BILL CUNNINGHAM: NEW YORK (2010)

Richard Press’s terrific documentary follows street-wise fashion photog icon Bill Cunningham (free at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6vFJv3Mnh4), a classic New York character who naturally lives in a teeny studio at Carnegie Hall.  (Not near it; in it.)*  Productive and personable, the eccentric Cunningham seems to have no life beyond his work, beginning in the ‘50s as a fashionable milliner before gravitating toward photojournalism (Women’s Wear Daily; DETAILS) before landing at The New York Times with matched columns to fill.  Here, pushing 80, but still dashing about town on his bike to cover Night-Life Society: parties, openings, art shows, happenings among the rich and arty/the beautiful and the hip.  While during daylight, hitting the streets on his three-speed bike to snap unstaged Found Fashion spottings from encounters among the hoi polloi.  Judgmental on fashion, but non-judgmental on people, Cunningham’s speciality might come off as stalking if he weren’t so elfin & asexual.  Brilliantly caught by Press & Co. who must truly believe that neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night should stop them from pursuing their subject.  Indeed, they go all the way to Paris where he’s feted and honored without having to change his blue work smock.  It’s the most touching part of this elsewise NYC-centric story.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The last two rent-stabilized Carnegie Hall studios were being phased out as the film was being shot.  Too bad we don’t get a better look at the eccentric layout of Cunningham’s.

IL TRADITORE / THE TRAITOR (2019)

Maestro of Italian cinema, Marco Bellocchio, writing and directing since 1965*, celebrated  his 80th year by sweeping the Italian Film Awards with this excellent, straight-forward docu-drama on Tommaso Buscetta.  A Sicilian mob boss (living in Brazil as the film starts in the early 1980s), his clan under attack in Italy by rival gangs and by special police forces, while he faces crimes of his own, agrees to work with Prosecuting Judge Giovanni Falcone, Patron Saint of Mafia busters.  Il Cosa Nostra, as Buscetta insists on calling what had long been, in his warped view, an honorable association now falling into chaos.  Backed into becoming the first inside informer to testify against the organization after losing so much manpower and territory.  He and his family are given witness protection in America, yet he’s drawn back to Italy so he can settle scores after Falcone is assassinated.  Superbly done, note details like how Pierfrancesco Favino, as Buscetta, wears facial prosthetics before he has face altering plastic surgery so he can play the final act without the props.  Good as it is, there’s a built-in structural weakness in that all the more juicy rub-outs (so damn cinematic a cow could shoot them effectively) come cheek by jowl in what amounts to the prologue, leaving the rest of the film largely without easy kinetic excitement.  The interrogations/interviews between Falcone & Buscetta and, of course, the trial & testimonies have plenty of drama, but can’t really compete with graphic killings.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Bellocchio (whose name translates as ‘beautiful eye’) will always be shadowed by his debut, the revolutionary masterpiece FISTS IN THE POCKET/’65.  There are worse curses to carry around your neck.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/fists-in-pocket-1965.html

DAVID (2025)

Angel Studios (now simply ANGEL), specializing in the (supposedly) under-served Christian-friendly market, moves into big-time Old Testament animation with what could have been titled YOUNG DAVID.  You know the one, shepherd boy; too many brothers (one source lists seven!); lion killer (here, catch & release); slingshot Giant killer (Goliath, not catch and release); singer of song to ailing King Saul; then on the lam as falsely accused usurper; finally hailed as the anointed one/King of what would become, under his forty-year rule, Judea..  Oh, that David.  (Serial love-making and personal betrayals saved for the sequels.)  All this covered more faithfully than expected here, but, like the promise of David’s beautiful son Absalom, ultimately unfulfilled.  But where Absalom’s tragedy is tricky to explain, DAVID’s (the film that is) very easy: ANGEL took the generic route and wound up with Biblical Brand X.  The songs, each working overtime to become next year’s church camp sing-a-long hit, faux Alan Menken at best, with glints of Elton John’s LION KING & Lloyd-Webber’s JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR at worst; character animation a la 1990s DreamWorks, with a spritz of 1950s hairspray for that stiff finish look; lame lamb jokes for the kiddies/pointless older references to thank the grown-ups for driving them.*  A shame, as the bones of the story are there.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Best gag for the adults: when they swap Davids from PRE to POST pubescent, using the mere flick of a cape (Brandon Engman vocals out/Phil Wickham vocals in), suddenly young adult David morphs into Michael Landon.  Make that, Michael Landon with the same Groucho Marx eyebrows everyone in the film has.  Do co-directors Phil Cunningham & Brent Dawes have them, too?

TOGETHER / HE NI ZAI YI QI (2002)

Even the English-language title is a bit corny in this wide-eyed Father/Son tale of a small-town violin prodigy and self-effacing dad who head to the big city (Beijing) to find a music conservatory professor willing to help the boy’s natural talent take wing.  Why not embrace corny since the film’s legitimate sentiment plays like some semi-classic/half-remembered Hollywood fable.  (Though more over-processed 1940s than rougher-textured ‘30s.*)  With two standout perfs from Father Peiqi Liu (pushy, proud, persuasive) and disheveled teacher Zhiwen Wang (definitely not using cat-gut strings).  These two splitting nominations and awards at all the Asian Film Contests that year.  And with writer/director Kaige Chen doing triple duty by playing the well-connected violin professor who takes over when 13-tr-old Yun Tang switches masters for the third act competition.  Unexpected complications come with a Party Girl neighbor who hires the boy to play for her (watch for a lift straight out of Chaplin’s THE GOLD RUSH/’25); a rival student with chops but no passion; and note the far more sophisticated choice in music selections than usual.  Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto for the big competition, but also a sneaky bit of commentary from Gershwin’s ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’ (in the Heifetz transcription) and especially in the film score’s main throb going to Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy: third movement.  A three-hanky sob-fest all on its own.  The film’s inevitable father/son finale both manipulative and ridiculously moving thanks to director Chen’s smash editing, pulling off a win-win/have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too ending.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Golden-Age Hollywood's go-to teenage coloratura, Deanna Durbin, could do this sort of thing with blinders on.  Peaking with the Father/Daughter/Depression number 100 MEN AND A GIRL/’37.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/03/100-men-and-girl-1937.html

THE GOLDEN FORTRESS / SONAR KELLA (1974)

In the 1960s, at the height of his early international fame, Indian writer/director Satyajit Ray was also putting out YA novels (in Bengali) for local consumption.  (Were they ever translated for Stateside publication?)  The most popular featured private investigator Feluda (more Holmes than Maigret), played here by Ray regular Soumitra Chatterjee, a know-it-all with modest eccentricities.  (The character went on to further film & tv adventures, but after the first two without Ray or Chatterjee.*)  You can see the appeal, even if much of the fun & charm gets lost in translation, especially in some of the broader characterizations (comic & villain) whose reactions wouldn’t feel out of place on a TeleMundo soap.  This story concerns an 8-yr-old kid more communicative with drawing than with words, currently fixated on a hard to find Golden Fortress and the gems supposedly hidden inside.  That possibility enough to bring out a trio of bad guys claiming to have the boy’s interest at heart, along with an opposing trio of protectors, including Feluda, hoping to find the castle first, then wait to nab the abductors.  With better picture elements (the colors look right, but the image isn’t sharp), the picaresque elements built into the storyline might carry us past any weak spots, but I’d guess it would still seem too local for broad appeal.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *The second of the Ray-helmed Feluda films, THE ELEPHANT GOD/’79 (not seen here) sounds pretty similar in style & quality.  Perhaps it’s out in better condition.

TRAIN DREAMS (2025)

In his second feature as writer/director, Clint Bentley trims his frame ratio down from a horizontal WideScreen of 2.35 to 1, well-suited for his horse-racing debut in JOCKEY/’21 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/jockey-2021.html), to a more vertically inclined ratio of 1.5 to 1 for the tall trees of the NorthWest and the intimacy of family life found here.  (Both films with cinematographer Adolpho Veloso’s emphasis on using natural light and too many backlit silhouettes.)  The film a career definer for Joel Edgerton as a still-waters-run-deep loner, an orphan working for the railroad as a logger whose life improves when independent-minded Gladys (Felicity Jones) takes an interest.  Romance, marriage, house building, child, played in stages between long separations on dangerous work trips.  But even this unsatisfactory on & off family life will seem precious next to the whims of God & Nature that leave Edgerton with little more than haunted memories.  The film, generally moving and refusing to push emotional buttons (it hardly needs to), though in the end, somewhat one-note in theme and execution.  The biggest shame is that while digitally shot, the laconic characters and spectacular landscape might have played with far more power on the big screen*, and NetFlix barely gave this a short award-qualifying theatrical run.  And regardless of promises currently being made, that’s the likely future of film; or rather the end of it.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *A proper release might help stop the blather on how only productions with casts of thousands and pricey screen-filling special effects get major boosts from theatrical showings. Ultimately, nothing’s bigger/more powerful than the human face shown in close up 50' wide.  See Garbo at the end of QUEEN CHRISTINA/’33 for confirmation.

YELLOW SKY (1949)

The last of three films made by favored 20th/Fox wrier/producer Lamar Trotti and tough guy megger William Wellman isn’t nearly as well known as their second collaboration, the much acclaimed OX-BOW INCIDENT/43, but, if no classic, is a far better work.  OX-BOW, with its mournful bearing (a Western Greek tragedy) and airless soundstage ‘exteriors,’ is usually deferred to for its downbeat content and taking a bold stand against lynching innocent suspects.  (An attitude known in Hollywood circles as Texas Liberal.)  This less arty item, loaded with on-location exteriors, follows a passel of Civil War vets who rob small town banks but are eventually chased by a military posse into taking a 70 mile crossing over ‘the sink,’ an ‘anvil flat’ that’ll kill you surer than a rope.  And since they shot in Death Valley, you believe it.  Miraculously, on their last legs, they come upon a town out there . . . a ghost town.  Two inhabitants and a hidden spring; it offers a chance, or could if Grandpa and Granddaughter don’t shoot them first.*  They’ve been prospecting for years and have a fortune in gold stashed away.  Info that perks up the revived gang almost as much as the good-lookin’ tomboy granddaughter.  Fill in the blanks; just don’t forget to add on a passing group of reasonably reasonable Indians, long time pals of G’pa.  It makes a fine set up, with plenty of suspense, horniness, venal backstabbing and possible redemption for robbers Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark (just his third pic), Harry Morgan & John Russell; alternately ogling the gold and curvy granddaughter Anne Baxter.  Trotti cops out at the climax (twice!), but at least Wellman doesn’t try for the artistic flourishes he’s rarely comfortable handling.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *James Barton, Anne Baxter’s prospecting G’pa, was a longtime B’way star, a sort of stage Irishman since 1919.  Most recently the original Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s THE ICEMAN COMETH.  It’s the role Lee Marvin filmed in 1973.  Back on B’way, after some Hollywood work, Barton followed ICEMAN with Lerner & Loewe’s first hit musical PAINT YOUR WAGON, playing the same role Lee Marvin did (with many a change) in the 1969 film.  Even stranger, the relationship between Barton and Anne Baxter’s tomboy granddaughter suddenly thrust into womanhood, was replayed by Barton two years later, now with Olga San Juan as daughter, on B’way in PAINT YOUR WAGON.

THE 300 SPARTANS (1962)

A glance at the date and style of advertising for this telling of the oft-told Battle of Thermopylae (the legendary Fifth Century B.C. holding action by vastly outnumbered Spartans against Xerxes’ Persian hordes) suggests one of those Sword & Sandals epics-on-the-cheap flooding the market in the wake of the huge commercial success of HERCULES UNCHAINED/’59.  Not so.  This was meant as a quality release, boasting a decent mid-level cast of Hollywood leads; top-drawer Brits in support (Ralph Richardson, David Farrar); two great cinematographers (Rudolph Maté, directing since 1947, and the great Geoffrey Unsworth lensing); generous seaside location work; and a few thousand marching soldiers scenically hugging the shoreline for spectacle.  The problem is that we only get so far in the quality department while missing the chance for campy fun from poorly dubbed, over-muscled beefcake in leading roles.  In comparison, this seems too sobersided, a little dull and a lot dutiful.  Still, not bad at telling the tale, a true legend we stick to with reasonable fidelity; only losing our way in some added-on straight romance for a disgraced young Spartan whose eventual sacrifice can’t come soon enough to spare us from his emoting.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The film probably best watched before something like the artsy, eye-popping, but narrative-challenged 300/’06, Zach Synder’s OTT vision of the even better graphic novel by Frank Miller & Lynn Varley.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/07/300-2006.html

DEEP COVER (1992)

As so often the case, unsung director Bill Duke can't put a foot wrong in this undercover cop story.  Laurence Fishburne is the regular beat cop recruited by Charles Martin Smith’s Fed NARCO to plant in the West Coast drug trade, embedded deep in the organization so he can rise to expose the top California supplier.  Two problems: ONE: to get there, he’ll have to play the game for real as an insider; TWO: by the time he gets to the guy, he’ll be no different than the men he’s been stealth hunting.  Nothing original there, but Duke makes it feel fresh and suspenseful with cross-play between the corrupt and the corruptible.  A distinction that certainly includes Washington, D.C., apt to change who they want to take down depending on changes in Central American governments.  Scripter Michael Tolkin (just off THE PLAYER/’92) fills in Fishburne’s character with a father’s death, a surrogate son, a romance with a beautiful art gallery manager/money launderer, but mostly with a bromance with partner in crime Jeff Goldblum, reminding you he can do a lot more than recycle Jeff Goldblum tics.*  These two a fascinating double act; straight, but with sexual voltage steaming out of their ears.  It leads to a veritable liebestod of a finale with Fishburne confessing he’s working for the Feds and Goldblum confessing how it needn’t change the relationship.  They might be Jack Lemmon and Joe E. Brown at the end of SOME LIKE IT HOT/’59, when Lemmon pulls off the wig and says ‘Because I’m a guy,’ and a still smitten Joe E. Brown replies, ’ Well, nobody’s perfect.’  Except this is no comedy.  Technical chops, brilliant stylized use of color, relentless pacing, no dull content, standout perfs, how does Duke pull these things off so consistently?

DOUBLE-BILL:   Now in his 80s, Duke remains active as actor & director.  Best known for Urban Crime pics and ‘quality’ series tv, his first feature-length work, THE KILLING ROOM/’83 already a near classic.  It can be tricky to find since it was made for PBS American Playhouse, and is often listed under the series’ title.  Complex and sophisticated filmmaking on the beginnings of the Chicago Meat Workers Union, and how racial issues affected work relations before and after WWI.  Why Duke never gets mentioned as a pioneering Black filmmaker is beyond me.  Maybe he was just too good to need that sort of special pleading.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:   *Goldblum quite the clotheshorse in this film.  But then, he probably wears them as well as any male star since Rex Harrison in UNFAITHFULLY YOURS back in 1948.