UNEXPECTED UNCLE (1941)

No film genre is more unforgiving than Screwball Comedy.  Most examples of the form not even Screwball, merely uppity Rom-Coms, studded with a few classic Screwball elements: rich, dysfunctional family; mansion with majestic staircase and sassy servants; disdain for their own inherited wealth; furs treated like pets/pets treated like furs; et al.  And the most important one that later films were unable to use: The Great Depression as social/financial backdrop.  It gave weight & irony to the weightless principals.*  Compared to Noir or Westerns, to Courtroom Drama or Police Procedurals where thresholds for success might be low as 45%, or to the second toughest genre, Musicals, which might be saved with a couple of standout numbers, Screwball needs a batting average of 750.  And that’s just to get to first!  So credit this little number for getting the gist of things right.  And for hiring Charles Coburn (sixty before he got into films) to replay his Grandpa Cupid speciality and bring the couple together.*  Here, that’s Anne Shirley at her prettiest and James Craig at his tipsiest.  The rest is cringe city.  Premise: sales girl Shirley loses her job after telling off tush pincher James Craig, unaware America’s youngest industrial tycoon also owns the shop.  Coburn offers himself as Fairy Godfather and connives to get them back together . . . for keeps.  The film is hardly helped by changing mores that have turned Craig’s attempts at ‘making love’ (as the old phrase used to put it). into what now would be called out as sexual harassment.  Also ‘hilarious’ episodes of drunken driving and kidnaping for love.  Yikes!  While as a rom-com stylist, Craig no Cary Grant.  Even the vocal cadence all wrong for this sort of thing.  Director Peter Godfrey, under producer Tay Garnett, manages a wicked traveling shot around the sales floor, but elsewise too unvaried in pacing.  Plus the usual lack of simple explanations just to keep the ball rolling.  Co-writer Eric Hatch, the source of superior Screwballs like TOPPER and MY MAN GODFREY should have known better.  And the suggested happy ending, ‘millionaires!, you have nothing to fear but your own wealth’ doesn’t cut it in 1941.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Coburn got his Oscar® doing similar duty for Jean Arthur & Joel McCrea in THE MORE THE MERRIER/’44.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-merrier-1943.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *You'd have thought The Great Depression would have made the idea that wealth drives these people crazy wouldn’t have played in those days, but the reverse ('money isn’t everything') was the unspoken moral.

ATOMIC BLONDE (2017)

David Leitch, in various capacities, has had his hand in some of the biggest action franchises of the last decade.  JOHN WICK; DEADPOOL; FAST AND FURIOUS.  But after watching this ‘original,’ where he feels fully in charge as sole director, you may wonder how much of a positive influence he was on those successes.  Told in flashback, 1989 Berlin is erupting in the societal unrest that will soon lead to the ‘Wall’ coming down.  With spillover instability bringing on chaos in the world of international espionage, there's little time to settle scores and grab the upper hand before everything changes.  No wonder East/West divides of loyalty feel fluid.  Whom to believe as the Cold War goes into its death rattle?  So, it makes sense there’s a race to find the ultimate Spy vs Spy Big Book o’ Secrets floating around Berlin.  Crackjack agent Charlize Theron is getting all beat up divining the various gangs keeping the ‘other side’ frm getting their paws on it.  But just how many ‘sides’; are there?  The vaguely delineated book the McGuffin to end all McGuffins.*  Theron works with double-agent James McAvoy to figure out a ‘safe’ way to get it out.  But can it be gotten, and can he be trusted?  Other gangs, East German Stasi and KGB also on the hunt), so Theron is forced to fight or shoot her way out with acrobatic moves and the trick rope skills of a circus vet,  Theron can take care of herself, but also shows the effort involved.  She’s pretty beat up at a debriefing for spy lords John Goodman and Toby Jones (another untrustworthy pair) and quite undone physically in a blonde fright wig.  This all should work a lot better than it does, but Leitch can’t decide what style it will best play in, alternating OTT martial arts with logistically unconvincing shoot-‘em ups.   Should actors simply brush off impossible blows like gnats or show real injuries and pain?  (So unlike WICK where it’s all of a piece, all dance and decor.)  Same goes for choices in set design and lighting.  As if Leitch wanted to order test swatches of style from all the films he was involved with, only to find they cancel each other out.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A McGuffin is the important thing everyone in the film is trying to get their hands on, but of little importance to the audience.  Hitchcock came up with the term, but the idea is pretty common.  What’s less common are the three iconic Hitchcockian moments Leitch (and his writers?) rip off.  From DIAL M FOR MURDER, a woman stabs her attacker in the back, but the blade really goes in when the guy falls on it.  From THE 39 STEPS, a Mr. Memory figure who’s memorized the ‘McGuffin’ and dies because of it.  (Though here it’s also pointless within the film plot.  Boo!)  And finally, repurposing the decoy umbrella murder gag from FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT.

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.