NO NAME ON THE BULLET (1959)

Still short, but no longer young enough to play ‘The Kid,’ war-hero turned actor Audie Murphy caught a break playing a Bad Guy under Jack Arnold’s laconic direction* on this unusual chamber Western.  Not much in the way of action, romance, horsemanship or vistas, but branching off the ‘50s trend toward psychological Oaters toward, of all things, philosophy and semantics.  (Philosophy & semantics 101, but still . . . )  Structurally, a traditional Stranger-Comes-To-Town piece, Murphy’s a traveling hitman, a hired gun who stays technically not-quite-guilty by goading his assigned target into drawing first.  Feared and so well known, his name enough to trigger panic for half the men in town, causing unprovoked suicide, stress severed partnerships, fire sales.  Yet no one as yet even knows whom he’s come to kill.  Waiting till that effect fully settles in, Murphy strikes up an unlikely friendship with town Doc Charles Drake (excellent).  Playing chess and discussing which of the two helps humanity more; the professional killer who removes evil men standing beyond the law; or the principled physician who heals indiscriminately?  The dialogue ain’t G.B. Shaw, but it’s not bad.  With Arnold knowing just how much we can handle before the next threat, including a disrupted attempt at ‘premature justice’ from the town’s fair citizens against Murphy’s Angel of Death, our vastly outnumbered/out-gunned seasoned assassin.  The film even pulls off an unexpected victim to reveal at the climax, along with a clever way out of this philosophical pickle that avoids being a cop-out by mere inches.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Before Murphy went with Universal and (mostly) Westerns, he showed another kind of range in an early role working under John Huston on Stephen Crane’s THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE/’51.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/05/red-badge-of-courage-1951.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Jack Arnold best known for iconic ‘50s Sci-Fi: CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON/’53; IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE/’53; THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN/’57.

LOVE AFFAIR (1939)

Starting as shipboard rom-com between solo passengers on their way to NYC, Charles Boyer (Continental Rake) and Irene Dunne (ex-club singer/current publishing secretary), the two  engaged, just not to each other.  (And both peerless.)  Shifting to dramatic romance and a decisive meet-up six months later at the Empire State Building, Leo McCarey’s genre mash-up looks better than it has in seven decades when R.K.O.’s original film elements were lost in transit to 20th/Fox where McCarey was remaking it for Cary Grant & Deborah Kerr as AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER/'57, a notably inferior effort.  It got a lot of attention when some of the plot and a bit of the film showed in Nora Ephron’s typically anodyne SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE/’93.*  Now, with the 1939 original restored by Lobster Films & MoMA from McCarey’s donated 35mm nitrate print (check out the before & after on Criterion) you can at long last really see it.  McCarey, in the sweet spot of his career, between THE AWFUL TRUTH/’37 and GOING MY WAY/’44, seems unable to put a foot wrong.  His loose, improvisatorial style, built in his early silent comedy days, entirely intuitive, finessing pivotal moments like the lovers’ visit with Boyer’s failing grandmother, to unexpected emotional levels.  McCarey’s pay-to-play Catholicism held from treacle by his Personal Trinity: Faith, Sex and Comedy.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Enough attention to generate an unhappy third version: 1994's LOVE AFFAIR with Warren Beatty & Annette Bening.

CONTEST:  How does Elvis Presley figure into this?  A correct answer earns your choice of movie for a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (2024)

After the Osage Tribe find oil reserves under their land and grow rich in the early 1920s, the local white men who’d long run their affairs in Oklahoma, scheme to take profits and rights away from them.  No surprise in that story; a true and important one, for sure, but not exactly filled with surprise.  Equally unsurprising, the kid glove treatment from critics & the award circuit for Martin Scorsese’s latest self-indulgence; packing two-reels of story into a three-and-a-half hour running time,*  (His last, THE IRISHMAN/’19, an equally long marathon.)  A sub-story embedded here on the birth of the FBI thru their belated investigation of the swindle offers major possibilities, fresh angles on an old theme, plus the film’s best perf in Jesse Plemons’ G-Man.  But it doesn’t show up till the film’s half over, and never claims focus.*  Instead, Leonardo DiCaprio returns from WWI, aimless but hoping to work for his politically powerful Uncle Robert De Niro, a sort of Oklahoma version of one of those ‘benevolent’ White capitalist bullies Edward Arnold used to play in Frank Capra movies.  Bob’s really out to murder his way into an oil fortune with help from his naïf nephew who’s married into the clan.  But as DiCaprio is 50+ when his character needs to be 25 to make sense, he comes off as a bigger villain & a bigger dope than we can invest our emotions in.  While a nefarious De Niro, unable to just rely on his intimidating stare, the fallback gesture he over-relies on in mid-list fare, a habit that likely kept Scorsese looking elsewhere for an alter-ego for nearly three decades (1985 -  2019), brings out a truly odd solution: channeling Robert Duvall as an acting model all thru this film.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Marty knows it, too, fashioning a five-minute radio show recap of the whole plot for a burlesque coda; even taking a cameo role in it.  A gag or an insult?  Tone deaf or Brechtian?  Discuss.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Besides Plemons, the other worthy element in here is Jack Fisk’s production design.  Even if Scorsese tries to sabotage it with ill-considered camera moves (interiors and exteriors) aping his famous nightclub back-entrance intro shot in GOODFELLAS/90.

JOINT SECURITY AREA / GONGDONG GYEONGBI GUYEOK JSA (2000)

Well-received, but disappointing.  Award-bait (cinematic & humanitarian) from iconic Korean writer/director Park Chan-wook plays like an allegory on the futility-of-war.  Odd, as it takes place in the on-going Cold War between North and South Korea.  In a peacefully maintained border area campus, where territorial lines are laid out in tasteful sidewalk pavement styles, a neutral foreign official, with a Korean background, has come to investigate what happened when patrolling soldiers of the South crossed into the wrong DMZ area, nearly triggered a landmine, found themselves in North territory and, after explanations, slowly started to bond with their enemy.  Brothers under the uniform?  Or just under the skin?  The breach in territorial protocol an honest mistake/misstep or a testing provocation?  Things seem to be calming down as the soldiers work things out on their own (and share chocolate), but when a superior true-believer officer hits the outpost, suspicions flare up and a gun-happy Mexican Stand-Off erupts.  Like a 1960s parable (specifically 1964: more earnest FAIL-SAFE then hip DR. STRANGELOVE), and a big hit in South Korea, it was a career breakthru for Lee Byung-hun as the handsome South Korean soldier.  But in trying for timeless verities, Park ends up dated.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Head Juror at this year’s Cannes Fest, Park Chan-wook remains best known for his gross-out thriller OLDBOY/’04.  There’s lots more to him, but it’s a good place to start.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/oldboy-2004.html

LOVE (1927)

Greta Garbo’s silent version of ANNA KARENINA always considered something of a travesty, starting with that title.  Plus, no cheering section for Anna without Dolly, Kitty or Levin; no pregnancy; no drug addiction or suicide attempt; no insufferable forgiveness from cuckold husband; no train!  No wonder Garbo tried again, now with sound, in 1935.  So, why is this infamous iteration, taken on its own terms, so satisfying?  That notorious happy ending?  Seems just right in Edmund Goulding's well-directed production.  Perhaps because even at its most M-G-M idiotic, the film all of a piece.  Very well cast, too, with top-billed John Gilbert as love-struck Vronsky.  (The orchestral soundtrack on the official DVD release from Warners recorded live, so you hear the audience gasp & laugh at his initial reaction to Garbo.)  The real hero here (along with regular Garbo lenser William Daniels) may be Hollywood’s highest paid scripter Frances Marion, here credited only for ‘continuity,’ who chose to make the film as a series of ‘set pieces.’  Snowy meet-cute, ballroom gossip, race track disaster, mother-love reunion, renunciation², etc; and who put them in order.  Simplified into an awkward love triangle for Garbo not between Gilbert’s military officer and VIP husband Karenin (a one-note Brandon Hurst), but between Anna’s love for Vronsky vs. her love for her little boy.*  Her fourth Hollywood film, but first to take her beyond temptress mode.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Advantage 1935 in both these roles with Basil Rathbone’s chilly husband a far more dangerously attractive/formidable obstacle; and, fresh off DAVID COPPERFIELD, the wistful charm of Master Freddie Bartholomew, the other love of Anna's life.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/anna-karenina-1935.html

ZOOTOPIA 2 (2025)

With near identical budgets (150 mill) and near identical creatives (from directors Jared Bush/ Byron Howard down thru cast & crew), this animated sequel nearly doubled the billion dollar gross of the 2016 original.  And if hardly twice as good (indeed a modest fall off), it’s good enough to justify blockbuster numbers.  This time out, Judy Rabbit and Nick Fox are no longer adversaries, but junior cop partners on the hunt for the long suppressed truth behind Zootopia’s origin story.  Is it possible those forked-tongued snakes got a raw deal in the legend of Zootopia’s beginnings?  They’ll go to the ends of the ‘safe’ territory behind the transformative wall of intra-species cooperation to find the truth.  Less straightforward than the earlier film’s police procedural format, which may explain why the film is over-produced, trying too hard to top themselves with (very impressive) spectacle.  But this soon drops away as their main mission clicks into place; along with expected character turns from various animals new and returned.  Less understandable are a pair of self-revelatory/self-justifying soliloquies for Nick & Judy.  Talk in place of clarifying action . . . in an animated film?!  The film quickly recovers movement and momentum, but an odd glitch from these guys.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  No doubt, you’ve seen the original, yes?   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/10/zootopia-2016.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Stick with the end credits not just for the tag surprise, but also to note the international line-up of names & nationalities.  A veritable cornucopia of D.E.I. in the film’s D.N.A.

WEAPONS (2025)

This critically & commercially well-received, darkly-comic Body Horror from writer/director Zach Creggar even earned a rare acting Oscar® for the genre.  Good scary fun, if ultimately less than meets the gashed eyeball.  It opens poorly, with needless narration from a wise-for-her-years child giving us too much info, and Creggar defensively covering with a plethora of ‘shock cuts.  But things rapidly improve once Grade School Teacher Julia Garner finds all but one of her kids, Alex, absent.  Make that missing.  As if the Pied Piper had tootled them away in the night.  Angry suspicions fall on the teacher, but no evidence.  No matter, she’s dubbed a witch by locals.  (Another error, make that a cheat, from Creggar removes any serious investigation of the house & parents of Alex, the boy who stayed in town when they ought to be swarming the joint.)  Still, this prologue enough like a classic TWILIGHT ZONE opening to get you interested.  (Actually, it’s more like a ONE STEP BEYOND episode, but who remembers that paranormal knock-off.)  And this is where you wonder how one of those half-hour shows can possibly support a two+ hour film.  (Spoiler Alert!)  Answer, it doesn’t.  Instead, Creggar switches to HANSEL & GRETEL, but without Gretel.  (Hansel & Hansel?)  With spooky Great Aunt (that’s award-winner Amy Madigan in fright wig & makeup) as the witch who’s capturing little boys and girls to fatten up before getting the life’s essence out of them.  (Sustained only by cans & cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.)  A few gory visual effects; hop/skip & jump character continuity for some non-linear surprise explanations; and a nifty semi-heroic turn from grieving parent Josh Brolin (head squarer than ever) also helps.  Just be aware: some gory effects nearly as ‘grimm’ as those famous Brothers.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  One unhappy comic-horror throwback sees the return of a trope from the 1970s that saw either the FIRST or the WORST/most realistic gory violence hit the one significant Black in the movie.  Now, this spot goes to the film’s main gay character (and his husband).

THE CHORAL (2025)

A can’t-miss idea that self-sabotages by striving for originality when the old tropes are just what’s needed.  It’s 1916, with more than a year of war on the continent as seen from a Yorkshire Mill Town where even their prestigious/well-funded local choral society feels the pinch of conscription decimating the ranks of tenors & baritones.  Now the music director is enlisting.  With few options, mill-owner/fading lead tenor Roger Allam (beyond praise) has little choice but to hire musically qualified, but ostracized Germanophile Ralph Fiennes for the position.  (He’s also a single man of ‘peculiar tendencies,’ as it was put at the time.)  Fiennes immediately starts recruiting any & all classes all over town, from bakery boy to disabled/still convalescing vets to sing, as well as settling on Sir Edward Elgar’s then little known oratorio THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS in lieu of the usual Bach, Beethoven or Brahms; all uncomfortably German.*  The film all but running itself in these early scenes, written & played with unexpected tartness, LOL personal putdowns, and gossipy chorister queens kibbitzing from the sidelines.  With a fierce, almost proud, local rudeness staunching sentimentality, even the telegraph messenger boy delivers his death notices with dispatch before riding to the next choral rehearsal; sacred and profane juxtaposition in the form of cheeky gallows humor and hopes of shagging a young, newly widowed soprano after practise.  Scripter Alan Bennett, now in his nineties, at his best here, and as the tone shifts when a one-armed/disabled vet* comes home to a wife’s disappointment and an offer to use his fresh tenor voice to  oust Allam from his usual lead spot.  After this, something goes seriously wrong with Bennett’s ideas.  Revising/downsizing the oratorio to fit resources; repurposing the poem as dramatic tableaux that comments on the war in ways more 1960s than 1916; bringing in Elgar not for a nervous opening night, but for suspense (will he let the show go on in this radical form?).  Everything stops ringing true to the times.  A nice coda returns to form as more young men leave for the war, and the film has an impressive offhand period look.  But Elgar, who wore his musical sentiment on his sleeve, would have mourned how Bennett's script and Nicholas Hytner's direction turn chilly in the third act.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *At the time, GERONTIUS had yet to achieve its current standing.  Four major recordings released in the last two years, the most recent featuring just the sort of amateur choir, The Huddersfield Choral Society, this film’s group emulates.  Founded in 1836, Huddersfield also recorded the first complete GERONTIUS in 1945.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Jacob Dudman, the returning one-armed vet who sings Gerontius, appears to be doing his own vocals.  It’s a killer part so congrats . . . if he is.

NEXT TIME WE LOVE (1936)

Note that James Stewart, in his first leading role, is missing from our poster.  Under contract at M-G-M, who couldn’t figure out what to do with this tall, gangly (make that alarmingly thin), unconventionally attractive fellow; loaned out to Universal who had just the thing for him  On the other hand, they failed at make-up 101.  Check out the lip-rouge on his enormous lower lip.  Yikes!  Had Stewart been roughhousing with roommate Henry Fonda?  A lucky punch, too, since co-star Margaret Sullavan (that’s her on the poster) had just amicably divorced Fonda, and specifically asked for his roommate in the part.  Perfect together, they’d pair up for three more films.*  Here, with director Edward H. Griffith (best known for stage reliant transfers on Philip Barry’s HOLIDAY/’30 and THE ANIMAL KINGDOM/’32) along with gifted lenser Joseph A. Valentine faking unusually atmospheric NYC & Europe locales on studio sets (plus an uncredited Preston Sturges taking a pass on the script), they play out a difficult two-career/sperate lives marriage that’s unusually intelligent & modern for 1936.  Each following their bliss to success as Foreign Correspondent (him) and stage star (her).  While waiting in the wings, respectful third-wheel Ray Milland.  (Looking ridiculously handsome, it was, along with next year’s EASY LIVING/’37, his breakthru role after seven years.)  The film goes soft and sentimental in the last reel (which is fine for this sort of thing), but also narratively convenient to tidy up all the moving parts (which ain't).  But so much better than you expect, it’s something of a find.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Second pairing, THE SHOPWORN ANGEL/’38, now looking a bit shopworn itself, but 3 & 4 are contrasting masterpieces: Borzage’s THE MORTAL STORM/’40; Lubitsch’s THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER/’40.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-mortal-storm-1940.html