THE JAZZ SINGER (1952)

No BlackFace in this remake of the 1927 Al Jolson original.  So, progress?*  Alas, not much else improved.  No doubt someone at Warner Bros. thought popular nightclub entertainer Danny Thomas could carry a film.  After this, Thomas never tried again.  Now best known for his charity hospital (daughter Marlo still fronting donations), Thomas was a pleasant rather than riveting presence, just the thing for tv.  (Even more successful as a producer.)  Monologist rather than jokester, his strength as a performer something the film fails to get across.  So, we’re left with the old story of a Jewish Cantor Father assuming his son will carry on the family tradition at Sinai Temple rather than go into showbiz.  Tempting songster Peggy Lee’s around to encourage his ambitions, but Danny backtracks when he doesn’t make a quick breakthru.  Not much director Michael Curtiz can do with this one; Thomas changing his direction with the wind, Peggy Lee disconnected from the main action (backstage insider stuff completely outgunned by next year’s THE BANDWAGON/’53), while attempts to make the plot less melodramatic only thins out the atmosphere & texture, the two main things going for the 1927 original.  That and Jolson’s raw, almost disturbing, force.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  In a parallel Father/Son story, the 1927 original (considered Hollywood’s first Talkie) was directed by Alan  Crosland, father of this film’s editor, Alan Crosland Jr.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *BlackFace is back, baby!  For all you masochists, BlackFace returned (less black than fleshly gray & clownish) when Jerry Lewis remade JAZZ SINGER for a 1959 live tv production ‘in Living Color.’  Real deal Yiddish theater star Molly Picon brings verisimilitude as Momma and Eduard Franz repeats from here as ‘Poppa.’   And if you think Jerry doesn’t take over shabbos services while still wearing traces of that clown-face makeup, you’ve got another think coming.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBe0qy5k8vk

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Nothing we’d call ‘jazz’ found in any version of this story.  The term has narrowed over the decades; but who’d go to see THE SYNCOPATED ‘POP’ SINGER?   (A perfect title for the Neil Diamond/Laurence Olivier iteration of 1980.)  ALSO:  A real Jazz Singer story might be found in the loving relationship between American Songbook composer Harold Arlen and his father, longtime Cantor at Temple Adath Yeshurun in Syracuse, NY, who used to sneak his son’s tunes into services.  Imagine hearing bits of ‘Blues In The Night’ in the midst of his cantorial melismas.

CUT BANK (2014)

Passable attempt at reviving a revival by writer Roberto Patino and director Matt Shakman, each with recent top-tier streaming credits (GAME OF THRONES, WESTWORLD,  WANDAVISION, THE GREAT), here showing more affection than aptitude for the 1980s Neo-Noir revival they’re trying to hollanderize.  Specific target, as usual, J. & E. Coen’s BLOOD SIMPLE/’84; but less a reasonable facsimile thereof than stylistic homage, like a finals project at UCLA Film School.  Starting with that mysterious title, actually the name of an actual town in Montana where Liam Hemsworth (distracting tall & handsome) is part of a convoluted plot to fake a mail carrier’s murder and split town with the reward & his girl.  But too many cogs spoil the loot and soon real bodies start to pile up.  Some of this is faintly amusing, some just dumb (especially the women's largely reactive roles, with misogyny displacing misanthropy).  Console yourself with the clever casting choices: Billy Bob Thornton now playing out-of-the-loop Dad instead of creepy town weirdo, that’s taxidermist Michael Stuhlbarg.  And if John Malkovich is a bit dried out as the only law in town, it’s sweet to see Bruce Dern, the foul-tempered, deceitful mailman who plays fake victim in the plan, nail the same role he’d have taken in 1984.  Dern no mere acting legend, he’s fucking immortal.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Seen BLOOD SIMPLE?  A couple of years later, John Frankenheimer pulled off a Neo-Noir no one thinks of any more: 52 PICKUP/’86.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/04/52-pickup-1986.html

MILLENNIUM ACTRESS / SENNEN JOYÛ (2001)

The early death of ‘millennial’ anime-tor Satoshi Kon (at just 46 in 2010) seems an even greater tragedy (an artistic tragedy) after seeing this remarkable film; possibly his finest.  Its story, advanced in an unusual narrative form, vibrantly visualized and ‘meta’ to the max, using a particularly fluid technique & superior characterization (as drawn & written, with nothing prefabricated) a perfect fit for telling the life and career of studio actress Chiyoko Fujiwarara just as her old studio is being torn down.  A young cameraman and an older interviewer are out to get a rare one-on-one chat and surprised to find the reclusive actress (older, but still beautiful) so open & welcoming.  And here’s where Satoshi Kon (who also co-wrote) shows his special qualities as the contemporary reporters come along inside her memories.  At times, watching from the side, other times participating in the action.  The older reporter having been a besotted intern/assistant on her post-war projects, he’s either working on-set or playing a part in front of the camera (sometimes as he appears now, sometimes as he was then)  Underneath the reporters’ hunt for her personality, Chiyoko also on the hunt for a man she helped cheat death when he was being hunted by the military.  The two promising to meet again after the war; a promise symbolized by a key that comes & goes throughout the course of her working life.  Told without definite lines of division between what she’s living and what’s she’s shooting on film.  Often stepping in and out of the narrative continuity in a fashion that puts the SpiderVerse (and its constant confusion) to shame.  Wonderfully uplifting as pure anime (Satoshi had the best color palette in the biz), the film’s also not afraid to be wonderfully sad in the telling.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Young anme master Makoto Shinkai picked up the gauntlet from Satoshi Kon, see YOUR NAME/’16.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/kimi-no-na-wa-your-name-2016.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Satoshi Kon loved to quote from classic Japanese cinema, here Akira Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD/’57 shows; and isn’t that Kenji Mizoguchi’s  THE LIFE OF OHARU/’52?

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988)

Opening with an apologia (from the Nikos Kazantzakis novel?) to anticipate accusations of blasphemy, we’re told upfront this is not a tale of the Christ from one of the Gospels.  But it is: The Gospel of Martin.  And Scorsese acolytes have long bent over backward to praise the film and spread the Not-So-Good-News: Jesus not only sacrificed his life to save mankind, he also gave up a putative home life as suburban dad with wife, kids & carpentry business.  (Or at least thought of doing so, a la  Ambrose Bierce.*)  That’s the bit that got Scorsese in advance trouble with the usual suspects (Conservative/Evangelical Christians who hadn’t seen the film . . . and never would), but St. Martin didn’t help his cause with barriers that kept ‘friendlies’ away, too.  Jesus as expert crucifix carpenter (such irony; and think of the shipping fees from Nazareth); Harvey Keitel’s Judas as henna-haired BFF; scripter Paul Schrader’s streetwise locutions (plus not a single line of dialogue given to a person of color . . . in the MidEast?); and in Willem Defoe a Christ more Scandanavian in looks than Max von Sydow’s Jesus in George Stevens’ dismal THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD/’65.  (At 2'44" this one only seems as long as TGSET’s full-cut of 4'20".)  Oddest of all, with all the echoes of rough-hewn religious bio-pics from Roberto Rossellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini*, Scorsese’s endeavor, doesn’t feel so different from those mercenary, commercially-oriented Hollywood epics; and the religiosity even worse.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Get a lot closer to the subject with Monty Python’s THE LIFE OF BRIAN/’79.  Really.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/05/life-of-brian-1979.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Specifically, Bierce’s short story ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,’ appearing here as An Occurrence at Golgotha Heights.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:   *But the poster following a different director; Otto Preminger from his classic Saul Bass period.

LES CHOSES DE LA VIE / THE THINGS OF LIFE (1970)

Well received breakthru toward what might be called ‘Quotidian Bourgeoisie’ came to quintessential French director Claude Sautet midway along his stingy fourteen film output.  Told in non-chronological flashbacks after a car crash has stopped forward momentum on a life’s worth of decisions (personal & business/public & private) for middle-aged builder & family man Michel Piccoli, that French Everyman of moral indecision.  As a builder, he and his longtime partner are up against opposing plans by their backers while at home (if indeed Piccoli currently has one) he’s promised younger lover Romy Schneider they’re starting anew in a fresh city, but has also promised grown son Gérard Lartigau (hard to imagine as Piccoli’s son) to join him and his girlfriend for two weeks at the old family vacation home . . . with ex-wife attending.  (How amicable are these two?)  Well done and well cast, but whatever was advanced about this in 1970, now looks pretty common.  The film far surpassed by every Sautet film made after it.  (At least, the one’s I’ve seen!)  The list an extraordinarily sophisticated group of original ideas lifting the lid on that Quotidian Bourgeoisie so often looked down upon by French intellectuals & cineasts.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Look for them here: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/search?q=sautet; along with a special appearance from his debut pic.  New to Sautet?  Plump for CLASSE TOUS RISQUES / THE BIG RISK/’60 and UN MAUVAIS FILS / A BAD SON/’80.

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS (1986)

Simple and effective, even when it stumbles, this nuclear cautionary uses hand-drawn animation with a flat palette to tell its story of ‘little’ people calmly living thru quiet desperation in the aftermath of world destruction from an atomic bombing.  Our retired couple (voiced by Peggy Ashcroft and John Mills, they’re the entire cast), long moved from the city to a small house in the country.  With the coming crisis announced on radio and in the paper, the husband attempts to follow all the advise in official government pamphlets (a step and a half beyond the old ‘duck and cover’ instructions) and hold out till service is restored.  Totally on their own, without a soul to turn to, media to inform, power or water; between diminishing resources and advancing radiation poisoning, the outcome is inevitable.  Director Jimmy T. Murakami changes gears during some dream sequences with a more fluid/fantastic style, but mostly keeps things to a Lake District/watercolor æsthetic that turns gray & empty as time passes.  The film's main trouble stems from the ingrained British condescension toward the unsophisticated middle-class, presumably coming from writer Raymond Briggs, who makes the husband a docile follower of rules, and the wife not so much down to earth as slow on the uptake.  (Of course, thinking that a nice cup of tea can fix anything isn’t too far off the mark!)  More interesting today as a socio-political take on the times (trendy enough to get David Bowie to do the title track) than as film, but it gets by.

DOUBLE-BILL:  For real artistic engagement with the folly of war and destruction in animated form from this period, there’s the unique style of cartoonist/animator R.O. Blechman with a resoundingly successful version of Igor Stravinsky’s THE SOLDIER’S TALE/’84 (Max von Sydow, Andre Gregory, Serge Gainsbourg among the vocal cast) which (alas) only seems to be currently available in a version cut in running time and aspect ratio.

DEEP IMPACT (1998)

SUMMER: 1998.  OMG!  There’s a gigantic meteor headed toward Earth!  Look again . . . SUMMER: 1998.  OMG!  There are TWO gigantic meteors headed toward Earth!  ARMAGEDDON, ‘Pop’ flavored extinction from Michael Bay thru Touchstone/Disney* while director Mimi Leder for Paramount/Dreamworks puts out this more sober-sided global finale.  JAWS producers David Brown & Richard Zanuck take first-position credit, even against Steven Spielberg at Dreamworks.  It certainly doesn’t feel like a Spielberg movie*; nor for that matter Brown/Zanuck.  What it very much does feel like is a Sherry Lansing-era Paramount production, a paradigm (or is it parody?) of when she was Head of Production.  Uncredited among the film’s producers, the Lansing touch of highly polished secondhand goods, faux serious tropes (here, mostly ON THE BEACH/’59) and over-qualified talent given little to do, are all in place.  Old pros to lend unearned gravitas; up-and-comers lucky to get ten lines of dialogue.  No one actively disgracing themselves (other than composer James Horner and Téa Leoni’s hair), and the 1998 state-of-the-art special effects have their moments, but the film has almost no personality.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Compare and contrast with ARMAGEDDON.  (not seen here)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Except for the use of Spielberg mentored director Mimi Leder who briefly held a niche as the rare woman who crept onto the Hollywood short lists to helm action fare after a big Spielberg launch.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  People have varied opinions on what’s improved and what’s been lost with the move away from ‘practical’ effects and the rise of CGI.  But no one doubts the improvement in Hollywood pizza since the ‘90s.  Check out that disaster Charles Martin Smith is eating in the prologue.

ELEANOR THE GREAT (2025)

Venturesome actress Scarlett Johansson had her own ‘but what I really want to do is direct’ epiphany in this modest One-Little-Lie-and-How-It-Grew story; a sort of Senior Citizen DEAR EVAN HANSEN: Holocaust Edition.  94-yr-old June Squibb stars as the 94-yr-old fabulist who moves into her daughter’s Upper West Side Manhattan apartment after the death of her Holocaust survivor BFF/roommate.  Demanding, feisty, always kidding-on-the-square, her over-tasked daughter signs her up for JCC activities she ducks out on.  Instead, wandering down the hall and into a Holocaust Survivor support group.  Embarrassed to be there on false pretenses, she impulsively relates the real-life experiences of her late roommate as her own.  Yikes!  Worse, an eager-beaver journalism student (Erin Kellyman) gloms onto these purloined memories for a school project.  Worse², the kid’s a grief-stricken nepo-journalist.  (Dad Chiwetel Ejiofor, yet to grieve for his wife, the girl’s late mother, is a tv commentator.)  And before you can say Jacob Rabinsky or belated Bat Mitzvah*, our faux Concentration Camp pixie centenarian is getting press coverage, tv attention and general kvelling.  Naturally, this house of cards must collapse, but not before the distasteful set up leaves a foul taste in your mouth.  (Those sit-com comeback lines for Squibb from scripter Tory Kamen are the least of it.)  And as for Johansson behind the camera?  The expected over-reliance on close-ups to do the work.  (One measly piece of narrative info conveyed visually when Squibb sits alone on a beach bench.)  Still, kudos to Johansson for landing one of these directing debuts without having to also star in it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  In our continuing survey of food and cooking gaffes on film, note the poorly stocked section of shelf-stable pickles Squibb complains about to show her ‘fearless’ character.  No one noticed they’re loaded with jars of Ba-Tampte Pickles, traditional salt-cured Kosher varieties that must be kept under refrigeration.  Now that would be something to complain about!  ‘Are you trying to kill me and my friend with your spoiled pickles?’

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *For a late in life adult Bar Mitzvah, check out one of the sweetest of all DICK VAN DYKE SHOW episodes: BUDDY SORRELL: MAN AND BOY/’66.

THIS IS MY DESIRE / EYIMOFE (2020)

Debut film of twin Nigerian brothers Arie & Chuko Esiri* is fittingly a twinned story; fraternal not identical.  DESIRE both a portrait of two disparate personalities and of Lagos, Nigeria.  The first, and more original of the two, is something of a Book of Job update about a single forty-something man,,a naturally gifted electrician  trying to get everything together for his move to Spain.  But a series of tragedies and losses take away almost everything he has: sister & nephews, inheritance, job, cash reserves, all of it playing out in a slow motion series of unforced errors.  But it’s his demeanor (calmly accepting, stoic; with one exception) and the way he manages to be down & out yet holding his head above water that sustain interest; along with the portrait of life in Lagos.  If this man can carry on . . .   The second story navigates the fast swings from favor to failure of a younger woman, a bartender with fashion model looks, who longs to run a dress-shop in Italy, but has nothing but trouble trying to put together the forms needed to travel out of the country and restart her life in a more promising fashion.  It’s those good looks that lead to the troubles, constantly proposed for dates, but not proposals.  Except from the guy she doesn’t want: her landlord.  What about that White American with a crush and a hefty wallet?  Meanwhile, her younger sister has tied herself up in an iffy pregnancy and a baby-selling racket.  Here, the twins preference for indirection/indication rather than clarity leaves a few too many unfilled holes, but there’s enough to hang on to.  (And the first story also get a hopeful epilogue.)  Easy to forget how one of film’s earliest appeals came from its ability to bring the world to viewers in costumes, customs, cultures and countries we might not otherwise experience.  The Esiri brothers have mastered that part already.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *CLARISSA, their free adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s MRS. DALLOWAY, a hot item at this year’s Cannes.