SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964)

On the big screen, 1964 was the year of political paranoia & nuclear endgame.  Hipsters got scary/comic brilliance in Stanley Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE; squares had Sidney Lumet’s earnest & dutiful FAIL-SAFE.  The difference in tone matched by two other Presidential thrillers of the period: John Frankenheimer’s THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE/’62 and John Frankenheimer’s SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, the first outlandish & subversive, the second, with scripter Rod Serling’s ‘well-made play’ vibe, dropping obvious clues to underline every story beat.  But if CANDIDATE is more daring, sophisticated, wacky & original, SEVEN, unlike the self-important FAIL-SAFE, is an impressive achievement in its own straightforward way, and a real nail-biter.  Coup-hungry General Burt Lancaster and suspicious Col. Kirk Douglas are both at their best, helped by having an equal third-party, President Fredric March, between them.  It turns their competitive streak away from them as stars, and toward character.  But everyone’s dandy in this one; and there’s extra fun substituting current politicos in most of the roles.  Imagining modern candidates being so articulate even gives the speechifying final showdown between Lancaster & March an extra frightening kick.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *At times, it really is a ‘well-made’ play, specifically, Gore Vidal’s 1960 B’way smash THE BEST MAN which it steals a significant plot point from.  BEST MAN also a 1964 movie, and with FAIL-SAFE’s Henry Fonda in it.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-best-man-1964.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Look for producer John Houseman making his acting debut at 62.

CHILDREN OF THE SEA / KAIJÛ NO KODOMO (2019)

Spectacular manga-based anime proved a tough sell for G-KIDS Stateside with little in the way of a traditional storyline.  But beyond the film’s standard summer-break/coming-of-age teen tribulations (young girl with separated parents gets tossed off the summer-league soccer team for acting out), something quite different & fascinating, laid out in stunning animation from Ayumu Watanabe & Beyond C. Studios in a style quite different from Studio Ghibli & other Japanese firms.  Philosophical in ideas, more abstract in extended set pieces, we watch as Ruka, the just banned summer-league soccer player, visits the local aquatic museum where her father works.  Behind the tank, she stumbles upon a unique sea creature few have seen, a teenage boy (Umi) who literally swims with the fishes.  So too his older brother Sora, who Ruka will meet later and who appears to be undergoing some sort of metamorphosis.  Not the only seismic shift in the film: sea, sky and earth are also experiencing changes after a meteor strike.  Is Ruka falling in love with one of these brothers, or perhaps changing into some sort of ‘Gaia’ prophet, if that’s what they are.  No doubt this all parsed out more clearly in the manga series of books, but sometimes lack of specificity, not quite knowing what’s going on, helps rather than hurts if you can ZEN-up and go with the flow of illustrious illustrations.  (In the ‘70s this would have been considered an essential Head Trip experience.)  Here and there, the plot, such as it is, goes sappy and well-meaning, but wisely holds back from nailing down concepts too literally with exposition & explanation.  The story not even bothering to wind things up by having Ruka rejoin her teammates for an uplifting ending.  Hurrah!  (Though wait thru the end credits to get a bit more story.)  Best to put any expectations to the side, and prepare yourself for a climax that draws on 2001's ‘Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite’ . . . and gets away with it.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Ayumu Watanabe’s other credits mostly in tv series, but a follow-up feature, FORTUNE FAVORS LADY NIKUKO/’21 (not seen here), looks to be more traditional.  (And brought in about a fifth the gross.)

PAN SI DONG / THE CAVE OF THE SILKEN WEB (1927)

A challenging but rewarding watch, this once lost Chinese silent survives thru a print found (and restored) in Norway.  Missing the first two reels, it now runs about an hour and there’s a small amount of nitrate damage to get thru.  (Mostly at the start.)  And what a familiar story it tells!  Not only because Cheng'en Wu’s 16th century multi-part JOURNEY TO THE WEST saga has served dozens of adaptations* (this probably the first), but for its echoes to . . . well, here’s a brief.  Our lead, on a journey thru unknown territory to fetch a precious item, is kidnapped and taken to a cave castle, yet hopes to be rescued by anthropomorphic pals Monkey, Pig & Shark who must scale a craggy mountain to gain entry.  And it’s not only THE WIZARD OF OZ that comes to mind.  Here, our ‘Dorothy’ is a monk on a journey to find precious manuscripts in some heavenly territory, and her pal protectors are on the clock.  (Monkey, primus inter pares like The Scarecrow, is also a shape-shifter, something which comes in handy against the beautiful ‘She-Devil’ kidnappers who plan a forced marriage and human flesh appetizers instead of a monk’s proper vegetarian diet.  Worse, those lady devils are really spider people.  Yikes!  The transformation no more than a puff of smoke and a ‘matched’ edit, but the spider costume is impressively creepy.  The production is surprisingly elaborate, if not up to international late-silent standards, the filmmaking technique more late ’teens than late ‘20s (see Maurice Tourneur’s THE BLUE BIRD/’19), with acting that’s very UFA German Expressionism when not British ‘Panto.’  (You even get racial stereotypes with dark complexioned cave servants.)  It all climaxes at the wedding with mad dances out of a ‘rave’ and a RED tinted fiery conflagration for a finale.

LINK:  Watch for free here:  https://archive.org/details/pan-si-dong-cave-of-the-silken-web

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Not seen here, but first on the list when you type CAVE OF THE SILKEN WEB on a search engine (or IMDb) is a version from 1967.  No doubt, it would clear things up, but sacrifice some of the silent film’s enticing perplexity.

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (1995)

Hard to see why this accomplished adaptation of Walter Mosley’s first Easy Rawlins detective novel flopped.*  (A streaming series of the 15 titles in development.)  True, it’s CHINATOWN derivative (how not, given the L.A. post-WWII period setting?); Tom Sizemore’s Joe Pesci villainous copycat act brings little new (same for Maury Chaykin’s John Huston shtick); writer/director Carl Franklin* & cinematographer Tak Fujimoto lay on over-ripe period texture to beat the band (props look like ‘props,’ the atmosphere lacquered, exteriors like showroom models.  But Franklin, and his generally good cast, get too much right to miss out on, capturing the urban experience of an ambitious, home-owning Black vet trying to stay out of harms way and keep the cash flowing with pick-up work that lands him on the edge of the law, the casual indignities of simply being Black in America ‘tell’ in ways rarely caught on film.  Perhaps that’s because its subtext is seen thru the lens of strict film noir detective tropes.  Incriminating photographs, interracial love affair, blackmail, kidnapping, hideouts, friendship loyal & disloyal; all in a twisty political story about a mayoral race you can largely follow.  Denzel Washington makes one sexy Rawlins; they could have auctioned that ribbed-‘T’ to make up any box-office shortfall.  (see poster)  And if Jennifer Beals’ mystery gal is no Faye Dunaway (Mosley probably made a mistake giving her too close a variation of Dunaway’s ‘My sister, My daughter’ routine), Don Cheadle’s dangerous psychopathic BFF more than makes up for it.  (Why not a streaming series on this guy?)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Lots of violent detective work for director Franklin before & after, on tv & film.  ONE FALSE MOVE/’92 a particularly tasty example.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/03/one-false-move-1992.html

THE GORGEOUS HUSSY (1936)

Everyone in-front & behind the camera/above & below the line is at their worst in this inert period historical, stiffer than the Petticoat that gave name to this Andrew Jackson political scandal.*  Joan Crawford, never at ease in period pieces (or in flouncy clothes), is Peggy O’Neal Eaton, serial inamorata to Virginia Senator Melvyn Douglas, Navy hunk Robert Taylor, Man-about-town James Stewart, Cabinet Secretary Franchot Tone; as well as enjoying the personal protection of President Lionel Barrymore . . . er, Andrew Jackson.  More sinned against than sinning (in this telling), her choice of romantic chaperones always blowing up in her face.  In some ways, it’s Crawford’s PARNELL/’37, the Clark Gable mega-flop historical.  Only this one somehow made money.  All those stars*; and just as many in support.  A pity, too, as whenever we leave the romance and head to the Capital, you can faintly make out the proto-Civil War story wasted here.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *And that includes producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz, hotly being wooed to take over from mortally ill production head Irving G. Thalberg, and ex-wooer of Crawford whose recent marriage to co-star Tone was already on the rocks.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Taylor suddenly a major star after a loan-out to Universal for MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION/’35.  Above-the-title second billing (and extra curly hair!) in spite of getting killed off at the end of act one, a mere 41" into the film.  Even Janet Leigh lasts longer than that before her much discussed early demise in PSYCHO/’60.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/08/magnificent-obsession-1935.html

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Underrated contract director Clarence Brown lives down to his mediocre rep on this one.  At least the film earned out; more than can be said for his next, CONQUEST/’37, a real money pit for Garbo & Charles Boyer.  Yet, these two disappointments followed by one of his best (and least known) films, OF HUMAN HEARTS/’38.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/conquest-1937.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/01/of-human-hearts-1938.html

EDMOND / CYRANO, MY LOVE (2018)

That’s Edmond, as in Edmond Rostand, turn-of-the-last century French-verse playwright, but don’t blame him for that ridiculous export title.  Author of CYRANO DE BERGERAC, by common consensus the greatest second-rate play in the canon.  So maybe there’s justice in a third-rate bio-pic, alas, not the greatest.  Instead, a rollicking embarrassment of clichés as Rostand & putative star Benoît-Constant Coquelin seek to create a hit play.  Writer/director Alexis Michalik has no shame inventing whimsical backstage shenanigans on the order of those old bio-pics where real life events ‘inspire’ an author/painter/composer/architect to immortality.  You know, Strauss hears a hunting horn, takes out a notebook and voila! . . . The Blue Danube is born.  The film has some fun with CGI cityscapes, creating a pop-up picture-book look instead of trying to convince. and there’s a clever bit for rival playwright Georges Feydeau that plays out like one of his farces.  Plus, theatrical tropes found in just about every backstager kick in by the third act.  You really care if the damn thing gets up & running.  Or would if Michalik hadn't just ‘cured’ a shy actor with a confidence-building dressing room blow-job.  A general rule of thumb on backstage bio-pics is that the only factual moment in the whole thing is sure to be the most unbelievable one.  Here, best guess is papering a skimpy opening night crowd with drunks & hookers, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: Considering its many  adaptations, CYRANO has been as unlucky on screen as it’s been lucky on stage.  For a good English verse translation, Anthony Burgess; his play not his musical, on B’way with Derek Jacobi.  Best known film adaptations all have the stink of an officially sanctioned ‘quality project’: 1950 with José Ferrer (verseless), 1990 with Gérard Depardieu (with verse), 2021 with Peter Dinklage (the verse).  Steve Martin’s modern take, ROXANNE/’87, charmed when it came out, but I wouldn’t risk a second viewing.  A brief scene made in 1900, with pre-recorded synch-sound via acoustic wax cylinder, from Benoît-Constant Coquelin (Olivier Gourmet plays him here) is merely a curiosity.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC4xgu40da8).  But a 1923 silent, directed by Augusto Genina and starring Pierre Magnier is the only film to get anywhere near the effortlessly overwhelming effect found in nearly any stage production.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Michalik claims inspiration from SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE/98 (it shows, it shows).  If only he’d gone with THE BAND WAGON/’53 or FRENCH CANCAN/’55.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-band-wagon-1953.html

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: To see how these things can be done without risking the cutes: CHOCOLAT/’16.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/02/chocolat-2016.html

OUTRAGE (1950)

Fourth of the six independent features Ida Lupino directed, co-wrote & just once starred in as part of The Filmmakers, all with producer/writer Collier Young, her husband whom she divorced halfway thru the series.  Possibly the best, it’s certainly toughest of the social issue topics they covered; rape and its psychological aftermath.*  And while producer Stanley Kramer got more press hanging his indie shingle on social issues, he tilted toward the noble where Lupino was hard-nosed & no-nonsense.  As usual, Lupino (pretty much the only game in town when it came to female directors) tends toward blunt, and is hardly blessed with filmdom’s best casts (here Mala Powers’ sophomore outing as the victim has you imagining Lupino taking over the role).  But as director, Lupino packs a lot into every shot as this young woman in a small town where everyone knows your business is attacked, tries to act as if everything’s fine, then abruptly breaks her engagement and without a word runs off to . . . where?  Headed from the Midwest to L.A. (SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST?) she finds a welcome at a stopover in California orange territory, its migrant no-questions-asked workforce and orchard job openings just the ticket to a fresh start, even a fella.  But when a social event reignites the demons she was running away from, Powers erupts with violence and heads to the hills.  This second dash also ignites something in Lupino, who, with help from cinematographer Archie Stout, turns out the best set piece in her entire output.  A rapturous, lyrical terror, caught by Stout in rich fluid textures, more bright poetic hysteria than dark noir, in a manner that recalls Frank Borzage or even F.W. Murnau.  There’s a tricky renunciation at the end, and some moral/legalistic speechifying, but the film easily rides them out.  Strong work by Lupino, who soon moved to tv directing after her remarkable independent run.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  Powers must have felt comfortable next to co-star Tod Andrews since he looks (and acts) like a stand-in for her debut co-star Farley Granger in EDGE OF DOOM/’50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/edge-of-doom-1950.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *The critical & commercial success of JOHNNY BELINDA/’48 helped sell the tough subject matter to distributor R.K.O.  Note that you still couldn’t say ‘rape’ or even ‘sexual assault’ if you wanted to get a wide theatrical release; ‘criminal assault’ had to do.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/johnny-belinda-1948.html

CHE ORA È? (1989)

Slight, but tasty commedia all'italiana from Ettore Scola, something of a two-hander (with interruptions by guests) for Marcello Mastroianni and Massimo Troisi as absentee father and son at the tail end of compulsory military service, spending an awkward day trying to find something that holds them together.  Breaking out in petty squabbles on every subject, but always drifting back to walk thru an amusement park, take a short movie break, meet the current temporary girlfriend (‘how’s the kid in the sack?’), confess to marital problems, dangle a car & Rome apartment as proof of affection, order the whole menu at a waterfront seafood place (looks fabulous!), just be sure to never get below the surface.  That is until the day’s almost over and they stop at Troisi’s regular joint, a bar to make CHEERS look impersonal, where Mastroianni is quietly devastated watching his son take and give so much pleasure as long as Dad is out of the picture.  After all the obvious embarrassment of merely being together, and his high-handed controlling manner (Mastroianni unable to shut it down for more than five minutes), the realization of years wasted is crushing.  There’s another quick reproachment as they wait for the train to start up, but we know this too will be temporary.  Lucky if it can make it thru the end credits.  Scola, last in the line of great post Neo-Realist Golden Age Italian filmmakers, knows just how to set a proper strolling pace and how to walk up to, but not cross into caricature.  Especially impressive holding Mastroianni back since it’s more of an Alberto Sordi role.  While Troisi, known Stateside from IL POSTINO/’94 where he looks like a spectral ghost (he died of a heart condition hours after finishing the shoot), nails his slow-burn resistance without a false step.  The truths in here may be a little obvious, but the payoff unexpectedly moving.  NOTE: The title: ‘What’s the time?’ refers to a family heirloom given to Troisi, Granddad’s pocket watch.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Scola appears to get his angles wrong on a series of reverse shots between father & son till you realize Troisi is suddenly noticing how much his father’s face has aged since he last spent time with him.  How typical of Mastroianni to confidently go along with the deconstruction.  

MUSEO (2018)

Alonso Ruizpalacios’ fictionalized account of Mexico’s ‘Heist of the Century,’ when Mayan National Treasures were looted from the State Anthropology Museum in the mid-1980s, might have been improved if the real story it’s based on hadn’t been ‘improved.’  In this telling, a couple of slacker pals, thirty-something veterinary students Gael García Bernal & Leonardo Ortizgris, ditch their family’s Christmas Eve celebrations to take advantage of scheduled renovations at the museum to pull off a rush job.  The early scenes work best, with interpersonal relationships brought out, including some health crises that bear on events before and after a robbery that comes off as largely improvised.  Bernal, very much the alpha male of these perennial underachievers, pushing for action.  Ruizpalacios does tends to overwork his technique, whiplashing the camera thru messy family dynamics, but it works extremely well for the robbery where the museum’s shocking lack of security & protection give easy access to priceless antiquities.  It’s only when they have the goods that they realize they haven’t a plan (or a clue) on what to do next.  Who’d even think to trade in such internationally recognizable treasures?  And the film’s structural switch to Road Movie brings out the worst not only in the two pals, but in the film’s dramatic focus.  (Not quite sure here, but this also seems to be where the film largely departs from the facts.)  A tricky ending (sacrifice, renunciation, admission-of-guilt) gets us back on track, resonating dramatically largely thru Bernal’s ability to let us read emotion physically without having to twist himself into knots.  No need to ‘indicate’ when you’ve got such transparency in the set of your face.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  How’d the producers ever manage to snag Sir Simon Russell Beale to play a bit as the fabulously wealthy art collector who sees right thru these amateurs?  Quite the catch!

THE CLAY PIGEON (1949)

The talented rookie who was at his best before success put him on the A-list is an old story, and not only in Hollywood.  But it was rampant among a group of rising directors who got their start around WWII.  Edward Dmytryk probably best known of the gang, likely because,  as one of the Hollywood Ten, his line of demarcation neatly splits into Before Jail & After.  But Richard Fleischer may be its exemplar, the quality of his films largely moving in reverse proportion to his budgets.  Given little to spend, you get THE NARROW MARGIN/’52 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-narrow-margin-1952.html); give him a blank check and DOCTOR DOLITTLE/’67 might pop up.   (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/08/doctor-dolittle-1967.html).  That said, there are some exceptions, and this early programmer is prentice work.  (Same for scripter Carl Forman who quickly moved on to CHAMPION/’49, HOME OF THE BRAVE/’49, YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN/’50, THE MEN/’50 and HIGH NOON/’52.*)  This WWII tale stars Bill Williams (né Hermann August Wilhelm Katt) already married to co-star Barbara Hale (handsome offspring William Katt brought back the family name in CARRIE/’76 and BIG WEDNESDAY/’78).  Antagonists when they meet, he’s on the lam from a military hospital, charged with the death of her husband back in the Phillippines and looking for the real killer.  It’s a lot like THE FUGITIVE/’93, right down to the turn-coat villain.  Best things in here some location chase work in a rundown area of L.A.’s Chinatown, a cool flashback that adds infra-red photography to the usual film noir ‘memory whorls,’ and seeing how much Bill Williams looks like his wicked handsome son from certain angles.  But better things soon to come from many involved here.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Carl Forman’s liberal sensibilities show when he apologizes for using a stereotypical WWII ‘Jap’ villain (Richard Loo) and shows a Military Certificate of Honor framed in the apartment of a Japanese-American widow who helps Williams at a critical moment.

WEEK-END WITH FATHER (1951)

Once critically dismissed, but later acclaimed (after early retirement) especially for his strikingly stylized TechniColored Hollywood melodramas on middle-class life & morality in the 1950s, Danish-German director Douglas Sirk was anything but a one-trick pony.  War films, historicals, exotic foreign drama, Chekhov; dig a little into his L.A. films or the earlier work in German to find all sorts of surprises.*  But light domestic family comedy?  Sit-com ready middle-class farce?  Seems like a stretch, no?  Well, no.  As seen here in Blended Family/Father Knows Best format, Sirk takes on all comers as widower Van Heflin (sending his two girls off to camp) and widow Patricia Neal (sending her two off to its bordering boy’s facility) meet-cute at Grand Central Station, briefly commiserate and quickly fall for each other while the kids are away.  But what will happen when they all meet up over Parents’ Week-End?  No doubt, you’ve guessed the entire Brady Bunch plot, but there’s no way you’d guess how lightly, how winningly Sirk runs the genial slapstick action.  Reversing M.O. from his signature mellers, he steps back from OTT players & rhymed storylines (only King Vidor successfuly dove deeper into the gorgeous absurdities of that genre*) and relaxes to achieve more modest goals.  The physical comedy routines trying to hit singles & doubles rather than swinging for the fences, moving his plot thru well-meant behavior & sanity rather than escalating stupidity and blind misunderstandings.  Seems simple, but not so common in Hollywood farce.  Even the music score with but one exception, staying away from laugh track prompts on unfunny set pieces.  Van Heflin & Patricia Neal show relief lowering the wattage while the four children, something of a kiddie all-star line-up, with goof-faced Tommy Rettig (a natural Penrod or Calvin in CALVIN & HOBBES) stealing every frame he’s in.  Plus romantic rivalry courtesy of he-man Richard Denning’s shirtless camp coordinator and Virginia Field as a tv star who’d love to have Heflin without the girls.  Taken as it lies, good, modest fun.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Vincente Minnelli, Nick Ray and a half-dozen others might have been added here.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Universal happy enough with the results to double-down next year, assigning Sirk to a sweet-natured, old-fashioned piece of Americana (with a subversive twist) in HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY GAL/’52.  OR:  *On the cusp of leaving UFA/Germany, a little known masterful meller, LA HABANERA/’37.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/07/has-anybody-seen-my-gal-19542.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/la-habanera-1937.html

KRAKATOA: EAST OF JAVA (1968)

Thanks to a screwed-up title, practically everyone knows Krakatoa was WEST of Java.  It’s the only thing anyone knows about the film.  Are we missing something?  Well, yes, and not really.  Something of a last gasp for the plush family fare put out by Cinerama, no longer using their signature interlocked three-camera system, but 70mm.  First, Ultra-Panavision 70, which had a slight anamorphic squeeze, here Super Panavision 70, which doesn’t.  Still, a fantastically sharp image!  The original process getting a tip of the hat in the opening credits, designed to look as if done in the retired interlocked/3-camera format.  Alas, it’s mostly downhill from there, the story a dreadful mess about treasure hunters searching for a sunk ship with a fortune in rare pearls, sailing thru churning seas near Krakatoa’s already active volcanoes.  Add on a deep sea diver with bad lungs; a claustrophobic submersible ‘bell’ specialist; feuding father/son balloonists; a gaggle of chained convicts in the hull; a needless song/striptease from the producer’s girlfriend (yikes!) and Maximilian Schell miserable to find that the lux Cinerama prestige family drama he’d signed up for was more like an A.I.P. vehicle for Vincent Price.  (Specifically, MASTER OF THE WORLD/’61.*)  What is worth checking out are the models, miniature backgrounds & special effects (apparently shot using TODD-AO) by Eugène Lourié.  These done with much larger scale models than was typical at the time and, if not exactly believable, spectacular fun.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In addition to the beautifully executed model work, the film briefly lurches to life when journeyman tv director Bernard L. Kowalski steps aside for some unknown second unit action specialist who makes you believe Schell could come out of the sea dripping wet and singlehandedly take back his ship from a score of cutthroat convicts.  (No proof of this, but take a look!)

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Even with a script by Richard Matheson & direction by talented B-Western specialist William Witney, MASTER OF THE WORLD suffers from more than merely a skimpier budget than KRAKATOA had.  But it does make for an interesting comparison.

SUPAI NO TSUMA / WIFE OF A SPY (2020)

Best known (at least Stateside) for artsy off-kilter horror*, this ambitious, but disappointing film from prolific Japanese writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a significant change-of-pace.  A period piece set during the opening salvos of WWII, with Japan’s savage occupation of Manchuria not seen, but playing out in the background.  (Still a dodgy topic in Japan.)  Returned from service and horrified by what he’s seen, the nephew of a film director smuggles in documentation (notebooks & film) of atrocities he hopes to bring to the public, shaming government, military & citizens into action.  But his plans are complicated by an old family friend, now a local captain in charge of espionage & morale, already suspicious of the director’s, his former classmate,  internationalist attitudes.  Just as threatening, it’s not clear which side of things the nephew’s aunt, fiercely loyal to her film director husband, leans toward.  It’s an intriguing setup, and, with options for action limited, the film, of necessity, concentrates on character rather than suspense or twisty plotting.  But to come off, Kurosawa needs to get details & tone just right, and here the film slips badly.  Little feels authentic to 1940, especially in how the cast present themselves which feels too modern.  And an over-polished, over-processed digital look, along with Kurosawa’s penchant for glaring light in his compositions (filling gaps in production values?*) stylistically draw us out of the story.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For Kurosawa in his element, CURE/’97  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/cure-1997.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Listed as a TV Movie on IMDb which may explain the disappointing visual texture.

IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958)

Astronaut Marshall Thompson, sole survivor on a mission to Mars gone wrong, gets picked up by a rescue team and heads home to face court-martial for the presumed murder of the rest of his crew.  Yikes!  But when the rescue team starts falling to the same monster one-by-one, his claims of innocence are validated in the worst possible way.  It’s find and destroy the stowaway monster or don’t make it back to Earth alive.  Double Yikes!  Easy to spot this as a ‘50s low-budget Sci-Fi precursor to ALIEN/’79, but it’s really more like a chump-change knock-off of Howard Hawks’ THE THING (FROM ANOTHER WORLD)/’51.  (Even the title a reflection.)  In the Hawks film (credited director Christian Nyby) an isolated team of Arctic scientists gets locked up with a killer vegetable.  (It looks like your typical humanoid flesh-eating monster, but it’s a plant.)  This one follows pretty closely (budget permitting), especially in highlighting the team effort so typical of Hawks.  But here, everyone’s locked inside a phallic-shaped multi-level spacecraft.  The big finale starts by trapping the monster on a middle floor so that, in a last ditch effort, two men can try a dangerous space walk down the outside ‘skin’ of the ship (untethered, using magnetized boots?) and work their way in on a level below the monster; the remaining survivors waiting on the top level.  This little film filled with decent ideas like this, and technically not badly accomplished.  That space walk featuring a dandy model shot, an example of hack director Edward L. Cahn rising all the way to acceptable mediocrity.  (Though blowing up grenades as defense inside a spacecraft an odd idea.)  And note two woman on-board as medical officers.  Okay, they also bus tables in the mess, serve up coffee refills to the men, and are objects of a romantic rivalry, but still . . . medical officers!  All told, the film not at all despicable.

DOUBLE-BILL:  As mentioned, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD/’51.

THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963)

For Baby Boomers, this is THE WWII prisoner-of-war action/adventure.  And, with its sharp mid-point pivot from comic comradery to sacrifice & atrocities (even with its famous tag-end uplift), something of a coming-of-age epiphany for a generation.  Its near three hours so well structured & paced by director John Sturges, working at the peak of his craft, you hardly feel it.*  Fun to see so many rising players being born or solidifying personalities.  Note our Italian poster plumping for Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson & James Coburn, in spite of billing order.*  Not that second-billed James Garner ain’t worthy, incongruously debonair in his clean white turtleneck among the drab captives.  The cool quotient in this film off the charts.  Yet what a lot of short actors among the Brits!  Most 5'5" or 5'6", Gordon Jackson a tower at 5'9".  McQueen & Bronson about the same; Garner & Coburn the only two topping 6'.  The story beats of the dig and escape by now so familiar, thru this and dozens of imitators, its continued freshness a surprise.  And if it’s more a great Pop experience than a great film, P.O.W. escape pics from Renoir, Bresson & Lean dwarf it, Sturges smart enough to grab a couple of things from Lean’s BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI/’55: James Donald as sobersided survivor as well as the use of a counter-intuitive jaunty theme to start us off.  There, the ‘Colonel Bogie’ March, here Elmer Bernstein’s upbeat earworm which he uses as leitmotif.  As to the many complaints about three or four Americans taking on roles carried out in real life by Brits, there’s films a’plenty to cover that slight.  Try THE PASSWORD IS COURAGE with Dirk Bogarde pulling triple duty in roles played here by Richard Attenborough, Steve McQueen & James Coburn. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-password-is-courage-1962.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Though apparently not distributed as a Road Show engagement (few saw commercial potential in the film), it certainly has the appearance of being designed for one.  Note the fade-to-black at about 1'31" which would have been used in many countries that divide all their films into two acts.  Stateside it was likely used by Drive-Ins for a concession break.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Bronson & Coburn got rare roles worthy of their much underestimated talent in Walter Hill’s debut as writer/director, HARD TIMES/’75.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/hard-times-1975.html

MAN WITHOUT A STAR (1955)

Even the title doesn’t mean quite what you think in this deceptively non-standard Western from King Vidor, his final Hollywood production after 40+ years at it.  (His last two films multinational epics.)  That eponymous ‘star’ not, as you’d expect, a Sheriff’s or Marshall’s badge, but a reference to a person’s lode star, something Kirk Douglas is still searching for as this cattleman drifts from one job to another in the old West.  Instead, seeking direction from the next opportunity or person he meets.  Currently, he’s ridin’ the rails in Texas where he hops a train with naive kid William Campbell and starts teaching him the ropes . . . literally.*  The two, after dodging a false murder rap, landing on a big cattle ranch just as a range war is about to break out.  Not as usual cattlemen vs. homesteaders, but Free Range ranchers vs. Barb Wire ranchers.  (In this film, the ‘good guys’ are debatably on the ‘wrong’ side of the law.)  And Kirk, against them for personal reasons, just might end up fighting on their side; again for personal reasons.  Chase Borden’s almost subversive script pulling the rug out on one issue, and character, after another: past lover Claire Trevor; tough-as-nails new ranch owner antagonist/putative lover Jeanne Crain; old enemy/current confederate Richard Boone, and so on.  Vidor letting everyone play in the broadest manner imaginable, wide as the Texas panhandle.  (That’s a hundred & sixty miles!)  So broad, you half expect a musical number to break out.  And why not, OKLAHOMA! was likely playing in the theater down the block.  Heck, this film’s got Frankie Laine on a hokey title track and when Kirk does breaks out in song, accompanying himself on the banjo, the film briefly feels stylistically balanced.  (Kirk darn good at both, even better showing off some gun-slinger tricks.)  An intriguing uneven film, worthy of King Vidor.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Campbell, playing the tenderest of tenderfoot/greenest of greenhorns, over-parted.  Going for the ‘aw-shucks’ manner of a young Robert Walker, he just seems a bit dense.  And that makes Kirk’s tender loving care all but inexplicable without adding in an element that takes us past brotherly affection and toward loverly attraction.  Same situation seen in Howard Hawks’ THE BIG SKY/’52 where Dewey Martin partnered with Douglas.  There, bromantic elements between the boys far stronger than anything happening on the heterosexual front.  Both films see Kirk pretty much abandoning his own wants to ease his pal’s path to sexual fulfillment thru sacrificial celibacy.   How much intentional never to be known.

KÔSHIKEI / DEATH BY HANGING (1968)

Provocateur, third-rail enthusiast, chameleon, Japanese director Nagisa Ôshima only connected a couple of times with American audiences (IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES/’76; MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE/’83), but this earlier work might have left a mark if not for that off-putting title.  The ‘hanging’ comes early and doesn’t go as planned since the executed man, a Korean immigrant who killed and then raped two girls (Oshima not interested in making things easy), has so disassociated from himself that he can’t die.  He’s not only innocent (maybe), he’s not him!  Whatever are prison officials & military officers to do?  Reenacting the crime to jog the condemned man’s memory, these middle-aged men look ridiculous, the tone Black Farce rather than Black Comedy, the style of acting leaning more Three Stooges/John Belushi Samurai than Shavian debate re Capital Punishment and Japanese prejudice toward Koreans.  Shot in tight quarters, up-close & personal, Oshima stages this dead serious subject as crisscrossing slapstick, eventually bringing in a love interest for a bit of chaste bedtime action.  She says she’s his sister, but maybe she’s one of the victims, or perhaps a collective figment of imagination.  Then there’s the ‘closet case’ Chaplain who starts making passes when he gets drunk.  Ôshima’s circular anti-logic runs out of fuel halfway in, but the misterioso ending helps even if the film never rises to the level of hilarity and disquieting absurdity (like a one-tenth scale model version of the War Room sequence in Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE/’64*) Ôshima must have been aiming for.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Ôshima’s Kubrickian tendencies clearly seen in 1967's SING A SONG OF SEX/’67.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/nihon-shunka-ko-sing-song-of-sex-1967.html

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE / L'UCCELLO DALLE PIUME DI CRISTALLO (1970)

You’d never guess this ‘Giallo‘ (the color saturated Blood & Busts Italian horror genre) was Dario Argento’s debut as writer/director.  On the other hand, you’d easily guess that Giallo would become his signature form.  Immediately assured behind the camera, and smart enough to land Ennio Morricone to score and Vittorio Storaro as cinematographer.  That said, the film now more interesting for its influence than for itself.  A tricked up serial killer/police procedural with American-in-Rome Tony Musante getting a glimpse of the murderer in action and, once the police figure out he’s not the killer, helping as amateur investigator and as bait.  Same goes for his live-in Suzy Kendall.  But the clock is ticking two ways, first because the killer strikes again (and again) and second because these two are about to split for the States.  Argento keeps everything as pulpy as possible (there’s an art galley with darty objets d’art at the center of things), but Jeez-Louise these two lovebirds are nonchalant about the dangerous situation they’re involved in.  They never met a dark staircase, alley, second-floor, locked window or basement they didn’t want to step into.  You start rooting for the mysterious slasher to rid the world of these dopes.  Interestingly, while Musante regularly exposes his chest, Kendall keeps demurely covered.  Now that’s unusual in these Italian things.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  What does hold up are some off-the-wall supporting characters.  Especially, one secretive avant-garde artist and a stutterer who uses the phrase ‘So Long’ to get ‘unstuck.'  And keep a lookout for the Royal Albert Hall assassin from Hitchcock's THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH 1954 remake.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE (2023)

In a big set piece (from a film that’s nothing but big set action pieces), comic relief player Simon Pegg races to defuse a nuclear bomb hidden on a conveyor belt in the luggage area of an international airport terminal.  Working the puzzle-lock open in the nick of time, he opens the thing to reveal . . . an empty cylinder.  Yikes!  I mean . . . Phew!  The sequence, part of a fugal action climax to the first act, emblematic of this self-indulgent tease of a film (all sound & fury, signifying nothing . . .. not even entertainment) that asks us to wade thru nearly three hours of chaff as down payment to PART TWO a couple of years hence.  Truth is, in spite of continuing commercial success (though far less this time), the M:I series has been in decline since star/producer Tom Cruise switched from the inventive lighter touch of director Brad Bird (series best #4*) and went with Christopher McQuarrie’s violent/jokey OTT action stylings.  The move fully catching up with him now.  The film less plot than plot points: a lost Russian stealth submarine; a fanciful interlocking double-key to an AI doomsday machine that will integrate a worldwide super computer system; renegade spies (and one sexy pickpocket); shouldn’t be a game stopper, but constant ‘Top This’ thrill seeking palls in a character vacuum.  Cruise, as usual, showing no chemistry, not even with himself.  Perhaps because of the way his face looks different in almost every scene.  (Flushed or bloated or weirdly smooth or weary or neckless.)  It makes you think he’s about to pull it off, like one of the film’s latex masks, at any moment.  Maybe underneath there’s another empty cylinder.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Bird’s GHOST PROTOCOL the M:I film Cruise & Co. were always shooting for.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/07/mission-impossible-ghost-protocol.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  A big vehicular race in Rome, especially on The Spanish Steps, so devoid of crowds, you wonder if they’ve introduced a time travel element and gone back to 1953.   ALSO: While the Stealth Sub may be advanced State-of-the-Art 2023, damned if it doesn’t still make those comforting Sonar PINGs we’ve heard since sound came to film in the 1920s.  Okay by me, some things can’t be improved upon.

SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON (2002)

Considered one of the better (late) hand-drawn animations from DreamWorks (the hideous CGI of SHREK started the previous year), SPIRIT generated decent box-office, straight-to-tape sequels & computer games.  Alas, its relative success tells us more about DreamWorks’ standards of achievement than the film’s.  It’s all wild horses, sympathetic Lakota Native Americans and nasty U.S. Calvary in a post-Civil War West, told from an Equine POV.  Likely ‘pitched’ as a naturalistic fable without dialogue for the horses or English from the Lakota, somebody got cold feet so the Indians speak English while lead horse Spirit narrates via incessant voice-over (a suspiciously articulate Matt Damon).  After an idyllic prologue for Spirit & herd, our prize stallion is caught by horse-soldiers, refuses all mounts, tortured back at the fort, then escapes with a Young Brave.  Taken to the Lakota camp, he woos a fetchin’ pinto, but before heading home, more bold adventures, played against fanciful Monument Valley backgrounds.  (Where’s Road Runner & Coyote when you need ‘em?)  By now, any stylistic consistency in action, drawing or storyline has devolved into absurdity: fashion-plate eyebrows for the horses, decoupling trains without opposable thumbs, the swimming skills of Johnny Weissmuller . . . where did our naturalistic fable go?  Lost amongst wistful Brian Adams’ songs Phil Collins would have disowned.  Or perhaps gone missing in the second-tier animation that can’t keep physical connection between foreground & background or get hoofs in synch with ground covered.  Animated ‘naturalism’ can mean many things, from the Japanese watercolor backgrounds of BAMBI to the needle-sharp Serengeti grasslands of THE LION KING.  But you’ve got to choose one style and stick to it.  This one’s all over the place.  The only consistent thing it does is pander.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  For a recent fanciful animated Western, one that works by holding to a consistent style, try RANGO/’11 (Gore Verbinsky; Johnny Depp).

ENNIO (2021)

Film composer John Williams, still active at 92, recently had a fitting birthday tribute when the head of Sony Pictures renamed the old M-G-M Culver City Music Building for him, calling Williams filmdom’s GOAT composer.  But is he?  This over-indulgent film biography of Ennio Morricone (1928 - 2020), by CINEMA PARADISO director Giuseppe Tornatore begs to differ.* And largely makes the case, helped by an astounding 532 film composing credits, as long as we confine the argument to post Golden Age Hollywood.  Speed-talked by a host of film pros, some actors but mostly behind the screen directors & fellow composers (look fast or you’ll miss the briefly held on-screen title intros), the film is too long on running time and encomiums, too short on musical analysis (one guy goes into raptures about Morricone using a petal point!) and how throwaway genre crap was used by Morricone to work out new approaches.  Nearly as old and active as Williams when he died in 2020, Morricone only adjusted late in life to his film scores being just as (if not more) important as his formal concert music.  Like Williams in this respect, there’s been little acceptance of their non-film work.  Ignored by the Academy Awards for decades (hard to fathom why everyone puts such an emphasis on Oscars’ fickle ways), Morricone finally got two ‘pity’ awards.  A Lifetime Achievement in 2007 and a competitive statue for THE HATEFUL EIGHT/’15.  (Ironically, beating out John Williams’ on a STAR WARS nomination.)  To this film’s credit, there’s  stunningly sourced excerpts (especially from those hard to remaster early TechniScope Westerns), and the film should help point you in the right direction: those ubiquitous early Westerns truly revolutionary . . . and fun! (not only the Sergio Leone ones), even better, a batch of over-praised, pretentious, big budget sprawls Morricone did from of the mid-‘70s to the mid ‘80s. muddled films with soundtracks from a genius.  (We'll never tell, but you’ll know ‘em when you see the excerpts.)  These two periods show Morricone at his GOATest.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The indulgence (at 2'36") perhaps not surprising since Tornatore just about owes his career to Morricone, whose ‘madeleine’ of a score for PARADISO turned Tornatore’s wet, sentimental pic into a hit.

RIDERS OF JUSTICE / RETFÆRDIGHEDENS RYTTERE (2020)

Coming out just as ANOTHER ROUND (DRUK)/’20 blew up internationally, especially for lead Mads Mikkelsen, and having to the fight head-winds of COVID closures, this exceptional (and exceptionally) violent/funny shaggy-dog revenge tale hid in plain sight without making its mark Stateside as it had elsewhere.  A pity, as all those stars on our poster prove entirely deserved.   Co-writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen (past & future Mikkelsen collaborator) doesn’t put a foot wrong or miss a beat in a film that swings wildly in tone from punishing tragedy to wild shoot-‘em-up.  Lean & mean as a Don Siegel film, it also sports a finesse not much seen in Siegel, with Mikkelsen as a borderline psychotic war vet, back home to see his daughter after his wife is killed in some freak subway incident.  Only problem, a trio of ‘on-the-spectrum’ statistician geniuses are convinced it was a planned killing by a criminal outfit known as the Riders of Justice.  A court witness against them was the real target while one of the trio, now suffering from survivor’s guilt, was collateral damage along with Mikkelsen’s dead wife.  Falling into an uneasy working relationship with the easily triggered Mikkelsen, the computer nerds download enough info to see that the strongly organized gang is just too big for a mere four men to take on . . . but maybe not for one when that guy is a one-man wrecking crew (think Navy Seals) and as motivated for revenge as Mikkelsen is.  One smart film festival gave Mikkelsen top acting honors for this and DRUK, but you’re not gonna get many props for something this enjoyably disreputable.  Even with Jensen getting top perfs from everyone on board in some honestly surprising turns.  A young Ukrainian ‘rent boy’ and Mikkelsen’s slightly chubby teen daughter both standouts among the fine, intensely likable crowd working thru some damn clever twists that really add up for a change.  And those three computer guys?  They just might be the Scarecrow, Tinman & Lion of R-Rated mayhem.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: Shame on Hollywood for not picking this one up for remake and going for DRUK which will never work.  (Chris Rock likely directing Leonardo DeCaprio.  Yikes!)  And even more shame for seeing just how richly textured & beautifully made a big commercial actioner can be done for a cool 5 mill.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/02/druk-another-round-2020.html

THE CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (1972)

Fourth of the original five PotA films, made when sequels were still second-class citizens in Hollywood’s primogenitor pecking order; all but the First Born progressively demoted down to programmer status.*  This one something of a dark course correction, grimmest in the initial series after some mildly comic notes in #3.  No plot to speak of, just an extended prologue for human mentor Ricardo Montalban to go thru yards of exposition getting advanced chimp Roddy McDowell (and us) up to speed on the Brave New World of 1991 where apes have gone from house pets to non-unionized labor & servants.  Speech-endowed Caesar (that’s McDowell, playing his own son) is radicalized by this 12 YEARS A SLAVE society (all PotA films being race allegories) to becomes defacto leader of a fast escalating revolt.  The Birth of an Ape Nation against Don Murray’s murderous dictator.  With little complicating forward motion (no cute kids to rescue, no romance, one gag in the whole pic - a lady smoker says ciggies no fun now that we know they aren’t bad for you), there’s little but riots & electrode torture to follow.  Director J. Lee Thompson camouflages with choppy edits and handheld camera panic when the situations beg for Leni Riefenstahl or Sergei Eisenstein parody.  Thompson fallen a good distance from the glory days of TIGER BAY/’59, GUNS OF NAVARONE/’61 and CAPE FEAR/’62.  Yet, in spite of what’s missing, the ninety-some minutes do hold you.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *James Bond the main exception on standard Hollywood procedure for sequels at the time.  A few bucked the system, but the tipping point on how to treat a Hollywood sequel was truly sealed when Steven Spielberg, having passed on JAWS 2/’78, kept the reins for THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK/’97.  The power of I.P. too profitable to be ignored.

DOUBLE-BILL: Not seen here, but RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES/’11, from the rebooted series, is said to be a remake of CONQUEST.

PAST LIVES (2023)

Much touted debut for South Korean writer/director Celine Song is a romantic triptych about missed opportunity, roads not taken, the one that got away, alternate destiny.   Formatted in twelve-year gaps, we first meet Seung Ah and Hae Sung in Korea as top-of-their-class 12-yr-olds; then web bonding at 24 after she moved to the States and they lost touch; finally in a physical reunion at 36 when he comes to visit (she’s married; he’s just out of a relationship) in NYC.  Song, with cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, shows a bad case of Kar-Wai Wong envy, loading up on swoony regret, but does bring some real insight in the middle section when Seung Ah (now called Nora and finding her new self at a writers’ colony) shuts down a quickly growing internet intimacy with Hae Sung that’s starting to fill up too much brain space.  But once the cycle plays out, country and culture separation seem neither as interesting, let alone defining, as Song seems to think.  12-yr-old school chums lose ‘best friends’ after moving to another county let alone another country.  Or even when staying put.  Chances are, physical separation and lack of contact are the only factors in keeping them mentally bonded.  (Absence makes the heart grow fonder not exactly a fresh concept.)  The film nice enough, especially the guy in the case, warm to her prickly, and reasonably well observed even if the scenic New York locales she takes him to seem pretty square for the hip playwright Nora has supposedly become.  If she wrote this up for the stage, it could be called MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING if that title weren’t already taken.

COTTON COMES TO HARLEM (1970) A RAGE IN HARLEM (1991)

Best known for hard-boiled crime novels with NYPD detectives Grave Digger Jones & Coffin Ed Johnson (COTTON has Godfrey Cambridge & Raymond St. Jacques doing Good Cop/Bad Cop honors; RAGE’s cops are supporting players), author Chester Himes’s discouragingly small Hollywood footprint is led by these two down & dirty violent comedies.*  Actor/writer Ossie Davis made his directing debut in COTTON, not quite in control of a Harlem treasure hunt to find a stash of money hidden inside a bale of cotton.  The fun of the thing is in the tasty cast and rude atmosphere as the police, a smooth-talking Prosperity Preacher, a vicious gang of thugs, church ladies, and various Black Power revolutionary political parties (rivals with activist uniformed associates) rush to find the missing bale (and its contents), happy to break a few heads along the way.  With real Harlem locations & hosts of fresh-to-the-screen Black actors (Redd Foxx, Calvin Lockhart, Cleavon Little) in on the action (tasty white guys, too: Lou Jacobi, Eugene Roche), it’s a fun, fast-paced mess.  Worth it just to see Cambridge in a proper leading role. 

RAGE is something else entirely.*  Directed with flair and action chops by Bill Duke (alas without real Harlem locations off a script by novices without further credits), you need to give it a chance to settle in after a superb (and superbly violent) prologue sets up the trunk of gold sexy Robin Givens hauls to NYC.  Landing on her feet between step-brothers Gregory Hines’s two-bit hustler and Forest Whitaker’s sainted undertaker, she uses them as buffer between Danny Glover’s dog-loving ‘Numbers’ King and the surviving thugs from the prologue, still in pursuit.  Loads of startling character turns, none better than a menacing Badja Djola (in the role of a lifetime) as a cold-blooded killer in love for real.  The whole film pulling itself into a steam roller of pacey comic action, style & expressive color.  Only Whitaker disappoints, too bulky to get his laughs or make us believe Givens is serious about him.  (Where’s 1970s Richard Pryor when you need him?)

DOUBLE-BILL:  Still acting, if no longer directing, in his 80s, go back to THE KILLING FLOOR/’84 to see just how quickly Duke found his feet working behind the camera.

RAAI/LINK:  *Fresh appreciation for Himes just now, as per this NYTimes piece.  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/books/review/chester-himes-essential-harlem-detectives.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *How many times did Quentin Tarantino watch this David Duke film before he made RESERVOIR DOGS/’92 and PULP FICTION/’94?

ORION AND THE DARK (2024)

Latest NetFlix animation, adapted from a well-received Emma Yarlett picture-book for kids, the film about as anodyne as they come in story, style, characterization & life’s lessons, makes you understand why the streaming companies refer to ‘product’ as ‘content.’   The term drives ‘creatives’ nuts, but too often, all too accurate.  Young Orion, an overly sensitive junior high type, is scared of just about everything: bullies, the ocean, girls, the locker room, most of all The Dark.  So when a nightmare grabs him by the imagination and partner’s him with a big ol’ anthropomorphic realization of ‘Dark’ (along with Dark’s nighttime pals), Orion’s got no choice but to confront his fears.  And, wouldn’t you know it, Dark has similar issues of inadequacy behind his bluff bulk.  And it’s just when they reach this point of understanding that Orion sees the light, metaphorically and on the horizon.  Will Break of Day send him back to square one?  Hoping to sabotage this one-track narrative, the production team got Charlie Kaufman (ETERNAL SUNSHINE/’04) to complicate structure with a meta approach (is it in the book?) that twists the plot with a linear back-flip halfway along, a retroactive flashback for Adult Orion & teen daughter less mind-bending than slightly creepy.*  The bigger surprise is why no one involved thought of traveling way North (or South) where it’s ALL NIGHT (or ALL DAY) for extended periods of the year.  (Does NetFlix/DreamWorks have the usual development obstacles or only internal focus groups?)  The one fresh element here comes in its suburban background realizations, designed to look like stage flats rather than multi-plane camera setups.  Very cool, very painterly.

SCRDEWY THOGHT OF THE DAY:  *It does answer the question what could possibly be more unsettling than thinking about your parents having sex?  Answer: Going back in time to bud with Dad just as he’s hitting puberty and having his first crush on a school classmate.  Gross!

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932)

THE Dark & Stormy Night film of all Dark & Stormy Night films . . . and surely the funniest.  Not in the nudge-nudge/wink-wink manner of a typical comic-horror pic, but playing out like some cocktail party gone madly wrong.  Fresh off the original FRANKENSTEIN/’31, eccentric British director James Whale gives a lunatic spin (especially in the first half) to macabre doings as five travelers (Charles Laughton, Lilian Bond, Gloria Stuart, Raymond Massey, Melvyn Douglas) find unwelcome shelter from a fierce storm & washed out roads at the first manse they spot.  A once great house, now in reduced circumstances, Boris Karloff (in a role that inspired Chas. Addams’s ‘Lurch’ the butler) reluctantly lets them in to meet elderly siblings Eva Moore and Ernest Thesiger.  Fey & proper, Thesiger functions as tonal alter-ego to director Whale, spinning the enterprise toward dry comedy.  Upstairs, 102 yr-old Dad and crazy locked-up brother make later appearances.  Surprisingly, given the sheer oddness of the first two acts, Whale generates real scares in the third, simultaneously running three or four lines of dangerous action at a pace.  Whale’s technique always a bit bumpy on the editing, but here, lack of flow probably a plus.  And the film is simply too enjoyably nutty to pick at.  Instead, note the substitution of an old-fashioned hand-cranked wind machine for musical underscoring which Universal had yet to add to their films.  (They’d be last of the majors to do so.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Uncredited cinematographer Arthur Edeson (partnering Whale on FRANKENSTEIN and WATERLOO BRIDGE/’31) moved to M-G-M after this before he went on to his best known work at Warners (MALTESE FALCON/’41; CASABLANCA/’42; et al.).  Here showing an infinite charcoal grey scale and striking candle-lit portraiture a la Georges de la Tour.

THE SCAR OF SHAME (1929)

Final release from the short-lived Colored Players Film Corporation of Philadelphia.  Not as advertised ‘the first All-Colored Talking Picture’ (were sound elements added on?), but a ‘lost’ silent reclaimed by the Library of Congress.  But if the ‘Players’ were indeed All-Colored, behind the camera things were almost certainly All-White.  Including director Frank Peregini & Austrian-born scripter David Starkman.  An important distinction since the film’s main interest now lies not in story or technique, but in how it exposes poisonous attitudes within the Black community.  Accurate or hyped up for commercial appeal?  Colored Players’ regular leading man Harry Henderson is a rising Black musician living in a well-run boarding house who impulsively marries abused neighbor Ann Kennedy (in her only role), but refuses to let his well-bred mother meet the new wife as she’s ‘not from their caste.’   What does that mean?  Class?  Education?  Social set?  Family background?  Complexion?  With pride wounded by this slight (and physically wounded by a miss-aimed gun fired by her now jailed husband!), Kennedy falls into the orbit of another boarding house guest, a con-man with an immoral proposition to get a private gambling club up & running.  Meanwhile, the ‘ex’ has escaped from prison and is soon engaged to a proper young woman he can show to Mom.  Wouldn’t you know it, the new girl’s father is a regular at the very gambling club where the still married wife of his putative son-in-law works the customers.  Oh, what a tangled web . . .   Technically, this 1929 film (some sources list 1927), might have been made in the early ‘20s, not a pan, scan or tracking shot in sight.  And even a tight budget doesn’t explain the need for a series of long letters to wrap everything up.  But decent enough acting and those prejudicial attitudes on class and ‘caste’ hold more than enough interest to carry the film along.  Mostly an historic curiosity, but a most curious one.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  Donald Bogle’s TOMS, COONS, MULATTOES, MAMMIES, AND BUCKS, long the go-to tome for Black American Cinema, has felt inadequate to its subject for more than 50 years.  Anything better out there?

L'AILE OU LA CUISSE / THE WING OR THE THIGH? (1976)

Averaging three films a year since the ‘50s, standout French farceur Louis De Funes skipped 1972 only to return with the biggest, most exportable hit of his career in LES ADVENTURES DE RABBI JACOB/’73.*  Then promptly had a heart attack.  Off the screen for three years, he returned about 15 pounds lighter, still agile, still dyspeptic, very slightly tamer if no more refined, still broad & silly.  More importantly, still alarmingly funny enough of the time.  Here, he’s publisher & lead critic of a Michelin-like restaurant guide, a terror in the field & on the page, now prepping to hand over the works to pudgy son Coluche.  (Coluche also takes on some of his physical shtick, ‘slimed’ the way Funes had been in RABBI.)  This inheritance angle backed with two more storylines: Coluche is secretly working as a circus clown (rudely funny) and a food mogul who’s killing French cuisine passing off processed crap in place of real ingredients (only rude).  Comedy specialist Claude Zidi keeps it all moving in a ham-fisted way, even if the bright, flat lighting grows tiresome.  (Cinematographer Pierre Renoir capable of so much more.)  But by & large, and with guffaws mostly front-loaded, it made a successful return for De Funes.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *(Tiny personal note.)  Seen in Paris on release, LES ADVENTURES DE RABBI JACOB drew (with but one exception) the loudest, most consistent laughter of any film I have ever seen in a movie theater, topping THE GODFATHER at the French box-office that year.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/les-adventures-de-rabbi-jacob-1973.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Look for a short gag they’d never get away with today: De Funes’ and a waiter with Tourette’s Syndrome.  The food goes flying and a bottle of sparkling water is all shook up.  Typically for De Funes, it’s hit-and-run rather than properly developed.  To see what’s possible, W.C. Fields and the deaf & blind customer in IT’S A GIFT/’33.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y189-69cQPs    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/its-gift-1933.html