12 JOURS / 12 DAYS (2017)

Prolific French documentarian Raymond Depardon, often doubling as cinematographer and now in his 80s, hasn’t released a new film since this one.  But if it does prove to be his last, he’s gone out with honors; a calmly fraught look into a unique custom in the French Code of Justice that calls for a ‘Freedom and Detention Judge’ to revisit the status and rights of involuntarily admitted criminal patients held at psychiatric facilities within 12 days of incarceration.  Using simple non-narrated techniques (no voice-over to set the scene or give info), Depardon relies on static shots, basic reverse angles between judge and ‘patient’ (with assigned legal representation), we might be watching ‘Dogme’ filmmaking principles in action or a film along the lines of the late Frederick Wiseman . . . only much, much shorter.  (Running time about 90".)  The patients are split between three judges, all kind, all seen-it-all-before; all taking doctors’ reports ahead of patients explanations.  Half of them know they need more time before requesting a change in treatment or early release, all on some sort of sedating medication regimen, nearly all able to put across a five minute sanity pitch only to start showing mental cracks or something more complicated in rising order of sad, scary, delusional.  And just once, after a patient has left the room, does a judge let us in on something terrible from a patient’s past she’s aware of.  And it’s devastating.  All this fascinating to watch, but plainly exhausting to the players on both sides of the judgment table where they go thru the motions of observable justice with unexpected civility and hidden hopelessness.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  A fine correction to the cute/sentimental slush seen in so many fictional films dealing with mental health conditions & 'holding' facilities.  And no one playing it up for the awards circuit.

LOVELESS / NELYUBOV (2017)

More than two decades after his stunning debut on THE RETURN/’03, Russian writer/director Andrey Zvyagintsev continues to make absorbing films that don’t quite satisfy or come up to his first.*  (Two of his eight not seen here.  Both, like THE RETURN, titles where he takes no writing credit.)  Like all his work, this well-reviewed work (his best received since THE RETURN?) is worth its running time, but certain filmmaking tics have crusted over into mannerism.  Here it’s most noticeable in Zvyagintsev’s use of ominous slow tracking shots in, portending major revelation, but with no payoff.  Fizzling into mere transition.  Still, this portrait of a dissolving bad marriage hit with the added pressure of a child neither seems particularly attached to suddenly gone missing, is compelling.  Especially as acted out by two self-centered couples, Mom & Dad each seeing others.  Only the characterless lost boy earning compassion in a brief, shadowy shot, hiding behind a door, overhearing his parents argue about their future and his.  Their actions taken past the breaking point when they take two days to even notice his absence after overnights with the putative replacements.  (The only other relative is the wife’s estranged termagant of a mother.  A visit there the most rattling thing in the film.)  Cunning and cutting, Zvyagintsev seems an extremely talented director in need of direction.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned: THE RETURN/’03.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/09/return-2003.html

PUSHER (1996)

Hard-boiled Danish writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn was at Cannes this year with his first feature film in a decade.  Easy to see how he could have burnt himself out watching this debut.  In his mid-twenties at the time, he looks fresh out of the THIS IS SPINAL TAP ‘Crank it to 11' School du Cinema.*  A character study on a week in the life of drug supplier Frank (Kim Bodnia) and his inconstant mates (including a feral Mads Mikkelsen),as Frank rapidly sinks into dangerous levels of debt to various drug dealers a mere step or two above him, but far deadlier.  Shot entirely with jumpy hand-held camera (Morten Søborg), it has the opposite effect of Refn’s intention (a rookie gaffe), constantly calling attention to itself (especially in fast back & forth pans between actors) pulling you out of the action when it wants to pull you in.  With actors playing to Refn rather than to each other . . . or to us.  Guru cinéma vérité something of an oxymoron.  Worse, when Frank finds his back against the wall on the seventh day, Refn starts pulling melodrama out of his hat (character & plot reversals via guns, romance, power balances, cash & friendship) that might work in a more stylized film, but here look like cheating.  On the other hand . . . two sequels.  It made Refn’s rep.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *We much prefer Refn’s poorly received ONLY GOD FORGIVES/’13.  Perhaps because rather than crank it to 11, he aims for 12.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/08/only-god-forgives-2013.html

LUCKY JORDAN (1942)

Fourth-billed, but breaking thru as a major star on THIS GUN FOR HIRE/’42, Alan Ladd got solo above-the-title billing for the first time on this slapdash wartime comedy later the same year.*  Paramount Pictures rushing to get Ladd back on screen before the Draft Board grabbed him for the Army.  And, wouldn’t you know, that’s pretty much the plot of the pic; just that Ladd’s a big-time racketeer with the draft board on his tail rather than a big-time movie star with the draft board on his tail.  But treating superior officers like mob underlings doesn’t fly when your boss is Uncle Sam.  On the other hand, when a cache of secret documents goes missing, and foreign agents are hot on the trail, some of those underworld talents come in mighty handy, especially if you’re on the run, AWOL with the film’s antagonist WAC (debuting Helen Walker) who’s beginning to see possibilities in this arrogant soldier boy.  Sounds kinda fun, no?  Especially with the lousy news from the front in the early days of the way.  For a time, it brought out the silly side in Hollywood war movies.  Alas, nothing in here plays to its comic potential.  (Other than a running bit between Ladd and the drunken old ‘biddy’ (Mabel Paige) who pretends to be his mother.)  And while cinematographer John F. Seitz was proving transformative to Paramount literary writer/directors Preston Sturges & Billy Wilder at the time, there’s little he can do to give payoffs to disappearing characters & plot lines, or fix director Frank Tuttle’s lackluster comic timing.  (Note how elements snap into place whenever the script drops the comedy and goes for straight suspense.)  The film’s not unpleasant, just a mess.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See what all the fuss was about in THIS GUN FOR HIRE/’42.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/this-gun-for-hire-1942.html

FLICKERING LIGHTS / BLINKENDE LYGTER (2000)

Small-time crooks/big-time psychopaths (with comic edge to their violence) had become something of a genre unto itself by the time this Danish iteration, from writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen, came out.  Two & a half decades on, there’s not much surprise or kick left to it.  What it does offer is a chance to watch a young, lean Mads Mikkelsen as one of the four thuggish grifters making small change smuggling in contraband goods, like tax-free cigarettes.  ‘Menthol!,’ Mikkelsen grouses before laying out the confused Polish driver.  But it’s the next job that launches the main action when the four guys pick up a locked suitcase that contains too much dough to deliver without taking a 100% cut, hatching a plan to enjoy their profits by running off to Barcelona.  Naturally the intended party for the cash-filled suitcase is none too happy with things and the hunt is on as one small mob goes after another.  And this is where Jensen doubles down from quirky to absurd as our gang of thieves (plus an on & off girlfriend of little intuition) find a dilapidated house, formerly a country restaurant, now abandoned, they plan to restore.  Too bad no one knows how to cook.  But under the informal protection of a couple of equally oddball locals, the project starts coming together.  Tricked out with short daytrips, a slow-healing gunshot wound, walks on the beach, hunting down farm animals and flashbacks to character-defining crises from childhood, the film devolves into a fable.  Not without its shocks, laughs and nifty resolutions, the problem less that so much is absurd as that so much is secondhand absurd.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *You can get a good sense of Mikkelsen’s exceptional range, pretty much right from the start, comparing his young Robert De Niro act here (even in build) to his equally convincing Gregory Peck solid physicality in the WWII spy drama FLAME & CITRON/’06.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/flammen-og-citronen-flame-and-citron.html

WYATT EARP (1994)

Kevin Costner is seriously underrated.  Not as an actor, fine in the right role (underdog striver/ornery father-figure).  No, he’s underrated as a Hollywood survivor.  Few movie stars could slip past career-ending debacles like WATERWORLD/95*, THE POSTMAN/’97, the on-going HORIZON/’24 and EARP with nary a nick to their commercial standing.  In EARP’s case, big losses on writer/director Lawrence Kasdan’s dead serious/reasonably factual bio-pic on the legendary lawman were chalked up to the recent release of George P. Cosmatos’s more light-hearted lob at the same subject, TOMBSTONE/’93, sucking all the air out of the market.  (Ironically, using the rowdy tone of SILVERADO/’83, Kasdan’s previous Western epic.)  No doubt that’s part of the story, but EARP didn’t need help to fail; a 3+ hours length and grim predetermination turned possible audiences off all on their own.  (One thing that does make both films a must-see are the two enormous all-star casts, offering the chance to sample half of Hollywood's best late-twenties/early-thirties actors at the time.)  Kasdan’s main take on the saga is decidedly Freudian: Earp’s Old Testament revenge against GOD for taking away his young bride (and unborn son) before he’s redeemed (after murdering towns-full of gun-toting strangers*) by a beautiful Jewish prostitute.  Yikes!  But the film is a drag (if not for Gene Hackman with but ten minutes on-screen); at times (particularly in James Newton Howard’s windswept overblown score) even a disgrace.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  John Ford’s MY DARLING CLEMENTINE/’48 remains tops in EARP mythology (very ‘print the legend’) though low on accuracy.  Even though Ford, in his early Hollywood years, knew Earp.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/my-darling-clementine-1946.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In spite of critical ridicule, WATERWORLD, in a variety of ‘improved’ re-cuts, eventually recouped.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Hard not to wonder at The Wild West’s ‘liberal’ gun policies that ordered NO GUNS in town.  Pick ‘em up again on your way out.  It’d never happen today.

REMEMBERING GENE WILDER (2023)

Once past the generic title (fit for a local memorial service) and the generic structure (movie clips & fresh or archival interviews set between self-narration from Gene Wilder’s audio version of his autobiography), and not withstanding occasional non-linear jumps to pre-fame days, this Ron Frank/Glenn Kirschbaum documentary on the iconic/unorthodox comic movie star is mainly unusual for its sheer niceness.  As was its subject.  (No given with great comic actors!)  But what it does best of all is getting you to reconsider films you’d either overlooked (SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL/’89) or actively avoided (THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER/’75 with wife Gilda Radner).  And simply by listing THE PRODUCERS, BLAZING SADDLES, and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN showing how indebted Mel Brooks’ film career batting average was to Wilder.  Behind the movie roles, more personal heartbreak than you recall.  Touching stuff.  It also serves well as a Wilder starter pack without giving away too many highlights or spoilers.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Our regular suggestion for the funniest/lesser-known Gene Wilder pic remains START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME/’70.  OR: Type Gene Wilder into our Search Box (Upper Left corner on the Main Site (e-phoners scroll below to the link) for a pot-pourri listing of various Wilder films & mentions.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/02/start-revolution-without-me-1970.html

LA FEMME INFIDÈLE / THE UNFAITHFUL WIFE (1969)

Often beginning his films with little inflection and just-the-facts directness, gourmet gagster Claude Chabrol could come off as the Jack Webb of the French Nouvelle Vague.  Often as not, this tactic was a fake-out meant to leave you off-balance, uncertain where you were being led till you’d digested the first act.  By then, you’d know if you were watching good or bad Chabrol.  This one of the good ones.  Stéphane Audran (then married to Chabrol) is the beautiful, blank wife of well-heeled businessman Michel Bouquet; working in Paris/living with their 10-yr-old boy in Versailles.  Right now, Bouquet’s visiting mother is about to head home, but not without first telling her son to lose a little weight.  Seems rude, but Maman has picked up on the ‘off’ vibe between the couple.  And a stealth phone call by Audran cues us in to some sort of relationship troubles before the pair share a joyless night out with friends, highlighting a couple at cross purposes.  Soon after, Bouquet hires a P.I.; Audran disappears every other afternoon; an affair of no great passion is confirmed; and civilized confrontation turns on a dix sous piece into violence.  The mix of family comfort and discomfort; smiling lies & unpleasant truths; married & unmarried beds of iniquity.  Like the jigsaw puzzle the young son is trying to complete, there’s a piece missing in this relationship.  Then two detectives knock at the door after dinner.  Death and domesticity.  Chabrol couldn’t always be bothered, but when he could, he knew how to tighten the screws.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  And dig how Pierre Jansen’s atonal score keeps you off-balance.

CONTEST:  Along with fellow Nouvelle Vague-er Éric Rohmer, Chabrol co-authored one of the first books to make the case for Alfred Hitchcock as more than ‘mere’ entertainer. (As if that alone weren’t enough!  Ah, the French.  See: HITCHCOCK; THE FIRST FORTY-FOUR FILMS.)  So, no surprise to see Chabrol lift a major scene from a major Hitchcock film here.  Use the Comment Box to name the film and the scene to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of a streamable film of your choice.

LENIN IN OCTOBER / LENIN V OKTYABRE (1937)

Straightforward and easy to follow, Mikhail Romm’s film on Vladimir Lenin and The October Revolution of 1917 is less ‘agit-prop’ than YA bio-pic.  Made to celebrate twenty years that shook the world, it takes bolshoi liberties with the facts, most notably by raising Joseph Stalin’s involvement in events, largely by giving him now exiled Leon Trotsky’s part.*  And damned if the simplified storyline & politics don’t work in entertaining fashion.  Romm might be telling a modern Robin Hood story, with short, stocky, balding Lenin taking from the establishment and giving to the proletariat.  There’s even a big, benign protector/bodyguard called Vasily in the Little John spot.  Structured for near constant suspense, we begin with Lenin’s train ride from Finland Station to Petrograd, hunted all the way by agents.  Met by comrades in the city, he goes into immediate hiding, his every move an opportunity for various parties and groups of activists across the political spectrum to grab him.  (From Sergei Eisenstein’s OCTOBER/‘28 to Warren Beatty’s REDS/’81, party confusion is where they lose us.*)  Boris Shchukin makes a downright bouncy Lenin, a charmer (recent bios paint him as only slightly less ruthless than Stalin) while loyal aide Nikolai Okhlopkov isn’t so different than Alan Hale was in Little John in next year’s THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD.  Both leads repeated in Romm’s follow up, LENIN IN 1918/’39, but that film a good deal more daunting to watch.  With impressive sets and set pieces, sweeping, screen-filling action, self-serving political villains and a noticeable absence of Eisenstein’s artistic trappings, this was THE representation of ‘Volodya’ for at least a couple of generations in Russia.  And note the final shot at the victory rally: Lenin with his characteristic out-thrust arm; Stalin standing behind him waiting for the next act to begin.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Trotsky had his post-mortem revenge after Stalin’s death when Khrushchev’s cultural ‘thaw’ clipped Stalin out of all circulating prints.  Restored to full length, here’s an excellent print available free:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lenin_in_October_(film)_1937.webm  

DOUBLE-BILL:  *As mentioned above, Eisenstein’s OCTOBER: TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, which, as Stalin pointed out, is too ‘formalistic.’  (The guy was also a film critic.)  And Beatty’s REDS, which has its own problems though Jack Nicholson makes a fantastic Eugene O’Neill, if not nearly as tragically handsome.