’way play is the better film.  Or rather, makes the better impression.  Less from quality than timing; a decade’s growth in audience sophistication on psychiatry making the story’s simplistic underpinnings, still fresh in 1939, looking shopworn a decade later.  Freud still alive when this opened, ‘the talking cure,’ here at its most Freudian (kill Dad/bed Mom) something of a magic trick that could happen in a single ten-minute session.  Well-directed by Charles Vidor (dig the film's negative-image dream sequence), with a powerfully unbalanced Chester Morris as the escaped killer (playing in vicious James Cagney mode and getting away with it) who takes Professor/Shrink Ralph Bellamy and his lake house guests hostage while he and his gang wait for a rescue boat.  And what a nifty cast of crack pots on both sides: Ann Dvorak, the moll who wants Morris cured of his debilitating nightmares till she realizes he might lose his dependency on her; a cool, calculating Milburn Stone before he was Doc on GUNSMOKE; Melville Cooper’s wised-up cuckold showing unexpected toughness; even Joseph Mankiewicz’s real life psychologically fragile wife Rose Stradner as Bellamy’s frightened film wife.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *As mentioned, remade as THE DARK PAST.  OR: The fascinating first Hollywood film to seriously tackle psychiatric cures & sanatoriums, PRIVATE WORLDS/’35 (Claudette Colbert; Charles Boyer; dir - Gregory L Cava) where the treatments now look absurd, but the psychological interactions between the staff show somebody knew the score.

THE EXILES (1961)

Essential urban ethnography from writer/director Kent Mackenzie goes inside a closed world of directionless Native Americans who’ve left old ways and lands behind to settle in scruffy L.A. nabs with little but temp jobs, tomorrow’s elusive promise, tonight’s bar crawl and overnight ceremonial gatherings to rehash old customs under an alcoholic buzz.  A pair of thirty-something men get special attention over one very long night, driving around a noirish cityscape as they search for comradery, booze and likely dating prospects.  The women far more integrated into the commercial world, but given few options in this dating scene.  Their reluctant choices only getting worse as the evening and the alcohol level wear on. Shot in the manner of a documentary, this ‘planned’ naturalism goes back to documentary pioneer Robert J. Flaherty’s NANOOK OF THE NORTH/’22.  And this film might be too depressing to watch if the presentation didn’t come with such compositional artistry, capturing in crepuscular tones lost manners and dingy neighborhoods where Mackenzie so brilliantly shot & edited with Robert Kaufman in some of the same out of the way L.A. areas where they started with their award-winning student film BUNKER HILL 1956.  Check out the almost surreal funicular used in both films and previously seen in Anthony Mann’s THE GLENN MILLER STORY/’54 and James Whale’s fascinating Pre-Code IMPATIENT MAIDEN/’32.  That last a real find . . . if you can find it!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For an East Coast view of another ‘under-belly’ society, ON THE BOWERY/’56 is a more traditional documentary that holds to non-scripted storytelling.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/01/on-bowery-1956.html  ALSO:  Mackenzie’s student film BUNKER HILL/’56 mentioned above is included in the fine Milestone DVD restored edition of EXILES.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING (2025)

More chaff.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Lots of notes taken while watching this, but after rereading our post for Part One, they just seemed superfluous.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/02/mission-impossible-dead-reckoning-part.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Ancillary markets and financial benefits from a refreshed franchise can’t make a $400 mill budget (plus 100 for ads, publicity and opening costs) pay off on a Worldwide gross of 600 mill.  (Actual returns about half that.)  Even with Hollywood accounting it comes up short.

REPRISE (2006)

Super debut for Norwegian writer/director Joachim Trier, now known from THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD/’21* and currently in theaters with SENTIMENTAL VALUE/’25 (not seen here).  This first feature a bumpy journey-to-adulthood for a tight group of ‘bros’ (girls mostly on the side and some of the male sexism surprising for 2006), but mainly concerned with a pair of yin/yang BFFS, bound by their shared literary bent.  Sunshiny in looks and personality, Eric (Espen Klouman Høiner) is the one with natural talent while the perpetually overcast Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) shows promise but no follow thru.  Falling into clinical depression, Phillips’s manic side comes out when he begins a hot & cold relationship with Kari (Viktoria Winge).  Whisking her off to Paris for romance when he’s not bailing out entirely for months at a time.  Eric not much more constant with longtime steady Lillian.  Trier playing mind games with all relationships thru spot on character detail and linear tricks in continuity by developing episodes that only might be happening.  Listen up for the use of  narration to clue you in when we jump between what’s real and what’s narrative fancy.  Even using the technique right at the end to add poignance to possibility.  As if he were saying ‘isn’t it pretty to think so.’   A remarkably confident introduction from Trier.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  * As mentioned, WORST PERSON.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/12/verdens-verste-menneske-worst-person-in.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *As with many debuts, Trier’s influences float to the surface like gnocchi announcing they’re ready to eat.  I’d reckon Truffaut/French New Wave are on the menu.

FORCE OF ARMS (1951)

Third of four pairings for William Holden and Nancy Olson after they clicked in SUNSET BOULEVARD/’50 which was only her second film,  None competes with that Billy Wilder classic (but try UNION STATION:  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/union-station-1950.html), while this WWII romance, set around the lethal Battle of SAN PIETRO (infamously faked as a documentary by John Huston in ‘45) is solidly unexceptional.  On loan from Paramount, Holden/Olson are at Warners where a still lively Michael Curtiz directs and, with cinematographer Ted McCord and editor Owen Marks, does a bang-up job integrating real war footage from Italy with studio mock ups.  Interesting story, too, as Holden & company, on a brief leave from the front, dive in to all the Italian specialties: food, vino, girls.  All but Holden, blindsided after an ill-tempered encounter with Stateside WAC Lt. Olson goes nowhere fast as she’s still recovering from the death of her last attachment.  Naturally, the bickering hides a mutual attraction.  And when called back early, he’s lost his edge; the built up calloused edge he gets from not really caring about anything.  Love can be a danger to your health.  The script can’t quite live up to the concept, but you fill in enough of what’s missing to make it worth your time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The combination of post-WWII frankness and a still enforced Hollywood Production Code bowdlerizes cuss words so that, for example, FUCK becomes FLUFF.   As in: Situation Normal All Fluffed Up.  When Olson says it, FLUFF sounds, if anything, dirtier than FUCK.  Downright pornographic.

OLD HENRY (2021)

There’s no question Westerns have been having a moment over the past decade or so.  Largely out of favor not so long ago, they remain hit & miss on the big screen, but are all over the place on home screens.*  And it’s not entirely Taylor Sheridan's doing!  Such resurrections need a nickname on the order of ‘60a Spaghetti Westerns, the anti-Westerns of the’50s or the post-WWII psychological Westerns of the late-‘40s.  These days, seemingly half debut on NetFlix only to quickly disappear.  But NetFlix Westerns not very catchy.  Why not Vacuum Westerns, since most get made solely to fill vacuums in scheduling quotas on streaming platforms?  Not that Vacuum Westerns need be pejorative.  Take this recent Oater, a sharp chamber piece from writer/director Potsy Ponciroli who deserves credit right from the start by forgoing ubiquitous stranger-comes-to-town tropes to focus on hardscrabble farmer Tim Blake Nelson, widowed and living alone with his disaffected teenage son, coming across an injured man with a bag of stolen cash.  Taking him home to recuperate (or preferably die), Blake assumes a posse will soon show to claim the guy and the loot.  But a posse of Sheriff & Deputies or a posse of bank-robbers?  The same question might apply to the injured man.  Lawman or outlaw, possibly a turncoat from the gang.  Meeting the challenge, mostly on his own, but helped (if that’s the word) by his all too eager boy and his neighboring brother-in-law.  Can he trust the recovering injured man to help?  And what’s behind the old farmer’s personal confidence and unexpected competence with weapons?  The son had no idea he even owned them.  Henry has a trick or two up his sleeve; a secret past so unexpected it’s less character twist than personal triple lutz.  Tim Blake Nelson, looking even shorter than his 5'5", with a rare leading role easily walks off with the film.  And it might be more to walk off with if director Ponciroliis had better control of P.O.V. and a more distinctive film technique.  More like you’d see in a Budd Boetticher B-Western or that Delmar Daves owned in his 3:10 TO YUMA/’57 days.  Still, this one makes for a good 'Vacuum Western.'  Though that title no help.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Kevin Costner’s late career hit in Sheridan’s YELLOWSTONE and hubristic miss with DOA big screen HORIZON/’24 exemplifies the risk.

THE HOLLOW CROWN (2016)

Shakespeare’s series of British history plays, the ones that cover The War of the Roses (RICHARD II; HENRY IV - PARTS 1 & 2; HENRY V; HENRY VI - Parts 1, 2, 3; RICHARD III - though not written in that order) have been tempting completest directors for decades.*  But they can be a tough go, especially since the saga begins with drippy Richard II (modern queer emphasis not a big help).  And because the three that were written last (HENRYs IV & V) show such a staggering advancement in dramatic craft, each a masterpiece of plotting, poetry & prose . . . plus Falstaff, they tend to outshine everything else.  Fortunately history’s chronological order ends with Richard III, written relatively early but with a scene-stealing/fourth-wall breaking villain for the ages.  The epic idea of doing all eight plays never fails, even if it never really works.  Or so till now with this lightly abridged compendium from the BBC.  A bit rearranged and textually amplified for clarity (what a kick to be able to parse what the heck’s going on and who’s who in those early HENRY VI plays!), even more fun to watch just about every possible U.K. Shakespearean (other than Kenneth Branagh, conspicuous by his absence) killing their roles under directors Dominic Cooke, Richard Eyre, Rupert Goold & Thea Sharrock.  Who knew PBS Masterpiece Mystery guys like Tom Hiddleston (Prince Hal), Adrian Dunbar (Plantagenet) and Anton Lesser (Exeter) were such natural Shakespeareans?  All the expected names also standouts, other than Simon Russell Beale whose Falstaff never connects.  Pace this one out to your preference (episodes already come in various lengths though full episodes last an average 2 and a quarter hours.  Great stuff for fans, newbies and specialists.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Orson Welles’ attempt was called FIVE KINGS on stage which he eventually brought down to TWO KINGS for FALSTAFF/CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT/’65.  Barely released when made, now universally hailed.  Its battle sequence, in particular, like nothing e’er seen at the time.  While now, just about every Shakespeare film has a battle scene stylistically copied from it.  HOLLOW CROWN with half a dozen.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/chimes-at-midnight-aka-falstaff-1965.html

TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! / ÁTAME! (1989)

After capping his scabrous, generational page-turning early films with the commercially friendlier international breakthru, WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN/’88, Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodóvar began codifying his signature OTT style, as if he preferred being an adjective, Almodóvaresque, rather than a filmmaker,   It took about three films for him to shake it off (see THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET/’96*) and start putting out the enviable series of mature masterpieces that continue today.  Meanwhile, we have these near parodies, not without their charms (did Antonio Banderas’s eyes ever look more caramel?; Victoria Abril ever more physically abandoned?), but what a tired tale he tells.  It’s the old Women Want To Be Dominated tropes.  Here with Banderas a mentally unstable orphan, just released from a criminal sanatarium (he apparently pity-fucked his way out) who meets-cute with Abril by beating her up after she tries to slam the door in his face.  Hey!, he’s got control issues.  A nice guy under the violence, they soon meet-cute again on a film set and while she doesn’t recall the man, she’ll eventually recall the fuck.  (What is he doing down there?)  Naturally, she succumbs post-kidnapping, that’s why he ties her up/ties her down, before these two (plus her sister) sing their way toward a happy future.  Much of this is meant to play ironically or as farce, but it’s still a heavy lift for what are now stale Almodóvar stylistics he’s outgrown.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Permission granted to skip directly to FLOWER OF MY SECRET and Almodóvar’s resurrection.  And for the early work, still too little seen, try MATADOR/’86.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/flower-of-my-secret-1995.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/04/matador-1986.html

OR: Troubled guy/pretty girl kidnapping, served plain, William Wyler’s THE COLLECTOR/’65.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-collector-1965.html

PRESENT LAUGHTER (2019)

One of Noël Coward’s more indestructible plays.  On B’way alone, a success for Coward, Clifton Webb, George C. Scott, Frank Langella (perfectly cast), Victor Garber and most recently Kevin Kline.  Here, Andrew Scott is stage star Garry Essendine, just turned forty and about to leave on a long tour when he finds himself, along with his theatrical circle of friends, stuck in his swanky apartment playing out a French Sex farce of his own making for real.  Secretary, housekeeper, valet, overnight ‘guest’, ex-wife, manager & wife, everybody wants Essendine, his attention or a roll in the hay.  Smartly structured for first act clarity, second act conflict and third act hide-and-seek chases, this Live National Theatre production dives straight in with broad playing to its live audience (farce, don’cha you know) that takes a bit of getting used to, as well as sexual updating in character & motivation (one sex change and three now bi-sexual). that needs even more.   It still makes sense this way (it may even make more sense), but playing what had been SUBTEXT as TEXT, thins the texture.  Even in a farce, not something that helps Coward.  And it lends a self-congratulatory knowingness to what was meant to be closeted naughtiness.  Still, Scott gets his laughs and revels in his big speech on amateur playwrights while secretary Sophie Thompson makes like Maggie Smith (a nonpareil Cowardian) while Enzo Cilenti’s infatuated male (formerly female) lover grabs attention with a spot on Anton Walbrook accent.  But the play’s end now just an exhausted question mark.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Considering the changes in tone & text, shouldn’t there be a credit for adaptation?