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, it’s the likely future of film; or rather the end of.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *A proper release might help stop the blather on how only big productions with casts of thousands and pricey screen-filling special effects get a major boost 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.

SOUTHERN COMFORT (1981)

LORD OF THE FLIES meets DELIVERANCE in Walter Hill’s chilling survivor tale about a small platoon of National Guardsman on a training exercise that goes haywire in the swamp-lands of Louisiana Cajun country.  An easy allegory to American interventionist policies, here weekend warriors fire blanks, justify action with patriotic patronizing & arrogance, or cite first-world entitlement with empty phrases of pigheaded stubbornness and feverish religion.  Hill smartly lets parallels to recent foreign entanglements speak for themselves to concentrate on how the men got into deep shit with unseen/unfriendly natives.  (You can’t call Cajuns indigenous people, but that’s the idea.)  No surprise then that the lost men's desperate situation is entirely brought on by the Guards' own actions and willful ignorance; the squad misreading themselves and their attackers.  Peter Coyote and Fred Ward are part of this Ugly American team, but the film belongs to new Texas import Powers Boothe (able to see things plain), and local reservist Keith Carradine, a good ol’ boy of character; no redneck he.  Carradine never did anything finer.  Filmed in hellish swamp locations, Hill is phenomenal with his cast, and with the settings.*   While staging the action, especially a last attack in the middle of a small town food festival, in terrific fashion.  What action chops!  Clear logistics and believable consequences.  Hurrah!  (It really shouldn’t be so rare.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/SPOILER:  *Hill's sole unforced error a major one, yet another example, typical of the time, in tagging the one meaningful Black player with the most gruesome death.

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK (1998)

Leonardo DiCaprio was still in his ‘Tadzio’ period when he followed TITANIC/’97 with yet another version of this Alexandre Dumas perennial, it’s the one where the aging Three Musketeers plot to replace bad-boy King Louis XIV with his secretly imprisoned identical twin.  Grand entertainment from Dumas, here over-elaborated by BRAVEHEART/’95 scripter Randall Wallace making a queasy directing debut.  Wallace showing a positive knack for placing the camera too close or too far from the action.*  But about halfway in, Dumas’s narrative irony and sheer gusto, along with good teamwork by the male leads (Jeremy Irons, Gérard Depardieu, John Malkovich and Gabriel Byrne showing rare positive energy) come to rescue him.  Alas, the women less memorable.  Like the generic sets & costumes, they may be real, but look rented.  And DiCaprio?  Fine as the ‘nice’ twin (if only we had a chance to see him grow into his the Pretender King), but not so convincing as a cruel debaucher.  And what’s with composer Nick Glennie-Smith?  Usually an arranger, he uses a Pan Pipe for a wistful melody.  A Pan Pipe?  In Versailles?  (Maybe he thought the company was still making BRAVEHEART.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Not that this version is unwatchable.  But so many superior versions, some even follow the book!  Hard to beat Douglas Fairbanks’ 1929 farewell to silent cinema, THE IRON MASK.   By 1998, light, literate period adventures hopelessly out of fashion when not guyed as ‘camp.’  Yet one of the best in decades had just showed up, LE BOSSU/’97 a late effort from Philippe de Broca with Daniel Auteuil & Vincent Perez in terrific form.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/le-bossuon-guard-1997.html

SCREWT THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *You got the feeling from attempts at the genre around this time, that not only had filmmakes forgotten how these things worked, but that they were embarrassed to be trying.

TRUCK TURNER (1975)

With films that moved more freely between HIGH Art and LOW than nearly anyone else in Hollywood at the time, director Jonathan Kaplan, who died last year at 77, didn’t put up the usual neat career arc.  His epitaph might read: Memorably Malleable.  Here, he’s down for a Blaxploitation pic with Isaac Hayes as an ass-kickin’ Bounty Hunter working with partner Alan Weeks in violent pursuit of bail skippers.  Hayes in big gun/love machine mode; Weeks making like Richard Pryor as sidekick.  Both hitting the mark.  The first half holds to larky fun (sex, bloody fights, snappy comeback lines, car chases), but the second half changes gears with the belated entrance of Yaphet Kotto.  Not that it gets serious, we’re still pushing Blaxploitation tropes, but deadly consequences are suddenly in effect.  Kotto taking over a revenge mission of Hayes’ enemies, backed by Nichelle Nichols’ rich avenging Madame; Kotto a more formidable antagonist and, as actor, good as it gets in this sort of thing.  Actually, Kotto good as it gets in just about anything he turned his hand to.  (But as a Black actor at the time, he simply didn’t get the chance to show his full range often enough.)  TURNER remains good fun of its type, and very well-handled by Kaplan given the low production values you expect with American International Pictures.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Quentin Tarantino’s Blaxploitation pastiche JACKIE BROWN/’97 probably got as much from this film as it did from the Pam Grier films of the ‘70s.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/04/jackie-brown-1997.html