ZAMA (2017)

Distressingly believable historical, a multi award-winner from director Lucrecia Martel on early colonial attempts at commercial trade & development in northern  Argentina (late 18th century).  It’s where Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) is stationed and where he has grievously erred thru hard work, loyalty to the Crown and near competency.  With such a positive record, why should his superiors let this magistrate transfer to a better post or Buenos Aires?  He believes he’s earned that reward by honest labor (he has a family he’s not seen in years) compared to the drunks, thieves & slackers around him.  Impossible to get anything accomplished in the face of men drifting toward savagery, disease & madness; or dying mid-lunch by an acute attack of the plague.  Zama hardly immune, having acquired a mistress and mixed-race son.  And more obstacles, like a rural legend with a gang of deserters & discontents,  one Vicuña Porto, regularly reported dead or attacking in some new place.  A man Zama will be ordered to track down, discover he has something in common with, then pay a price when Porto faces near mutiny by his superstitious men convinced that gemstones can be found inside coconuts from a certain grove.  And Porto needs to pressure Zama on their location.  Martel’s dogged realism does little to make this more palatable, it’s a drudge at times, but never without interest in its depiction of depravity and man’s infinite capacity for self-deception and illogical hope.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Werner Herzog’s  AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD/’72 set the standard for this kind of collective madness among early colonizers, though the film has lost the classroom caché or art-house following it once had.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Paid by D.P. Rui Poças who cuts off more heads than anyone on screen with tight framing, as if he thought they were releasing in Academy Ratio (1.37:1) not standard ‘flat’ (1.85:1).   Or was it meant for some in-between frame?  (Say, 1.66:1; often seen in Europe.)

THE BEAST TO DIE / YAJÛ SHISUBESHI (1980)

Toru Murakawa’s elegantly horrific multiple-murder story, something of a Nippon Noir, is hard to classify, but easy to watch.  Drawing you in without adding up right from start when a middle-aged detective and a younger/fitter man fight over a stolen police gun in the pouring rain.  Shot from a distance, often at a high angle, the otherwise deserted sidewalk corner softly lit by street lamps to slightly obscure our view.  It’s compelling without rhyme or reason.  As is the following robbery and slaughter of a mob gang at a closed bistro/club where a table of partially stacked stolen yen waits to be distributed.  Instead, after a rubout, the loot is destined to go home with our murderer where his high tech music room calms him down via Shostakovich & Mozart.  And that’s before a concert in an arid modern concert hall for a strikingly charmless rendition of a Chopin piano concerto where our killer bumps into a woman he’ll meet again while holding up a bank.  (More mass murder of tellers and execs.)  Then pick-up a prostitute to masturbate in front of him while he relaxes with an alcohol slurpee.  Yikes!  What a strange film!  It coninues in this vein, a partner comes on board and there’s a dandy cat-and-mouse game with another detective on a moving train, before ending with one of those it-was-only-a-dream wake-up calls at the end of the concert.  (An old UFA trick Fitz Lang was partial to.)  Except this too is a trick.  Murakawa has something else in mind entirely.  Revenge?  Maybe.  Explanations?  Certainly not.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Murakawa brings revisionist flair to ‘80s ‘drop-out’ culture.  Was that a thing in Japan at the time?  Had me thinking back to the anti-genre/genre pics of Seijun Suzuki in the ‘60s.  Both directors decades ahead of their time.  Begin a Suzuki tour with YOUTH OF THE BEAST/’63, a true astonishment.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/youth-of-beast-1963.html

NINJA SCROLL / JÛBÊ NINPÛCHÔ (1993)

Superior anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri successfully covers a lot of hand-drawn styles as it sets forth a sweeping tale of wandering Ninja Jubei who gets mixed-up in a political power struggle between rival clans and would-be Shoguns, with help (if that’s what it is) from a stranded ancient wiseman and the sole survivor of the current Shogun’s military advance force, a deadly female whose poison-laced body leaves anyone she takes to bed dead by morning.  Yikes!  (One intriguing exception: fuck with an already poisoned man and your poisoned body works on him like an antidote.  Got that?)  In spite of how this sounds, the story quite easy to follow.  But those alternating visual techniques are the real stars here; that and the uncompromising nihilistic ending.  The animation ranging from simple scanning of still compositions, many played over each other in multiplane to create depth; but just as often, lively shots, busy with screen-filling flights of birds or insects in patterns of motion.  Then, used elswhere simply for their beauty in silhouette (in washes of color rather than b&w).  Or with characters giving chase thru rows of spindly trees or bad weather.  Stunning, and stunningly effective.  But be aware: lust, sex, female nudity, violence & torn limb-from-limb gore also in the mix.

DOUBLE-BILL:   Not previously familiar with Kawajiri’s work; he’s been more active in tv and in non-directing capacities.  But if the styles aren’t much alike, the clean, enjoyably kinetic visuals brought the early seasons of Genndy Tartakovsky’s  SAMURAI JACK/’01 to mind.

BLOODY SUNDAY (2002)

Paul Greengrass’s docu-style film on the 1972 massacre in Derry, Northern Ireland, where poorly prepared British military forces shot 13 dead (twice that injured) during a political march protesting the lack of Civil Rights in this heavily Catholic town, perhaps inadvertently, plays as if hindsight wasn’t needed to foretell the tragic outcome.  As if both sides to some extent knew things would go wrong, but wanted them to go wrong ‘their way.’  Filmed by D.P. Ivan Strasburg, in hand-held guerilla style, it moves back & forth between sides with brusque editing and clipped fade-outs that leave us hanging.  (Like they'd been watching bits of Gillo Pontecorvo’s THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS/’66 before going to bed during the shoot, but didn’t learn anything.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/battle-of-algiers-1965.html)  Greengrass also gains and loses points, especially for American viewers, casting well-known PBS types.  Easier to keep track of, but hard not to be constantly pulled out of the story trying to remember where you’ve seen some of these actors before.  A major, if  unintended, I.R.A. recruitment tool in its day, this largely avoidable incident remains all but unknown Stateside.  Flaws and all, worthwhile for that.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Look sharp for the movie marque seen near the top with SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY/’71 listed as second feature.  Entirely possible, it's the only light moment in the pic.

THE BROKEN STAR (1956)

B-pic vets Lesley Selander, director, and John C. Higgins, writer, bring their A-game to this Western programmer with unexpectedly tasty results.  It’s a character study, but with most of its cast of characters working against type and story expectations.  The effect downright destabilizing.  Check out the opening: a dirt poor sharecropper is short on back payments; the Mexican collection agent working for the Great White Land-owner, cleans him out, secretly watched by top-billed Deputy Marshall Howard Duff.  He moves in, chats up the oddly reasonable Mexican before calmly shooting him dead and grabbing the eight thou hidden in the office.*  All stealthily watched by a silent Apache who hides from Duff before running to town.  Other than the farmer, every person on screen is acting against type.  And so it goes all thru the story, even that White Land-Owner not such a bad guy; the do-nothing Chief Marshall does something; the Mexicali girlfriend (her theme song, ‘I Hate You.’) engaged to Deputy #2 (Bill Williams, pleasantly plain) who’s Duff’s BFF and who gets the big heroic two-on-one fight sequence you expect Duff to handle.  The more you think about this one, the odder it becomes.  Alas, other than in character development, it’s a drab looking thing with minimal action outside a pair of fights, but nuanced story beats and characters refresh the old Western tropes.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See Duff work more typical/more congenial dramatic territory while also meeting future wife Ida Lupino on set in WOMAN IN HIDING/’50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/05/woman-in-hiding-1950.html

THE HISTORY OF SOUND (2025)

Though slightly overshadowed by award-winning co-stars, Jessie Buckley in HAMNET; Josh O’Connor here, Paul Mescal deserves some kind of special recognition for inducing more well-earned/high-toned tears with those two films than any other actor achieved in 2025.  SOUND, lesser seen of the two, is, in its own distinctively hushed manner, just as moving, just as well-played.  The script, Ben Shattuck’s debut from his own short story, covers three time periods (in chronological order for a change!): the WWI era; a decade later; and the mid-60s, as it follows the relationship of O’Connor & Mescal after leaving a Massachusetts music conservatory when academic-minded O’Connor all but orders Mescal, a more musically gifted new acquaintance, to join him on a foot tour of rural New England recording folk tunes on wax cylinders before the traditional music is lost to modernity.  (A real thing that happened in many countries; Hungarian composer Béla Bartók’s work in the field probably best known.)  The two men fall into friendship, fall into the rhythm of their subject, fall into bed; a relationship only strengthened by the occasional disagreement.  But the war and their differing levels of ambition & talent will amicably separate them.  O’Connor off to war, but insisting Mescal follow up on his natural musical skills on the world stage.  A decade’s separation from Mescal’s blooming career, and marriage for O’Connor, complicated by echoes of the war, will dissolve (too late) in a flash of recognition on what’s been lost.  And not repeatable on a wax cylinder.  It will be decades before full understanding brings emotional epiphany.  (And not just on screen.)  Director Oliver Hermanus, working closely with D.P. Alexander Dynan, plays his story in grace notes rather than in main themes, emotion inferred rather than underlined.  It can feel like a mannerism at times, but, like the folk song mordants flourished at the end of most melodic lines, things that can sound like blemishes may be part of a precious package.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Similarities to BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN/’05 have been noted, but O’Connor’s earlier coming-of-age film, GOD’S OWN COUNTRY/’17, hits closer to the mark.     https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/01/gods-own-country-2017.html

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948)

Public demand for low-down comedy wih a high silly factor during WWII helped journeymen comedy team Bud Abbott (straight-man) and Lou Costello (butt) over-perform at the box-office, especially in the early 1940s.  Limited talents, they caught a second wind in the late ‘40s, when someone at their home studio thought to combine them with Universal’s signature monsters.  (Five MEETs in total, the fourth over at Warners.*)  FRANKENSTEIN, first & best of the lot, churning out pots of money, even with few good notions on what to do with this can’t-miss set-up.  Raspy-voiced Abbott keeps the pace up (always his strong suit) while Costello holds to his usual too-scared-to-get-the-words-out shtick, but played against the Frankenstein monster, Dracula and Wolfman, he generates pretty decent laughs.  But that’s about it for comic ideas; the rest boilerplate A&C.  For some amusement, note that Wolfman (still Lon Chaney Jr.) grows fur under four full moons over five or six days.  A Full Moon record!  (And does so in unusually smooth Man-to-Wolf dissolve transitions.)  That Bela Lugosi is Dracula for only the second time.  It’s also his last major studio pic.  And that  Bud Westmore’s simplified monster makeups (based on masks), aren’t a patch on Jack P. Pierce’s built-from-scratch every day originals.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Least if not last, it was . . . MEETS CAPTAIN KIDD/’53.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/09/abbott-and-costello-meet-captain-kidd.html

PILLION (2025)

With nebbishy demeanor, wilted physique and close-set eyes, Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley in the HARRY POTTER films) comes on screen singing high tenor in a Barbershop Quartet, then wandering thru the pub, collecting tips in a straw hat.  Think you couldn’t get more masochist than that?  Think again!  Melling’s about to be picked up (well, picked out) for special service by leather-clad biker Alexander Skarsgård (even at 50, the guy Adonis was modeled after).  Naturally, it’s an arrangement, with Melling chosen as submissive (sexually & domestically), to Skarsgård’s laconic dominator.  An instant kinky cult item (rating-wise, a hard ‘R’), co-writer/director Harry Lighton’s film quickly lost whatever buzz-worthy qualities it seemed to possess.  Pop Psychology contents settling down to half-full in packaging & delivery.  Third-act reverses particularly obvious, not to say dog-eared, leaving us with way too much time to think about the relationship’s far-fetched gestation.  Lighton not helping his case by filming & lighting Melling as if he were screen testing to play Renfield in a new Dracula film.  One of those films where you had to have been there in the opening weekend for the buzz to trick you.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Not strictly comparable (to put it mildly), but Harold Pinter’s THE SERVANT/’63 (Joseph Losey’s 1963 film with Dirk Bogarde and James Fox) works its way thru some similar, creepy ideas on submissive/dominate bad behavior.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  In our never-ending quest to find cooking faux pas in film, check out Melling at a party with many of  Skarsgård’s biker pals, scouring a ridged cast-iron pan with dish soap.  The one thing he deserves to be punished for, and no one says ‘boo.’

MADAME X (1929; 1937)

Alexandre Bisson was a turn-of-the-last-century French playwright best known for Madame X/’29, Madame X/’37 and Madame X/’66.  And that’s just in Hollywood.  Another dozen or so international iterations 1916 to 1981.  (From our writeup of Lana Turner’s remake: ‘Unfairly tagged for her lover’s accidental death, a rich young wife & mother disappears to protect her family from social disgrace, hiding for twenty years as Madame X, sinking into absinthe & despair until being spotted by a lowlife blackmailer she does kill.  Now, on trial for murder, she’s unaware that the young defense lawyer working his first case is . . . (gasp) the son she abandoned as a child!’  Oft filmed, and you’ll see why, it’s prime hokum for bravura acting, no less than Sarah Bernhardt brought excerpts of this irresistible trash to B’way when she was pushing 70.*’  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/madame-x-1966.html)    The only major plot alteration is that the lover’s death ain’t ‘accidental’ in the two earlier, infinitely preferable Hollywood versions: Lionel Barrymore’s primitive Early Talkie from 1929 and Sam Wood’s polished example of 1937 Golden Age Hollywood.  No question, 1937's the best as film.  Gladys George’s whiskey bruised voice a perfect match for Mme., especially on the lam, combined with John Meehan’s streamlined script (two reels trimmed), plus John F. Sietz’s lighting (as the wronged husband, William Warren never looked this good).  The problem is, in sensibly taming the old stage chestnut, the emotional craziness no longer runs the drama.  Barrymore, who tried directing for a few years before returning to acting, doesn’t seem to have much feel for the job (even factoring in Early Talkie technical limitations), but he does have a feel for ‘the theatre.’  So, if you can get thru the first two unbearably stiff acts, the third act's trial scenes, with their big arioso speeches for Ruth Chatterton’s Mother and Raymond Hackett’s son, gain cumulative power from the buildup, detonating just as they must have when this first was staged.  For anyone who’s wondered what acting was like at the time, and what all the bother was about, this is essential stuff.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *And for reigning stage divas, not only a plum role of indeterminate age with a twenty-year time span, but also offering the chance to play off-stage as well as on with their much younger lover playing the son.  So, the big climax where Mme. X gives the boy a ‘mother’s’ kiss’ is loaded with kink & suspense.  (On the cheek in ‘37; cheeks and mouth in ‘29.)

DOUBLE-BILL:  *But genius acting it ain’t.  For that sort of window into theatre of the past, look to Somerset Maugham’s THE LETTER/’29, with doomed Jeanne Eagels in the lead.