THE SANDLOT (1993)

This small town whimsy about a sandlot pickup baseball gang hoped to catch the backdraft of other idyllic tween-age memory pieces.  (Think A CHRISTMAS STORY/’83, STAND BY ME/’86 or tv’s THE WONDER YEARS/’88.)  Thirty years after a popular release, its following has only expanded.  So, what a surprise to finally watch the thing and discover it’s terrible!  Then again, a glance at the admittedly not always reliable IMDb ratings of other films by debuting director David Mickey Evans clues us in with some of the lowest ratings ever seen.  Ranging from 5 (out of 10), to 4s and a 2.  (That last for ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE JR.)  Evans all thumbs at everything he tries: horrible child acting (adults Denis Leary & Karen Allen also dreadful), slapstick action split into unmatched edits on gags that need to play out in a single take, character & story moves that wouldn’t surprise a toddler.   Like a junkyard dog who’s really a sweetie pie at heart (ditto owner*); a baseball signed by Babe Ruth to get ruined; a bonding game of catch with tough-to-please stepfather; pretty lifeguard to trick into a kiss; heck, there’s even a token Black kid on the team.  Sheesh.

ATENTION MUST BE PAID:  When the new kid shows up, the sandlot boys all excited to finally have nine players so they can field a full team.  But since somebody’s got to be at bat, they're still fielding eight.  As Casey Stengel famously said about his 1962 METS, ‘Can’t anybody here play this game?’  (BTW, with only two kids available for the outfield, they also stick the hopeless kid in Center-Left when everyone knows Center-Right is where the worst player goes.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *That junkyard owner is James Earl Jones as a one-time pro player from the old segregated Negro League, now blind.  (Laying it on kinda thick, no?)  For Jones in a baseball pic less maudlin than FIELD OF DREAMS/'89 try the underrated Negro League baseball pic BINGO LONG TRAVELING ALL-STARS & MOTOR KINGS/’76.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-bingo-long-traveling-all-stars-and.html

BREACH (2007)

Over before it starts, but still intriguing, co-writer/director Billy Ray looks back in discomfort at how a junior agent-in-training (Ryan Phillippe) became the aide (and the end) of F.B.I. turncoat Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper).  Adjudged the most destructive insider ever to spy against the agency (paid for decades to feed info & contacts to the USSR), we don’t see much of this action, instead it’s all undercover investigation of Hanssen after he’s lured to the home office with the promise of overseeing a computer upgrade for the entire F.B.I.  A very strange guy even without being a traitor, but we come into the story so late, the film can’t develop what ought to be its raison d’être: how the heck did this creepathon of a guy (perverted sexual tastes; antisocial, off-putting religious hypocrite, inflexible solo-flyer) didn't raise alarms given his position of power and authority.  (And what’s a 60-something yr-old guy doing running IT anyway?  That’s a young man’s game even at an old school outfit like the FBI.)  Instead, the script is like an elongated Mission Impossible episode for choirboyish Phillippe buddying up to this prickly personality as he seeks something ethically damning on him or witnesses a misstep in foreign info exchange for his undercover superiors.  Stakes are sky high, but never feel so.  Not even the added stress this puts on his marriage.  The obvious idea that the wife is left out of the loop for her own protection never mentioned.  We’re left with four or five story beats over the whole film, with Phillippe having to think fast on his feet and lie his way out of some slipup.  Execution reasonably well-cooked but flavorless, tension mild at best.  Mostly worth a look to see quiet/assured/sympathetic Chris Cooper going all John Malkovich on us.  (Or is it now Michael Shannon?)  No one else here nearly as interesting or interestingly cast.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  What about our major spy orgs pulls in such amazingly destructive insiders?  Over at the C.I.A., founding fellow James Jesus Angleton did so much damage misreading the tea leaves he might as well have been a Commie spy.  He’s fictionalized in a manner nearly as inept as he proved to be in Robert De Niro’s THE GOOD SHEPHERD/’06.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/12/good-shepherd-2006.html

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1967)

Recently undergoing something of a critical reevaluation (the book more than the film), up-to-date ‘party line’ critical academic theory now values Jacqueline Susann’s purple prose page-turners as a pop feminine litmus test of changing social norms.  It makes for a nice PhD thesis, but the film does little to uphold the argument.  Instead, it was correctly understood and commercially successful as instant camp; the thudding last gasp in a chain of FOX films charting the paths of three gal pals, their life, love, careers & personal catastrophes; with titles going back to the early ‘30s.  More specifically, following up on those CinemaScope triptychs (the wide frame ratio just made for bosom-buddy trios) from HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE/’53 to THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN/’54 and THE BEST OF EVERYTHING/’59.  (Many more in-between.)  Each one coming in a bit more shaded than the last before reaching SusannLand where big city stress, sex, addiction (pills & booze), bad relationships and suicide are seen thru a glass darkly.  And yet, it's somehow all inadvertently hilarious, dumbed down to a playing level that leaves no one unscathed.  (On screen and off, none of the major creatives in front or behind the camera ever worked on a quality project again.*)  Patty Duke wins the booby prize (ironically with the smallest ‘boobies’ in the pic!), over-emoting to beat the band as the too-much-too-soon self-centered singing star who self-destructs on ‘reds’ and ‘blues’; Barbara Perkins the boring one gets VOGUE-ish pseudo Pop fashion montages as inadequate recompense; Sharon Tate stoops to conquer, making ‘artistic’ soft-porn to support a husband under a neurological death sentence.  Meanwhile, ‘guest star’ Susan Hayward shows up to top & tail as a B’way legend sporting hideous sparkly outfits that don’t suit her.  (Left over when Judy Garland ankled just before filming?)  Two more Susann laughers followed, THE LOVE MACHINE/’71 and ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH/’75.  By then, who cared?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The one exception is the score, especially the title song which everyone thinks is by Burt Bacharach (Dionne Warwick sings it), but actually is Dory & André Previn.

THE CASE OF THE HOWLING DOG (1934)

Sharp programmer sees Warner Brothers trying Perry Mason on for size in the first, and likely the best, of these early adaptations.  Later entries added generic elements and more comic relief, but here Warren William, who’d repeat for most of the series, hunkers down investigating & lawyering for a neurasthenic man who’s come to make a new will and sue a neighbor for his continually howling dog.  Shootings, disappearance, a pretty wife (Mary Astor) charged with murder, a false witness ‘arranged’ by Mason to nullify testimony (Perry skirting legality in these early films), nice period flavor and a rattling pace for a dialogue heavy film; just about everything one of these modest double-bill offerings ought to have.  The writers get a couple of things wrong: should Mason really be running a huge office firm with dozens of specialty lawyers, private dicks, rows of secretaries and banks of phone switchboards & operators?  And the relationship with secretary Della Street ought to be implied rather than activated, no?  (That’s lovely Helen Trenholme as efficient Ms. Street in the first of only two credits.  Pity.)  But the spirit of the case and how Mason runs it makes sense and is twisty without being impossible to follow.  (Based, for once, on an actual Erle Stanley Gardner novel.)  Neatly handled by Alan Crosland (note the quick pans instead of edits), a Warners contract director who’d slipped badly from his late-silent/Early Talky heyday; dead in a car accident two years later.  This one good enough to think he might have come back to prominence.  Fun stuff.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Out a few months after the Production Code went into strict effect, they still manage to let someone off the hook for murder.  And note that while there’s no real musical score, some interesting diegetic choices get made, like having an upbeat song from DAMES/’34 play during the murder.

DOUBLE-BILL: Utility player on Warners’ leading men contract list, William likely got this assignment after his stellar turn two years back in THE MOUTHPIECE/’32.

ESCAPE FROM PREORIA (2000)

As nobler-than-thou prison escape films go, this one’s a solid-citizen contender, neither overblown nor oversold.  Debuting director Francis Annan makes his points and gets out of the way on this truish story of two 1970s South African anti-Apartheid activists (Daniel Radcliffe & Daniel Webber) sentenced for setting off harmless exploding devices to scatter political leaflets.  Finding a like-minded support group in their segregated jail (but only one willing to join the escape plan), Radcliffe’s character uses the prison tool shop and his resourceful ideas to create a series of wooden keys to fit a series of doors, gates & locks leading out of the helpfully antiquated prison.  Perhaps it's all too straightforward, character development and background on their unlikely talents skipped over, and what went missing left the film commercially lost in the shuffle of Early Covid lockdown.  A shame, as you can easily infer the missing pieces on your own.  (Like having Radcliffe’s creative mechanical engineering of ‘safe’ explosive devices figuring into his whiz-bang jailhouse ingenuity amid white-knuckle fear of failure and the even higher stakes of detection.)  Or is it simply a lack of clear prison logistics when we really need to know just where everyone is at every moment for the suspense to take hold.*  Still, if you’re on the hunt for a nice prison escape escapade, look no further.  And count your blessings to find certain prison movie tropes passed over: no sexual threats or dropping the soap; no rants on bad prison food (Radcliffe digs in when nervous); no solitary confinement heroics.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Fitting that a country with such an ugly political system should feature the ugliest English-language accent you’ve ever heard.  Listen to the vowels coming out of the Judge on the case.  They could curdle the contents of a can of Coca-Cola.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  That’s a cut from an L.P. of the Mozart Requiem played on the prison sound system cued up by the night watchman as he makes his rounds.  A nod toward THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION/’95 use of the Letter Duet from THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO on their turntable?  (Naturally, all the inmates love it.)

THE LONG FAREWELL / DOLGIE PROVODY (1971)

The New Wave belatedly shows in the USSR on this early film from Romanian-born Soviet filmmaker Kira Muratova.  Banned for a decade, it’s unclear if authorities’ objected to the early Godard stylistics or its disaffected Soviet youth content.  Where has the white-of-teeth, strong-of-arm Soviet Pioneers spirit gone?  Oleg Vladimirsky, in his sole film credit, is the best thing in here as the late teen, back with Mom (in Odessa?) after a summer spent with Dad, and now falling away from old habits, perhaps to move away for good.  (In both senses of the word.)  And who wouldn’t be thinking escape with a mom like Zinaida Sharko, playing a Russian version of one of those desperate clutchy/clinging chatterbox Tennessee Williams fading divas?*  (Brittle, mannered and embarrassing, Geraldine Page would have been just the thing for a putative Hollywood remake.)  On the other hand, she’s so dreadfully needy, perhaps Dad is better able to take care of himself?  Do I see filial sacrifice and years of psychiatrist bills in the future?  Except that’s all free in the Soviet Union, da?  Admired & influential internationally when finally released, so help yourself if you're so inclined.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *But is it more GLASS MENAGERIE/Amanda Wingfield or Geraldine Page/SUMMER AND SMOKE/61; SWEET BIRD OF YOU/’62?  Either way, lots of award action for Ms. Sharko.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Extreme, downright odd use of repetition in the dialogue; as if characters rehearsing lines incessantly with small variations in emphasis.

LONE STAR (1952)

Tumbling & crumbling in the post-WWII/post Louis B. Mayer era, top dog M-G-M only had farther to fall than other fast-fading Hollywood majors.  But this mid-sized Western on Independent Texas fighting over annexation with a pre-Civil War USA, comes off pretty well under journeyman Warners director Vincent Sherman out on loan.  Borden Chase, who wrote some Anthony Mann/James Stewart Westerns and Howard Hawks’ RED RIVER/’48, has a good story for a 50-ish but fit Clark Gable playing a pro-annexation agent hiding his identity from fascistic Independent Politico Broderick Crawford, and finding himself falling for the man’s long time gal pal, newspaper owner Ava Gardner.  The idea of romantic interest between Gardner & Crawford cleverly finessed, while political maneuvering and rough-riding action taken care of in the sort of plush M-G-M style you didn’t think this increasingly arthritic studio could still pull off.  True, Gable’s stuntman is a bit too exposed (a back flip?), but this is compensated by letting Gardner use her own voice in a song.*  We even get a final acting role for Lionel Barrymore, playing an infirm, but energetically grumpy Andrew Jackson after something like 100 credits at the studio.  But what makes this modest entertainment unmissable only becomes apparent once Crawford follows Gable to a secret meeting between some Native Americans and Sam Houston.  Suddenly, Crawford bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain recently indicted ex-President.  Sounds like him too.  But wait!  The film then climaxes with Crawford leading a bunch of goons in an insurrection against the legal Texas Congress as they are in the middle of voting on the government annexation proposal.  Not even The Simpsons, famous for anticipating historical events decades before they happen can top this.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Gardner played backup gal to Deborah Kerr (of all people) in her first Gable pic, THE HUCKSTERS/’47, but made up for that error in MOGAMBO/’53 their last and best co-starrer.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-hucksters-1947.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/mogambo-1953.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Unwillingly dubbed in last year’s SHOW BOAT/’51, Ava Gardner probably got to keep her own vocal as a sop to keep her happy on the home lot.

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (2018)

In this self-indulgent homage to ‘80s/’90s L.A. Neo-Noir, rising writer/director David Robert Mitchell hit something of a brick wall with a conspiracy-minded tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, a film school shaggy dog story filled with naked backsides.  Very nice ones, too, though in true ‘90s style, only the gals are asked to pivot.  Andrew Garfield, his hair never so tousled, is a slacker on his way to getting evicted from one of those L.A. courtyard apartment units, watching his odd neighbors like James Stewart in REAR WINDOW/'54.  (The film poster hangs on the wall.)  But after spending quality time with a new beauty he just saw using the complex’s pool (you know he’s hallucinating as residents never use those pools), she goes missing.  Now Garfield sets off on a trip thru the purgatory of filmdom’s fringe world to find her, picking up on the suggestion of a vast conspiracy hiding in plain sight in codes all around him.  (Just check out the back of that cereal box!)  All tuned to some inner music Mitchell never lets us in on.  At times pretty to look at, and not just the glam, youthful bods, it eventually sorts itself out² via death cult denoument and a special delivery from Mom (a VHS copy of SEVENTH HEAVEN/’27; dir- Frank Borzage; Janet Gaynor; Charles Farrell*).   But this drug-addled paranoid thriller never settles down as a story or even as a time period.  Mitchell now in reset mode.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  L.A. Noir died briefly in the ‘60s, cracking wise in overlit interiors in films like Paul Newman’s HARPER/’66 & James Garner’s MARLOWE/’69.  At least Blake Edwards caught a whiff of the changing Zeitgeist with his bargain basement GUNN/’67.  But it took Robert Altman pissing everyone off with THE LONG GOODBYE/’73 to revive the genre and find new places to go.  OR:  *Follow up on ‘Mom’s’ suggestion for SEVENTH HEAVEN.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/12/marlowe-1969.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/harper-1966.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/08/gunn-1967.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-long-goodbye-1973.html

THE FROGMEN (1951)

Dandy & unpretentious, this WWII sea action pic remains damn effective, helped rather than hurt by journeyman director Lloyd Bacon’s usual lack of imagination.  His just-the-facts style of filmmaking reportage on the mark in making the insanely dangerous operations of UDT-4, the Underwater Demolition Team (a sort of proto-Navy SEALs unit) believable.  Assignments include advance surveillance of battle sites; charting mines & shoreline obstacles; taking out beachfront ordnance), all accomplished with equipment that’s not so much primitive as nonexistent (swimming trunks, scuba masks, waterproof writing mini-tablets; that’s about it).  Richard Widmark the replacement commander who can’t bond with his loyal-to-a-fault unit; Dana Andrews the older top-man, bending rules for popularity; Gary Merrill the seen-it-all transport ship Captain; Jeffery Hunter the young family man (who of course will be the one guy seriously wounded); and Robert Wagner (with equal billing to Hunter) left largely on the cutting room floor.  (Uncredited Jack Warden has more screen time.)  There’s some extraneous melodrama (an unexploded torpedo gets stuck in the ship’s sick bay), but all the quotidian techniques & duties of the job are both fascinating and horrifically scary/difficult.  The system for picking up the men after they’ve completed an assignment a hair-raising variation of the old moving train/mailbag hook grab, but with men as mailbags (Yikes!) and a human ‘hook’ using a noosed rope the men must catch and hang on to while the boat is moving at speed.  None of this faked.  Lots more in this vein, all leading up to a major op, now with oxygen tanks, taking out a ‘pen’ of Jap subs.  The whole film modest, stoic, underplayed, and nearly hoke-free.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  It’s always a shock to see real WWII footage where the fighting men were more like fighting boys (late teens to early 20s; 25 made you the unit’s ‘old man’).  Hollywood films had them all a decade older.  And it only got worse as war memories (and war footage) faded.  Here, Dana Andrews is the old timer at 41, but in general, this film casts a bit closer to the age mark.  Perhaps because they spend so much time wearing nothing but swimming trunks, you really needed to be in shape and younger actors were the ones in fighting trim.

DAY OF THE OUTLAW (1959)

Known more as trivia punchline than for directing (‘What one-eyed director got Hollywood’s 3-D movie craze going?’), André De Toth was far more interesting than his rep suggests.  This late entry one of his most interesting and certainly one of his toughest.   Shot ‘flat,’ in unglamorous b&w (lenser Russell Harlan between two high-profile TechniColor jobs the same year: RIO BRAVO*; OPERATION PETTICOAT), it’s a bleak wintry Western that opens in commonplace fashion as gruff rancher Robert Ryan rides into town to confront the homesteader who took his gal (Tina Louise) and now threatens his land by running barbed wire across once open field.  But this all abruptly changes when Burl Ives and his gang of outlaws come to the little town with 60 thou in stolen coin and take over the place till the weather improves for their getaway.  But time may be running out since Ives needs a gunshot taken out of his chest and the operating ‘surgeon’ can’t promise recovery.  Scripter Philip Yordan’s rep was for rewriting the same basic Western in various genres, but here, abetted by De Toth’s uncompromising vision, the film is exceedingly grim, violent, nihilist, pushing the 1959 envelope in a manner a major studio release would never have let a journeyman like De Toth get away with.  The film somewhat reminiscent of one of those Anthony Mann/James Stewart moral Westerns (DOUBLE-BILL - see THE MAN FROM LARAMIE/’55), though Mann would have probably used an electric cattle-prod to jumpstart David Nelson’s ‘good’ bad guy act.*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Lenser Russell just off working RIO BRAVO with kid brother Ricky Nelson.  Yikes!  He couldn’t act either, but at least had Elvis Presley’s lip-curl snarl down pat.

THE SELFISH GIANT (2013)

Unexpectedly strong meat from co-writer/director Clio Barnard, working the Ken Loach/Mike Leigh vein of off-the-loop/working-class U.K. (though Belgians Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne never far off*) on two young teenage pals falling thru social network cracks.  And what seems at first to be something of a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn dynamic as the boys get into trouble and eventually kicked out of school (one permanently . . . at thirteen!) darkens considerably by the second act and tragically in the third.  Something of a Mutt & Jeff pair physically, it’s the little blonde kid (Conner Chapman) taking lead position over docile friend Shaun Thomas when they spot copper-wire cable thieves and figure out how they can use the same system for their own gain.  There even looks to be a chance for hope in the setup since the scrapyard owner keeps workhorses for his metal scavengers and a racing horse (a trotter) for sport.  Something quiet Thomas has a knack for.  It proves a cause of positive attention Chapman views as a threat.  But this isn’t really where we’re heading as the main issue isn’t undiscovered talent or even social adjustment, but mental instability as Chapman is showing serious signs of pathological behavior, especially when he’s off his meds . . . and he’s always off his meds.  By the middle of the film we see where this is going; by the third act there’s really nothing to stop it.  Heartbreaking stuff, even if Barnard allows a few unlikely events to force tragedy on a story that’s already plenty dark.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See the Dardennes’ THE KID WITH THE BIKE/’11, out two years before this.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/12/le-gamin-au-velo-kid-with-bike-2011.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Both boys debuting non-pros: one not long for the biz/one still going strong.  That’s almost always the case with these duos: the blonde one dropping out of film while the dark-haired pal still actively employed.  Any reason behind this blonde/brunette disparity much debated.  The classic example going back to De Sica’s SHOESHINE/’46 where the sunny blonde kid never made another film while his darker, slightly older pal became screen great Franco Interlenghi, with over 100 credits over seven decades working with almost every famous Italian director of his day.

THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI (1947)

Guy de Maupassant’s much filmed story, a Frenchified Rake’s Progress*, two in 1947 alone, this & Mexico, is, as the ad copy says, ‘the history of a scoundrel.’  George Sanders, a decade beyond his lean & hungry days (Louis Jourdan in next year’s LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMEN exactly what was needed . . . to say nothing of Max Ophüls!) is elsewise well cast as the amoral opportunist climbing the ladder of numbingly vain, superficial French La Belle Êpoque upper-crust society, pivoting past friends (male) and lovers (female) to a cozy, influential and profitable position dishing up social & political gossip for a scandal mongering news baron.  Or is till he runs into the Hollywood Production Code for a comeuppance de Maupassant would never have allowed.  Rather misses the point, non?  Written & directed by Albert Lewin, whose taste for literary adaptations labeled him a Hollywood intellectual (Hollywood intellectual manqué closer to the mark), Lewin’s few films all fun to watch (THE MOON AND SIXPENCE very good indeed: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/gauguin-voyage-du-tahiti-2017-moon-and.html), but he never developed a fluid visual style to match his ambitions.  (Here he thinks a Manet mock up gives him all the bona fides needed.)  Stylized sets shot without flair look flat & airless, while pacing remains unvaried regardless of the situation.  Yet what a cast he’s put together, even without studio backing.  Honors go to Ann Dvorak, the widow he marries for business reasons, and implacable enemy Warren William.  And while it was probably a mistake to repeat his shock TechniColor insert of a painting, the trick far more effective in DORIAN GRAY/’44, it’s hardly the only thing that feels like a repeat here.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  That’s Sanders doing his own bit of singing.  His substantial baritone hardly ever called upon.  Here, in CALL ME MADAM/’53 he replies in song to Ethel Merman.  (I believe Angela Lansbury for the first time also does her own bit of singing here, previously, at M-G-M, she'd been dubbed and would continue to be.)  https://www.google.com/search?q=call+me+madam+george+sanders+sings&sca_esv=558437297&sxsrf=AB5stBix3nMXf-B5oBiGFyXQN73H_elVkA%3A1692476921962&source=hp&ei=-SXhZJ2TOPylptQPsNymyAw&iflsig=AD69kcEAAAAAZOE0CWJjJqPPE0Sw79V4VrNlK64LLxr3&oq=&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6IgAqAggAMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnMgcQIxjqAhgnSO4KUABYAHABeACQAQCYAQCgAQCqAQC4AQHIAQCoAgo&sclient=gws-wiz#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:280714fd,vid:C7wOSy4gyUA

DOUBLE-BILL:  Rex Harrison played this game in grand style in THE RAKE’S PROGRESS (aka THE NOTORIOUS GENTLEMAN), and as it came out in 1945, WWII comes to his moral rescue.

47 RONIN (2013)

Umpteenth telling of this inscrutably Japanese national story given a wholly misconceived CGI/Hollywood treatment for Keanu Reeves, making an already distasteful saga of revenge & martyrdom cheap & meaningless by adding demons, witches & various metaphysical cop-outs.  The basic story isn’t hard to sum up: Inside the Shogun’s palace, a feudal Lord breaks decorum drawing his sword on a personal grudge against a fellow Lord.  The punishment?  Ritual suicide and loss of his fiefdom & retainers.  His personal army of Samurai disbursed to roam as independent ‘Ronin.’  The men vow revenge against the unharmed Lord, followed by honorable mass ritual suicide just like their late Lord.  Hey, we’ve got The Alamo, right?  And like The Alamo, this one gets twisted this way and that to fit various eras.  Stately & inert in 1941 wartime Japan, distanced as much as possible by Kenji Mizoguchi (did he even want to make it?); plushly corporate from Hiroshi Inagaki in CHUSHINGURA/’62; physically stunning but oddly debunked in Ken Ichikawa’s 47 RONIN/’94, undercut rather than glorified.  Here, Hollywood tried to make things acceptable (make that internationally sellable) with a half-breed hero (Reeves) who sports supernatural powers which he reluctantly uses only against witches, demons & supernatural monsters.  Goodbye pure national Japanese attributes.  Instead of unwavering nobility in the face of impossible odds and inner victory thru death, the story now reads as No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, with Keanu taking it on the chin (and elsewhere) whenever he does the right thing for the house that never appreciated him and the court lady whose love can neither be demonstrated nor accessed.  And with the rest of the cast speaking English with various degrees of accent, the action laid out in confusing or unconvincing fashion, and none of the crucial relationships reverberating, director Carl Rinsch hasn’t made a feature since.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  On the other hand, you can amuse yourself for a minute or two, noting how much Reeves’ rival-turned-buddy Hiroyuki Sanada looks like he’s Steven Yeun’s uncle.  Or how his character steals Shakespearean tropes from HENRY IV Part II.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Two 47 variants mentioned above.  CHUSHINGURA and Ichikawa’s.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/chushingura-1962.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/47-ronin-shijushichinin-no-shikaku-1995.html

MORGENROT / DAWN (1933)

Holding major historical interest simply as the first German film released after the Nazis took power, this WWI story is also well-made and politically/morally complicated.  Whatever did the German public & authorities make of it?  (Herr Hitler at the premiere.)  Strong heroics, noble sacrifice & ultimate failure feature in this WWI U-Boat saga centered around a small German port town proud of the locals in the crew.  A Rah-Rah send-off is quickly followed by easy victory against a British destroyer.  But any celebration premature, tempered by doubt when the sub doesn’t quickly return, the town unaware that tables have turned thanks to a wily British trick.  The enemy flying false colors on an old sailing frigate to fool chivalrous Germans strictly following all international rules of war.  (Take note Germans: We’ll not make such gallant mistakes again!)  Smashed by a fast moving enemy ship with correct coordinates, the few surviving U-crew now stuck in a damaged boat with near depleted oxygen and not enough rescue suits.  Working with something of an All-Star German cast, director Gustav Ucicky gets quite exceptional effects (real footage and seamlessly handled optical printer dissolves) while tight sub interiors (note the 1.2:1 frame ratio*) and control panels in this DAS BOOT/’81 precursor fully up to Stateside technical levels.  Even the love stories back home nicely integrated.  A fascinating watch.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *That narrow frame ratio (1.2:1) an artifact of putting the sound track on the film strip where it took up about 10% of the space before someone figured out how to letterbox the image back to 1.37:1.  (Recent use of this oddly squarish shape a bit artsy-fartsy.  But using it for a submarine’s ultra-tight corridors has a sort justification to it.)  The nearly square image still in use @ FOX when John Ford told the other side of this story two years earlier in THE SEAS BENEATH/’31. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-seas-beneath-1931.html

HÄR HAR DU DITT LIV / HERE IS YOUR LIFE (1966)

Co-writing, shooting, editing & directing (what, no catering?), Jan Troell proved a master of all film crafts right from the start in this striking debut feature.  Daring, too; adapting Nobel Prize winner Eyvind Johnson's quartet of autobiographical novels into a deliberately paced, fully absorbing three-hour coming-of-age tale set in neutral Sweden over the course of the First World War.  Eddie Axberg, whom you may know as the young brother in Troell’s THE EMIGRANTS/’71, is the likable/honorable teen from a poor family with a chronically ill father who matures thru a hardscrabble series of jobs tough: logging, brick mill, train mechanic; and jobs easy (movie house multi-tasker).  Along the way acquiring radical leftist mentors; girls & experienced women; an admirably consistent line-up of pain-in-the-ass bosses; and an autodidact’s cover-to-cover reading habit.  (The kid did grow up to win the Nobel Prize.)  Shot in a variety of styles (docu/Neo-Realist/poetic/symbolic) that always hang together (New Wave never far away, especially in a bike-riding lesson that might have come from JULES ET JIM/’62), yet with Troell’s unmistakable fingerprints.  A few supporting players come from the Ingmar Bergman stable, but everyone is a marvel; often very funny within a pretty grim bildungsroman Dickens might have found dark for his taste.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Just the Double-Bill to follow a nearly three-hour film, THE EMIGRANTS/’71 and THE NEW LAND/’71, a Double-Bill on its own running a further six-and a half hours.  Yikes!  All three films severely truncated in initial Stateside runs, all worth every damn minute.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/utvandrarna-emigrants-1971-nybyggarna.html

ATENTION MUST BE PAID: In spite of interviews and a big essay in the Criterion edition, there’s no mention of the film’s unusually charged homoerotic swimming scene & dance for Axberg and Stig Törnblom, his womanizing anarchist pal.  In a film full of ellipses (something of a Troell specialty), it’d be nice to know just how it was meant to be taken.  Is that a pass from Törnblom that abruptly ends the boys’ nude idyll?   We never find out since Törnblom soon develops an STD from a date (with a girl?/with a boy?) and is out of the pic after that.  Perhaps this is clearer in the novels.

AIR FORCE (1943)

Howard Hawks’ paradigmatic template for many a WWII ‘vessel’ as fighting microcosm film; be it boat, truck convoy or, as here, B-17 Bomber.  Still looking great, even when F/X model planes betray themselves.  (Not to worry, most of the special effects hold up pretty well, especially a final battle at sea that got George Amy his Editing Oscar®.)  Here, the motley crew you always find in these films holds a cynical Pole, a Manhattan Jew, ‘the kid,’ a ladies’ man, the old vet, a flying legend’s son, and our calmly bland pilot-leader.  The plane’s on a training run (sans ammo) flying from San Fran to Hawaii (and here’s the brilliant/apparently fact-based gimmick) leaving early Dec. 6th and finding itself in the air without a plan when Pearl Harbor is attacked.  The date cleverly hidden till the third reel.  The rest of the story a race that hops from one threatened landing strip on some doomed island (Wake; Manila) already under siege to the next.  Scripter Dudley Nichols tended to overwrite, but between Hawks’ on-set dialogue editing and his bringing in William Faulkner to redo a pivotal death scene, every moment lands with the faultless ensemble cast.  (Only John Garfield truly a name-above-the-title star.)  Hawks also reuniting after a decade with cinematographer James Wong Howe who does wonders realistically lighting inside the flying fortress (the film much darker than you may recall), and in a stunning bit of lensing legerdemain, pulling victory from the jaws of defeat when his generator died hours before a scheduled landing sequence and left him to improvise something that turned out even better using little but runway flares and smoke pots.  Everything clicks on this one: action, gags, camaraderie, uplift & strong emotion, as even producer Hal Wallis, no fan of Hawks’ independent streak when he worked off the studio lot, had to admit.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Hawks’ previous film with Wallis, SERGEANT YORK/’41, far more acclaimed and even more financially successful at the time, now seems the lesser achievement.  Certainly, AIR FORCE feels more ‘all of a piece.’  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/sergeant-york-1941.html

INTERDIT AUX CHIENS ET AUX ITALIENS (2022)

Claymation stop-motion animator Alain Uhghetto looks back a couple or three generations in admiration, fondness & gratitude, from the turn-of-the-last century thru two World Wars & a bit beyond on a story cultivated from his own hardscrabble family.  Immigrants in their own country who confronted work & political upheaval in Italy, especially with the rise of local fascism, then in France, where new roots are again shattered, now by the expanding war, with a household of characters constantly in flux, only Mama & Papa consistent figures.  You can see why they went for big families back then as it wasn’t unusual to lose half the kids from war, accident or disease.  Bewitchingly sad and lovely (funny, too!), often all at once, a heartfelt memory piece caught a couple of generations later and given an unusual artistic treatment that perhaps shouldn’t work, but does.  With charming assistance from animator Ughetto who literally lends a hand as needed; his life-size paw entering the frame and touching your heart each time thru the simple difference in scale between him and his lifelike figurines. Add in some marvelous Tinker-Toy & model train effects to delight in spite (or is it because) of their simplicity and basic honesty and it’s impossible not to be moved.  A big award-winner, deservedly so, the film went unreleased Stateside, but is worth digging around the internet to find.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Technically, if not in tone, the spirit of the animation is more Aardman (the WALLACE & GROMIT guys) than Laika/Selick.

CONTEST:  The title translates as: NO DOGS OR ITALIANS.  Like a sign in the States for a Boarding House that might have read NO Chinese (or Jews, or Blacks, or even Actors) at the time.   Let’s come up with something better for a putative American release.  THE UGHETTOS not too exciting.  Maybe a catchy title (sent to our COMMENTS link) would get this picked up for distribution.

THE NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY (1968)

Marlon Brando in a B-pic?  Well, yes.  A brutal kidnaping caper that fails thru poor planning, lax execution & personality clashes.  (A description that also fits the Making of this Film!)  Generally accepted as Brando’s nadir (it’s not, worse to come), fair enough to consider it his commercial low point.  So, how typically contrarian of him to diet down to the weight of his wily Asian in TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON/’56 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/12/teahouse-of-august-moon-1956.html), now topped with tousled blonde locks.  Slim & fit one last time for a writeoff project he cared nothing about & knew no one would see.*  (And is the title referencing Polonius in HAMLET?  ‘And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.’)  Richard Boone is funny & frightening as the seriously creepy pack leader while that’s Brando ‘ex’ Rita Moreno as his former gal pal and possible junkie, made up to look like Barbara Harris with the blonde wig Brando rejected for himself.  Occasional writer/director Hubert Cornfield lost control of the pic once Brando refused to take direction (the same ploy he used on Lewis Milestone in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY/’62, the mega-flop which confirmed Brando’s mid-’60s skid before THE GODFATHER/’72 came to the rescue.)  A puzzling mess, with the last reel pulled off with process work & leftover bits & pieces.  (Boone taking over direction.)  Yet, even barely going thru the motions, Brando casts enough animal magnetism to keep you watching.  Just don’t expect too much.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *You know that’s what Brando thought of this woebegone project as he doesn’t even bother to artfully mumble or work up a tricky accent you can’t quite make out, but enunciates every word with the clarity & precision of Laurence Olivier at the National Theatre.  Skip this and check out Brando’s alarming 1968 skinniness in CANDY, made on a week off this.  A ‘hip’ abomination, it’s worth a look (he's around for less than a reel) to see Brando prophetically send up his APOCALYPSE NOW/’78 characterization a decade before he made that film.

GUEULE D’AMOUR / LADY KILLER (1937)

Turns out all French director Jean Grémillon needs to lift his films from second to first tier is Jean Gabin in the lead.*  Here, Gabin, very much in fighting trim in ‘37, vivifies the all-consuming/ill-fated romance between his girl-bait soldier boy and non-exclusive love Mireille Balin.  Smoothly scripted by Charles Spaak from André Beucler’s novel (a closer translation of the title might be ‘a mouth made for love’), Gabin’s cock-of-the-walk officer loses his edge when he permanently takes off the uniform, leaving the army to follow ‘kept’ beauty Balin into civilian life.  Quickly becoming too possessive, he threatens the security of her domestic set-up in Paris (Maman & valet particularly worried about losing M. Sugar-Daddy) while Balin is unconcerned by the idea of divided loyalty.  What she fails to realize is that Gabin no longer knows if he’s subject or object in the relationship.  Falling apart, he tries to restart (or is it hide away) his diminished self moving back near his old army base to run a small bar/gas station.  And it’s there that an old army pal asks him to meet the new woman in his life . . . you know who, still longing for Gabin in her own inconsistent way.  The plot, with overtones of CARMEN, lurches to hit all its uncomfortable points in the third act, but it’s very accomplished stuff even when Grémillon forces his hand, superbly atmospheric in location & character.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Balin is made up haute Dietrich style, the cheekbones, the pencil-thin eyebrows, le froid; and if she can’t quite pull it off, it does serve to remind you of Dietrich’s famous quote about her relationship with Gabin; ‘He had the most beautiful loins of any man.’  Yikes!  

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  1937 quite a year for Gabin with PÊPÊ LE MOKO and GRAND ILLUSION preceding.  *OR:  Try Gabin’s other film with Gremillon REMORQUES/’41.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/05/remorques-1941.html

THE NIGHTINGALE (2018)

Six decades after the aspirational concept of White Man’s Burden was displaced in film with the reality of White Man’s Atrocity, writer/director Jennifer Kent has nowhere to go other than White Man’s Psychopathy.  Yet this strongly played horror about colonialism run amuck (British military entitlement breeding murder, racism & revenge) ends up celebrating yet one more noble sacrifice by a principled indigenous native for his great White friend, just about the oldest trope in the Colonial Story Playbook.  Well-made as it is, brilliantly so at times, you can’t help seeing Gunga Din in the rearview mirror.  Aisling Franciosi is the young mother in the Tasmanian outback (a convict immigrant) whose lovely voice brings her to grief when it attracts the attention of a British officer.  Beaten & raped, her husband & infant child brutally murdered in front of her, she’s soon out for revenge, aided by reluctant indigenous guide Baykali Ganambarr (fantastic in his debut) who has his own reasons for payback, but even less hope at surviving long enough to even get a chance.  Their slowly building relationship and a series of unlikely, yet believable close calls and opportunities grabbed as they follow the perpetrators to the nearest town often thrilling, usually terrifying.  Though the casual, even absurd mistreatment of the aboriginal peoples remains the most shocking.  (And that’s saying something after seeing a baby get its head bashed in.)  Kent casts throughout with a master’s touch, especially with Sam Claflin as a handsome, perfectly contemptible psychopath), and only seriously errs with a few too many nightmare visualizations.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Kent’s stunning debut: THE BABADOOK/’14.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-babadook-2014.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  In many ways, Kent’s walking tour toward ‘the horror, the horror’ of Tasmania settlement reverses the movement and roles of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS.

THE NIGHT IS YOUNG (1935)

M-G-M took five years & about ten films before they figured out how to best use silent film star Ramon Novarro in the Talkies.  But by 1934, THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE (Jerome Kern score, dir-William K. Howard, Jeanette MacDonald), styles had changed and it was too late to reverse his decline.  Things only got worse when LAUGHING BOY followed, D.O.A.  Then something unusual happened.  Rather than run out his contract with films designed to chase a fading star off the lot with failure or embarrassment (see John Gilbert; Kay Francis), the studio gave Novarro a real shot at a comeback by combining his best sound film & his best silent: CAT AND THE FIDDLE’s light musical comedy with the Ruritanian romance of Ernst Lubitsch’s THE STUDENT PRINCE/’27.  So, the modest score (some old/some new) is Sigmund Romberg & Oscar Hammerstein; top-tier A-list supporting cast; solid production values; even a clever, slightly naughty idea: unhappily engaged Austrian Emperor is encouraged to put off his marriage to sow his wild oats with commoners only to find true love & friendship can bloom among the hoi polloi.  And in Evelyn Laye’s commoner, an improvement on MacDonald’s wandering warbles.  (Where did Ms. Laye disappear to?)  Pleasant, if inconsequential; it did nothing to reboot Navarro’s star.  But at least they tried.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: Ruritanian romance could still be potent with the right combo, as seen when Ronald Colman remade THE PRISONER OF ZENDA in 1937.  Ironically, the silent version of 1922 was Novarro’s breakthru pic.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/10/prisoner-of-zenda-1937-1952.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-prisoner-of-zenda-1922.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Novarro is ripe for rediscovery.  Three silent classics alone make the case, BEN-HUR/’25 and THE STUDENT PRINCE OF OLD HEIDELBERG at least still sound familiar, but Rex Ingram’s wonderfully entertaining SCARAMOUCHE/’23 is also unmissable.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/03/scaramouche-1923.html

SMILIN' THROUGH (1922)

Nothing like having the dead hang around to comfort the living.  This ectoplasmic notion particularly appealing during & after big international wars; popping up on stage & film a lot around WWI & II.  There’s really no other explanation for claptrap like SMILIN’ THROUGH getting three big screen outings: Silent - 1922; Early Talkie - ‘32; Musical - ‘41.  It’s the one where the generation after a tragic love triangle (jealous, rejected lover aims for the groom, shoots the bride . . . Yikes!*) can’t get blessings to marry from the surviving, embittered ex-groom.  Stolid megger Sidney Franklin directed the first two*; Frank Borzage the Jeanette MacDonald musical.  And while you’d think this sentimental fantasy would work best as a silent, this unimaginative telling is so dependent on explanatory/expository title cards and chatty billet-doux, any stylistic advantage is lost in the Black Hole of epistolary cinema.  Now largely forgotten, Norma Talmadge, the women’s weepie star for most of the ‘20s, who naturally plays both brides, does her tricky eye rolls in place of acting (she's far better in THE LADY/’25, guided by Borzage) while cinematographers J. Roy Hunt & Charles Rosher do what they can with the unfortunate Talmadge nose.  (Sister Natalie, Buster Keaton’s wife had the same nose, as seen in OUR HOSPITALITY/’23.)  So, acting honors go to (an earlier) Harrison Ford, handsome & surprisingly modern as the next generation fiancé who returns injured from the war and doesn’t want Norma to marry ‘a cripple’ out of pity.  Poor Norma, always out-acted in the few films we have available to judge her by.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Consider yourself warned!  Nevertheless, here’s SMILIN’ THROUGH 1932.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/smilin-through-1932.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *All you really need to know about SMILIN’ THROUGH is that the ghostly bride who was shot on her wedding day is named Moonyeen.  MOONYEEN?!  Pronounced Mooney-Een?; or Moon- Yeen?

TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (1985)

After THE FRENCH CONNECTION/’71 and THE EXORCIST/’73, director William Friedkin spent the last two-thirds of his career not so much chasing past success (though that too!) as in futile pursuit of the once-in-a-generation audience rapport he lost when SORCERER/’77 sank critically & commercially.  (And it may be his best pic; Friedkin thought so.*)  Of those later films (good/bad/successful/not), LIVE AND DIE was the one that should have turned the trick for him, but didn’t.  Made on a tight budget with up-and-comers (William Petersen, William Defoe, John Pankow, Jane Leeves, John Turturro), this extra twisty L.A. noir has nothing but baddies and not-so-baddies starting with expedient Treasury Agents Petersen & Pankow who take whatever low-road they need to bring down master counterfeiter Dafoe.  Here, a literal low road as Friedkin goes into overdrive trying to top his own under-the-elevated car chase from FRENCH CONNECTION.  (Exciting, but probably a misstep since it feels like he’s trying to top himself & not serve the story.)  With its crooked storyline cleanly structured to make everything easy to follow (each character & plot reversal a model of concision), not even Friedkin can freshen up some tired cop tropes (dying on the last case before retirement; a ‘dead’ guy rising for one last shot), and a few pieces of close action could have used another take (dictates of budget, no doubt), but most of it feels unusually fresh for such a strict genre film.  And so much male flesh on display!  Highly unusually at the time when ‘the babes’ would get naked for quick sex with guys who always screwed fully dressed . . . standing up.  Yikes!  The third act probably overdoses on reversals and preordained twists, but there’s enough momentum to sell them.  Just not enough momentum to return Friedkin to that Capra-like sweet-spot of audience rapport he held ever so briefly in the early ‘70s.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The 'cold-opening' prologue (sloppy execution, but a neat tip of the hat to Hitchcock’s VERTIGO, a Friedkin favorite) serves as an excellent reminder that the Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Check out SORCERER for yourself.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/sorcerer-1977.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Friedkin’s career at low ebb when his last wife, Paramount production head Sherry Lansing 'Green Lit' JADE/’95 for him to direct.  The film lost a cool 50 mill, derailed career tracks for David Caruso, Linda Fiorentino & scripter Joe Eszterhas, and featured a perhaps prophetic  SLOW-MO version of Friedkin’s signature car chase set piece.  (Studio gossip maintained that 10 mill+ in additional costs was off-laid on other Paramount films in production at the time . . . but that’s only studio gossip.)

FORT MASSACRE (1958)

You don’t associate Joel McCrea with cold-blooded murder.  But here he is, shooting a disarmed Apache as he surrenders.  That’s McCrea all thru this strong, uncomfortable Western.  For the only time in his career, letting his inner demon out.  Known as the guy you got when you couldn’t get Gary Cooper, then bringing his own off-hand spin on the classic American alpha male mix of sex appeal & decency.  But here, McCrea pivots to the ornery John Wayne of RED RIVER/’48 and THE SEARCHERS/’56.  He’s frighteningly effective.  As a calvary Sargent, raised to command of his small unit after an Apache attack kills his two superior officers, McCrea’s immediately challenged on nearly every decision as he keeps moving (probably lost) in hopes of finding a missing large army column.  But as attacks continue, and men fall, his last order is to hold out at an adobe structure in a cave-like fortress.  Handsomely shot, and directed on spectacular Utah locations, McCrea & his main supporter, Pvt. John Russell, fill in their backstories a bit too easily (they might be playing musical chairs as shrink & patient).  But they handle it so well, as do the motley/depleted unit, that you accept it.  A pity director Joseph M. Newman shoots the final standoff on studio sets that can’t match an earlier battle shot around a water hole where the Indians are in an impossible position with the army men circling on cliffs above.  One of many ‘readable’ logistical staging stratagems all thru the pic.  Alas, no indigenous peoples in speaking roles, but at least the men get away with it; Susan Cabot does not.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  McCrea must have been pleased with Newman since they went for seconds on his next film, THE GUNFIGHT AT DODGE CITY/’59, a real stinker.  Instead, try Newman’s unsung work on the excellent 711 OCEAN DRIVE/’50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-gunfight-at-dodge-city-1959.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/04/711-ocean-drive-1950.html

THE BAD GUYS (2022)

Turns out you’re not the only animation head who’s soured on the soulless, over-processed default look that’s become CGI standard over the last decade or so.  So too are the best new CGI animators!*   And this debut feature from director Pierre Perifel counts as a major step in shattering the mold at DREAMWORKS, the most House Style driven of the major animation warrens.  And if narrative & development still overdose on reflexive gags, pointless Pop referencing, relentless pacing (DreamWorks never met a pause or reflective moment they didn’t fear would bore someone), those welcome changes in story & tone were already in the pipeline for later in 2022 via PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/puss-in-boots-last-wish-2022.html).  This one involves a gang of scary beasts (The Bad Guys: wolf, snake, tarantula, et al.) villains by nature or expectation (?) who pretend to mend their ways and play Good Guys as a ruse to their next big score . . . only to learn that it can feel Good to be Good.  Downright GRINCH-y, no?  But the film is mostly great fun to watch, especially an impressively long & well-structured main set piece, a gala fund-raiser where the caper will take place.  (It also has the single best visual gag in the pic.  Something to do with a martini.)  Sam Rockwell’s wolf goes heavy on Jack Nicholson (he’s really a lot like ‘Tramp’ in LADY AND THE TRAMP/’55) while Anthony Ramos shows off some serious pipes on his big ‘Numbo.’  The film likable if not particularly memorable.  Now if we could just get Perifel off the DreamWorks teat and see what he could do with a bit more autonomy.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  *Here’s that recent NYTimes article.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/movies/spider-man-versus-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles.html

L'ETRANGE MONSIEUR VICTOR (1938)

Though working with all the usual suspects at the apex of classic French cinema (‘30s thru ‘50s), director Jean Grémillon flew just below radar outside his country.  And good as L’ETRANGE is, you can see why.  Raimu stars as a blustery dry goods shop owner in Toulon nervously due to become a father.  Deferring to his wife & mother, this soul of propriety also leads a secret life, fencing stolen goods for a gang of local thugs, unexpectedly tough as needed.  And when a murder comes into this double life, he lays low and lets a neighboring cobbler take the rap.  Seven years later, our shopkeep, now a man of means, has grown estranged from his wife, his young son, even his own mother, changed by a guilty soul and the man still rotting in prison in his place.  Oozing his criminal responsibility from every pore, he’s a French bourgeois Raskolnikov desperate for punishment.  And when the innocent cobbler escapes, and risks going home to see his wife (about to remarry) and his son (a teenage lout), he’s overwhelmed by the unsolicited friendship & help Raimu uncomfortably forces on him.  A marvelous setup, but only a pretty good film.  Hard to put a finger on just why.  To some extent, Charles Spaak’s screenplay foreshadows with the subtly of a trailer at a Drive-In movie theater, and the different styles of acting sometimes bump against each other.  On the other hand, Grémillon does a fine job messing with our sense of allegiance & sympathy.  Perhaps it’s simply a case of needing to see  the one film that unlocks the rest of a filmmaker’s output.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Three more Gremillon films currently posted: LUMIERE D'ETE/’43, which lands somewhat behind this one and REMORQUES/41 which we place slightly ahead.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/09/lumiere-dete-1943.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/05/remorques-1941.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/07/le-ciel-est-vous-woman-who-dared-1944.html

THE NAKED DAWN (1955)

Possibly Grade Z film auteur Edgar G. Ulmer’s last worthwhile film, and likely his most underappreciated; a South-of-the-Border character-study Western cum love triangle.  Arthur Kennedy (with a Mexicali accent Dick Van Dyke might blush at) starts it off by robbing a train with a doomed partner, a superbly economical set piece, then hiding out of town before returning to fence the goods.  Stumbling upon a young married farming couple (Betta St. John/Eugene Iglesias), he finds no expected love match, but a marriage of convenience.  And Kennedy takes an interest in both parties: Iglesias to help with the possibly dangerous payout (and party to excess with the windfall); St. John to seduce into running away with.  He ends up corrupting both of them . . . but perhaps not for the worse.  Handily staged on tiny, underdressed sets, it’s exceptionally well (and actively) scored by Herschel Burke Gilbert, making like Villa Lobos.  Music Ulmer’s secret weapon in many of his films.  Ironically, this little indie production (in TechniColor, yet!) was picked up by Universal for distribution, the studio where Ulmer had made his only major studio release, THE BLACK CAT back in 1934:  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-black-cat-1934-raven-1935.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Arthur Kennedy’s agent either unusually open-minded or deeply rapacious, bookending this micro-budget project between big mainstream fare the same year: Anthony Mann’s THE MAN FROM LARAMIE with James Stewart, and William Wyler’s THE DESPERATE HOURS with Bogart & Fredric March.

13 RUE MADELEINE (1947)

With WWII over, Hollywood went on a now-it-can-be-told story spree.  Anything atomic held obvious fascination, no matter how much info was still limited, rivaled by foreign intrigue out of the O.S.S., that daring forerunner of the C.I.A.  Ergo, for God, Country & Paramount, Alan Ladd went undercover in France for O.S.S.; Warners sent Gary Cooper to Italy for Fritz Lang’s CLOAK AND DAGGER; and over at 20th/FOX, James Cagney ran an ‘op’ in the Netherlands, before being tortured at Nazi headquarters at 13 Rue Madeleine, Le Havre.*  All three are mediocre suspensers (Lang particularly off-form), but advantage Cagney since 20th/FOX had a perfect template ready to fit all the moving parts in their on-going series of docu-dramas produced by ‘March of Time’ vet Louis De Rochemont.  Shooting largely on location (‘In the very place it happened!’), director Henry Hathaway had recently made one of the most effective at THE HOUSE ON 92ND STREET/’45.  Here, with O.S.S. renamed ‘077,’ opening reels stick to standard selection & training exercises, while Cagney scopes out his 70 recruits to find the Nazi plant.  Only later, after one of his three-member crew dies, does he personally join the mission.  Annabella is touching & effective in her last Hollywood role (40 and out back then) while Richard Conte must have been happy away from default Italian-American roles; he's Irish-American . . . a phony one at that.  No classic, but solid moviemaking under Hathaway’s clean, clear, fast-paced megging, with plenty of pulsating Warners moxie for and from Cagney.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Check out the trailer for some explicit torture of Cagney not in the final cut.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, more tales from the still abornin’  O.S.S. in CLOAK AND DAGGER/’46 and O.S.S./’46.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/03/cloak-and-dagger-1946.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/09/oss-1946.html

VERA CRUZ (1954)

Deservedly popular Western with comic trimmings (second release from Burt Lancaster’s production company and second of four with director Robert Aldrich), gets just about everything right.*  Set soon after the U.S. Civil War, we’re South-of-the-Border for another Civil War (Franco-Mexican) where Burt and his company of mercenaries are hunting up Pay-to-Slay opportunities.  (Check out the future stars in that group!)  And since the populist Juaristas are poor peasants, choice goes to the French-backed Emperor Maximilian.  Ruined Southern General Gary Cooper, also looking for a quick payday, meets-cute with Burt on the way to selling his services and the two become fast frenemies: getting along, needing (or needling) each other and fighting it out all thru the film.  (That meet-cute a dandy BTW, so too all the solid reverses & switchbacks that make up the script’s organizing principle along with two untrustworthy ladies and a hidden stash of Mexican gold.)  Aldrich brings this elaborate tale in at a brisk hour & a half, but should also be celebrated for how he anticipates Western trends that led straight on to Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone ‘Spaghetti Westerns.’   Still, when all is said and done, it’s Burt’s teeth that pretty much steal the pic.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *That one error would be the choice of SuperScope as WideScreen format.  Here’s a LINK to an excellent discussion on the WideScreen SuperScope process, which was first used right here!  A CinemaScope knock-off that used regular 35mm film & cameras and fully exposed the negative, a bit like Super-16mm.  Only the print’s captured image, or rather the negative, cropped top & bottom, would then become anamorphic, usually in a 2:1 aspect ratio, for theatrical prints to project.  This really pushed the grain in certain lighting situations and generally meant that this cheapest of WideScreen processes looked the cheapest.  http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingss1.htm

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Get to know the political players (sort of) with Warners' slightly stiff/mostly fascinating bio-pic JUAREZ/’39.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/juarez-1939.html

BACK ROADS (2018)

The Ancient Greek House of Atreus has nothing on the Modern South-East House of Altmyer.  Here, the originating sin is Dad’s sexual abuse of minors, his own kids, and his subsequent murder in 1993.  We know who was shot, but who pulled the trigger?  Is Mom covering for one of the abused kids (older son, three girls)?  Was Dad even the intended victim?  Revelations of past sexual abuse prove something of an enigma.  Did jealousy and a sick kind of sibling rivalry factor into the equation?  And how does it play out two years after the murder left the brother, barely out of his teens, attempting to keep family & home together by dropping out of school and taking on two jobs, only now finding love or some reasonable facsimile thereof with an older married neighbor.  A court appointed psychiatrist is on hand to help us parse relationships & sympathetically listen to exposition, but too much method mumbling keeps us from figuring out just how much transfer of familial guilt is flowing, figuratively or literally.  Alex Pettyfer, a good decade too old as head-of-the-household brother (he also wound up directing*), might be an interesting actor, but here you quickly lose patience with his Ashton Kutcher meets James Dean act.  And he can’t make sense for us of the final shooting, choosing to play martyr while we pretend that police forensics didn’t exist twenty years after QUINCY took to the airwaves.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *So far, a one-off for Pettyfer as director.  But in spite of trouble maintaining a sense of momentum at the film’s deliberate pace, he does make a few interesting choices.  None more so than in the oddly framed shots that open & close the film: typical reverse angle single shots between investigating cop and confessed criminal, but with each man purposefully positioned on the ‘wrong’ side of the frame.  It works!