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 party’ finale.)  So, unless you’ve got a hankering to see Bill Pullman go the full 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?

MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH (1934)

Third of four filmings of Alice Hegan Rice’s popular/bathetic turn-of-the-last-century family drama, as hopelessly old-fashioned in 2025 as it must have looked on the Paramount lot in 1934.  Raising her brood in a ramshackle shack on the wrong side of town on a (chicken) wing & a prayer, eternal optimist Mrs. Wiggs expects Mr. Wiggs to return any moment with a Klondike fortune.  Till then, depending on the kindness of strangers to help her family and bedridden boy.  Directed by Norman Taurog, an Oscar-winning kid specialist who later became an Elvis specialist, it’s got Southern sentiment, lessons in prideful poverty and blather to spare.  Yet not without interest what with W.C. Fields in a rare ‘legit’ role* (third act comic relief as suitor to spinster neighbor Zasu Pitts), an old-fashioned vaudeville show that looks like the real thing (what a missed opportunity not to have Fields come on stage with a juggling act as his intro).  And, in her movie debut at 44, Pauline Lord (on B’way ANNA CHRISTIE; THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED; ETHAN FROME), one of the many stage legends of the 1920s & ‘30s who rarely (or never) got to film their famous roles . . . or any others.  (Think Ethel Barrymore, Katharine Cornell, Maude Adams, Gertrude Lawrence, Ina Claire, Lynn Fontanne, Adele Astaire.)  For Lord, the tears, uplift & sentiment a DOA career launch.  Yet, she’s fascinating.  None of that theatrical too big/too ‘hot’ for the camera.  Though turning matronly, she’s vocally & physically commanding without feeling untouchable.  Some less oppressive role might have set her up in the sort of distinguished support roles Ethel Barrymore played for a decade as a senior.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Next year, Fields would have his legit triumph playing Micawber in DAVID COPPERFIELD/’35.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/david-copperfield-1935.html

DREW: THE MAN BEHIND THE POSTER (2013)

Even if you’re not constantly looking for great movie poster art, its steady decline over the decades is obvious.  Hard to pinpoint the turning point, since memorable anomalies still pop up, but it surely started with the end of the old studio system in the ‘60s.  By the ‘80s, photoshopping and airbrushing had largely taken over from paint & brush storytelling.  Now, it’s down to a rotation of portraits, space rockets, uniforms and MARVEL.  So, doubly sad to read obits for two of the last great practitioners of the craft: Italy’s Renato Casaro and Hollywood’s Drew Struzan, dying about a month apart.*  Eric Sharkey’s Struzan docu is nothing special, but gets the job done, showing a lot of work, especially good at including putative poster campaigns that were turned down by studio execs who thought something less ‘artistic’ would sell more popcorn.  Fortunately, a George Lucas or a Steven Speilberg could sometimes step up and manage to find a spot for their preferred renderings in Special Editions or re-releases.  Sharkey goes a little light on Struzan’s peculiarities, a very likeable, but odd artistic fellow, and only does right by one of the two  major conflicts in the story: a fight over rights on 'lost' original art (that wasn't lost at all), and a non-Struzan poster for INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM that was eventually replaced by Struzan.*   Hagiographic interviews with famous actors & directors tell the rest, as do Struzan/Wife & Son, to bring this quiet and surprisingly quirky personality out.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  *In addition to individual obits, this appreciation neatly touches on the vast output of these two titans.  ALSO:  Can’t swear to it, but I think this is the TEMPLE OF DOOM poster that Lucas & Spielberg objected to as too dark in tone & personality.    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/movies/drew-struzan-renato-casaro-movie-posters.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/09/indiana-jones-and-temple-of-doom-1984.html

COUNTER-ESPIONAGE (1942)

Edward Dmytryk’s four decade directing career tends to get split into two unequal pieces: mid-list R.K.O. films of the ‘40s that punch above their weight, and the A-list films he made after his ‘Hollywood Ten’ purgatory which often punch below.  Not incorrect, but ignoring the programmers Dmytryk pumped out first.*  Like this ‘Lone Wolf’ number at Columbia with Warren William’s gentleman jewel thief doing his part for the war effort by going to London, along with amusingly dithering aide Eric Blore, not for diamonds & such, but to steal secret war plans from Sir Whomever.  The act a ruse to get on the ‘right’ side of the ‘wrong’ team, exposing a German spy ring in the heart of London.  Only problem, the letter of intent is destroyed when Sir Whomever is killed and now William has both the Germans and Scotland Yard after him.  With a perfect running time (1'18"), a real plot, clues you can follow and a stronger than usual cast, it’s one of the better Lone Wolf pics, even managing a decent romance for the daughter of Sir Whomever and the two suitors who work with him; one a spy.  Likely made as a second (or even third) feature, it may have been better than the headline pic.  Dmytryk fails to keep a couple of Stateside cops from overplaying, but gets everyone else to keep their chins up and their upper lips stiff.  Though having contract player Forrest Tucker play a continental spy was never going to work.  (On the other hand, a very young Lloyd Bridges just fine as a waiter in the German Spy ring.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Next year’s indie quickie, HITLER’S CHILDREN/’43, became a surprise hit and Dmytryk’s springboard out of Columbia programmers and into R.K.O.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/04/hitlers-children-1943.html

THE EXORCIST ii: THE HERETIC (1977)

A new documentary, BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL/’25 (not seen here), now hunting a distributor, takes a look at what went wrong with the sequel to THE EXORCIST.  (Spoiler Alert: Everything!)  So, what better time to size up this universally reviled flop?  Hollywood’s top example of self-inflicted ‘franchise-icide’ till JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX came along.*   Would it seem better now?  Nah, still plenty lousy.  But reaction currently leans more toward sorrow than anger.  Quite the opposite of FOLIE.  Director John Boorman must have envisioned a different kind of exorcism since the problem doesn’t concern Catholic believers, but possessed locusts!  (The director working thru his nuttiest period: ZARDOZ/ ‘74 just before; EXCALIBUR/’81 just after.   Possessed child Linda Blair returns, still with Satanic induced mental troubles (did the Devil also supply the chipmunk cheeks?) and therapist Louise Fletcher playing surrogate mom/hypnotism partner.  Plus a priestly confused Richard Burton, briefly restored to acting legitimacy via EQUUS on stage & film, as the Pope’s Exorcist, tasked with taking care of unfinished business from the last film.  After the DOA opening, Boorman quickly came up with a new cut (about a reel shorter in spite of clarifying additions*), the cut going round now is the original 1'57".   But since this is misconceived from the get-go. how could it make any difference?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Where this is merely a tax write-off, a conceptual mistake, that JOKER sequel spoils the original . . . for those who liked it.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/07/joker-folie-deux-2024.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Maybe Boorman got it shorter by cutting Linda Blair’s musical comedy numbers.  They’re the scariest things in here.

LITTLE MEN (2016)

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

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

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

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

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