LOS FUERTES / THE STRONG ONES (2019)

Pleasingly modest queer bromance; a first-rate/award-winning feature debut for Chilean writer/director/editor Omar Zúñiga.  Limited theatrical release beyond Chile; the film, no doubt designed for the inbred Film Fest echo chamber before eventual internet distribution.  But Zuniga’s film too good/too well-observed to be left to die in that critical bubble.*  Thirty-something Samuel González, stopping to visit his dental technician sister in a small coastal fishing town on Chile’s Southern coast on his way from Santiago to Grad School in Montréal , sees sparks fly after a casual meeting in a bar with slightly younger Antonio Altamirano.  Gay romance not exactly taboo in such a confined, traditional community, but not exactly welcomed.  The men discreet in public, passionate (if a bit on the tasteful side*) in Altamirano’s off-the-beaten-path cabin.  The main problem for the men location, location, location, as Antonio’s a local boy hoping to build his own fishing biz with a starter boat of his own while Samuel wants a wider canvas for his life and art.  Yet they’re such a natural match, you ache for a solution.  And that’s about it.  But when something is this solidly told, it can be enough to move you to tears.  What an eye Zúñiga has for building drama out of striking waterfront locations.  With cinematographer Nicolás Ibieta nominated for an Pedro Sienna Award . . . whatever the heck that is.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *None of that rolling off the bed in blinkered ecstacy crap for Zúñiga, and the handsome pair look like people rather than models, but a few tip-toeing camera angles feel too arranged, and a little behind the times.  Perhaps a Chilean dodge to get funding or the necessary PG-13 equivalency.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *But that’s just what happened, Zúñiga’s done nothing since.

BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL (2025)

Entertaining, if self-indulgent/soft-pedaled look at the 360° of hubris that led to the critical & commercial drubbing of THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, director John Boorman’s risible response to William Friedkin’s fright phenomenon of four years back.  This pic-bio peppered with smart interviewees (including an 85-yr-old Boorman) all looking back more in sorrow than in anger at their ‘contributions.’  (Only one happy-talk critic to ignore.)  Easy in hindsight to see what went wrong . . . EVERYTHING!  Less investigated, and far more interesting are two stories we don’t get in this well-reviewed autopsy.  The first miss perhaps inevitable as the Warners studio execs of the day, the guys so eager to milk a putative franchise they ran their empty promise up the flagpole, are no longer around for debriefing.  They’re the ones who started the chain-reaction by hiring visionary director John Boorman instead of a journeyman hack.  (Say, next year’s OMEN II director, Don Taylor.)  Or in imagining chipmunk-cheeked Linda Blair, dead to the touch Richard Burton or know-the-face/can’t-place-the-name Louise Fletcher could ‘open’ a big-budget film in 1977.  (Had they ever?)  Then approving a high caloric, thrill-free script; Corporate Group Think at its worst.  With lemmings like this, who needs hindsight?  And a second missed storyline; mentioned, but undeveloped; ironically involves director of the original EXORCIST William Friedkin, who turned this down to make SORCERER for Universal/Paramount, released concurrently.  Costing far more; bringing in even less.  There were two very different outcomes: SORCERER now a belatedly acknowledged masterpiece whereas HERETIC remains, at best, a minority acquired taste.  Yet it was Boorman who went on to make some of his best work, and Friedkin who never really recovered.  That’s the story that should have been made out of this material.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Quick jumps to the films mentioned above.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-exorcist-ii-heretic-1977.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/sorcerer-1977.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/hope-and-glory-1987.html   Note all the jokes repeated here (without a prompt, honest!) from our EXORCIST II write-up.  Boo!

WENDELL & WILD (2022)

Best known for collaborating with Tim Burton on THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS/’93, a shared taste for the macabre has seemingly held Stop-Motion animator Henry Selick in the Burton orb even on Burton-free projects.  As here where Selick’s main collaborator is Jordan Peele, yet the Burton æsthetic clings.  And that’s saying something considering this death-infused fable has a major Black vibe to it.  It opens with a nightmare-inducing scene (don’t bring the little ones!) as young ‘Kat’ escapes a car drowning, but her parents don’t.  Blaming herself (and not without reason) for partially causing the accident, she’s even more fucked up for having survived.  Growing up with an ‘attitude,’ she’s determined to be a ‘bad girl,’ winding up in a juvie facility with a progressive motto: ‘Break the Cycle!’  Sounds great, but there’s something fishy about the sponsors; using good public relations in hopes of taking over this dead factory town.  They also have eyes on the dead in the local cemetery.  What a waste of land development!  Fortunately, a couple of demons from the underworld (Peele and partner Keegan-Michael Key*) have got a big tube of ‘reviving’ cream able to raise the dead.  (Convenient, no?)  Selick’s OTT style gets a real workout with dozens of live school friends, half-dead mentors, a scientist who looks like Marlon Brando, Nuns and a Zombie Priest vying for Kat’s soul, while Kat longs to use that rejuvenating cream on her dead parents.  The storyline another maximalist mess (think EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE/’22 or SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE/’23), covering a lot of territory before Kat can learn to accept, mourn and move on.  Still, mighty enjoyable just to watch because Selick’s playful sense of style (baroque Goth) and gruesome characterizations are so joyously witty.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Is Jordan Peele purposefully doing a sly tribute to James Baskett, the young actor who played Uncle Remus in SONG OF THE SOUTH/’46?  Rarely noted, Baskett also did the voice for Br’er Fox which Peele is almost certainly copying as ‘Wild.’  Who else would have dared?   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/song-of-south-1948.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID (by me!)/LINK:  We’ve spaced out yet again and accidentally done a second write-up on this film.  (Teach me to swap '&' for AND in the title.)  At least both posts are interesting!  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/10/wendell-wild-2022.html

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.: THE HELICOPTER SPIES (1968)

Early in U.N.C.L.E.’s four-year run (especially after it switched to color), when its popular appeal seemed bulletproof, their M-G-M masters figured they could spin the occasional two-part episodes into eight ready-made  theatrical features simply by ‘letterboxing’ tv’s 1.33 to 1 Academy Ratio frame into standard ‘flat’ (1.85 to 1) for that big screen flavor.  Regularly done for international sales, here they also played Stateside under new titles.  What M-G-M didn’t count on was the show cooling off as fast as it did.*)  This seventh release seems representative of the lot.  Not necessarily a good thing as, with the notable exception of agent Robert Vaughn/Napoleon Solo’s trim worsted suits, and agent David McCallum/Illya Kuryakin’s floppy flaxen locks, not much held up . . . then or now.  Director Boris Sagal does pull off a tricky train hijacking (a NASA rocket stolen by the bad guys), but what’s crucial in these ‘60s Spy-vs-Spy near spoofs is setting & holding tone.  Here, all over the place with some aiming for fun, some aiming for funny, others playing straight, and a few going full tv BATMAN camp.  The silly plot has Bradford Dillman tricking Solo & Kuryakin into helping him steal mad inventor John Dehner’s deadly Thermal Prism.  With it, he and his religious cult gals can control the world . . . IF they can launch it into space.  Maybe if they’d left the commercials in we’d have some real, as opposed to guyed, period flavor.  Instead, it now seems neither fish nor fowl; just spoiled.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  IMDb viewer ratings give the two-part original tv version (THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS AFFAIR/’67) a 7.5 whereas the one-part movie release earns a mere 5.7.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A failed spin-off, THE GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E./’66, sapped mojo from the original series, which never quite recovered its early buzz.

COUP DE CHANCE (2023)

While a combination of age, scattershot quality, cancel culture, artistic exile and sagging box-office has reduced Woody Allen’s former release pattern (one a year for five decades; his last truly popular success MIDNIGHT IN PARIS/’11), this most recent film (after a three year break) shows revived filmmaking chops, and more interest in design, character and content than he has offered in years.  Working with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro in Paris no doubt helps.  As does shooting in French, a language Allen ain’t idiomatic in.  But as his last few films featured English that might have been written and spoken by foreigners, perhaps lack of fluency is an advantage.  (As blindness was to Allen’s director in HOLLYWOOD ENDING.)  Seriously old-fashioned melodrama: infidelity, murder, accidental retribution; only a period setting goes missing.  Pity.  But still amusingly mean-spirited within Allen’s typical upper-crust milieu.  Lou de Laâge plays distracted wife to Melvil Poupaud’s shady/controlling personal money manager for the rich & striving.  Accidentally bumping into former classmate Niels Schneider, de Laâge falls into a casual affair that turns serious.*  But when M. Cuckold inevitably sniffs it out, he quickly decides to snuff it out . . .  permanently.  Later, when his visiting MIL hears her daughter’s confession, she puts two-and two together before placing herself in harm’s way deer hunting with the son-in-law.  (Really, Woody?  Deer hunting?)  More society gossip anecdote than developed story, Allen smartly skates over the plot in the manner of French masters Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol.  (Probably more like Hollywood loving Chabrol who adored the ‘40s fare this apes.*)  All told, good late Allen.  And an encouraging sign for his next, now filming in Spain.  Hopefully in Spanish!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Note the use of his signature jaunty jazz at even the darkest parts of the film, playing against story tone. 

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *If this had been a real 1940s Hollywood pic, there’d be a late second act reveal on how there was nothing accidental about the meeting.  It was all a plan by her former schoolmate.  As for our Chabrol wet dream suggestion, he’d definitely have been thinking of 20th/Fox as the studio; and holding out for Gene Tierney, Tyrone Power and George Sanders.  But the MIL gets a sex change with either Edmund Gwenn or Clifton Webb taking over.  I’d watch that in a minute!

OPERA (1987)

Four & a quarter centuries after its premiere, Shakespeare’s HAMLET is again inspiring the year’s most moving film.  Last year, HAMNET/’25 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/03/hamnet-2025.html), this year, uncontrollable sobbing likely to come from ELSINORE/’26, the true story of how CHARIOTS OF FIRE actor Ian Charleson took a leap of faith, stepping in to play Hamlet in spite of rapid physical decline from AIDS, taking over the part on short-notice when Daniel Day Lewis ankled mid-performance.  A ‘can’t miss’ idea if there ever was one.  Only that wasn’t the original idea.  Most of the creatives (producers, writers, lead Andrew Scott) initially got behind this project when it was being developed as a ‘behind-the-scenes’ film on the making of this Italian giallo.  (Giallo: those stylishly gory, color-saturated, tits & terror Italian horror films.)  Giallo master Dario Argento, past his ‘70s prime by ‘87, but still up for big, bloody set pieces between his near random notions of drama.  (Argento never much for ‘leg-bone-connected-to-the-thigh-bone’ story construction.)  Charleson co-stars, playing a high-concept film and opera director taking on Verdi’s MACBETH when his Lady Macbeth ankles the high-flying tessitura and her replacement is young, willowy, much pursued Cristina Marsillach.  Argento tosses in a bit of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA in some skulduggery to get her on stage in the role, but the main plot involves murder attempts, Charleson’s role as off-stage protector and a handsome police detective as rival.  The big climax typically has little bearing on the plot as an ‘unkindness’ of ravens is released in the opera house where they attack a well-heeled crowd of music lovers.  (Hitchcock’s Bodega Bay Elementary School in THE BIRDS has nothing to fear.)  And while the film is reasonable Argento, it’s hard to see what the ELSINORE crew were planning to develop out of it.  (Though Charleson does recite a couple of lines from Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' speech in here for no particular reason.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  This was Charleson’s last feature film, dying at 40 in 1990, six weeks after he completed his run as Hamlet.

LEBANON (2009)

And you thought DAS BOOT/’81 was claustrophobic.  Award-winning film from Israeli writer/director Samuel Maoz takes a near abstract look at war, following (in tight close-up) a single tank carrying five hardened fighters and one barely trained newbie as they cross into Southern Lebanon during the 1982 war,  part of an ill-defined mission to destroy PLO bases and launching sites.*  Without a specific goal, their job merely to reach a designated contact point so they can pick up orders for the next designated contact point.  Between man and machine, things quickly begin to break down: misread oncoming vehicles (friend or foe?); planned and unplanned attacks; a comrade lost; banned weapons renamed so they can be ’legally’ used; a chaotic village assault where enemy Arabs use civilian women & children as ‘living’ shields, encouraging collateral (and non-collateral) damage by Israelis; that tank newbie unable to pull the trigger (literally) having previously shot at nothing more dangerous than empty barrels; all while the tank turns into a abattoir of human filth and rotting offal, their view becoming ever more restricted to a tank POV.  No heroes or heroics, but with opportunistic ‘Phalangist’ warriors grabbing the prize for worst-of-the-worst.  Fortunately, the mission, which opens & closes on the same ironic shot, reduced on screen to only 90 minutes of horror.  But you’ll not forget a searing minute in this brilliantly shot and acted journey thru some of Dante’s darkest circles of Hell.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For a bigger picture on the war, the remarkable animated documentary WALTZ WITH BASHIR/’08.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/waltz-with-bashir-2008.html

SIGNAL ONE (2026)

If you’re going to make yet another First Alien Contact movie (think THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL/’51 & 08; CLOSE ENCOUNTERS/’77; ARRIVAL/’16; many more*), especially if you’re on a lowball Canadian budget, you better have imaginative filmmaking chops and a fresh concept.  But the only fresh thing in writer/director Jonathan Sobol’s assault on the subject is Dennis Quaid’s face.  Even that, less fresh than unnaturally refreshened.  Quaid’s the billionaire visionary searching the heavens from his private island, built up to receive Alien Contact signals and staffed with space research geniuses leading the hunt.  Borderline psycho David Thewlis; college wiz Isabelle Fuhrman; never laid Josh Hutcherson.  The twist is that Thewlis crosses protocol and SENDS rather than only RECEIVES the coded calls and the beings respond in ways that scare the planet into a panic.  Hours later, the island is invaded by overbearing military types who don’t understand the nuances of alien call-and-response etiquette.  Will they take the whole operation down before friendly relations are established?  Dull, dull, dull.  And Sobol’s eccentric idea of even simple reaction shots less communicative than 'Gort' was in STOOD STILL.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Sobol does have one stylistic quirk to watch out for.  Though shot 1.85 : 1, he stages shots for a wider anamorphic frame with severe left/right positions that leave the middle empty.  But since he places the conversations for two within a ‘flat’ frame ratio, the backs of some heads are out of frame.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Simpler & more effective (also really funny/really scary), less pretentious and far more emotionally affecting, Robert Wise’s ‘51 STOOD STILL still stands ahead of the pack.

AGATHA (1979)

Decently reviewed and reasonably popular, this speculative fiction on the true eleven-day disappearance of mystery writer Agatha Christie in the 1920s probably looks better now, when Mid-List ‘civilized’ entertainments no longer grace the big screen, than it must have on release.  Worked up by Kathleen Tynan (wife of top stage critic Kenneth, it's her sole film credit), and directed in comfy fashion by Michael Apted, the film is consistently fun & clever (Tynan just managing to layer in a bit of suspense* ), but mostly posh slumming for a cast of high wattage stars enjoying a period field trip while handing out narrative l’amuse-bouche.  Vanessa Redgrave is Christie, ennobled by height, beauty, ‘20s couture and Vittorio Storaro’s creamy lens stylings.  (The real Christie tall but horsey.)  Undone when Timothy Dalton’s husband (channeling the chilly Laurence Olivier of REBECCA/’40) asks for a divorce, she has a meltdown before hiding out in the very spa town used by his mistress.  Waiting to do mischief?  Enter American-in-the U.K. reporter Dustin Hoffman, groomed, dressed and polished as never before or since; if still a half foot shorter than his target.  With the whole country looking for the missing Queen of Whodunits, can he get a scoop before word leaks out . . . or Agatha does something stupid?  One of the last films made by First Artists (a briefly functioning Streisand, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Hoffman outfit), you have to presume Hoffman had more than usual input, gently fashioning one of the least self-regarding films on his C.V.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/SPOILERS:  *A bigger mystery is how no one, then or now, caught on to Tynan using ROMAN HOLIDAY/’53 (William Wyler/Gregory Peck/Audrey Hepburn) as template.  Runaway celeb hiding in plain sight under a false name; reporter finding/befriending her, also under an assumed identity; mutual, but deflected romantic feelings; inevitable split with the reporter nobly burying his exclusive.  At least Tynan knew to steal from the best.