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.

FELIDAE (1994)

A big international seller in print (less so Stateside), Akif Pirinçci’s serial killer story came with a twist, the cast is all cats.  A few humans make appearances, the felines call them ‘can openers,’ but this elsewise relatively straightforward catch-the-killer pic, structured as a standard ‘procedural,’ came within a whisker of getting picked up for a live-action Hollywood feature.  That idea fell thru (too much ‘hard R’ sex & violence?), so it stayed in Germany as a rare adult animated feature.  Director Michael Schaack’s hand-drawn style, something between '70s-era Disney & Bakshi, proves a good fit for charting new-to-the-neighborhood tomcat Francis who immediately lands inside the invetsgation when a mutilated cat appears below his window.  He makes a perfect lead to take us thru character introducions and exposition as new acquaintances pass on rumor & info . . . before passing on.  Yikes!  Suspects include an experimental unit of human researches using stray cats for testing; a cat cult of fatalistic ferals; a tough old bruiser; a slinky gal who’s always in heat (yowl!); an elderly sage who’s computer literate; et al.  Plenty of egos and misadventures for Francis to come against.  Yet the story isn’t nearly as involving or fun as the set up promises.  Needlessly fantastic on a story that needs straight playing for the suspense, waggish humor and seriously bleak tone to come across.  Maybe with new film technology (and Guillermo del Toro?) time's ripe for that Live-Action production?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Martin Rosen’s lesser-known follow-up to Richard Adams’ WATERSHIP DOWN/’78, THE PLAGUE DOGS/’82, shows a better approach to this sort of material.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-plague-dogs-1982.html

THE SHEEP DETECTIVES (2026)

Irresistible and slightly disappointing, often at the same time, someone (scripter Craig Mazin?; top-listed producer Tim Bevan?) had the madly wonderful idea of reconfiguring Leonie Swann’s German novel (a proposed animated production had collapsed) as a combo-platter of two favorite British genres: an Agatha Christie/Dorothy Sayers rural murder mystery; and one of those sweetly eccentric (or is it maddeningly daffy?) isolated/insulated U.K. countryside character comedies so popular a few decades back.  (And before that, the old Ealing Studios model.)  We open with a prologue for contented shepherd Hugh Jackman and his flock of sheep.  So preferable to people!  He knows them all by name & personality; he reads them a murder mystery chapter every night before bed.  Then one morning, he’s found dead . . . by his sheep!  Natural causes or murder?  Unhappy with a lack of action by the local policeman, there’s but one thing for the devastated flock to do; solve the case on their own.  Who says sheep are dumb animals?  Lily the Sheep (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) takes the lead, with an all-star cast voicing the many other varieties of sheep Jackman had.  Problem: how to communicate their findings to those humans in town.  This is all fun, and quite touching at times (a flashback to Jackman rescuing a sheep quite emotional; as is the look at lamb prejudice).  The sticking point is the CGI work on the sheep which probably needed to be either considerably more or considerably less realistic.  As it stands, the technical gaffes (usually from asking the digital magic to do too much) can pull you out of the story.  Also, rather like the likable THE CAT  WHO... Murder Mystery series by Lilian Jackson Braun, the clues and inevitable solution come too easily.  No matter, you’re sure to fall for the film’s nicely reserved sense of whimsy.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Not a film that first comes to mind, but watch what Gene Wilder does with a non-CGI sheep in Woody Allen’s  EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX/’72.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know.html

HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A. (1976)

The trick to Barbara Kopple’s classic film on the thirteen-month Kentucky coal-miners’ strike against Duke Power & affiliates (1973 - ‘74) is that it’s not only a great documentary, but great filmmaking.  There’s an unusually high percentage of superb films on life in the mines (fiction & non-fiction), what it does to those who ‘go under’ and those who only stand and wait.  But you need to go to Zola/GERMINAL or those gobsmacking first two chapters of George Orwell’s THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER to find the like of what Kopple, in only her second film, does here.  It stems from the personalities she captures, the dramatic organization, the stealth shots of actions captured, the dull ache of showing up at five in the morning (in numbers for safety) to beat the opposition.  And the high bar you need to meet when opponents contain not only expected foe (owners, politicians, police), but also your own union reps, the local priest(!) and the fucking United Mine Workers President, the guy who also votes ‘for’ you.  (Soon replaced.)  It’s a tough story to lay out clearly, but is clear as a bell under Kopple & Crew.  (Note the high percentage of women in key spots, no easy thing at the time . . . no easy thing now.  Yet the deeper tragedy of the whole film, not only the murder of a teen supporter that hurries resolution, is the legacy of a work force doomed to win modest concessions while shrinking year by year to a meaningless number of jobs now only used as political fodder by Luddites for non-renewal energy and the pipe dream of what’s still heralded as Clean Coal.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Hard to imagine just how much unused footage might still exist in some warehouse.   A 2007 restoration of the original cut, out on Criterion, is excellent.  But a brief clip during a miners’ rally near Manhattan corporate offices features a highlight in a conversation between a NYC cop and one of the miners comparing wages, hours & benefits.  Priceless; surely, there’s more of it.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  As mentioned, Zola’s oft-filmed GERMINAL.  (It nearly comes across in a recent French mini-series.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/06/germinal-2021.html )  OR:  Orwell’s WIGAN PIER, which devolves into statistics, but is untouchable in its early chapters.