MARS ATTACKS (1996)

Tim Burton functions best when the budget is tight and content pushes him past his comfort zone.  (In other words, not one of his ALICE films.)  So why is MARS ATTACKS so much fun?  The exception that proves the rule?  It could lose a reel or two, but you’ll be giggling too hard to mind.  Based not on a book (comic or otherwise), but on a series of TOPPS Chewing Gum Trading Cards*, story and tone largely inspired by ‘50s Sci-Fi (think THIS ISLAND EARTH/’55; WAR OF THE WORLDS/’53*).  With a huge, unnecessary All-Star cast showing who can get their laughs within the agogic Burton rhythm (Jack Nicholson, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Lukas Haas, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, and especially Sylvia Sidney can; everyone else can’t).  But the film’s propulsion doesn’t come from smart dialogue, dumb gags or narrative inertia, but from its elegant high-concept design and lo-fi execution.  Particularly out in space when enemy space craft ominously orbit Earth.  Twenty years after STAR WARS, these may be retro toy models, but grandly purposed and displayed like the imaginatively painted box the scale models kits came in.  Commercial artwork that both ignited and ultimately limited the Burton æsthetic.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  *The idea man behind the TOPPS card series, Len Brown, isn’t properly credited on screen, but did recently get this excellent NYTimes obit.  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/arts/len-brown-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1

DOUBLE-BILL/SPOILERS/LINK:  *Just as WAR OF THE WORLDS had the aliens defeated not by weapons of mass destruction, but by ‘the little things,’ viruses and such, so here, where they are felled by a double dose of sub-operatic kitsch: Rudolf Friml operetta sung by Grand Old Opry’s Slim Whitman.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/10/this-island-earth-1955.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/war-of-worlds-1953.html

THE REPLACEMENTS (2000)

In a film full of mostly bad surprises, the first is that it took 13 years for Hollywood to turn the 1987 NFL players’ strike, and the brief series of games using semi-pros & amateur ‘replacements’ into a film.  Such a 'can't-miss'  idea.  The second is that, while the template follows 1974's THE LONGEST YARD, at core this is a PRO-scab celebration.  (And you assumed Hollywood was purely closed-shop/Pro-Union in thought & deed.)  Third is: Who knew A.I. was writing major motion pictures in 2000?  (Even scarier, it’s not bad.  Grade it a ‘Gentleman’s B.’*)  Faceless journeyman director Howard Deutch should have been just the guy for this, but his on-field completion rate is low, and the cast either works the gags too hard (see Jon Favreau) or carbon copies past triumphs without background seasoning.  (Jack Warden & Gene Hackman knowing a lost cause when they see one.)  As a once-promising quarterback, Keanu Reeves went to the trouble of putting on enough pounds to unchisel his facial structure, but is ultimately defeated by a zero chemistry girlfriend.  And yet this ain’t a ‘can’t miss’ idea for nothing; the damn thing more or less gets by on field goals or punts it's way out of trouble.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Grade inflation has upped the old Gentleman’s C to B.  (Actual scripter Vince McKewin, last of his three feature credits.)  ALSO: Attention wandering?  Decide if sportscaster Pat Summerall or John Madden is the worse actor.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Not always the case with ‘can’t miss’ football pics.  Eight years on, George Clooney fell on his ass with a look at the early days of pro-football, LEATHERHEADS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/07/leatherheads-2008.html

THE GANGSTER, THE COP, THE DEVIL / AKINJEON (2019)

Slick, ultra-professional crime thriller from South Korean writer/director Lee Won-tae (just optioned for Stateside remake*), a dandy slice of violent police procedural mayhem that lifts off when a brainy serial killer (your standard super-ego sociopath) chooses  the wrong guy as his latest victim since inside the pricey car he regularly targets, no thick-set CEO to stab at will, but a thick-set mob boss who fights back.  Injured, but alive after the killer takes off, it means the cops already on the case at last have an eyewitness to interview.  If only the survivor weren’t also a wanted criminal, a top player in the city’s gangster scene.  Played by vet villain Ma Dong-seok (shades of old-time movie star Wallace Beery, he reluctantly winds up playing ‘down-low’ partner to cock-of-the-walk police detective Kim Mu-yeol (shades of now-time movie star Brad Pitt.  Both men outstanding, each with his own reasons for finding the serial killer first.  They also have lots of backup and lots of rivals to fend off.  A neat set-up, and Lee Won-tae directs the hell out of it, much helped by Se-Seung Park nighttime lensing.  For once in one of these things, you can really follow the plot along with the elaborate fights.  Too bad Won-Tae is so addicted to over-editing, as the film's flow would benefit from a few one-take/two-shots to vary pace, especially when the leads are working out who’s gonna get what out of this unusual collaboration.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *A cleverly satisfying have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too ending begs for a follow-up.  No doubt visions of franchise helped set-up remake rights.  Did they try a sequel in Korea?

HER HIGHNESS AND THE BELLBOY (1945)

Beautiful as ever at 31 (with ravishing portrait shots from cinematographer Harry Stradling); the acting a bit more animated than usual; lucking out with fast-rising Robert Walker as co-star, stepping in for a just drafted Mickey Rooney; and getting a solid hit* out of the standard issue Euro-Royalty meets Stateside Commoner playbook; yet for Hedy Lamarr at M-G-M, the writing was already on the wall and her contract wasn’t renewed.  (She only made two more A-list pics: C.B. DeMille’s SAMSON AND DELILAH/’49 and Bob Hope’s MY FAVORITE SPY/’51 before her acting career began to fade away.)  It's directed by M-G-M company-man Richard Thorpe, but family-friendly producer Joe Pasternak pulls the strings behind this sentimental corn that sees NYC hotel bellboy Walker ditch bedridden girlfriend June Allyson once he mistakes visiting Princess Lamarr’s friendly manner at the hotel for love.  Pasternak being Pasternak, there’s a big musical sequencer so Allyson can get off the couch where she paints porcelain figurines (really!) to sing and dance in her dreams.  (Nothing physically wrong with the lass, she just needs a proposal from Walker’s distracted bellboy to receive a ‘love cure.’)  Loaded with ill-used M-G-M contract players (Agnes Moorehead as a chilly royal relative; Carl Esmond as designated fiancé, slow-witted ‘dese-dems-dose’ Rags Ragland for comic relief) . . . and the damn thing goes on for nearly two hours.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  You’d think these impossible Royalty/Commoner romantic dramedies would have died off ages ago.  But no; still being made today. ROMAN HOLIDAY/’53 (Wyler; Peck, Hepburn) still the ideal.  Best from M-G-M: THE STUDENT PRINCE.  Worst from M-G-M: THE STUDENT PRINCE.  See LINKS for details.  (Hint: the bad one directed by this film’s Richard Thorp and produced by this film’s Joe Pasternak.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-student-prince-in-old-heidelberg.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-student-prince-1954.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Keep in mind, just about anything made money in 1945, the last year of the war seeing Hollywood’s all-time highest attendance numbers.

THE ARENA (1956)

Before prolific tele-scripter Rod Serling discovered he could sidestep network censorship by sneaking (mildly) provocative ideas into his work under the guise of fantasy/Sci-Fi in THE TWILIGHT ZONE, he wrote for various prestige anthology shows.  So-called Golden Age TV like this hour-long drama for STUDIO ONE.  (Under Westinghouse sponsorship at the time, most editions retain the awkwardly ‘live’ original commercials; mini tele-plays for new appliances and actress Betty Furness.)  This one, a political drama about a senatorial feud played out on the Senate floor, a fair representation of the Serling model & method.   Just appointed Senator Wendell Corey holds a grudge against his state’s senior U.S. senator (director John Cromwell in a rare actor gig) who had denounced Corey’s corrupt senator father.  Corey’s newly hired advisor, Chester Morris, superb as a wise/wily D.C. operator, knows to play the long game, but on a drunk, blurts out an old damning secret.  Will Corey use the bomb or take the high road?  The same moral dilemma supplies the narrative motor in Gore Vidal’s THE BEST MAN/’64.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-best-man-1964.html  It also shares ARENA director Franklin J. Schaffner.)  Main reason to watch is to check on one-time Hollywood A-lister Morris in a return to form with far better material than Hollywood offered after he’d slipped to programmers.  But the unfortunate main takeaway is seeing how commonplace Serling looks without genre camouflage and metaphoric trimmings.*  Censorship did him a favor.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Past THE TWILIGHT ZONE (try ‘To Serve Man’), Serling’s subcutaneous message technique (including his beloved O’Henry twist endings) is best seen in PLANET OF THE APES/’66 (again with director  Schaffner).  But his best without obfuscating genre elements is SEVEN DAYS IN MAY/’64 under John Frankenheimer, another Golden Age tv director.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/02/seven-days-in-may-1964.html

WORLD WAR III / JANG-E JAHANI SEVOM (2022)

For those who think Romania writer/director Cristian Mungiu (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS/’07) isn’t tackling enough of his signature Modern Romanian Misérables tales*, here’s Iranian writer/director Houman Seyyedi to the rescue.  If that’s what you’re looking for, he’s damn good at it.  This award-winning downer, a convincingly tricked out nihilistic fable features Mohsen Tanabandeh as a homeless, middle-aged day laborer drifting from town to town after losing wife & child to an earthquake.  Finding temp construction work on a low-budget Holocaust film, he’s roped in (along with other day laborers) as a Concentration Camp extra in gas chamber scenes where he and his faceless building crew get treated a bit too realistically.  There’s a sense of irony run amuck as film production herders rush from shot to shot to keep on schedule.  But Seyyedi has much worse in mind than unsettling cos-play as Tanabandeh’s character inexorably sinks toward disaster: tapped to play Hitler; sleeping in the unheated gas chamber set, forced to double on early call kitchen duty, blackmailed by relatives of the local whore who secretly moves in with him on site.  Luckily, since he can’t read lines, he ‘acts’ by counting up to his next move; dialogue to be looped in later.  But any remaining laughs freeze in your throat as a series of missed communications lead to on-set tragedy and a revenge any Nazi resistence fighter would envy.  The film a bottomless black hole of Misérables’ revenge.  Fascinating, but very bleak.

DOUBL-BILL/LINK:  *Cristian Mungiu used different paths and more complicated character motivation to cover similar territory in GLORY/’16, where no-good-deed-goes-unpunished.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/01/glory-slava-2016.html

THE PAPER TIGERS (2018)

American-born Quoc Bao Tran, with a background in Martial Arts action-editing, made his writing/directing feature debut on this good-natured, if rueful Kung Fu comedy.  Modestly released to even more modest sampling, he’s put out nothing since.  A shame as half of the film has a lot of fun following three one-time Kung Fu prodigies who reunite after 15 years for the funeral of their beloved former master.  All three nearing some sort of mid-life crisis, all three sure they’re still unbeatable, if a bit rusty from age, disuse or injury.  A workout or two should bring it all back.  Yes?  Making fast enemies out of later students now claiming the late master’s legacy, they’re easily goaded into challenge matches only to find clean fights, won or lost, can turn enemies into comrades.  And if these formal grudge matches can’t fix all life problems, flexing the old disciplines still has lessons for them.  Heard this one before?*  But as long as Quoc Bao Tran holds to ‘buddy’ tropes & character comedy, the cast is able to make something out of this ‘curate’s egg’ of a film.  First-among-equals Alain Uy as a divorced dad trying too hard to cover all bases a particular pleasure.  But the script keeps slipping in moral uplift, kidding-on-the-square fortune cookie aphorisms and nods toward the power of positive thinking.  And we’re not even mentioning a final climax against a deadly legacy usurper/villain who’ll be defeated if one of our former prodigies can only ‘feel the force’ once more.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Not seen here, but is this what COBRA KAI/’18 - ‘25 manages  better?

THE GENERAL (1998)

John Boorman’s superb direction on the rise and fall of Dublin gangster Martin Cahill can’t overcome problems in a script by . . . John Boorman.  Outmaneuvering the police in one crime caper after another, Cahill became something of a folk hero after record-breaking heists in the ‘80s.  (Around the same time, ‘Dapper’ John Gotti built similar public appeal in the States simply by being well-dressed where Cahill was slovenly.)  Boorman shows some of the violence & collateral damage, but largely soft-soaps the thuggish aspects of Cahill & Co., working the underdog/Irish darling tropes with stylish WideScreen monochrome (Seamus Deasy lensed) and a shitload of good acting.  Normally, Brendan Gleeson’s broad-stroke Cahill would have blown everyone else off the screen, but he gets a run for his money with the whole cast, especially Police Captain nemesis Jon Voight.  (Forgotten what a great actor he can be?  Not Boorman who directed him in DELIVERANCE/’72 and brought him in as a last-minute replacement.)  So what goes wrong here?*  It starts at the beginning, which is actually the end, with Cahill assassinated.  It sure looks like an IRA thing.  And is there anything audiences are more weary of than the Irish ‘troubles?’  Cahill was more likely an IRA victim.  (Is the answer known?)  In any event, he wouldn't play ball with them.  Perhaps Boorman picked the wrong POV to tell the tale.  Here, the gang who couldn’t shoot straight is the hapless/incompetent Dublin police force.  The bane of Voight’s despairing Javert.  It’s an off-the-beat option that might have refreshed a lot of threadbare story beats.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Well, there’s that misleading title.

MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA / CHELOVEK S KINO-APPARATOM (1929)

Experimental Russian film journalist Dziga Vertov (the nom de kino means Spinning Top), was born Denis Kaufman, older brother to cinematographers Mikhail, who shot this, and Boris, who didn’t.*  Other than France’s Jean Vigo, Vertov likely owns the biggest reputation on the smallest body of work in film; basically the hour & change seen here.  But while Vigo an immediate natural behind the camera, Vertov looks like he had to work hard for every shot; plus self-burdened with the goal of creating Cinematic Esperanto for the masses.  He’d been making progressively less objective/more artistically subjective ‘kino reports’ since shortly after the 1917 revolution, but MAN still a stylistic leap.  (Though so many of the films missing or unavailable; who knows?)  Yet the film marks not a beginning but an end for Vertov; only one major project remaining: THREE SONGS OF LENIN/’34.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/three-songs-about-lenin-tri-pesni-o.html)  And he was only 38.  (Another case of Stalin shooting down an artist who was ‘too formalistic?’)  Long available only in shabby prints that didn’t help Vertov’s case, a recent BFI restoration (with a new score from Michael Nyman) brings back visual mischief & luster.  So, in hindsight, Vertov now seems to be one of the pioneers in the new City Portrait films coming into vogue.  Brother Mikhail would make one (IN SPRING) from Kyiv later this year; while 1930 saw Boris shooting Vigo’s cinematic letter from Nice, while the most famous of the lot, PEOPLE ON SUNDAY, from Berlin, involved Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak & Edgar Ulmer.  CAMERA a speed tour of Moscow, celebrating everything from street tramps to nude mud bathers, trolleys to kinemas, parades, delis, fashion and anything electronic that spins.  All handled in clever multiplane action and edited as closely as a pedestrian's swerve to avoid motorcars in crowded streets.  Building toward self-operating animatronic cameras and rapide montage Abel Gance would envy.  The film a marvel, though possibly an empty one.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Vertov obviously closely followed international trends, but it’s still a surprise to see so many Buster Keaton gags.  Buster wildly popular in Moscow at the time.  Look for lifts straight out of SHERLOCK JR./’24 and THE CAMERAMAN/’28.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Boris was already living in Poland at the time and would soon go to France where he shot for Jean Vigo, eventually debuting in the States on Elia Kazan’s ON THE WATERFRONT/’54.