EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)

The ‘Cinderella Pic‘ of 2022 hit all the right buttons: non-sequel original story, diversity cast, LGBTQ+-friendly, top-grossing Indie release, full theatrical roll-out; no wonder it charmed the award-circuit.  Michelle Yeoh, a Laundromat owner/operator with troublesome finances, taxes & family, is multitasking to beat the band before writer/directors Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinert toss her into the planetary multi-verse where multiple versions of her father, her husband, her daughter, her tax auditor & herself are living messy lives of their own . . . or trying to kill her.  Quite the technical feat, but one that cools off as the film keeps turning unexpected corners.  With so many personalties to keep in the air (coming & going, falling to the wayside before springing back to life), the film suffers more than usual from multi-universe impermanence: when every story beat is reversible, nothing’s really at stake.  Why invest emotionally or intellectually?  And what’s with the cast?  No one feels remotely related to anyone else on screen.  (The filmmakers seem to recognize this, constantly reminding us that Ke Huy Quan is Yeoh’s husband .)  Even good ideas, like a pair of lonely boulders assuming the roles of mother & daughter stuck with Borscht Belt shtick when they ought to sound like ersatz Samuel Beckett.  And what’s Claude Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ doing all over the soundtrack?  Heard on piano, in orchestral arrangements, fitted with lyrics for a choir.  The film really does deliver on its promise though, exhaustingly so, as if the spaces had all been removed: everythingeverywhereallatonce.  Phew!!  How ‘bout A FEW THINGS IN ONE OR TWO PLACES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Didn’t SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE/’18 do this sort of free association a lot better?   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/05/spider-man-into-spider-verse-2018.html

(AGATHA CHRISTIE'S) ENDLESS NIGHT (1972)

Not a murder mystery this time from Dame Agatha, more psychological thriller.  Not that a dead body won’t show up!  And while the film doesn’t quite come off, it holds interest as last call (or nearly so) for writer/director Sidney Gilliat, actor George Sanders & composer Bernard Herrmann.  The latter two still showing vital signs of life, the first a little lost away from his usual comic fach.  Hayley Mills & Hywel Bennet, the newlyweds from THE FAMILY WAY/’66, reunite as another young couple.*  HIM: Working Class dreamer, a chauffeur who larks about as a toff.  (Looking rather like David Hemmings as a chubby blonde baby.)  HER: The world’s sixth richest heiress, out to prove she’s no snob in the love department.  But life in the idyllic countryside proves bumpy.  His oldest pal, a dying architect warning him of bad life choices when not making passes.  (Or so it seems. Was a gay subtext clearer in the book?  Or fitfully added on set?)  And on her side, an unwelcoming family on her betrothal and Britt Ekland, back in her life as a controlling confidant.  Gilliat doesn’t have the technical chops to play with the subliminal overtones of sex, class, resentment and cash, but you can fill in any missing pieces on your own.  Easy to do whenever family solicitor George Sanders swings by to sequentially warn and threaten the newlyweds.  Or when composer Herrmann, in a major unknown score, touches base with some of his own stuff or turns to his favorite English Pastoral composers (George Butterworth’s ‘On the Banks of Green Willow’ gets a big nod).  The source print looks too soft in the opening reels, but Harry Waxman’s lensing soon firms up.  Just in time to cringe at the alarming 1972 Mod attire Bennett wears.  They say a good suit should feel as comfortable as a pair of pajamas, but should it look like one?

DOUBLE-BILL:  *THE FAMILY WAY (not seen here) earned most of its attention from Paul McCartney’s debut film score, written at the height of Beatlemania.

THE ENEMY BELOW (1957)

It’s the old game ‘Battleship,’ WWII Edition: mid-50s Hollywood-style in CinemaScope & Deluxe Color.  Our antagonists: recovering Navy Captain Robert Mitchum in command above on sea vs. Nazi-agnostic Curd Jürgens running the German sub below.  First Act exposition laid on plenty thick, motivation & personal history YA novel simplistic, but Dick Powell, in his penultimate directing gig (his best?*) turns out a handsome, pacey package.  (Note the improved grain from new ‘Scope’ film stock; especially noticeable on dissolves & optical printer work.)  Real ocean filming helps sell the action, but also makes the climax look tacky as we’re unprepared for models & studio trickery.  (Everything harder in color, too.)  But the game is well played by the two captains, with a sympathetic Jürgens even getting the last line.  (He also gets the larger head shot in our German film poster.)  You might even swallow the amount of philosophy & feelings these normally taciturn archetypes seem so eager to share with fellow officers.  (They open up more in two days than they would over two-years in a John Ford film.)  Plus, in rests between the well-staged action, you can imagine the ship's crew playing Seebees next week when they put on SOUTH PACIFIC.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Even better WWII Battleship strategy, with reversed roles above & below the water, in next year’s RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP/’58. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/03/run-silent-run-deep-1958.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Morphing from ‘30s  boy crooner to ‘40s tough guy P.I,, from ‘50s prestige character actor to directing seven feature films, Dick Powell kept finding new ways to resurface.  His next, again with Mitchum, now flying in Korea, THE HUNTERS/’58 (not seen here), is oddly little known.  Also his last as he died in ‘63, only 59.

MATILDA (2022)

Full title ROALD DAHL'S MATILDA THE MUSICAL to distinguish this new adaptation from The Original Book; a 1996 film; the stage musical; and a video capture of that stage show out earlier this year.  That’s a lot of MATILDA!, you’d think the material would be all played out.  (And you might be on to something.)  Matilda, our super brilliant tween prodigy in literature & math, unwanted at home by ghastly parental units, gets a chance to attend school at Crunchem Hall.  But in going for her bliss Matilda comes up against Head Mistress Miss Trunchbull, a tank of an antagonist (gnawed to a fare-the-well by Emma Thompson), and Matilda will have to ‘get nasty’ to triumph.  Fortunately, she’s got sympathetic teacher Miss Honey (Lashana Lynch) and a school of rebellion-ready students on her side.  Director Matthew Warchus, working with Tim Minchin’s tuneless tunes and mass movement in place of actual choreography, hopes execution and fast editing will trump material; and he almost generates enough propulsion (along with some adorably eccentric kids) to camouflage all the mediocrity.  (Standard issue for British Musicals when you think about it.)  But there’s something relentless about how he just keeps coming at you.  More theatre guy than movie director, Warchus wears you down to force a response, as much a bully as Miss Trunchbull.  And once it finally ends, those melodic earworms lingering in your head turn out to be from other shows.  No wonder the final shots show the school as a three-ring circus.  Truth in advertizing, at last.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  They must have been trying for something between ANNIE and OLIVER!  ANNIE, famously, has had a pretty unhappy film history (see 1982; 2014; or live tv 2021), but Carol Reed’s much Oscar’d film of OLIVER!/’68 (recently restored to astonishing effect) is not just superb, but infinitely better (nay, purified) from the original stage version.

THE BURNING HILLS (1956)

Warner Brothers teamed rising stars Tab Hunter & Natalie Wood (respectively just off BATTLE CRY/’55 and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE/’55) to little effect on consecutive 1956 programmers.  This Western followed by THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND, a military coming-of-age dramedy (not seen here).  But the two stars prove less than the sum of their parts with Tab injured on the run from a posse of bad guys and Natalie flunking Mexican accent 101 as she helps out.  Secondhand stuff in spite of Louis L’Amour source material, only Wood’s fully developed 18-yr-old breasts grabbing Howard Hughes-worthy attention while Tab seems to disappear from the action for suspicious amounts of time.  (He’s really not a bad actor, but director Stuart Heisler seems to be hiding him.)  With such bland leads, only Skip Homeier, in particularly nasty form as he hunts them down, shows command and presence.  Tall and powerful (he's just a year older than Hunter), if only the script had built in a bit of ambivalence from Wood they might have sparked something dramatically interesting.  On the plus side, CinemaScope shooting strategies had loosened up considerably after three years of flat staging techniques.  And while interior sets still look twice the size they ought to be, cinematographer Ted McCord manages to darken his lighting schemes and move in to create some good claustrophobic fights for journeyman director Heisler.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Homeier didn’t get the breaks he needed to step up to leading roles, but could be awfully good when given a chance.  An opportunity he grabbed earlier this year in what is probably a career best playing an outlaw who develops a conscience in STRANGER AT MY DOOR/’56.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/10/stranger-at-my-door-1956.html

ARGENTINA, 1985 (2022)

Half a year after the restoration of democracy in Argentina, a fragile new government has yet to start legal proceedings against the military leaders who ran the dictatorship using illegal arrests, torture and disappearances.  Victims in the tens of thousands.  Where should these officers, so impressive in their intimidating uniforms, be tried?  Military court?  Civil?  Government prosecutors?  And who’ll take the job and the risk: the threats, the smears, the sheer workload.  It all falls to State prosecutor Julio César Strassera (aptly named, no?), forced to staff up with legal aides fresh out of law schools since so many of the more experienced lawyers lean fascist.  A classic moral dilemma story, seasoned with family drama, tough investigations in the field and dramatic courtroom revelations taking up the second half.  Effective historical stuff, consistently interesting and clearly developed even for non-Argentineans.  But, oh dear, such ‘solid citizen’ filmmaking.  The film not only takes place in 1985, it might have been shot then.  When the end credits roll, naturally with period photos of real protagonists, you expect the title card to read: Directed by Alan Pakula . . . or maybe Sidney Pollack.  (Count your blessings Stanley Kramer never comes to mind.)  In many ways, this period feel represents quite a witty response to the subject matter, and it largely works.  But was it intentional from director/co-writer Santiago Mitre?  Even his choice of actors, perennial award nominee Ricardo Darín as State Prosecutor and Peter Lanzani as his untested assistant, might easily have been Gene Hackman & Willem Dafoe as they were for director Alan Parker in MISSISSIPPI BURNING back in 1988 . . . when this film probably should have been made.

SCREWY THOGHT OF THE DAY:  One thing Mitre doesn’t shy from is showing just how popular Fascism could be with the masses.  Something the movies generally don’t like to confront.

LES COUSINS (1959)

Claude Chabrol’s second film is almost a reverse image of his first.  So where LE BEAU SERGE/’58 had a worldly soldier’s uncomfortable return to his old town, COUSINS follows a country lad in Paris.  It’s all City Mouse/Country Mouse tropes as a couple of law students share a flat while prepping for final exams.  Or rather, one preps.  City mouse doesn’t see the point, this party boy will glide thru on instinct & natural charm, just as he does in life.  (Is he meant to be quite the shit he seems in the film?)  Their dicey relationship even more upset when a pretty girl enters.  (Reflecting the male gaze of 1959 Paris, Juliette Mayniel displays little personality of her own.  She’s there to reflect the men’s issues.)  Gérard Blain’s country mouse may not have much confidence, but does have a secret weapon: Sincerity.  Too bad Jean-Claude Brialy’s city mouse trumps with an even greater power: Insincerity!  Chabrol stages in depth, wonderfully abetted by Henri Decaë’s glossy monochrome.  But the story feels like a sketch stretched too thin.  Largely inferior to Chabrol’s first, if no sophomore slump, he perversely rewards the unworthy before forcing an abrupt shift to tragedy the material can’t support.  Instead, he pours on the ‘Liebestod’ from Wagner’s Tristan & Isolde to set the mood.  Shooting for gay bromantic sub-text or trying for a cheap Brechtian distancing effect?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, LE BEAU SERGE/’58.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/05/le-beau-serge-1958.html

COLORADO TERRITORY (1949)

Director Raoul Walsh had the rare opportunity of remaking two of his own 1941 successes.  ‘Gay ‘90s’ romance THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE faithfully, if unmemorably musicalized into ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON/‘48, and the contemporary gangster-on-the-lam HIGH SIERRA westernized as COLORADO TERRITORY.  (NOTE: Just out on a Criterion 2-disc set with SIERRA and an excellent 90" Walsh bio.)  But if SUNDAY is rightly written off, this sharp repurposing is a considerable achievement of its own, well shot and scored, too (Sid Hickox; David Buttolph*).  With Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo & Dorothy Malone in for Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino & Joan Leslie, the basic outline remains (outlaw plans a last job to set himself up with an unworthy girl of his dreams), the subtle and not-so-subtle changes may work even better here.  (All but Henry Hull, equally lousy playing different roles in both films.)  McCrea, in one of his last sexy turns*, is just about perfect as a doomed sadder-but-wiser wanted man, ignoring a tarnished girl for a fresh-faced ingrate.  Malone, even with limited screen time, a revelation when she lets her guard down.  Mayo, here a classic ‘good’ bad girl, was always at her best for Walsh whose next film, WHITE HEAT let her be all bad, then all good in CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER/’51.  SIERRA remade yet again in 1955 as I DIED A THOUSAND TIMES (WarnerColor & WideScreen, but no Walsh); third time wasn’t the charm.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/08/i-died-thousand-times-1955.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Buttolph has a great ominous music cue shortly after the big train holdup (tremendously clear action from Walsh BTW) when McCrea goes to see his partner as Native Americans chant in the background.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *After Cecil B. DeMille had McCrea hitch his pants up too high back in UNION PACIFIC/’39, McCrea’s sex appeal rode ever after on the placement of his waistband.

THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)

Taking over the Mouse House in ‘84, Michael Eisner quickly prioritized animation.  Reduced to anodyne cash-cows dribbled out every few years in a market Disney monopolized, they hadn’t delivered a showstopping moment since THE JUNGLE BOOK’s ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ two decades ago.  (That film the last animation to have input from Walt.)  Too late to do anything about THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE/’86, Eisner gave credit to music mogul David Geffen for pointing at better song-writers for that quantum leap of difference, setting up a path for the very unDisney-like team of Alan Menken & Howard Ashman to confer a hip, Pop-pastiche/Off-B’way sensibility to the Buena Vista soundstages.  Regeneration immediately apparent with a score that included four earworm hits and one show-stopper in ‘Under the Sea.’  (At previews, the surprise, delight and applause was startling.  Only the projectionists’ inability to physically pause the film holding back encores.  Indeed, half the next scene obliterated by spontaneous clapping.)  Everything works in this one.  The sweetened Hans Christian Andersen story about a mermaid who falls for a human (see  Dvořák’s RUSALKA for an operatic take & appropriate tragic ending); a sidekick worthy of Golden Age Disney in Sebastian the Crab; the scariest villain since Maleficent in SLEEPING BEAUTY/’59 (with her own showstopper in ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’); excellent character design/development (except for a friendly flounder who misses having both eyes on the same side of his flat head); and allowing co-directors Ron Clements & John Musker, who showed technical chops debuting on the otherwise disappointing MOUSE DETECTIVE/’86 (note the innovative work in its clock tower finale), to come into their own.

DOUBLE-BLL/LINK: After kickstarting the Disney Animation Renaissance, Clements & Musker’s next was second in the One-Two punch of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST/’91 and ALADDIN/’92 that consolidated the new era for a thirteen year run.  But as you’ve probably seen that one, try their overlooked directing debut on THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE/’86.  OR:  See their near remake, now with ethnic diversification, in THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG/’09.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-princess-and-frog-2006.html

CROUPIER (1998)

Superb character study from Mike Hodges who died last week at 90.  With a mere eight features over three decades, Hodges may have been his own worst enemy commercially, unable to parlay a breakthru success on the tough, influential Michael Caine revenge drama GET CARTER/’71 into a stable career.  Instead, hit & miss projects, ankling a Hollywood franchise (the ultimate commercial sin), flopping in full exposure on the hippest of Pop vehicles with FLASH GORDON/’80.  But here he is, back from irrelevance in his penultimate pic, a gorgeous achievement made on a dime (Paul Mayersberg script, Michael Garfath cinematography) with a still young Clive Owen (before he made a brand out of permanent dishevelment) as a failed novelist-turned-croupier who finds literary inspiration in his new surroundings.  Writing from behind the scenes of his lux London gambling club, and on the rich/sexy/dangerous clients he 'services,' while narrating his own story in Present-Tense/Third-Person, a living audio book.  He finds himself getting involved in a scam, a forbidden romance, falling out with his girlfriend, and, worst of all, turning into the character he’s chosen as lead in his novel; the sort of candid interior portrayal we’ve seen dozens of filmmakers strive (and fail) to achieve.  Neatly plotted, too, with screw-tightening suspense, lovers’ betrayals, and a deeply satisfying triple-twist ending that manages to feel inevitable.  We can wish we had more from Hodges, but at least this time, he got the cards he needed.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Hodges & Owen reunited for I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD/’03.  (not seen here)

THE GREAT GARRICK (1937)

Known for Universal horror pics laced with humor (FRANKENSTEIN; INVISIBLE MAN; BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN), British-born James Whale was no one-trick pony as director.  WWI pics; women’s mellers; the classic 1936 version of SHOW BOAT; and here, that rarest of genres, historical farce.*  An unusually sophisticated project for Warners (Whale on loan from Universal after THE ROAD BACK/’37 was butchered in post.), Ernst Lubitsch regular Ernest Vajda wrote the fanciful story about 18th century London stage titan David Garrick going to Paris where he’s been invited to play DON JUAN.  But when Le Comédie-Française hears (mistakenly) that Garrick plans to teach them all how to act, the company is honor-bound to avenge the slander!  And playwright Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais (Lionel Atwill) has just the comeuppance, a play for players.  They’ll trick their guest star into making a fool of himself.  But since it takes an actor to catch an actor, Garrick will find them out even as he himself is tricked when he falls in love with the one ringer in the story: an enchanting lady he doesn’t realize is not a member of the troupe!  This charming little fable, well staged by Whale on Anton Grot’s marvelous sets, is pacier, in the Warners’ manner, than Whale’s somewhat bumpy Universal films.  Always fun, if not as funny as it thinks it is.  Especially in the first two acts.  Only the last two reels fully coming to life with a faked riot outside his lodging room; a masterclass in acting from Garrick after he’s found them out; and a final stage speech to woo the lady.  Teenage Olivia de Havilland is tops as the confused non-actor; Edward Everett Horton leads the typically tasty Warners’ support, and Brian Aherne (tall and slim where the real Garrick was short and squat) tries for John Barrymore panache.  Four years back, Barrymore would have done it himself, but by 1937 Aherne’s facsimile will have to do.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Gregory La Cava’s THE AFFAIRS OF CELLINI/’34 another example of historical farce.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: New at Warners, composer Adolph Deutsch, noting playwright Beaumarchais in the cast, uses Mozart’s DON GIOVANNI to back the DON JUAN production.  Good call as Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro was the preceding Mozart opera.

BARDO (2022)*

All the thinking & imagery in this self-reflective/self-indulgent film feels secondhand or second-rate.  Written & directed by mucho-awarded Alejandro G. Iñárritu, its auto-biographical leanings a navel-gazing exercise with Daniel Giménez Cacho as alter-ego (journalist instead of filmmaker) who finds after twenty-odd years working, living & raising a family up North in the States, he’s left his heart back in Mexico.  (The idea that he and his family would have precisely the same feelings of dislocation/dysfunctionality, just in a different way, had they stayed put, never occurring to him.)  It’s deeper and deeper into swallower waters.  Warmed-over Fellini (make that warmed-over late Fellini; or maybe faux-Fellini, say Bob Fosse/ALL THAT JAZZ), loaded with extravagant set pieces meant to impress (stylized dances of death; womb-returning infants; back-to-the-sea imagery; revelatory talks with immediate family dead or alive), call it Unmagical Non-realism.  Sensing that the film wasn’t connecting with early film fest audiences, Iñárritu quickly lopped off a couple of reels in hopes of holding attention.  Another 2'39" trim just might do the trick.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Even Fellini only got away with this sort of thing once: 8½/’63.  And directors have been failing at follow ups ever since . . . including Fellini.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Generally a good idea to beware of films with extra long titles.  Full title: BARDO, FALSA CRÓNICA DE UNAS CUANTAS VERDADES; in English: BARDO: FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS.

MAN IN THE SHADOW (1957)

Lousy, but not without historical interest.  Producer Albert Zugsmith, in the midst of some of Douglas Sirk’s best pics, recast the villain of this modern-day Western with Orson Welles as an overbearing cattle baron whose word is law around these parts.  A call that led to Welles directing TOUCH OF EVIL/’58 for Zugsmith, his last at a Hollywood studio.  Welles, originally hired only to act, wound up helming after co-star Charlton Heston made the suggestion.  (Good on you, Chuck!)  Here, the lead is Jeff Chandler, shivering in his boots as a small town sheriff duty-bound to investigate the murder of a Mexican laborer at Welles’ big ol’ cattle ranch.  Scripter Gene L. Coon (later a regular writer on STAR TREK) makes a half-hearted attempt to bring out similarities to HIGH NOON, but plotting, action & dialogue are so laughably bad director Jack Arnold (of THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN/’57), wisely walks thru with eyes half-shut.  One nice surprise finds lots of expert supporting players (James Gleason, John Larch, Royal Dano, Paul Fix, William Schallert) to hold your attention when Welles is off screen.  Not that he has much to do when on, but Welles holds your attention simply by showing up, for a change, au naturale, without a speck of makeup or nose putty as camouflage.  He’s big (other than that undistinguished nose he usually disguised), but oddly normal looking.  And you thought he looked like EVIL’s Police Captain Hank Quinlan at the time.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  For a contemporary Hollywood take on border-town/immigrant labor issues, try BORDER INCIDENT/’49 (Anthony Mann/Ricardo Montalban) or, even better, THE LAWLESS/’50 (Joseph Losey/Macdonald Carey).  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/border-incident-1949.html

HYTTI NRO 6 / COMPARTMENT NO. 6 (2021)

It’s a stretch to call Cannes award-winners disappointing.  Disappointment is expected, and not only from recent years.  Unhappily chosen international pics (though tending French) from unhappily chosen international juries, usually a Euro-centric mix of above-the-line film stalwarts of unknown critical distinction.  This 2021 Grand Prix representative (that's the runner up spot) from Finnish writer/director Juho Kuosmanen unobjectionable at best.  A Dogme style character piece about a directionless college gal, leaving her Moscow intellectual den to travel on her own after an older girlfriend bails, is off to see what she imagines is an important archeological site of early rock paintings.  A long trip in a small sleeper compartment shared with a vodka-soaked Russian miner looking for a decent paycheck from his new job and maybe a quick pickup in this acceptable foreigner.  Chalk and cheese from the start, various temporary add-ons make the accommodations even more unlivable, along with a lack of ablutions over three or four days (Yikes!) and that famous Ruskie service-with-a-smile attitude.  (It makes Amtrak long-haul train conditions shine in comparison.)  Halfway along the route to Murmansk, a more respectable traveler joins.  Tall & handsome, a free-spirit with winning charm and  unending guitar selections . . . whether you want to hear them or not.  Russian jealousy rears its ugly head.  But eventually, our Russian oaf turns out to be a decent sort at heart, a give-the-shirt-off-his-back bloke hiding behind clumsy nationalistic bluster; while the sophisticated Western tourist is revealed as a self-regarding/self-centered creep . . . and worse.  It’s the kind of East/West reproachment storyline favored in Cold War days.  And maybe we’re back there.  (Even more since this film came out.)  Nothing wrong with the set up, if you don’t mind close-quarters hand-held shooting strategies (those train corridors are murder), but there’s something disingenuous in presenting such hardwired characterizations & reveals as fresh stuff.  And when we do get to the archeological site, the meaningless climax and fake human connection is a bit much to celebrate.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  While it’s always a bad idea to wish for the film someone didn’t make, there’s a real spark of comedy that largely goes missing when our student briefly gives up on her goal and settles for a hilariously boring, old-Soviet-school tour of a WWII museum honoring heroic patriots memorialized in displays of fading photos and small artifacts.  But it would take a Russian, not a Finn, to pull off such black comedy . . . and it would never win any awards.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Not all so far away from Richard Linklater’s BEFORE SUNRISE/’95.

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989)

Credited only as Exec Producer on the next INDIANA JONES film* (DIAL OF DESTINY/’23, currently in post-production), it still makes for Steven Spielberg’s seventh INDY pic in and out of the franchise.  (Officially preceded by RAIDERS/’81; TEMPLE OF DOOM/’84; CRUSADE/’89; KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL/’08’; and unofficially by YA Indy: THE GOONIES/’85 et L’Indy Français dans LES AVENTURES DE TINTIN/’11.)  And while the verdict is out on DESTINY, the only one so far worthy of standing alongside RAIDERS is this third installment, the one with the inspired addition of Sean Connery playing Dad to Harrison Ford’s ‘Junior.’  A brief, telling intro by main creators Spielberg & George Lucas gives full credit to the former not only for adding a dad to the mix, but also for insisting on Connery.  Spielberg retaining his lock on the popular Zeitgeist; Lucas already losing touch by the late '80s.  Cleverly plotted, with a witty prologue for the perfectly cast River Phoenix as Young Indy to run thru a series of character defining incidents before the main story leads to a search for Pop Connery, gone missing while on the hunt for The Holy Grail.  Alison Doody is a bit off-key as the femme fatale, but everyone else right in the spirit of things.  No one more so than cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, back three years post-retirement for one last shoot.  (Though it's unlikely he was responsible for one of the greatest magic tricks in all cinema when a third riddle is made visually tactile on screen, reducing the audience to a sense of simple childlike wonder.)  Stupendous entertainment.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Note that while Spielberg has moved on from full involvement, 90-yr-old John Williams, who passed on the later HARRY POTTER films, still listed as sole composer.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Worst of the lot: TEMPLE OF DOOM.   Think of it as a learning experience.  (As it surely was for Spielberg & Lucas.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/09/indiana-jones-and-temple-of-doom-1984.html  OR: Type INDIANA JONES in the Search Box (Main Site/top-left) and see what comes up.

BOZE CIALO / CORPUS CHRISTI (2019)

In the movies, when a Con Man comes to town, he always leaves a bit of true grace in his wake.  From Elmer Gantry to Harold Hill, even after they’re caught, an aura of something positive remains.*  So in this excellent Polish film, claiming inspiration from a true story, a religious-leaning 20-something ‘juvie’ on parole skips his appointment at the small town sawmill where a job is waiting, only to stumble into the role of a young itinerant priest.  It’s a con of opportunity, not something planned; faking his way into the hearts & minds of a small parish with bits of memorized dogma & cues off a SmartPhone when the local vicar needs medical treatment and leaves the earnest young man in charge.  With his modern straightforward manner and unconventional responses to a town still suffering from the tragic death of six youngsters after a car crash, our faux priest only starts to get into trouble when he subsumes into his new role and asks forgiveness not only for the ‘victims,’ but also for the perpetrator.  If indeed the guilty and innocent parties are as clear as first indicated.  Life is complicated.  Especially when you have to hide your true past.  Bartosz Bielenia, who looks something like a very young Richard E. Grant, makes a fine Doubting Thomas whose belief in his assumed priestly powers grows into a problem, but he could have used a bit more help from director Jan Komasa.  The film’s deliberate pace sometimes hanging fire.  But the situation is fascinating, uncomfortably suspenseful and not without moments of spiritual clarity.  A clarity that sometimes goes missing in Piotr Sobocinski Jr. consistently misty lensing.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *See Humphrey Bogart, of all people, have a go at faking his way thru a Latin Mass as a Con Man priest in THE LEFT HAND OF GOD/’55. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/06/left-hand-of-god-1955.html

DEMENTIA (1955)

In spite of financial & technical obstacles, a small, but stubborn thread of experimental films (studio product & independent) find legit Hollywood distribution going back to the silents.  Early Josef von Sternberg (THE SALVATION HUNTERS/’25; WOMAN OF THE SEA/’26 - a ‘lost’ film); Pál Fejös’s LONESOME/’28; Robert Florey’s THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413: A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA/’28.  And while difficulties in physical production had eased by the mid-‘50s with new lighter/more mobile equipment (see Morris Engle’s LITTLE FUGITIVE or Lionel Rogosin’s ON THE BOWERY/’56), this film, a one-off oddity by the elsewise unknown John Parker, is more like a throwback to the silent-to-sound transition era.  Memorably shot by Ed Wood cinematographer William C. Thompson, his manner not so far from Stanley Cortez’ striking work in NIGHT OF THE HUNTER out the same year, and running about an hour, it’s a Jungian nightmare told by an idiot; filled with sound & fury; signifying nothing.  Dialogue-free (it was re-released with unhelpful narration as DAUGHTER OF HORROR; see poster), its bizarre POV follows a disturbed young woman who spends a nightmare of an evening being followed, attacked, saved and tempted on skid row & at downbeat clubs.  Imagine if the characters from Edgar G. Ulmer’s DETOUR had afterlives; this is where they’d have ended up.  Even with an opening encomium from, of all people, Preston Sturges, the film came & went quickly.  So too auteur John Parker who runs out of gas 40 minutes in.  But not before locating a living room in the middle of a park at night.  (His best idea.)  Fun to watch, in a sick sort of way, the new Cohen Media DVD makes the most of Thompson’s crepuscular images and also comes with that best-avoided alternate version.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned, LONESOME; LITTLE FUGITIVE; ON THE BOWERY.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/lonesome-1928.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/09/litle-fugitive-1953.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/01/on-bowery-1956.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The unusual score (with an appallingly transparent lift from Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’ used as a ‘vamp’) is from classical music’s American ‘Bad Boy’ George Antheil.  A brilliant guy who partnered with equally brilliant sex goddess Hedy Lamarr on patented experiments that helped develop WWII bombing devices and today’s internet technology.  And listen up for Marni Nixon on the soundtrack doing all the melismatic vocals.  Next year, she was dubbing Deborah Kerr in THE KING AND I/’56.

THE BATMAN (2022)

On the plus side: the first BATMAN movie to include an article in its title: THE BATMAN.  On the negative side: everything else.  Robert Pattinson, rapportless with anything on screen, not even his Batman suit, primps & poses and sidesteps previous incarnations of Heroic Batman, Iconic Batman, Ironic Batman, Campy Batman, self-doubting/destructive/denying Batman to give us EMO Batman; alternately growling and whispering his lines.  (A QUIET PLACE/’18 has less whispering.)  The story, such as can be followed, has Paul Dano either under or overacting as The Riddler, pointing out clay feet in Batman’s family history while looking for a bromantic partner to flood Gotham over a punishing three hour running time. Other villains may be in here, but it was too dark to be sure.  (Lack of wattage helpful at camouflaging the usual inadequacies of lifeless CGI action finales to all three acts.)  Massive grosses all but guarantee more of the same.  Suggested title: A BATMAN.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Far more satisfying are various animated BATMAN movies.  BATMAN: MASK OF PHANTASM/’93 highly rated by most completists.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/02/batman-mask-of-phantasm-1993.html

MARATHON MAN (1976)

For his second independent production, former studio macher Robert Evans repeated his CHINATOWN stunt by hiring an artsy-Euro director to give class & unique perspective to a genre pic.  Where L.A. noir got the Roman Polanski treatment; here, William Goldman’s hot-house international thriller (it’s yet another Dr. Mengele pastiche) got tony Brit John Schlesinger.  But he was coming off an expensive flop in DAY OF THE LOCUST/’75 and, needing a mainstream hit, was not so much himself as an amalgam-manqué of Alfred Hitchcock (for chills) and William Freidkin (for spills).  Commercially, they got away with it, but the film looks sillier than ever, especially after Roy Scheider leaves the scene halfway thru and plot implausibilities start piling up.  Dustin Hoffman, having gained fame at thirty as the world’s oldest new GRADUATE, pushing forty and looking every minute of it (in spite of the killer bod) now plays Columbia’s oldest grad student.  Turns out brother Scheider (with an even more killer bod) is involved with some sub-C.I.A. outfit who watch from the side as the Dr. Mengele character, Laurence Olivier, makes with the drills as a sadistic dentist to find out if it’s ‘safe’ to collect the jewels his late brother has in a NYC safe deposit box.  He'll even risk being spotted going to Manhattan’s largely-Jewish diamond district on 47th Street to get current quotes on karats.  (He couldn’t walk the five blocks to Tiffany’s?  Or maybe try using a phone?*)  Well, best not to think about Goldman’s idea of plot and enjoy some of the acting.  Even ‘70s kiss-of-death love interest Marta Keller okay for a change.  And someone was wicked smart, casting Kennedy-lookalike William Devane as an ambiguous C.I.A. op.  (Devane’s glory year, also starring in Hitchcock’s FAMILY PLOT.)  Close down the right side of your brain to get the most out of this one.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The Diamond District sequence a sort of variation on all those closed Manhattan pawnshops in THE LOST WEEKEND/’45 when Ray Milland makes the mistake of trying to raise cash hocking his typewriter on a Shabbos Saturday.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: A couple of years on, a much frailer Lord Olivier switched sides to fight Nazis in THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL/’78.  Olivier blew hot & cold in the movies, but these two perfs, especially coming almost side-by-side are pretty amazing.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-boys-from-brazil-1978.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  See how it says ‘A Thriller’ on this admittedly lousy poster?  It means some young publicity exec had to phone producer Evans and explain that because ONE PERSON (from a sample of 12,378) thought the title suggested a sports pic, they’d have to change the title (from a best-selling novel) or add the copy line.

NANFANG CHEZHAN DE JUHUI / THE WILD GOOSE LAKE (2019)

Well-received Neo-Noir from Chinese writer/director Yi'nan Diao is less the gang warfare film it seems at first, more in line with fatalistic 1930s French Poetic Realism; think Jean Gabin before John Garfield & James Mason took up these doomed romantic anti-heroes.*  Guys who knew their time was up, but stayed in the game just long enough to square accounts.  Shot with ultra-saturated edge (an award-winner for cinematographer Jingsong Dong), and a kinetically charged vibe even between fluidly executed action.  The melieu’s underground, literally so (Hotel Floor B2), with gangs of motorbike thieves taking productivity seminars!  But divvying up sections of the city for control prove more contentious: Internecine Riots; Asian Arts style fights; Gun Shots; undercover cop killed.  It leaves gang leader Zenong Zhou injured & on the lam.  With multiple nets closing in (cops and rivals), he needs a few trustworthy (or bribable) souls to make sure the reward for his capture goes to his estranged wife & child.  Most of it coming from an unlikely helpmate: a ‘bathing beauty’ prostitute who gains his trust.  (She’s getting a cut of the reward.)  The various chases and escapes in and around the Goose Lake district well-accomplished/remarkably easy to follow.  (Speedy traffic, fights & violence done with little visible CGI tweaking.)  And before the inevitable, a bit of sex (blow job) and even a last meal (also noodle); each well earned.  So too the film’s high rep.  Ge Hu and Gwei Lun-Mei  perfect as the lead pair while remaining perfectly dry-eyed right to the finish.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *John Garfield on the edge in HE RAN ALL THE WAY/’51.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/08/he-ran-all-way-1951.html

JIGSAW (1962)

British journeyman helmer Val Guest, just off THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE/’61, seasons this propulsive police procedural with a few attention grabbing stylistic touches (even Hitchcock’s famous jump cut from shouting victim to shrieking train whistle . . . naughty, naughty!), but in general holds to the main quotidian purpose of giving actor Jack Warner a proper swansong playing the same police officer he’d been portraying at various ranks & billings of importance on big & little English screens for decades.  (Not quite retired after this, but nearly so.)  It’s a good example of the form, too.  Lots of grubby locales to visit after the dismembered body of a luckless lover is discovered in a lonely one-month rental.  The crime a big priority for a medium-sized department.  Visual flourishes aside, we follow along as the department meticulously, and frustratingly, follow one dead-end path after another, with obvious suspects proved innocent while the police wait for a bit of luck to reveal all.  The restored print on Cohen Media looks surprisingly washed out in the first few reels (try taming your brightness level), but slowly improves.  And it’s still fun to watch old-fashioned competent character actors playing old-fashioned competent coppers, and to see Warner incorporate a slight limp (probably the real thing) into his characterization.  Nice little light-bulb moment of an ending, too.

DOUBLE-BILL: Guest’s influential QUATERMASS Sci-Fi films (1955; ‘ 57) and DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE show the imaginative side that’s properly tamped down here.

THE SEVEN LITTLE FOYS (1955)

Hosting the Oscars® a record 19 times between 1940 & 1978, Bob Hope’s ‘go-to’ gag was always about the awards he gave away but never got.  Even more so after regular co-star Bing Crosby won one for GOING MY WAY/’44.  But Hope was kidding-on-the-square; he really did want that little gold man for a mantlepiece.  So, no surprise to see Bob tilting toward drama, drama with wisecracks, mind you, but still drama, on his very first film under his new deal with Paramount not as studio employee, but as independent contract producer.  In fact, all his early films under the new awning lean this way, with this first one the best balanced, probably because Hope is so well cast as confirmed bachelor, child & woman hating vaudevillian Eddie Foy Sr.  (A bit of a stretch, Foy was twice married/twice widowed before the events covered here; no wonder he was gun shy.)  The story’s a natural, with Foy unable to admit he’s been swept off his feet against his better judgement by Italian ballet beauty Milly Vitale.  Eleven children later, she dies (of consumption or exhaustion?) and he’s got to work the seven surviving kids (all talentless, all strangers to a man always on the road) into the act or lose contact.  Turns out, they’re so unruly, he’s forced to improvise around their incompetence.  That’s the act!  And audiences of the day flocked to see it.  Talk about a can’t miss scenario!  With a neat-as-a-pin triple twist gag ending; two of Hope’s best musical perfs (he does Follies’ great Bert Williams’ NOBODY like nobody’s business, and a teaming with James Cagney, reprising his George M. Cohan, in one of those we’ve-still-got-what-it -takes embarrassments that for once doesn’t embarrass), and a tough edge that keeps sentimentality at bay.  It’s one of Bob’s best mid-period films.  Even with writer Melville Shavelson’s rather timid directing debut.  These late Hope Paramount titles must have slipped out of copyright, so buyer beware of lousy editions.  Decent ones around on this one if you look.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Except for the second one, THAT CERTAIN FEELING/’56, which sounds like it might the best.  Instead, here’s a LINK to the third in the series. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/08/after-two-decades-under-contract-bob.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  For a closer facsimile of the real Eddie Foy Sr. (slobber, lisp, and all) see Eddie Foy Jr. cameo as his dad in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY/’42.  He’d later play this script on tv in a Bob Hope produced special, but wasn’t a big enough star for the movie and was a big deal on B’way at the time in THE PAJAMA GAME, a role he’d repeat in the 1958 film.

THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT (2017)

Not quite the police procedural you were expecting; something more.  A murder; a shadowy suspect; a hotel maid (a Nigerian illegal) seeing too much, but knowing enough to hide; and a fearless strong-featured chief-detective to look in places he knows he ought to avoid.  But, as soon becomes apparent, police procedural is not the game Egyptian-in-exile writer/director Tarik Saleh is playing.  Instead, in the first half, a tour of rarely shown back-street Cairo as Detective Fares Fares gets the runaround from likely suspects and constantly comes up against internal police corruption.  Not from outliers, but built within the system.  Make that especially within the system, where nothing happens without a bribe.  And bigger bribes needed to stay safe outside of your precinct where the police are not even friends of the police.  Everywhere you turn ‘it’s CHINATOWN,’ so to speak.  The second-half, tightens focus onto the specific murder we began with, adds on more death, and sees what happens when Detective Fares, whose honesty is a thing of relative values, finds himself being blackmailed along with some powerful politicians.  All of this coming to a head just as the Arab Spring Uprising hits the streets of Cairo.  Excellent work here, if perhaps a little confusing for non-locals.  But don’t try spotting Cairo landmarks.  Saleh had just been exiled and couldn’t shoot in Egypt.  You’ll see why.  (Did it even open there?)  Fares a natural on screen.  Think Egyptian Bogart . . . if Boogie only smoked more.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Not seen here, but Saleh & Fares latest thriller, CAIRO CONSPIRACY/’22, also forced to shoot abroad in spite of that title, very well received.

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016)

In general, it’s a good idea to ignore advice that begins: ‘I don’t usually like (blank), but this is pretty good.’  So, as a grizzled STAR WARS agnostic on everything after the first two films (IV and V to true believers), take this recommendation with a grain of salt.  But this troubled prequel to the old original (mostly to A NEW HOPE) really knows what it’s about.  ‘Troubled’ because there was a lot of rewriting and reshoots under director Gareth Edwards when Tony Gilroy was brought in to ‘improve’ Chris Weitz’s script.*  Hard to know who’s responsible for what, but the opening, using A NEW HOPE as structural template, nicely sets things up, with new, excellent characters for its all-star cast.  (Internationally flavored for maximum box-office.)  Hell, they even come up with some truly funny comeback lines for the latest robotic assistant.  With more model work than you expect these days (not always happy next to the CGI stuff), but also a disagreeably drab palette.  As if the new 'serious' STAR WARS æsthetic had outgrown the brassy colors and shiny surfaces of yore.  Pity.  The story not always as clear as the old films either, something about internecine disputes among rebel groups forced to work as one when those real baddies start building a death star.   (The later led by Peter Cushing who died in 1996!)  Exploding ordnance galore for a finale, but other than a blind samurai fighter not enough characters to invest in emotionally.  Still, faults and all, this truly feels like a STAR WARS film.  No small achievement.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Tony Gilroy now show runner on ANDOR, a 12-part prequel to this prequel.  Not seen here, but very highly rated, with season 2 coming up.

DB/LINK: The original and one of those lousy follow-ups.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/12/star-wars-1977.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/star-wars-revenge-of-sith-2004.html

AFTERSUN (2022)

Currently winning awards on the indie circuit, especially in Britain, this memory film about a divorced dad and his eleven-yr-old daughter bonding (and tentatively beginning teenage separation) over a school holiday in the Mediterranean, is well-observed & touching, charming & ultimately a little too slight.  Paul Mescal is super as the understanding, if occasionally befuddled father, clearly seeing a near future with less access.  Newcomer Frankie Corio is the girl, either too old or too young for most of the people at the resort.  (In a surprise, the one age-appropriate romantic partner around is downright chubby.)  In her first feature, writer/director Charlotte Wells is too fond of obfuscating ‘cinematic’ razzle-dazzle.  Adding confusion & filler to beef up the running time?  And are the scenes showing the grown up Corio character thinking back really necessary?  The lack of SmartPhones let us known where we are.  But the happy memories turn sour at an unfortunate karaoke night event (Corio some kind of awful singer!) which sets up some unexpectedly strong/serious relationship drama before Wells finds a gentle way back.  (In a lovely shot focused entirely on Mescal’s back.*)  The film’s truthful modesty most becoming.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *But not the scene in our poster.

DOUBLE-BILL: In the ‘sixties, it was teens rather than ‘tweens’ who rebelled.  Delightfully brought off in the rarely revived THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT/’64.  Peter Sellers stars, but the film belongs to its two 14-yr-olds: one middle-class/one rich.

DOWN BY LAW (1986)

Sui generis filmmaking from Jim Jarmusch, a cockeyed odyssey far more Homeric than the Coen Brothers’ O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?, which actually gave Homer a writing credit (and wouldn’t you love to have seen that contract?), here played with deadpan intensity (to coin an oxymoron) by three inspired lunatics: Tom Waits, John Lurie and Roberto Benigni.  The first two, under-employed New Orleans’ musicians who meet-not-so-cute in a filthy jail cell, each man having been set up for a fall.  One framed on an under-aged prostitution rap; the other caught driving crosstown with a dead body in the boot of the car he was driving.  Unaware of what they had gotten themselves into, they’re like prisoners waiting for Godot when Benigni is moved in, a talkative Italian with expressively limited English and a murder rap he’s more than happy to explain.  As wary friendship evolves, an impromptu plan of escape thru treacherous swamp-lands seems a good idea.  And dammed if it isn’t under the patient gaze of Jarmusch and Robby Müller’s incredibly expressive hot-house monochrome cinematography.  With long takes, minimal action (actually there’s quite a lot of action, it just seems as if nothing happens), and near magical realism, the film, with it’s leapfrogging narrative sensibility (skipping over what normal writer/directors would have made a meal of) is a one-of-a-kind wonder.  Possibly the best thing Jarmusch ever did.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Hard to watch some of the shots cruising past New Orleans houses & neighborhoods dilapidated even then, without imagining if they now survive at all after weather calamities and social indifference over the past four decades.

THREE HOURS TO KILL (1954)

In the middle of a long run of Randolph Scott Westerns (six with Budd Boetticher directing yet to come*), producer Harry Joe Brown cast fading A-listers Dana Andrews, Donna Reed and journeyman Alfred L. Werker to meg this tight chamber Western.  Pretty good, too (though the climax disappoints), but even more interesting as a test run for those Boetticher gems.  With cinematographer Charles Lawton Jr. & composer Paul Sawtell already in place, it looks & sounds like the later films, if only Werker tied landscape to character, and staged with a bit more formal discipline.  (Some action stuff mighty casual: punches missing by a mile and obvious stunt-doubling for Andrews behind shrubbery.)  But the anti-lynching theme would have worked for Scott as it does for Andrews, returning to the town where he barely escaped a ‘neck party’ (and with the scar to prove it).  Determined to end a life-on-the-run, he’s come back to find the true guilty party, the man who shot Reed’s husband in the back while Andrews took the blame.  And what a load of likely suspects still in town.  Town barber Whit Bissell particularly odious . . . and lousy with the straight-razor.  You’ll guess the real killer, but not three neatly turned twists right at the end.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Watch for a fluff Werker kept when Reed’s little boy couldn't get some candy out of a bag.  Adorable.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Closest match-up with a Boetticher/Scott Western is probably BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE/’58, which keeps to town more than the other six though can’t quite pull off some appealing comic elements.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/buchanan-rides-alone-1958.html

RUAN LING-YU / CENTER STAGE (1991)

Hong Kong’s Stanley Kwan’s film on ‘30s film actress Ruan Ling-Yu, is a like deconstruction of the traditional bio-pic.  Sometimes called the ‘Shanghai Garbo,’ Ruan was more Luise Rainer meets Janet Gaynor in a handful of films, mostly silent*, up to 1935 when a combination of bad choices (debt-ridden husband, infidelity, hostile press, studio politics & gossip, general indifference and jealous rivals) led to early suicide at 24.  Kwan brings a unusual texture to everything in here, not only in its look, but in the telling, nipping at expected bio-tropes in recreations, modern commentary from current actors & elderly acquaintances, snippets of actual footage & stills (not much appears to have survived), and a full-rigged period film with Maggie Cheung as Ruan.  It takes a while to get the hang of his method, but it soon starts to pay off as the collisions in style & time frame bring new angles and clarity to what might have played as the usual too-much/too-soon tale of stardom turned sour.  Indeed, Ruan’s suicide (leaving an elderly mother and adopted child) remains more mysterious than ever by the end.  Note that the current restoration, out on Film Movement, adds a useful three reels (now running about 2.5') to the original cut.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Shanghai was late to add synch-sound.  They also appear to have continued using color-insensitive orthochromatic stock long after panchromatic became standard.  Note the heavy white makeup used.  Yet with so many period details perfectly observed, Kwan has his cameramen cranking their cameras at an impossibly slow speed.  You’d end up with under-cranked Keystone Kops comedy.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Perhaps taking a cue from this breakthru role, Maggie Cheung has, with just a few exceptions, curtailed her work since 2003.

WINGS OF THE NAVY (1939)

The least of Olivia de Havilland’s five 1939 films.  No contest against GONE WITH THE WIND, THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX; DODGE CITY and RAFFLES.*  De Havilland really has little to do in this sibling rivalry story of Navy flyboy George Brent, busy designing new experimental planes, and kid brother John Payne, hoping to transfer from submarines to the open sky.  Pop was a Naval air pioneer, and these two competitively carrying on the legacy.  Competitive on land, too, with Olivia’s affections tilting from George to John.  But when one of the brothers is seriously injured in a training flight, the only honorable thing to do is . . . well, you get the picture.  Standard doings for Warners in this not quite programmer, though it feels like one.  Not even a musical score, very unusual for wall-to-wall musical score Warners.  Just a few library music cues between the constant drone of airplane motors.  Lloyd Bacon walks thru directing chores, but cinematographer Arthur Edeson’s high contrast look is equally effective on land and in the air.  But the thing that really makes this worth the time is a rare look at all those between-the-war years planes.  Bi-planes to pontoon fighters, mighty carriers to diving death traps.  It’s Pre-WWII THE RIGHT STUFF out there, with planes that didn’t make it into mass production when war came along.  Pity they didn’t have someone like Frank ‘Spig’ Wead on the script.  He specialized in boilerplate Navy dramatics, but with Wead it was The Real Stuff Navy dramatics.  Still, points to original screenwriter Michael Fessier for a speedy, neatly turned ending.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Three of those five in TechniColor.  Unheard of in ‘39.  (RAFFLES, Sam Goldwyn’s attempt to make David Niven his new Ronald Colman, not much better than this.)

ELVIS (2022)

What an odd film writer/director Baz Luhrman made of his Elvis Presley bio-pic.  Maximalist, as is his wont, prioritizing instant gratification and ignoring the long view.  Aware of missing structure, Luhrman uses creepy fabulist/manager Colonel Tom Parker to walk us thru a series of ellipses (as if  you'd stumbled into a World’s Fair Exhibit and couldn’t find a way out), a long picturized lecture on a rather short life.  Southern poverty, smothering mother-love, Gospel music & spirituality, a fast rise, but crucially skipping Elvis’s pre-Army Hollywood days and the three pics rushed thru production when producer Hal Wallis signed him up before the infamous Milton Berle ‘Hound Dog’ fiasco.  Dramatically, it means Army grooming, mother’s death, Colonel’s monetization all play unopposed as Elvis loses openness, rough edges and cultural threat.  As Elvis, Austin Butler seems just right . . . for Ricky Nelson.  (Those two boys did share the same lips.)  And Tom Hanks' Col. Parker?  Not for the first time in a role Michael Keaton should have played, belabors under Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL makeup.*  While Luhrman, desperate to hold our attention, uses so many speedy 'push-in' fast-tracking shots, it becomes his all-purpose stylistic tick and a reflexive mental rope-a-dope kicks in to filter them out.  And when he does try to slow up, it doesn’t register.  Like Elvis at the end, he’s running on fumes.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The early Elvis can still be glimpsed in KING CREOLE/’58.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/king-creole-1958.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *And speaking of Welles, Luhrman attempts a FunHouse mirror sequence a la LADY FROM SHANGHAI when the Colonel shows his hand as Mephistopheles to a young Elvis.

THE LAVENDER HILL MOB (1951)

There are many fine examples of the distinctive, insular world of ‘Ealing Comedy’ in the decade after WWII, but only three lodestars: KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS/’49; THE LAVENDER HILL MOB, and two months later, THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT/’51.  That last one, perhaps best of all, sharpest of social comedies as it tackles class, labor, management, commerce, science, family; each hilariously taken apart and put back together.  With CORONETS the blackest & probably best known (thanks to a famous casting stunt), it leaves MOB, gentlest of the set, perhaps the best one to start with.  Naturally, it stars Alec Guinness, the one element common to all three, dropping his ‘r’s as a mild-mannered accountant in charge of getting gold bullion safely across town and delivered to the bank.  But when fate, in the form of souvenir trinket manufacturer Stanley Holloway, moves into his rooming house, it’s a case of irresistible force meets movable object.  That object?  Miniature Eiffel Towers for the tourist trade; perfect for smuggling out of the country.  Screenwriter T.E.B. Clarke works out near perfect obstacles to the caper that wind up helping rather than hurting the enterprise, as well as memorable side characters.  (And, pace Hollywood, no romantic element at all.)  Cleanly helmed by Charles Crichton, an Ealing regular who knew when to add a clever touch* and when to stay out of the way.  (No wonder, John Cleese pulled him out of retirement for A FISH CALLED WANDA/’88.)  Even a fun little bonus in the form of an early bit for a pre-ROMAN HOLIDAY Audrey Hepburn looking downright radiant under Douglas Slocombe’s lensing.  The film’s a peach.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned: KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS; MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/kind-hearts-and-coronets-1949.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-man-in-white-suit-1951.html

CONTEST: *One of those clever bits echt Ernst Lubitsch, the sort of proper ‘Lubitsch Touch’ many try, but few pull off.  Post your answer in COMMENTS to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.

THE EIGER SANCTION (1975)

Think of it as Clint Eastwood finishing his apprenticeship.  His next as director, THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES/’76, a masterpiece.  Here, surprisingly uneven, especially in close-action and fight scenes: staging, camera positioning, editing, all amateur city.  Though who’ll notice as the big surprise is just how much Clint was jonesing to be James Bond!  Who knew?  Not the next Connery or Roger Moore, instead anticipating the style of yet-to-be Bond Timothy Dalton (THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS/’87; LICENCE TO KILL/’89.)  Tougher, more realistic, with Eastwood’s semi-retired agent/Art History Prof at some Euro-University when he’s called back in to do a hit after a secret formula is stolen.  Plus, a follow-up contract killing.  Working for a mystery agency run by an evil mastermind (more Blofeld than ‘M’), his target an unknown assassin who’s part of a mountain climbing team.  That’s the second/lesser half of the film, handsomely shot in the Alps, but a big bore, in spite of Clint doing his own stunts.  Yet the film’s no lost cause since the first half, more Bond-like and loaded with Clint’s ideas of sexy Bond babes; line-back built George Kennedy an unlikely mountain trainer; and a passel of delightful villains for Eastwood to take out.  No one more so than B’way Musical Comedy star Jack Cassidy in a rare good film role as a fey former comrade, now out to dispose of his old pal.  Walking off with every scene he’s in, Cassidy, a notorious Lothario in real life, seldom clicked on film, but he’s supremely gay and threatening here.  Whoever thought of using him?  Give that man a gold star.  Alas, when he disappears halfway in, chilly mountain climbing and a guessable twist tanks the rest of the film.

(And the studio knew it.  See second poster, designed to look like more Dirty Harry fare.*)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Another reason this got a bit lost is that producers Richard Zanuck & David Brown had JAWS/’75 coming out the next month.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, Eastwood’s follow up, JOSEY WALES.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-outlaw-josie-wales-1976.html

GRAND HOTEL (1932)

Churning romantic folly, delicious right from its snazzy opening credits laying out Hollywood star-pecking order, circa 1932.  (Check poster to see who tops whom).  Garbo is doubly lauded: first-billed/last to appear on screen.  (Not till reel three; backed by a swell of Rachmaninoff.)  Visually clever fugal opening with figures in telephone booths filling us in on the back-story.  (Edmund Goulding’s direction surprisingly peppy for M-G-M, heightened by William Daniels’ dark-toned portraiture & overhead views.)  Then, a half a dozen life-or-death stories playing out simultaneously, seamlessly moving from lobby to upper floor suites, with stops for character revelation at the cocktail lounge and the dance floor.  Garbo’s ballet diva on the edge of collapse.  John Barrymore’s charming, penniless Baron hoping to rob only to be robbed of his heart.  Brother Lionel’s dying clerk, a rube among swells, out for a final fling with his savings.  (Look sharp for a small acting miracle when John confesses to this new acquaintance that he has no friends.)  Modern gal Joan Crawford, a secretary for hire (with benefits) to coarse, flailing industrialist Wallace Beery.  Lewis Stone’s disfigured doctor, watching life from the sidelines.  And Jean Hersholt as the hotel manager worrying about a wife in hospital having a difficult delivery.  Much of the drama, as well as the acting, now looks faintly ridiculous, not at all like the beloved Golden Age Hollywood films that still ‘tell’ in remarkably up-to-date ways.  (Especially those, like this, from the early ‘30s Pre-Code era.)  But one of the glories of this film is how it somehow lets us rediscover for ourselves what audiences of the day felt about all these glamorous/fatalistic comings and goings.  Even lines that now make you giggle (or gasp) in disbelief manage to make their dramatic mark.  Almost in spite of itself, the film remains consistently compelling.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  To a large extent, the formula is repeated in next year’s DINNER AT EIGHT/’33.  But in a dramatic vehicle with a far more modern, even ironic edge.  The two films nicely summing up the difference between HOTEL producer Irving Thalberg and DINNER’s David O. Selznick.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/11/dinner-at-eight-1933.html