THE SUBTERRANEANS (1960)

After winning his first Oscar® on GIGI/’58, composer/arranger/conductor André Previn’s next call from producer Arthur Freed had him not only score, but also perform ‘live’ on camera as jazz pianist within the club settings of this adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s best-selling novel about ‘The Beats.’   (Not hep to the term?  Think late ‘50s hipsters.)  Knowing the story was about Kerouac as a struggling writer (miscast George Peppard) unable to love before he encounters a mentally troubled mixed-race (Black/Cherokee) beauty who breaks thru his reserve, Previn asked the studio exec, ‘Who’s playing the Black girl?’  ‘Leslie Caron.’  Which explains everything.  At least, everything that's wrong here.  Not just Caron.  There’s clueless director Ranald MacDougall replacing clueless initial director Denis Sanders; Robert Thom’s script tossing out all but three of the novel’s characters; Freed’s conception of a small, raw, b&w film losing out to standard studio policy for MetroColor & CinemaScope; savage cuts to the film without input from Freed or MacDougall . . .   You get the idea.  Checking out old tv clips of the real Beats is embarrassing enough.  (Some of the writing, too.)  But this is off the charts.  (Excepting Jim Hutton whose scraggly attempt at a beard looks downright authentic.*)  M-G-M buried the remains, making this one of their few films never given home video release in any format.  (The curious can find Pan and Scan copies online.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *The year before, Roger Corman’s b&w horror cheapie BUCKET OF BLOOD/’59 got closer to the mark on The Beat Generation.  (It’s actually more in line with Freed’s original conception.)  If only the poetry club denizens snapped their fingers rather than clapped their  hands.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/11/a-bucket-of-blood-1959.html

DESIERTO (2015)

Mainstream commercial debut for Jonás (son of Alfonso) Cuarón, this Mexican illegal immigrants-on-the-run thriller is more interesting than first appears; just not for the right reasons.  Gael García Bernal (doing Alfonso a favor?) stars as the nice fence-jumper, a fair-minded guy trying to get back to the son he had to leave in California.  But when the truck he’s riding in breaks down, it leaves him, along with a baker’s dozen of fellow border crossers, with no choice but to hike thru the desert on foot in shadeless temps touching 120°.  Then things really start to go wrong as sharp-shooting ‘patriotic’ homicidal maniac Jeffrey Dean Morgan, along with his ferocious dog Tracker, spot the desperate group.  The rest of the film standard chase stuff, the hunter and his prey.  But what makes it interesting is just how far Cuarón goes to depoliticize the situation; never stopping to ask if it should be depolitized.  The only legit cop we see runs into, then drives away from Morgan.  Each miming disdain for the other.  Elsewise, Cuarón models the film on totally apolitical classics like THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME/’32, an oft-filmed story of a wild game hunter releasing human prey to chase around.  Or, say, THE LOST PATROL/’34, a John Ford film about an unseen enemy sniper taking troopers down one-by-one.  Plus Morgan brings in his own layer of inappropriate references from his long run in THE WALKING DEAD.  Odd decisions.  And if you are going to emphasize the sheer sports-like horror of a human hunt, you need a surer hand at action and suspense than Cuarón shows.  Where’s Raoul Walsh to work out those now-you-see-him/now-you-don’t angles between hunter and prey as they climb round rocky cliffs?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  For a great angle on the Mexican immigrant experience, I CARRY YOU WITH ME/’20.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/i-carry-you-with-me-te-llevo-conmigo.html

THE CHRISTOPHERS (2025)

Maybe Steven Soderbergh needs to direct fewer films.  (To say nothing of his work as producer.)  For well over a decade his projects (even the more obviously commercial ones) have been reasonably well-received critically, sometimes commercially, too, but forgotten so fast, it’s as if they never existed.  So too here on this well acted, but empty whimsy on failing artistic powers, greedy children, a truth-telling assistant and the difference between what art costs and what it’s worth.  Not strictly a two-hander, though it feels like one; a throwback to faux-stylish death-haunted ‘70s play adaptations like SLEUTH or DEATHTRAP.  Ian McKellen plays the fast-fading chattering bore of a painter whose estranged children (Tweedledum Jessica Gunning and Tweedledee James Corden) hope to cash in post-mortem on a late work, THE CHRISTOPHERS, a series of unfinished portrait studies on his last great love.  Lucky for them, talented but undiscovered painter Michaela Coel needs a job and hits it off in an antagonistic way, to get hired by McKellen as his assistant.  Her secret assignment: finish The Christophers after his imminent death using his paint & brushes to hide the forgery, then split the sales with the siblings.  Has no one told these dopes that unfinished ‘lost’ work can fetch prices equal to if not higher than finished second-rate stuff?  In any event something of a real relationship develops between the painters scuttling the plot . . . but in a good way.  A fun watch, if you have the patience.  Some of the heavily improvised dialogue does go on (McKellen not one the great Shakespearean monologists for nothing!), but the teasing will he or won’t he destroy his unfinished work before he kicks the bucket, holds less interest and puts out less tension than Soderbergh counts on.  So this time, the film was forgotten before it hit the screen.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  For something in the same ballpark: aging gay writers/artists confronting their demons, try LOVE IS THE DEVIL/’98 or QUEER/ 24.  Each with Daniel Craig, but going from object to subject.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/01/queer-2024.html

ALIBI (1929)

‘The Talkies’ truly arrived at the movies not as you’ve no doubt repeatedly been told in 1927 with THE JAZZ SINGER, but in 1929 when films with some sort of synch-sound capacity flipped from 1928's 20% sound/80% silent to 80% sound/20% silent.  (These figures about as rough as the recording quality at the time.)  Audiences, studios and critics picked up on the shift and knew things would never go back.  But much woe amongst film intelligencia who saw the change as either bad canned theater or canned bad theater; an art form immobilized.  Yet even in 1929, signs of life were appearing if you looked for it.  Visually imaginative, fluidly shot, still enjoyable today.  Standouts holding on to camera mobility and personal style included Ernst Lubitsch’s THE LOVE PARADE (next year he’d invent the Music Video in MONTE CARLO);  F. Richard Jones’s BULLDOG DRUMMOND (alas dead of T.B. the next year); and this film’s Roland West* who’d inexplicably fall out of the biz two films/two years later at 47.  Here, after a quick-step opening to get wise-guy mob man Chester Morris out of jail, West films a big single-take thru art director William Cameron Menzies’ Art Deco nightclub to establish antihero Chester Morris’s character with a tracking shot Martin Scorsese might envy.  And while the visual pizzazz comes & goes, it all leads to the film’s climax with a penthouse escape that can still cause a gasp or two.  The plot gimmick involves a five-minute gap in Morris’s alibi that would have given him time to kill a cop.  And it’s trusting fiancé Mae Busch, a cop’s daughter, no less, who trips him up.  Other than West’s sure hand, it’s Morris who makes the pic.  The ruthless gangster kept in reserve behind the romantic lead Busch falls for still packing a wallop.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Morris would slip to formula programmers, hamming it up in BOSTON BLACKIEs and the like.  But seen here, in THE BIG HOUSE/’30 and in RED-HEADED WOMAN/’32, he’s the real deal.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-big-house-1930.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/04/red-headed-woman-1932.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *The uptick in ‘Talkie’ quality so apparent even Oscar® noticed, with these three films collecting eleven nominations.

LA CASA LOBO / THE WOLF HOUSE (2018)

Partners in animated shorts since 2007, Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León went feature-length with this vaguely political allegory, a well-reviewed, if little seen chiller that mixes various styles of animation (hand-drawn; puppetry; stop-motion).  It opens with a ‘restored’ faux ‘60s documentary on a discreet German Colony in Chile’s back-country, a happy land where  strong local honey, strong personal discipline and strong support for the fascist Pinochet government lead one freedom-loving woman to escape.  Now she’s living in a cabin of fear with a wolf at the door and fellow visiting victims.  Or something like that.  JC/CL none too clear on narrative detail; much more concerned with laying out overstuffed design elements amid constant washes of colors and animated movement in every corner.  All very 1970s avant garde in decor and technique.  (1973 when Pinochet took power, so . . . intentional?)  The animators’ visual idée fixe a deadly bleed out (seen in many of their earlier shorts) which turns into a spontaneous blood bath.  Less stop-motion animation than glop-motion animation as characters ooze away in front of your eyes.  No doubt, appealing to some.  It certainly got attention from Film Fest juries.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Top notch animated/allegorical anti-Pinochet pic in EL CONDE.’23.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/09/el-conde-2023.html

COOGAN’S BLUFF (1969)

To New Yorkers, Coogan’s Bluff is a natural promontory by the Harlem River, think 150th to 160th St, then big apartment buildings West to St. Nicolas Ave.  Old timers remember the Polo Grounds in Washington Heights.  Not movie mavens.  For them, COOGAN’S BLUFF is where Don met Clint; that’s Don Siegel & Clint Eastwood.  Siegel becoming, along with Sergio Leone, one of Eastwood’s two directorial father-figures.  Leone for vision & ambition; Siegel for tools & efficiency.  Yet it almost didn’t happen when studio execs put up either DON Taylor or Alex SEGAL to direct Eastwood’s first Universal project.  Luckily, the memo split the difference and Don Siegel got the call.  Siegel claimed not to have even seen an Eastwood pic.  Together they worked up a shootable script from five drafts and got along fine.*   But how hard could it have been?  The story no more than a fish-out-of-water/bull-in-a-china-shop story about a lean/mean Arizona Sheriff Coogan losing his extradition in those tough Manhattan streets and overstepping his authority to get him back between stare downs with Lt. Lee J. Cobb (pleasingly reserved), pushy romantic passes at criminal psychologist Susan Clark (giving as good as she gets), and the general mayhem of Manhattan in its Fun City days.  Check out the Swingin’ Discotheque Club.  Boobs and LGTB action.  Neatly run, as expected by Siegel, though don’t look for the actual Coogan’s Bluff, the big action finale filmed in Fort Tryon Park below the Cloisters Museum far West of Coogan’s Bluff.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *This out of Don Siegel’s excellent auto-bio A SIEGEL FILM.

DOUBLE-BILL:  BLUFF not only an unplanned trial-run for Siegel/Eastwood’s era-defining DIRTY HARRY/’71, it also served as a stealth-pilot for tv’s McCLOUD, a six-yr run with Dennis Weaver, nicer/less sexy.

PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (1986)

In spite of being a considerable hit (because of being a considerable hit?), this is the peak period Francis Ford Coppola film no one talks about.  It’s also the last time he worked as a  hired hand (replacing Penny Marshall after production started).  More importantly, it’s the only female driven film of his maturity.*  And if Magical Realism Americana in the suburbs ain’t in Coppola’s fach (a lesser talent who could believe in sentimental life-lessons via time-travel might have been better), enough comes thru when a gag touches a nerve to make the film play.  As when lead Kathleen Turner belts out ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’ in front of her embarrassed High School classmates in 1960.  The unlikely situation possible because a story that opens in 1985 as Turner contemplates divorcing ‘High School steady’ husband Nicolas Cage (relentlessly pulling focus by over-egging his role), does a Fade-Out/Fade-In to 1960 after Turner faints at their 25th High School Reunion.  Structurally, we’re close to THE WIZARD OF OZ, but here Turner’s ‘Dorothy’ alternately tries to fit into her wised-up teenage self while offering advice to help her old gang prep for what she knows is coming.  Instead of Tin Man, Scarecrow, Lion, she dreams of a future with Cage (the one she got), nerdy Bill Gates type Barry Miller and dangerous literary Jack Kerouac wannabee Michael Fitzsimmons.  And barely giving a thought to her future children not showing up if she swaps.  Original scripters Jerry Leichtling & Arlene Sarner not bothered by the usual narrative rules of cinematic time-travel.  They also fudge her return to the present.  Things improve whenever the older generation shows up, including Mom Barbara Harris and especially a wonderful Leon Ames as Grandfather.  If only they had more to do.  Hard to care when Cage & Turner inevitably make nice.

DOUBLE- BILL/LINK: To see just how many opportunities are wasted here, go to PLEASANTVILLE/’98  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/10/pleasantville-1998.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Much the same could be said of Martin Scorsese’s ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE/’74.

THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER: RECOBBLED (1992 - 2013)

A Holy Grail for British animator Richard Williams (WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT/’88; sequences in A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM/’66; THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE/’68; various PINK PANTHERs), this never completed magnum opus was probably too ambitious from conception.  But what a conception!  And what an achievement as far as he got!  It’s THE LAST SUPPER for animation heads, a mess, but also the greatest painting ever made.  Basically, a standard ARABIAN NIGHTS story: beautiful princess pursued by an evil usurper is saved by a not-so-simple simpleton with a mouthful of tacks.  There hadn’t been an animated film this visually ambitious since Disney fell on his face with the stunning, but inert SLEEPING BEAUTY/’59. (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/12/sleeping-beauty-1959.html)  That too a financial disaster.  But Disney could weather the loss; Williams could not.  Far from finished when funds ran out and a Completion Bond Company took over, the eviscerated results (about 80") issued by MiramaX vultures to zero B.O. under a couple of titles.  Fortunately, Williams retained his work print.  (Seen here a decade ago with Williams in attendance.)  But while the work print proved invaluable, much better visual quality appeared on any number of fan edits that started to show up on the internet.  Best of the lot, Garrett Gilchrist’s long evolving ‘RECOBBLED Cut,’ dropping installments as it added chapters and refined as ever better elements appeared.  Where do these materials come from?  (The dates listed above reflect Williams’ work print and Gilchrist’s final (?) revision; running time 1'39".)  That’s the one to look for.  Hardly a perfect work, story sense never Williams’ forté, but being forced to see so much effort in such different stages of creative development isn’t just enlightening, but a backstage thrill into the wizard’s workshop.  With lovable characters (even Vincent Price’s villainous ZigZag with his rhymed couplets carries rooting interest), you’ll soon pick up on the hop, skip & jump rhythm of the narrative thread while you goggle at visual influences ranging from Chuck Jones to M.C. Escher, Aubrey Beardsley to Peter Max & Gahan Wilson.  Designed to play on the biggest, widest screen possible (Williams has the compositional eye of William Wyler), if you can’t make out the flies buzzing around The Thief’s head, you need a bigger screen.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  The ReCobbled Cut uses well-matched, if abruptly edited classical music, heavy on Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Scheherazade.’  But the repeating decor, designs and geometric floor patterns beg for an original Philip Glass score.  ReCobbled ReScored?

KING SOLOMON’S MINES (1937)

Originally published in 1885, H. Rider Haggard’s book was still showing up as major motion picture material every other decade a century later (1919; 1937; 1950; 1985).  To say nothing of once-removed second cousins for Tarzan & Maciste to visit; even a Son-Of iteration in WATUSI/’59.  And that’s before hitting the small screen via one-offs & series in spite of dated elements and attitudes: Darkest Africa clichés; Great White Hunter leading man.  M-G-M’s splashy version of 1950 (Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, African location backgrounds, TechniColor - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/king-solomons-mines-1950.html) long considered the class act in a landfill of kitsch, usually given top rating.  But a look at this British production when seen in a good print, easily overtakes it.  With solid journeyman director Robert Stevenson* on U.K. studio work, producer Geoffrey Barkas shooting location footage in Africa and cinematographer Glen MacWilliams (he’d later do remarkably convincing water tank work for Hitchcock in LIFEBOAT/’44) getting it all to match up pretty well, the film holds up better than M-G-M’s.  Just don’t expect major studio Hollywood technical polish.  (Certainly no ‘invisible’ editing!)  But what really makes this version a standout is in how it follows the book and in how well it’s cast.  Cedric Hardwicke, Roland Young, John Loder and Anna Lee all dashing, amusing, romantic as needed.  And then there’s Paul Robeson as mysterious fellow traveler Umbopa; friend, foe or just out for himself?  Just shy of 40 and in terrific shape, still built like the former Rutger’s football star he’d been before stage & concert hall, it’s probably the best role of his curtailed film career.  Somehow making his aid to these White fortune hunters & adventurers believable in even the most ridiculous situations.  And when he opens his mouth to sing one of the pseudo African songs, especially when he lets his bass bottom loose, he’s simply undeniable on screen.  He also looks like he’s having a great time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Yes, the same Robert Stevenson who directed Orson Welles in JANE EYRE/’43 and became Disney’s top house director in the ‘50s and ‘60s: MARY POPPINS/’64 and a host of Disney hits.  Considering his gross figures include half-price kids, it’s entirely possible Stevenson is the most commercially successful director in Hollywood history counting not by dollars but admissions.