LADIES’ MAN (1931)

Now remembered almost exclusively for co-writing CITIZEN KANE/'41 with Orson Welles, Herman J. Mankiewicz was at his most productive and his most influential during the early ‘30s at Paramount, writing, producing, and most importantly setting a sophisticated/adult tone.  This rather disagreeable romantic dramedy a perfect example of his imperfect efforts.*  William Powell, still shaded with the darker characters he started out playing back in the silents, is this year’s ‘ladies’ man’ to upper-crust business ‘widows,’ their husbands alive, but always at work.  Something of an unannounced gigolo, Powell’s a Manhattan flaneur, threading a needle of romance-with-benefits to ‘baste’ together a living with the trinkets of love.  Currently working a mother/daughter act, Mom’s a 400 Society snob (Olive Tell), unaware her main rival is her own daughter (Carole Lombard).  (Off the set, Lombard & Powell just engaged.)  These two are matched by father/scion: Bank prez Dad aware of the useful ‘escort’ service; son horrified at ‘the benefits.’  But once Powell is gob-smacked by ‘the real thing,’ a just visiting Kay Francis, he suddenly sees himself plainly and wants a fresh start.  Is he in too deep to change?  This is at least the third time Mank used this light start to set up a swerve toward the depths (it worked better for him in LAUGHTER/’30), but under Lothar Mendes’s direction, there’s less Early Talkie longueurs, at least by the younger cast members.  Though Paramount, like M-G-M had yet to come up to speed.  Very watchable if viewed with a bit of patience and a yen to see Powell’s lounge lizard go all Rake’s Progress.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See David Fincher’s unconvincing case for the defense (or is it the offense?) in MANK/'20.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/mank-2020.html   OR: By 1939, Francis’s star had slipped to B-pics, so Lombard, who was riding high, gave her a big juicy role in her Cary Grant co-starrer, IN NAME ONLY.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/08/in-name-only-1939.html

ALL OF US STRANGERS (2023)

Effective, affective and a bit overpraised, writer/director Andrew Haigh, working from a piece by Taichi Yamada, charts a fast-evolving/erotically-charged affair between two men, apparently the only tenants in their large apartment complex.  The main interest lies in the surprising gap between what might be called Generation Gay, sadder but wiser forty-something Andrew Scott*; and Generation Queer, late twenty-something, demonstrative Paul Mescal.  A cultural shift in attitude that doesn’t put a wall between them, but moves the relationship toward bridge building.  As in a noisy club scene, where expectations of rupture instead only deepen excitement.  But Haigh proves more concerned with relations between the living and the dead; specifically the need for emotional closure for Scott.  An unfulfilled screenwriter, his current project (if it is a project) has him visiting his childhood home for conversations with the parents he lost when he was an unhappy twelve year old.  The parents, now younger than he is, appear corporal, interacting with him as he is now, the gay adult man he grew up to be.  Played self-consciously in hushed tones, the fantasy relationship tender, touching and rather sentimental.  (Asked about his life after they died, there’s a superb line for Scott, noting how he hid his true self at school to keep from being bullied: ‘I made sure I did.’)  And at the end, we discover Mescal has his own ‘Mommy issues.’  Now we’ve jumped five generations back!  Very ‘40s Freudian.*  Missteps and all, it’s well acted (Claire Foy & Jamie Bell play the parents) and involving.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Scott’s recent roles have called on him to buff up a bit, but the real change is in the contours of his face.  As if at 48, he suddenly acquired the look of a movie star.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *The influence of 1940s memory piece plays very strong here.  On purpose?

WRECKING CREW (!942)

Typical bare-budget fare from the Williams, Pine & Thomas (known collectively as the Dollar Bills), this bargain-basement blockbuster pits old rivals at work & romance in competition.  One a naturally talented fuckup/braggart; the other more worker bee/butter-and-egg man.  Made at M-G-M with 10X the budget, the guys would be Clark Gable & Spencer Tracy; at 20th/Fox Tyrone Power & Don Ameche; Warners with Cagney & Pat O’Brien.  For the Dollar Bills?  You get Chester Morris (late of M-G-M) & Richard Arlen (late of Paramount).*  Credit the Bills with finding a good target for the action (a motley wrecking crew who specialize in tearing down dangerously dilapidated skyscrapers), and in finding the unknown Alex Widlicska, in his sole film credit, to work up special-effects that help director Frank McDonald give those cracking facades a reasonable sense of weight and volume.  Even real suspense in some simply accomplished trick shots.  (They’d look even better if a decent print could be found.)  Jean Parker no more than efficient as the girl with a past who must choose between the men, but kudos to someone for casting middle-aged character actress Esther Dale as ‘Mike,’ a senior woman in a man’s job (she inherited the biz from her husband) who’s both sentimental (the reckless Morris gets break after break because he reminds her of her husband) as well as tough.  And check out how they set up the corny sacrifice at the end.  Play ball!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Arlen always looked a bit glum at having fallen off the A-list, whereas Morris’s joie de vivre at just being an actor could come across as prime ham.  Arlen probably at his best in late silents like BEGGARS OF LIFE/’28.  For Morris, it’s his early M-G-M Talkies, see THE BIG HOUSE/’30.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/beggars-of-life-1928.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-big-house-1930.html

AWAY (2019)

Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis, whose FLOW/’24 is a well deserved global phenomenon, had only one previous feature to his credit.  And while it’s not as original an idea as FLOW’s flood (a dystopian adventure for a young survivor looking for life on earth . . . or whatever dangerous planet he’s found himself on), it’s FLOW’s near equal in visual imagination and is even more of a personal achievement because Zilbalodis apparently did the whole thing himself.  Don’t look for fifteen minutes of end credits; THE ENTIRE FILM: animated, directed, edited, scored by Zilbalodis; whom I hear also brewed the coffee.  Of course, this would be meaningless if the film weren’t as good as it is, but it’s positively loaded with interesting ideas on fate, luck, companionship, philosophy, trust, misplaced fear, opiate for the ‘people,’ hope, pluck . . . you get the idea.  Beautifully paced as a series of challenges & obstacles overcome to get to the next step on his journey against an enigmatic demon who may be as much friend as fiend.  And what character development animation for the lead and the little animals who come & go.  (Where does this talent come from?!)  Plus, for anyone who wants to know how somewhat limited CGI can blossom under the eye (and hand) of a single artist rather than a committee, here’s your chance.  Heck, he’s even managed to get a shade of GREEN on screen that doesn't slightly nauseate.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, FLOW.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/10/flow-2024.html

SHADOW OF DOUBT (1935)

Bereft of the snazzy production values & star wattage that kept M-G-M commercially atop Golden Age Hollywood, the studio’s programmers had to rely on just the sort of independent moviemaking moxie and quick-witted invention officially discouraged (even punished) on the lot.  A safe, dulled response in contrast to studios where B-pics could loosen up a bit with so little at stake.*  Ergo this sub-par M-G-M murder mystery, slackly directed by George B. Seitz, amid Society toffs and nightclub toughs where every Manhattanite is a Man-About-Town, even the gals, and all is fodder for tomorrow’s gossip columns.*  Our murder victim is Bradkey Page, a ‘handsy’ producer with too many girlfriends and too many enemies.  Beginning with an insulted Ricardo Cortez who publicly punched him at the club for leaving putative fiancée Virginia Bruce in the lurch for golddigger Betty Furness.  The usual list of shady characters, chorines and market manipulators fill in a long list of suspects and . . .  Ho-hum.  But halfway along, something unusual happens.  The script pivots almost entirely to Constance Collier, Cortez’s ultra-rich/eccentric Aunt, getting her out of the manse for the first time in decades to take the lead as amateur detective, solving the case along with antagonistic ‘help’ from detective Edward Brophy.  Collier, a near legendary stage performer in pre-’20s Britain making an unlikely Hollywood debut at 57 (she’d go on to a series of character turns as a fallen dowager in films like STAGE DOOR/’37 and ROPE/’48) walks off with the film. (Presumably, Collier and Brophy were test-running a possible series along the lines of what Edna May Oliver & James Gleason were doing over at Universal starting with THE PENGUIN POOL MURDER/’32.)  Collier proved too rich a taste for anything but the smallest of parts, but she’s certainly something to see in this, her sole lead role.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Actually, there's one nice bit of movement when a taxi getaway ride gets stuck in city traffic and becomes a foot chase.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Warners had just shown how these things are done in WONDER BAR/’34, exposing how crude & backward M-G-M’s default house style was at the time by comparison.  Just be warned, WONDER BAR may be the best of Al Jolson’s films, but racially it’s the most appalling.  (And BlackFace the least of it.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/01/wonder-bar-1933.html

GREEN BORDER / ZIELONA GRANICA (2023)

Coming Soon to an International Border near you . . .  No, not the movie, the events.  A tough watch from Polish-born, but borderless writer/director Agnieszka Holland on today’s Les Misérables: foreign refugees (legal, illegal, semi-legal migrants) leaving home & country for something better, only to find a road not paved in gold, but no road at all; merely a dirt path to hell.  In this case, a No-man’s-land between the Poland-Belarus border.  Arranged in chapters: the Border; the Guards; the Activists, etc., Holland, with but one truly horrible exception, puts the worst of it in section one, after a hopeful plane ride devolves into pure terror and venality from everyone they meet, beginning with a connecting van ride gone purposefully wrong, military terrorism, a forced border crossing where they discover they are pawns of international politics, hustled back and forth (with significant collateral damage in each direction) like a deadly game of Red Rover/Red Rover where sadistic Border Guards control the barbed-wire barrier.  (Among the many portraits of horrific behavior toward the migrants, the Belarus Border Guards stand out for general inhumanity and whimsical enjoyment of cruelty.)   Holland hardly needs to push to earn her effects, and she’s scrupulously fair, not turning starry-eyed toward the sympathetic, and occasionally effective activists, more hard-headed legal aides than saints, and not without their own assholes and entitled show-offs.  Not to say there aren’t a few rounded portraits of border guards showing their own stricken consciences, influences and peer pressures.  And if some storylines wrap in expected ways (most of them tragically), it’s impossible not to be freshly moved before the inevitable coda shows how this deadly show continues somewhere.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Shot in moody b&w, Holland reverses expectations by using professionals to get a non-pro vibe in the acting.

MURDER BY PROXY / BLACKOUT (1954)

Our unplanned BritNoir mini-fest ends with what promised most, but delivered least of three.  (See right below for the other two.)  ‘Most’ because it should be right up Hammer Films’ alley, the British studio best known for reinvigorating classic horror icons with kinetic charges of action, sex & lurid TechniColor . . . just not yet.  Instead, top contract director Terence Fisher, who made most of those fright films, is held down by a dogged whodunit plot, drab monochrome interiors and a budget that threatens to quit before the wrap.  Dane Clark, the American ‘ringer’ on board to ensure Stateside distribution, is prospectless & blind drunk at a snazzy London bar when he’s approached by a beautiful blonde with an unlikely proposition: Marry me tonight and I’ll pay you £500.  What he doesn’t know is that the gal in question is using him to stop an upcoming forced marriage; that her father will be murdered tonight; that she’ll disappear just as fast; or that Clark will be tagged with circumstantial evidence as suspect #1.  (Told you it sounded promising.)  Clark and the otherwise all-U.K. cast are fine, but the unraveling of lies & motives doesn't add up.  Nor a  necessitated warmup between Clark and Belinda Lee’s femme fatale.  Didn’t anyone on set notice the chemistry developing between Clark and spur-of-the-moment helpmate Eleanor Summerfield?  Send Lee down for the count and have Clark & Summerfield walk off into the sunrise.  If only they had enough cash for the re-takes.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  In Hollywood, Clark was typed as backup man whenever John Garfield was too busy, but could be his own guy given a chance.  See him at his best, and most distinctive, in MOONRISE/’48, the last film worthy of its great director, Frank Borzage.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/moonrise-1948.html

THE INTERRUPTED JOURNEY (1949)

Solid direction from little-known Daniel Birt (dead at 47 after just 12 features) makes all the difference in turning this modestly clever BritNoir programmer into something special.  Richard Todd is particularly good as a failing novelist, married to loyal but disappointed Valerie Hobson, now getting cold-feet as he runs off via train with the wife of his publisher.  And that's when his unscheduled emergency stop to hop off and go back home causes a major train collision with dozens killed, including the adulteress.  This is where the film becomes something unique for movie mavens with Act Two playing out like a compressed Alfred Hitchcock thriller with circumstantial evidence trapping Todd as calm Inspector Tom Walls closes in.  (Todd might be playing CRIME & PUNISHMENT’s Raskolnikov to Detective Walls’ Porifry.)  Just don’t trust that Act Two conclusion, it’s a fake-out to set up even worse charges Todd must disprove while on the run in an Act Three that leans more toward Fritz Lang in Hollywood.*   Fortunately, a short running time (77") doesn’t give you time to nitpick logic, but just enough space to savor how Birt is enjoying himself.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Hitchcock undoubtedly had a good hard look at this, hiring Richard Todd to run with similar lies, half-truths and ambivalent tone as one of the leads in next year’s STAGE FRIGHT/’50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/stage-fright-1950.html  OR:  Lang’s THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW/’44 for clues on where some of those twists came from . . . and where Birt picked up that ending.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/08/woman-in-window-1944.html

ORDERS TO KILL (1958)

Testing himself on WWII espionage far removed from his usual play or literary adaptations, director Anthony Asquith got lucky when savvy producer Anthony Havelock-Allan gave him Paul Dehn’s morally tricky/fact-suggested script.*  Paul Massie uses his slight build & weak chin to good effect as a grounded flyer transferred to undercover spying thanks to his impeccable French.  The job?  Take out a low level, small-town Resistance liaison man whose British contacts are being discovered by the Gestapo at suspicious rates.  (Five of the last nine dead.)  Only problem: once landed, Massie starts to find reasons that make him believe this middle-aged family man is innocent of the charge.  A classic spy yarn Asquith has trouble putting over at first.  Training and mission detail coming across like canned theatre with flat interiors, bald exposition and the usual British idea of Ugly (wartime) Americans.  But hold on; Act Two brings striking improvement as Massie, once in France, finds the reality of an ordered military assassination doesn’t match up to the larky adventure he imagined.  In a way, Asquith goes thru a similar process, locating his proper place within noir stylistics (seconded by regular lenser Desmond Dickinson’s exterior work), pace, suspicion & suspense.  And he's not hurt by the uptick in acting by all concerned when Irene Worth joins the story as Massie’s ambivalent local contact.   The script even retains a modicum of moral complexity, softened rather than written out, right thru the ending.  BTW: the high billing for Eddie Albert (Massie’s superior officer) and Lillian Gish (mom back home) is exaggerated, no doubt to help Stateside distribution, but they’re both fine.  So’s the film.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Dehn misses a sure thing in a little coda by not having the film’s pet cat make a return appearance after finding her way home post-occupation.   On the other hand, there’s a nifty meet-cute for assassin and target at the local bistro involving a rabbit stew that just might be kitty-cat fricassée.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Having the French speak accented English was standard practice at the time (still is to some extent), but not using it here could have considerably bumped up verisimilitude.

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (2024)

The one thing everybody knows about Beetlejuice (presumably even Tim Burton!) is that you summon him by repeating his name out loud three times.  Please see title.  (Oops.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  Along with Michael Keaton’s praise-worthy return 36 years on as the afterlife demon ‘Betelgeuse,’ only Burn Gorman (the immortal Guppy of BLEAK HOUSE/’05) as Father Damien holds tone against Burton’s barrage of faded frights.  Still, credit Burton with bettering his last feature, the wholly lamentable DUMBO remake.  Even showing a touch of the old magic in this film’s 'MacArthur Park' musical finale.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/11/dumbo-2019.html

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  The original BEETLEJUICE/’88, still a ghoulish delight.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/beetlejuice-1988.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Hard to believe, but after four decades on the job, director Burton still cannot handle an action sequence as simple as an out of control bicycle crashing thru street traffic and colliding into a backyard tree.

HIDDEN AGENDA (1990)

Indefatigable U.K. indie director Ken Loach takes on the Irish ‘Troubles’ (or rather Thatcher-Era Northern Irish ‘Troubles’) in both expected and unexpected ways.*  The ‘expected’ sees Frances McDormand and partner Brad Dourif as half of an international investigative team, currently in Belfast looking into police tactics that amount to Human Rights violations being justified as excessive violence to stop excessive violence.  It leads to the film’s McGuffin, a meaningful one in this case, an incriminating audio tape that causes Dourif to take a ride to a secret daybreak rendevous that goes deadly wrong.  So when the official report on the incident from British Special Forces and Northern Irish police proves self-serving coverup, Brian Cox’s honest, hard-nosed British detective is empowered to find out what really happened to the man and to the audio tape.  He functions like a police internal investigator, and is just as popular on all sides.  All this is fine, exceptionally well acted (particularly Cox’s world-weary, wised up, unstoppable force) and unfortunately all too believable, It’s also nothing new.  But that’s where Loach brings in the ‘unexpected,’ pulling out tropes from ‘70s paranoid political thrillers that go one step beyond usual Orange/Green allegiances and peer into messier/more consequential High Tory campaigns to influence U.K. politics.  True or not, it’s certainly convincing; and the portrait of power brokers running the government (the over-entitled titled) curving the arc of history to their liking is more deeply disturbing then the usual suspense.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Loach’s film on the ‘expected’ Irish Troubles was his big award-winner, THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY/’06.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/06/wind-that-shook-barley-2006.html    

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Loach & scripter Jim Allen’s main dramatic cheat is having too many political speeches outline differing goals & self-justifications (from the police, from the rebels, from the Tories) that would be as obvious to all the participants as they are to us.

SIDE STREETS (1934)

Featured players at Depression Era Warner Bros., Aline MacMahon and Ann Dvorak had just co-starred in the classic Pre-Code proto-feminist HEAT LIGHTNING/’34 when they had this Post-Code proto-feminist rematch.  This time business moves from auto-garage & lodge in the desert to a ‘side street’ fur salon owned & operated by MacMahon in San Francisco.  That’s where she meets-cute (in the Zoo) with unemployed able seaman Paul Kelly.  He’s picking up spilled peanuts meant for the monkeys; she’s picking up him!  The film nothing if not frank & hardheaded.  Soon they’re partners at the store and in bed.  Now married, he's already two-timing the wife with sharp looker Dvorak.  (Film’s original title ‘A WOMAN IN HER THIRTIES’ says it all.*)  But a baby will change the equation as Kelly’s nuts for the little heir.  Too bad the kid with MacMahon ain’t the only infant in this story.  Yep, Dvorak also in the family way.  Worse, Kelly’s roving eye gets another target when MacMahon’s flirtatious niece comes to help in the shop.  Yikes!  Meanwhile, MacMahon displays psychological acumen & salesmanship in selling those fur coats, leveraging mistresses against wives for big sales using subtle suggestion & not so subtle blackmail.  All while being a good egg.  Super stuff, even when some hallowed tropes of Women’s Drama threaten to make things too far-fetched.  But jeez-o-pete, what an actress Aline MacMahon was.*  And though she was big-boned, even matronly, there was a sort of Madonna-like magnificence & beauty to her.  LIGHTNING certainly the finer flick (both films programmer short at an amazingly speedy 1'3"), which means perennially dull megger Alfred E. Green hasn’t the time to slow things down.  Lenser Byron Haskin & typically superb art direction from Anton Grot give this one a sense of place & side street atmosphere.  The film, long hiding in plain sight, overdue for an airing.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, HEAT LIGHTNING. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/heat-lightning-1934.html    

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Keep in mind Kelly and MacMahon exactly the same age: 35.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  In Axel Nissen’s MOTHERS, MAMMIES AND OLD MAIDS (a fine rival on Hollywood actresses to go-to authority Jeanine Basinger), we learn MacMahon had a first professional theatrical experience as a ‘super’ to Sarah Bernhardt and shared the stage on her final B’way show (her 31st) with a debuting Meryl Streep.

LIGHTYEAR (2022)

For Disney/Pixar, seeing a sure bet like this TOY STORY offshoot, The Buzz Lightyear Origin Story, turn into a hubristic New Coke moment, must have been bewildering.*  Particularly as the film is beautifully crafted & darn entertaining.  Yet the explanation of its commercial failure (ok, an explanation) is apparent to anyone with half an ear to the ground: it was sold as TOY STORY addendum, but made as STAR WARS adventure.  (And not just any STAR WARS mind you, but as something that held to the vibe of the initial ‘70s/’80s trilogy.  (Admittedly, some story beats really too close to the original for comfort.  Call it homage.)  Lots of buzz at the time about swapping in Chris Evans as voice actor for original Buzz Tim Allen.  (Evans excellent, BTW.)  Yet not a peep about an even stranger alteration: a slight, but noticeable physical tweak that transforms Buzz, in face & body heft, into a Chris Pratt doppelgänger.  Weird.  (Was he up for the part?)  Briefly, Buzz and his Space Rangers need a new power supply to get off the inhospitable planet they crash landed on.  Testing a new energy crystal takes Buzz only four days in space, but lasts four years back on the planet.  Many tests later, his generation has aged out (or died), his New Space Rangers now two generations removed.  (Ask Einstein; you enjoy a clever twist on Luke Skywalker’s Darth Vader reveal.)  For the millions who passed on this as a probable failed TOY STORY origin story, but who’ve waited long & hard for one of the many STAR WARS reboots to remember what made Episodes IV & V great ‘Pop’ cinema, this one’s for you.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *You can almost hear the Creatives arguing with Publicity not to package this solely as a TOY STORY family film, but to play up its (junior) STAR WARS vibe.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/12/star-wars-1977.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *For the four or five of you who may not recall: 1985 saw Coca-Cola (temporarily) discontinue production of ‘Old Coke’ for the slightly sweeter ’New Coke’ after tests showed a preference for . . . Pepsi!  Yikes!  They completely overlooked two things.  ONE: they never informed customers this wouldn’t just be an additional flavor choice, but that the original Coke recipe was coming off the market.  TWO: Pepsi only beat Coca-Cola in sampling where you’d get a mini-cup.  Sure, the sweeter Pepsi took honors on the first four or five sips, but soon turned cloying.  At least Up North.  Down South, even sweeter R.C. Cola vies with Pepsi for top spot.  Yuck.

SHOOTING STARS (1928)

Considering a largely justified rep as a straightforward adaptor of well-bred literary material in the safe/solid British tradition, Anthony Asquith’s silent film beginnings capture a rarely seen visual showman in near experimental mode.  Especially so in UNDERGROUND/’28 and A COTTAGE IN DARTMOOR/’30, but also showing in this debut pic.  A behind-the-scenes look at how The Movies test the marriage of cowboy star Brian Aherne (long, lean, very Gary Cooper) and temperamental co-star wife Annette Benson.  While she pouts and plays bored on set, Asquith uses the time to give us a technically dazzling high-flying tour of the place.   Benson only perks up when she spots studio top clown Donald Calthrop working his baggy-pants slapstick.  Let the canoodling begin.  But the fun comes to a stop once Benson notices her tube of lipstick is a perfect match for her husband’s rifle cartridges, setting up either an ‘accident’ waiting to happen or the perfect crime.  (Some things never change!)  And if the melodrama feels tacked on, it’s still fun to look behind the camera, circa 1928.  As the unfulfilled wife, Annette Benson tends to play only one emotion at a time (she didn’t last much past the silent-to-sound transition), but Aherne is in his youthful prime, stealing the show while a simple storyline gives Asquith (along with co-director A.V. Bramble) space to stretch his cinematic muscles via fancy crane shots, complicated camera crawls and tricky framing.  Everyone else quite vivid.  Too vivid in the case of an obese clown rival in a film-within-this-film.  His period one-piece bathing suit leaving little to the imagination.  Yikes!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  SHOOTING is a decent start for Asquith, but either UNDERGROUND or DARTMOOR make better intros into his imaginative silent film world.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/10/cottage-in-dartmoor-1929.html   

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  IMDb incorrectly lists a 70" running time; the restoration is more like 100".

ANORA (2024)

Resilience from unlikely people in unlikely situations, the theme in writer/director Sean Baker’s best-known previous film, THE FLORIDA PROJECT/’17; and here again in an even more unlikely situation.  Preposterous, raunchy (make that preposterously raunchy), galvanizingly funny & farcically plotted without losing its line of action, ANORA the working name of a ‘working gal’ pursuing her lucrative trade at a strip club as Brighton Beach’s top lap dancer.  (Competitors grinding right by her, taking on customers lined up as if they were waiting for the next available chair at the barbershop.  Something of a happy-go-lucky hooker (but don’t dare call her that), she gets a special request for a Russian speaker from the 21-yr-old son of a Moscow oligarch, a horny naïf for whom nothing’s off limit, including his sense of entitlement.  But a week’s exclusivity whisks them off to a Las Vegas marriage and instant crisis back home for his guardian-protectors, terrified/mortified by his in-coming parents.  Baker going for a BORN YESTERDAY meets MARRIED TO THE MOB* vibe, finds his own twist on the material, jazzing things up with wavering loyalties so you can’t be sure what comes next or who winds up with whom.  Yet never forcing the material.  (Actually, I wish he would force, tightening the running time by ten or fifteen minutes.)  Great perfs all ‘round, many either debuting or having their first big role.  And given a neat physical look that’s something of a throwback to the ‘80s.  Lots of award action, too, well deserved.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *While the obvious Jonathan Demme shout out goes to MARRIED TO THE MOB, the tone of the film harks further back, to Demme’s earlier, most non-judgemental work, particularly the miraculous MELVIN AND HOWARD/’80.  OR: For more Baker, THE FLORIDA PROJECT.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/melvin-and-howard-1980.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-florida-project-2017.html