SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (1972)

Considering his literary prominence and popularity, Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s big-screen footprint is awfully small.  And this attempt, director George Roy Hill’s squarely realist adaptation, which failed commercially and as film, helps explains why.  The fantasmagoric tale of Billy Pilgrim, a sort of mid-20th Century Holy Fool, drifts thru an eventful life in jump cuts of time & space, finding love, war, whimsy, kids, afterlife, but never the manner of bemused horror Vonnegut gets on the page.  Instead, a curdled mass of irony, fear, defeat & acceptance, a ‘one damn thing after another’ cracker barrel philosophy.  (‘And so it goes,’ as the book has it.)  Hill too flatfooted, too literal to bring off the coy conceits and wacky juxtapositions.  (Imagine a young, budget-constricted Tim Burton on it.)  Acting no help either; debuting Michael Sacks’ aw-shucks confusion as Billy Pilgrim progresses across time, place & incident without selling us on the concept or on him.  (He’d shortly do better for Steven Spielberg in THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS/’74, but saw his career fizzle out by the early ‘80s.  While in support, Eugene Roche (tragic mentor) and Ron Leibman (obnoxious naysayer) make obvious acting choices.  Don’t blame them, or Hill, the more likely fault is that Vonnegut off the page and made flesh is hard to believe in.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  For what it’s worth, Mike Nichols also came a cropper with this sort of thing on CATCH-22/’70; while Lina Wertmuller (generally not a fan here) had quite the success (deservedly so) with similar ideas in SEVEN BEAUTIES/’75.

COME NEXT SPRING (1956)

With their bread & butter Westerns (budget features; Saturday matinee serials) sinking as tv took over the market, Republic Pictures tried quality.  Then, either didn’t know what to do with it or didn’t recognize it when they’d made one.  So a fine, gently effective mid-lister, like this slice of late ‘20s Americana from Western specialist R.G. Springsteen, made in Republic's own TruColor process, went largely missing, and is still little known.  Pity.  A prodigal husband story with Steve Cochran (a natural screen tough guy who longed to play more complicated characters - even going to Italy to work for Antonioni) returns home after a five year bender (and three more sober), to the family farm now run by embittered wife Ann Sheridan.  He also finds an eight-yr-old son he didn’t know he had, and a traumatized, mute twelve yr-old daughter.  No big surprises here, but all the boxes intelligently ticked.  (Other than de rigueur alcohol relapse, which isn’t so much gone as finessed.)   Not without melodrama, there’s a cyclone to get thru and a missing-person-in-jeopardy  finale to resolve the last few issues, but generally mostly believable steps to redemption/reclamation.  And while other directors might have made more of this, Springsteen’s plainness has a quiet charm and works a sense of inevitability that’s very appealing.*  Plus, you get to see Walter Brennan and Edgar Buchanan at the same time instead of wondering if Buchanan only got his part because Brennan was busy elsewhere.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *At their respective studios, FOX’s Henry King and Clarence Brown at M-G-M handled the rural Americana line with a special grace.  They tend to be underappreciated mostly because their respective studios were always tapping them to take on genres they didn’t excel at.   For King, try DEEP WATERS/’48; for Brown INTRUDER IN THE DUST/’49.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/deep-waters-1948.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/06/intruder-in-dust-1949.html

KAILI BLUES / LU BIAN YE CAN (2015)

Now in his mid-30s, Chinese writer/director Bi Gan is a representative of a new wave of Chinese filmmakers coming after the so-called Fifth and Sixth Generation.  The number designating how removed they are from the establishment of Communist China.  (No one’s thought of calling them the Seventh?)  KAILI, now a decade old, serving as Bi’s international calling card, even though, for non Chinese, it can be frustratingly opaque.  (Nearly typed ‘inscrutable,’ but the term, like the use of ‘Oriental’ as a race designation, has been retired from polite conversation.)  A rural roadtrip film, it moves as much thru time & memory as kilometers, very loosely organized by two half-brothers and the Search for Weiwei, son of one/nephew to the other.*  The father a sometime jailbird with little contact; the uncle more involved before ‘selling’ the boy, now grown and lost.  The uncle takes the lead and we follow as he starts to look for Weiwei on a journey employing a slippery timeline not nailed down for us.  Instead, we (or rather the uncle) randomly meets new people along the way who delineate the society of this back country for us; climaxing in a small town where Bi employs a long (and I mean long) continuous tracking shot to take us around the corners and thru stairways, gateways, inner courtyards and secluded passageways of the small town.  An impressive feat that turns the village into a maze as complicated as the whiff of a storyline allows it to be.  Almost post-narrative in design, the film is worth the confusion.  Later work from Bi may be a pleasure to connect with, but in general, I was more intrigued than carried away.

SCEWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Wei Wei, of course, the name of an internationally famous, Chinese censored, artist.  Whether the name of the son was chosen to reflect this isn’t specified.

21 DAYS TOGETHER (1940)

Even considering mental health issues and stage tours with husband Laurence Olivier, it’s still surprising that Vivien Leigh, as big a screen star as you could be after GONE WITH THE WIND/’39, had only nine more feature films over the next twenty-five years.  And most of them forgotten.  This one, released between GWTW and her personal fave WATERLOO BRIDGE/’41, though actually shot in 1937*, one of the more forgotten.  And that’s in spite of co-starring husband-to-be Olivier, popular Leslie Banks and Graham Greene adapting John Galsworthy’s moral dilemma novel.  Let’s stick most of the blame on director/co-writer Basil Dean, more stage manager/theatre actor than movie man.  His second to last try at film direction has a choppy/stop-start quality to it.  And Czech cinematographer Jan Stallich (later a Soviet Block lenser) has little interest (or ability?) in helping Leigh sparkle or Olivier seem a bit less callow.  These two lovers confronted by a husband who vanished three years ago.  He’s there to blackmail them, pulls out a knife and is accidentally killed in a scuffle.  What to do?  Olivier, scapegrace kid brother of barrister Banks, is strongly advised by him to cover up the crime and leave the country, even though it was self-defense and accidental.  Banks desperate to limit any scandal as he’s up for a High Court Judgeship.  But Olivier refuses to let an innocent man take the blame and Banks has to keep him from doing the right thing.  Not a bad set up though Galsworthy has a twist you’ll see coming that lets everyone (even himself) off the hook.  A miss as a film, but also something that shouldn’t be missed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Note this was filmed two years before director William Wyler, according to a chastened Olivier, ‘taught’ him how to act for the screen while making WUTHERING HEIGHTS/’39.  It shows.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/05/wuthering-heights-1939.html

STRAIGHT SHOOTING (1917)

With only five two-reelers under his belt, novice director John (‘Jack’) Ford, and regular lead Harry Carey, got carried away on the sixth, shooting enough footage for a five-reel feature.  Naturally, Universal execs ordered it trimmed down to the contracted short, only stopped by Universal head Carl Laemmle who recognized a bargain.*  A rare survivor from Ford’s pre-FOX silent output, it’s a find that lives up to your hopes.  And, if less than mature Ford, it still displays an astonishment in Ford style, technique and themes, present & accounted for in this Homesteaders vs. Cattlemen Oater.  With heavy D.W. Griffith influence (lead gal Molly Malone like a brunette Mae Marsh and a big ride-to-the-rescue finish), but Ford’s use of landscape & framing already his own.  (Those backlit door-framed shots might be out of THE SEARCHERS/’56.)  The story is a lot like George Stevens’ SHANE/’53 (tropes already familiar in 1917?), but with Carey’s character a combination of Alan Ladd’s ‘good’ badman and Jack Palance’s ‘bad’ badman.  It takes a pivotal on-screen murder of a young homesteader to shame him.  Carey not only changing sides, but in a riveting shoot-out, taking down his drinking pal, the killer.  How to explain Ford’s filmmaking confidence?  How lucky to have it survive.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In silent days, a reel of film could run longer than the modern standard of ten minutes depending on the cameraman’s cranking speed.  You could get almost 15 minutes if you were as slow as D.W. Griffith’s Billy Bitzer.  Hence, Ford, with forgotten cinematographer George Scott and the great Ben Reynolds (later Erich von Stroheim’s go-to lenser) gets over an hour out of five reels.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   *Avoid lousy subfusc Public Domain downloads.  Click the link to see a proper restoration.  This EUREKA! Edition Comes with a more recent Ford find, HELL BENT.  (not seen here)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=darotFrBNFM

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025)

Best of the recent Animation-to-Live-Action remakes?  We’ve missed (or rather avoided) too many for any definitive pronouncement.  In general, they usually coin big cash, but leave little long-term impact compared to the originals.  But director Dean DeBlois, co-director of the full-animated feature in 2010, makes lots of smart moves; he even made this one for a bit less.  Plus, whatever money was spent is all up on the screen.  Though so much is CGI, calling it Live Action is less truth-in-advertizing than convenient nomenclature.  DeBlois starts smart, gliding toward the small Viking island where man and dragon fight for survival, in a shot that might be CGI, but looks like old-school scale-model work: a doll house village on a terrarium landscape.  It sets the whole film up with a tone of believable unreality, welcome to artifice, fantasy and tall tales.  This particular tale remains largely unchanged: Young Viking-in-training Hiccup happens upon a wounded beast, nurses it back to health (with a prosthetic tail ‘jib’ he fashions) and comes to realize  that dragons are just as afraid of human Vikings as Vikings are of flying, fire-breathing beasts.  But how to convince the town, especially warrior Dad Gerard Butler (repeating from 2010), of possible peaceful coexistence?  Much of this: CGI special effects, character arcs, Hiccup’s demonstrating his control over the beasts at Viking School are perfectly handled.  Yet ultimately, that’s not what makes the film work.  And there are problems too; an animated 300 pound Viking and a live action 300 pound Viking make very different impressions.  At times you think they’ve cloned John Goodman to play half the male adults.  (Too bad they didn’t, Goodman would have pulled it off.)  Nico Parker no better as the natural female warrior-in-training who warms to Hiccup and his new ‘pet.’  (Though nice to see a heroine with the old-fashioned face structure of Depression-Era madonna Sylvia Sidney.)  No, forget what they get right or wrong, what ultimately makes this one work is Master Mason Thames as Hiccup, the most overwhelmingly empathetic/sympathetic/winning juvenile lead seen on screen in decades.  (Since Michael J. Fox/BACK TO THE FUTURE/’85?  Or, closer to the mark, Matthew Broderick in LADYHAWKE/’85.)  Now if only someone could do a Director’s Cut that trimmed the overextended finale . . . and make a sequel a good bit better than the animated HTTYD2.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above - LADYHAWKE or BACK TO THE FUTURE.  OR: Compare with the animated original and its unfortunate sequel.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-to-train-your-dragon-2010.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-to-train-your-dragon-2-2014.html

PIANOFORTE (2023)

Inspired by Poland’s Olympics debut in 1924, the International Chopin Piano Competition started in 1925, returning every five-years, (October 2025 will be its centennial.)  This documentary (dir. Jakub Piatek) follows six contestants in 2020 thru the four increasingly selective/nerve-wracking stages.  First Stage: Chopin Etudes.  Yikes!  Some of the toughest pieces ever written.  Then climaxing days later with one of the two piano concertos Chopin wrote when barely out of his teens.  Dozens of these fly-on-the-wall classical music documentaries out there.  (Or streaming: daily posts or full coverage like the Van Cliburn.)  What sets these competitions apart, aside from the prizes, is who came out of them.  The Chopin boasts Krystian Zimerman, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini.  And what sets this film apart is that it’s less fingers; more head, heart & backstory.  Actual stage action limited.  Advantages: We get to know the chosen six as people.  Disadvantages: Hard to judge talent/musicality from snippets; other than differences in articulation.  We end up rooting on looks and personality . . . which would be fine if it was their musical personality.  Showing at its worst with seamless intercut playing of the same piece, like passing the baton in a relay race.  But at least there, you’ve got a stop watch keeping score.  Pianist Stephen Kovacevich (once married to Argerich) dismissed a lot of current competition playing as ‘typing.’  Accuracy over art.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Hollywood tried dramatizing one of these in THE COMPETITION/’80 (not seen here) with oldest contestant Richard Dreyfuss falling for Amy irving, one of the youngest.  Apparently Sam Wanamaker does a wicked Leonard Bernstein as jurist/conductor which does sound tempting.  Seen it?  Thoughts?  Leave a Comment.

THE ORDER (2024)

True Story from the early 1980s: seasoned F.B.I. agent Jude Law is on his own when he starts to investigate a series of bank robberies & counterfeiting in rural Idaho/Pacific NorthWest.  Unwelcome by local police, he’s still able to see involvement linked to the quasi-religious Aryan Nation cult.  What he doesn’t know is that he needs to be focusing on an even more extremist splinter group quickly devolving into a national terrorist threat led by charismatic (make that messianic) Nicholas Hoult.*  Helped by one of the few cops not willing to let sleeping terrorist dogs lie (Tye Sheridan whose Native American wife literally puts skin in the game), Law & Sheridan can barely fathom the size of the organization they’re up against and the scope of their plans.  Finally, more crimes bring in more FBI, but the response remains unequal, even inept.  Closer to the facts than these films often are, it’s well played (Hoult exceptional) and well organized for dramatic effect, but also with very few surprises.  (Our main victim might as well be wearing a Shoot Me placard.)  And the film only half as effective as it might be, less from over familiarity as from a mischosen visual style from cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, director Juton Kurzel and the film’s 19 (!) producers.  Opting for glare, haze, and obfuscating filters & backlighting when the obvious choice would have been to make this ‘80s story look like an ‘80s film, sharp, bright, razor edge clear, with color saturation to match, throwing literal light on a dark story.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  A late ‘80s FBI thriller about ‘mid-‘60s White supremacy, MISSISSIPPI BURNING, shows the visual spark missing here.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/mississippi-burning-1988.html 

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Perhaps focusing on splintering within the Aryan Nation (extreme, very extreme, crazy extreme) rather than using an FBI POV would bring a new angle to this familiar story.

THE KING OF KINGS (2025)

Less ‘Good News’ Gospel than indigestible kiddie indoctrination; Christian pablum served in cutesy CGI animation that’s blocky & unattractive.  Strictly for believers, of which there are more than enough to turn a profit.  Especially in country of origin South Korea where, surprisingly, nearly one-third of the population identifies as Christian.  Note all the ‘Kims’ in the credits of this Angel Studios product which specializes in Up With Christianity movies.  A framing device goes back to Charles Dickens who famously wrote A CHRISTMAS CAROL and less famously a Story of the Christ, largely for family consumption.  So, we begin at one of his histrionic stage readings of The Carol, interrupted by his obnoxious, though meant to be adorable, son.  Unable to calm the boy down, stop sneezing from cat allergies or get the tyke to appreciate Christ over King Arthur and the like, Dickens tells him the whole story.  And with Dickens & son stepping right into the Biblical past as participants.  Missing pieces in the Life of Christ filled in as needed.  (By Dickens or by Angel Studios?)  With ghastly Christian Pop over the end credits and a depressingly impressive All-Star voice cast.  (Oscar Isaac’s Jesus a hoot, tossing in the occasional Bronx infection even though he was raised in Miami.)  The film offering something inappropriate for believers and non.  God knows what other ANGEL Studio Films are like.  Oh, yeah . . . God knows.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  This, the third KING OF KINGS iteration we’ve taken on, does make you appreciate the highly flawed films from Cecil B. DeMille (1927) and Nicholas Ray (1961).  There are, of course, scores more under various titles.  (Like the unexpectedly silly/serious LIFE OF BRIAN. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/05/life-of-brian-1979.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/01/king-of-kings-1927.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/king-of-kings-1961.html

LINDA (1929)

Fascinating on many levels.  If only it were a better film!  Directed by Dorothy Davenport, one of Hollywood’s few female directors at the time, the story, which has D.W. Griffith written all over it (not a plus in 1929) charts the sorry, if eventually triumphant, path of teenager Helen Foster, a kid from a penniless Appalachian family (wastrel dad, worn out mom, many siblings), bartered by her father into a loveless marriage with much older Noah Berry Sr., then blindsided when a previous wife and child show up.*  Yikes!  Pregnant herself, she gives birth before heading north to improve herself with help from a rich benefactress.  Finds love too, with the lady’s brother (no thank you) and the inner-city physician she’d met back in the woods (Warner Baxter, yes thank you).  Lots more in this vein.  Yet, as melodramatic and filled with coincidence as it is, Davenport was a natural behind the camera, and got lucky in cinematographer Henry Cronjager who knew the territory from his superb work on TOL’ABLE DAVID/’21.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/06/still-freshly-felt-moving-in-its.html)  And what a backstory on Davenport.  Not only the daughter of character actor Harry Davenport (kindly doctor in GONE WITH THE WIND; Grandad in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS), she’s also the widow of silent film star Wallace Reid (note billing as Mrs. Wallace Reid), a major Hollywood star who died addicted to the morphine Paramount got him hooked on to complete a picture in production.  Some things never change.  (NOTE:  LINDA has been successfully restored by The Library of Congress - though with a rather odd be-bop influenced score.  Find it here:  https://archive.org/details/linda_1929)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *When the first wife shows up with the kid she had with Noah Berry Sr could it be Noah Berry Jr, best known as James Garner’s Dad/sidekick on THE ROCKFORD FILES?  No credit listed, but he’d have been just the right age.  I’d put money on it.

TWILIGHT (1998)

Paul Newman, novelist Richard Russo and co-scripter/director Robert Benton knew they’d pulled off something special in NOBODY’S FOOL/’94, an unclassifiable quality film that even made a bit of money.  But it’s still a surprise to find them sitting out on any project for four years before reuniting on a very classifiable film, a hard-boiled Raymond Chandler-esque L.A. Private Eye mystery, the kind where the lead femme tells nothing but lies; the P.I. gets knocked out; your best friend sets you up; the police are incompetent and/or corrupt; and comic violence buffers real gore & gunplay.  No wonder reception was underwhelming.  (Commercially too, where FOOL doubled its modest budget in gross; TWILIGHT, with twice the budget, took in less than half.*)  But distance has markedly improved things.  No longer in competition with the earlier film, it can stand on its own as a neat little crime pic, with a cold case mystery to unravel as current messes pile up.  A prologue has Newman catching runaway teen Reese Witherspoon and a slug in his thigh for his trouble.  So his luck goes all thru the pic with Newman triggering trap after trap as he helps Witherspoon’s fading movie star parents Gene Hackman (dying of cancer) and Susan Sarandon (splitting the diff between Bette Davis & Jeanne Moreau).  Plus loads of character support from Stockard Channing, Liev Schrieber, James Garner (towering over everyone at 6'4"), many more, none for show, all with plenty to do.  Stuffed to the gills at barely over an hour and a half, the film (fun, touching, almost parsable as a mystery) deserves a second look.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *After this underperformed, the trio never tried again.  But NOBODY’S FOOL/’94 remains.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/10/nobodys-fool-1994.html   OR:  For the Chandler template;: after doing real Chandler in MURDER, MY SWEET/’44, director Edward Dmytryk & star Dick Powell topped it with faux Chandler in CORNERED/’45.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/12/cornered-1945.html

ONE FINE DAY (1979)

Playwright Laureate isn’t a thing, but if it was, Alan Bennett is a lock for the British shortlist.  With a major film out in November (THE CHORAL/’25), Bennett starts a seventh decade of dissecting the British character (Division: White upper-middle class & those striving to be, with detours into royalty), going back to his breakthru as monologist in BEYOND THE FRINGE/1964.  (His three equally unknown partners at the time Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.)  This 1979 tv film, one of a series of six, was directed by Stephen Frears (already showing his chameleon-like way of suiting style to content), and is largely representative of the Bennett manner: droll, sec, with wry character touches and reverse engineered twists.  This example comes packed inside a mid-life crisis for senior real estate agent Dave Allen, stuck at home with a college student son and the boy’s new sleep-in girlfriend; and at work with a nine-story White Elephant office property boss Robert Stephens is tired of carrying on the books, especially since young office pup Dominic Guard thinks he can flip it to residential for a quick sale.  With beautifully observed office behavior & characters (everything but business discussed ad infinitum by the staff, while holding to a strict pecking order of office seniority, as fiercely defended as royal privileges at Windsor Court in the 1600s.  Allen’s character effectively drops out by squatting in his empty office building to get way from it all, warding off involvement behind a sound barricade of Puccini arias.*  This being Bennett, avoidance is just the ticket to make the world go round and come out right with all problems healed.  Slow boil justice.

DOUBLE-BILL:  A decade later, Bennett dug deeper than usual with six solo character monologues, TALKING HEADS/’88, including the much acclaimed BED AMONG THE LENTILS written for regular collaborator Maggie Smith, who just happened to be Robert Stephens’ ‘ex.’  Actor Toby Stephens is their son.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The title, ONE FINE DAY, is the translation of ‘Un Bel Di,’ the best known aria from Puccini’s MADAMA BUTTERFLY; and (unless I missed it) one of the few hit Puccini arias not used here. 

POWER (1986)

Apparently, vet NYC director Sidney Lumet was ‘shocked, shocked’ to learn that politicians often say things they don’t believe just to get elected.  Or so you’d think after watching this autopilot all-star attempt to recapture some of the controversy & cultural buzz Lumet got out of NETWORK/’76.  A (lack of) character piece about hotshot political consultant for hire Richard Gere as he guides his roster of international clients thru one political & personal crisis after another.  (Though after a front-loaded sequence in Central American with the only action in the pic, Gere remains Stateside.)  So it’s off to D.C. where aging senator E.G. Marshall unexpectedly retires (could there be a secret reason?), bowing out to leave his seat open and a long line of clamoring clients to vie for Gere’s professional services.  Also on the scene: rival consultant Gene Hackman, sporting a Southern Fried accent* & bow tie to go with his on-and-off principles; journalist Julie Christie, Gere’s on-and-off ‘ex’; Denzel Washington, an on-and-off supplicant/threat; Fritz Weaver’s on-and-off candidate; Michael Learned, the on-and-off front-running Governor . . . and so on.  Plus Beatrice Straight, Kate Capshaw, J.T. Walsh and Matt Salinger (J.D.’s son!).   Every one of them, underused.   Nothing really wrong here, but nothing to get excited about.  Mostly, it’s stale goods.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Whereas silent great Mary Pickford deserves much of the credit for using her eyes, rather than physical gestures, to move story & character on screen (goodbye arm waving),  Richard Gere was the first (and only) leading man to feed us emotion and information thru blinks.  BLINKS!  He really is the oddest actor with whomever he partners.  (Even Hackman, who has a way of pulling people up to his level fails to curb him.  Fast blinks for danger and action prep.  (None during action.)  Tight for stubborn determination.  And v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w to indicate deep thinking.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Talk about a fast learning curve, two years on Hackman would transform his hokey accent into a remarkably subtle, slightly malleable thing in MISSISSIPPI BURNING/’88.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/mississippi-burning-1988.html

TIME BANDITS (1981)

Moving on from the Monty Python universe in babysteps, director Terry Gilliam, co-writing with Python lifer Michael Palin, concocted this typically overstuffed metaphysical adventure about a young lad who drops thru a portal in time to join a jolly band of thieving midgets bopping around the globe on a fractured time continuum as if stuck for eternity in a ‘Worst of’ DOCTOR WHO compilation.  Comic violence and fake laughs thru the ages; the usual Gilliam modus operandi.  An impressive sounding cast of zanies make funny faces in lieu of being funny with Ian Holm’s Napoleon & John Cleese’s Robin Hood in a tie for least laughs, and David Warner’s devilish villain the biggest disappointment.  Two standouts: a remarkably youthful looking Sean Connery amused with himself as a Kingly Hellenistic toast-of-the-populace and a late appearance by Ralph Richardson as the Supreme Being, demonstrating how to earn laughs without really trying.  His entrance line, ‘What a dreadful mess,’ pretty much sums things up.*  The real time bandit is, of course, Terry Gilliam, and you can’t get your two hours back.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Gilliam's best shot at these portmanteau pics was THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN/’‘88.  But the Baron, all but certainly written with Richardson in mind (he had died in 1983) was recast with a merely adequate John Neville, losing whatever charm and magic the film might have had.

POSSE (1975)

Tasty little Western, produced, directed & starring Kirk Douglas, about to hit 60 and making a proactive career move.  A Texas Marshall with lots of ambition and close connections to the railroad companies, he’s got his eye on the U.S. Senate and figures to seal the deal by taking down Bruce Dern and his gang of cutthroats & robbers.  But that Dern is one slippery character, even after he’s been captured.  Douglas, not a director who knows how to make two mill pass for ten, but he turns in clear-eyed action and doesn’t hold the reins so tight the actors can’t breath some life into the old tropes.  And just barely 'sells' the clever twist ending.  Douglas deserved the credit he got for casting double amputee James Stacy in his first role since his injury (Stacy is excellent), but he should have gotten just as much for letting Dern steal the picture playing the sort of wily, likable badass Kirk would have taken on twenty-five years ago.  And in doing so, likely did himself a favor as it allows him to lay back for a change instead of pushing to prove he’s still got what it takes.  (He seems constantly delighted in what Dern is doing all thru the pic.)  Keeping his head low, Douglas turns in one of his best late turns.  Good tech for the bucks spent, too.  Or is with the exception of Maurice Jarre’s oddball score.  Perhaps his attention was already on his next assignment, one of his best, John Huston’s THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING/’75.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID;  There are two pretty horrific horse stunts in the film (see poster).  I'm assuming they were safely accomplished but just be aware.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Douglas made more Westerns than you may recall.  And all thru his career, not only toward the end when fading Golden Age Hollywood stars used the genre as a safety net.  Try one of the early ones, but perhaps skip Raoul Walsh’s ALONG THE GREAT DIVIDE/’51 for Howard Hawks’ bromatically revealing THE BIG SKY/’ 52 where Kirk and Dewey Martin are the real couple.

THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND (1961)

Before Leslie Stevens created tv’s OUTER LIMITS (’63 - ‘65), he made his name with this ‘sophisticated’ B’way sex farce.  A big hit for Claudette Colbert & Charles Boyer, it ran a year and half before being filmed with Susan Hayward and James Mason.  Slightly smutty in the popular manner of the day (THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH a paradigm of the form), it’s deliciously dated in content, attitude and style.  Dated in its style of filmmaking, too.  That's the main attraction.  Elsewise, the lame doings have little to offer.  This one proposes a modern take on insemination: use the best man to get the best results.  Enter Julie Newmar (repeating from B ‘way), Amazonian Swede, daughter of Mason’s Nobel Prize winning pal, needing the perfect mate to do the deed; no love, no marriage, no financial or parental responsibilities.  Stevens cheats structurally using a flashback framework with parallel public talks on the experience from Hayward & Mason (both college lecturers), then spoils his argument by having brainy Newmar start to grow feelings.*  Trying hard to be adult & unembarrassed about the facts of life, there’s a fascination to the thing; a grim one, not what they were aiming at.*  And what’s with director Walter Lang?  Effectively his last film (there was a Three Stooges ahead), he’d long been a competent, even Oscar® nom’d journeyman director, mostly of lighter things and musicals.  But he really fell for the laisser-faire less-is-more filming techniques of early CinemaScope.  A slow ‘dolly in’ shot big news here.  Oof.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  Nothing wrong with the idea of a comedy focused on social issues and sex without love; then caving.  Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder did it in NINOTCHKA/’39.  But, oh!, what a difference talent makes.  (BTW - Wilder fell for the smutty B’way sex farce tone directing the film version of SEVEN YEAR ITCH/’55, then doubling down with KISS ME, STUPID/’64.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/12/ninotchka-1939.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Another ‘smart’ sex comedy of the day titled THE FACTS OF LIFE/’60 stars Lucille Ball & Bob Hope who together just might have made this one work.  Meanwhile, Mason blasted the whole formula to smithereens in next year’s LOLITA/’62.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-facts-of-life-1960.html

AMERICAN STAR (2024)

At least commercially, this slow-burn thriller from Spanish-born director Gonzalo López-Gallego, with a typically fine Ian McShane, died of false expectations.*  Sold, to whatever extent it was sold, as one more Last Hit by an Aging Hitman story (tropes don’t come any tropier), it’s nothing of the sort.  Indeed, McShane’s nephew/occasional partner is already in talks for the next job.  And action mavens should be aware that any ‘hit’ action merely book-ends a character study of McShane, forced to wait a few days after his target fails to show on a first attempt at the man’s isolated home in Fuerteventura, a Spanish controlled Canary Island.  And it’s the island’s strange, haunting landscape that sets off a sort of inner existential journey of the soul for McShane.  (Fuerteventura the sort of beautifully baleful resort spot Michelangelo Antonioni might have booked for a summer.)  While McShane waits, a casual encounter with young local Nora Arnezeder leads to an afternoon of sightseeing and island history.  No pick up, more a surrogate father/daughter vibe though the girl is actually on the hunt for date material for her eccentric/lonely mom (Fanny Ardant).  Yet there’s something wary between these two; especially when McShane’s nephew butts in.  Do these two have a past?  Is something being hidden?  As a few lazy days play out, McShane is more comfortable bumping into Max, the tyke down the hall with disinterested parents.  Max the only person in the film who’s transparent, everyone else more layers than an onion.  And when the brief finale starts to run off course, López-Gallego shows his hand technically in clear narrative & kinetic action.  Stylish stuff; even a moral: No man is an island . . . except when you’re on Fuerteventura.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Just bear in mind, false expectations is a two-way street.

NOCTURAMA (2016)

French writer/director Bertrand Bonello brings focus and finesse to an extended prologue individually following eight (or is it nine?) 20-somethings moving thru Paris streets, shops & The Metro on some unexplained, tightly organized, yet apparently random path to a nearly deserted office building where they will stealthily meet in a conference room to finalize their plans for a terrorist attack on the city.  The bombs will go off perfectly; the rest of the film less so.  Using an upscale department store as overnight hideaway, political motives stubbornly remain left in doubt for generic anarchy, Bonello unwillingly to point fingers or be specific.  Such abstraction often meant to add universality to a subject (it doesn’t; being specific fosters universality), but here it just feels like a dodge, reducing the group from political agitators or sentimental sociopaths (your choice) to chumps.  Bonello does no better on logistics inside the store as pressure within the group on tactics break them into factions once their safe haven starts looking more like a trap of their own making.  In the end, government forces couldn’t care less about motive.  At last, something you can believe.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Pulling an overnighter at a closed department store or mall shows up in a lot of films including Chaplin’s MODERN TIMES/’36.  Or try a classic Pre-Code department store sleepover in EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE/’33.  It should also be noted that any Security Staff that missed their hourly phone-in during the night, would automatically trigger some response, non?    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/02/employees-entrance-1933.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE  DAY:  The terrorists come off as arrogant, entitled pricks with undigested sophomoronic ideas on people & world politics (or is it trust fund baby syndrome?) with the exception of the token Black (no kiddin', a token Black!) who might have come out of a film or tv episode of fifty years ago.

SEBASTIAN (1968)

Larky Cold War espionager (home office division), not quite a spoof, but certainly not serious, earns points for late-‘60s ‘Mod’ trimmings, an all-gal encryption decoding center (run by Dirk Bogarde - he's Sebastian), D.P. Gerry Fischer’s unfoggy London Town in primary colors, and for Jerry Goldsmith’s ‘Swingle Singers’ stylings on the soundtrack.  But debits for a motorless narrative that doesn’t set up a big Cold War crisis for its decoding staff to tackle till the third act.  (A young Donald Sutherland shows up briefly to explain it all.)  Pretty good fun all the same as Bogarde runs around town (literally) hunting up savvy puzzle-solving ‘birds’ to replace departing staffers.  That’s how he crashes (again, literally) into Susannah York (whom he’ll also bed) while fighting off MI6 bureaucrats worried about inside ‘Lefties’ leaking State secrets.  (Like longtime aide Lilli Palmer.)  Not a bad cast there, plus John Gielgud as their boss and Michael Powell (yes, the Michael Powell) one of the producers, but not directing.  Instead, we get journeyman tv megger David Greene in a rare feature outing.  Who wants genius when you can settle for competence?

DOUBLE-BILL:  Near spoofs of the spy racket are tricky to pull off, asking to be laughed with and taken seriously enough to generate real emotion & suspense.  Typical examples from the two years immediately before this are James Coburn’s OUR MAN FLINT/’66 and IN LIKE FLINT/’67.  Both now looking pretty lame with half the cast all but winking at the camera to signal intent.

ARÁBIA / ARABY (2017)

Haunting in presentation and story, this Brazilian film from co-writer/directors João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa begins with a feint.  We track thru mountainous countryside following a teenage boy as he bikes home (a quietly stunning uninterrupted take) where his kid brother is sick enough to be home from school.  A check-in from their aunt (she’s the rural visiting nurse; Mom’s working in the city) is followed by a couple of stops with the teen in tow and an emergency stop at a big industrial factory where a man has collapsed.  And it’s that man, not the teen, not the sick kid, not the aunt, who takes focus for the rest of the film after the boy finds a spiral pad where the factory worker (who unexpectedly died overnight) kept a journal.  We never get back to the brothers or the aunt, as if we changed partners mid-dance to follow the short, itinerant life as set down in ‘Christiano’s’ diary.  It should feel like a structural gimmick, but doesn’t.  We begin with a reckless event that puts ‘Cristiano’ in jail long enough to learn some important lessons from a fellow inmate.  Once out, it’s a series of short-lived/smalltime jobs; most hard labor, some decent enough, others taking advantage of him (tangerine picking leaves him paid in tangerines).  For a while, a steady factory job leads to a romantic relationship that might have altered the course of his life, but it peters out after a miscarriage.  Events, and a life, come and go with a circle of life quality sans goals or milestones.  Yet 30-ish non-pro Aristides de Sousa is overwhelmingly moving doing the most ordinary things, and the directing team have a knack for lining up one artlessly artful composition after another.  (They tend to place large blocky buildings to one side of the screen and keep movement on the other.)  If Edward Hopper had lived in rural Brazil, his paintings might have looked like this film.

ROBIN ROBIN (2021)

Like a featherweight boxer who can’t compete with heavyweights in the ring, but just may be (as the tv announcers like to say) pound-for-pound the best fighter around, so too little Aardman Animations if you count product minute-by-minute.  For three-and-a-half decades, they’ve produced more joy, more whimsical laughs and sheer pleasure than any animator out there . . . per released minute.  This delightful half-hour short, released on NetFlix without enough fanfare four years back*, a typical example of their consistent excellence.  Aimed a bit more toward the little ones than the divine WALLACE AND GROMIT films, it follows a family of field mice (Dad & children, no Mom) whose new adopted member is a just hatched robin.  An event seen from the robin’s POV inside the shell.  Getting his mice family in and out of trouble as they forage for leftover crumbs, Robin dreams of bringing home an entire sandwich.  Bumping into a ‘winged’ magpie, something of a hoarder that one, Robin is encouraged to fly and, with this added skill, is able to be a provider as well as a troublemaker.  Lots of singing in this one while mercifully skipping the oversell & push found in so many other family-marketed rivals.  A big relief from the Dreamworks/Illumination model; Aardman thriving on grins and chuckles, avoiding the hunt for the canned laughs others prize.  And how well it weathers!  Note that the ‘stop-motionographers’ have swapped out Plasticine for articulated figures covered with needle felting.  Goodbye tell-tale fingerprints, alas.  But if it helps save costs to give us more Aardman product, I’m okay with it.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *You’ll have to wait a while, but Aardman has just signed to make this a series to join their SHAUN THE SHEEP shorts.  Of the SHAUN spin-off features, FARMAGEDDON/’19 especially fine.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/03/a-shaun-sheep-movie-farmageddon-2019.html

THE FOUR POSTER (1952)

Jan de Hartog’s popular stage piece, a true two-hander and a perfect vehicle for a married acting couple to inexpensively tour with, was a major B’way hit for married acting couple Hume Cronym & Jessica Tandy (José Ferrer directing) while this film version had starrier married acting couple Rex Harrison & Lilli Palmer under stage-stuck film director Irving Reis.  (Harrison & Palmer with three B’way appearances around this time, including a huge hit in BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE, which they were still playing together in London in 1954 after Rex had taken up with Kay Kendall!  Talk about troopers!)  The play, a middlebrow Scenes From A Marriage, plays like an elegant series of alternately witty/wise/obvious/sentimental Black-Out sketches: Wedding Night; Labor Pains; 12 Year Itch; Children; Loss; Empty Nesters; Search for Youth; Till Death...; Survivor Blues.  Tougher-minded than you’d imagine, in addition to the expected charm & sentiment, with witty pen & ink styled animated interludes from the great John Hubley.  Pleasant, but these things can be awkward on film without an imaginative rethink.  (It has a better chance on the small screen.)  If only a decent print were available, perhaps it might come closer to its potential.*

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Touching on similar ideas, an earlier Rex Harrison film, from his initial Hollywood sojourn at 20th/Fox, shows what’s missing here.  Co-starring Gene Tierney, it's Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s still undersung THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR/’47.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Likely lost on today’s audience is that the very title of this film is a thumb to the nose of the Hollywood Production Code still forcing even married couples to sleep in separate beds.  A fourposter indeed!  Shocking.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Note the stage play is THE FOURPOSTER while the film is THE FOUR (space) POSTER.  Now you know what Hollywood producers do.

TWO GIRLS ON BROADWAY (1940)

Top-billed for the second time after moving from Warners, M-G-M was still figuring out what to do with a very young Lana Turner, not yet 20.  Musicals?  Not how we think of Lana now, but she made her share.  Did her own singing, too.  This backstager, a programmer from megger S. Sylvan Simon (say it three times fast), skimps on connective tissue to squeeze in pots of plot along with a few numbers in just 73 minutes.  Turner’s kid sister to Joan Blondell, small-town dance tutor engaged to hoofer George Murphy.  Going on an amateurs radio show, Murphy scores a big break in the Big Apple, then parlays his win into a gig in a revue and an invite to bring out the girls.  (Not the most believable moment in the pic.)  Only problem, longtime fiancée Blondell is strictly smalltime while Turner outshines her professionally (Blondell okay with that) and personally (tougher to swallow).  For Blondell, this offers an orgy of self-effacing renunciation; for Murphy, two neat dance routines and an orgy of apologies; for Turner, a chance to show off some nice moves on-stage and the buoyant looks and personality she had before M-G-M lacquered on the hard-shell surface.  Blondell, as so often, managing to layer in a bit of real sentiment between the formula moves.  Plus, standout lighting from DP George Folsey.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The big turntable stage set that shows up for this little film’s one big number is yet another outing for the mammoth circular staircase set originally built for THE GREAT ZIEGFELD/’36.  It was next seen on screen, again with Turner, in next year’s ZIEGFELD GIRL/’41 where Turner had to share it with Hedy Lamarr and Judy Garland.  Worse yet, dropping down to fourth-billed on that A-list pic.

BLOW (2001)

It’s fitting that Ray Liotta, playing understanding Dad to Johnny Depp’s drug dealing mogul, gives the defining (and best) perf in what proved to be Ted Demme’s last feature.  (A drug related death at only 38.)  Liotta having made his name in Uncle Jonathan Demme’s SOMETHING WILD/’86 and whose signature role was in Martin Scorsese’s GOODFELLAS/’90.  You expect Demme influence, but instead get lots of Scorsese; specifically GOODFELLAS which is nearly a template for this highly personalized story of how Depp’s character (the real life George Jung) became a key figure in upping the ante in Stateside drug consumption from weed to blow.  And it’s a great subject, one that this Demme isn’t quite up to, try as he might.  As the film would have it, Jung is more or less accidentally hooked into trafficking cocaine as a competent fellow who Columbian kingpin Pablo Escobar trusts to deliver across the border.  But in Demme’s hands the trip thru ‘70s fashion in clothes, grooming and preferred substance abuse skates on the surface.  Entertaining, and with lots of surprising turns from Paul Reubens (excellent!) and Penelope Cruz among many others.  But the sentimental turns and case pleading, all from the Jung/Depp’s POV, desperately needs counterweight from another (probably legally opposing) force while Demme only piles on more swag.  It makes a nice contrast to the barren walls of Jung's many prison layaways, but is missing any nuance.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  The real Jung, as seen in a still at the end of the pic, certainly no looker . . . unlike Depp!  So the way Depp enjoys all the outre ‘70s clothes (those pointy collars!), long hair styles and cosmetic trappings, plays very differently on him than it must have on the real guy.  The difference between a natural peacock and a squab who can only dress like one.

THE SECRET OF MONTE CRISTO (1961)

With film profits stuck in the U.K. under post-WWII financial protection policies, Hollywood used the embargoed cash to make more movies there.  It’s why you find M-G-M turning to a series of British historicals starting with IVANHOE/’52 or Disney making a series of family-suitable/live-action Classics like TREASURE ISLAND/’50, the one with Robert Newton.  The Disney run uniformly successful.  So when they wound down production, a little company like Mid-Century stepped into the breach.  (Too late for Mid-Century who disappeared after this.)  In spite of its title, look not for Alexandre Dumas' COUNT*, instead, an ‘original’ 1800s treasure map adventure, the old saw about four strangers, each holding one part of a map promising millions, forced to come together to find out where X Marks the Spot.  (That joining up a mid-point climax all but missed in Leon Griffiths' script.)  Rory Calhoun is pleasant company, but hopelessly American as an honorable Brit stepping in to help a Lady-in-distress whose father was just killed over his piece of the map.  Three others join them while two villains (and a lady adventuress) await up ahead.  All second-rate actors to be sure, but the production (by Robert S. Baker & Monty Berman who produce, direct and photograph per the opening credits) is quite handsomely shot and believably mounted.  (Though one exterior courtyard seems to get reused once or twice.)  And, of course, there’s a loyal servant for lame comic relief before he turns into a courageous ace-in-the-hole.  No great shakes, but not so far off the Disney model.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *From France, two new versions of the Dumas CRISTO just out: one a feature film/one a mini-series.  Both well received but neither yet showing up with English subtitles.

THE APPALOOSA (1966)

‘There’s never been a picture like THE APPALOOSA . . . There will never be another.’  That’s the Universal ad copy, overselling this rather conventional Western from director Sidney J. Furie, briefly ‘hot’ after THE IPCRESS FILE/’65, and star Marlon Brando, in his chilly career peregranation between a catastrophic MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY/’64 remake and his GODFATHER/TANGO/‘72 resurrection.  Not that Brando didn't have good outings over the break, it’s just that he didn’t matter as he once did.  It’s 1870 and Brando, 'the Gringo,’ is heading to the poor home of his son & family near the border to start a horse farm with his fabulous Appaloosa stallion.  But unknowingly, along the way he’s made an enemy of Mexican John Saxon.  Brando & Saxon wear the same Mex-makeup and use the same accent (though Brando drops his for a bit after he shaves), so why he’s named The Gringo something of a mystery.  Most of the film merely a chase to get back the horse that’s been stolen by Saxon.  Furie seasons with still new Spaghetti Western stylings (note the use of thrifty two-perforation TechniScope stock), but mostly sticks, like a one-trick pony, to his favored trick of framing within the frame by placing objects or silhouettes in the foreground to alter the picture ratio.  Vet cinematographer Russell Metty couldn’t have been happy.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Brando’s self-directed Western, ONE-EYED JACKS/’61, much like this film, tries for profound/settles for ponderous.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/one-eyed-jacks-1961.html

BISBEE ‘17 (2017)

In its centennial year, a forgotten American tragedy, centered on the long closed copper mines of Bisbee, Arizona, is brought to light by descendants of the real participants in the form of reenactments of events replayed on the actual locations.  It makes for a historically compelling, but only partially satisfying documentary from Robert Greene.  The conflict stemmed from increased copper production as America prepped to enter WWI.  In spite of making money hand over fist, the mine owners refused to bargain with the largely immigrant-worker demands on hours, pay & safety conditions and their union, the most radical of major American unions, the IWW (slogan: One Big Union!) called Strike!  Over a thousand walked; answered by violent enforcement and cattle car deportation to be left in the middle of the desert by a mostly White/mostly armed force acting under the made-up principle of ‘The Law of Necessity.’  Shocking as the act was, the general ignorance of the events from recent generations of the decimated Bisbee townspeople may be even greater.  (The town shrinking two-thirds after the last copper mine shut down in 1975.)  Greene spends most of his time mining for memories, mainly from sons & daughters of the players on both sides.  And it’s disheartening to listen to many of them not so much defend indefensible acts as stand their ground because Dad or Granddad couldn’t have done something wrong.  Greene misjudging the line between letting someone hang by their own rope and false equivalency.  And the reenactment, when it does come, unable to tell the story clearly.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  One of the more thoughtful participants notes how the union had a song for every occasion; or wrote one.  And it’s true!  Think of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union/ILGWU (the ‘Look for the Union Label’ people) who went so far as to turn one of their musical pep rally shows into the hit late-‘30s B’way musical PINS AND NEEDLES.  A complete studio cast recording of the Harold Rome score made in the ‘60s can be found on various services, and excerpts from it sung by guest star Barbra Streisand are on youtube.    https://open.spotify.com/album/11wkhjI7iSqiaefVNGRJ1q

CURTAIN UP (1952)

This little theatrical farce is a lot like those ‘veddy’ British Ealing Comedies so popular at the time.  Often LOL funny, it has enough of a following in England for a colorized edition.*  Set in a mid-sized British industrial town, we join the local theatrical rep company, a landing spot for professional also-rans, as they start rehearsal for next week’s play . . . or will once everyone shows up.  A new play, written by local amateur with connections Margaret Rutherford, is being put on its feet by Robert Morley’s very reluctant producer/director with the usual talent-challenged cast and skeleton crew.  Easy to see the comic possibilities here, Michael Frayn’s NOISES OFF is the G.O.A.T. of these things, but this more modest insider look works thanks to a cast kept on the move by journeyman director Ralph Smart, a looking-fabulous turn from Kay Kendall just before she broke thru in GENEVIEVE/’53 (more or less what happens to her character here), but mostly from doughty, fusty Rutherford and from some of the most outstanding quick comic reverses ever caught on film from Morley who gets to run the show and not simply support less funny, less talented people.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Less Double-Bill suggestion than Warning:  Like so many attempts at transferring farce from stage to screen, Peter Bogdanovich’s try at NOISE OFF/’92 is a mere shadow of its stage self.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *It should go without saying: avoid all colorized editions.  It’s like talking a kid to a Children’s Museum when the real deal is just across the street.

LINDA LINDA LINDA (2005)

From Japan, locally popular last-year-of-high-school comedy (girl BFF division) has acquired enough of a Stateside cult following over 20 years to warrant restoration/re-release.  Its straightforward story condensed into the final week of school when multiple food & cultural festivals take over from schooling & tests.  (Really, in Japan?)  We focus on a 4-girl pop/rock band that loses its vocalist shortly before a school concert and needs a replacement pronto.  Enter ‘Son,’ a South Korean exchange student with imperfect Japanese and even more imperfect pitch.  Not really a problem between the insipid/repetitive lyrics and the short vocal range of these ‘J-Pop’ faves.  Designed for group sing-a-longs &  karaoke bars, they hardly call for verbal or vocal virtuosity.  Ah, but beware of the eponymous title track!  Ear worm gold with a music hook you can’t get away from.  (A double LINDA followed by a triple.  Yikes it’s catchy!)  For non-locals, probably more interest in its depiction of Japanese high school culture and the positively weird passivity of our girl group.  Lethargic?  Sleep deprived?  Id challenged?  Do they have the energy for rock & roll, even on those Eurovision style songs, while going thru all the expected crises (all-night practice, on-and-off boyfriends, family stress, loss of the school cocoon lifestyle)?  Reticent rock & roll?  Director Nobuhiro Yamashita favors single-shots to cover scenes when possible, placing his camera as carefully distanced as a vase of flowers in a sparsely furnished room.  Even still-life ‘pillow shots’ of the school exterior in various weather conditions between scenes like something out of Yasujirô Ozu. (Though Ozu was a lot funnier about young people in many of his films, like those late family comedies with fart jokes!  Nothing that rude here.)

THE NATURAL (1984)

Barry Levinson has given his fabulist baseball yarn a Director’s Cut that significantly improves on a problematic film.  (At least, I think it does.  It’s been a while.)  Not that the film has lost its tone of mythic self-regard and sentimental claptrap, just that it’s now better mythic self-regard and claptrap.  Per Levinson, an expanded/rearranged first act has led him to tighten the rest of the film so it only runs a few minutes longer than before while feeling shorter since we’re more quickly involved.  (Fans of the Bernard Malamud novel shouldn’t get their hopes up.)  Robert Redford, all but perfectly cast*, stars as the young phenom, cut down before he can begin his pro career, returning as a mystery man without a past 16 years later.  But will he be cut down again?  The simple story arc embroidered behind the camera with layered atmosphere in Robert Towne’s script, 1940s period detail, sun-kissed cinematography by Caleb Deschanel and composer Randy Newman’s stirring ‘Fanfare for the Common Ballplayer’ score.  Even better in front of the camera, where a veritable pile-up of outstanding character actors in their late prime (Wilford Brimley, Richard Farnsworth, Darren McGavin, et al.) and a like sum of standout younger ones all get turns at the plate.  Alas, the women get the short end of the bat, two devil’s helpers/one lesser angel (Barbara Hershey, Kim Basinger, Glenn Close playing accordingly) lending a misanthropic or condescending note.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That’s almost perfectly cast since Redford’s throws are so slow they make Levinson’s frequent use of slo-mo camera tricks largely unnecessary.  (A college player, Redford can swing a bat.)  On the other hand, what a missed opportunity not casting the 21-yr-old Brad Pitt as Redford’s secret son.  Pitt debuting three years later.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Similar ideas, without the mystical mumbo-jumbo, but with even more mush, found in Dennis Quaid’s THE ROOKIE/’02    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-rookie-2002.html

MY FAIR LADY (1964)

Between 1957 and 1964, Jack Warner, last standing Warner Brother, green lit five B'way musical hits for stage-to-screen transfer (PAJAMA GAME/'57, DAMN YANKEES/'58, GYPSY/'62, THE MUSIC MAN/'62; MY FAIR LADY) that had two things in common: Each almost slavishly faithful to its stage source; All but one replacing their B'way leading lady with a well-established movie star.  The exception, DAMN YANKEES, retaining B'way sensation Gwen Verdon, the only one to flop.  So, the cause célèbre that erupted when Julie Andrews lost out to a non-singing Audrey Hepburn to play Eliza Doolittle on screen was no hard call for Jack Warner, merely Standard Operating Procedure.  Originally, JW also hoped to replace Rex Harrison & Stanley Holloway with Cary Grant & James Cagney in this Lerner & Loewe musical of PYGMALION, G.B. Shaws classy class comedy about a flower peddler who 'hires' a wealthy phonetics professor to teach her 'proper' speech.  So, how'd it turn out?  How's it hold up?  At the time, an enormous success with all but the growing auteurist/academic cinema scene, who were a bit sniffy, it now seems to have also won over that crowd; especially since an in-the-nick-of-time '90s restoration.  Deservedly so, particularly in the first half which plays with old Golden Age Hollywood confidence in its long-view pacing and solid construction.  The playing lightly elevated so that the move into song feels perfectly natural.  What masterful simplicity director George Cukor brings into play on a stand alone song like 'On the Street Where You Live,' basically shot in two static shots, stunningly lit, as is the whole film, by Harry Stradling.  (He shot three of the five musicals listed at the top.)  Cukor might have been more stylized here & there, and things go droopy a few times in the second half (look for Eliza pulling out a watering can), but it quickly gets back up.  With Harrison & Holloway captured in signature roles and Hepburn earning her place beside them with real laughs at Ascot and touching melancholy returning to her old Covent Garden flower market.  After falling a bit out of favor, it now looks fairer than ever.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The original Shaw, neatly trimmed by G.B. himself (or at least approved by him) was triumphantly filmed in 1938.  Leslie Howard a more sweet-natured Professor Higgins against Wendy Hiller's nonpareil Eliza.  Old tv footage shows Julie Andrews at twenty, during the original run playing the part with striking similarities, as if Hiller could sing like a lark learning to pray.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/pygmalion-1938.html

GHOST IN THE SHELL / KÔKAKU KIDÔTAI (1995)

You can date the international rise of anme (the Japanese style animation largely derived from 'Manga' comic books) from two 1988 films: Hayao Miyazki's MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO and Katsuhiro Ôtomo's AKIRA.  Seven years on, Mamoru Oshii sealed the deal with this futuristic semi-cyborg police thriller.  And while some of the technical aspects inevitably show their age, the ideas & characters certainly hold up/hold their interest.  Plus, feeling the sense of discovery and out-of-the-box strides of everyone involved in making this remain potent.  Heck, you can even more-or-less follow the story, no guaranteed thing in the 'Manga' world, as semi-cyborg policewoman Tanaka and her mostly still-human partner track down the mysterious 'Puppet Master' who may be hacking into everyone's operational system . . . or something like that.  Most endearing touch: Tanaka asking everyone she meets what percentage of cyborg-to-human they are.  (She's like a house guest rudely wanting to know what your rent is.)  But of course, you're not here for plot or character, or even some pretty interesting ideas*, but for the graphic design, city-scape, street signage and computer generated action.  None of which disappoint.  (NOTE:  Re our Family Friendly label, prudish parents should be aware there's a fair amount of female cyborg nudity.  Also, with so much info on screen, dubbed rather than Japanese w/subtitles is the way to go.)

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  With cool graphic trimmings, here's a nifty overview on the Rise of ANIME from a recent NYTimes article.    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/03/magazine/anime-manga-pokemon-demon-slayer-dragon-ball-z.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Look very closely at the lower-left corner of your screen, and you just might spot the Wachowskis furiously taking notes for THE MATRIX/'99.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2017)

While unlikely to match TEN LITTLE INDIANS in Agatha Christie adaptation supremacy, this full-rigged iteration of her train-set whodunit must be the fourth or fifth try.  The first of a series for actor/director Kenneth Branagh’s to play eccentric Belgium detective Hercules Poirot, two followed (DEATH ON THE NILE/’22; A HAUNTING IN VENICE/’23), each doing a mere third the business.  (neither seen here)  A first try at watching never got past Branagh’s whopper of a moustache (Yikes!), nor beyond the pointless over-produced Jerusalem prologue.  But knowing what was coming got us over the hump and into Christie’s interlaced murder puzzle; helped by the generally strong cast.  Unlike the far more sophisticated Sidney Lumet all-star version of 1974, Branagh’s grows progressively dark, even serious.  With a flattened color palette on interiors to set a serious mood while also adding action, unconvincing CGI spectacle, melodrama and his usual disruptive, showy camera moves & angles.  It also replaces the earlier film’s line-up of delectable one-on-one post-murder interviews (they’re like vaudeville turns for the cast to out do each other) with splintered questioning of suspects after vicious businessman Johnny Depp is murdered in his compartment.  It still works, Christie almost always does, but you’re often settling for mild little ‘in’ jokes from the cast.  Michelle Pfeiffer channeling a bit of Lauren Bacall; Josh Gad finding his inner Jack Weston for a vocal model.  Then Branagh lectures us on morality in the modern world for an ending.  Does Branagh really think absence of fun equals serious?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The obvious choice is 1974's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.  But which to watch first?  You only get one shot at not knowing whodunit.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/09/murder-on-orient-express-1974.html