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.