THE RITCHIE BOYS (2004)

Standard-issue WWII documentary about the anything but standard-issue Ritchie Boys.  Self-exiled Europeans, mostly German Jews, who got out just before hostilities started, and were either drafted or volunteered for war service only to quickly find themselves transferred to the idyllic countryside of Camp Ritchie, MD where they were assigned to the elite unit of Military Intelligence  Training Center.  All multilingual (idiomatic, if not accent-free) in three or four languages*, they were uniquely qualified for enemy interrogation and in getting information on troop & equipment movements from suspicious locals.  Many of them sent in with the Normandy invasion (some introduction to war!) before continuing East where they eventually would be caught up in The Battle of the Bulge; something they had tried to warn their superiors about.  These are the guys who put the great into the Greatest Generation; a phrase tossed around far too easily.  Interviewed in their eighties, you can get a real feel for them (and for this film) in the two obits linked below on the last two surviving members.  Brilliant men who all seemed to have gone on to remarkable post-war careers, all of them holding back their stories for decades.  Great stuff here, the memories precious, the sentiments wise.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Attention by whomever did post-production for writer/director Christian Bauer as newsreel and archival actualities used between the 2004 interviews are all mastered to fit the wider modern frame ratio not by enlarging the old square picture, but with anamorphic distortion to stretch the image.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  *Two surprise take-aways from the stories.  Best way to scare a Nazi into talking?  Tell them they’ll be sent over to the Russian authorities for questioning.  Scariest threat for the Ritchie Boys at the front?  Having the same accent as the Nazi infiltrators dressed in US uniforms.  Especially if you weren’t a baseball fan and didn’t know who won the World Series.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/17/world/europe/guy-stern-dead.html?searchResultPosition=2  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/us/victor-brombert-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1

QUEER (2024)

Granted, the bar’s set pretty low, but Luca Guadagino’s latest (his second major release of the year) must be the best William S. Burroughs adaptation yet made.  Taken from a late novella (Justin Kuritzkes scripts, following his debut on CHALLENGERS/’24, also for Guadagnino), the first half is set in a gay-friendly Mexico City nab for Stateside ex-pats in the late 1940s.  Though it’s more specifically set within the even smaller sui generis world of Burroughs fevered mind.  He’s there to pursue his addictions: drugs, tobacco, alcohol, handsome young men.  And Daniel Craig, solidly muscled considering the decades of heroin and all-nighters, makes a four-course meal out of the part.  (No problem accepting Bond, James Bond, tangling in bed with guys, but seeing 007 with bad hair takes some getting used to!)  Cruising for Mr. Right, he finds lanky, lush Drew Starkey, a journalist of some sort, currently involved with a red-head, a female red-head, but an eager gay lover when needed.  The film takes a big turn at mid-point when William Lee (the Burroughs alter-ego) heads to uncharted jungle territory far South, hunting for an elusive drug rumored to have telepathic properties.  Not quite the case; but a sort of HEART OF DARKNESS adventure brings in an alarming Leslie Manville as a researcher who knows the hallucinogenic effects of the plant.  These relationships provide plenty of character and narrative drive for Guadagnino to work with.  But he truly excels with simpler things, like those dark, painterly apartment & hotel interiors that all seem to have magically expressive blue-toned vistas thru the window.  All in all, it’s a very impressive display of filmmaking legerdemain.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Craig took on the younger man role, a ‘rough trade’ type, to Derek Jacobi‘s masochistic Francis Bacon in his breakout film, LOVE IS THE DEVIL/’‘98.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/love-is-devil-1998.html

NORDLAND ‘99 (2022)

Danish director Kasper Møller Rask may have been born after the initial run of David Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS (Rask born 1993/PEAKS airing 1990), but he’s one of the few to successfully pick up on the propulsive combination of narrative fog, deliberate pacing and creepy anxiety that helped make Lynch’s first season mesmerizing.*  A small town story of teen abduction and disappearance, it even takes place in the ‘90s (see title), and largely concerns a hunt for a second local teen who’s gone missing.  Already hounded by the mother of the first missing boy, a local policeman is in over his head when this second boy vanishes.  Filling the gap is his own son, the younger sister of the latest missing boy, and another teen pal employed at the local video store/hangout.  Period detail and social interaction all spot on; the cop’s son (Elias Budde Christensen) a real find.  And what a collection of horrors and horrible people the three searchers find living in the cracks of society around this town.  (Makes you want to move to the city.)  Made in eight episodes (the first two a bit of a slow burn, but hang in there), each running only about 20" sans credits so you could binge it, but as it’s not one of those streamers that’s half filler, best parsed out.  With a bit of unexpected emotion at the end; a very un-Lynchian move, but an effective one.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  No sequel announced, but for once, it’d be something worth thinking about.  So many memorable characters here.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Partially, Rask pulls off the Lynch factor simply by not overdoing it.  A trap Lynch’s many imitators, and indeed Lynch himself, all too easily fall into.

LUISE (2023)

Taking D.H. Lawrence’s novella THE FOX as starting point*, director Matthias Luthardt and writer Sebastian Bleyl have kept the time frame (1918 - tail end of WWI) but moved the place (an isolated Alsace farm) to make this intriguing three-hander.  Beautifully observed, warmly shot & acted, but the film makes a big ‘ask’ to work thru its tragic romantic triangle, one you may or may not buy into.  Luise, barely on the cusp of young womanhood when we meet her, by default runs the small family farm on her own after her mother dies.  But a young Frenchwoman and a young German soldier separately passing thru will unexpectedly stick around, ‘guests’ who bring sexual baggage with them.  The Frenchwoman, a lesbian who had been trying to reach Holland where she’s heard of more personal freedom; the soldier, a deserter after four years of combat.  Luise will be attracted to each in turn (or is she simply trying out possibilities?), before choosing one and triggering a veritable Greek tragedy of mortality; and more off-screen.  The ‘ask’ comes in the easy acceptance by Luise, who’s plenty smart, but also a simple country girl without any sexual experience, of what must have seemed in 1918 a most unconventional offer to take off with this female she’s just met.  On the other hand, the deserting soldier’s offer to stay as husband and share duties on the farm seems a far more likely proposition.  But even with a hand placed on the scale that shows the women’s warm/caring physical intimacy vs the soldier’s rough bedroom manner, the film pulls you into their bubble, letting the war proceed on the other side of the forest while these three tread sexual borders that prove equally deadly.  An impressively balanced chamber piece from all concerned.  And who is this Sebastien Pan, a French composer who wrote the subtle & moving chamber-like score.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *THE FOX was filmed in 1967 by Mark Rydell (normally a pretty coarse director) with the intriguing cast of Sandy Dennis, Keir Dullea & Anne Heywood.  (not seen here)

BOGART: LIFE COMES IN FLASHES (2024)

Another Humphrey Bogart bio-doc, but the first to come out since all the principals in his life have died.  (Other than his two children, but the oldest only seven when Bogart died.)  So, it’s disappointing to get boilerplate cable-ready fare that adds little to what we’ve seen before.  Some new home-movie clips hardly revelatory and narration from an uncomfortable Bogie impersonator reading from a purported memoir feels chintzy.  All in all, a missed opportunity to get under the surface of a difficult man often voted Hollywood’s greatest star.  Perhaps it has some use as a primer for movie mavens born this century; but would they watch?  The only fresh insight comes from silent star/film essayist Louise Brooks who rightly points to Bogart’s soul-flaying work in Nicholas Ray’s IN A LONELY PLACE/’50 as a possibly revealing personal portrait.*  Elsewise, this is a largely hagiographic work.  No surprise with his still living son on as exec-producer for co-writer/director Kathryn Ferguson.  But why not a fresh look at Bogart’s first try at Hollywood?  His prison/baseball pic with Spencer Tracy for John Ford a delightful nut-job of work.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/07/up-river-1930.html)  Or an honest appraisal of how stagey his breakthru in THE PETRIFIED FOREST now looks.  (Or for that matter, how narrow his range was and how he couldn’t quite hide his displeasure at having to play second fiddle to Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis & James Cagney in his first decade at Warners.)  Fine as a DVD extra, but don’t expect much more.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Take your pic of our Bogie pic posts (the main iconic titles start in 1940) by typing Bogart in the MAKSQUIBS Search box.  (Upper left corner on the Main Site.)  But first check out the truly unnerving IN A LONELY PLACE.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/07/in-lonely-place-1950.html

ANYTHING GOES (2021)

Fourth time’s not the charm for this Cole Porter musical.  A 1934 hit on stage at the height of the Great Depression, it’s one of the few shows from that era to be successfully revived on B’way (twice).  But it's always been a dud on screen.  Sadly, that includes this spiffy HD theatrical presentation of the 2011 staging.  (The 2021 date above presumably refers to its home release.)  In Hollywood, Paramount’s 1936 version (Bing Crosby & original stage star Ethel Merman) stays closest to the original book (Boy Chases Engaged Society Girl onto an ocean liner after telling all to the Lovesick Evangelist who’s also sailing.  Evangelist swallows her pride & helps Boy Get Girl).  But it dropped all but two songs from Porter’s score, and interpolated others from lesser tunesmiths.  A tv ‘spectacular' (Merman, Frank Sinatra, Bert Lahr) was cruelly chopped to under an hour.  Back at Paramount in ‘56, Crosby tried again; this time with Donald O’Connor aboard to share a couple of the original songs and the naughty title.  No one involved ever worked at Paramount again.  Keep in mind, Porter’s original score produced an astonishing four-and-a-half American Songbook Standards (I Get a Kick Out of You; Anything Goes; All Through the Night; You’re the Top and Blow, Gabriel, Blow).  Here, at least, the interpolations are real Porter (De’Lovely; Easy to Love; Friendship; Goodbye Little Dream, Goodbye).  But if the plot changes aren’t ruinous, they’re also not particularly funny.  (Or maybe they just die on-stage because this is one of those ‘captured live’ hybrids that only seem to work for opera, solo shows and boxing.)  Leading lady Sutton Foster comes across on screen as efficient rather than inspired, but taps to beat the band and her ‘Numbos’ all land.  Everyone else, not so much.  Though a British dope (Haydn Oakley?) who turns out to be a ‘right guy’ is a pleasant surprise.  And we get British song & dance man Robert Lindsay, in a role written originally for Victor Moore, picking up for vacationing Joel Grey.  A slight, but noticeable improvement.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Porter didn’t have a lot of luck with film adaptations.  And two bio pics (NIGHT AND DAY; DE’LOVELY) are crap.  One that’s actually an improvement on the stage show is SILK STOCKINGS/’57.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/silk-stockings-1957.html

CHALLENGERS (2024)

As shallow and over-produced as a Tony Scott film from the ‘90s, the big difference being that ultra-sophisticated director Luca Guadagnino knows he’s playing in the kiddie pool.  And that helps make this tennis-oriented DESIGN FOR LIVING good fun most of the way.  (Till a confused ending past the 2 hour mark floods the engine.)   Mike Faist (pale, fit) and Josh O’Connor (less pale, equally fit) go from college to early 30s most convincing as BFFs and rivals on and off the tennis court, gaining and losing favor with fellow racketeer Zendaya whose knee injury will chase her from player to coach.  But which boy will she choose?  Especially after the one she married & mentored to fame & glory gets stuck in a late career slump while their former pal, who’s barely hanging on, has his rival’s number where it counts.  That’s about it for plot.  (Unlike DFL there’s no safe outsider to take our mistress away from both guys which leaves the storyline feeling thinner than the stars’ waistlines.)  Scripter Justin Kuritzkes comes up with a few twists you don’t see coming, but Guadagnino doesn’t trust them and thinks he has to cover with a jumping timeline and too many odd POV shots.  (What?  You didn’t know tennis balls had POVs?)  And the sex plays like a feature layout for Men’s Health when it needs Euro-frankness rather than Hollywood cover-up.  But pretty good fun if watched with a bit of tolerance.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  You can see what’s missing here in THE DREAMERS/’03, one of Bernardo Bertolucci's best late works.  OR:  The Lubitsch/Hecht highly-hetero take on Nöel Coward’s DESIGN FOR LIVING/’33.  (Sex sequential rather than contiguous.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/03/dreamers-2003.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/01/design-for-living-1933.html

A STRANGE ADVENTURE (1956)

The writing was already on the wall at Republic Pictures by the time this B-pic went into production.  Even its generic title seems to admit defeat in advance.  With television making their bread & butter Westerns & serials non-starters, and company head Herbert J. Yates unwilling to ‘go big’ as he occasionally did with name stars & directors just a few years back, the studio spiraled down to nothing-burger pics like this little suspenser that might have worked with heavy film noir flair and a cast of threateningly sexy up-and-comers.  Instead, we might be watching a double episode of 77 SUNSET STRIP as boy-next-door type Ben Cooper pines for tenant Maria English at his mom’s L.A. rental property, unaware the girl’s no Hollywood hopeful, but amoral moll to a pair of con men (Jan Merlin; Nick Adams) setting up an armored-car robbery.  They all wind up snowed in for the winter at an isolated forest weather station and try to wait it out while police activity cools down before violent cabin fever heats up.  It’s THE DESPERATE HOURS meets SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS!  Well, not really.  What it really is is lousy.  Visually flat, with cabin interiors staged as if they were radio dramas (soundstage exteriors even worse) and missing those cool side street L.A. locations seen all thru the first act.  Workhorse Western specialist director William Witney, always at his best when there’s a horse around, phones it in.  Which leaves Nick Adams to steal focus with a cold in his nose that doesn’t let up the whole time they’re snowed in.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The same year, Witney showed what he could do with a real script, real characters (plus horses!) at Republic in the superb STRANGER AT MY DOOR/’56.  Loaded with similarities to ADVENTURE, I doubt it got much more commercial traction.  Pity.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/10/stranger-at-my-door-1956.html

MAN OF ARAN (1934)

Thought those colonizing ‘spice’ miners in DUNE faced difficult living conditions?  They wouldn’t last a day by the tempest-tossed cliffs, wind-swept rock surface & oceanic fury of the Aran Isles off the Irish coast.  And this a real place!  Or nearly so.  That’s because pioneering documentarian Robert J. Flaherty was more interested in fancy than fact; catching legendary lifestyles whether or not they were still being practiced.  Even casting his players on looks (his screen families assembled from a pool of locals) and then reenacting events using multiple takes & angles as needed to get his poetic ideas about ethnography across.  Globetrotting the world to find the next tribal customs to capture for the big screen, his films magnificent fabrications.  Closer to studio films, but made on actual locations.  Holding out for a truthful essence of some iconic civilization, not what you’d find in a modern documentary.  From ‘Eskimo’  to Pacific Islander to all-American boyhood in the swamps of Louisiana, Flaherty didn’t catch reality, but curated it.  And this look at incredibly harsh living conditions and family life on one of the Aran Islands is probably the best introduction to his style; whatever you choose to call it.*  Whether struggling to bring in boats without crashing onto rocks, hauling rare soil & seaweed up the cliff-side to create plots to grow potatoes on the unyielding rock surface, or harpooning sharks the size of small whales for oil, the  film is a stunning series of terrific set pieces.  A mix of bravery (by the locals) and artistry (by Flaherty & crew).  Lots of red filtering on the stunning cinematography (Arthur Miller did no better for John Ford) and some fascinating rapide montage for sea hunts and crash landings.  You’ll see why it’s now considered a period piece and still controversial (the customs covered were all decades in the past when this was made), but still riveting, physically gorgeous, awe-inspiring stuff.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Call Flaherty ‘Father of the Illegitimate Documentary.’