LE COUPERET / THE AX (2005)

From the Donald Westlake novel, a satiric black comedy on modern business practices, written & directed by, of all people, politically-minded, Greek-born/French-based Costa-Gavras, of Z/’69 and MISSING/’82.  (And note, a Korean remake, NO OTHER CHOICE/’25, on the horizon.*)  A cleverly lethal fable about solid company man José Garcia downsized out his cushy job as top exec at a paper manufacturing company.  Now in his forties, with wife, two kids & a mortgage, he’s two years on the job hunt and running out of opportunities.  Too many mid-level types trying for the same few positions.  Nothing to do but eliminate the competition . . . literally! Make that lethally.  Collecting resumes thru a phony job search ad, he culls replies to find likely hires and moves fast to bump off the best and improve his chances.  Costa-Gavras no comedy technician (don’t hold your breath for compound gags), but he does get his points & laughs across by loudly charging forward.  With nice complications at home with the family and nice suspense when he hits the road for hits.  José Garcia’s dispensable exec carries the film as the sort of hangdog optimist Alberto Sordi brilliantly overplayed in ‘60s Italian films and Jack Lemmon annoyingly overplayed in ‘70s Hollywood.  (Garcia even looks like a bit like Lemmon.)  A tricky postman-always-rings-twice ending isn’t properly set up, but the film mostly comes across.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Easy to imagine a wilder, weirder, funnier version catching fire in ways this one doesn’t.  Perhaps the Korean remake will take us there.

BLIND ALLEY (1939)

Though better known by its 1948 remake (THE DARK PAST/’48 - William Holden; Lee J. Cobb - dir. Rudolph Maté*), the first version of James Warwick’s B’way play is the better film.  Or rather, makes the better impression.  Less from quality than timing; a decade’s growth in audience sophistication on psychiatry making the story’s simplistic underpinnings, still fresh in 1939, looking shopworn a decade later.  Freud still alive when this opened, ‘the talking cure,’ here at its most Freudian (kill Dad/bed Mom) something of a magic trick that could happen in a single ten-minute session.  Well-directed by Charles Vidor (dig the film's negative-image dream sequence), with a powerfully unbalanced Chester Morris as the escaped killer (playing in vicious James Cagney mode and getting away with it) who takes Professor/Shrink Ralph Bellamy and his lake house guests hostage while he and his gang wait for a rescue boat.  And what a nifty cast of crack pots on both sides: Ann Dvorak, the moll who wants Morris cured of his debilitating nightmares till she realizes he might lose his dependency on her; a cool, calculating Milburn Stone before he was Doc on GUNSMOKE; Melville Cooper’s wised-up cuckold showing unexpected toughness; even Joseph Mankiewicz’s real life psychologically fragile wife Rose Stradner as Bellamy’s frightened film wife.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *As mentioned, remade as THE DARK PAST.  OR: The fascinating first Hollywood film to seriously tackle psychiatric cures & sanatoriums, PRIVATE WORLDS/’35 (Claudette Colbert; Charles Boyer; dir - Gregory L Cava) where the treatments now look absurd, but the psychological interactions between the staff show somebody knew the score.

THE EXILES (1961)

Essential urban ethnography from writer/director Kent Mackenzie goes inside a closed world of directionless Native Americans who’ve left old ways and lands behind to settle in scruffy L.A. nabs with little but temp jobs, tomorrow’s elusive promise, tonight’s bar crawl and overnight ceremonial gatherings to rehash old customs under an alcoholic buzz.  A pair of thirty-something men get special attention over one very long night, driving around a noirish cityscape as they search for comradery, booze and likely dating prospects.  The women far more integrated into the commercial world, but given few options in this dating scene.  Their reluctant choices only getting worse as the evening and the alcohol level wear on. Shot in the manner of a documentary, this ‘planned’ naturalism goes back to documentary pioneer Robert J. Flaherty’s NANOOK OF THE NORTH/’22.  And this film might be too depressing to watch if the presentation didn’t come with such compositional artistry, capturing in crepuscular tones lost manners and dingy neighborhoods where Mackenzie so brilliantly shot & edited with Robert Kaufman in some of the same out of the way L.A. areas where they started with their award-winning student film BUNKER HILL 1956.  Check out the almost surreal funicular used in both films and previously seen in Anthony Mann’s THE GLENN MILLER STORY/’54 and James Whale’s fascinating Pre-Code IMPATIENT MAIDEN/’32.  That last a real find . . . if you can find it!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For an East Coast view of another ‘under-belly’ society, ON THE BOWERY/’56 is a more traditional documentary that holds to non-scripted storytelling.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/01/on-bowery-1956.html  ALSO:  Mackenzie’s student film BUNKER HILL/’56 mentioned above is included in the fine Milestone DVD restored edition of EXILES.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING (2025)

More chaff.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Lots of notes taken while watching this, but after rereading our post for Part One, they just seemed superfluous.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/02/mission-impossible-dead-reckoning-part.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Ancillary markets and financial benefits from a refreshed franchise can’t make a $400 mill budget (plus 100 for ads, publicity and opening costs) pay off on a Worldwide gross of 600 mill.  (Actual returns about half that.)  Even with Hollywood accounting it comes up short.

REPRISE (2006)

Super debut for Norwegian writer/director Joachim Trier, now known from THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD/’21* and currently in theaters with SENTIMENTAL VALUE/’25 (not seen here).  This first feature a bumpy journey-to-adulthood for a tight group of ‘bros’ (girls mostly on the side and some of the male sexism surprising for 2006), but mainly concerned with a pair of yin/yang BFFS, bound by their shared literary bent.  Sunshiny in looks and personality, Eric (Espen Klouman Høiner) is the one with natural talent while the perpetually overcast Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) shows promise but no follow thru.  Falling into clinical depression, Phillips’s manic side comes out when he begins a hot & cold relationship with Kari (Viktoria Winge).  Whisking her off to Paris for romance when he’s not bailing out entirely for months at a time.  Eric not much more constant with longtime steady Lillian.  Trier playing mind games with all relationships thru spot on character detail and linear tricks in continuity by developing episodes that only might be happening.  Listen up for the use of  narration to clue you in when we jump between what’s real and what’s narrative fancy.  Even using the technique right at the end to add poignance to possibility.  As if he were saying ‘isn’t it pretty to think so.’   A remarkably confident introduction from Trier.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  * As mentioned, WORST PERSON.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/12/verdens-verste-menneske-worst-person-in.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *As with many debuts, Trier’s influences float to the surface like gnocchi announcing they’re ready to eat.  I’d reckon Truffaut/French New Wave are on the menu.

FORCE OF ARMS (1951)

Third of four pairings for William Holden and Nancy Olson after they clicked in SUNSET BOULEVARD/’50 which was only her second film,  None competes with that Billy Wilder classic (but try UNION STATION:  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/union-station-1950.html), while this WWII romance, set around the lethal Battle of SAN PIETRO (infamously faked as a documentary by John Huston in ‘45) is solidly unexceptional.  On loan from Paramount, Holden/Olson are at Warners where a still lively Michael Curtiz directs and, with cinematographer Ted McCord and editor Owen Marks, does a bang-up job integrating real war footage from Italy with studio mock ups.  Interesting story, too, as Holden & company, on a brief leave from the front, dive in to all the Italian specialties: food, vino, girls.  All but Holden, blindsided after an ill-tempered encounter with Stateside WAC Lt. Olson goes nowhere fast as she’s still recovering from the death of her last attachment.  Naturally, the bickering hides a mutual attraction.  And when called back early, he’s lost his edge; the built up calloused edge he gets from not really caring about anything.  Love can be a danger to your health.  The script can’t quite live up to the concept, but you fill in enough of what’s missing to make it worth your time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The combination of post-WWII frankness and a still enforced Hollywood Production Code bowdlerizes cuss words so that, for example, FUCK becomes FLUFF.   As in: Situation Normal All Fluffed Up.  When Olson says it, FLUFF sounds, if anything, dirtier than FUCK.  Downright pornographic.

OLD HENRY (2021)

There’s no question Westerns have been having a moment over the past decade or so.  Largely out of favor not so long ago, they remain hit & miss on the big screen, but are all over the place on home screens.*  And it’s not entirely Taylor Sheridan's doing!  Such resurrections need a nickname on the order of ‘60a Spaghetti Westerns, the anti-Westerns of the’50s or the post-WWII psychological Westerns of the late-‘40s.  These days, seemingly half debut on NetFlix only to quickly disappear.  But NetFlix Westerns not very catchy.  Why not Vacuum Westerns, since most get made solely to fill vacuums in scheduling quotas on streaming platforms?  Not that Vacuum Westerns need be pejorative.  Take this recent Oater, a sharp chamber piece from writer/director Potsy Ponciroli who deserves credit right from the start by forgoing ubiquitous stranger-comes-to-town tropes to focus on hardscrabble farmer Tim Blake Nelson, widowed and living alone with his disaffected teenage son, coming across an injured man with a bag of stolen cash.  Taking him home to recuperate (or preferably die), Blake assumes a posse will soon show to claim the guy and the loot.  But a posse of Sheriff & Deputies or a posse of bank-robbers?  The same question might apply to the injured man.  Lawman or outlaw, possibly a turncoat from the gang.  Meeting the challenge, mostly on his own, but helped (if that’s the word) by his all too eager boy and his neighboring brother-in-law.  Can he trust the recovering injured man to help?  And what’s behind the old farmer’s personal confidence and unexpected competence with weapons?  The son had no idea he even owned them.  Henry has a trick or two up his sleeve; a secret past so unexpected it’s less character twist than personal triple lutz.  Tim Blake Nelson, looking even shorter than his 5'5", with a rare leading role easily walks off with the film.  And it might be more to walk off with if director Ponciroliis had better control of P.O.V. and a more distinctive film technique.  More like you’d see in a Budd Boetticher B-Western or that Delmar Daves owned in his 3:10 TO YUMA/’57 days.  Still, this one makes for a good 'Vacuum Western.'  Though that title no help.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Kevin Costner’s late career hit in Sheridan’s YELLOWSTONE and hubristic miss with DOA big screen HORIZON/’24 exemplifies the risk.

THE HOLLOW CROWN (2016)

Shakespeare’s series of British history plays, the ones that cover The War of the Roses (RICHARD II; HENRY IV - PARTS 1 & 2; HENRY V; HENRY VI - Parts 1, 2, 3; RICHARD III - though not written in that order) have been tempting completest directors for decades.*  But they can be a tough go, especially since the saga begins with drippy Richard II (modern queer emphasis not a big help).  And because the three that were written last (HENRYs IV & V) show such a staggering advancement in dramatic craft, each a masterpiece of plotting, poetry & prose . . . plus Falstaff, they tend to outshine everything else.  Fortunately history’s chronological order ends with Richard III, written relatively early but with a scene-stealing/fourth-wall breaking villain for the ages.  The epic idea of doing all eight plays never fails, even if it never really works.  Or so till now with this lightly abridged compendium from the BBC.  A bit rearranged and textually amplified for clarity (what a kick to be able to parse what the heck’s going on and who’s who in those early HENRY VI plays!), even more fun to watch just about every possible U.K. Shakespearean (other than Kenneth Branagh, conspicuous by his absence) killing their roles under directors Dominic Cooke, Richard Eyre, Rupert Goold & Thea Sharrock.  Who knew PBS Masterpiece Mystery guys like Tom Hiddleston (Prince Hal), Adrian Dunbar (Plantagenet) and Anton Lesser (Exeter) were such natural Shakespeareans?  All the expected names also standouts, other than Simon Russell Beale whose Falstaff never connects.  Pace this one out to your preference (episodes already come in various lengths though full episodes last an average 2 and a quarter hours.  Great stuff for fans, newbies and specialists.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Orson Welles’ attempt was called FIVE KINGS on stage which he eventually brought down to TWO KINGS for FALSTAFF/CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT/’65.  Barely released when made, now universally hailed.  Its battle sequence, in particular, like nothing e’er seen at the time.  While now, just about every Shakespeare film has a battle scene stylistically copied from it.  HOLLOW CROWN with half a dozen.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/chimes-at-midnight-aka-falstaff-1965.html

TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! / ÁTAME! (1989)

After capping his scabrous, generational page-turning early films with the commercially friendlier international breakthru, WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN/’88, Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodóvar began codifying his signature OTT style, as if he preferred being an adjective, Almodóvaresque, rather than a filmmaker,   It took about three films for him to shake it off (see THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET/’96*) and start putting out the enviable series of mature masterpieces that continue today.  Meanwhile, we have these near parodies, not without their charms (did Antonio Banderas’s eyes ever look more caramel?; Victoria Abril ever more physically abandoned?), but what a tired tale he tells.  It’s the old Women Want To Be Dominated tropes.  Here with Banderas a mentally unstable orphan, just released from a criminal sanatarium (he apparently pity-fucked his way out) who meets-cute with Abril by beating her up after she tries to slam the door in his face.  Hey!, he’s got control issues.  A nice guy under the violence, they soon meet-cute again on a film set and while she doesn’t recall the man, she’ll eventually recall the fuck.  (What is he doing down there?)  Naturally, she succumbs post-kidnapping, that’s why he ties her up/ties her down, before these two (plus her sister) sing their way toward a happy future.  Much of this is meant to play ironically or as farce, but it’s still a heavy lift for what are now stale Almodóvar stylistics he’s outgrown.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Permission granted to skip directly to FLOWER OF MY SECRET and Almodóvar’s resurrection.  And for the early work, still too little seen, try MATADOR/’86.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/flower-of-my-secret-1995.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/04/matador-1986.html

OR: Troubled guy/pretty girl kidnapping, served plain, William Wyler’s THE COLLECTOR/’65.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-collector-1965.html

PRESENT LAUGHTER (2019)

One of Noël Coward’s more indestructible plays.  On B’way alone, a success for Coward, Clifton Webb, George C. Scott, Frank Langella (perfectly cast), Victor Garber and most recently Kevin Kline.  Here, Andrew Scott is stage star Garry Essendine, just turned forty and about to leave on a long tour when he finds himself, along with his theatrical circle of friends, stuck in his swanky apartment playing out a French Sex farce of his own making for real.  Secretary, housekeeper, valet, overnight ‘guest’, ex-wife, manager & wife, everybody wants Essendine, his attention or a roll in the hay.  Smartly structured for first act clarity, second act conflict and third act hide-and-seek chases, this Live National Theatre production dives straight in with broad playing to its live audience (farce, don’cha you know) that takes a bit of getting used to, as well as sexual updating in character & motivation (one sex change and three now bi-sexual). that needs even more.   It still makes sense this way (it may even make more sense), but playing what had been SUBTEXT as TEXT, thins the texture.  Even in a farce, not something that helps Coward.  And it lends a self-congratulatory knowingness to what was meant to be closeted naughtiness.  Still, Scott gets his laughs and revels in his big speech on amateur playwrights while secretary Sophie Thompson makes like Maggie Smith (a nonpareil Cowardian) while Enzo Cilenti’s infatuated male (formerly female) lover grabs attention with a spot on Anton Walbrook accent.  But the play’s end now just an exhausted question mark.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Considering the changes in tone & text, shouldn’t there be a credit for adaptation?

MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH (1934)

Third of four filmings of Alice Hegan Rice’s popular/bathetic turn-of-the-last-century family drama, as hopelessly old-fashioned in 2025 as it must have looked on the Paramount lot in 1934.  Raising her brood in a ramshackle shack on the wrong side of town on a (chicken) wing & a prayer, eternal optimist Mrs. Wiggs expects Mr. Wiggs to return any moment with a Klondike fortune.  Till then, depending on the kindness of strangers to help her family and bedridden boy.  Directed by Norman Taurog, an Oscar-winning kid specialist who later became an Elvis specialist, it’s got Southern sentiment, lessons in prideful poverty and blather to spare.  Yet not without interest what with W.C. Fields in a rare ‘legit’ role* (third act comic relief as suitor to spinster neighbor Zasu Pitts), an old-fashioned vaudeville show that looks like the real thing (what a missed opportunity not to have Fields come on stage with a juggling act as his intro).  And, in her movie debut at 44, Pauline Lord (on B’way ANNA CHRISTIE; THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED; ETHAN FROME), one of the many stage legends of the 1920s & ‘30s who rarely (or never) got to film their famous roles . . . or any others.  (Think Ethel Barrymore, Katharine Cornell, Maude Adams, Gertrude Lawrence, Ina Claire, Lynn Fontanne, Adele Astaire.)  For Lord, the tears, uplift & sentiment a DOA career launch.  Yet, she’s fascinating.  None of that theatrical too big/too ‘hot’ for the camera.  Though turning matronly, she’s vocally & physically commanding without feeling untouchable.  Some less oppressive role might have set her up in the sort of distinguished support roles Ethel Barrymore played for a decade as a senior.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Next year, Fields would have his legit triumph playing Micawber in DAVID COPPERFIELD/’35.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/david-copperfield-1935.html

DREW: THE MAN BEHIND THE POSTER (2013)

Even if you’re not constantly looking for great movie poster art, its steady decline over the decades is obvious.  Hard to pinpoint the turning point, since memorable anomalies still pop up, but it surely started with the end of the old studio system in the ‘60s.  By the ‘80s, photoshopping and airbrushing had largely taken over from paint & brush storytelling.  Now, it’s down to a rotation of portraits, space rockets, uniforms and MARVEL.  So, doubly sad to read obits for two of the last great practitioners of the craft: Italy’s Renato Casaro and Hollywood’s Drew Struzan, dying about a month apart.*  Eric Sharkey’s Struzan docu is nothing special, but gets the job done, showing a lot of work, especially good at including putative poster campaigns that were turned down by studio execs who thought something less ‘artistic’ would sell more popcorn.  Fortunately, a George Lucas or a Steven Speilberg could sometimes step up and manage to find a spot for their preferred renderings in Special Editions or re-releases.  Sharkey goes a little light on Struzan’s peculiarities, a very likeable, but odd artistic fellow, and only does right by one of the two  major conflicts in the story: a fight over rights on 'lost' original art (that wasn't lost at all), and a non-Struzan poster for INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM that was eventually replaced by Struzan.*   Hagiographic interviews with famous actors & directors tell the rest, as do Struzan/Wife & Son, to bring this quiet and surprisingly quirky personality out.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  *In addition to individual obits, this appreciation neatly touches on the vast output of these two titans.  ALSO:  Can’t swear to it, but I think this is the TEMPLE OF DOOM poster that Lucas & Spielberg objected to as too dark in tone & personality.    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/movies/drew-struzan-renato-casaro-movie-posters.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/09/indiana-jones-and-temple-of-doom-1984.html

COUNTER-ESPIONAGE (1942)

Edward Dmytryk’s four decade directing career tends to get split into two unequal pieces: mid-list R.K.O. films of the ‘40s that punch above their weight, and the A-list films he made after his ‘Hollywood Ten’ purgatory which often punch below.  Not incorrect, but ignoring the programmers Dmytryk pumped out first.*  Like this ‘Lone Wolf’ number at Columbia with Warren William’s gentleman jewel thief doing his part for the war effort by going to London, along with amusingly dithering aide Eric Blore, not for diamonds & such, but to steal secret war plans from Sir Whomever.  The act a ruse to get on the ‘right’ side of the ‘wrong’ team, exposing a German spy ring in the heart of London.  Only problem, the letter of intent is destroyed when Sir Whomever is killed and now William has both the Germans and Scotland Yard after him.  With a perfect running time (1'18"), a real plot, clues you can follow and a stronger than usual cast, it’s one of the better Lone Wolf pics, even managing a decent romance for the daughter of Sir Whomever and the two suitors who work with him; one a spy.  Likely made as a second (or even third) feature, it may have been better than the headline pic.  Dmytryk fails to keep a couple of Stateside cops from overplaying, but gets everyone else to keep their chins up and their upper lips stiff.  Though having contract player Forrest Tucker play a continental spy was never going to work.  (On the other hand, a very young Lloyd Bridges just fine as a waiter in the German Spy ring.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Next year’s indie quickie, HITLER’S CHILDREN/’43, became a surprise hit and Dmytryk’s springboard out of Columbia programmers and into R.K.O.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/04/hitlers-children-1943.html

THE EXORCIST ii: THE HERETIC (1977)

A new documentary, BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL/’25 (not seen here), now hunting a distributor, takes a look at what went wrong with the sequel to THE EXORCIST.  (Spoiler Alert: Everything!)  So, what better time to size up this universally reviled flop?  Hollywood’s top example of self-inflicted ‘franchise-icide’ till JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX came along.*   Would it seem better now?  Nah, still plenty lousy.  But reaction currently leans more toward sorrow than anger.  Quite the opposite of FOLIE.  Director John Boorman must have envisioned a different kind of exorcism since the problem doesn’t concern Catholic believers, but possessed locusts!  (The director working thru his nuttiest period: ZARDOZ/ ‘74 just before; EXCALIBUR/’81 just after.   Possessed child Linda Blair returns, still with Satanic induced mental troubles (did the Devil also supply the chipmunk cheeks?) and therapist Louise Fletcher playing surrogate mom/hypnotism partner.  Plus a priestly confused Richard Burton, briefly restored to acting legitimacy via EQUUS on stage & film, as the Pope’s Exorcist, tasked with taking care of unfinished business from the last film.  After the DOA opening, Boorman quickly came up with a new cut (about a reel shorter in spite of clarifying additions*), the cut going round now is the original 1'57".   But since this is misconceived from the get-go. how could it make any difference?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Where this is merely a tax write-off, a conceptual mistake, that JOKER sequel spoils the original . . . for those who liked it.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/07/joker-folie-deux-2024.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Maybe Boorman got it shorter by cutting Linda Blair’s musical comedy numbers.  They’re the scariest things in here.

LITTLE MEN (2016)

Largely liked by critics; largely ignored by the public, co-writer/director Ira Sachs’ film may be modest to a fault, but the bigger problem is that Sachs wears that modesty like a badge of honor.  (Or is it a hairshirt?)  Focused on new middle-school age pals Jake & Tony (they actually go to different schools), brought together when Jake’s grandfather dies and his parents (mid-list NYC theater actor Greg Kinnear; therapist wife Jennifer Ehle) inherit the Bkln townhouse where Tony’s dressmaker mom (Paulina Garcia) has long run an underperforming storefront shop.  She needs the space; the new owners need a market-value rent; the conflict soon headed to the courts.  It inevitably comes between the two boys’ friendship and everything turns messy,  But under Sachs, that means neat messy, polite messy, fait accompli messy; while withholding the visual backing that should abet his storytelling.  Why no tour of the new spacious apartment upgrade?  Why make Garcia’s store look like a alterations/thrift shop, and its proprietress more seamstress than boutique designer?  Was she always this dour?  Was she ever the promising creative person Kinnear at least seems to have been as a young actor?  The film plays like a New Yorker fiction piece you never get around to reading.  Maybe that was Sachs modest hope all along.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  It’s an uneven film, but George Roy Hill’s THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT/’64 works similar teen tropes from a girls’ mid-‘60s POV.  (Plus Peter Sellers as a concert pianist who loses his place during a modern concerto premiere.)

L'AÎNÉ DES FERCHAUX / MAGNET OF DOOM (1963)

Third, last and least of three consecutive films from writer/director Jean-Pierre Melville with Jean-Paul Belmondo (after LÉON MORIN, PRÊTRE/’61; LE DOULOS/’62) is still a considerable achievement.*  Adapted from a typically character-driven Georges Simenon novel, Melville uses twin prologues to contrast young Belmondo’s failed boxer joining up with elderly Charles Vanel’s amoral  money manipulator banker as traveling assistant.  Fleeing France in a hurry, they land in New York where Vanel empties his security deposit box at one bank, but finds paper securities stuck at another.  Then, it’s all North-to-South Road Pic  with Belmondo steadily chipping away at Vanel’s authority.  And it’s this power struggle arc that interests Simenon; Melville more concerned with the series of encounters & incidents along the way in a race to reach a country without a French extradition treaty.  Neither man much concerned with the outcome once they dead-end in New Orleans.  Some of Melville’s Americans have that ‘Made-in-France’ affect, and a few studio sets (all shot in France) show Melville’s usual lack of concern about production polish.  But with Henri Decal on camera and a Georges Delerue score, Melville largely hides his tight budget, holding fast to his basic idea of an opportunistic Belmondo along for the ride.  The film becoming more compelling by the mile. 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Of the three films, LEON MORIN, PRIEST is the masterpiece.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/10/leon-morin-pretre-leon-morin-priest-1961.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/05/le-doulos-1962.html

AT SWORD’S POINT (1952)

Faux Alexandre Dumas MUSKETEERS follow-up is historical nonsense, but a nifty idea all the same: Dying Queen Anne, worried about young Louis XIV’s safety, wishes her loyal Musketeers were here to protect him.  Turns out, they are!  Or rather, their sons are.  That’d be D'Artagnan Jr., Porthos Jr., Aramis Jr. and Athos Jr.; Cornel Wilde, Alan Hale Jr,. Dan O’Herlihy and Maureen O’Hara.  Bet you spotted the odd ‘man’ out.  O’Hara not the son of Athos, but fierce fighting daughter Claire.  Honor bound to the Queen, who reveals Louis’s secret location only to them, but word gets out when a trusted Countess proves traitor.  It’s all-for-one and one-for-all (except in that bed built for four) to save the monarchy from dastardly usurper Duc de Lavalle (Robert Douglas).  Alas, that villain is defeatable, while the film’s true villain,  new R.K.O. owner/production chief Howard Hughes, is not; already micromanaging the studio to a premature death.  Note this film held back for two years and its short running time (81").  What remains emphasizes sword play over plot & character development.  (How could they miss having the failing Queen mistake the young Musketeers for the old?)  Journeyman director Lewis Allen not much help, either; pedestrian swash and buckle.  And when you’ve got Olympic caliber fencer Cornel Wilde on hand, why not let him show some honest fencing rather than the usual stunts?*  And what’s with the print?  It looks like it went thru the TechniColor rinse cycle with too much softener.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Wilde left the 1936 USA Olympic Fencing Team for a theater job.  Perhaps in consideration of the games location in Nazi Germany and his own Jewish background.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Douglas Fairbanks' final silent, THE IRON MASK/’29, about the best (and certainly the most touching) of all MUSKETEER pics.  Look for the restored version of about 1'45".

BLUE JEANS (1917)

Fascinating, frustrating, unmissable.  Frustrating in that the film’s in pretty rough shape, a dupe with severe nitrate deterioration.  The widely available George Eastman House print, free online, fortunately improves as it goes along.  Much better by the crucial last two reels where Joseph Arthur’s 1890 stage melodrama’s idea of tying the hero to a conveyor belt at a sawmill is filmed to stunning effect.  And note, it’s the guy on the belt and the gal who saves him in the nick of time.  (As if Snidely Whiplash threw the switch and Nell Fenwick saved Dudley Do-Right.)  But how’d we get here?  Briefly, under top silent scripter June Mathis*, hungry orphan Viola Dana meets-cute with handsome young Perry Bascom by stealing his lunch.  On his way to claim his late father’s sawmill from his Step-Uncle, he’s eager to marry Dana and settle down.  But when he gets involved in politics, a previous wife surfaces to denounce him.  She was already married to another, but can he prove it?  And now, Dana’s past is leaking.  Seems her mom ran off with . . . Bascom’s father!  These newlyweds are brother and sister!  Plus, her kindly landlords, who are about to throw her out, discover they are her actual Grandparents.  This but a fraction of the melodrama Mathis has to parse, which she does neatly under the clarifying direction of John H. Collins.  (The fourth of their five collaborations at Metro.)  Collins, who managed to make good films even at Edison*, shows flashes of brilliance here.  The pastoral courtship (though you have to squint) and even more in that sawmill climax.  What advanced editing, closeups and angles. His early death during next year’s Spanish Influenza Epidemic, only 29, a huge loss to cinema.  To Viola Dana, too, as they were husband & wife.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *The late ‘teens/early ‘twenties saw female creatives squeezed out of the film biz.  The two most powerful women left were writers Frances Marion and June Mathis.  Mathis going on to discover Rudolph Valentino with THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE/’21 only to slip when she lost BEN-HUR to the newly configured M-G-M.  Then dying in 1927, only 40.  A new critical study, JUNE MATHIS: THE RISE AND FALL OF A SILENT FILM VISIONARY by Thomas J. Slater details the life & work.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *More Collins from his Edison days.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/09/john-h-collins-edison-films-director.html

WEIRD SCIENCE (1985)

Dreadful.  Hard to believe that even the current crop of writer/director John Hughes acolytes would stand up for this also-ran item.  (And with only eight directing credits, there’s not much product to spare.)  A FRANKENSTEIN sendup (watch for the colorized clip from the ‘31 classic) that morphs into HORNY CAT IN THE HAT, Anthony Michael Hall is Nerd Number One, a high school loser with three ‘funny’ faces for all occasions, while Nerd Number Two Ilan Mitchell-Smith speaks with an adenoidal voice to let us know either puberty or Jerry Lewis is about to show up.  Together, they create Living Doll Kelly LeBrock to cook & strip for them.  (The boys prefer breakfast.)  As big brother Marine, home to keep order, Bill Paxton gets a couple of decent laughs, but the whole idea is deeply creepy even as a teen fantasy with a sentimental copout moral: Be Yourself.  And even worse when aliens show up (don’t ask) and Hughes thinks it funny to have a huge Black guy on hand (at an otherwise All-White teen party) to faint in fear.  Staged and lit to look like a CostCo warehouse, the film may not be Hughes’ worst, but seems so as you watch.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  If you’re trying to boost Hughes’ rep, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF/’86 and PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES/’87 probably make the best case.

DEATH OF NINTENDO (2020)

Don’t be fooled!  This poster ‘reads’ as Animation, but NINTENDO is a Live Action coming-of-age film, and a good one.  Comfortingly conventional/true to the form, yet holding on to enough curious local custom & cultural specificity in time & place (1990s/Philippines) to make it feel freshly caught.*  Best guess is that writer/producer Valerie Castillo Martinez used her own memories of growing up in Manila for details, well caught by director Raya Martin.  A middle-school  summer break; the matriarchal society in charge at home (not a father in sight); some wary mixing between the boy groups and the girl groups.  Our focus on three buds and a neighboring girl who’d rather hang out with these computer game obsessed guys than those pink-fetishing girly girls.  The boys’ passion for the latest Nintendo Cassette Game only exceeded only by a desire not so much to lose their virginity, but their foreskin under the whetstone sharped razor of an unsanctioned tradition-bound country circumciser.  Yikes!  The boys certain this rite of passage a sure way to increase size.   As the youngest looking of the three pals, Noel Comia Jr. especially charming, a kid who doesn’t realize he’s become a handsome prince fit for the pretty new girl in town, but a much better fit for the smartest, Kim Chloie Oquendo as Mimaw, the boys' tagalong pal.  All while earthquakes and power shortages make this a summer to remember.  And doubly interesting to the viewer as a rare chance to see middle-class Filipino life.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Similarly gaining universality thru local specificity, FRENCH KISSES/’09, a coming-of-age film by ARAB OF THE FUTURE graphic novelist Riad Sattouf.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/03/les-beaux-gosses-french-kissers-2009.html

WESTFRONT 1918 (1930)

Shot and released at the same time as Hollywood’s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, this German production from top filmmaker G.W. Pabst uses much the same ingredients: late WWI infantry, the waste of young lives in trench warfare, futile battle action, a disappointing visit home, a girl at the front to embrace, nihilistic finale.  Technically similar too in advances with some astonishingly free camera movement for an Early Talkie and capturing the horrors of war with Pre-Code honesty.  Yet the two films are quite different in tone.  Hollywood director Lewis Milestone, adapting Erich Maria Remarque’s international phenomenon in a far larger production, weeps over humanity where Pabst despairs.  Both films essential.  Three years on, the Nazis gained power and banned both films.  Seven years on, Hollywood made something like a sequel to QUIET in THE ROAD BACK/’37.  Nobody came; and WWII on the horizon.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Now best known for the Louise Brooks silent PANDORA’S BOX/’29, Pabst followed this with a true story of German & French miners working together after an underground explosion in KAMERADSCHAFT/’31.  OR: The 1930 ALL QUIET . . .  - the much acclaimed 2022 remake is best avoided.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/all-quiet-on-wewstern-front-2022.html

AFTER LIFE / WANDAFURU RAIFU (1998)

Early feature from Japanese writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda, already showing masterful control & balance, is a charmed fable about the path to eternity.  A land-mined field if ever there was one.*  Set in a dilapidated workplace (a  former school or factory?) where a motley group of recently dead meet for instruction on their ‘future.’  Given three days to find the one memory in their lives they’d take with them to the beyond, the deceased, young & old, are assisted in their search by seasoned ‘helpers’ stuck in coaching positions thru their own inability to choose that one pure recollection.  Tough, funny and remarkably clear-headed, the film could profitably lose a reel, but is otherwise all but faultless as the dead seek their unique life-defining moment before helping to recreate it on film for a final group screening before . . .  Well, that we aren’t told.  But we do witness a revelation when one of the aides makes a connection that lets him realize his own epiphany, his moment of clarity.  A decision that finally lets him take his leave, saddening a fellow helper yet to find her moment.  But soon the week has come to an end and a new class will need help from the slowly rotating staff of experts.  Simply handled technically, what an eye for still composition Kore-eda has; wonderfully acted; Kore-eda sets the bar in taste, tone and well earned sentiment very high, but knows what he’s doing.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The passage to the hereafter a surprisingly popular subject, particularly during wartime.  Try this two-for-one package that did service in both WW I and II, first as an Early Talkie - OUTWARD BOUND/’30, then, more polished if less touching, remade as BETWEEN TWO WORLDS/’44.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/outward-bound-1930-between-two-worlds.html

ANIMALS (2014)

Directed by Collin Schiffli (his debut feature), but produced, written and starring David Dastmalchian, this is undoubtedly a vanity project.  Perhaps a good one, but still a vanity project.  Something of a ‘70s throwback, it’s all but a druggie two-hander for Dastmalchian and Kim Shaw, his partner in petty crime, hypodermic nirvana and bed.  We join the White middle-class heroin addicts when they’re still high-functioning narcissists.  A period tagline might read: They’re Young; They’re in Love; They’re Junkies.  Seen at comfortable distance, they display chic angularity with the sharply defined features and blotchy skin of those models manqué you might notice standing in the background of an Andy Warhol production shot at ‘The Factory’ in the ‘60s.  By the time they inevitably touch bottom, their faces have collapsed into Meth addict death masks.  Then, unlike the old period cautionaries on glam degradation, the pair, forcibly separated, get help.  One from Mom; one from a remarkably generous/effective/caring Public Care Program.  Clinging to their last chance the way they once clung to their sense of shitty personal entitlement as they conned, robbed and lied their way past bumps in the road during the height of their druggie run.  Bouncing back with a hard to swallow sense of hope hanging in the air, any chance of an honest portrayal now off the table.

GOVERNMENT GIRL (1943)

Inconsequential romantic-comedy, set in overcrowded WWII Washington, proved to be highly consequential; not as film, but in film business.  How’d that happen?  First the film.  In this directing debut, serious writer Dudley Nichols (writing with Budd Schulberg from an Adela Rogers St. Johns story) tries on a MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON template as sharp government secretary Olivia de Havilland teaches the Washington anagram playbook to hard-charging Detroit auto exec Sonny Tufts (charm-free), brought in to ramp up airplane production.  Two other guys also playing for de Havilland: reporter Paul Stewart and Congressional Aide Jess Barker.  Meanwhile, newlywed friends James Dunn and Anne Shirley (dreadful) hunt the No Vacancy town for ‘sleeping’ accommodations.   Presumably, Nichols thought a fast paced little comedy would make his move into directing simple.  Sorry, Dudley, comedy three times harder than drama.  Talk Loud/Talk Fast; cover with ‘funny’ music about all he’s got.  (Nichols proved no better in his two tries at drama.)  So, what makes the film consequential, a Hollywood turning point?  De Havilland, who started in 1935 at 19, was in the eighth year of her seven-year contract; and not even working for home studio Warners, but on loan out to David O. Selznick who in turn loaned her out to R.K.O. for a film she didn’t want to make.  She’d finally had enough and went to court hoping to win the same case Bette Davis had lost a few yeas back,  Basically, it stopped studios from adding time on to your contract if you refused an assignment.  Off screen for three years, de Havilland won the case, finished her Warners commitment with two films in 1946 and was free to work elsewhere.  What Curt Flood was to free-agency in the MLB (losing his case, but winning the battle),, de Havilland won decades earlier in Hollywood.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Earlier in ‘43, de Havilland nailed this sort of WWII Washington rom-com: winning, spirited, funny, romantic, wistful and lovely in PRINCESS O’ROURKE/’43.  Inconsequential, but good inconsequential.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/06/princess-orourke-1943.html

LE COMTE DE MONTE-CRISTO / THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO (2024)

Feature-length and full-rigged, this recent French adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas classic is big, handsome and slightly homogenized for easy digestion.  The film’s one eccentric note comes from the unlikely casting of Pierre Niney (FRANTZ/’16), thin of frame/beaky of nose (think Gallic Adrien Brody) as our hero, the revenge-minded self-invented Count.  As usual, Dumas plots to beat the band, and, as usual, gets away with every coincidence, over-ripe characterization and plot reversal as Edmond Dantès, a rising young sailor whose selfless deed causes him to gain, then suddenly lose a Captainship thru bitter envy; a bride thru jealousy; and his freedom thru a purloined letter.  Escaping from his prison island to find the treasure chest a fellow inmate promised, he’ll use this fortune to seek a merciless revenge on the three men who done him wrong, helped by two more victims from the next generation.  It’s all ridiculously satisfying, even in a version that occasionally fumbles the narrative ball.  (And blows the staging on the big sword fight finale.)  All told, there’s probably more of the story here than in any other big-screen telling, and you really can’t miss with Dumas in any of these adaptations which rival his THREE MUSKETEERS in number.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Also in 2024, an even better received eight-parter on French tv.  Coming to PBS in ‘26.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Don’t expect to hear the immortal Act Two curtain line, ‘The world is mine!,’ famous from American adaptations.  It’s not Dumas, but was likely added to the famous stage vehicle by its star James O’Neill, father of playwright Eugene.  (Did James really play this 4000 times across the country?)   You can hear the line spoken (most beautifully, almost incanted) by Robert Donat in the 1934 film version.  And don’t ignore the remarkably fine 1922 silent with John Gilbert.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/06/count-of-monte-cristo-1934.html      https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/07/monte-cristo-1922.html

DELUGE (1933)

Something’s up, or rather down (way down) with the world’s barometric pressure.  And it continues to fall as impotent meteorologists scuttle in labs and at conferences, preaching imminent doom, Earthly catastrophe waiting to happen.  No, the sky isn’t falling; the Earth is cracking up!  Quakes will take down entire cities and tsunamis will put everything under water.  And that’s just the first reel and a half in this odd little indie pic, distributed by R.K.O. the same year they had KING KONG.  Maybe that’s why DELUGE is so little known.  Not that it’s a patch on KONG.  Still, that opening is a destructive delight, even if it looks like a Science Fair school project run amok, with scale model skyscrapers collapsing on cue.  And lots of Schüfftan process trickery, using precisely positioned mirrors to visually place people in harm’s way.*  (Look for execs watching the disaster unfold thru ceiling-to-floor windows in multi-story buildings soon to come down as well.)  After that spiffy opening, we’re in a shattered, depopulated world of gang warfare, as nice guy Sidney Blackmer takes on a new wife since he believes his old wife and kids have died in the shake-up.  Guess again bigamist!  Seems it’s a Pre-Code Brave New World!  Journeyman director Felix Feist turns in a bumpy product, but at just over an hour, it’s a wild ride that’s worth taking for that first reel and a half.  Neatly restored and free here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPz9it1fBYo  (Adjust resolution for best pic.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  See how effective the Schüfftan process could be with better technicians and a bigger budget in M-G-M’s lux disaster pic SAN FRANCISCO/’36.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/san-francisco-1936.html

WAKE ISLAND (1942)

Fairly standard WWII action from Paramount (a mid-list item with featured players but no major stars), out within months of the real events (on tiny Wake Island, a Marine unit, some Navy flyers and civilian construction workers, held off wave after wave of Japanese flotilla attacks), was a surprise Best Pic Oscar® nominee, probably because of timing.  Most war films beginning production before the Battle of Midway victory, tended to accent the positive and eliminate the negative; heavy on recruitment messaging, morale boosting and unlikely comedy angles.  Only when news from the front(s) improved did the films toughen up.  WAKE an exception.  Downbeat and tragic, a sort of 300 Spartans story of front line sacrifice, hence the Best Pic nod.  (Not that it won, that would be the redoubtable uplift of MRS. MINIVER.)  Journeyman director John Farrow (Mia’s dad) gets good results from all, though 23-yr-old Robert Preston & William Bendix lay it on pretty thick as comic relief grunts always getting into trouble, but Brian Donlevy and Walter Abel are briskly fatalistic as commanders fully aware of the inevitable, so too underrated MacDonald Carey in an airborne sacrifice, even Albert Dekker goes from ‘me-first’ civilian contractor to fatalistic hero with an automatic gun.  1940s F/X has the usual trouble with scale model ships at sea, but most of the tricks hold up pretty well.  And the cinematography from Theodor Sparkuhl & William C. Mellor, with stunning low-key lit interiors and red filters on location exteriors (those dramatic clouds!), award-worthy any time.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  One year later, even M-G-M figured it was commercially safe to give downbeat victory-thru-defeat heroism to Robert Taylor with  BATAAN/’43.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/bataan-1943.html

ABOUT DRY GRASSES / KURU OTLAR ÜSTÜ (2023)

Known for ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA/’11 (not seen here), Turkish writer/director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to that region for this lengthy, but involving study of Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), a teacher reaching the end of his rope and the end of his compulsory service at a snowbound rural High School.  Three and a half hours of it, with a difficult character who starts sympathetically but turns prickly and self-centered as our guide to petty squabbles and rivalries among students & staff.  Mr. Chips he ain’t.  With fellow teacher & roommate Kenan, he receives a complaint on their attention to certain students.  Nothing seems really out of order, only encouragements to class achievers.  But after a routine (and degrading) bag-check by the principal & lead teacher finds a few harmless personal items (a diary, a lipstick, a secret note that Samet holds onto from a girl in class he favors), this ignites a mess of misunderstandings.  Nothing really comes of it (nothing ever does in this hideaway location) and everyone moves on . . . yet don’t.  Meanwhile, the two men turn into quasi-rivals over an English teacher from another school.  A sadder, but wiser type who lost the lower half of her right leg in a terrorist bombing.  Something worth pursuing when you’re all but certain to leave at the end of the semester?  Quotidian stuff, yet loaded with bitterness and possibilities to, at least, one up your roommate.  What a strangely unsatisfying life the men find themselves stuck in.  Beautifully acted (the amputee, Merve Dizdar, exceptional), and often stunningly shot in very simple long takes.  Ceylan, like the teachers, always pushing against rigid rules of no-frills filmmaking, at one point leaving studio artifice to wander backstage until finding a way back onto his set.  A more Brechtian than Brooksian move to pull back the studio curtain.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The reference, just in case you’ve forgotten,  is to the finale of Mel Brooks’ BLAZING SADDLES/’74.

SINNERS (2025)

Hardly the first time an acclaimed/award-bound film opening early in the year was soon revealed as something less than it was cracked up to be.  In writer/director Ryan Coogler’s case, it's his attempt to add import to horror tropes by grafting on racial commentary between shock cuts and grue (a la GET OUT/’17), here with vampire dogma, but leaning more toward INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/’56 than THE WALKING DEAD/’10.  A pity too, as the first hour (before any vampires comes into frame) is strong, handsome moviemaking thanks to fluid tech* and a handsome physical production.  Especially in a look that doesn’t smother its 1932 setting with cliché faded visuals, instead ramping up dye saturation to pudding-rich 1940s TechniColor levels.  Michael B. Jordan and Michael B. Jordan star as twins, home in the South after seven years in Chicago, flush with seed money to open a ‘Blues’ Juke Joint they somehow put together in a day.  (Musicians, caterers, security, space, ballyhoo.)  An instant success on opening night until a trio of close harmony Whites are refused entry and show their true Vampiric colors.  Worse, turns out they’re something of an Advance Front for the local KKK who come along after sunrise takes out the Living Dead.  Coogler reducing the true horror and evil of the KKK, letting them off the hook by taking away full responsibility.  ‘The vampire made me do it.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  As an old Blues Man along for the ride, Delroy Lindo is the film’s true survivor.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Sure, modern digital techniques have made doubling techniques all but invisible.  But they’ve also taken away much of the fun in them as a visual trick and physical feat.

THE BRASS LEGEND (1956)

Soporific ‘second-feature’ Western goes nowhere fast, other than sending rugged lead Hugh O’Brien, attempting to bust out of supporting roles at Universal, into his signature role as tv’s WYATT EARP.  And perennial film ‘heavy’ Raymond Burr off to his even more identifying part as unbeatable lawyer Perry Mason.  It also led to faceless tv gigs for director Gerd Oswald after just making his striking debut in the off-kilter I Was A College Serial Killer thriller A KISS BEFORE DYING/’56 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-kiss-before-dying-1956.html), the one where handsome, young fortune-hunting psychopath Robert Wagner brings pregnant Joanne Woodward to a rooftop rendezvous and . . . Yikes!  Alas, this programmer is as drab as KISS was CinemaScopically dynamic.  Briefly: Wanted Man Raymond Burr is presumed dead, but spotted very much alive by young pup Donald MacDonald.  Reporting back to Sheriff O’Brien, he’s immediately in danger for his own life as Burr has a posse of bad guys ready to shoot whomever tipped off O’Brien.  Burr is quickly captured, but he’s got that posse of bad guys coming to town to kill the snitch and get him out jail.  None of this makes a lot of sense, nor very exciting.  Only Burr comes through, already quite heavy, yet with a lean, threatening face, and a jarring bit of near violent lovemaking to inamorata Rebecca Welles.  Everyone else leaves no mark at all.  Who was this one made for?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  With scores of Westerns following similar narrative lines*, you only had to wait a year for a superior example in 3:10 TO YUMA.  The 1957 original, not the 2007 remake.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Is the film’s ghastly guitar & harmonica score playing on a loop?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *An old theory says all films can be boiled down to seven plots.  Maybe.  But with Westerns, we’d say you don’t even need seven; just one: Stranger Comes To Town.  Certainly applies here, where it’s Raymond Burr’s Wanted Man.

NIGHTBOOKS (2021)

You have to assume NetFlix had a slot open for YA Horror and filled the niche with this ill conceived project.  A film so overloaded with creepy crawly CGI, decorative grue and faux degraded animated interludes, it seems expressly designed to shut down the imagination of its intended audience.  The basic idea splices an up-to-date HANSEL & GRETEL story with SCHEHERAZADE as horror obsessed little Alex (Winslow Fegley) slips out of his big city apartment (Mom & Dad none the wiser) and hits the elevator’s lobby button.  But the car gets stuck between floors, opening onto some mystery space between two floors.  The train platform to Hogwarts?  No such luck.  Instead, he goes down the hall and winds up in Witch Krysten Ritter’s apartment.  (A classic New York ‘6', the lucky dog!)  He might be the delivery boy . . . delivering himself . . . as lunch.  Yikes!  Fortunately, the witchy gal is crazy for scary stories and he’s got a dozen ready in his backpack.  One tale a night or he’s toast . . . literally.  But there’s another lunchable in there with him, the house servant, catering to the witch’s every whim & hunger pain.  A slightly older Black girl.  (Yep, the one Black in the film is the maid.  Good grief.)  Naturally, these two plot an escape, discover their witch answers to a higher/meaner/more dangerous witch and find a furnace to shove her in.  Nothing especially wrong with the set up (other than the Black teenage domestic angle), but so physically over-elaborated and choppy in David Yarovesky's directorial execution, you’ll feel nearly as trapped as the kids do.  The ones in the film and the ones watching on the couch.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Nicolas Roeg’s Grand Guignol take on Roald Dahl’S THE WITCHES/’90 is the go-to title on these things.

CLEAR ALL WIRES (1933)

Married B’way playwrights with nearly a score of lightweight comedies from the late ‘20s to the early ‘60s, Bella & Sam Spewack hit the jackpot with BOY MEETS GIRL.  Even that work nearly forgotten today, so they’re only known for writing the ‘book’ to Cole Porter’s KISS ME, KATE.  This one, a fast-paced farce copying Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur’s newspaper classic THE FRONT PAGE, but with a Foreign Correspondent digging up the scoops, had a modest 93 show run.  With catch-as-catch-can plotting as messy as THE FRONT PAGE is meticulously structured, it’s still a fun watch.  Mile-a-minute dialogue and reverses of fortune as our fearless reporter fights off rival scribes and desperate dames on assignment in Russia where his currently tarnished reputation needs an exclusive interview with General Secretary Joseph Stalin to recover.  But the real reason to have a look is that B’way lead Thomas Mitchell, who wouldn’t get to Hollywood for another year, has his role taken by none other than THE FRONT PAGE's original Hildy Johnson on B'way, Lee Tracy (rumpled of face/nasal of voice/rat-a-tat-tat delivery) in the first of his M-G-M films.  Hollywood did well by THE FRONT PAGE/’31, but here’s a chance to see the original in essentially the same part.  It’s also a chance to check out the final film of George W. Hill, the top action-oriented director at M-G-M, recently divorced from top Hollywood scripter Francis Marion.  Only 39, he’d die by his own hand next year.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *And for the template the Spewack’s followed - THE FRONT PAGE/’31.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-front-page-1931.html

HOSTILES (2017)

In the late ‘70s, iconic (and iconoclastic) director John Ford, who’d fallen out of favor in the ‘60s & early ‘70s (partially because his politics were mistakenly tied to John Wayne’s right-wing provocations), had his rep posthumously resurrected.  Less for his Oscar’d prime, than for THE SEARCHERS/’56, particularly by the rising generation of ‘70s filmmakers.  Visually quoting it became something of a rite of passage in such disparate  films as George Lucas’s STAR WARS/’77 (the opening family massacre) and Paul Schrader’s HARDCORE/’79 (a full-dress redo with the modern porn industry taking over from kidnapping ‘Indians.’)  Half a century later, writer/director Scott Cooper picks up on the idea, near-quoting a pioneering White family massacre for his opening (ruthless Comanches) before Indian hating Capt. Christian Bale enters as the film’s Ethan Edwards ruthless avenger.  (That's John Wayne’s bigoted character in THE SEARCHERS though Bale wears a Sam Elliott mustache and speaks in his growl.)  These mere set ups for the main mission, reluctantly returning jailed Non-Comanche Tribal Elder Wes Studi to his Montana homeland before he expires from cancer.  But unlike Ford’s tough-minded portrait of an unrepentant racist on the hunt for his kidnapped niece, a man who only succeeds with an assist from a Holy Fool, Bale learns to respect the hated Indian as his outfit loses men to external & internal forces.  At the very end, finding the greatest enemy of them all is the entitled White.  Handsomely staged & shot, if indifferently acted (you start to welcome the surprise kills), the film turns squishy & sympathetic by design, condescending to all sides on all issues in all respects.  Perhaps never more so than when it turns dying Indian leader Wes Studi into Moses; seeing the Promised Land (Montana), but denied entry.  Then, replacing THE SEARCHERS’ famous door closing end to allow Bale to literally open the last door to hope on a moving train.  Sheesh.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Maddening and magnificent, see what all the shouting is about in THE SEARCHERS.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Five or six times, the film all but stops for philosophical one-on-one conversations so Bale and one of his men can parse the difference between portentous and pretentious to perfection.

AUTUMN BREAK (2025)

AUTUMN BREAK?  No, not a film title, just notice of a week’s hiatus.  But that’s no reason to stop hunting for great video on MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE.  Over 6000 posts to scroll thru, more than a thousand come Recommended, thousands more barely shy of the mark.  (I-Phoners can switch to the Main Site to view all our Labels.  Scroll to the bottom of the screen for a link.  Our Search Box also on the Main Site.  Alas, the big Search Engines only index a fraction of our Posts/Titles.

Meanwhile, here’s a few titles with LINKS to the full Write-Up, two to a category, to get you thru the week.  Most, not all, Recommended, a few flawed but fascinating.  Mostly older ones you probably haven’t heard of.  Or if you have, probably not seen.  Even a few downright famous titles; but have you seen them?   Like the last two; well-known/widely-acclaimed classics, but seen by shockingly few Stateside.

WESTERNS: 

STRANGER AT MY DOOR/’56 :  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/10/stranger-at-my-door-1956.html   

ALL THE PRETTY HORSES/’00 :   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/07/all-pretty-horses-2000.html  

SILENTS:

THE SHAKEDOWN/’29 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-shakedown-1929.html  

THE TRAIL of '98 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-trail-of-98-1928.html  

MUSICALS :

IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/its-always-fair-weather-1955.html  

THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-cat-and-fiddle-1934.html  

EXOTIC:

EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT/’15 :  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/01/el-abrazo-de-la-serpiente-embrace-of.html  

BHOWANI JUNCTION/’56 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/bhowani-junction-1956.html 

LEGAL/COURTROOM DRAMA:

COUNSELLOR AT LAW/’33 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/08/counsellor-at-law-1933.html  

CONFESSION : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/confession-1937.html  

PRE-CODE:

EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE/’33 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/02/employees-entrance-1933.html  

THE CRASH/’32 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-crash-1932.html   

CHRISTMAS:

REMEMBER THE NIGHT/’40 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/remember-night-1940.html  

COMFORT & JOY/’84 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/comfort-and-joy-1984.html  

FILMS NOIR:

ACT OF VIOLENCE/’49 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/act-of-violence-1949.html  

LA NOCHE AVANZa/'52 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/04/la-noche-avanza-night-falls-1952.html  

1960s ITALIANO:

IL SORPASSO/’62 :  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/il-sorpasso-easy-life-1962.html  

THE ORGANIZER/’63 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/06/i-compagni-organizer-1963.html  

Back next week!