MICKEY 17 (2025)

Preternaturally gifted Korean writer/director Bong Joon Ho, now regularly working in English, has a great story to work with here . . . if only he’d stick with it.  Starting in classic fashion, a pair of lowlifes (Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun) go on the run from murderous loan sharks, getting out of town (make that out of the solar system) by grabbing the first interplanetary flight opportunity colonizing a frozen planet.  Yeun’s got a connection while Pattinson signs up to be a human guinea pig, an ‘Expendable,’ placing himself in harm’s way to test the waters (literally), experimental meds, air quality, local critters, and, should he die, getting ‘reprinted’ (DNA, memories and all) via 3-D techniques; a freshly made perfect copy, ready to die again.  But a problem arises when he’s left for dead, but recovers to return to the space station on his new planet after a replacement Mickey (that’d be Mickey 18) has already been cloned & printed.  Yikes!  Endless possibilities here for moral & physical doppelgänger dilemmas: farce² or metaphysical morals & mortality.*  But the film is stopped in its tracks by a cast playing so broadly, the gags stick in their throats; and with Pattinson also putting on a ‘funny’ voice.  (Dennis Weaver from GUNSMOKE?)  While Mark Ruffalo, the pseudo-religious visionary villain trying to start a brave new world tilts Trumpian.  But an even bigger problem finds Bong Joon Ho moving past endemic complications for overworked anti-colonizing allegory with an Earthling crew cleansing ‘their’ planet of its indigenous population of ‘monsters’ who turn out to be nice enough ‘roly-poly’ beasts when respected/left alone, only acting like  interstellar Comanche warriors when attacked by the likes of . . . us.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Both AVATARs/’09; ‘22 work the same colonizers vs indigenous storyline.  But give MICKEY credit for more jokes and an hour’s less running time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *You’ve no doubt noted how the prologue mirrors Billy Wilder’s SOME LIKE IT HOT/’59 while that extra Mickey gumming up the works pulls from Dumas’s twin princes in THE IRON MASK/’29, usually done as a romantic swashbuckler.  (In 1998, Leonardo DiCaprio played it.)

NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER (1980)

They skimp on subway graffiti, but everything else is in place on this tip-top template of grit & grunge ‘80s NYC style, the Daily News FORD TO CITY; DROP DEAD era of near bankruptcy and soaring violence.  You know, the good old days.  TV director Robert Butler, stepped in when journeyman hack Sidney J. Furie ankled*, while leads James Brolin and Cliff Gorman only feel like they’re stepping in for starrier names.  (Cheaper than the A-team, say Kurt Russell and Al Pacino, but here, the B-team probably a better choice, lesser stars & director offering a useful lack of polish and upping the film’s ‘gonzo’ factor.)  Brolin, ex-cop/truck driver, gives chase (by foot/by car; pedestrians be damned) when his teenage daughter is mistakenly kidnapped by Gorman who thinks he’s grabbed a real estate developer’s kid.  And we’re off; never stopping to look back on a race thru parks, avenues & down & dirty city streets.  (Bonus points for getting Manhattan logistics right for a change.)   Local obstacles include traffic jams; street gangs; crashes; even the police.  One in particular, Dan Hedaya, has a beef to settle with Brolin.  Only top detective Richard S. Castellano (unbeatable here) understanding what’s going on.  This mid-range actioner deserves its cult following.  Find it on-line now in halfway decent prints; or wait for the upgrade coming from Kino Lorber, as detailed in the LINK below.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  After the unintentionally ironically named ‘Fun City’ of the ‘60s, ‘70s Manhattan  ran on fumes, with films like ACROSS 110TH STREET/’72 and THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE/’74 pointing the way toward ‘80s Manhattan Armageddon.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/04/across-110th-street-1972.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/taking-of-pelham-one-two-three-1974.html  

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: More on JUGGLER’s difficult path to restoration and distribution.  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/movies/night-of-the-juggler.html

REPULSION (1965)

With over a dozen films and international stardom already in hand, 22-yr-old Catherine Deneuve made her first (and best*) English-language film in this psychological horror that gave Roman Polanski something of a mainstream hit in only his second feature.  Still extremely effective, though it does wear its cinematic influences on its sleeve (mostly Hitchcock & Cocteau*), the film triumphs over a tiny budget with imaginative stylings and unwavering focus.  (Extra points to cinematographer Gilbert Taylor.)  Deneuve plays an introverted manicurist at a fashionable beauty salon, her impassive face betraying diffidence toward job, clients, fellow workers & boss.  Something that might not pass notice if she weren’t such a blonde beauty.  It’s the unspoken subject underneath how people respond to her, elsewise her downward spiral into depression, delusion & violent fantasy might have been caught before it was too late.  Sharing a flat with her older sister, her mental skid is already on track when she’s left alone for over a week while sister & boyfriend take off on vacation.  By the time they return, job, lives and a ready to cook rabbit will have gone ‘off’ in horrifying ways.  Immaculate filmmaking, with Polanski’s uncanny shot choice putting tricky psychological ideas across, without forgetting to unsettle us.  Often scaring the bejesus out of us thru shock cuts, shock pans, shock reveals, angles and smash sound edits.  Unnerving stuff that sticks with you.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *While few actresses chose better directors on their home turf, Deneuve didn’t seem to know the score in either directors or co-stars on her mediocre attempts in Hollywood.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Though easy to see ROSEMARY’S BABY/’68 appearing after a three-year gestation, Polanski more closely revisited this terrain, now playing the lead and speaking entirely with his own fully mature voice, in THE TENANT/’76.  His still underrated, darkly comic absurd Kafkaesque tragedy.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-tenant-1976.html

LE PARADIS / THE LOST BOYS (2023)

That poster, along with the English-language title change, something of a come-on to sell this debut feature by French co-writer/director Zeno Graton as yet another ‘coming-of-gay’ tale.  Nearly a genre of its own these days.  But the story really isn’t going there, not that queer romance between two juvie jailees isn’t an important part of the story, it’s just not the main one.  Nor a sexual revelation to either.  The main motivating factors have more to do with developing minds & mores, immature judgement still short on self-control, unable to handle the pressure of a countdown to freedom.  On his way to early conditional parole, assuming he can keep his impulsive troublemaking under wraps, is Joe (Khalil Ben Gharbia), a 17-yr-old arab kid with a history of breaking out.  He’s started a prison affair with Julien De Saint Jean’s William, a tougher tattooed type, newly returned to juvie jail after a stint at ‘The Castle,’ grown up prison, where the life is considerably rougher.  The crisis that develops spills over after Joe, who’s already destroyed the relationship by not telling William of his imminent release, is unexpectedly returned for an extra three months.  Graton has a great subject here, showing the ways & rules of this fascinating, even nurturing facility for wayward youth.  A place that might indeed look like its original title (PARADISE) to any incarcerated Stateside Juvie.  (If you’ve ever seen the difference between a French school cafeteria lunch and an American one, you’ll get the idea.)  Such caring, concern & resources.  Is it accurate?  Graton errs in making the young inmates (as well as the supportive staff) so fit & handsome, you could do a fashion magazine layout with this crew.  But he doesn’t overdo much else and dramatically knows how to pull off a neat narrative ellipsis.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For a worst case scenario of an Arab kid not in the juvenile jail system, Jacques Audiard’s startling UN PROPHÈTE / A PROPHET/’09 with a career-making debut from Tahar Rahim.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/un-prophete-prophet-2009.html

LILO & STITCH (2025)

Twenty-three years after the original L&S, last of the great hand-drawn Disney animated features, it’d be a kick to call this new version best of the current cycle of Live-Action Disney remakes.*  But as I’ve avoided so many of them, let’s confine ourselves to noting how well this turned out.  LILO 2002, a final success in old-school Disney manner & technique (style, character, musical integration, story construction), grew to mega-hit status after its initial release (sequel, series, now this reboot).  So give Disney credit for hanging in there and then for taking a leap of faith entrusting it to Dean Fleischer Camp, a barely tested director of sublime whimsy & oddball charm as seen in MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON/’21.  Apparently unfazed by the staggering difference in budget and resources, he largely retains story and characters.  (Orphaned Hawaiian sisters with a fifteen year age gap are on the verge of being split up by child welfare services when Stitch, an experimental space alien passing as an Earthly pooch, brings complete anarchy to their lives . . . and to the island.)   Camp handling all the hard technical stuff, character driven mayhem and family-friendly morals beautifully.  The guy’s a natural.  (Standout casting, too, especially Billy Magnussen's hilarious alien Earth expert.)  Most missed from the older film, in spite of 2025's longer running time, is far more native Hawaiian music & traditional dance woven into the plot.  But then, who’s stopping you from watching that one, too!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, the original L&S and MARCEL.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/02/marcel-shell-with-shoes-on-2021.html      https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/07/lilo-stitch-2002.html

SCREWY THOGHT OF THE DAY:  *Just how Live-Action are these films?  Most so loaded with CGI processing, they’re simply animation by another name.

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987)

Leave it to those Cannon Film boys,, schlock producers Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan, here in their ‘80s heyday, to see STAR WARS/’77 in a D.C. comic-book franchise.  From its bold Bill Conti opening fanfare, pure John Williams copyright infringement; to fascist pageantry laced with STAR WARS design elements in sets & costume (check out those glossy black helmets); to a demonstration of deadly force by gesture, you know where you are.  Even a Sorceress in white, held in electronic bondage while a team of space soldiers are sent to recover ‘the key’ so chief villain Skeletor (Frank Langella hamming it up nicely) can rule the universe.  Luckily, their space portal takes them all the way to a double-feature: BACK TO THE FUTURE/’85!  Yep, Globus/Golan have combined the two biggest franchises of the day.  That’s young Courtney Cox as Earthly ingenue alongside boyfriend Robert Duncan McNeill.  But what of the two good guys & one gal, plus freakish goblin?  Busy adjusting to Earth’s ways before helping those two kids who just happened upon ‘the key.’  As ‘He-Man,’ Dolph Lundgren sports a great shag haircut, the jawbone of an ass, the largest breasts on screen, and acting chops that make Cox & McNeill look RADA-trained.  All under first time director Gary Goddard who seems befuddled by so many moving parts.  That’ll teach those Cannon boys to put up a decent budget.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Learn how indie producer Roger Corman made a million bucks by not releasing his lowball try at the genre in the sadder-but-wiser tru-life Tale of Hollywood DOOMED: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ROGER CORMAN'S THE FANTASTIC FOUR/’15.

AVATAR: THE WAY OF THE WATER (2022)

The first of four (!) planned sequels to the original James Cameron CGI-heavy blockbuster offers more (and more and more and more) of the same: super-sleek indigenous planet peoples (this time forest dwellers and coastal paradise types) compelled to join forces to fight off a new round of genocidal attacks by Earthly invaders from the sky out to steal a fountain of youth formula.  Think Amazon tribes & Tahitian natives vs arrogant/powerful East Coast/West Coast raiders in another intergalactic ‘Bad’ Cowboys/ ‘Good’ Indians action adventure.  And since 2009's AVATAR became the all-time top grosser, hard to gainsay a sequel.  This rising to #3 on that list*, though with hardly an original idea in a self-indulgent 3+ hour running time.  (Half an hour longer than the first film.)  Unexpectedly, establishing shots of landscapes and characters look unconvincing.  (Or does if you're not hooked on video games.)  Like a Robert Zemeckis film where improved pure CGI and motion capture techniques reduce rather than improve identification.  Fortunately, this problem soon corrected, unfortunately, not much else is.  And so many borrowed tropes from classic fable and fantasy.*  (The lion with a throne in his paw a real lulu, but you choose your favorite.)  The final battle, when we finally get there, is impressive in its windy manner, but the way Cameron presents his tarnished ideas as fresh discovery comes off as more self-delusional than ever.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Third place on the all-time box-office list nothing to sneeze at!  But even without adjusting for inflation, it’s also a 20% drop from the first film.  Perhaps the underwater heros of the film aren’t the only ones running out of oxygen.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/07/avatar-2009.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *The film so impersonal, you keep looking for a little sign on the wall attributing direction & story not to James Cameron but to ‘School of James Cameron.’

SUNDAY BEST (2025)

Rather than the expected hagiographic look at tv variety show host Ed Sullivan, a fixture on CBS Sunday nights for twenty-five years (late-‘40s thru early ‘70s), documentarian Sacha Jenkins takes a hagiographic look at Sullivan’s unprecedented progressive booking policy on largely excluded Black talent: ex-Vaudevillians up to The Jackson Five.  With generous clips of singers and dancers, the film touches on politics and representation as Sullivan puts his neck out where others did not.  Lots of wonderful stuff in here, some still surprising (Sammy Davis Jr in a duet with White smoothie Tony Martin?), Nat King Cole showing his jazzy piano chops.  But why no Moms Mabley?  Moms told the single funniest, dirtiest joke even heard on broadcast tv on a 1969 Sullivan show.  (How’d she get away with it?)  Sullivan’s fight to get Harry Belafonte on in spite of their political differences.  (Likely, Belafonte wasn’t held back by CBS execs for Leftist leanings, but for being the sexiest man ever put on the tube, period.)  Irresistible stuff.  But Jenkins, or whomever finished the cut (Jenkins died before this aired) also tries to cram in the usual personal details and check off some important White guests (The Beatles; Elvis; Original B’way Casts), which only points up how much else is missing.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Jenkins misses two important points.  ONE: Right thru the 1950s, whenever you saw Blacks on tv, you knew you were seeing the absolute best. How else could they have made it on the air in that environment?  Now, check out any police or medical procedural to confirm that Black actors can be just as bad as anyone.  The other missed point is how important Sullivan was as a sort of ANTI-algorithm.  In addition to giving, say Elvis or The Beatles, an early and a late slot, the rest of the really big show would be filled with things completely different which you would have to sit thru.  So, you might accidently bump into something wonderful, something you kinda liked, even if it wasn’t cool to say so out loud.  A modern ballet company, an opera aria (with the famous Sullivan band snare drum adding a beat for extra emphasis), a foreign nightclub act, Yugoslavian tumblers, plate spinners.  Plate spinners!  Good Lord, two whole generations unaware of Plate Spinners!

DOUBLE-BILL:  *A DIY double-bill is waiting on youtube by adding the name of your favorite (see poster) alongside Sullivan and watching the videos pop up.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991)

Among B’way cognoscente & critics of the time, the general consensus was that the Best Musical of the 1991 - 1992 season wasn’t one of the four Tony-nominated shows that year (CRAZY FOR YOU; FALSETTOS; FIVE GUYS NAMED JOE; JELLY’S LAST JAM), but BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, the animated film playing on the silver screen down the block.  And while a revisit shows the film holding up quite nicely, thank you, it also reveals B&B as less a standard, old-fashioned 1940s-style  musical (like THE LITTLE MERMAID/’89, the previous Alan Menken/Howard Ashman animated project for Disney), but something even more unfashionable in current Pop culture: operetta.  Yet the film was both blockbuster and cultural landmark, making animated features not just respectable (Oscar, Oscar®), but suddenly something adults could see on a date without the kids.  How’d that happen?  Our vote goes to composer Alan Menken, a musical magpie of borrowed genius, he seemed to know exactly what musical genre was needed to match any property.  1960s Brill Building pastiche for LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS/’86; bubbly ‘50s ballads a la Frank Loesser or Richard Adler for LITTLE MERMAID; and here, 1920s operetta stylings fellow musical magpies Rudolph Friml & Sigmund Romberg might have composed.  Especially easy to hear in big group numbers.  So, by the time Angela Lansbury lands the title track, we’re all goners.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:   Co-directors Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise never made another feature after ATLANTIS/’01 tanked.  Hollywood an unforgiving place, even with B&B in your background.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/08/atlantis-lost-empire-2001.html