VIVA MARIA! (1965)

Director Louis Malle thrived on pushing himself beyond his comfort zone with films that were either unclassifiable and/or out of his fach.  But this burlesque of Central American People’s Revolutions at the turn of the last century, comes up short of the buoyant political parody he and co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière must have been aiming at.  Brigitte Bardot, orphaned daughter of an Irish bomb throwing terrorist, literally falls into the world of Jeanne Moreau’s troupe of traveling entertainers.  Together, they accidentally come up with a striptease act, the singing/dancing Two Marias before their little wagon train rolls into the middle of the Revolution.  Captured along with People’s Patriot leader George Hamilton (!), they’re soon rescued, but not before Moreau finds a way to make love to the handsome shackled rebel and promise to carry on ‘the cause’ should he die.  Malle stages big comic battle scenes with exaggerated violence and acrobatic strategy from the Music Hall lineup; and everyone seems to be having a jolly time of it.  If only the fun were contagious.  (Though Moreau stacking up surprisingly well, so to speak, next to Bardot.)  One really good joke among the misses: a combatant kneels down before the two Marias to lace up his boots and hundreds of soldiers standing behind him, taking it as sign of respect, also kneel.  If only Malle could stage a compound slapstick gag or two.  Alas, the film is more in the ‘60s terroir of Philippe de Broca or Blake Edwards.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Similar ideas play out in George Cukor’s HELLER IN PINK TIGHTS/’60 as another ‘60s sex Goddess, Sophia Loren, takes her stage show to the Wild West.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/one-of-kind-backstage-western-from.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Particularly the Ruritanian section of Edwards’ THE GREAT RACE/’65.

42ND STREET (1933)

After Hollywood flooded the market with D.O.A. Early Talkie musicals (1929 - 1932), they became so unpopular, theaters were putting up placards promising ‘All Talking/No Songs,’ studios removed already filmed production numbers from films and the Movie Musical was declared dead . . . at the age of three and a half.*  But the genre came roaring back in 1933 thanks to three hits from Warner Bros. (42ND, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933; FOOTLIGHT PARADE) and the first paring of Rogers & Astaire at R.K.O.  But where Fred & Ginger figured out how to trip the light fantastic on film, Warners tethered musical comedy to current events, specifically The Depression, in all its desperation.  Naturally, improved sound technology had a lot to do with things, but in 42ND STREET, first to be released, it was the realistic portrayal of a world falling apart, even if it was the fantastic backstage world of a B’way musical in trouble.  Warner Baxter is a powerhouse of physical exhaustion as the show’s director with one last chance to make back his Wall Street losses.  And the rest of the cast is chockablock with iconic turns from Ruby Keeler as a naïf but game chorine; Dick Powell’s sweet-natured boy ingenue; Bebe Daniels’ leading lady with a sugardaddy (Guy Kibbee) she can’t abide, but who’s backing the show (she’s stuck on old partner George Brent); and a veritable cartload of tasty characters (including Ginger Rogers before she was poached by R.K.O.).  Funny putdowns & Pre-Code innuendo galore , cleverly put together by book director Lloyd Bacon from a pacey script.  Yet, the film, which is dead serious, fights a reputation of campy silliness, largely because of those famous Busby Berkeley dance routines.  But in these early films, his work is double tethered, to the stage and to the financial meltdown just outside the theater alley door.  Excess production values would soon set in (marvelous fun, but in a different/campy way), but here, as in GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 and FOOTLIGHT PARADE.’33, the naughty Berkeley touch has a human scale still involved with what audiences would return to once they left the show.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Those other ‘33 classics: GOLD DIGGERS; FOOTLIGHT; Fred & Ginger’s FLYING DOWN TO RIO- all essential viewing.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/gold-diggers-of-1933-1933.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/footlight-parade-1933.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/06/flying-down-to-rio-1933.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *After the phenomenal, but misleading grosses on Al Jolson’s JAZZ SINGER follow-up, THE SINGING FOOL/’28, only Paramount consistently found the key to success in early sound musicals, thanks to Ernst Lubitsch and Rouben Mamoulian.

ACT OF LOVE / UN ACTE D'AMOUr (1953)

Between big-budget Hollywood hits in 1952 and ‘54 (THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL; 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA), Kirk Douglas took a career detour with a pair of modest foreign productions chosen to show range rather than profit.  An early Israeli feature, THE JUGGLER, and ths WWII memory piece where he plays an ex-soldier visiting The French Riviera for the first time in belated tribute to the young woman he loved and lost as the war was ending.  Director Anatol Litvak, whose long international career flirted with greatness, but never quite crossed over, has A-list support (scripter Irwin Shaw; editor William Hornbeck; art director Alexandre Trauner) for Douglas and ‘debuting’ Dany Robin* as wary/unmarried roommates of convenience whose relationship turns to love in over-crowded Paris.  Lying to the landlady to get the room, a jealous local suitor (a typically superb Serge Reggiani) and some overly complicated plans to make things legit, instead put it all in jeopardy.  A simple story of Parisian & military bureaucracy and the limits of romance, you know where this is going, but Litvak supplies such specific verisimilitude time & place become real characters, make that adversaries, to the couple.  And if the present day wraparound opening and closing feel a little pat, most of the film is touching and memorable.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, THE JUGGLER.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-juggler-1953.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Dany Robin gets an ‘And Introducing’ title in the opening credits in spite of having appeared in about twenty films before this.  It’s not even her debut in English.

LIES WE TELL (2023)

With its literary tone, blunted action in a confined space and feminist leanings, this well-received suspenser ought to be more effective than it is.  But director Lisa Mulcahy proves unable to bring off the slow-burn pace she sets.  A shame as it’s an intriguingly disturbing period piece set at an isolated Irish estate where a recently orphaned teenage girl, now mistress of the house but three years before reaching her majority, ignores legal advise to contest her father’s will installing her disgraced uncle as guardian.  He’s just been cleared of a murder charge and her late father thought this would help restore the family name.  Bringing along his flippant daughter and depraved son, the interlopers are soon attempting to  ‘gaslight’ the young heiress into an asylum with the help of her own advisor whom they’ve likely compromised with bribes to come.  But stalled in his goals, the uncle sends in the son, using rape as a marriage proposal.  And while we know the worm will eventually turn on these relatives, and that the girl’s actions stem from systemic women’s suppression and a lack of rights, our victim seems less a study in gender politics/control, more slow to react.  (At 28, Agnes O’Casey looks anything but helpless teen victim.  So, when she turns the tables in the third act, there’s little surprise.)  The whole film plays as if one of the Brontë sisters had done a rewrite of LADY IN A CAGE for Masterpiece Theatre.

DOUBLE-BILL:  As mentioned, your choice from the many JANE EYRE adaptations for a jolt of Charlotte Brontë and LADY IN A CAGE/’64, one of those popular mid-‘60s ‘let’s debase a Golden Age Hollywood legend’ pics.  This time, Olivia de Havilland gets the treatment from young, rising James Caan.

FOUR’S A CROWD (1938)

Change of pace from period swashbuckling for Errol Flynn (still quite early in his career and just off ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/’38), a contemporary slapsticky rom-com quadrille that sees Flynn and co-stars Olivia de Havilland, Rosalind Russell and  postremus inter pares Patric Knowles mixing it up in love & newsprint.  Knowles the young newspaper owner who needs Public Relations frenemy Flynn to get his paper up on its feet and back in the streets; Russell the crack reporter who needs the paper to publish her stuff; de Havilland the fetching granddaughter of mega-rich Walter Connolly, Flynn’s dream account.  Let the chases, reversals of fortune and toy train races begin.  To it’s credit, the film, directed by Michael Curtiz, is less loud and frenetic and than most Warners comedies, it even keeps you guessing who’ll end up with whom and largely refrains from using the background score as a covert laugh track.    If only it were as funny as it thinks it is.  The film improves in the second half when it stops pushing so hard for laughs, but this merely lets you see that the story doesn’t add up.  The main storyline less about the newspaper than Flynn’s attempt to turn Connolly’s miserly millionaire into a public pussy cat of philanthropy.  And while it’s a kick to watch Flynn doing most of his own slapstick falls, final results don’t exceed ‘meh.’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The All-Star newspaper rom-com quartet to check out is LIBELED LADY/’36 (Powell, Loy, Tracy, Harlow).  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/libeled-lady-1936.html

NOUVELLE VAGUE (2025)

You don’t have to be a film studies major or even an amateur movie maven to get a kick out of this fast-paced, unexpectedly endearing look at the largely unendearing Jean-Luc Godard at his  first gig as feature film director on BREATHLESS/’60, an early standard bearer for the French New Wave.  Godard chomping at the bit as other ‘Cahiers du Cinéma’ journalists, like Claude Chabrol & François Truffaut, get there before him.  And those are the two hot names Hollywood star Jean Seberg thought she’d be working with.  Instead, this jokey, saturnine intellectual with his own ideas about how to make a movie.  Helped by its quick shooting schedule (20 days), and a big cast of strong personalities, director Richard Linklater opens in media res using superimposed names on the screen as I.D. rather than explanations, letting the action take care of any questions, tacitly allowing us not to worry about what we miss in the race to get the film finished on time in spite of Godard’s abbreviated working days and waits for spontaneous inspiration.  Shooting in a style that apes Godard (Academy Ratio/b&w/on the run tracking shots), we’re immediately caught up in the on-set action while generally admiring the (not quite) lookalike cast playing the well-known leads and the unknown crew.  (That crew probably a tenth the size used on this tribute film.)  Zoey Deutch easily steals the film as leading lady Seberg, frustrated, bemused, and having more fun than she’ll admit to.  Others also coming thru vividly (in the story and as actors in this recreation).  The real surprise is that the behind the scenes hero ain’t Godard with all his stubborn confidence in new ideas, but the resilient professional in the face of impossible demands, unflappable cinematographer Raoul Coutard (seemingly observed rather than played by Matthieu Penchinat), accomplishing everything Godard throws at him, and turning out revolutionary images without personal drama getting in the way.

DOUBLE-BILL:  BREATHLESS/’60, the original.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  While it was probably the right decision to get out as quickly as possible once main filming had completed, the brief bit of post-production we do get to see might have emphasized more New Wave stylistics (okay, idiosyncracies) Godard pushed forward.  Particularly the way his ‘jump cuts’ were as much born from necessity as from choice.  As in, “We haven’t got the shot to link these two pieces of action so let’s simply ‘jump’ past that bit.’

TOKYO GODFATHERS / TÔKYÔ GODDOFÂZÂZU (2003)

From co-directors Shôgo Furuya & Satoshi Kon, a visually wild anme of the oft-filmed Christmas allegory about three very unwise men (here two men and one teen runaway girl; living homeless on the street), who find an abandoned baby in the trash on Christmas Eve and try to figure out what’s the best thing to do with it ('it’ being a weeks-old girl wailing for a change and a bottle), during the busy holiday season.  What makes the film special, and interesting, are the characters (rebelling runaway teen, soiled drunk who lost his family and took to the streets, and a highly flamboyant transvestite - think Auntie Mame - who always wanted to have a baby girl . . . the ‘natural’ way) and the warmer than usual style of animation that uses much more face modeling than usually seen in the genre.  Consistently extravagant in all departments, it builds to a superb finale chase/climax that unfortunately takes place late in the night and flattens out the vivid color scheme used in the rest of the film, presumably to emphasize the final sunrise of a new day and the discovery of the real parents and the explanation of how the infant came to be stolen.  Quite a different æsthetic than your typical anime, tough, rude and funny, too.  (NOTE: Be aware there’s lots of rude language in spite of our Family Friendly label - faggot, homo, etc.)

DOUBLE-BILL:  William Wyler’s first all-Talkie was HELL’S HEROES/’29, an exceptional version of THE THREE GODFATHERS, also made twice by John Ford and by Richard Boleslawski along with many more versions.  The later Ford version (3 GODFATHERS/’48) is the best known, but lays on the religious allegory as thickly as the period TechniColor.  But the expanded ending works a treat.

I'M STILL HERE / AINDA ESTOU AQUI (2024)

Exceptional, and exceptionally moving, this deservedly acclaimed memory piece from Walter Salles (MOTORCYCLE DIARIES/’04) follows a large Brazilian family living a near idyllic life a stone’s throw from the beach in Rio de Janeiro, who fall into the black hole of government surveillance and unwarranted arrest in the country’s 1970s military dictatorship.  The father, a former congressman now in construction, is first to be brought in ‘for questioning,’ shortly followed by his wife and second oldest daughter.  We never do find out exactly what he’s charged with, but he’s does seem to be handling messages and letters from illegally held prisoners trying for contact with the outside.  Unaware of anything he even might be doing, the daughter is soon released, the wife after a longer, more degrading stay.  Taken from the son’s memoir written decades later on the events, the film never over states or over plays things.  The facts, actions and family response offering all that’s needed to hold us in the grip of this intensely personal drama within the larger events being played out.  The film using fortitude in a way most projects dealing with such subjects might have used suspense.  With Fernanda Torres holding both family and film together as the mother, fully justifying all the nominations and awards she received.  Much helped by Salles who refuses to push either personal tragedy or politics too hard.  A brief aside on how ‘good people must do something’ about as far as he’ll go.  All while imaginatively visualizing the era on the technical side.  His use of recreated ‘Super-8' home movies particularly well done and effective.  Just don’t go in hoping to see the wicked punished.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Or hoping anyone might learn something about political abuses by visiting the past.  Check out the latest election results in Chile where a Pinochet legacy candidate has just won the top office.  And probably best not to look too close to home . . . or in the mirror.

THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS (1954)

To judge solely from the films (the ones he was paid to write*/the ones adapted from his work), you’d think Hollywood had it in for F. Scott Fitzgerald.  And maybe they did.  This big, misconceived M-G-M production is typical.  Long out of copyright and available only on subfusc Public Domain copies, it turns out after restoration to be a slick, expensive looking job.  Especially in the extensive French location work from D.P. Joseph Ruttenberg.  But that’s as far as the quality goes.  Moved from the original short story ('Hollywood Babylon')  POV of how the hedonistic late  ‘20s bled into the sobering ‘30s, we now begin as WWII is ending (about a half decade after Fitzgerald’s death) as a family of happy scam artists begin to fall apart when they actually become wealthy.  Perpetually glum ‘Stars & Stripes’ reporter Van Johnson meets ex-pat society sisters Elizabeth Taylor & Donna Reed, along with their Micawber of a father Walter Pidgeon and Reed takes it badly when Johnson goes ga-ga for La Liz.  Alas, these two lovers can’t settle in to that big inheritance after Johnson fails & fails & fails to write the Great American Novel . . . from Paris.  Wealth takes away his ambition and apparently Liz’s health as she runs around in the rain with Roger Moore’s Euro-trash gigolo.  You know where this is going, and not only because the film is told in flashback.  Taylor is by turns gorgeous and blobby looking, as if her face had no bone structure.  Reed gets the worst of it, and Johnson, as mentioned runs the gamut from glum to glummer.  Director Richard Brooks would do better by Taylor in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF/’‘58, but the rest of the cast were all beginning slow fades toward supporting roles and series tv.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *In spite of many attempts, Fitzgerald had only one credited screenplay, but it was a good one: THREE COMRADES/’38.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/12/three-comrades-1938.html

BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS (1971)

Between Walt Disney’s death in 1966 and the studio shakeup of 1984 (Michael Eisner in as CEO/adult-oriented shingle Touchstone’s debut release with Tom Hanks in SPLASH), the Disney film division was barely keeping its head above water with slapdash kiddie fare and infrequent, largely uninspired new animated features.  (Even animated classics, no longer holding to the strict 7-year re-release rotation, but put out carelessly in tired looking prints often-as-not projected on machines that inadvertently cropped original screen ratio.   No wonder the commercial and artistic appeal of a film that promised to recapture the prestige and grosses of MARY POPPINS/’64 sounded promising.  (Not that POPPINS is all it’s cracked up to be, but that’s another post.)  Used again here, the same directors splitting live-action &  animation; repeat scripters, tunesmiths, orchestrator, background matte men; even nailing POPPINS’ exact running time of 2'19".  (Holding back on names as no one is near their best here.)  All that was missing was the magic.  And they knew it, hastily trimming twenty minutes before the premiere.  Later releases kept snipping till all but one song went missing and running time hit 97".  (That’s 42" gone.)  Another period British musical, this time set in WWII where eccentric, childless apprentice witch Angela Lansbury (first choice Julie  Andrews having declined the role*) takes in three London siblings, sent to the country for safety.  Hoping to use her witchy powers in the war effort, they head to London to find missing sorcery professor David Thomlinson (uncomfortably cast in the Dick Van Dyke singing comic spot).  Tuneless, charmless, and boasting an endless production ‘numbo’ good for a toilet break, it all ends with a museum’s worth of empty armor fighting off a Nazi mini-invasion, but by then it’s hard to care.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Not everything was around for the film’s nearly full restoration.  Listen up for some ill-matched vocal dubbing on Thomlinson.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Andrews avoided this flop, but had a similar experience with STAR!/’68 which failed to recapture that SOUND OF MUSIC vibe with much the same team.  A bio-pic of musical actress Gertrude Lawrence, it was quickly recut for re-release with less of everything (including ticket buyers), retitled as THOSE WERE THE HAPPY DAYS.  (To its credit, STAR! is an interesting failure.

THE INVISIBLES / DIE UNSICHTBAREN (2017)

Though occasionally undercut by an obviously limited budget (note those fogged up bus windows and shortchanged exteriors), co-writer/director Claus Räfle does well by this little known/utterly fascinating chapter in the WWII Holocaust, recounting the lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin after 1941.  At first legally, as they worked in high-priority/protected jobs connected to the war effort; then, after 1943, when Berlin was officially declared ’free of Jews,’ the approximately 7000, mostly young, with families already sent to ‘the camps,’ either working anonymously in the city, entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers, or the few who found positions in the fragile German resistance.  About 1500 survived the war and the film focuses on four, all of whom were still around and lively enough to be interviewed in extensive, intensely memorable clips which are generously, seamlessly threaded into the film proper, re-enactments of their lives in the two years before the Russians entered the city . . . which posed its own kind of threat.  Well cast, and with caring attention toward the Germans who managed to help, though none of the main four actors can match the paradoxical sense of calm & spirit that served to hide the internal toughness of the survivors we meet.  (Max Mauff, as a forger for the resistance, comes the closest to being as memorable as his real life counterpart.)  Aptly, even gracefully, the film lets the material speak for itself in a way that’s moving and eloquent, without pumping up suspense with a surging score, squeezing out tears with mournful ‘cellos echoing Kol Nidre or basking in melodramatic overkill.  Räfle lets these survivors retain a dignity and even a survivor’s sense of victory in the face of horror and unimaginable loss.  (NOTE:  Our Family Friendly label obviously for teens and up.  Especially as three of the four 'invisibles' we follow were teenagers.)

L'ASSASSINAT DU PÈRE NOËL / WHO KILLED SANTA CLAUS? (1941)

German-owned Continental Films’ first release in Nazi occupied France was this downright peculiar Christmas Murder Mystery, an Alpine Whodunit in an isolated/insular town (KNIVES OUT SANTA?) , the sort of place where everyone knows who’s sleeping with whom, and what you had for dinner last night.  It’s also where Harry Baur’s toy & globe maker goes house to house Christmas Eve disguised as Father Noël to check on who was naughty or nice and take a bit of refreshment.  But when he doesn’t make it home and a body is found, it caps a series of strange recent events: Baron Big Shot, after ten years abroad, returning to his estate with a touch of leprosy; two saintly souls needing a miracle (Baur’s fair, but housebound daughter/the Baron’s housekeeper with her bedridden boy; the school teacher organizing a disruption to Midnight Mass; the theft of a sacred prayer ring during Church services; a romantic dinner for the Baron & the daughter (he never speaks/she never goes out), etc.  Happily, luck and misidentification solve all crimes & problems: Santa wasn’t murdered ,the ring found, the sickly child walks, the girl engaged, faux leprosy a test for tru-love.  Director Christian-Jaque and cinematographer  Armand Thirard* mix and match real locations and models in amusing ways, and hardly sweat the implausibilities.  But any ideas about this being some sort of wartime allegory are tough to buy into.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Christian-Jaque, one of those ‘cinema-of-quality’ guys French New Wavers dissed, probably best known for Gérard Philipe’s FANFAN LA TULIPE/’52, but perhaps better in another small town tale, UN REVENANT/’46.  While lenser Armand Thirard shows what PÈRE NOËL was aiming at in LE CORBEAU/’43, one of his films with Henri-Georges Clouzot.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/un-revenant-1946.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/05/fanfan-la-tulipe-1952.html

THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW (1988)

From the ‘70s to the millennium, fright specialist Wes Craven seemed to reboot, or at least refresh, the horror genre every decade.  (Eventually doing remakes of his own stuff.)  But this Haitian/Voodoo/Living Dead number leaves him stylistically stranded.  How serious was he about all this back-from-the-dead scientific blather?  How seriously did he want us to consider it between high blown pseudo-scientific jargon and primitive ‘native’ dance rituals?  Bill Pullman, with only RUTHLESS PEOPLE/’86 and SPACEBALLS/’87 behind him, is a Great White Hunter type with a test tube instead of a rifle, an anthropologist on the hunt not for wildlife, but for wild chemistry.  So, when he gets financial backing from Big Pharma, he heads to the tropics to find the magic powder of Life and Death.  A task complicated by destabilized Haitian politics, corrupt police & dangerous local Witch Doctors.  Craven seems to know he’s bitten off more than he can chew, smothering it all with exotic dance, violence and general drug-induced hysteria & hallucinations.  Leaving both victims and film buried alive.  For Craven, it was back to all those profitable NIGHTMAREs and SCREAMs.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/DOUBLE-BILL:   Serve your zombie æsthetic lyrically with I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE/’43; and anthropologically with EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT/’15.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-walked-with-zombie-1943.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/01/el-abrazo-de-la-serpiente-embrace-of.html

TWENTY PLUS TWO (1961)

Quintessential ‘60s tv actor David (THE FUGITIVE) Janssen (make that Quinn Martin-sential) was just coming off three seasons as Richard Diamond PRIVATE EYE when he returned to the big screen for this nonessential second-feature.  Janssen, in a lot of theatrically released films considering his prolific tv output and early death at 48, somehow made no impression on big screen, as if he shrunk in reverse proportion to image size.*  (On the other hand, a case can be made for SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN/’68 as the worst of all big-budget films.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/shoes-of-fisherman-1968.html)  In this Missing Persons Mystery, he’s at pains to tell us he’s not a P.I., but a Missing Heirs investigator.  Currently on the hunt for a daughter not seen in twenty years.  Dead?  Hiding?  Living abroad under an assumed name?  Pulp-scripter/producer Frank Gruber seems convinced he’s got a MALTESE FALCON on his hands: the lying dame; the mysterious fat man; Janssen as low-rent Bogart.  (All those cigarettes.)  And in its cheap manner, it’s sort of fun for a while.  (It’d be more fun if the tv-standard compressed grey-scale weren’t used on the light-flooded sets.)  Listen out for composer Gerald Fried swinging for the fences with unmotivated blasts of faux Henry Mancini cool jazz.)  With second-billed Jeanne Crain gone from the film by the last act.  Dull Dina Merrill stepping in.  William Demerest, Brad Dexter, Agnes Moorehead & Robert Strauss make paycheck appearances, but not much journeyman helmer Joseph M. Newman can do with the coincidences that pass for a plot.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Perhaps it’s something about Janssen’s concentration, as if he’s running out of gas and on the lookout for an Exit Ramp and a place to refuel.  Breaks provided by Quinn Martin Productions which were always divided its shows into four acts and an epilogue.

PLAY MISTY FOR ME (1971)

A late-starter at 41*, Clint Eastwood wisely set the bar to ‘Beginner’s Level’ for his directing debut.  Straightforward stalker stuff (scare cuts included), Clint’s a smooth-jazz radio D.J. with horndog tendencies, Donna Mills as a fiancée and mentally unstable superfan Jessica Walters falling out of balance.  Pretty slick as debuts go, and, thanks to D.P. Bruce Surtees, largely avoiding the over-lit/glossy t.v. look that was the bane of Universal Pictures’ late-‘60s/early ‘70s house style under production head Jennings Lang and studio chief Lew Wasserman.  But time hasn’t been kind to the film’s misogynist tone and all too obvious plot twists.  The whole thing would stop in its tracks if Clint & Co. showed an ounce of common sense or foresight.  Clint, in particular, so slow on the uptake, he seems to be asking for trouble.  Period gaffes not helped by that hoariest of ‘70s tropes, the likable, but expendable Black supporting character used in an ultra-bloody fashion to tee-up the rest of the mostly gore-free horror.  Casual Hollywood racism as dated as Clint’s ‘Sansabelt’ pants.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Not that it kept Eastwood from turning out 40+ features by the time he hit 95.  Will JUROR #2 prove to be his swansong?   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/12/juror-2-2024.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *And an even worse ‘70s stylistic cliché, the romantic music video break; here an oceanside stroll for Eastwood & Mills, backed by Roberta Flack/The First Time Ever I saw Your Face.

THE WARRIORS (1979)

Often confused with THE WANDERERS, Philip Kaufman/Richard Price’s less fanciful Rumble-in-the-Bronx/’60s Coming-of-Age tale, out five months later, Walter Hill’s Gangapalooza  Cos-Play romp, inspired by a Greek legend, happens over one long night in what might be called the imaginary here-and-now.*  That’s where Coney Island’s WARRIORS, sporting signature leatherette vests (undershirt optional depending on ab definition), grab the graffiti marked NYC subway going to the big Gang Pow Wow in the Bronx, No Weapons Allowed!  But when violence inevitably breaks out, it’s every gang for itself and the defenseless Warriors have to strategize a safe way home thru one enemy territory after another,  The Bronx, Manhattan and finally safe turf in Brooklyn . . . if they all make it.  Along the way, Martial Art fights, romance (real & feigned), all while misplaced blame puts them in harms way.  (In truth, the most dangerous place they go to is the subway Men’s Room.  Yikes!)  And speaking of territory, writer/director Hill is a bit out of his.  Optical printer wipes to change scenes?  Teenybopper music-video violence?  But he seems to be having almost as good a time as the costumer, decking out the gangs in various themed outfits.  (Check out the Goth Clown Baseball Team Gang.)  Too bad the cast missed finding a big breakout star.  Delicate hunk Michael Beck quickly lost his mojo with next year’s ZANADU.  Yet somehow, knowing most of the cast only for this film helps rather than hurts.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, THE WANDERERS.  Not so much alike after all.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-wanderers-1979.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The most stylized element in the film is 100% real.  The famous ‘70s-era NYC Subway Map of Massimo Vignelli.

CITIZEN K (2019)

This fine, even important, documentary on Russia (circa - 2000 - 2020): starts with the ‘Wild West’ Democracy of the early 2000s, then on to the Rise of the Oligarches and ‘Order’ (seven men holding 50% of Russia’s wealth), and finally the takeover by President Vladimir Putin, was too little seen.  (Though with NetFlix, who really knows?)  Centered on the Dostoevskian trials of possibly the biggest of the thieving Oligarches, oil mogul Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he is, at best, a deeply flawed messenger.  (But, hey, it’s Russia, you take what you can.)  It begins with President Boris Yeltsin, an unraveling comic tragedy, running for reelection against regrouped Communists, bringing in former Berlin KGB man Vladimir Putin as aide/heir apparent.  (Putin looking, if possible, even more like a rodent than he does now.  He might be auditioning for 007 super-villain.)  But with the government out of cash, and no one getting paid or pensioned, a backroom deal borrows funds from those seven super-rich oligarches who quickly buy up bankrupt Russian industry & utilities, pennies on the dollar.  (Kopeks on the Ruble?)  Including Mikhail Khodorkovsky.  But Putin tightens his political noose till the oligarches take the money and run . . . mostly to London.  Only Khodorkovsky stays.  Going into politics as a Democracy pushing opponent, earning jail time and, apparently, a conscience.  Told via news clips and fresh interviews with many a likely suspect and muckraking reporter, the story unexpectedly easy to follow thanks to clear narrative organizing (and generous on screen title cards) by writer/director Alex Gibney and editor Michael J. Palmer.  More timely than ever.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Of course, the question the film can’t answer, is why Russians put up with this level of dysfunctional government, corruption and misery.  Vodka?   That’s how they put up with it.  But ignorance, disinformation and stupidity help.  Watch the person-on-street interviews to see how they even surpass their American counterparts in willful Know-Nothngness.

PRANCER (1989)

In the disheartening world of modern cinematic Christmas uplift, PRANCER (nearing the 40 year mark) is considered something of a new classic.  (But then, so is LOVE ACTUALLY.)  A generous rating might be passable.  Oddly the basic story, single-parent kid starts to believe in a mythical Christmas character and sees her life go topsy-turvy for the better, is also the logline for an honest-to-goodness Christmas Classic, MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET.  The one from 1947, not the glossy ‘94 remake.  The big substitution is bringing in wounded reindeer Prancer for MIRACLE's self-proclaimed (delusional?) Santa Claus.  But whereas this film has no other plot to speak of, the surprise hit from ‘47 is loaded with subplots buttressing the CLAUS action: romance for the single parent; competitive capitalism going all warm & fuzzy; courtroom drama; even the frigging Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Without something similar, the texture’s awful thin on PRANCER, right from the start.  And that’s before a botched have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too ending.  Still, there’s nice work from Sam Elliott as the single parent running the family apple farm (substituting for Maureen O’Hara’s Mom in ‘47); and fun stunt casting with Michael Constantine & Abe Vigoda making real character turns out of throwaway roles.  On the other hand, director John Hancock* shows little control over Rebecca Harrell’s positive-thinker, not a patch on Natalie Wood’s depressed little girl in ‘47 (Wood a knockout child actor), or in taming Cloris Leachman, unable to pivot from nasty Miss  Havisham to mentoring Miss Moffat as the lady neighbor.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Though it has the lower IMDb.com rating, lots of comments show a preference toward the belated sequel PRANCER RETURNS/’01 (not seen here).  OR: Go for the unexpectedly entertaining (i.e. not too sappy) MIRACLE ON 34 TH STREET/’47.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *If the name John Hancock rings a bell, it’s likely because he directed the fondly remembered BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY/’73; a film better remembered than reseen.

BEFORE NIGHT FALLS (2000)

Hard to believe it’s been twenty-five years since Javier Bardem had his international breakthru as Cuban dissident-writer Reinaldo Arenas in this artful bio-pic.  Less hard to believe how well it’s held up as it was rightly acclaimed on release, only the second film from Julian Schnabel, segueing from high art to occasional film director.  For Arenas, child of the Cuban revolution, it wasn’t long before enthusiasm turned to persecution on two fronts, as an independent thinking writer and as part of a briefly burgeoning, soon underground, gay scene around Havana.  Schnabel, using a semi-linear, impressionistic style that suggests as much as it states, follows Arenas as he realizes he has to leave this new Cuba where he’s both imprisoned on trumped up charges (sexual/political) and forced to smuggle manuscripts out of the country for publication.  A grim situation, yet the film is neither a downer nor a suspenseful triumph of publishing intrigue, but a journalistic memory piece tethered to a political system that tries but cannot smother his voice, determination or friendships.  Schnabel brings remarkable control to the film, especially, as might be expected from his background, in color and texture, without undercutting a fluid visual style and unerring casting.  Not that everything works: the use of Spanish-accented English remains debatable as is Johnny Depp’s double stunt casting.  (Pretty funny though - Double drag: femme cross-dressing in jail, then as a Desk Sargent with a come-on vibe toward Arenas.)  But it’s Bardem who pulls everything together, mostly with his arresting physicality, the bone structure, the way the light catches his facial plains, like some handsome Cubist dream portrait, that ultimately make this so special.  It’s a plus that the guy can act, but what an objet d’art for the camera.  He knows it, too, which can get him into trouble, but certainly not here, not yet.*

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Though sparing with docu footage of Castro, it still makes the case of what a crashing bore he was regardless of politics.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Bardem’s face a great argument that you don’t need spectacle and fancy effects to justify watching on a big screen to get the full experience.

LIGHT OF THE WORLD (2025)

Like the Deluxe Illustrated Jesus for Kids your Great Aunt gave you for Christmas instead of the sports-gear you wanted, an oversized tome left unopened in its original shrink wrap on your bedroom bookshelf till college & the donation box called.  But had you looked inside at the heavy-gage glossy paper, you’d have found what LIGHT offers, a rather handsome, posterized version of The Gospel According to Market Research, a Bowdlerized Biblical primer on Jesus and his Merry Disciples joyfully spreading ‘the word’ in Judea, wandering ‘J-Pop’ stars (that's 'Jesus-Pop'), offering magic tricks that are real.  (Cute guys hip enough to make a JAWS reference.)  Fleshed out in pretty hand-drawn animation, and boasting a Band-of-Brothers vibe, it’s reasonably effective at hitting some of the early highlights in the canon.  But once we’ve crossed into Jerusalem, with Jesus now proclaiming himself King Messiah, the cherry-picked happy incidents have no way to pivot toward the disturbing last act.  (This telling hardly alone in tripping up here.)  Glib explanations on cause & effect in place of The Sermon on the Mount, the confrontation and riot at the Temple/Marketplace, et al.  What, you wonder, could anyone possibly object to from this winning clean-cut crew?  You may also start wondering why no one in here has skin tones darker than Mediterranean ‘olive.’  And as to those chalk-white Romans?  As usual, they're pretty much let off the hook as if the moviemakers were still proselytizing . . . oh.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Released months after THE KING OF KINGS/’25, another Jesus-for-Kids animation with a much starrier vocal cast, if IMDb.com can be believed, each film budgeted at 20 mill, but KING grossing nearly 80 mill to LIGHT’s disappointing 4.  Perhaps there is a limit to the Up-With Christianity market.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/09/the-king-of-kings-2025.html

WANTED MAN (2024)

File under Who Knew?  Dolph Lundgren, permanently tagged as Sylvester Stallone’s ROCKY IV adversary (a massive 6'5" to Sly’s bulked up 5'9", a blink would have K.O.’d) has had a surprisingly varied career even within the action hero roles he’s been stuck playing.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised this engineering Fulbright scholar has always had more than one arrow in his quiver, writing, producing and for the past two decades, directing low-ball action fare, presumably for the foreign market, now as streamers.  This one, generic as its title, perfectly acceptable product that could have been pitched at Clint Eastwood circa GRAN TORINO.*  (The prejudice Mexican-centered rather than Asian.)  Its neat parabolic plot sees Lundgren’s aging xenophobic cop in disgrace for violence and racial putdowns.  He’s saved from being fired by accepting  a trade-off assignment to pickup a pair of Mexican hookers South of the Border, witnesses to a drug cartel bust gone wrong and multiple dead DEA agents.  But those third parties at the sting operation weren’t Cartel Bad Guys, but cops in disguise, corrupt officers on both sides of the border.  So when the pickup also heads south (while driving north) and the body count erupts, who can you trust to call for help?  Okay, fresh this ain’t, and some technical issues bother.  (In particular, the dubbing, especially in the first three reels, might be out of an early ‘60s Italian post-production synch lab.)  But Lundgren stages the violent set pieces with aplomb (and readable logistics), earns props for brusquely killing off the film’s most likable character, and at 67, let’s himself look plenty beat up, enough to pas as a weary, but still powerful police presence.  Kelsey Grammer one of a few ‘names’ who show up.  Fine, though having someone so prominent in a smallish role sort of gives the plot away.  No cheering then, but no reason to hold your nose.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Sure enough, Lundgren says he tried to get this going in 2008. The year TURINO came out.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/05/gran-torino-2008.html

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967)

Few things date more quickly than ‘Progressive’ Hollywood films.  Often as not, passé before they hit the screen.  So all credit to this racially-charged murder procedural that plunks a top Black Detective from Philly, PA into a high-profile/Deep-South/small-town homicide investigation.  The film, one of the great entertainments in a competitive year of change in Hollywood (topping BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE GRADUATE, GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER and, of all things, DOCTOR DOLITTLE for Best Pic Oscar®) remains remarkably lively, well-observed and unembarrassing.  Four reasons why: a twisty murder mystery, not just scaffolding for current affairs; superbly caught atmosphere and inconspicuously imaginative craftsmanship from director Norman Jewison and cinematographer Norman Wexler*; Rod Steiger’s unexpectedly layered Southern-Fried Police Chief; and naturally Sidney Poitier’s stubborn/proud Northern Detective from his annus mirabilis*, whose on screen strengths (slow-burn dignity, gravitas & grace, intelligent vibe, reserved physicality, elegance) can sometimes hold him back, but here are a perfect fit.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Wexler’s changing palette & saturation levels, a masterclass in technique and a tutorial in the rise of ‘60s visual sophistication in Stateside filming standards.  Imagine what Lew Wasserman’s Universal Studios would have done to his negative at the time.  But also compare with today’s standard desaturated wash of autumnal gloom.  Just check out the railway station scene midway in that consists entirely of different shades of grey.  So, of course, cinematography the one major craft award where HEAT wasn’t even nominated come Oscar season.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Poitier hit the movie star trifecta in ‘67 with three huge hits: TO SIR WITH LOVE (Black American teacher wins over White lower-class British school kids; plus hit pop tune!); Love is color-blind DINNER; and this.  Note: DINNER had a staged release and was (God help us) second highest grosser in ‘68.

ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES (1943)

It took a World War to make (and sustain) the unlikely stardom of TechniColor beauty Maria Montez.  The campy, exotic adventure films she made for Universal in the ‘40s, especially when co-starred with blandly handsome Jon Hall and impish Sabu, were a perfect fit for wartime anxiety.  And though she continued making films till her early death in 1951 (only 41), her time had already passed.  ALI BABA, from 1943 now seems her best, certainly the best introduction, but is perhaps less well known than the ones with Sabu.  (Turhan Bey takes over his regular spot, and quite well.)  Easy to see why it holds up so well since, after a prologue that has the young Caliph watch his father’s murder, discover the secret cave of the Forty Thieves and get newly christened (if that’s the right word for an Arabic fable!) as Ali Baba, the bulk of the film, neatly paced by director Arthur Lubin, is pretty much lifted story beat by story beat/character by character from Warners' THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/’38.*  Even Jon Hall, bringing Errol Flynn dash to his grown up Ali Baba, Andy Devine in for Alan Hale, a public rescue from certain death, a dastardly usurper . . . and so on.  Alas, Montez ain’t no Olivia de Havilland in the kidnaped princess turned helpmate/lover department.  But then, who is?*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See for yourself in ROBIN HOOD with the whole unbeatable Warner Bros gang.   (Note: Hold off on more Montez; her films best seen in long-spaced intervals.) https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-adventures-of-robin-hood-1938.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Another ripoff comes when the outlaws sing their fighting song while riding thru the desert on horseback.  These guys not only robbing the wealthy Khan villians, but also composer Sigmund Romberg whose ‘Riff Song’ from his operetta THE DESERT SONG serves as a too close for comfort inspiration.

VIGILANTE FORCE (1976)

Twenty-five years before the horrible Brothers Weinstein, public face Harvey/backroom Bob, a similar dynamic played between the pleasant Brothers Corman, B-pic King Roger, front-man and stealth distributor of classy foreign cineasts, while kid brother Gene mostly content to stick with unassuming action junk such as this, one of a short series produced by Gene, on his own, for M-G-M release in the '70s..  And they don’t come much junkier than this tale of a terrorized town where locals hire a clean-up specialist only to discover that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.  (Heck, that’s almost SEVEN SAMURAI, no?)  Vietnam vet Kris Kristofferson’s the one-man wrecking crew (and closet sociopath) who simply replaces the current gang of shoot-em-up brawlers with a new protection racket of business-backed thugs.  It’ll take kid brother Jan-Michael Vincent to organize the town against KK and take back the town from the corrupt vigilante force who took back the town from the previous bad guys. Writer/director George Armitage manages to make a 30-day shoot look like they had 21, though art director Jack Fisk (with uncredited assistance from wife Sissy Spacek) somehow conjures convincing small-town flavor.  But who can explain what a hot property like Kristofferson (just off two Sam Peckinpah pics and about to start Streisand’s STAR IS BORN remake) is doing here.  (The filmmakers so surprised he showed up on set, they apparently forgot to buy him shirts!)  Jan-Michael Vincent shows the natural screen presence that somehow never quite put him in the top tier, while in a smaller part, pal Andrew Stevens makes a real impression even if Armitage throws away his sacrifice at the climax.  Guess he was too busy lifting James Cagney’s WHITE HEAT/’49 finish to bother.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  IMDb says this is a remake of Blaxploitation pic BUCKSTOWN/’75.  (Not seen here.)  And it does seem something of a precursor to popular guilty pleasure ROAD HOUSE/’86.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/08/road-house-1989.html

LE RAILWAY DE LA MORT / THE RAILWAY OF DEATH (1912)

Director Jean Durand amassed over 250 credits, mostly shorts/mostly for Gaumont, peaking in the pre-war years and out of the biz by his mid-40s before sound came in.  He must have been a handy guy to have around in those early days, churning out comedies that mixed Mack Sennett clownish eccentrics with Georges Méliès technical trickery (and nearly as tiresome); adventuress romances courtesy of daring wife Berthe Dagmar, who liked to work with wild/exotic animals; serials (none seen here); and tales of the untamed American West filmed in France (Pommes Frites Westerns?), as here.  Standing head & shoulders above anything else we’ve seen from Durand, and something of an astonishment for 1912, it’s a worthy precursor of the last two reels of Erich von Stroheim’s famously mutilated (but still phenomenal) GREED/’24.*  The two reeler (at least the 17minutes we have of it; 1912 two-reelers could last nearly a half hour using a slow cranking speed), opens in medias res, with a dying man discovered in a field by a pair of presumably prospecting partners.  His dying secret the exact location of a gold load, not ore, but a cache of gold nuggets.  Only problem, the 50/50 share the men had sworn to, lands in a notebook one of the ‘pals’ holds in the inner breast pocket of his jacket.  So the race is on, largely by train to claim the prize.  And the stunting (including fights on the roof  of a moving train) are gasp inducing.  No effects here, no cutaways or stunt doubles.  Just a couple of regular guys holding on for their lives before a nihilistic ending Stroheim would have okayed.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, the basic situation raised to the heights in GREED.   OR:  A selection of Jean Durand is out on a Gaumont Treasures DVD (Vol. 2/Disc 2).  But if you can deal with French-Only title cards, here’s a link to the same print of RAILWAY sans translation.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/greed-1924.html   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raWCzOg_X14

GERONIMO! (1939)

Born 1829; died 1909.  That’s all you need to know to figure out what a raw deal and what a load of historical hooey Apache warrior Geronimo got in the movies.  This early try starts encouragingly (that exclamatory title!), with backhanded admiration on screen (‘The Story of a Great Enemy’), and in hiring Native American Chief Thundercloud to play him.  But after an opening scene at the White House where a sympathetic President Grant notes broken treaties, starvation rationing, crooked suppliers and a near official policy clash between the peace pedaling Indian Affairs Bureau and Army extermination practices, it’s business as usual for the rest of the film.  In fact, the story’s hardly about Geronimo at all.  Instead, Grant forces reluctant martinet General Ralph Morgan to enforce peace policies he doesn't believe in, while also  unaware estranged son William Henry has been assigned to the unit.  The rest is almost entirely dysfunctional father/son issues alternating with dysfunctional attitudes between the ‘regular’ army guys already out there and the interloping/clueless General.  Journeyman director Paul Sloane, given a slightly above average B-pic budget (lots of process and stock footage in here), can’t get us interested in the familial drama, allowing Capt. Preston Foster and schlubby aide Andy Devine whatever heroics & swagger available.  Indeed, Devine, for once, gets to play last man standing.  Oh, and Geronimo?  In this one, he’s killed about four decades before the fact.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  The Martinet General/Regular Army conflict, along with the estranged father/son drama proved perfect material for the first and third films in John Ford’s classic Cavalry Trilogy: FORT APACHE/’48 and RIO GRANDE/’50.   OR: 1962 GERONIMO. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/rio-grande-1950.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/01/geronimo-1962.html

THE COMPLEAT BEATLES (1982)

Straightforward, unpretentious and unauthorized, this succinct Beatles docu has all you really need to know about John, Paul, George and Ringo, seen plain before mythology took over.  Basically a cut-and-paste job (a good one) by director Patrick Montgomery and editor Pamela Page (well narrated by Malcolm McDowel), buttressed with purpose-made interviews from a fair sampling of on-the-scene witnesses: Gerry (and the Pacemakers) Marsden, L.P. producer George Martin, et al.  Without finger pointing and with no ax to grind (nice to see Ringo get his due), the film is particularly refreshing in not polishing up every track and image to pristine state.  Instead, capturing some of pleasure in pulling out a slightly dinged up original pressing to listen to rather than some over-refined digital replacement/remix.  All in a couple of hours.  (THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY, currently in streaming rotation goes on for 10 hours.)  Best insight comes in noting just how quickly John’s voice broke down doing live shows.  Did that factor into the boys taking on Abbey Road studio hermitage?  Worst is the usual fawning over SGT. PEPPER.  Anyone around at the time can (off the top of their head) reel off five or six titles they’d put on the turntable before it.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  As mentioned in this NYTimes piece, the film is floating all over the internet.  The rights situation must be confusing as hell.  Most seem to be taken from decent VHS copies and are surprisingly watchable.    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/movies/other-beatles-documentary.html   

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The Beatles’ first Stateside visit turns NYC upside down in Robert Zemeckis’s debut pic, I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND/’78.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-wanna-hold-your-hand-1978.html

IT ALL CAME TRUE (1940)

Standard line on Humphrey Bogart’s move from the ranks of leading contract players to A-list stardom has him plucked for bigger things in '41 by Raoul Walsh and then John Huston for the one-two punch of HIGH SIERRA and THE MALTESE FALCON.  But before that, home studio Warners had already singled him out after years of second lead hoods in big pics and top-billed leads in programmers.  In hindsight, this film looks like his career pivot point.*  Lewis Seiler is the blunt, journeyman director who can’t take the cutes out of the set-up, an aging Irish Darlin’ with a failing Manhattan boarding house filled with ancient ex-performers who gets a lifeline when her darling boy (Jeffrey Lynn) comes home with his guest, underworld gangster/club owner/employer Bogart, desperate for an unlikely hideout after shooting someone.  Niece Ann Sheridan, a singer who’s worked for Bogie, already staying there.  Both men have their eyes on Sheridan.  (Who wouldn’t, she even gets to sing a few numbers in her own warmly musical voice when a bored Bogie converts the brownstone into an intimate Gay ‘90s club.  Just what any gangster on the lam would do.)  Hokey, but also silly fun; plus a great turn from Felix Bressart as a retired magician who doesn’t know his revived act is getting big laughs because his dated routine is so darn corny.  But the main thing to watch is how Bogart transitions right before your eyes into a sympathetic lead.  Heck, he even gets the big renunciation scene at the end so he can play fairy godfather to the lovers.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Basically, the same renunciation bit James Cagney played two years back for Raoul Walsh in THE ROARING TWENTIES/’39, giving the very same Jeffrey Lynn the love of his life.  Plus Bogart as the second lead baddie . . . sans redemption.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-roaring-twenties-1939.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A later reissue reshot the opening title card, upping Bogart from third to first billed.

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (2025)

With the notable exceptions of CABARET and CHICAGO*, B’way lyricist Fred Ebb & composer John Kander mostly turned out near misses that had good concepts, catchy scores, short runs and cult cast albums to keep their reps alive.  KISS, probably the best of these, still comes up short in Bill Condon’s heartfelt, but commercially DOA film adaptation.  Based on Manuel Puig’s novel (as was the 1985 William Hurt/Raul Julia film, uncredited here), it’s a sort of Queer Scheherazade with two prisoners of the Argentine military dictatorship in for Sultan and Storyteller.  Sharing a cell and an evolving friendship, Valentin, Diego Luna’s macho revolutionary political prisoner, and Molina, Tonatiuh’s effeminate informer, in on a vice charge, survive the misery of incarceration with nightly story recitations by Molina of the OTT romantic musical melodramas he loves and which now help take them out of the prison reality of  torture, poisoned food and isolation.  Under Condon (under Kander & Ebb for that matter,  the conceit only works sporadically, unsure how directly to reflect or comment.  Something the film points out all too well, highlighting the one musical number that pulls the whole concept together, ‘Where You Are.’ since it does exactly what the rest of the film only hints at doing.  Condon & Co. merely distracting when they mean to distance, in the Brechtian sense.  ‘Where You Are’ also exceptional because, while Molina is infatuated with lush TechniColor, this number, is lit & costumed to mimic glossy b&w showstoppers of the’30s,  using the natural abstraction of b&w to enhance a dialectic between audience & screen without need of forcing the conceit on us.  No complaints about the two leading men: Diego Luna’s Valentin gaining nuance and offering acceptance thru suffering; Tonatiuh’s Molina, pitched a bit high in the opening, but soon showing his best form and wide-ranging talent.  As the woman of their movie dreams (in multiple roles), Jennifer Lopez is proficient, sabotaged by leftover costume designs from Chita Rivera’s B’way run and by make-up that turns her into a wide-mouth ringer of musical comedy cult fave Dolores Gray whom you may recall from IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER/’55 and DESIGNING WOMAN/’57.*  Intentional?

LINK:  *Speaking of CHICAGO/Speaking of Dolores Gray: ‘IF,’ a comic ballad/tortured torch song (Jule Styne; Betty Comden & Adolph Green) introduced on B’way by Gray in TWO ON THE AISLE, is like a précis of CHICAGO, shrunk down from 2.5 hours to 3.5 minutes.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1XoR-fuzvY   

CONTEST:  For unknown reasons, two references to an earlier ‘concept musical,’ LADY IN THE DARK are in here.  Spot them and send your answer via our COMMENTS Box.  The first correct answer wins a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of the streaming film of your choice.

IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1994)

Faux Stephen King, but not faux John Carpenter in what is probably the best of his later films.*  Producer and occasional writer Michael De Luca gets credit for the script on this Stephen King pastiche about best-selling horror author and King rival Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow in a purposefully unbecoming wig).  His immense sales & cultural influence a lifeline to publisher Charlton Heston (well cast) and editor Julie Carmen (less well cast).  With Cane’s latest manuscript way overdue, but scheduled to hit the stores soon, they can’t even locate him.  That’s how insurance investigator Sam Neill (terrific) gets involved, hunting him up along with editor Carmen through directions more imaginary than real.  A lot like his books, getting weirder and scarier as the searchers find they’re driving into a living horror fable right out of his fevered brain.  Threatening small-town rubes, unspeakably gory monsters, it’s more maze than amazing.  Yet the best scare, the only one that really shows Carpenter still in top form, is a simple one that sees Neill hot-wiring a car to make an escape only to discover no matter how far or fast he goes into uncharted territory, you wind up right back where you started from.  Pure Lewis Carroll logic.  He’ll  have to go twice as fast to get anywhere.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Not having seen all of Carpenter’s later work, use the COMMENTS Box to let us know if we’ve missed something good.  Thanks.

LOOK IN ANY WINDOW (1961)

Since coming to Hollywood with Orson Welles’ Mercury Players, William Alland had done a bit of everything.  As an actor, he’s the shadowy reporter on the hunt for ‘Rosebud’ in CITIZEN KANE/’41.  Post-WWII service, he wrote & produced B-pics with little distinction till finding his niche at Universal in Sci-Fi & horror: IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE/’53; CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON./’54; THIS ISLAND EARTH/55; THE MOLE PEOPLE/’56 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-mole-people-1956.html), et al.  But he only directed once; this micro-budget seven-day quickie meant to establish rising ‘Teen Idol’ Paul Anka as a new Sal Mineo.  (Physically, the young Anka more proto-Dustin Hoffman.*)  In this debut, the poor kid’s in a bad way: Manly Mom Ruth Roman, busy emasculating unemployed Dipso-Dad Alex Nicol, is hankering for wealthy horndog neighbor Jack Cassidy.  Jack’s ignoring his wife who’s contemplating a coffee-fueled tête-à-tête with that widowed Euro-neighbor next door.  Meanwhile Gigi Perreau, Cassidy’s boy-curious teen daughter fights off a hot rod boyfriend to make nice with unthreatening soft-rod Anka.  But once he gets into Pop’s liquor supply, Anka comes on too strong.  (If Gigi weren’t stronger than drunk Paul, those shattered wine glasses already put out for  tomorrow’s big Fourth of July pool party might not have been just symbolic.  Yikes!  (Or is it mazel-tov?)  No wonder the kid is acting out as the pervy local Peeping Tom.  Enter Detectives Tweedledum and Tweedledee, one ready to force an old-school confession from any suspect, the other all modern psychology, understanding the kid’s depraved because he’s deprived as WEST SIDE STORY’s Officer Krupke might have put it.  Presented in a smeary/lo-fi image, the film lists no cinematographer (who’d want to take credit?); with generally lousy tech work to match.  Where has this sleazy, sticky-to-the-touch, campy Midnite Madness Movie been hiding?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Anka didn’t turn into a Mineo or a Hoffman, but he did write the film’s theme song.