1408 (2007)

While big brother Harvey Weinstein juggled A-list projects, ‘shorting’ profit participants and sexually abusing female interns & junior execs at MiramaX & later his eponymous company, kid brother Bob stayed busy Exec-Producing B-list genre slop, mostly horror (series and one-offs) that played like ‘content’ decades before A.I. existed.  Bob a prophet of schlock before the fact.  This one, a typically profitable terror-torial one-off taken from a Stephen King short story, stars a somewhat thickened/puffy John Cusack* who seems to have misplaced his ‘Epi-Pen’ along with his character’s writing talent as a past-his-prime author of  haunted house/paranormal investigations.  Now burdened by the tragic death of a young daughter, and the marital breakup that followed, he’s eager for a new ghost story to reset his brand.  That’s why he won’t listen to hotel manager Samuel L. Jackson’s pleas to back off from over-nighting in Room 1408 of NYC’s Hotel Duncan.  Sure enough, he hasn’t settled in before a funhouse of horrors starts beating him up with visions of past victims, poltergeist attacks and replays of personal family tragedies.  Still new to English language pics, Swedish director  Mikael Håfström leaves a mess for Weinstein favored editor Peter Boyle to clean up.  But he can’t help the film from over staying its welcome and piling on the poltergeists and shock cuts to diminishing effect.  Somewhere inside here is a pretty good episode of ONE STEP BEYOND or THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Have Oscar nom’d Samuel L. Jackson (hotel manager), Tony winner Len Cariou (dead Dad) or Tony and Emmy’d Tony Shalhoub (book agent) ever been given less to do?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Hard to think of an actor as inconsistent as the supremely talented Mr. Cusack.  His last Stephen King role, a cameo in STAND BY ME/’86, astonishingly memorable considering the brief screen time.  Here he seems to be channeling near contemporary Nicolas Cage for inspiration . . . and besting him by holding something back.

AMÉLIE ET LA MÉTAPHYSIQUE DES TUBES / LITTLE AMÉLIE OR THE CHARACTER OF RAIN (2025)

Inexplicably well-reviewed (if little seen) animation from France (feature debuts for directors Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han), best described as Whimsical/Creepy.*  Largely focused on Little Amelie as she passes from two to three years-old in the 1970s at the lux pagoda-style house her Belgian family (Mom, brother, sister, house helper) live in while Dad works a year in Japan.  Discovering some new natural wonder every day, Amélie develops a kiddie God Complex, getting into trouble with every adventure.  Mom weirdly unconcerned with safety in spite of near drownings and spills.  No matter, that local housekeeper serves as surrogate while late developer Amélie coos in wonder before finally starting to walk & talk.  If she’d only shut up!  A regular French philosopher manqué!  Now, we’re supposed to coo.  Short and stocky compared to her family, as if she needs to be shown thru an anamorphic lens.  (Or was she designed by Botero?).  The family does share unnaturally round cat’s eyes, just not the feline kind.  More Cat’s Eye marbles.  Yikes!  Though not the villainous landlady, a war survivor who hates Europeans.  But it’s Amélie you’ll want to slap.  The film like one of those over-sized child’s picture books your Grandma thought would make a nice gift, but which you never took out of its shrink wrap.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Hard to get behind a film that uses White Chocolate as Proustian Madeleine.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *TURNING RED/’22 director Domee Shi needs only eight minutes to land a lot of the ideas being messed with here in the hilarious child/parent horror of BAO/‘18.

THE BOY WHO CAME BACK / FUMIHAZUSHITA HARU (1958)

Japanese director Seijun Suzuki already shows pulp mastery in this early film from his contentious run at Nikkatsu.  And while he can only do so much with the clunky, repetitive, unmotivated script he was given, superb use of monochrome WideScreen TohoScope super charges his images with enough variety & excitement to set aside objections to sense and sensibility.  (Some male-on-female roughhousing may prove more of a deterrent.)  Sachiko Hidari stars as the chipper tour guide who volunteers at night as a case worker to just released Reform School toughs, helping to ease them back into society.  Place to live - √  New job - √ Staying away from the old gang - √  Keeping them out of trouble - √  This avocation a job in itself, especially with tough customer Akira Kobayashi, an unabashed punk, as your assignment. Good luck keeping this one in line; the attention span of a gnat and a habit of violently acting out when crossed.  Maybe he’ll straighten up after he’s set up by former pals for a gang killing.  The real surprise in here is that rather than stumble his way toward redemption with his attractive social worker, he’s got a girlfriend to reunite with, Hidari’s crush and attention remain platonic.  So the main reason to watch lies in seeing how Suzuki pulls this together visually.  Something he has no trouble achieving.  Though he’ll not hit his stride till the ‘60s when he adds EastmanColor to an increasingly stylized æsthetic that infuriated his studio and delighted his growing international followers.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Can’t go far wrong with Suzuki’s mid-‘60s crime dramas.  Best starting point, YOUTH OF THE BEAST/’63.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/youth-of-beast-1963.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Some downloads clip a couple of reels off the running time.  Look for 1'39".

B.O.Y.: BRUISES OF YESTERDAY / GLASSKÅR (2024)

With the advent of New Queer Cinema, there have been so many gay coming-of-age films, it can seem as if there are distributors releasing nothing but gay coming-of-age films.  More male than female, presumably because there are still three or four men to every woman working in film.  (Back in the day, studios like Republic Pictures seemed to make nothing but ‘Bromantic’ Westerns, so . . . plus ça change?)  That said, Danish writer/director  Søren Green finds fresh paths in the well trod tropes of 'emo' adolescent alienation, with Noa Risbro Hjerrild excellent as a 16-yr-old kid already struggling with his sense of self when he’s sent to spend the summer with his grandparents while Mom goes to work in Italy.  Other than his skateboard, he feels abandoned by everything he’s close to when an already bad situation takes a turn for the worse and he’s shuttled off to his estranged father and his unwelcoming new family, as his mentally failing grandmother has a medical crisis.  Hardly a surprise to find the boy ‘acting out’ (though how to run away from home when you’re basically homeless?).  Desperate to feel something, he starts self-harming, and a mutual attraction with a thirty-something painter his grandfather (a glazier) knows from work also peters out when the man pulls back from this kid.  He likes him too much to cross a line, though the kid lies and tells him he’s 19.  Even a local sex worker says he’s not his type.  That ‘type’ being a paying customer; an idea the kid picks up on.  Under Green’s thoughtful handling, none of this feels forced or exploitive as we watch him hit bottom.  Thank goodness for the Danish health system!  Effective, touching, believable in ways you thought long over-milked.  Much helped by spot on casting from the boy on down.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  If Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne took on the subject, it might be a lot like this in tone if not in style & technique.  Try their breakthru LA PROMESSE./’96    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/09/la-promesse.html

DEADLY HERO (1975)

Where Michael Winner/Charles Bronson’s DEATH WISH caught the populist Zeitgeist of vigilante justice in a violently out of control, graffiti-ridden 1974 New York City; and Martin Scorsese/Robert De Niro’s TAXI DRIVER caught artistic psychoses from similar elements in 1976, DEADLY HERO just got caught in the middle*, falling on its face in 1975 using many of the same ingredients, splitting the difference between those iconic titles, but too crappy as film to work even as bridge.  Don Murray is all over the place as a vet patrol cop looking for trouble alongside young partner Treat Williams, then finding it when James Earl Jones’s phony African ambassador pulls a knife on theater conductor Diahn Williams at her 88th St. brownstone apartment and forces his way in.  Between a confused script & Ivan Nagy’s inept direction, you can’ t tell if this is attempted rape or sexual role playing.  They sure seem to know each other as they gag about.  But when frightened neighbor Lilia Skala calls the cops, Murray & Treat respond.  And the deadly shooting of a big Black man turns the senior cop into a tabloid hero-for-a-day.  Only the victim's story turns out not to match Murray’s version of events, and his increasingly desperate attempts to fix the mess turns deadly.  Like WISH and DRIVER, downbeat NYC locations emphasize the city’s ‘70s decline, but it all becomes more than a bit ridiculous* in spite of some fun spotting New York’s acting pool being used in the days before LAW & ORDER took over that operation.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *In their wildly different ways, DEATH WISH and TAXI DRIVER now look unexpectedly complimentary.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *This must be the only film where a damsel in distress is abducted by her pursuer along with her ‘cello!  It makes for an odd looking shot, but works to our heroine’s advantage when she invents a new use for the instrument.  Yikes!

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (2017)

Having written off SPIDER-MAN after ‘3' (lowest IMDb rating of the bunch), it’s been quite the wait between SPIDER-MEN on this site.  (Other than out-of-series efforts like the meta-clever ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE and its over-egged sequel.)  But with BRAND NEW DAY setting all-time Box-Office records, and likely the last for 30-yr-old Tom Holland as Spidey, took a chance on his first.  (Sorry Andrew Garfield.)  Holland actually came in thru the side door, thirteenth-billed in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR/’16 (not seen here), now top-billed.  This is unquestionably THE Spider-Man to see for anyone who ever wondered what Michael J. Fox would have made of the role in his BACK TO THE FUTURE days.  Did Holland drop his U.K. accent listening to Fox tapes?*  No trace of the character’s NYC upbringing, instead Fox’s flat, Canadian, high-pitched, slightly croaky little voice that tends to speed up for no reason.  Same build and height, too; plus superior comic timing without any heat or threat.  Fox never did the Teen Beat beefcake shots they foist on Holland , but even that can’t sully Holland’s sunny disposition.  Backstory has him as Iron Man’s protégé, with Robert Downey dropping in like visiting minor royalty, acting supercilious.  A big downer.  While the main villain is Michael Keaton whom Spidey takes on before he’s primed for the big leagues.  That’s the main plot.  But as Keaton plays a sort of Anti-Iron Man and not Anti-Spider-Man, the whole film feels dramatically imbalanced.  Other characters (and there are a lot of them) make little mark (they even give Spidey the ‘wrong’ girlfriend).  And the effects often have a herky-jerky feel to them in spite of obvious masses of money thrown their way.  Guess we’re back to our lonelier than ever Spidey boycott.  (For all our Spider-Man content, type SPIDER-MAN in the Search Box in the top left corner on the MAKSQUIBS main site.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: These films are as producer-led as any big studio film from Hollywood’s pre-‘50s heyday.  Initially Laura Ziskin, now Amy Pascale.  Even promising more Spideys at the final credits as if this were James Bond.  That financial juggernaut probably less valuable than the SpideyWorld now is.  Nevertheless, there is a faceless director in charge, Jon Watts whose COP CAR/’15, made right before his SPIDER-MANs, is a smart little thriller that likely cost less than ‘craft-services’ for a week of a SPIDEY shoot, yet has far more personality and pleasure to it.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/06/cop-car-2005.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Just read on IMDb that Holland did indeed base his characterization on Fox.

WASTEMAN (2025)

David Jonsson stars in this brutish, British prison drama as a non-violent/accidental murderer who, thanks to over-crowding, gets a chance at early parole if he can keep his nose clean for the few weeks before his release date.  (With that set-up, Diogenes couldn’t find anyone who doesn’t know where this is going.)  Naturally, after getting this good news, he returns to new cellmate Tom Blyth, an ambitious sociopath working to grab the prison drug trade using drone deliveries of coke, heroin & weed flown to exterior transom windows.  What could go wrong?  No surprise, other/more established dealers are soon in his face and Jonsson’s inevitably drawn into the violence; finally blackmailed into agreeing to kill an aggressively violent rival dealer to protect his 14-yr-old son.  (Blyth has connections on the outside.)  Credit director Cal McMau and writers Hunter Andrews/Eoin Doran for ringing in a few changes on the usual pattern (the finale’s a pretty neat trick of misdirection), but it’s an uphill battle.  Fortunately, Jonsson has an wonderfully expressive, empathetic face.  If only they asked for a few more expressions!  Always a bit stoned, his sleepy/wary/beaten up look a decreasingly effective fallback position.  On the other hand, Blyth too obviously a graduate of the Robert De Niro School of Dramatic Intimidation making up for skipped classes.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For an ageless Hollywood take on the genre (and to see what’s missing here), Jules Dassin’s BRUTE FORCE/’47, with Burt Lancaster in his sophomore lead fronting an all-thug line up.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/brute-force-1947.html

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