HIDDEN FEAR (1957)

Interesting journeyman leading man John Payne and interesting journeyman director André De Toth, both hanging on by their thumbs in indie features before succumbing to tv*, had a good late outing with this unsung Euro-noir; now looking & sounding as well as it ever has in a cleaned up release from Kino-Lorber.  Filmed entirely on location in Copenhagen, exteriors and interiors (hence the occasional dicey sound when not at the local film studio), De Toth knows how to get the most out of picturesque Danish cafés & massed bicyclists while darker deeds play out in the foreground.  He also encourages Payne into an oddly charmless tough-guy portrait to match his own brutalist tendencies.  An American cop out of his domain, Payne’s in town to check on his kid sister, charged with murder and up to no good playing escort . . . or worse.  Turns out, she’s an minor pawn in a major counterfeit racket run by Alexander Knox that’s about to hit the streets with a mass distribution of phony bills; but only if they can suppress early circulation from spoiling the launch.  While Payne, and top local detective Kjeld Jacobsen (excellent), follow the clues in standard procedural fashion.  The female players generally aren’t up to the men here, but the real reason to check it out is for De Toth’s violent-happy set pieces.  The last two particularly well handled: an urban street chase finale (cars, vans, bikes, pedestrians) doing double-duty as a suspenseful sightseeing tour; and just before it, a twisty hide-and-seek search in a mansion that’s also a little masterclass in editing via logistics & precision composition.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Phil Karlson’s KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL/’52 is the go-to recommendation for Payne’s spate of low-ball indie noirs, But its follow-up, 99 RIVER STREET/’53, is even more ‘out there.’    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/11/99-river-street-1953.html   OR:  George Seaton, never the most visual of directors, may have had a looksie at this to judge by his COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR/’62.  Not the ‘counterfeit’ part (it’s a WWII spy pic), but in the use of bikes & traffic for its Holland location-shot finale.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/counterfeit-traitor-1962.html

SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009) / APOCALYPSE (2010)

Loosely linked animated double-bill, each running a bit over an hour, for DC Comics’ most commercially viable yin & yang crime fighters.  Hardly a natural team, Superman a force for good with a bottomless quiver of cosmic-powers/Batman a neurotic pessimist with a ready fortune for funding past revenge with new gizmos.  ENEMIES sets them up against President Lex Luther (amusingly prescient of the Trumpster) and an Earthbound Kyrptonite meteor, but devolves into little more than the usual consequence-free slugfest when a billion dollar bounty is slapped on the Man of Steel.  It brings out every DC character you (n)ever heard of, and overloads the pic with more pointless clashes than a three-ring WWE brawl.  Slightly better, APOCALYPSE sees future SuperGirl kidnaped by the Dark Side (oops!) ‘Darkseid,’ and the boys hitting the interstellar warpath.  Pity, the finale has real possibilities when a down but never out Darkseid shows up at Clark Kent’s family farm.  And no one slips on a pile of cow manure?!  Talk about missed opportunity!  You’ll know whether or not these are for you, but the bigger Q is why, coming from the same Warner/DC animation stables, the stand-alone BATMANs are so stylish, entertaining, visually snazzy, well-voiced and suspenseful; while these turned out dumb, repetitive and physically unattractive.*

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Especially in character design.  Everyone so ridiculously over-muscled they’re hard to pose attractively or even stand.  And while heavy with sexual innuendo, no one seems in need of a cod piece . . . even in a leotard.  (That guy in the flesh-colored outfit should not be wearing a onesie.  For a well designed animated Superman, hie thee to the old Fleischer Brothers shorts from the 1940s.  These highly stylized mini-dramas retain their appeal when seen in good prints.  All over the internet, choose carefully for a properly restored set.  OR: Even on this APOCALYPSE DVD, the trailer for BATMAN: UNDER THE RED HOOD/’10 knocks the visual socks off anything seen here.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/07/superman-1941-43.html

CONDORMAN (1981)

Laugh-free (yet laughable) attempt by Disney during the inept Ron Miller era* to start their very own PINK PANTHER franchise.  (Note the threat of a never-made sequel at the end.)   Poor Michael Crawford (think Dick Van Dyck doing Stan Laurel meets Peter Sellers) cold-cocked his film career with this one*, mugging like mad as a comic book artist posing as a spy to help Barbara Carrera give Ruskie boss Oliver Reed the slip and defect to the West.  Typical for Disney kiddie fare under Miller, the script lacks sense, craft or development, coming across with sheer contempt for a presumably indiscriminate audience of young mallers, parked at the multiplex while Mom shops.  Shot in Europe, at least production values are up a tad from Disney house style of the period, even Henry Mancini on the score.  (More wishful PINK PANTHER thinking.)  But the laugh's on them with Hank’s annoying Condorman fanfare repeating ad infinitum.  Director Charles Jarrott not at his worst (his infamous musical remake of LOST HORIZON/’73 holds its place), but still falls on his face trying to ape Blake Edwards’ masterly compound action slapstick.  And why bother with an animated Condorman who never shows up after the credit sequence?  Just Crawford in a silly costume.  (Oh, yeah, PINK PANTHER had animated credit sequences.)  One good gag in the whole pic: Crawford passing as a rich Arab oil tycoon disguised under Alec Guinness’s Fagin makeup from OLIVER TWIST/’48.  Must have been accidental.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Taking over post-Walt, son-in-law Miller was a college gridiron star with little aptitude for film.  Three years after this, Miller was out and Michael Eisner came in to save the studio.  In all Hollywood history, only 20th/Fox’s Spyros Skouras his clueless equal.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *A remarkably adept performer, Crawford reinvented himself to create the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd-Weber’s PHANTOM OF THE OPERA in London and then on B’way.  But first, career transitioned playing BARNUM throughout the U.K.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/07/barnum-1986.html

WALL•E (2008)

Hard to imagine Disney/PIXAR giving the green light to a film as daringly imaginative, untraditional and decidedly weird as WALL•E today.  Equally hard to imagine the current company configuration living up to the concept.  Stanley Kubrick and Fritz Lang are the unofficial artistic/narrative godfathers, along with THE BLACK STALLION/’79 for form (near silent first half/full three-act structure in the second.*)  The brilliant first half cleverly turns WALL•E, a roving trash compactor, into something of a Charlie Chaplin figure as these Modern Times occur in a post-dystopian Earth unfit for habitation.  So much to clean up, with only a cockroach and a VHS tape of HELLO, DOLLY/’69 for companionship.*  Or is until an extra-terrestrial probe lands to check the place out.  A chance discovery of vegetation lures them both back to the mothership where a plump, docile cross-section of humanity lead placid lives of debilitating leisure.  You can figure out the rest, but not the superb manner this is finessed into lively set pieces & improbably sweet characterizations; PIXAR, without cheating, able to get laughs, original personalties & deep emotion out of inanimate objects.  Sad to think that this wouldn’t get made today; sadder still to imagine its likely reception.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Look sharp for a perfectly played, endearing nod at STAR WARS/’77 as the big ship jumps into hyperdrive for the trip back to Earth.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *I suppose you could look it up on the internet, but more fun to guess what a Pan-and-Scan VHS tape of HELLO DOLLY would go for today. 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  No HELLO, DOLLY! on MAKSQUIBS (cowards!), but these three also referenced above.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/08/2001-space-odyssey- 1968.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/02/metropolis-1927.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-black-stallion-1979.html

THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE / DAS LEHRERZIMMER (2023)

Writer/director Ilker Çatak follows his promising coming-of-age film (STAMBUL GARDEN/’21 - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/09/stambul-garden-aka-blurred-lines.html) with a High School in crisis drama that’s either been short-listed or awarded on prize lists around the globe.  That crisis? - a wave of thefts at the school, with escalating suspicion ricocheting from cleaning staff to teachers to administration and, of course, the student body.  That’s where the real trouble starts as a recent hire, a permanent sub from Poland, stands by as her well-run classroom is subjected to an obviously illegal search & seizure by the school principal and her top assistant.  Informers also welcome.  Yikes!  Can these professionals truly be so clueless on personal rights?  (I know, I know, it’s a German school . . . but still.)  Naturally, it all quickly spirals out of control when a young non-German kid is tagged with a pocketful of cash, his parents’ easy explanation gets a quick apology but taints the kid in class.  But this isn't one of those stories where a bad faith mistake can’t be neatly corrected, and where every attempt at an honest course correction only makes things worse.  Instead, Çatak continues to poison the well, piling on stupid moves by staff & students far past any dramatically purposeful point.  (We'll buy one dumb move, but a dozen?)  It’s a structure best suited to farce, when every hotel door is the wrong hotel door.  (Oops!  I was looking for my wife . . . oh, there she is; under the blanket!)  But Çatak’s not exactly a guy with a sense of humor!, while this sort of issue-oriented realism needs but one moment of irreversible stupidity, followed by smart, caring responses that somehow still make things go from bad to worse, to function.  Smart good intentions, not dumb good intentions.  A beginner’s dramatic mistake you didn’t see coming after STAMBUL, his less acclaimed if more accomplished previous film.

DOUBLE-BILL: Leonie Benesch, who plays the teacher, must specialize in well-intentioned helpers who self-destruct, her best-known role the blindsided/unlucky housekeeper in the third season of BABYLON BERLIN.  Itself a distinct fall-off from the startlingly fine first two seasons.  Still good, just over-egged.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Those Germans don’t stint on their High School facilities!

THE HORSE SOLDIERS (1959)

Though John Ford made worse films in the ‘50s (WHAT PRICE GLORY/’52, anyone?), it’s hard to imagine a bigger missed opportunity than this, the one Ford feature to deal directly with the Civil War, a subject of long obsession.  Dissed even by loyal Fordians & biographers, it’s easy to see what this might have been as John Wayne’s Colonel, charged by General Grant with disrupting Southern supply lines, takes a division of horse soldiers deep into Southern territory, saddled with medical officer Major William Holden as main antagonist, fighting not combatants but high numbers of casualties.  And the Rebel Army?  They come in a distant third.  Constance Towers, meant to add complexity & romance as a spying Southern Belle forced to join the march with slavey housemaid (tennis great Althea Gibson giving the movies a one-shot try) gets better as the film goes along, but never quite fits in.  Ford, on the wagon at doctor’s orders*, and unhappy with the script, was already on his worst behavior when a favored stuntman died in what should have been an easy fall.  After that, Ford hardly seemed to care and wrapped up the shoot back in Hollywood.  So, it’s something of shock to see how well the film holds up (particularly the second half) in spite of the faults.  It’s Ford working at about 70%, but with too many indelible scenes between dramatic culs-de-sac to miss.  Especially in additions Ford made to John Lee Mahin/Harold Sinclair's original script.  Some Rebel charges straight out of D.W. Griffith’s bag of directorial tricks, and a remarkable set piece involving a Boys Military Academy, smartly outfitted, in serried ranks assembled, taking on and pretty much defeating (at least by default) the Union Division.  At moments like that, you can see why it earned Ford the last DGA nomination of his career.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The Civil War rages in the background of a couple of Ford pics, but only his reel-and-a-half contribution to HOW THE WEST WAS WON/’62 and this tackle it directly.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-west-was-won-1962.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Not only forbidden from drink, but aware when Wayne & Holden went to town.  Perhaps that explains this film’s two rare incidents of Ford’s approval at wasting perfectly good booze, one jug of moonshine/one half-filled bottle of whiskey.

CHIEN DE LA CASSE / JUNKYARD DOG (2023)

Writer/director Jean-Baptiste Durand’s psychologically sharp debut feature (up for a passel of César Awards in France) holds to classic film technique yet brings a fresh feel to the old story of two 20-something pals as they pull apart (la femme has entered the picture) yet stick together in the crunch.  Set in the underemployed South (as job statistic and as French shooting location), Raphaël Quenard is riveting and a pain as the slightly older/taller/better-looking alpha male to Anthony Bajon’s tagalong acolyte.  A bit of drug dealing among the neighborhood lowlifes gets them thru the day, accompanied by Quenard’s worshipful dog, while he dreams of taking care of his agoraphobic mother by opening a restaurant.  This may or may not be a pipe dream*, but what’s real is that little Bajon, the timid one, is the guy who finds a serious girlfriend, upsetting the balance between the men.  She quickly sizes up Quenard, but likely mistakes his controlling behavior as a sort of bromantic jealousy when the motivating factor has more to do with a loss of dependency.  Yet when a small gang of local toughs, pathetic slackers who act like a mob, go into attack mode, old ties still bind.  Galatéa Bellugi is particularly fine as the girlfriend with a mind of her own, but the film belongs to the young men as they sort out what they still need from each other.  Quenard especially strong at walking obnoxious behavior right up to the line without crossing it.  And with Durand capturing the unusual layout of the town (we’re in the Languedoc region), along with the eccentric characters living cheek-by-jowl in row houses set in the narrow alleys that pass for streets.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Finding out your big brother (surrogate or blood) isn’t the great guy you’d long looked up to is a classic rite of passage story.  Something of a specialty for Brandon De Wilde, as per HUD/’63 with Paul Newman as the charismatic heel or, just a year earlier, with Warren Beatty showing feet of clay in ALL FALL DOWN/’62.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Whilst Hollywood almost never gets cooking right, France almost never gets it wrong.  Here, Quenard is entirely right about not putting cream in spaghetti carbonara even if his mother likes it better that way.

LU OVER THE WALL / YOAKE TSUGERU RÛ NO UTA (2017)

Masaaki Yuasa puts out some spectacular anime in handling a fairly standard setup: High School mates start a pop band, two guys with opposite personalities (introvert/extrovert) and a wealthy girl singer whose connections make things happen.  She’s the usual hysteric sidekick (and a bit of a chore), but the boys are winning, with character animation showing more expression than normal for anime.  That said, the figurative style becomes even more lively, and fun to watch, during flashbacks & digressions that dial down to an abstract illustrated storybook style.  More of that, please!  All of it nicely merging to display the texture of life in the buildings & layout of a little fishing town surrounded by water and distant mountains.  So, it’s disappointing when magical sea creatures, the ‘Merpeople,’ enter the storyline in act two, causing trouble and making a mess of things.  Title character ‘Lu’ is the first to show, falling hard for our morose teen musician when almost everything about her (design to voice to personality) is off-putting.  The difference between what reads as ‘cute’ in Japan, and ‘creepy’ elsewhere, apparently lost in translation.*  Later, the Merpeople storyline morphs toward a Living Dead scenario that doesn’t follow any logical path.  Same-o on the flood they bring to cover the town till sunshine puts a stop to things.  (Yep, we also get Vampire Tropes.)  Lots of good animation wasted here; along with a fun pop score for those who can get into a bubblegum æsthetic.  Perhaps Yuasa has other films to better show off his obvious talents.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Our current go-to animation suggestion, and not just for an alternate take on coastal town kids & misunderstood sea beasts, is Pixar’s LUCA/’21, with cool motorbikes instead of a  pop band.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/luca-2021.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Or is she meant to look like one of the once ubiquitous ‘Troll’ dolls.  Some found those cute, yes?

BAT*21 (1988)

A fact-inspired Vietnam War rescue story of uncommon interest; not for the film itself, a perfectly decent, by-the-numbers effort from journeyman tv director Peter Markle in a rare A-list assignment, but as a marker from the Reagan years in the normalization of America’s most polarizing war.  To broadly generalize, in the movies, WWI - Wasteful; WWII - Heroic; the Korean War - Ignored.  And Vietnam?  A three-way split:  All Atrocities all the time (DEER HUNTER/’78); Honorable (GREEN BERETS/’68*); Religious allegory (PLATOON/’86).  But there’s an attitudinal change here, so even as the story becomes more conflicted & morally complicated, not much plays out in a manner that’s specific to the Vietnam ‘conflict.’  Instead, ‘A War is A War is A War’ after desk-jockey/combat virgin Lt. Colonel Gene Hackman, having bailed into an upcoming war target he himself had chosen, is forced to fight, run & kill in the field (and watch dozens die around him).  Danny Glover’s the aging flyer who spots him, then can’t stop risking all to pull him out.  Get thru the unpromising opening (helicopter lands behind Hackman during a golf practice session) and things rapidly improve.  Partially because artistic tension builds from David Cronenberg’s regular D.P. Mark Irwin (not long off THE FLY/’87) leaning surrealistic while Markle seeks realistic.  

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *How pointedly ironic that John Wayne’s all but last public appearance came giving THE DEER HUNTER Best Pic at the Oscars®.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: One of the earliest Vietnam War pics to make contact with what was specific about the conflict, GO TELL THE SPARTANS/’78, is regularly skipped over for bigger, emptier things.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/go-tell-spartans-1978.html

BLOOD ON THE WALL (2020)

Not quite what you expect.  Sebastian Junger & Nick Quested’s documentary (for National Geographic) looks to be yet another largely sympathetic look at the flow of Central American migrant caravans (that controversial word used here by the participants) as they make their way North thru Mexico to the U.S. border.  But the film turns out to be equally concerned with the standoff between Mexican Drug Cartels and the changing government response (police, military, political) used to slow them down.  Stopping the cartel (or for that matter, the migrants) seems futile.  It’s more than this 90 minute film can intelligently handle.  And while new footage of migrant ‘families’ on the hoof is well-handled and personalized, the film barely touches on root issues (failing home economies/unceasing drug demand in the States) or take any sort of long view/big picture stance.  Only a hint of what happened when 70 years of PRI rule, and their defacto compromise with the drug lords, was replaced with hardline enforcement campaigns that backfired to the cartel’s advantage.  A intersecting tragedy of tough talk playing out thru various hopeful administrations.  Skimping on ‘Cause’ to highlight ‘Effect, we leave the film with much the same attitudes & sympathies we had coming in.  Nearly as ill-informed as the young migrants we meet blindly traveling North without a plan/without a clue.

SONS OF THE DESERT (1933)

Beginning in 1931, and continuing for much of the decade, Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy alternated a few two (or three)-reel comedy shorts against the occasional six-reeler.  The short form made the better fit*, but boss Hal Roach (and distributor M-G-M) knew higher rentals on features paid the bills.  Still, coming up with an hour & change running time meant adding filler.  General rule: less filler =  better film.  SONS with only about five minutes of filler (a nightclub song-and-dance) possibly the best of the features.  Best in other ways, too.  Also easy to remember: it’s the one that’s a near template for Jackie Gleason’s THE HONEYMOONERS as the boys fib to the wives, saying they’re off to Honolulu for health reasons before heading to their secret lodge convention in Chicago.   Loaded with wonderfully funny, deliberately paced bits, high-pitched wails from Stan, confidential looks straight at us from Ollie; and with the boys still limber enough to handle real physical shtick.  What keeps it from being definitive, frustratingly so, is not having one those signature slow-burn/escalating tit-for-tat routines.  Guess we can’t expect utility-director William Seiter to have spoken up.  But how did Laurel, who largely ran things creatively, miss it?*  Oh well, guess we’ll just have to watch more titles till we find the best iteration of that classic comedy trope.  (Note, options for Laurel & Hardy are lousy with worn, dupey editions.  Try UCLA restorations.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Touching perfection the year before in THE MUSIC BOX/’32.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/music-box-1932.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Or maybe Frank Craven.  Credited as co-writer here, but famous as the original Stage Manager character in Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN, B’way and the undervalued 1940 film version which is fine till a cop-out at the very end.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  In latter/lesser films, Stan & Ollie continued with their childish ways, but crucially didn’t bring us down as participants to their infantile level, now merely viewers.

I FIGLI DI NESSUNO / NOBODY’S CHILDREN (1951)

Even as late ‘40s Neo-Realism evolved toward a new Golden Age of Italian cinema (lasting well into the ‘60s*), old-school commercial crudities still had a place in the market.  As per the popular soap-operatic melodramas of Raffaello Matarazzo, many for the well-cushioned pair of Yvonne Sanson & Amedeo Nazzari.*  This time, HE’s the absentee scion of corner-cutting marble quarry owner Françoise Rosay; SHE’s the working-class daughter of ‘Pop,’ its fast declining watchman.  Nazzari, a champion of workers’ rights, wants to modernize the crumbling site, while his tough old mother cedes control to evil foreman Folco Lulli.  But after Nazzari proposes to that low-class gal, Mom gives in, or pretends to, sending her (rather mature) boy off to buy equipment in England, using the separation to break the couple up for good.  One problem: Sanson is already pregnant.  Yikes!  Okay, many problems: ‘Pop’ just keeled over, dead; foreman Lulli overworks the men & steals the lovers’ letters for Rosay; the illegitimate child is born and given up (listed as dead); grieving mom joins a convent; Nazzari marries a proper lady and has an adorable girl; illegitimate kid not dead, but secretly sponsored at a Catholic school he runs away from only to separately bump into both mom and Dad.  Whew.  Meanwhile, Rosay dies and her will is stolen by the rich wife!  That cute little boy saves his  step-sister from drowning (neither aware of the relationship) and then attempts to stop Lulli from blowing up the quarry.  All this laid out by Matarazzo in a remarkably flat presentation which makes it either better or worse depending on how you take these things.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Tricky to mark the end of this highpoint in Italian cinema, when it seemed everyone knew how to make movies.  Just follow the rules in that Italian film grammar everyone carried in their back-pocket.  Or had in their head.  But it sure was easy to spot once those concepts fell out of favor.  To paraphrase an old quote on pornography: You knew it when you didn’t see it.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As in last year’s TORMENTO/’50.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/04/tormento-1950.html

RUSTIN (2023)

Long left off the roll call among prime Civil Rights activists, largely for being openly gay and hence not a ‘proper’ historical role model, Bayard Rustin at last gets his name checked, if not the bio-pic he rightly deserves.  Focused on the intense seven-week period in 1963 that saw him take lead position organizing the March on Washington and reestablish contact with nearly all the famous movement leaders he’d lost touch with.  (Rumors & innuendo, and his own arrogant swagger, left him on the outs even from a close, but wary friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. and on down from there.)  Now, they need him to run the show, so to speak.  Or do with the notable exception of Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, played in high style by Jeffrey Wright, the best perf in here by a city mile.  And that points up a lot of the film’s problems since nothing else develops similar dramatic urgency, and the film settles down to waxworks exhibit, offering speeches (and quotes from others’ speeches) instead of dialogue.  Worse yet are group scenes where everyone picks up cues in ping-pong fashion (WARNING! Reaction shot overload) as if director George C. Wolfe were setting the scene for a Musical Comedy ‘Numbo.’  (Just add exclamation point: RUSTIN!)  Meanwhile, the period settings, music and DL sexual self-loathing strike an early ‘60s mode while the filmmaking style for some reason leans late ‘70s-early ‘80s.  Who’dathunk that the deadening didactic spirit of Stanley Kramer*, would-be master of righteous thought-provoking banalities, showing little feel for the medium, would be resurrected by exec producers Barack & Michelle Obama!  Say it ain’t so Barack.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Four years after the March on Washington, Stanley Kramer tried being daringly up-to-date and controversial (his usual modus operandi) touching the third-rail of racial prejudice in GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER/’67.

NAPOLEON (2023)

The only passionate response to Ridley Scott’s big-budget bio-pic on Le Petit Caporal came from France.  They passionately hated it.*  For everyone else, merely uninvolving.  And, as usual with Scott, the reason nearly always the same, as narrative filmmaker he’s more docent than storyteller.  Meticulously dressed and handsomely presented, we move thru a series of highlight reels; hop, skip & jumping thru Nappy’s incident heavy life, not knowing Who, What, Where, Why or When.  The intro titles on screen not nearly enough to keep us informed.  Perhaps Name Tags?  ‘Hello! My Name Is Talleyrand.’  Pushing fifty (and looking every day of it), Joaquin Phoenix is now barely younger than Bonaparte at death (51), so the crucial wunderkind aspect of his rise doesn’t register.  While Vanessa Kirby, 15 years his junior, takes on the famously older Josephine.  Only by six years, but people thought she looked like his mother when they met.  (Credit Phoenix for rutting as if he learned about sex via animal husbandry in Corsica.)  Then, as if we weren’t already distanced enough from the material, Scott loads on hard-to-swallow period or anachronistic music (Haydn to Edith Piaf) before staging an ALEXANDER NEVSKY battle on the ice redux sans Prokofiev.  (Note we don’t know a single victim in the horde of drowned men & horses.)  Technically, some cutting edge stuff disappoints: sea battle CGI looking little better than old-fashioned model work, same on those serried ranks assembled in the background.  Legit live action stuff no doubt cost a fortune and perhaps will have more effect in Scott’s promised (or is that threatened?) longer cut.  But why wait?  It’s available to not watch right now!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  The first third of Bonaparte’s life remains a cinematic astonishment in Abel Gance’s 1927 epic, but barely survives home screen viewing.  While the one completely satisfying portrait of the man lasts all of ten seconds when Slavko Vorkapich, the montage master of Golden Age Hollywood, makes a cameo acting appearance as Napoleon in Rex Ingram’s masterful SCARAMOUCHE/’23.  Second place goes to Charles Boyer in CONQUEST/’37.  While Phoenix is closer to Marlon Brando’s unhappy Nappy in DÉSIRÉE/’54. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/03/scaramouche-1923.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/conquest-1937.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/desiree-1954.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Maybe Scott has a future in French politics as the only man in decades to unite the Left, Right & Center.

THE MIDNIGHT STORY (1957)

Sandwiched between the films he’s remembered for from his mid-1950s to mid-‘60s prime, Tony Curtis must have felt his long-running Universal contract was an albatross ‘round his neck, pulling him back for drek when he might have been shooting high-end fare like TRAPEZE/’56, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS/’57 or SOME LIKE IT HOT/’59 off the home lot.  Not that everything at Universal was bad*, but almost.  Like this poorly developed police procedural with Tony, a bit old as a junior cop, trying to work homicide after a local priest is murdered.  Leaving the force when his superiors won’t listen to him, he plays new-to-town drifter so he can target mourner Gilbert Roland as his sole suspect.  And what a cooperative fellow Roland turns out to be!  Giving Tony a free meal at his little waterfront San Fran seafood eatery; then a job, a room in his home, even his daughter’s hand (Marisa Pavan)!  Never suspecting the leading questions tossed his way are part of Tony’s informal investigation.  What a shame, Roland seems to be a great guy, even has an airtight alibi.  Or does he?  (Don’t be surprised when he helps again by coughing up a confession.)  Journeyman director Joseph Pevney phones it in, as does cinematographer Russell Metty.  (You’d never guess he shot TOUCH OF EVIL for Orson Welles next year.)  On this one, it’s like everyone wants to join Curtis and work anywhere but Universal.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Curtis did luck into early Blake Edwards at Universal on OPERATION PETTICOAT/’59, luckier still with Edwards' little known/hard to find MISTER CORY/’57 made immediately before STORY.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/11/mister-corey-1957.html

UP FOR MURDER (1931)

Reliable silent film director Monta Bell never found his footing in the Talkies, yet seems on the right path remaking his M-G-M silent MAN, WOMAN AND SIN/’27 over at Universal.  Staying unusually close to his original script (by ‘31 most of the synch-sound technical kinks worked out), the simple, effective story remains: naive ‘cub’ reporter falls hard for mature, sophisticated Society Columnist unaware she’s the ‘kept’ woman of his newspaper publisher.  Defending her ‘honor’ when the publisher returns a day early to the swanky apartment he pays for her to live in, a fight breaks out and the publisher is killed in the tussle.  Horrified, Ms. Mistress and the newspaper’s lawyer cook up a story to hush things up, but the kid’s too honest to do anything but confess.  The silent version, miraculously restored after a century's silence and two decades of legal issues, starring legendary/doomed stage actress Jeanne Eagles (now we can see two of her three features*), has three serious advantages over this remake.  Eagles, of course, her corrupt beauty and knowing demeanor, completely three-dimensional where Genevieve Tobin no more than pleasant company.  More important, the silent has a prologue on the cub reporter’s tenement youth in a largely Black D.C. neighborhood, a rare event in a 1927 feature film.  The silent also does without the sound film's tacked on sentimental finish.  In fact, the best shot in MAN, WOMAN AND SIN is its last; an extreme close-up of Eagles thru a small oval backseat window as she drives out of the young man’s life forever.  A stunner.  Elsewhere, Bell is able to precisely copy far more of the silent film than you might expect (even the inter-titles show up as dialogue), and has perfectly cast 22-yr-old Lew Ayres (riding high after ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT/’30*) as virgin journalist blindly in love.  In the silent, 30-yr-old John Gilbert looks far too knowing.  And shaving his mustache to look a bit younger just unbalances his face.  (Not such a big nose, just looks that way.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Hopefully, Bell’s silent original will soon appear in some rentable form.  Till then, you can see what all the fuss was about by watching Jeanne Eagles in an Early Talkie version of Somerset Maugham’s THE LETTER/’29, made just months before her death by overdose.   Avoid the Kim Novak bio-pic from 1957.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/02/jeanne-eagles-1957.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: To their credit, Universal knew they had a new marque-worthy movie star in Lew Ayres, they just didn’t know what to do with him.  See what might have been in this little known, but rockin’ Warner Bros. loan-out, THE DOORWAY TO HELL/’30.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/11/hard-to-mourn-mostly-lost-early-talkies.html

THE ALIEN DEAD (1980)

Unwatchable; purposefully so?  The start of writer/director Fred Olen Ray’s unaccountably prolific career (just occasionally touching mediocrity), this jump-starting entry tapped into the burgeoning home video scene/Junk Marketing Division with VHS covers promising sex, gore and affordable prices.  (Thank exec producer Henry Kaplan for insisting on that topless swimming scene.)  Not much narrative movement, just the usual White-Trash swamp-land Floridians hunting ‘gators and getting gnawed on by mutant aliens.  Shot on miserable color stock (apparently a ‘positive’ you could print off of), it boasts washed out color against pools of darkest gloom.  Cast with talent-free amateurs, staff relatives and college interns (?), a few getting face-time with old-time serial actor Buster Crabbe.  So much for the film.  Of greater interest: When did young filmmakers start wanting to be the next Ed Wood rather than the next Orson Welles?  Possible answer: While the ‘50s brought the long unavailable CITIZEN KANE back to circulation in movie theaters, the ‘70s/‘80s Home Video revolution brought Wood (and others less hopeless) into the basement.  Many hitting that ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ bell.  Heck, thought many a budding director, if Wood could do it . . .  why not Your Name Here?  Only Wood never tried to make (wink-wink/nudge-nudge) knowingly bad films, Fred Olen Rau, and his ilk, did.  Their output less film than symptom.

WTNT/LINK: The young John Sayles wrote a pair of films that show just what Ray couldn't pull off . . . and for not much more money.   Joe Dante’s highly enjoyable PIRANHA/’78 and Lewis Teague’s ALLIGATOR/’80 opening just months after this.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/09/alligator-1980.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Don’t believe our poster, the frame ratio is 1.85 : 1.

CONTEST:  Ray makes a show of film literacy with an opening a la JAWS; a mention of a McGuffin Bridge; the shambling gait of his Living Dead to match George Romero’s, even a shock intro entrance lifted from (of all people) David Lean.  Name the last (film & character) to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice.

CHITHHA (2023)

Tamil pic (i.e. non-Bollywood) from writer/director S.U. Arun Kumar with heartthrob leading man Siddharth, in what I presume is a big change-of-pace role, as beloved uncle to his fatherless eight-yr-old niece, suddenly finding himself drowning in circumstantial evidence that makes it look as if he’s molested one of the girl’s school friends.  (A bit hard to parse all the relationships in the film, but everyone seem to be a cousins of some sort.  Which, of course, makes the accusations  only worse.)  The second half of the film has Siddharth cleared, and the family of the girl not just apologizing, but working with him after his niece goes missing, almost certainly the molester's latest target.  This second part very effective, with frustrating missteps and misunderstandings from police, child social service workers, those helpful relatives, a rekindled marriage prospect (this relationship a film in itself), and Siddharth’s unhinged need for revenge.  (His broken-glass encrusted knife enough to frighten anyone.)  Yet it’s the slightly off-putting moments in the first half that feel fresh, culturally challenging, and narratively destabilizing.  Starting with the Uncle/Niece relationship, a typically self-centered kid, they’re a bit too close, she’s a little too pampered.  Caught lying in childish ways to get what she wants, even stealing from a fellow student, then not owning up to it.  So when her friend starts acting strangely toward her, taboo subjects left unspoken to fester into tacit accusations, commonsense answers (or even commonsense questions) impossible to come by.  With innocent actions made to seem ominous, quickly spinning out of control.  As per an opening title, ‘Based on a true story - unfortunately.’   Well, maybe, it feels structurally too neat for that, but works on its own terms, Kumar with a real eye for color, movement & casting.

WHITE NIGHTS (1985)

‘Pitchable’ story with ‘kitschable’ execution, reactions to Taylor Hackford’s Ballet vs Tap Cold War ‘suspenser’ may vary.  World-famous ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, long defected to the States, crash lands in Mother Russia where American tap dance defector Gregory Hines is assigned as his ‘minder.’  Can these two work thru their differences and get out of the USSR?  A classic Mutt & Jeff duo (one short & solid/one tall & lanky) each get establishing solos: Baryshnikov to Roland Petit’s gymnastically banal ‘Young Man & Death’ (as if Hammer Films choreographed PETRUSHKA) and Hines as the Sportin’ Life of your dreams, the sole Black in a Siberian ‘bus-n-truck’ PORGY AND BESS.*  Jerzy Skolimowski plays watchful Ruskie gatekeper; Isabella Rossellini Hines’s wife; a shockingly young Helen Mirren Bary’s ballet ‘ex’ (nearing 40, you’ll see why Hackford proposed on the spot); and a tiresome Geraldine Page as Mikhail’s dowager manager.  Nicely faked Russian atmosphere and real second-unit stuff from St. Petersburg, well-matched by cinematographer David Watkins to his usual impeccable standards while Hackford somehow manages to blow two endings.  Still, the film, and its frequent dance interludes (including a delayed challenge routine), develops a certain swing.  Just be prepared to park your brain at pivotal moments.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/CONTEST:  Thirty-seven at the time, Baryshnikov is amazingly fit, doesn’t overplay, has charm by the buckets & a photo-ready asymmetrical face.  Yet, like so many ballet stars, only made sporadic contact with the movies.  Exceptions to this rule?  Convince us to win a WriteUp of a streamable film of your choice.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Check out the original PORGY & BESS Sportin’ Life, John Bubbles, in a rare film appearance near the end of Vincente Minnelli’s CABIN IN THE SKY/’42.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/cabin-in-sky-1943.html

SOULS FOR SALE (1923)

Great fun if hardly great filmmaking, prolific film scenarist/occasional helmer Rupert Hughes goes behind the screen for a mostly comic look at moviemaking, circa 1923.  Packed with cameos for half of Hollywood’s elite (Charles Chaplin to Erich von Stroheim & a score more), major stars of the day take the leads as Eleanor Boardman’s runaway bride leaves Lew Cody, her BlueBeard of a husband, hopping off her honeymoon train in the middle of nowhere.  Alone, cold & frightened, she stumbles straight onto a Hollywood location shoot where a desert romance is filming, complete with glamorous sheik (Frank Mayo) and hired camels (camels).  From there, merely a step to screen test, slapstick failure (comedy hard!), success as an ingenue (drama easy!).  Wooed by all she meets: desert co-star, comic supporting player (Snitz Edwards) , bigtime director (Richard Dix at his most appealing as the love-struck helmer), too bad that erstwhile husband is hunting her down after spending the night with repressed spinster Dale Fuller (!) whom he strangles in the morning.  Yikes!  (Hitchcock might have blanched at this realistic murder.)  Naturally, Cody finds her just as they’re shooting the climax of her new circus themed movie when, wouldn’t you know, a hurricane threatens to blow it all down.  Or what’s left after the big tent fire!  Hughes, along with superb cinematographer John Mescal (later of many a classic Universal horror pic) come up with thrilling stuff here, if only Hughes had the directing chops to clarify action.  No matter, you get the gist of things.  Smart & funny about a fast maturing L.A., caught just as it was turning from free-for-all shop into big business.  Fascinating & fun.  (Look for a TCM restoration with a good new score.)

DOUBLE-BILL: King Vidor’s SHOW PEOPLE/’28, a far better known Marion Davies’ starrer, must have taken a hard look at this for inspiration.

MR BATES vs THE POST OFFICE (2024)

Just shown in the U.K. and already a cause, a campaign & a call to arms, few expected this modest ITV mini-series about modest people to be so immodestly effective.*  But it immediately found well deserved attention with its true story of an out of control computer operating system (Horizon) built for the U.K. Post Office that wound up decimating the lives & livelihoods of hundreds of small town post office sub-contractors criminally charged & responsible for repaying falsely generated debts.  Each desperate operator told it must be them since no one else reporting anything similar about the infallible Horizon payment tracking system.  Enter Mr. Bates (Alan Bates, actually, just not that Alan Bates), played by Toby Jones as the most even-tempered/well-organized Job figure imaginable.  Refusing to admit any wrong doing or to plead out on a lesser charge, all he has are facts, figures and fortitude, doggedly contacting others in a steadily increasing circle of post-office managers all in the same boat as he organizes a committee, finds representation and takes Horizon and the Post Office (ergo the whole British Government) to court.  And you thought Sisyphus had it tough.  (Two decades on, he’s still at it.)  Director James Strong & scripter Gwyneth Hughs don’t try to reinvent the docu-drama wheel here, and refuse to push too hard for melodrama in spite of some really dark situations and truly despicable behavior by tech/corporate types and politicos.  They even find a few good lawyers to fight the good fight.  Easy to see how this hit with audiences (faceless managers, intractable computers and business overlords always good targets), but the film also finds emotional episodes as steady injustice and torturous delays slowly bend in the face of the truth.  In its quiet way, very satisfying.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Considering the damaged lives & lost savings, imagine how high compensation might have been in an American court . . . and if anyone could have lived thru all the appeals to collect them.

DOUBLE-BILL: A fifth episode under the same title and released at the same time (not seen here) tells the tale in documentary form using many of the surviving players.

LINK:  *Beat the New York Times by a day!  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/10/world/europe/uk-itv-mr-bates-vs-post-office.html

IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS (1962)

Disney had such a success adapting Jules Verne’s 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA/’54 as their first big-budget Live-Action feature, it must have seemed just the thing to try a lesser-known Verne title when Walt’s bet on young Hayley Mills paid off with the Baby Boomer Zeitgeist hit THE PARENT TRAP/’61.*  It was . . . and it wasn’t.  A sure thing financially, if grossing only half what TRAP had, the film actually portended ever-worsening Mills vehicles that wound up nullifying the very potential that initially excited Disney upon seeing Mills' TIGER BAY/’59 debut, far and away her best work.*  This one, though filmed in Britain, looks like a typically stingy Disney ‘house’ production of the period, pushing Verne’s story toward something more like Robert L. Stevenson.  And why not as it’s directed by (non-related) Robert Stevenson?  Following Mills and her kid brother, along with guardian Maurice Chevalier, as they connive to convince wealthy ship captain Wilfred Hyde-White, along with his son, romance-ready Michael Anderson Jr, to search the globe to find their missing Dad.  George Sanders eventually shows up as a dastardly villain, as do a pair of tepid songs from the Sherman Brothers, used mainly to cover a few process traveling sequences . . . and for something to put on the record album tie-in.  (see poster)  As Chevalier would put it, naturellement!  At least there’s a few elegant Peter Ellenshaw painted background landscapes matted into the frame for something to look at.  Or is if you can see them behind acting as broad as a British Holiday ‘Panto.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Commercially, Disney had an amazing 1961: 2nd, 3rd & 4th top-grossing pics in ABSENT MINDED PROFESSOR; PARENT TRAP and SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON which, perhaps not coincidentally, starred Hayley’s pop, John Mills.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *All three films mentioned above an improvement on this one.  Even better, from much underrated director J. Lee Thompson, is TIGER BAY, with father & daughter Mills.

CYNARA (1932)

Fast transfer of the successful B’way play sees rising Barrister Ronald Colman reluctantly fall into an affair with working-class shop girl Phyllis Barry when wife Kay Francis leaves him on his own to accompany her ditzy, romantically entangled sister on a breakup trip to Venice.  Egged on by old ‘Honorable’ family friend Henry Stevenson (sole holdover from the B’way production), Colman’s just too damn polite to keep his pants on.  Instead, as if watching his actions helplessly from the side, finds his casual affair turning serious, then tragic.  And, once it’s over, too much the gentleman to defend himself against a morals charge.  Social scandal!  Separation!  Club & country left behind.  Marriage & promising career ruined.  Will Francis ever forgive him?  All terribly dated now . . . or is it?  FATAL ATTRACTION really so different?  Only here played out with breathtaking levels of misogyny.  Again, really so different?  (And that’s with Frances Marion adapting R. Gore Brown’s playscript.)  Phyllis Barry and her partying roommate incredibly unsympathetic as presented.  While anyone but Colman would seem a complete heel in his role.  All told, a fascinating and thoroughly depressing peek at sexual mores past.  King Vidor, on his second film for Sam Goldwyn, directs in a smooth corporate style not much like him, effective if faceless, with superb assists from art director Richard Day and cinematographer Ray June.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Between this and THE STRANGER’S RETURN/’33, his next marital infidelity pic, Vidor would go thru a second divorce.  Perhaps that accounts for some of the startling change from the judgmental CYNARA to STRANGER’S remarkably blame-free attitude toward love and fidelity.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-strangers-return-1933.html

SALEM'S LOT (1979)

There's something of a cult following on this late-‘70s Stephen King two-part mini-series, a vampire frightener remade in 2004, but without the cult following.  Usually in King monster/horror mode, he’ll work up a kickass concept to pull us in, only to discover he’s painted himself into a narrative corner with no way out of his self-made dramatic trap.  See IT, both the 1990 tv two-fer and the theatrical iteration of 2017 & ‘19; each of them sinking from 7.4 to overly-generous 6.5 IMDb scores.  And King’s recent tv series about a town in a bubble saw weekly drops.  Not here!  Instead, disappointment sets in right from the get-go as struggling novelist David Soul returns to his old town for a fresh start only to find strange doings.  For a 1979 tv movie, there’s a tremendous cast to greet him: tv stalwarts, up-and-comers, plus some grand old B-pic film noir regulars.  (Marie Windsor!)  No doubt, director Tobe Hooper brought some of these guys in, only to find little for them to do but wait around and turn into vampires after a bit . . . I mean bite.  You’d think Stephen King, of all people, would be on the lookout for a fresh angle.  But no, it’s straightforward DRACULA in New England. Or, rather, New England NOSFERATU, since that’s how they make-up the controlling vampire suave James Mason fronts for.  And that makes James Mason Renfield, right?  Say it ain’t so Stephen.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Though hardly flaw-free (it was re-edited and second-guessed to death in post-production), Disney’s film of Ray Bradbury’s SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES /’83 shows real imagination on similar themes & situations.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/09/something-wicked-this-way-comes-1983.html

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN (2018)

Was it Steven Spielberg’s HOOK/’91 that started the modern cinematic notion of playing catch-up with familiar childhood literary characters old enough to have forgotten their past selves?  There it was Peter Pan, now a troubled dad who needs to remember (and relive) past NeverLand adventures to slough off Mid-Life ennui.  Here, it’s Winnie-the-Pooh pal Christopher Robin (unlike Peter, Robin Milne an actual person, though not at all like the man seen here) who must leave office drudgery behind and revisit the Hundred-Acre woods & various stuffed animals from the past if he’s to rediscover his joie de vivre and bring some welcome anarchy into a too well-ordered life so he can reconnect to his ignored wife & daughter.  Disney double-dipped with MARY POPPINS RETURNS hitting the same story beats & character notes the same year, the original MARY POPPINS mutual template.  And while both improve on HOOK (how could you not?), each a wan reflection of their progenitor.  Five years on can you think of a single tune or performance from POPPINS RETURNS?  Here, they also made a mistake in slavishly copying the old voices (and musical bits) of Disney’s 1960s animated Pooh shorts.  Personalities not so much A.A. Milne as Walt & Co.  With dumb gags to wake up sleepy-heads, technical crudity in the animated puppet animals*, and choppy editing, this is pretty disappointing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *The same animation techniques worked wonderfully in the two recent PADDINGTON films (2014;’17).  The second one a particular treat.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/08/paddington-2014.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/paddington-2.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: While designed to appeal to 21st century kids, modern attitudes and office diversity hires really stick out.  Like those all-too-obvious Product Placement shots in ‘80s pics.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: The original stuffed animals have been on display at various locations in the New York Public Libraries since 1987.  Here’s a rundown of their travels over the years.  https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/schwarzman/childrens-center-42nd-street/pooh

SUMMERTIME (1955)

David Lean left Britain to go international and Katharine Hepburn left Hollywood glamour for Mid-West spinsterhood on this location-besotted Venice romance about a once-in-a-lifetime spree for an Akron, Ohio office worker and the handsome, Venetian shopkeeper she meets between vaporetto rides.  Those floating canal buses a big surprise for Hepburn, overplaying the self-consciously naive American abroad.  But then, Lean lets everyone underline all thru the first act, as if trying to match Jack Hildyard’s KodaChrome-like lensing.  Perhaps this comes from Arthur Laurents’ play (THE TIME OF THE CUCKOO)*, but things calm down considerably, and to considerable effect, once Lean lets the dross drift off and concentrates on his Henry James-ish virgin abroad motif, many scenes playing in daringly long-take two-shots.  As the suitor, Rosanno Brazzi unexpectedly rises to the challenge Kate sets for him in great set pieces backed by frame-worthy settings.  (Producer Alex Korda telling Lean not to skip on the famous sites/sights/sighs, ‘There’s a reason they’re famous.’ he reportedly said.)  With a great local kid to show Hepburn around (these ‘kid guides’ a staple in U.S. post-war-Italian movies) and a group of fellow pensione guests to add a little variety.  (But must the Ugly Americans be quite so ugly?)  Narrowing its scope, the film makes some very satisfying turns; immensely touching by the end.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Without Lean to hold her down, Hepburn’s next spinster was her most embarrassingly overplayed & coy, gushingly gauche choosing between Burt Lancaster and Wendell Corey in THE RAINMAKER/’56.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *And now, a little lesson in self-centered Hollywood star psychology.  Returning to Hollywood from B'way as a top box-office attraction with THE PHILADELPHIA STORY/’40, Hepburn’s sole regret was not being able to keep Shirley Booth in the role Ruth Hussey played in the film version.  Yet, here she is, nabbing the role Booth had won a Tony Award for in Laurents’ play on stage.  Even though Booth had recently won an Oscar® for COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA/’52.  Yet, our lesson not that Hepburn was inconsistent or hypocritical, but that she was right.  The film would have been nothing with Booth (literally nothing, it wouldn’t have been made), Booth’s film career pretty dismal post SHEBA. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/come-back-little-sheba-1952.html

CONTEST:  SUMMERTIME not the only 1955 film to symbolize sex with fireworks.  Name the other 1955 film with coitus covering pyrotechnics to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choosing.

SOUND OF FREEDOM (2023)

Damning with faint praise as ‘largely adequate’ pretty much covers this one.  A big screen variant of one of those CBS crime procedurals, more 2-part Navy Seal than CSI or NBC LAW & ORDER (though LAW & ORDER: Honduras has a ring to it).  Somehow or other, this by-the-numbers Sex-Trafficking thriller: YA edition, caught right-wing/evangelical favor to become a ‘cœur-less’ cri-de-cœur on what a hard-nosed vigilante could single-handedly accomplish against the odds, sabotaging international pimp syndicates once he dropped his uniform & assorted rules-of-engagement to fight dirty and win.  Jim Caviezel, all squint & raspy whisper, is our globe-trotting avenger, sick of hitting a wall against the sheer number of monetizing deviants.  So it's off to Central America where the big con he pulls saves scores of underage victims and takes down dozens of profiteers, but misses the one lost girl he most wanted to save.  So tack on another act with an Amazonian Heart-of-Darkness journey into rebel no-man’s-land where he poses as inoculating U.N. doctor to find her.*  Opening on the 4th of July (I kid you not) for that extra patriotic flavor, the film & target audience, seemingly unaware that what was once called ‘the White Slave Trade,’ standard subject matter since silent days, this based-on-a-true-story update is nothing new.  Though sub-par acting, dialogue, dubbing, cliché jungle settings & misty mood cinematography always a downer.  Suspense and tear-free, the film as anodyne as they come.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *God help the next visit of actual U.N. doctors to the area.  Imagine the welcome they’ll get based on this ‘true story.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Ironic to hear this film’s target audience cheering as millions are spent to save a single child but balking at any foreign aid program that might help thousands.

THE HUNTED (2003)

Joan Crawford joked in her M-G-M prime that she’d never have a chance at plum roles as long as rival star Norma Shearer was ‘sleeping with the boss.’  And Shearer was, married to M-G-M head-of-production Irving Thalberg.  What Joan didn’t mention was how all that prestige ultimately dragged Norma down.  Crawford, for better or worse, now far better remembered; Shearer more a specialist case.  Something of the sort applies to director William Friedkin at his 1990s career low point when he married Sherry Lansing just before she went from Paramount Pictures producer to first woman ‘Chairman’ of a major Hollywood studio.  And don’t imagine people didn't notice Friedkin now sleeping with the boss.  Ta-ta tv gigs, hello top-tier Paramount pics.  And only at Paramount as long as Lansing was there.  But did it serve Friedkin any more than Thalberg did Shearer?  BLUE CHIPS/’94; JADE/’95; RULES OF ENGAGEMENT/’00 and this nothing-burger action/chase pic coming in at an irresponsible 55 mill.  (Cannon/Golan-Globus would have spent 3 mill.)  All four of Friedkin’s releases seriously over-budget/under-performing; JADE notoriously so.*  And none buffing up a career left in tatters when SORCERER/’77 (unfairly) tanked after the windfall critical/commercial success of FRENCH CONNECTION and EXORCIST.   This one wasting an expensive prologue to show army killing specialist Benicio Del Toro taking out whole units in Kosovo, becoming a psychologically brutalized Silver Star man, now killing off Army men hunting him down back in the States.  Enter teacher/mentor/guru/swami Tommy Lee Jones, a solitary army trainer who’s never actually killed a man.  Now tasked to hunt down this wild animal caught in a trap of his own making.  (Symbolically shown to us in Jones’s intro by having him save a wild animal caught in a trap.  Subtle, no?)  The last twenty-five minutes an elaborate mano-a-mano for the lead boys, with FBI backup so someone can get killed along the way.  This wan attempt to repeat THE FUGITIVE/'93 none too satisfying.  Lansing left Paramount soon after; Friedkin making three or four interesting little films elsewhere.*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Why JADE doesn’t get nailed as a legendary Hollywood boondoggle is a mystery.  Not only a 60 mill loss, it also stopped three major careers: ace scripter Joe Esterhas; tv escapee David Caruso; rising femme fatale Linda Fiorentino.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *KILLER JOE/’11 probably best of Friedkin’s post Lansing pics.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/06/killer-joe-2011.html

TOMBOY (2011)

Current doyen of French Radical Queer filmmaking, yet little that’s ‘Radically Queer’ in this masterly second feature from writer/director Céline Sciamma.  Something that’s also true of her latest, PETIT MAMAN/’19.*  But where that story ran on a kind of meta-physical magical realism (and a wrinkle in time), this earlier work is more Neo-Realistic DOGME as summer brings new house/new neighborhood to 12-yr-old Laure (Zoé Héran), her parents & little sister.  Blessed with enchanting looks, she’s soon bonding in unsupervised outdoor play with new local pals not as Laure, but ‘passing’ as a boy, ‘Mikael,’ puberty delayed just enough to let her join in ‘skins’ vs. ‘shirts’ roughhousing, soccer, even swimming.  (The last by cutting down a girl’s one-piece into a boy’s brief.  Pudenda courtesy of her sister’s molding clay.)  And so it goes, every encounter a hurdle of subterfuge, especially when a slightly more physically mature 12-yr-old girl develops a crush on ‘Mikael.’  Hard to know which is the bigger problem: peeing in the field with the guys or finding out you liked kissing a girl.*  And while we know this will all soon crumble (school-days with the gang just around the corner), the suspense can be overwhelming.  Sciamma with a knack of setting up, then just avoiding kiddie coming-of-age tropes.  But she can’t stop little sister from being a girly girl (ballet, tutu, the works) and tripping things up when she tries too hard to help.  You’d need to go back to François Truffaut’s SMALL CHANGE/’76 to find equal levels of tween identification.  And not even there, a parent who knows how much and when a bit of tough love will be just the thing to solve unsolvable embarrassments and give a child time to begin to figure things out in a safe/loving environment.  All while a new baby, a boy with a full head of hair, joins the family.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, PETIT MAMAN Sciamma’s latest; OR: SMALL CHANGE/’76.  http://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/12/petit-maman-2021.html      https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/small-change-1976.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  One more Family Friendly label on a film with a tricky topic worthy of further discussion.  (Plus a touch of childhood nudity to consider.)  Tomboy phase?  Trans of some sort?  Future sexual identification undecided.  Where might she/he/they/thee be going?  Alas, chances of showing this film in, say, a Stateside junior high class currently unimaginable in ‘fly-over’ country where it’s probably most needed.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Hopefully, their high school will put on AS YOU LIKE IT and cast these two in it.

THE TIME MACHINE (1960)

Coming out of the 1960s, Baby Boomers had two unavoidable Pop Culture reckonings: One - recognizing THE FLINTSTONES was just THE HONEYMOONERS in pre-historic times; and Two - owning up to the alarming racist nature of George Pal’s elsewise enchanting version of H.G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE.  (And you thought the current state of the world came from Bad Parenting.)  Holding off on Yabba-Dabba Doing for the moment, we’ll stick with Wells.  No doubt you know the basic story, Edwardian Inventor tells his all-male social circle about traveling thousands of years ahead; they pooh-pooh the idea; he disappears back-to-the-future, presumably to help start a new great society.  Loaded with nifty analogue special effects you could imagine doing in the basement with boxed model kit sets; corny acting (Alan Young working up his Scrooge McDuck voice); Olde London Town studio sets in over-lit MetroColor; scored with near lifts from Stravinsky & Benjamin Britten (prominent use of a PETER GRIMES Sea Interlude); the film’s let’s-put-on-a-play vibe still very nostalgic.  Rod Taylor, manly & scientific, is our time traveler, zipping past centuries of destruction to reach a human nirvana that crumbles upon touch, like future man’s ancient books.  (A wonderful effect.)  He does learn of times past thru magic talking rings.  (Best effect in the film, masterfully simple & memorable.)  But by then you’ve noticed this Brave New World is populated only by fit, youthful super-Aryans served by ‘colored’ underground monsters, beasts of burden who do all the work and cull from their blond flock.  Plot and structure two-parts LOST HORIZON/’37 - one-part METROPOLIS/’27.  And Professor Taylor wanting to lead them all with knowledge from the past.  Best not think about it too much.

DOUBLE-BILL:  As director, Pal’s last (and probably best) feature is 7 FACES OF DR. LAO/’64.  But with Tony Randall in YellowFace as Lao (he plays all 7 faces) it’s a dicey watch.  OR: As mentioned: LOST HORIZON and METROPOLIS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/lost-horizon-1937.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/02/metropolis-1927.html