LOVELESS / NELYUBOV (2017)

More than two decades after his stunning debut on THE RETURN/’03, Russian writer/director Andrey Zvyagintsev continues to make absorbing films that don’t quite satisfy or come up to his first.*  (Two of his eight not seen here.  Both, like THE RETURN, titles where he takes no writing credit.)  Like all his work, this well-reviewed work (his best received since THE RETURN?) is worth its running time, but certain filmmaking tics have crusted over into mannerism.  Here it’s most noticeable in Zvyagintsev’s use of ominous slow tracking shots in, portending major revelation, but sans payoff, fizzling into mere transition.  Still, this portrait of a dissolving bad marriage hit with the added pressure of a child neither seems particularly attached to suddenly gone missing, is compelling.  Especially as acted out by the film's two self-centered couples.  Only our lost, characterless boy earning compassion in a brief, shadowy shot, as he hides behind a door, overhearing his parents argue about their future  and his.  Their actions taken past the breaking point when the couple take two days to even notice his absence after overnights with the putative replacements.  (The only other relative is the wife’s estranged termagant of a mother.  A visit there the most rattling thing in the film.)  Cunning and cutting, Zvyagintsev seems an extremely talented director in need of direction.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned: THE RETURN/’03.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/09/return-2003.html

PUSHER (1996)

Hard-boiled Danish writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn was at Cannes this year with his first feature film in a decade.  Easy to see how he could have burnt himself out watching this debut.  In his mid-twenties at the time, he looks fresh out of the THIS IS SPINAL TAP ‘Crank it to 11' School du Cinema.*  A character study on a week in the life of drug supplier Frank (Kim Bodnia) and his inconstant mates (including a feral Mads Mikkelsen),as Frank rapidly sinks into dangerous levels of debt to various drug dealers a mere step or two above him, but far deadlier.  Shot entirely with jumpy hand-held camera (Morten Søborg), it has the opposite effect of Refn’s intention (a rookie gaffe), constantly calling attention to itself (especially in fast back & forth pans between actors) pulling you out of the action when it wants to pull you in.  With actors playing to Refn rather than to each other . . . or to us.  Guru cinéma vérité something of an oxymoron.  Worse, when Frank finds his back against the wall on the seventh day, Refn starts pulling melodrama out of his hat (character & plot reversals via guns, romance, power balances, cash & friendship) that might work in a more stylized film, but here look like cheating.  On the other hand . . . two sequels.  It made Refn’s rep.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *We much prefer Refn’s poorly received ONLY GOD FORGIVES/’13.  Perhaps because rather than crank it to 11, he aims for 12.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/08/only-god-forgives-2013.html

LUCKY JORDAN (1942)

Fourth-billed, but breaking thru as a major star on THIS GUN FOR HIRE/’42, Alan Ladd got solo above-the-title billing for the first time on this slapdash wartime comedy later the same year.*  Paramount Pictures rushing to get Ladd back on screen before the Draft Board grabbed him for the Army.  And, wouldn’t you know, that’s pretty much the plot of the pic; just that Ladd’s a big-time racketeer with the draft board on his tail rather than a big-time movie star with the draft board on his tail.  But treating superior officers like mob underlings doesn’t fly when your boss is Uncle Sam.  On the other hand, when a cache of secret documents goes missing, and foreign agents are hot on the trail, some of those underworld talents come in mighty handy, especially if you’re on the run, AWOL with the film’s antagonist WAC (debuting Helen Walker) who’s beginning to see possibilities in this arrogant soldier boy.  Sounds kinda fun, no?  Especially with the lousy news from the front in the early days of the way.  For a time, it brought out the silly side in Hollywood war movies.  Alas, nothing in here plays to its comic potential.  (Other than a running bit between Ladd and the drunken old ‘biddy’ (Mabel Paige) who pretends to be his mother.)  And while cinematographer John F. Seitz was proving transformative to Paramount literary writer/directors Preston Sturges & Billy Wilder at the time, there’s little he can do to give payoffs to disappearing characters & plot lines, or fix director Frank Tuttle’s lackluster comic timing.  (Note how elements snap into place whenever the script drops the comedy and goes for straight suspense.)  The film’s not unpleasant, just a mess.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See what all the fuss was about in THIS GUN FOR HIRE/’42.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/this-gun-for-hire-1942.html

FLICKERING LIGHTS / BLINKENDE LYGTER (2000)

Small-time crooks/big-time psychopaths (with comic edge to their violence) had become something of a genre unto itself by the time this Danish iteration, from writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen, came out.  Two & a half decades on, there’s not much surprise or kick left to it.  What it does offer is a chance to watch a young, lean Mads Mikkelsen as one of the four thuggish grifters making small change smuggling in contraband goods, like tax-free cigarettes.  ‘Menthol!,’ Mikkelsen grouses before laying out the confused Polish driver.  But it’s the next job that launches the main action when the four guys pick up a locked suitcase that contains too much dough to deliver without taking a 100% cut, hatching a plan to enjoy their profits by running off to Barcelona.  Naturally the intended party for the cash-filled suitcase is none too happy with things and the hunt is on as one small mob goes after another.  And this is where Jensen doubles down from quirky to absurd as our gang of thieves (plus an on & off girlfriend of little intuition) find a dilapidated house, formerly a country restaurant, now abandoned, they plan to restore.  Too bad no one knows how to cook.  But under the informal protection of a couple of equally oddball locals, the project starts coming together.  Tricked out with short daytrips, a slow-healing gunshot wound, walks on the beach, hunting down farm animals and flashbacks to character-defining crises from childhood, the film devolves into a fable.  Not without its shocks, laughs and nifty resolutions, the problem less that so much is absurd as that so much is secondhand absurd.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *You can get a good sense of Mikkelsen’s exceptional range, pretty much right from the start, comparing his young Robert De Niro act here (even in build) to his equally convincing Gregory Peck solid physicality in the WWII spy drama FLAME & CITRON/’06.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/flammen-og-citronen-flame-and-citron.html

WYATT EARP (1994)

Kevin Costner is seriously underrated.  Not as an actor, fine in the right role (underdog striver/ornery father-figure).  No, he’s underrated as a Hollywood survivor.  Few movie stars could slip past career-ending debacles like WATERWORLD/95*, THE POSTMAN/’97, the on-going HORIZON/’24 and EARP with nary a nick to their commercial standing.  In EARP’s case, big losses on writer/director Lawrence Kasdan’s dead serious/reasonably factual bio-pic on the legendary lawman were chalked up to the recent release of George P. Cosmatos’s more light-hearted lob at the same subject, TOMBSTONE/’93, sucking all the air out of the market.  (Ironically, using the rowdy tone of SILVERADO/’83, Kasdan’s previous Western epic.)  No doubt that’s part of the story, but EARP didn’t need help to fail; a 3+ hours length and grim predetermination turned possible audiences off all on their own.  (One thing that does make both films a must-see are the two enormous all-star casts, offering the chance to sample half of Hollywood's best late-twenties/early-thirties actors at the time.)  Kasdan’s main take on the saga is decidedly Freudian: Earp’s Old Testament revenge against GOD for taking away his young bride (and unborn son) before he’s redeemed (after murdering towns-full of gun-toting strangers*) by a beautiful Jewish prostitute.  Yikes!  But the film is a drag (if not for Gene Hackman with but ten minutes on-screen); at times (particularly in James Newton Howard’s windswept overblown score) even a disgrace.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  John Ford’s MY DARLING CLEMENTINE/’48 remains tops in EARP mythology (very ‘print the legend’) though low on accuracy.  Even though Ford, in his early Hollywood years, knew Earp.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/my-darling-clementine-1946.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In spite of critical ridicule, WATERWORLD, in a variety of ‘improved’ re-cuts, eventually recouped.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Hard not to wonder at The Wild West’s ‘liberal’ gun policies that ordered NO GUNS in town.  Pick ‘em up again on your way out.  It’d never happen today.

REMEMBERING GENE WILDER (2023)

Once past the generic title (fit for a local memorial service) and the generic structure (movie clips & fresh or archival interviews set between self-narration from Gene Wilder’s audio version of his autobiography), and not withstanding occasional non-linear jumps to pre-fame days, this Ron Frank/Glenn Kirschbaum documentary on the iconic/unorthodox comic movie star is mainly unusual for its sheer niceness.  As was its subject.  (No given with great comic actors!)  But what it does best of all is getting you to reconsider films you’d either overlooked (SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL/’89) or actively avoided (THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER/’75 with wife Gilda Radner).  And simply by listing THE PRODUCERS, BLAZING SADDLES, and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN showing how indebted Mel Brooks’ film career batting average was to Wilder.  Behind the movie roles, more personal heartbreak than you recall.  Touching stuff.  It also serves well as a Wilder starter pack without giving away too many highlights or spoilers.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Our regular suggestion for the funniest/lesser-known Gene Wilder pic remains START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME/’70.  OR: Type Gene Wilder into our Search Box (Upper Left corner on the Main Site (e-phoners scroll below to the link) for a pot-pourri listing of various Wilder films & mentions.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/02/start-revolution-without-me-1970.html

LA FEMME INFIDÈLE / THE UNFAITHFUL WIFE (1969)

Often beginning his films with little inflection and just-the-facts directness, gourmet gagster Claude Chabrol could come off as the Jack Webb of the French Nouvelle Vague.  Often as not, this tactic was a fake-out meant to leave you off-balance, uncertain where you were being led till you’d digested the first act.  By then, you’d know if you were watching good or bad Chabrol.  This one of the good ones.  Stéphane Audran (then married to Chabrol) is the beautiful, blank wife of well-heeled businessman Michel Bouquet; working in Paris/living with their 10-yr-old boy in Versailles.  Right now, Bouquet’s visiting mother is about to head home, but not without first telling her son to lose a little weight.  Seems rude, but Maman has picked up on the ‘off’ vibe between the couple.  And a stealth phone call by Audran cues us in to some sort of relationship troubles before the pair share a joyless night out with friends, highlighting a couple at cross purposes.  Soon after, Bouquet hires a P.I.; Audran disappears every other afternoon; an affair of no great passion is confirmed; and civilized confrontation turns on a dix sous piece into violence.  The mix of family comfort and discomfort; smiling lies & unpleasant truths; married & unmarried beds of iniquity.  Like the jigsaw puzzle the young son is trying to complete, there’s a piece missing in this relationship.  Then two detectives knock at the door after dinner.  Death and domesticity.  Chabrol couldn’t always be bothered, but when he could, he knew how to tighten the screws.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  And dig how Pierre Jansen’s atonal score keeps you off-balance.

CONTEST:  Along with fellow Nouvelle Vague-er Éric Rohmer, Chabrol co-authored one of the first books to make the case for Alfred Hitchcock as more than ‘mere’ entertainer. (As if that alone weren’t enough!  Ah, the French.  See: HITCHCOCK; THE FIRST FORTY-FOUR FILMS.)  So, no surprise to see Chabrol lift a major scene from a major Hitchcock film here.  Use the Comment Box to name the film and the scene to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of a streamable film of your choice.

LENIN IN OCTOBER / LENIN V OKTYABRE (1937)

Straightforward and easy to follow, Mikhail Romm’s film on Vladimir Lenin and The October Revolution of 1917 is less ‘agit-prop’ than YA bio-pic.  Made to celebrate twenty years that shook the world, it takes bolshoi liberties with the facts, most notably by raising Joseph Stalin’s involvement in events, largely by giving him now exiled Leon Trotsky’s part.*  And damned if the simplified storyline & politics don’t work in entertaining fashion.  Romm might be telling a modern Robin Hood story, with short, stocky, balding Lenin taking from the establishment and giving to the proletariat.  There’s even a big, benign protector/bodyguard called Vasily in the Little John spot.  Structured for near constant suspense, we begin with Lenin’s train ride from Finland Station to Petrograd, hunted all the way by agents.  Met by comrades in the city, he goes into immediate hiding, his every move an opportunity for various parties and groups of activists across the political spectrum to grab him.  (From Sergei Eisenstein’s OCTOBER/‘28 to Warren Beatty’s REDS/’81, party confusion is where they lose us.*)  Boris Shchukin makes a downright bouncy Lenin, a charmer (recent bios paint him as only slightly less ruthless than Stalin) while loyal aide Nikolai Okhlopkov isn’t so different than Alan Hale was in Little John in next year’s THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD.  Both leads repeated in Romm’s follow up, LENIN IN 1918/’39, but that film a good deal more daunting to watch.  With impressive sets and set pieces, sweeping, screen-filling action, self-serving political villains and a noticeable absence of Eisenstein’s artistic trappings, this was THE representation of ‘Volodya’ for at least a couple of generations in Russia.  And note the final shot at the victory rally: Lenin with his characteristic out-thrust arm; Stalin standing behind him waiting for the next act to begin.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Trotsky had his post-mortem revenge after Stalin’s death when Khrushchev’s cultural ‘thaw’ clipped Stalin out of all circulating prints.  Restored to full length, here’s an excellent print available free:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lenin_in_October_(film)_1937.webm  

DOUBLE-BILL:  *As mentioned above, Eisenstein’s OCTOBER: TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, which, as Stalin pointed out, is too ‘formalistic.’  (The guy was also a film critic.)  And Beatty’s REDS, which has its own problems though Jack Nicholson makes a fantastic Eugene O’Neill, if not nearly as tragically handsome.

LA SYMPHONIE PASTORALE / PASTORAL SYMPHONY (1946)

Best film @ Cannes in 1946!  . . . along with ten other winners.  Starting up after WWII ended, the re-inaugural edition of the hardly begun Film Festival spread the wealth among participating countries.  The committee was out to make friends and influence tastemakers.  (Hollywood took their prize home for THE LOST WEEKEND/’45.)  Alas, this ‘winner,’ a significantly tamed version of André Gide’s novel on religious and social hypocrisy at a small town in the Alps, probably serves best as an example of the sort of infuriating work and positive critical reaction directors like Jean Delannoy regularly received by hitching a ride on some classic piece of literature.*  Not that it’s bad, it’s adequate, and nicely shot when they stick to real Alpine wintry locations.  Michèle Morgan is blonde & beautiful, affectingly ‘off’ (if a decade too old) as a blind orphan ‘adopted’ by town minister Pierre Blanchar who either doesn’t realize or can’t admit his love for the girl is anything but pure.  (Per Gide it ain’t, which is the whole point; per Delannoy it technically is, which loses the point.)  The girl morally innocent, yet not unaware of the destabilizing effect she has on everything she touches: the minister, his suddenly ignored wife, his handsome/talented organist son just back in town (Jean Desailly, best thing in the pic), etc.  And when she discovers her sight can easily be corrected with simple cataract surgery (Delannoy’s modern setting making this belated realization hard to swallow), Morgan instinctively knows her physical handicap was the only thing protecting her (and the family) frm a complete meltdown.  This is pretty interesting stuff, but as presented here, little more than sudsy romantic misalliance.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Similarly, Michèle Morgan’s best English-language film, THE FALLEN IDOL/’48, a superb Carol Reed/Graham Greene collaboration, also softens its story.  But with two major differences: it’s Greene’s own story, and the change is an improvement.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/fallen-idol-1948.html

ROMANCE (1930)

Greta Garbo’s second Talkie was another adaptation from ‘a play of quality.’  So too her third, all three directed as if walking on egg shells by otherwise talented/underrated Clarence Brown.*  The big difference is that the first, Eugene O’Neill’s ANNA CHRISTIE, really is quality goods; not so Edward ‘Ned’ Sheldon’s ROMANCE; cut-rate CAMILLE at best.  Though it still made a mark on B’way (three runs, the last musicalized by Sigmund Romberg).  Garbo, who made a CAMILLE for the ages (the real one) with George Cukor in ‘36, might as well be part of the demimonde here, too.  No courtesan, but opera soprano; nearly as bad in 1880.  And once more she’s torn between a wealthy old lover (Lewis Stone), burnt out at 51 he tells us, and virgin-pure Rector Gavin Gordon (well out of his league) who comes to reform, only to be aroused into a passion he’s never known.  Flaccid moviemaking, with Garbo’s accent at its most impenetrable and the men acting to the back row.  Dull as it is, Sheldon really does seem to be on to something (‘love’s truth and the horny heart’) he doesn’t quite know how to handle as drama.  At the least, it’s better than the third in the series INSPIRATION/’31, if still mainly for Garbo completists.  Everyone else feel free to jump ahead to GRAND HOTEL/’32.  Garbo swapping opera for ballet with M-G-M, at last, figuring out how best to use the legend in The Talkies.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Brown did far better by Garbo in silents and in ANNA KARENINA/’35.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/anna-karenina-1935.html

SILENT NIGHT (2023)

After resetting the bar on violent Hong Kong action fare in the ‘80s, director John Woo had brief success in Hollywood before diminishing returns brought him back to Asian markets.*  Two decades on he’s working in English again (sort of) on a standard revenge thriller loaded with OTT gore & grue.  Not especially well received, it sunk in early post-pandemic days.  A pity because of its type, it’s exceptionally well made (you can actually ‘read’ the action set pieces), has a conceptually rich character twist that gives purpose to style, and old-school star-power from a seriously jacked-up Joel Kinnaman*, grieving father to an innocent 7-yr-old boy, collateral damage in out-of-control L.A. gang warfare.  Opening in medias res, Kinnaman is chasing gunmen on both sides only to wind up shot in the throat; alive but voiceless.  Initially falling into catatonic depression before rousing himself to wellness thru deadly revenge. Cue Woo to turn this into a Silent Film, a LOUD Silent Film.  Unlike other Martial Arts films who drop dialogue during those major balletic fight scenes, but don’t try to figure out how Silent Film differs, Woo does.  'Silents' had their own rules, cutting rhythms & could support a different kind of continuity.  So too scene length (happy to just hang around) and editing technique (agogic).  Things Woo does instinctively, starting by muddying up all dialogue to a point where it no longer matters.  His technique mirroring what Jacques Tati developed for his highly stylized, largely non-verbal French comedies.  Tati’s pastoral yin to Woo’s urban yang.  By the finale, the multiple killings grow a bit too JOHN WICK (the films share a producer), Kinnaman downing dozens of gang members from both sides.  But if any physical presence/human force could pull it off, Kinnaman could.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Losing speech here, Kinnaman’s next, THE SILENT HOUR/’24 takes away his hearing!  Had it done any biz, his next might have stripped off his sense of smell.  SILENT SCHNOZ?   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-silent-hour-2024.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Woo came back to China with a two-fer bang in RED CLIFF.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/chi-bi-red-cliff-2008.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/chi-bi-xia-jue-zhan-tian-xia-red-cliff.html

COUNTDOWN (1967)

James Caan, Robert Duvall, Michael Murphy, Ted Knight and Robert Altman.  With that cast and that director, you’d imagine a higher profile for this Mission-to-the-Moon story.  Likely a dog all parties hoped to forget, yes?  Well, it is pretty conventional.  But as pre-2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY sci-fi goes, it’s solid mid-list fare with the added benefit of seeing Altman, at 42, making his belated move from tv to features.  A ‘job of work’ rather than something distinctively Altmanesque?  Sure, only hearing his cast talk over each other more than usual for the period feels like a personalized element.  The story more character study than space opera, those characters being astronauts Duvall, military man, and Caan’s civilian scientist.  Duvall, originally slotted to solo as first man on the moon, forced out by an expedited Russian launch that causes NASA to panic and move up the mission, with Duvall replaced by an untested Caan,, proving to the world NASA isn’t part of the military, they’re purely scientific.  But with only a few weeks to liftoff, a pissed/jealous Duvall the one guy who can teach Caan the fine technical points.  Will Duvall help or sabotage?  Hardly the genre game-changer 2001 would be next year, but neither is it a Boy’s Own Adventure.  Instead, a fairly serious study of then timely possibilities.  (Armstrong touched down only two years later.)  And the best moment in here purely visual, a silent reveal of the fate of those moon-bound Soviets.  Altman would start finding his own screen voice on his next two films: THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK/’69 and M*A*S*H*/’70.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Not much for the women to do in this 1967 film.  Astronaut wives only fit to watch, wait and worry . . . when not tending the kids.  Oddly, Duvall’s ramrod straight army man the sole unattached male.

THAT FORSYTHE WOMAN (1949)

A typical star-clogged loss-leader from a directionless post-WWII M-G-M, this ‘prestige pic’ proved unable to recapture past studio glory.  On the plus side, there’s a cleverly trimmed script from Book One of the John Galsworthy novel about a wealthy, but ruthless British family dynasty (just a couple of generations old), but only so much can be done with such a disagreeable lot.  (Not that this has stopped multiple dramatizations.)  Even the good eggs a chilly bunch.  And while the 1880s setting calls for overstuffed period detail, pudding-rich late-‘40s TechniColor makes you long for the outdoors only to discover you’re now stuck on an M-G-M backlot, even in the country.  The story, a roundelay of mismatched pairings & misaligned fortunes, suffers from missing backstory, but could still work if the cast hit the mark.  As it is, only underrated Errol Flynn (underrated as an actor, that is), convinces as Soames Forsythe, superb as a man whose pride can’t take no for an answer.  As the penniless beauty he desires, Greer Garson would have been fine twenty years ago; as would Walter Pidgeon, appropriately enough sporting a bad dye job as a painter who’s the family Black Sheep.   (Don’t believe the studio publicity about him & Flynn swapping parts to play against type.*)  A very young Janet Leigh and placid Robert Young both hopelessly MidWest American as the naive ingenue cast aside when her lower-class artistic lover falls for another.  (Guess who.)  Director Compton Bennett would show more moxie figuring out how to integrate docu-wildlife footage, a mystery treasure hunt and romantic melodrama in next year’s KING SOLOMON’S MINES/’50.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *This film could have profitably used the two stars of KING SOLOMON’S MINES!  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/king-solomons-mines-1950.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *While the story calls for Soames to basically rape his wife (not a crime in Victorian England), the thought of the gentlemanly Pidgeon forcing himself on Garson . . . well, the very idea!  In any event, the Production Code reduced rape to a quick slap on the Garson jaw by a sexually frustrated Flynn.

DANS LA COUR / IN THE COURTYARD (2014)

Though recently tapped for Cannes’ 2026 Opening Night with LA VÉNUS ÉLECTRIQUE/THE ELECTRIC KISS, French writer/director Pierre Salvadori has a low profile in the States.  Too French?  Too light?  Too mid-list?  But if COUR is anything to go by, we’ve been missing a trick.  From desciptions, this seems considerably darker than his other work, though it doesn’t start that way.  Gustave Kervern stars as a shambling, disheveled 40-something, a severely depressed substance abuser who walks out of a concert gig (he’s a rock guitarist) and into a job as live-in janitor at a slightly worn apartment house.  Hired on the spot by an unconcerned/disinterested Catherine Deneuve who’s going thru her own mental crisis, sloughing off longtime volunteer commitments to obsess over minor building issues.  And it seems every tenant in the building on the cusp of a nervous breakdown.  Yet without qualification for either building maintenance or mental counsel, Kervern’s calm manner of letting time take care of problems satisfies the co-owners and all turns out well.  But wait!  That’s a likely Stateside version of the film had it gone thru Hollywood Development Hell.  Salvadori having none of it.  Instead, at nearly every turn, the story takes the darker path with ingrates using Kervern for their own purposes, tenants over-loading him with tasks, and mental fantasy taking hold of Deneuve’s increasingly fragile state of mind.  A spontaneous visit to her childhood home with a by now poignantly chummy Kervern a particular (and dramatically brave) horror.  There’s resolution, of a sort, but this is hardly Handyman Mary Poppins by the time Kervern checks out.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Deneuve, quite rightly, nominated for a Best Actress César.  No grandstanding, no begging for sympathy, nothing taken for granted.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Salvadori’s best received film (at least his most nominated) is EN LIBERTÉ! (THE TROUBLE WITH YOU) which followed this in 2018.  (not seen here)

CLIFFORD (1994)

A polarizing film.  Everyone hates it for a different reason.*  Back when Hollywood was struggling over how to make use of Martin Short’s obvious talents, they tried off-beat leading man (leading clown?) to see if he could ‘open’ a film.  He couldn’t.  Splitting the lead in thirds helped*, but he only found his niche when they incorporated the law of diminishing comic returns and cast him in support.  But he’s still the whole show in CLIFFORD, forty-four at the time, 'realistically' playing a tantrumy ten-yr-old.  (Think ELOISE away from The Plaza.)  Turning progressively creepy (exponentially irritating) as we go along, he’s left in the care of child-hating Uncle Charles Grodin trying to impress child-loving girlfriend Mary Steenburgen and going slightly mad in the process.  (Or with his comic twitches is he auditioning to replace Herbert Lom as Chief Inspector Drefuss in a new PINK PANTHER pic?)  The one great bit in the film (likely unintentional), comes in what might be called ‘the battle of the bad hairpieces’ as boss Dabney Coleman is called out for a lousy toupé, but no one says a word about Grodin’s equally bad rug.  Elsewise, the series of comedy situations don’t so much develop as repeat under Paul Flaherty’s laisser-faire direction; and the film’s flashback structure (an older Short lectures a new bad boy on his misspent youth) is needless padding.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Okay, not strictly true.  The film has its fans, and something of a cult following.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See THE THREE AMIGOS/’86. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-three-amigos-1986.html

CAIRO CONSPIRACY / WALAD MIN AL-JANNA (2022)

This, the second of exiled Egyptian filmmaker Tarik Saleh’s Cairo Trilogy, is the masterpiece of the three.*  A slow-burn political thriller in religious garb during the run-up to elect a new Grand Imam at Al Azhar University, the apex for Islamic Studies for over a millennium,  We follow events thru the wide eyes of Adam, a new Al Azhar student on scholarship from his small fishing village, just arrived on the historic Cairo campus to find his bunk and bearings.  (Now officially ‘a sardine.’)  Adam also starts to find new friends, unaware the primitive yet beautiful site is a hotbed of political activity, covered by spy networks.  But he learns fast.  Especially after a wised-up classmate, a likely informer for State authorities, is murdered on campus, and the hunt to discover the murderer(s) leads to Adam being recruited as his replacement.  First assignment?  Become a trusted member of the radical anti-State (terrorist?) organization planning election interference.   After this, without seeming to alter tempo in the Hollywood manner, Saleh tightens the screws on all sides as everyone suddenly stops trusting Adam (with the possible exception of State recruiter Fares Fares).  Salem getting this across not with the usual tropes of chases, guns and close calls, but with rigorous intellectual/philosophical debate that can also put lives at stake as secrets about religious candidates are uncovered.  Fascinating, and deadly in intent; the film ending with a twisty sort of religious grace based on Islamic studies and principles.  Our moral?  Adam’s lesson?  Well, not that ‘the tragedy of this world is that everyone has their reasons’ (as Jean Renoir put it in RULES OF THE GAME/’39), but that everyone has their agenda.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Fares Fares, who stars in all three films, lets student co-star Tawfeek Barhom take focus, but is just as good as conflicted State intelligence gatherer.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The first and third (THE NILE HILTON/’17; EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC’25) not far behind.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-nile-hilton-incident-2017.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/04/eagles-of-republic-2025.html

SERIAL MOM (1994)

Dialing down the danger factor of his early films, campy curator John Waters was coming off two mainstream hits (HAIRSPRAY/’88; CRY-BABY/‘90), when he went for the triple, but got thrown out at the box-office plate.  Not that this suburban satire doesn’t get its laughs (a gory comic gloss on CRAIG’S WIFE*, the stage classic about an obsessively meticulous homemaker who drives everyone away with her mania for neat perfection; ORDINARY PEOPLE/’80 one of its many offspring), but here Waters’ targets are too easy; as social satire, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.  With ultra-bright colors and broader than broad playing, Kathleen Turner uses a killer smile (make that a killer's smile) to play the Happy Homemaker to her exemplary nuclear family: loving husband, two great kids, colonial home, glazed meatloaf.  But guests must abide by her rules of etiquette or else.  (Hard to believe Waters missed having a pet to die early and set things in motion.)  And everyone seems to be winking at the camera to let us know they’re only fooling.  A touch of Waters' audacity surfaces here and there: a grieving brother pivots from revenge to profit participation, a murdered teen lover loses his liver when skewered.  But even a super cynical ending all too tame.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *George Kelly’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1925 play was filmed thrice: a silent in 1928 for Irene Rich; as CRAIG’S WIFE/’36 (with Roz Russell); as HARRIET CRAIG/’50 (with Joan Crawford).    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/12/craigs-wife-1936.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/harriet-craig-1950.html

ROSEBUD (1975)

With few exceptions, producer/director Otto Preminger’s technically distinctive film-making, call it ‘Imperial Style,’ had a remarkable run for a decade starting in the mid-‘50s.  But luck deserted him with HURRY SUNDOWN/’67, and he never really recovered (Zeitgeist or talent).  So it may just be low expectations that now makes this penultimate film look better than its miserable rep suggests.  Indeed, its extensive prologue, a reel & a half detailing a kidnapping at sea by a PLO terrorist splinter group, is essential viewing , echt Preminger.  A last bloom of that Imperial Style, with signature long sweeping, mobile takes, calm but steady activity unfolding at its own pace via WideScreen coverage to capture a real event in real time.  Otto at his breathtakingly efficient best.  He doesn’t keep it up, not with son Erik’s patchwork script (his sole attempt), but this rather ordinary three act political thriller, with awkward close action and standard 1975 terrorists vs political stooges vs ultra-competent British & Israeli spies, is reasonably entertaining.  Or is if you’re cool with Richard Attenborough as a terrorist leader in a secret Lebanese cave condo; five fleshly teen hostages (including Isabelle Huppert & Kim Cattrall); an impressive supporting cast; and most of all Peter O’Toole (stepping in when Robert Mitchum ankled) playing Britain’s top expert Middle-East spy as if he were doing Henry Higgins in a revival of PYGMALION.  (He’s even pinched Rex Harrison’s flippant demeanor and hat(!) from MY FAIR LADY.*  And all Premingerians need to see the first couple reels.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Preminger’s next, his last, THE HUMAN FACTOR/79, also more interesting than its dire rep.  Not really a surprise given its Graham Greene source novel and screenplay by Tom Stoppard.  But on a very tight budget, no more Imperial Style.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *A dream role for O’Toole, he spent three years as Higgins (1983 to 1985) via tv film, West End run, then B’way.

LE MONDE TREMBLERA / THE WORLD WILL SHAKE (1939)

Dandy conception, but script development & execution leave a lot on the table in this French fantasy about a scientist who invents a different kind of ‘time machine,’ one that tells you how long you’ll live.  With gears & gauges, bells & whistles, this analogue contraption takes up an entire wall, as electric bolts jump from vacuum tube to spherical receptor, plus head-set with contact points for the ‘subject.’  Final tally in years, months, days & minutes displayed on a machine fashioned like an old cash register.  Obsessed inventor Claude Dauphin, first seen escorting a chatterbox tart to play guinea pig only to see the girl duck out with nary a franc once he turns the thing on.  Confident all the same, he tells investor Erich von Stroheim not to worry, his gamble will soon pay off.  It better, as Stroheim’s gone deep into debt with loan sharks.  He’s hoping millionaires will pay thru the nose to see how long they’ve got.  And think of the insurance scams!  Meanwhile, his daughter, all but engaged to Dauphin, is getting tired of waiting and falling for Dauphin’s best pal, a handsome young doctor.  Meantime, the machine is proving uncannily accurate; with global consequences as dying millionaires shut down factories to go on one last vacation.  Yikes!  And Dauphin starts playing God by switching longevity charts.  Are his life forecasts predicting or causing suicides?  Loads of personal complications & moral dilemmas to follow.  Yet even with Henri-Georges Clouzot co-scripting, director Richard Pottier is left playing thru a thin set of events, especially after Stroheim leaves the scene.*  Plenty interesting all the same, especially recalling the European political situation when this came out.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Stroheim had been acting in French films for a couple of years now.  But he still sounds fresh out of a Berlitz crash course.  Which makes his non-idiomatic French far easier to understand than those rattling native-born cast members.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Lots of lousy subfusc dupes out on this title.  Perfect prints with excellent subtitles can be found under its original name.  So sample first if possible.    

NUREMBERG (2025)

Rubbish.  Stepping away from his day-job (producing & occasionally writing schlock comic-horror film series (SCREAM; MURDER MYSTERY; READY OR NOT), James Vanderbilt triple threats*, hanging up a directing shingle (his sophomore effort) with a new angle on the post-WWII Nazi Nuremberg trials that put top surviving Third Reich officers in the docket to answer for the Holocaust.  Well cast and well received (critically & commercially), it opens with a G.I. peeing on a Swastika decal pasted on a rock at war’s end, and Field Marshall Hermann Göring surrendering.  With dumb comeback dialogue covering exposition before moving on to standard-issue pre-trial moves & courtroom melodrama (Vanderbilt also betraying an unfortunate addiction to matched transition edits), the main gimmick concerns Rami Malek, an army psychiatrist brought in to work up quick profiles of the Nazi defendants in hope of giving the prosecution a leg up during proceedings.  With Rami taking a special interest in Göring’s personality (Russell Crowe with just a bit of unnecessary padding), the relationship starts looking too chummy for comfort to the military (especially Colonel John Slattery).  How else to discover what makes such evil tic?  But will it lead prosecutor Michael Shannon to take his advise or will that wily Kraut slip out of yet another noose?  Apparently, there’s a certain amount of truth behind all this.  But Vanderbilt’s cheap melodramatic touch and reflexive handling of character motive make any chance at belief irrelevant.  Something none of the film’s 52 (!)  producers noticed under the weight of Brian Tyler’s misguided, suspense-heavy score.  One more film that hangs its importance on the importance of its subject matter; and leaves a bad taste in your mouth.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Much the same could be said about another shot at the same subject, producer/director Stanley Kramer’s JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG/’61.  Or of an early writing credit for Vanderbilt, ZODIAC/’07, also well received critically if not commercially, but which points the way to what’s wrong here.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/zodiac-2007.html

THE BIRDS, THE BEES AND THE ITALIANS / SIGNORE & SIGNORI* (1966)

Commedia all'italiana master Pietro Germi, best known for DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE/’61, goes to Treviso for a triptych of one-act sex farces within an unchanging cast of middle-aged middle-class Lotharios.  Story #1 centers on a socially connected doctor whose long-time pal is struggling with a bout of impotence.  The weakest and most stereotypical of the three  stories, the guy who can’t keep his pants on also can’t get it up!  But what if the cure turned out to be a quickie with the Doc’s wife?  The betrayal cure.  Tired stuff.  But improvement is just around the corner in story two.  Here, when a long-standing extramarital affair is exposed, the husband’s not ashamed, but relieved, even shaving off his goatee to celebrate his new freedom.  But since family ties can’t be clipped off quite as easily as a goatee, the story’s not over till the fashionably thin wife sings.  Spot on perfs all ‘round, and unexpected real emotion between comic playing.  Nice use of the confused son & daughter, too.  Then the last story blows them all away as a willing young beauty uses her allure & availability like a credit card.  (Germi brutally frank as needed.)  But when the girl’s peasant father shows up to collect, threatening the five men who’ve been partaking, he has a trump card to play.  His girl is still a minor.  Regrets, scandal, incompetent lawyer, outraged judge, real trouble in Treviso.  Germi not fooling around.  Enter one of the wives.  She knows the score.  She’s known the score; and not just the sexual score.  Plus faith that the rich have their ways (they write the rules), while the poor, especially the undeserving poor (the girl’s father thrilled at the cash he thinks is coming) always end up with the short end of the stick.  As if the poor man forgot: in Italian; commedia all'italiana doesn’t only mean comedy.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Try a Germi outlier, ALFREDO, ALFREDO/’72 with Dustin Hoffman going all Italian on us.  (Dubbed on the Italian track, he does his own talking in the English language dub.)   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/03/alfredo-alfredo-1972.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *For once, the Stateside title improves on the generic original.

PAVANE / PABANNEU (2026)

Everything feels secondhand sourced in Korean writer/director Lee Jong-pil’s sudsy romance for regular guy Moon Sang-min and regular gal Ko Ah-sung who meet and incrementally fall for each other at the department store they work at.  He’s new there, a tall shy type starting part-time in the parking garage where, many floors above, Plain Jane Ko already works.   Plus Byun Yo-han ile hanging around as third-wheel to offer tips & world-weary advice as philosopher, musician & comic cut-up.  Writer Lee’s best idea shows how the large department store functions like an extension of high school with cliques and strict pecking orders, a place where uniformed glam girls rule the roost selling designer goods on upper floors, and parking attendants work, appropriately enough, in the basement.  Plenty of gossip on who’s seeing whom, too.  The staff watching live on video chat.  Most of the film script worked out in a fog of predetermined fatalism, noble renunciation of desire and life-changing miscues.  With a colorful look that tries to hide its condescending view on the also-rans of this world.   As if director Lee had put in an order of MARTY/’55 and AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER/’57 smothered with Wong Kar-Wai secret sauce.

EXTREME MEASURES (1996)

Everybody’s slumming in this paranoid medical thriller . . . and that’s a good thing.  Taken any more seriously, the whole movie would collapse.  Basically yet another ‘doctor plays God’ number, with the old Dr. Frankenstein & Monster horror model replaced by a newer suspense template taken largely from Robin Cook & Michael Crichton’s COMA/’78.  Here, Manhattan Emergency doc Hugh Grant, still floppy of hair, but stutter-free with medical jargon, inexplicably loses a patient and can’t figure out why since the hospital morgue has inexplicably lost the body.  Seems they never had it.  Is he being gaslighted?  What’s going on.  Who’s behind this?  Pressured to drop it, Grant investigates all the more and soon finds himself framed (with stolen/planted drugs) to shut him up and drum him out of work.  But, as in any good Hitchcockian innocent on the run pic, there’s a blonde to help, Sarah Jessica Parker.  Digging up a name in the files for Grant, he now can follow a series of clues leading to an empty wheat field . . . er, a subway underworld of homeless who knew the missing dead man.  But Grant, in turn, is also being followed.  Followed by two hitmen, the guys who planted drugs and trashed his apartment.  Enter moving subway train and a fight on the tracks.  Yikes!  Finally, he reaches fanatical research neurologist Gene Hackman.  (Co-star billing and a fat paycheck for 15 minutes of screen time.  You go, Gene!)  Scripter Tony Gilroy revels rather than hides some of the sillier plot holes.  (No one in New York has heard of a neurological clinic located in its own dedicated billion-dollar building, even printing the company name on plastic gift bags?)  And if director Michael Apted’s action chops are stronger with street traffic than in fights, he compensates by letting cinematographer John Bailey hit us with crazy sharp hospital interiors (no smoke or filters to soften the 1970s style image), holding back dark atmospherics to depict Grant’s slide toward danger.  Those who can shut off the right side of the brain may find this good dopey fun.  Plausibility sticklers, may like it even better.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Unusually good NYC location spotting all thru the film.  Even some of the interiors are real.  Grant’s trashed apartment no doubt a studio set, but his switchback stairway is the real deal.

SATURDAY’S CHILDREN (1940)

Considerably adapted by twin writers Julius & Philip Epstein from a now forgotten Pulitzer Prize winning 1927 Maxwell Anderson play, this B+ feature uses A-list creatives for what is essentially a test-run to see if new tough-guy phenom John Garfield could play rom-com (he can!); and if maturing ingenue Anne Shirley could fill in for troublesome Olivia de Havilland* (nope).  And if the film doesn’t quite come off, it does avoid the forced tone of too many Warners comedies, intelligently touching on current economic & office workplace issues.  Shirley, in a role the young Ruth Gordon originated, meets-cute on the job with Garfield, whose dream of making a fortune abroad is shot down when Shirley follows her older sister’s advice to make him jealous so he’ll propose.  Act Two shows him having second thoughts when, once again, big sis has a suggestion for Shirley: tell him you’re pregnant and he’ll have to stay.*  This all comes from the play, but they’ve added some melodrama for eccentric Pop Claude Rains, and tamed the newlyweds’ relationship by dropping a separation and her move into a rooming house.  Even so, all her role playing at home and at work offer plenty to chew on.  Note who gets laid off from work when there’s a downturn in foreign sales.  Director Vincent Sherman*, still young & hungry in the early ‘40s, lets, rather than makes things happen.  While strict mores at home & office do the rest.  Too bad they puff up the melodrama with a dash to the rescue.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Post GONE WITH THE WIND/’39, de Havilland demanded better vehicles, hence troublesome; at least in the eyes of Jack Warner.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Later on, Sherman often assigned to handle stars on the wane.  But try him at his best in 1943's THE HARD WAY.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-hard-way-1943.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Warning!  The following is pure speculation.  The Epstein brothers add a scene at the doctor’s office to show Shirley really is pregnant, not tricking Garfield.  But in the play, she’s not pregnant, but adopting her sister’s suggestion to say she is to keep her husband from that overseas job.  The play would then end with the truth coming out but a face-saving plan to have a kid ASAP.  An ending ‘borrowed’ by Tennessee Williams in his CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF third act rewrite, made under orders from original stage director Elia Kazan.  (Okay, make that complete speculation.)

HOUDINI (2014)

Of the half-dozen film, cable and tv-movies on Harry Houdini, early 20th century magician, escape artist, amateur spy and spiritualist debunker (a man whose name, a hundred years after his death, can still sell a bio-pic), only two seem to matter.  From producer George Pal, fanciful in 1953 for M-G-M*; and, from writer Nicholas Meyer in 2014, rather less fanciful for The History Channel in a three-hour two-part mini-series.  And while there’s residual affection for the earlier film (near newlyweds Tony Curtis & Janet Leigh star), this modern version with Adrien Brody, beats it in nearly every category.  (‘Nearly’ because Curtis is the better physical match.)  Director Uli Edel, if occasionally held back by his budget on dead studio exteriors, generally does better with suspenseful stage acts than with personalities.  Anything with a ticking clock comes to life; Mom Houdini and Mrs. Houdini fare less well.  But it’s a kick to see Brody (in stupendous shape) having fun in front of the lens for a change.  And if savvy modern audiences are a step or two ahead of any camera tricks selling the magic, credit Edel for getting so much to work.  So, stop raising that eyebrow at some of the less likely events (Houdini given such familiarity with the Tsar’s family?) and give Meyer’s fabulist take on the legend a shot.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *See for yourself.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/07/houdini-1953.html

AQUARIUS (2016)

Last year’s international must-see, THE SECRET AGENT/’25 (not seen here), was a breakthru for Brazilian writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho, in spite of nearly twenty years’ work.  But this earlier high-profile film probably not the best place to start.*   Sonia Braga, best remembered Stateside for KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN/’85 and the popular, if vaguely appalling DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS/’76, stars in this lumpy saga as a hold out tenant who refuses to leave her handsome, if frozen-in-time beachfront apartment, stopping a big development project by stubbornly refusing even good offers family and ex-tenants pressure her to accept so they can get their payouts.  We’ve seen this one before, though with a lot less sex.  Everyone seems to be getting it on.  Even those pushy developers rent the deserted apartment directly above Sonia for a noisy orgy.  It doesn’t drive Braga away; instead, a peek at the action makes her horny enough to call up a handsome sex worker and have a go at her place.  (Okay, we’ve not seen that one before.)  There’s something ‘off’ (performative) about her encounters with middle-aged gal-pals and worried family members; as if we were watching The Real Widows of Recife.  Things get only weirder as Mendonça Filho strips gears to shift into a third act of skullduggery & property rights in a dastardly plot to degrade the building and force her out with a termite-riddled coup de théâtre.  Well, something’s termite ridden.

WATCH THIS, NpOT THAT/LINK:  *Instead, try Mendonça Filho’s intriguing first feature NEIGHBORING SOUNDS/’14.  (THE SECRET AGENT is in our cue.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/o-som-ao-reder-neighboring-sounds.html

TWO PROSECUTORS / ZWEI STAATSANWÄLTE (2025)

Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was (if possible) even more paranoid than usual in the mid-‘30s, before his ill-fated Nazi Pact and the ‘Great Patriotic War’ split his attention . . . for a while.  But it’s 1937 when this steely paced/inexorable miscarriage-of-Soviet-justice story plays out.  Alerted by a letter written in blood from within a fortress-like prison far from Moscow’s center of power, a local, idealistic State prosecutor (Alexander Kuznetsov, whose boxing past has given him an addictively photogenic face - half boyish/half smashed) follows up on the complaint by honoring the prisoner’s right to an interview.  Evidence of NKVD torture on ths longtime committed Communist not only confirming the man’s story, but giving support to tales of similar treatment thru-out the province prisons.  Much of it stemming from his refusal to certify official Death Warrants of innocent men; himself included.  Taking up the old man’s case against prison guards & the NKVD (the future KGB), the new State Prosecutor, a tru-believer in the Soviet system as outlined in its constitution, may be idealistic, but not so naive to think he’d have a chance to do anything locally.  So, without appointment, he’s off to Moscow in hope of seeing the USSR Attorney General.  No surprise where this is heading, but co-writer/director Sergey Loznitsa’s meticulous physical realization (the film shot in Latvia), and formal structural design (basically two long interviews: tortured prisoner and young prosecutor; young prosecutor and plainspeaking Attorney General); followed by a quickstep coda showing the NKVD trap awaiting him, no anomaly, but Kremlin-approved policy.  Played for suspense or shock this would fall flat as a blini, but comes alive when played as Greek Tragedy, predetermined ‘ot A do Ya’ (from A to Zed).  Why generations of Russians, a country all but synonymous with Revolution, put up with these conditions, probably unanswerable by anyone not part of the system.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Armando Iannucci’s bleakly hilarious THE DEATH OF STALIN comes within shouting distance of understanding/explaining the Russian attitude, if not the Russian soul.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-death-of-stalin-2017.html

SYNCHRONIC (2019)

ALL SPOILERS!  Skip this if you don’t want to know everything in advance.  Better yet, skip the film.  Anthony Mackie & Jamie Dornan, joined-at-the-hip New Orleans EMT paramedics, currently inundated with ODs from a new, potent designer drug marketed as ‘Synchronic,’ find this powerful hallucinogenic leaving a wake of dead or disappeared users.  Something almost sentient about this pill: its favorite book would have to be A WRINKLE IN TIME; favorite movie BACK TO THE FUTURE.  So when Dornan’s teenage girl goes missing from using the stuff (a runaway from home or lost in a time continuum?), perhaps there’s an explanation.  Going thru a bad personal patch, Mackie & Dornan may be fighting like an old couple, but hey!, family’s family, and a recent diagnosis of brain cancer emboldens Mackie to test the waters on Synchronic’s metaphysical properties and bring the girl back.  Co-directors Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead (Benson also scripted) play blind man’s bluff with the audience (a spare one, the film tanked) with spooky lighting, creepy score, inexplicably precise time leaps.  Really nothing you wouldn’t expect here, dumb genre logic, but cross the line with ‘progressive’ racial tropes long past their sell-by date.  From the late ‘50s/early ‘60s, the sacrificial Black Man giving his life to save his White pal* (here the pal's daughter) and, far worse, a revival of the ‘80s/‘90s Magical Negro character.  Benson doubling down by setting the climax at some Civil War battle with Mackie mistaken for a runaway slave.  Yikes!  Pretty good reviews and award action on this one.  Go figure.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT (not that you could find it!):  *On a DANNY THOMAS HOUR anthology show from 1967 (‘The Enemy’), Sammy Davis Jr, who got stuck with a lot of sacrificial Black friend to White ‘brother’ roles, outdoes them all in a little WWII drama when he discovers who the Nazi infiltrator is in his army unit after the undercover German agent mispronounces the ‘N’ word as ‘Neigher.’  Sammy risking all to save the unit yelling back ‘It’s Nigger, you Nazi rat!  Nigger!.’  (Or something like that; it’s been a while!)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  One happy surprise is a neat bit of support (about a scene & a half) from Ramiz Monsef as Synchronic’s remorseful developer, now trying to undo some of the damage.

SIX BRIDGES TO CROSS (1955)

Inadequate, even risible assignments under contract to Universal didn’t stop Tony Curtiz from breaking out in the 1950s.  But things suddenly improved, likely in the nick of time, on loan-out for his next film after this, co-starring with Burt Lancaster in TRAPEZE/’56.   (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/12/trapeze-1956.html)   After that, even Universal had to step up with better scripts.  Before then, this fact-inspired pic probably best of a bad lot.  Curtis is a juvenile delinquent in Boston (or rather debuting Sal Mineo as his younger self is) who likes the easy cash too much to ever straighten up.  Hit by a bullet as he runs from arresting beat-cop George Nader, the two develop a wary relationship with Curtis stooling for Nader, and Nader’s cop always giving the kid one more chance to make good.  Eventually, this pattern will backfire on Nader’s rep, when, after two decades and a World War, Curtis becomes suspect #1 in the infamous 2.5 mill armored truck robbery THE BRINK’S JOB.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-brinks-job-1978.html)  With Joseph Pevney’s solid if unimaginative direction much helped by lenser William Daniels’ deglamorized æsthetic.  (Real Boston exteriors and interiors; note the varying acoustics.)  And while there’s not a lot of surprises in how things turn out or how punishment is dealt, some blunt disdain toward Fed authority blundering into a local crime isn’t something you expect to see in a 1955 film.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The following year, M-G-M’s SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME/’56 took on similar tough 'truthy' tenement tones: Brooklyn in for Boston; boxing in for robbery; Paul Newman* (born 1925 - half Jewish) in for Tony Curtis (born 1925 - all Jewish); catchy title track sung by Perry Como in for less catchy title track sung by Sammy Davis Jr,; Upbeat vs Downbeat ending; studio recreations in for real locations; master craftsman Robert Wise directing instead of journeyman Pevney.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/07/somebody-up-there-likes-me-1956.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Newman himself a last-minute replacement for the late James Dean.

THE WARLORDS / TAU MING CHONG (2007)

From directors Peter Ho-Sun Chan & Wai-Man Yip, a well-produced War, War and more War epic about the power struggle of leading Chinese generals to take enough cities to control the country, never comes together.  Especially if you’re not already familiar with the historical background.  But it does acquire enough kinetic momentum and character development to hold attention.  Jet Li plays the unfortunate General Pang, losing his entire army in battle (he alone survives under a pile of dead), now looking for fresh financial support, partners & troops.  Finally, a trio of elderly connected politicians back him (the type who pull the strings and really run the country) while two bandit brother kings (Andy Lau; Takeshi Kaneshiro) in remote territory may be willing to bring their army in hopes of legitimizing their status.  At first, the group have nothing but success as their smaller forces crush armies five times their size.  But differences in the principles of war and in the goals they are fighting for will tear them apart.  It’s those old men backing them who go on and on; along with the eternal Chinese Empress.  Oddly, we never see her, nor the final climatic battle; and since we also aren’t shown much difference in how the enemy generals act,, we can’t know if we’re even on the ‘right’ side.  Like soldiers, we only know we’re on ‘our’ side.  Sole rooting interest lies upon actions between our threesome of warrior ‘brothers.’   Trimmed by a reel or two for international release, someone decided other territories would only turn out for battle & gore; the hell with what’s going on behind the silk curtain.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The real shock in here comes when a final title card reminds us the real events behind this juiced up telling happened, not in some mystical past, but as recently as 1870.

THE EXECUTIONER (1970)

By 1970, Cold War Thrillers ran on parallel tracks: James Bond and his brood going OTT; John le Carré and acolytes drifting only more serious.  Light entertainment or reality’s deadly game.  But this modest example of the form offers convergence, trying to split the difference.  And it’s not bad.  George Peppard, in rapid career decline, has a role to fit his charmless arrogance, a mid-level MI6 agent, British-born/U.S.-raised (they gotta explain the accent, no?), who’s just lost his team on a failed mission.  Why?  A leak in the company.  But is this to be Find-the-Mole; or Whack-a-Mole over at what le Carré called The Circus?  Lucky for Peppard, current ‘bird’ (Judy Geeson) has access to all relevant files.  Unlucky for him, spy bosses Charles Gray & Nigel Patrick (played as a couple) catch them out and suspend them.  But Peppard has other resources: Oscar Homolka’s hungry Russian defector; Joan Collins’ infatuated spouse of a prime suspect; agent Keith Michell, a likely KGB ‘plant’; and so on.  Quite a cast for a low-budget Charles Schneer production.  (Schneer known for Ray Harryhausen stop-motion fantasy fables.)  Good location stuff in London & Athens; note the lack of process work even in traveling car interiors.  Director Sam Wanamaker*, one-time Black-Listed actor, now active helming smallish features & series tv, shows he’s partial to ‘60s stylistics (arhythmic quick-cut head-shots, zooms, tight framing) probably has his largest budget here; along with an extra twist at the end.  (Added to give Peppard a get-out-of-moral-purgatory-free card?)  Just keep expectations down for best viewing results.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Though better known for acting, and for actor/daughter Zoë (try his funny take on Leonard Bernstein in THE COMPETITION/’80), Wanamaker had around thirty directing gigs.  Yet he’ll undoubtedly be more remembered as the main motivator in his adopted London-town for starting the push to rebuild Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on its original Thames site.  Only an American could get it done.  Sadly dying before it was completed.

ZAMA (2017)

Distressingly believable historical, a multi award-winner from director Lucrecia Martel on early colonial attempts at commercial trade & development in northern  Argentina (late 18th century).  It’s where Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) is stationed and where he has grievously erred thru hard work, loyalty to the Crown and near competency.  With such a positive record, why should his superiors let this magistrate transfer to a better post or Buenos Aires?  He believes he’s earned that reward by honest labor (he has a family he’s not seen in years) compared to the drunks, thieves & slackers around him.  Impossible to get anything accomplished in the face of men drifting toward savagery, disease & madness; or dying mid-lunch by an acute attack of the plague.  Zama hardly immune, having acquired a mistress and mixed-race son.  And more obstacles, like a rural legend with a gang of deserters & discontents,  one Vicuña Porto, regularly reported dead or attacking in some new place.  A man Zama will be ordered to track down, discover he has something in common with, then pay a price when Porto faces near mutiny by his superstitious men convinced that gemstones can be found inside coconuts from a certain grove.  And Porto needs to pressure Zama on their location.  Martel’s dogged realism does little to make this more palatable, it’s a drudge at times, but never without interest in its depiction of depravity and man’s infinite capacity for self-deception and illogical hope.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Werner Herzog’s  AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD/’72 set the standard for this kind of collective madness among early colonizers, though the film has lost the classroom caché and art-house following it once had.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Paid by D.P. Rui Poças who cuts off more heads than anyone on screen with tight framing, as if he thought they were releasing in Academy Ratio (1.37:1) not standard ‘flat’ (1.85:1).   Or was it meant for some in-between frame?  (Say, 1.66:1; often seen in Europe.)