LUXURY LINER (1948)

Coasting thru the war years when just about anything made money, Hollywood peaked commercially in the afterglow year of 1946, then watched helplessly as the old studio system started to collapse.  A slow drip contraction of some twenty-years.  And while M-G-M didn’t fare much worse than other ‘majors,’ they had farther to fall.  (Note this handwriting on the wall a year before the Supreme Court vertical-integration ruling against the studios and even longer before television was having a serious financial effect.  What you do see are the old formulas curdling before your eyes, as in this idiotic showcase film, a typical Joe Pasternak family-friendly production, for Jane Powell.  More irritating brat than adorable baby coloratura, she’s a stowaway on Captain Daddy’s ocean liner where she gets quality time with single parent George Brent (looking quite stout in uniform) and plays mismatching matchmaker to half the passengers onboard.  Lots of second-tier musical interludes (legendary, if aging Wagnerian heldentenor Lauritz Melchoir never did get film-friendly) though Xavier Cugat (plus band and chihuahua) show how to do this kind of silliness.   But Pasternak, here with kid actor turned mediocre director Richard Whorf, seems to have forgotten the rules for the distribution of laughs, tears and reconciliations, he once could pull off in his sleep.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  As we’ve mentioned before, 100 MEN AND A GIRL/’37, Pasternak’s best, also uses baby coloratura and single-father/daughter strained relationship as narrative engine.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/03/100-men-and-girl-1937.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  M-G-M’s tech crew gave the big ship some unusually clever process/model combo shots.  Very cool looking.  With a repeated shot from the side where the visual integration and grain match is stunning.

LYING LIPS (1939)

Oscar Micheaux, the go-to guy for film text-books needing an example on early independent Black cinema: the first Black to produce a silent feature; first to produce a Talkie; first to tackle race issues.  (He also takes it on the chin for using light-skinned Blacks as romantic leads and darker ones for laborers and villains.*)  Lots of cultural/political/social issues tied to this one-stop source.  Less discussed is whether Micheaux was any good as a filmmaker.  Of course, between lost titles and subfusc surviving film elements, it can be hard to tell.  But even a tight budget needn’t mean stiff, formal dialogue.  Letting characters come to dumb conclusions.  Or choosing bad camera placements.  Often, the best things on film are free.  Edna Mae Harris stars as a nightclub singer who refuses to play after-hours good-time-gal to fat-cat friends of the owners, instead going home to find her Aunt  murdered and herself set up for arrest.  Yikes!  It’s really an insurance scam and Edna, in spite of her protective lawyer/fiancé and top inner-city detective Robert Earl Jones (best thing in the film/father to you know who) stick to her side and eventually clear up the mystery.  Odd how the after-hours plot disappears.  But structure not Micheaux’s long suit.  Instead, piece by piece, the story lands and you can just make out what gave Micheaux a long career and made him, at least historically, important.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *It’s supposedly what got restauranteur Paula Dean in trouble with The Food Network execs: Light-skinned Blacks assigned to work ‘front of the house’; darker-skinned assigned to kitchen duty.

INFERNO (1953)

Weeks before 20th/Fox introduced CinemaScope (‘the miracle you see without glasses!’) to the public with THE ROBE, helping to speed an end to the brief early ‘50s 3-D craze, they released one of the better films made in the process.  Doubly ironic, since, like so many 3-D pics at the time, INFERNO largely distributed ‘flat,’ in 2-D.  Another POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE infidelity/murder story (though with different outcomes), the film’s mostly a three-hander, and good even in 2-D, with the guilty pleasure bonus of watching the action-packed last reel (actually two separate reels running in synch) hoarding most of the objects thrown directly at the camera.  Fun spotting even in 2-D.  (Make it a drinking game!). Journeyman director Roy Ward Baker runs a cool, clean narrative as lethal lovers Rhonda Fleming and William Lundigan try to get away with the murder of Robert Ryan, Fleming’s rich, older, selfish husband, abandoning him in the desert with a broken leg before carefully setting the scene to make it look like his own doing.  Only wily Ryan proves too stubborn, too ornery, and too self-reliant to die.  And the longer he can keep going, the more chance he’ll be rescued.  There’s a good cast in support (Carl Betz, Henry Hull, Larry Keating), with cleverly worked out falling objects for those 3-D effect shots, and the great Lucien Ballard to shoot them.  Along with LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN/’45, one of the rare TechniColor & sunshine noirs, even rarer with 3-D.

CONTEST:  Explain why these early ‘50s 3-D films always ran about 80 minutes (with half-point intermissions) to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of the streaming film of your choice.  (NOTE: Professional film projectionists ineligible.)

FIRE WILL COME / O QUE ARDE (2019)

Paris-born, but with a Spanish heritage, director Oliver Laxe currently breaking beyond the film fest circuit and gaining attention on SIRAT/’25, his fourth film (not seen here).  It follows a father & son thru North African ‘rave’ sites as they search for the man’s missing daughter.  This, his previous effort, follows a paroled arsonist (he started a mountain forest fire that threatened his own Northern Spain village) as he tries to restart a life after two years in prison.  Unsurprisingly, no one wants much to do with him.  But, as Robert Frost put it, ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’  So, holed up with his aging mother, he halfheartedly looks for work, but seems reluctant to try to connect with anyone, even new people in town.  Guilt/innocence/actions never discussed, all settled by small town gossip  & misery.  Even the incessant rain working against hope or redemption. Inevitably, another blaze will look like his doing.  And here, Laxe’s treatment breaks down, unwilling to speculate on the situation other than one physical altercation with a suspicious neighbor.  Laxe entirely focused on fate, a traumatic tone and the physical atmosphere.  But perhaps avoiding the elephant in the room, adds to the mesmerizng atmosphere.  Filming and the non-pro cast (particularly Benedicta Sánchez as the mother) impeccable.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Obviously, SIRAT, which sounds fascinating.

SISU (2022)

The Finnish title may be untranslatable (think ‘Back-against-the-wall indomitable courage’), but the action, ultra-violence and gore easily cross international borders since director Jalmari Helander makes this WWII chase-and-shoot thriller neatly balanced between mirth, mayhem & absurdity.  The look seemingly realistic and stylized; not so much the expected Asian Martial Arts, more like a Chuck Jones Road Runner cartoon.  Finland tundra in for South West canyons.  Plus a twist: Wile E. Coyote is our heroic alter-ego.  With apologies to Ernest Hemingway, it’s THE OLD MAN AND THE NAZIS.  Finnish sniper Jorma Tommila (a one-man killing unit) had been taking out hundreds of Russians like a scythe running thru a wheat field early in the war before walking away from battle to mine for gold.  But the changing landscape of war in 1944 sees retreating Nazi forces after him and his stash.  So now it’s the Nazis’ turn to die in the hunt.  A crash landing, a hanging, a drowning, nothing seems able to stop this guy.  More than tough, he’s downright immortal.  Held to a brisk 91" (any longer and it would collapse from CGI fatigue which it almost does in a flying sequence), but taken on its own terms, it’s effective and weirdly fun.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A Finnish production, but made in English.

RED WING (2013)

A Hallmark cable movie from deep-think autuer Terrence Malick?  This landscape besotted adaptation of an 1840s George Sand novel (FRANÇOIS LE CHAMPI/FRANK THE FOUNDLING) feels like it might be.  Actually, Malick only exec produced, Will Wallace takes credit (if that’s the word) for directing.  With a Book of Saints æsthetic to exploit the visual harmony of man, nature and Texas in the 1970s, young Glen Powell (25 at the time) plays a naïve & sentimental foundling (a regular Billy Budd), honest, handsome, hardworking, friend to man & beast, earning his keep in the field thru his adolescence (and beyond) on a small farm where surrogate Mom (Breann Johnson) watches over him and mean, lazy surrogate Dad (Luke Perry) takes umbrage with a beer chaser.  Shying off the town ladies who hit on him, he starts rumors by not screwing indiscriminately.  No surprise, jealousy gets him kicked out of the house.  But a few days on the road finds a new farm and a chance to begin making the same personal choices & mistakes.  For some reason, the women in the film are terrible actors (laughably transparent), the men somewhat better.  Bill Paxton fine as farm owner #2, and there’s instant actor/audience rapport from kid ‘brother’ Lucas Adams.   But Wallace’s presentation so hackneyed, they might have done better setting this in the 1870s rather than the 1970s.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *To judge by the movie marque in town (they seem to be showing Robert Altman’s THE WEDDING) it’s 1978, the same year Terence Malick’s DAYS OF HEAVEN came out.  Nice try guys.  But this little Texas bijou would never have booked that Altman flop.  Though it’s  a sure bet anything they would have shown would have had just as many embarrassingly crappy music videos in it.

TWO O’CLOCK COURAGE (1945)

Comic films noir, a sub-genre generally best avoided, tend to have less laughs than straight noir; and no discernable suspense.  But here’s a happy exception from early in noir master director Anthony Mann’s career.  Not much known for comedy, perhaps that’s his secret.  Rather than going for laughs, he plays the game straight; making sure his plot holds water.  Pleasingly cockeyed rather than dumb.  It also has the striking advantage of debuting noir icon Jane Greer, already showing cool heat in support.  Elsewise, lead couple, top cop, crime reporter, all pull together on a script that rarely sinks for a laugh.  (From a Gelett Burgess novel previously filmed as TWO IN THE DARK/’36 - not seen here.)  Tom Conway (the non-caddish kid brother of George Sanders) is nearly hit by cute cabbie Ann Rutherford.  Already conked on the head, he’s got temporary amnesia and a likely murder rap chasing him.  Who is he?  Figure that out to find the real murderer among a bunch of B’way writers, producers & actors before the cops move in for an arrest.  Less innocent man on the run than innocent man running in society and theatrical circles.  Neatly played and written, with quick answers and solutions, the film doesn’t overplay for easy laughs, but leads us toward believable motives and solutions.  But all bets are off when Greer shows up as a B’way sharpie who knows what’s going on.  Poor Ann Rutherford, pleasant enough as a sympathetic cabbie sidekick to Conway’s confused suspect, hasn’t a chance once this Always-Gets-What-She-Wants femme fatale shows up.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Jane Greer’s main claim to noir immortality stems from OUT OF THE PAST/’47, but for lighthearted noir stylings, try THE BIG STEAL/’49.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/07/big-steal-1949.html

JUVENILE COURT (1973)

From late/great documentarian Frederick Wiseman (dead last month at 96, his most recent film out in 2023), this early masterpiece in his favored fly-on-the-wall manner remains one of his best; certainly one of his most influential, inspiring thousands of syndicated hours of copycat courtroom tv drama.  Most of them spoiled by textbook melodrama; literally so thru underscored speech & action.  These offshoots quite a contrast to Wiseman’s slow-burn purity & effectiveness in his approach on a handful of cases, gray areas left intact.  Everyone given as much sympathy as Wiseman is able to generate.  With far more comfort & care, and a lack of jaded behavior from this Memphis, TN courthouse staff, than you’d expect.  More staff Blacks than you expect, too.   How different this might have looked ten years earlier.  Wiseman holds back the most complex case for the end (the film running about two and a half hours without a wasted minute).  Deeply empathetic with a thoughtful even-handed judge and an uncomprehending sacrifice to the system bringing the most emotional moments in the film.  But you’ll find your own case of special interest.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Some of the cases don’t finish, but are sent to continue in another court giving no closure after we’ve invested ourselves in some kind of outcome.  A commission from the Wiseman Estate on a Project Update to run as a coda to the film would be just the thing.

PENELOPE (1966)

Not yet 30, but with her career slipping (only one film of consequence ahead of her*), Natalie Wood couldn’t have been happy with the scripts on offer at the time.  Nor this cast & crew other than D.P. Harry Stradling, too many near novices on a major studio production.  But with Hollywood facing collapse and, as yet, no rebirth on the horizon, she grabbed this meager comedy that sees her playing a goofy, but glamorous kleptomaniac who’s trying to rejigger interest from workaholic bank executive husband Ian Bannen.  (His first & last conventional Hollywood lead.)  Maybe she’ll get his attention by robbing his new flagship bank?  That’s about it for plot, the rest is comic fashion show (did Howard Fast really co-write this?), complications coming via love-addled shrink Dick Shawn (fey & reasonably funny) and love-addled police investigator Peter Falk (in something of a trial run for Columbo two years off).  But don’t give up, what catches the eye is more than usual NYC location work (the city looking great in 1966, late ‘60s decline yet to appear; one long scene played in the MoMA Sculpture Garden a treat), plus the chemistry between Falk & Wood so obvious, you wonder why no one did anything with it.  But the oddest part of the film is that everyone involved, including faceless director Arthur Hiller, seems to think they’ve got another BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S/’61 in here.  With borrowed style, borrowed party scenes, borrowed kooks, even a Givenchy outfit as a major clue to the crime.  Maybe they borrowed it from #1 Givenchy client Audrey Hepburn?  And maybe that’s why they got ‘Johnny’ Williams to write a song for Natalie to sing.  ‘Moon River’ it ain’t.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *That would be BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE/’69.

HAMNET (2025)

Overpraised for an award-winning NOMADLAND/’20; then under-performing in her MARVEL misstep/’21, here Chloé Zhao fulfills the promise of THE RIDER/’17, her docu-flavored feature, with this Shakespeare & family re-imagining.  Collaborating on the script with original novelist Maggie O’Farrell, it’s a daring rethink of the young Latin tutor William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and older Anne (Agnes) Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), a forest-wise Earth Mother type); their courtship & marriage before a quick succession of children (two girls/one boy) and long separations as Will pursues theatrical opportunities in London.  Finding believable physical & mental spaces for this to play in (note the static one-shots during intense moments), Zhao carefully builds in period detail and still-modern emotion, refusing to overplay or nail everything in place for us.  Late 16th/early 17th century Stratford & London coming fully to life before Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), their enchanting young son, suddenly falls ill while Shakespeare is away (as he always seems to be) in London.  The feeling of desertion particularly acute for Agnes.  All of this superbly handled across the board, and all of it heartbreaking.  But the miracle of the film comes in what technically amounts to a long coda (it runs its own entire three act structure in about twenty minutes) when Agnes and her brother go to London to see their first play, the premiere of HAMLET at the Globe Theatre.  (That’s Jacobi’s real-life big brother Noah Jupe playing a college-age Hamlet.)  Scenes of rehearsal and then the opening* before a rapt crowd, knowing what we now know of the personal life . . . has HAMLET ever played in quite this raw a fashion?  Zhao showing nothing less than the purpose of art at its highest level, with tear-worthy emotional depth you rarely find in something you know so well.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned above: THE RIDER/’17, still too little seen.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-rider-2017.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The modern/thoughtful pace of stage acting we see used in the production of HAMLET works within the film.  But at this tempo, could HAMLET get to the finish line in the two-and-a-half hours of natural light available at The Globe?

THE ICEBREAKER / LEDOKOL (2016)

And you thinking Russia not know how to make CGI-loaded Bolshoi Blockbuster?  (Bolshoi Icebuster!)  Phooey!  We show.  Big ship taking on frozen Arctic Sea as well as frozen expeditionary science unit with dog.  But with ship Captain Pyotr Fyodorov, handsome, strong, stubble beard, 70 men safe on board.  (Two time winner of Russian Hero of the Year acting award!  Real thing.  Look up!)  But stopping boat when science man & dog go overboard in frigid waters bolshoi mistake.  Save doggie; lose man.  Puts rescue attempt ahead of mission.  Soon helicopter comes.  Replace fine Captain with no nonsense Captain.  Less handsome; no caring.  Crusty exterior hiding crusty interior.  Smashes sailor’s guitar to bits if deck not swabbed with anti-freeze.  Relieved Captain & new Captain like Burt Lancaster & Clark Gable in RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP/’58; Liam Neeson & Harrison Ford in K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER/’02.  Dozens others to choose from.  Yet, mean Captain wife back home having baby #1 at home.  Maybe he's not so bad.  But now, ship stuck in ice, with huge iceberg following.  Yikes!  Cracks below deck no one in Moscow takes responsibility for.  Now storage flooded, nothing to eat but cabbage soup.   (Inside info: is same cabbage soup as before flood.  Ironic, da?)  Almost forget; for film, no expense spared, English dub made by same team who did WHAT’S UP, TIGER LILY?/’66 for Woody Allen.  And since date of events is 1985, everyone calls everyone ‘dude.’   Plus takeaway motto: Shit Floats.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Look for some great sunshiny weather as a water truck spews out heavy rain showers on a Moscow sidewalk.  While on the English dub track, a clueless actor pronounces LeninGRAD as LeninGARD.  Even under perestroika , you could get shot for that.

JUNGLE HEAT (1957)

Howard Koch’s film career took him from NYC-based distribution office work to Hollywood production assistant before co-starting a production company for tv and small features led to running Paramount for a couple of years and then the Paramount production deal he’s remembered for.  Early Neal Simon pics (think THE ODD COUPLE/’68) and game changing Zucker Bros. comedies (think AIRPLANE!/’80).  Lost in the middle of his onwards & upwards trajectory are a few directing credits, mostly in the ‘50s for tv and low budget second-run features.  That’s what we’ve got here.  And what a deliciously trashy title to entice the curious: JUNGLE HEAT.  If only it lived down to it.  Alas, former Tarzan hunk Lex Barker is doctor on the lesser Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, a likable guy who’ll treat anyone, native or visitor, but has his good nature tested by new plantation overseer Glenn Langan whose racist tendencies are supported by big shot overseer James Westerfield.  Fortunately, Langan’s pretty wife, Mari Blanchard, has little in common with her husband, but lots in common with Barker.  Meanwhile, Japanese Fifth Columnists are threatening the whole damn island in the weeks before Dec. 7, 1941.  Not that we see them (budget too small?), instead, tepid interracial marriage issues and almost a kiss between a White Military Officer and his Island beauty bride.  Other than that, the film feels pointless.  What was Koch up to?  True they were shooting a second film on the island at the same time (VOODOO ISLAND/’57), but a more likely explanation is that the conscientious Koch was rounding out his Hollywood education by learning just what a director went thru before moving into the big time.  Smart, though not exactly showing much aptitude for directing.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Though shot in Academy Ratio (1.37:1), generous top & bottom framing suggests the film was designed to be cropped by the projectionist (via scrims or aperture plate) down to ‘flat’ (1.77 or 1.85:1).  A simple manual adjustment on older DVD players lets you watch it that way, but automatically adjusting BLU-Ray machines may not.

FRACTURE (2007)

Throwback to the bestseller legal-thriller adaptations of the ‘80s & ‘90S . . . and just as blandly unnecessary.  Those books great as Father’s Day gifts when Walter Isaacson didn’t have a new historical biography in stores.  Once upon a time, Hollywood would have bidding wars to option these prestigious-for-a-day tomes, targeting Sydney Pollack or Alan J. Pakula to overproduce them, always running two hours+ so we knew they were important.  Plus, multiple Oscar® noms which alas never won.  It's precisely how director Gregory Hoblit moved from quality tv cop shows to the Big Screen via PRIMAL FEAR/’96 a decade before doing this.  Here, Anthony Hopkins (who might have been given the same role back in the ‘80s) is the wealthy, older husband who bumps off his unfaithful wife with a How To Get Away With Murder Plan.  Enter prosecuting D.A. Ryan Gosling, taking on a final case before moving to commercial law and a better tax bracket.  But Hopkins has a trick in store, representing himself to set up a mistrial.  But this is Hollywood and the Postman Always Rings Twice.  Especially if you've got Goslng’s doe-like eyes.  Ultra slick and a millimeter deep, Hopkins phones in mini-me Hannibal Lector vocal tics, sweeping the floor on auto-pilot. Even Hoblit seems to know how pointless these things had become by 2007, dropping the non-stop camera moves once we get into court.  His surrender to mediocrity retroactively exposing those older films as equally empty vessels,

DOUBLE-BILL;   *Hard to believe films as dull, predictable and self-regarding as PRESUMED INNOCENT/’90 (that’s Pakula) and THE FIRM/’93 (Pollock) were taken seriously at the time.  Pollock paid a high price for it.  Only 59 when THE FIRM came out, he never made another good film.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Hopkins may have top-billing, but Gosling gets the showy star’s delayed entrance, not coming on screen till the third reel.

SUNDOWN (1941)

Snazzy independent producer Walter Wanger culled A-listers from all over Hollywood* for this nifty African adventure, released via United Artists, just before Pearl Harbor pulled America into the war.  It opens as Gene Tierney deplanes in the middle of Nowhere Kenya, only to be met by a caravan of goods and locals (men, mammals, merchandise) who welcome her like some sort of mercantile queen.  Not so far off the mark as her late caravan king father left her the family biz which sees her running multiple bazaars servicing rival tribes in the Kenyan interior.  Meanwhile, territory administrator Bruce Cabot (very winning here) coaxes peaceful tribal relations with a gentle touch that balances conflicting traditions.  But the current threat is something new, as one belligerent tribe, backed by the Nazis, threatens to take over the land using vast quantities of smuggled guns & ammo entering the country via caravan, including Tierney’s outfit.  At least that’s what by-the-book British Officer George Sanders thinks.  And because of the war, he has authority over Cabot.  War inflected international roundelays popular at the time, from IDIOT’S DELIGHT/’39 to next year’s CASABLANCA, and they all work to some extent.  Here, director Henry Hathaway does what he can to keep all the tangents clear; and when motivation sags, you simply put nationality to the fore as here with Joseph Calleia’s anti-fascist Italian or Carl Esmond’s faux Hollander patriot.  It’s all a bit hokey-pokey, but Tierney is ravishing enough to overlook many absurdities.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Nice to see a high class indie get three Oscar noms (D.P. Charles Lang; Interior Art Direction; Miklós Rózsa score).  If only a good print were around to show them off properly.

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1920)

On the cusp of revolutionizing Shakespearean acting in America with B’way openings of RICHARD III in 1920 and HAMLET in’21*, John Barrymore also got serious about film.  (Not something you could count on other than during his miraculous run of 1932 - 1934,)  The reason was likely his love of grotesquerie, a passion handsomely serviced by this more or less faithful adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novella.  Directed by John S. Robertson in stiff, poetic ‘prestige’ style as a series of romantic or ghastly tableaux vivants which can now make a proper effect thanks to an early 2000s restoration.  (Try the KINO edition.)  The story is much as you recall: brainy doctor tries to isolate man’s good side from his bad with a potent potion, then can’t find the OFF switch.  With a decent cast and standout perfs from BAD companion Louis Wolheim (in real life a ‘working man’ with a concave face Barrymore discovered and got into acting), and from BAD wench Nita Naldi.  Successfully pitiable.  But who are we kidding?  You’re here to watch Barrymore, still a youthful 38, transition au naturale, without camera tricks or makeup from handsome/saintly Jekyll into hideous villain Hyde.*  Makeup and camera dissolves will be used later, but the initial change remains both wild and impressive.   The later ones also have their charms; especially in a print where you don’t need to squint to see it happen.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *See Michael A. Morrison’s JOHN BARRYMORE: SHAKESPEAREAN ACTOR for details on Barrymore’s Bard influence.  Or simply watch Laurence Olivier’s HAMLET/’48, loaded with Barrymore touches as well as something like Barrymore’s highly Freudian ‘cut’ of the text.  Right down to what soliloquies were dropped.  (Olivier saw the Barrymore production in London 25 years before as an impressionable 16-yr-old.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:   *Barrymore repeated his one-shot transformation trick (now shown going in both directions) with better/closer framing in DON JUAN/’26.

THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY (2019)

Back-loaded adapted screenplay from Charles Willeford & Scott B. Smith puts a dark spin on an old standard, the one about the painter who fakes his own death, goes into hiding incognito and watches as his work soars in value now that he can’t produce anymore; suddenly a sellers’ market.  SPOILERS!  Here, it’s not the painter (Donald Sutherland) manipulating his output for profit, but art critic Claes Bang taking advantage of the painter’s age and frailty, especially as he’s famously already lost his old work to fire and only has a small cache of new canvases as his legacy.  The idea: win his trust; destroy all but one of his new canvases, and end up owning the only original painting left intact, now worth millions.  (It's as if Patricia Highsmith were doing an iteration for the Talented Mr. Ripley.)  Ultra-rich art collector Mick Jagger (of all people) might be behind the scheme, while recent pickup Elizabeth Debicki is an unknowing complication who can be used to entice Sutherland into opening his clam shell of a personality and locked up studio.  But once they get inside, they hardly find what they expect.  Without spur-of-the-moment murder and forgery, plans and profit certain to be forfeit.   It’s a clever idea, but director Giuseppe Capotondi can’t invigorate a script that lolls around over its first two acts, then does a poor job cramming in and explaining the caper mechanics toward the end.  He covers (or is it uncovers) with sex (some) and nudity (lots).  Until by the end, characters & events reduced to mere literary devices .

WATCH THS, NOT THAT/LINK: Imagine GAMBIT/’66 with all the fun sucked out of it.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/06/gambit-1966.html

DR. NO (1962)

The most recent James Bond film/s (in case you forgot, it was split into two parts) goes on five & a quarter indigestible hours.  This first James Bond film (now an improbable senior citizen) runs an hour 50 minutes and plays better than ever.  Long considered a trial run next to its two top-rated follow-ups (FROM RUSSIAN WITH LOVE/’63; GOLDFINGER/’64), a look at the refreshed print proves it holds its own in the early Bond pecking order.  With a just unpacked quality from semi-regular Bond director Terence Young on a laundry list of Bond iconography.  From bloodied gun-barrel kickoff and Monty Norman’s hot electric guitar-lick theme; into Maurice Binder’s opening credits; that unstirred martini; brief banter with Miss Moneypenny; chemin de fer at the card table, the formal introduction ‘Bond . . . James Bond’; Ken Adams sets; Richard Maibaum script & quips.  (Plus hardly a process shot in sight, the bane of '70s BOND, none till the 50" mark.)  And, of course, Sean Connery’s Bond; classic & classy, but with an indelible touch of working-class bully-boy in his cruel curled lip.  Only two missed elements of much importance: no John Barry score* and no final credit notification saying ‘James Bond Will Be Back.’  The storyline (wacko genius, think Asian Captain Nemo, hopes to disrupt NASA’s latest moon-prep launch from his secret ocean fortress near Jamaica) as clever & lean as Connery’s never surpassed Bond.*  Both story and character driven, the film blessedly bloat-free (bloat crept in early, starting with THUNDERBALL/’65.  And note, those early films came out every year, no six+ year wait between.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Per that famous Bond theme: John Barry (and his band) credited with the rendition, and Barry long claimed partial authorship. 

CONTEST:  *People also think Connery the hairiest of all Bonds.  (Not on his head!  Look close, it’s already going,)  He’s not!  Name the most hirsute 007 to win your choice of a MAKSQUIBS writeup. 

ARCO (2025)

Well intentioned, critically well received, this Oscar nominated French animation (Ugo Bienvenu/Gilles Cazaux direct) is a ’Gaia’ friendly botch on Earth’s short & long term future.  A 2070s robot serviced/A.I. organized near future vs Earth reborn centuries on via personal responsibility & humanism.  The two time periods coming into contact when a ten-yr-old kid, officially too young to ‘rainbow fly’ thru time, takes a forbidden joy ride, loses control and crash-lands in the 2070s.  Taken in by a young girl who lives near the crash site, they’re soon on the lam from state & police authorities and from a nutty trio of comic-relief conspiracy stooges.  (Dubbed to annoying effect in the English edition by Will Ferrell, Flea & Andy Samberg.)  Only when the runaway boy’s parents show up to collect their son, does he discover the true cost of his careless irresponsibility.  And what of his out-of-time playmate who now wants to join him on the ride back?  (Imagine Eliot going ‘home’ with E.T.*)  A mess of borrowed ideas, this might have worked with a more physically appealing look.  What to call it?    Euro-anime?  It certainly carries the minuses, if not the pluses of that style.  Character design a particular problem.  (What’s up with the weird mouths?)  Ambitious ideas alone aren’t enough; you’ve got to execute.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Yes, lots of E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL/’82 echoed here.  But the main influence is more likely youngish anime master Makoto Shinkai.  Especially WEATHERING WITH YOU, his follow up to YOUR NAME./’16.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/11/tenki-no-ko-weathering-with-you-2019.html

UNEXPECTED UNCLE (1941)

No film genre is more unforgiving than Screwball Comedy.  Most examples of the form not even Screwball, merely uppity Rom-Coms, studded with a few classic Screwball elements: rich, dysfunctional family; mansion with majestic staircase and sassy servants; disdain for their own inherited wealth; furs treated like pets/pets treated like furs; et al.  And the most important one that later films were unable to use: The Great Depression as social/financial backdrop.  It gave weight & irony to the weightless principals.*  Compared to Noir or Westerns, to Courtroom Drama or Police Procedurals where thresholds for success might be low as 45%, or to the second toughest genre, Musicals, which might be saved with a couple of standout numbers, Screwball needs a batting average of 750.  And that’s just to get to first!  So credit this little number for getting the gist of things right.  And for hiring Charles Coburn (sixty before he got into films) to replay his Grandpa Cupid speciality and bring the couple together.*  Here, that’s Anne Shirley at her prettiest and James Craig at his tipsiest.  The rest is cringe city.  Premise: sales girl Shirley loses her job after telling off tush pincher James Craig, unaware America’s youngest industrial tycoon also owns the shop.  Coburn offers himself as Fairy Godfather and connives to get them back together . . . for keeps.  The film is hardly helped by changing mores that have turned Craig’s attempts at ‘making love’ (as the old phrase used to put it). into what now would be called out as sexual harassment.  Also ‘hilarious’ episodes of drunk driving and kidnaping for love.  Yikes!  While as a rom-com stylist, Craig no Cary Grant.  Even the vocal cadence all wrong for this sort of thing.  Director Peter Godfrey, under producer Tay Garnett, manages a wicked traveling shot around the sales floor, but elsewise too unvaried in pacing.  Plus the usual lack of simple explanations just to keep the ball rolling.  Co-writer Eric Hatch, the source of superior Screwballs like TOPPER and MY MAN GODFREY should have known better.  And the suggested happy ending, ‘millionaires!, you have nothing to fear but your own wealth’ doesn’t cut it in 1941.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Coburn got his Oscar® doing similar duty for Jean Arthur & Joel McCrea in THE MORE THE MERRIER/’44.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-merrier-1943.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *You'd have thought The Great Depression would have made the idea that wealth drives these people crazy wouldn’t have played in those days, but the reverse ('money isn’t everything') was the unspoken moral.

ATOMIC BLONDE (2017)

David Leitch, in various capacities, has had his hand in some of the biggest action franchises of the last decade.  JOHN WICK; DEADPOOL; FAST AND FURIOUS.  But after watching this ‘original,’ where he feels fully in charge as sole director, you may wonder how much of a positive influence he was on those successes.  Told in flashback, 1989 Berlin is erupting in the societal unrest that will soon lead to the ‘Wall’ coming down.  With spillover instability bringing on chaos in the world of international espionage, there's little time to settle scores and grab the upper hand before everything changes.  No wonder East/West divides of loyalty feel fluid.  Whom to believe as the Cold War goes into its death rattle?  So, it makes sense there’s a race to find the ultimate Spy vs Spy Big Book o’ Secrets floating around Berlin.  Crackjack agent Charlize Theron is getting all beat up divining the various gangs keeping the ‘other side’ frm getting their paws on it.  But just how many ‘sides’; are there?  The vaguely delineated book the McGuffin to end all McGuffins.*  Theron works with double-agent James McAvoy to figure out a ‘safe’ way to get it out.  But can it be gotten, and can he be trusted?  Other gangs, East German Stasi and KGB also on the hunt), so Theron is forced to fight or shoot her way out with acrobatic moves and the trick rope skills of a circus vet,  Theron can take care of herself, but also shows the effort involved.  She’s pretty beat up at a debriefing for spy lords John Goodman and Toby Jones (another untrustworthy pair) and quite undone physically in a blonde fright wig.  This all should work a lot better than it does, but Leitch can’t decide what style it will best play in, alternating OTT martial arts with logistically unconvincing shoot-‘em ups.   Should actors simply brush off impossible blows like gnats or show real injuries and pain?  (So unlike WICK where it’s all of a piece, all dance and decor.)  Same goes for choices in set design and lighting.  As if Leitch wanted to order test swatches of style from all the films he was involved with, only to find they cancel each other out.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A McGuffin is the important thing everyone in the film is trying to get their hands on, but of little importance to the audience.  Hitchcock came up with the term, but the idea is pretty common.  What’s less common are the three iconic Hitchcockian moments Leitch (and his writers?) rip off.  From DIAL M FOR MURDER, a woman stabs her attacker in the back, but the blade really goes in when the guy falls on it.  From THE 39 STEPS, a Mr. Memory figure who’s memorized the ‘McGuffin’ and dies because of it.  (Though here it’s also pointless within the film plot.  Boo!)  And finally, repurposing the decoy umbrella murder gag from FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT.

BILL CUNNINGHAM: NEW YORK (2010)

Richard Press’s terrific documentary follows street-wise fashion photog icon Bill Cunningham (free at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6vFJv3Mnh4), a classic New York character who naturally lives in a teeny studio at Carnegie Hall.  (Not near it; in it.)*  Productive and personable, the eccentric Cunningham seems to have no life beyond his work, beginning in the ‘50s as a fashionable milliner before gravitating toward photojournalism (Women’s Wear Daily; DETAILS) before landing at The New York Times with matched columns to fill.  Here, pushing 80, but still dashing about town on his bike to cover Night-Life Society: parties, openings, art shows, happenings among the rich and arty/the beautiful and the hip.  While during daylight, hitting the streets on his three-speed bike to snap unstaged Found Fashion spottings from encounters among the hoi polloi.  Judgmental on fashion, but non-judgmental on people, Cunningham’s speciality might come off as stalking if he weren’t so elfin & asexual.  Brilliantly caught by Press & Co. who must truly believe that neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night should stop them from pursuing their subject.  Indeed, they go all the way to Paris where he’s feted and honored without having to change his blue work smock.  It’s the most touching part of this elsewise NYC-centric story.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The last two rent-stabilized Carnegie Hall studios were being phased out as the film was being shot.  Too bad we don’t get a better look at the eccentric layout of Cunningham’s.

IL TRADITORE / THE TRAITOR (2019)

Maestro of Italian cinema, Marco Bellocchio, writing and directing since 1965*, celebrated  his 80th year by sweeping the Italian Film Awards with this excellent, straight-forward docu-drama on Tommaso Buscetta.  A Sicilian mob boss (living in Brazil as the film starts in the early 1980s), his clan under attack in Italy by rival gangs and by special police forces, while he faces crimes of his own, agrees to work with Prosecuting Judge Giovanni Falcone, Patron Saint of Mafia busters.  Il Cosa Nostra, as Buscetta insists on calling what had long been, in his warped view, an honorable association now falling into chaos.  Backed into becoming the first inside informer to testify against the organization after losing so much manpower and territory.  He and his family are given witness protection in America, yet he’s drawn back to Italy so he can settle scores after Falcone is assassinated.  Superbly done, note details like how Pierfrancesco Favino, as Buscetta, wears facial prosthetics before he has face altering plastic surgery so he can play the final act without the props.  Good as it is, there’s a built-in structural weakness in that all the more juicy rub-outs (so damn cinematic a cow could shoot them effectively) come cheek by jowl in what amounts to the prologue, leaving the rest of the film largely without easy kinetic excitement.  The interrogations/interviews between Falcone & Buscetta and, of course, the trial & testimonies have plenty of drama, but can’t really compete with graphic killings.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Bellocchio (whose name translates as ‘beautiful eye’) will always be shadowed by his debut, the revolutionary masterpiece FISTS IN THE POCKET/’65.  There are worse curses to carry around your neck.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/fists-in-pocket-1965.html