THE LOST LEONARDO (2021)

Lost, yes.*  Leonardo, well . . . ?  Andreas Koefoed’s singularly unconvincing documentary on the discovery of an equally unconvincing ‘new’ painting by Leonardo da Vinci (of Jesus, no less, 'Salvator Mundi') grows only more depressing as it goes along, dropping any considerations of art and restoration to drool over financial machinations.  The basic set-up involves a pair of art hunters who buy a poorly restored Renaissance era painting which looks like a bad copy of a School of Da Vinci portrait of the Messiah; dressed in 15th Century drag and looking like Mona Lisa’s brother.  And, barring a few art experts/dealers who vigorously poo-poo the attribution, many more seem to know which side of the bread is buttered and are happy to get in line: experts, historians, museum curators, auction house profiteers, newspersons; all on the band wagon with stars in their eyes and open pockets.  After bidding wars, a painting that was originally bought for about 1200 bucks winds up going for half a billion (!) from murderous Saudi Prince Mohammad Bin Salman eager to take the plunge for the cultural caché of possessing not a Da Vinci, but with the far more appealing idea of owning the most expensive art work in the world.  Offered a chance to lend it to the Lourve’s Da Vinci spectacular, he wisely declines.  (Fear of competition and close comparison?)  Meanwhile, the film seems happy trying to have its cake and eat it too, lifting the occasional eyebrow as it coasts on Leonardo’s genius rep and toggles between documentary 101 clichés and interstitial interviews with supporters who don’t seem to acknowledge a difference between a painting’s worth and its price.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Not a forgery, per se, but by the look of things, merely a third-rate/in-the-style-of exercise.  A work that’s more in the nature of a misattributed composition, like the supposed 6th and 7th violin concertos (not by) Mozart (he wrote five) recorded by many great players.  Yet they reveal themselves as faux-Mozart within six or seven measures.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Since everyone assumes Prince MBS holds the painting but has it hidden, this Leonardo isn’t even LOST.

THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE (2024)

Apparently, this, the first ever all-animated Looney Tunes Feature, survived by the hair on Porky Pig’s chinny-chin-chin only because it didn’t cost enough to be worth annihilation as a tax write-off.  Made to stream on MAX (speaking of tax write-offs), it was picked up for theatrical release by Ketchup Entertainment.  So, worth the trouble?  Well, no classic, but damned good.  Especially with the ‘tamed’ CGI animation that reasonably apes a hand-drawn æsthetic and avoids that rubbery/fondant look.  A first feature for director Pete Browngardt, who also co-wrote, the guy certainly knows his animation forebears, sneaking in fun shout-outs to past Merrie Melodies masters (look fast for a nod toward overlooked Bob Clampett*) and is ecumenical in citing non-Warner sources & influences past & present.  Plus a story that holds together instead of getting in the way, as Porky and Daffy (nicely looney here, as in his early nut-job days*) work together, along with Porky’s new lady friend, to stop a gooey alien invasion taking over bodies via chewing gum.  (Less modern zombie than INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS throwback.)  Best in the prologue, a sort of origin story for an orphaned Pig & Duck now being raised by Farmer Jim who’s hilariously drawn in the style American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton, with landscapes and dramatic skies to match.  Quite striking!  Looney cartoony style always there to add contrast and comment without having to say a word.  Much of this wonderful stuff, even if the busy, busy storyline not quite so wonderful.  Too many cooks?  Fifteen credited writers on board and it feels like it.  No matter.  This is about as good as these long-form up-datings get.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Daffy at his daffiest in his early days (late ‘30s/early ‘40s) as Tex Avery & Bob Clampett developed his unconstrained ‘id.’  Check release dates for top results.  NOTE: Some of his best in b&w.

LINK:  Mel Blanc’s unbeatable vocals for the main Warners’ animated crew are successfully inherited (at last!) by Eric Bauza.  Seen here demonstrating.  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/movies/looney-tunes-voice-actor-eric-bauza.html?searchResultPosition=1

SIROCCO (1951)

Humphrey Bogart never quite left the bad guy roles behind; the killers, thugs and mob guys that established him in support of Warner Bros. A-listers in the ‘30s, before hitting star status playing compromised heros in the early ‘40s.  But he chose to play the two darkest roles of his career at Columbia Pictures in the early ‘50s under his own Santana production banner.  A masterpiece a year before this in Nicholas Ray’s uniquely unsettling IN A LONELY PLACE/’50, and this near-miss directed by Curtis Bernhardt.  But a particularly interesting miss as it twists so many elements/equivalents from CASABLANCA/’42 into an entirely different shape; all romanticizing filters off, almost everyone, Bogart included, a nasty piece of work.  It's 1925 Damascus, Syria: religious fanatics may be losing the war against their French 'protectors', but they’re taking a heavy toll in terrorist attacks.  Bogart, profit-minded and politically neutral, happy to sell them weapons & ammo at the right price while careful to curry favor from the current French authorities.  With an Ingrid Bergman lookalike on the side (Märta Torén), she’s mistress to Lee J. Cobb, he’s the French Chief of Security, and she may just be using both men to get to Cairo.  Cobb, the least tainted character in here, is trying to get both sides to some kind of peace agreement, an idea opposed by his superior, Everett Sloane, determined to round up all the usual suspects and put them against the wall.  Unlike CASABLANCA, there’s no uplifting jaunty tone, even the walls seem to be closing in under director Curtis Bernhardt, much helped by exceptional lensing from Burnett Guffey.  Not exactly realistic, more like sweaty German Expressionism, the art direction impressively fierce and moody as Bogart tries to rein in his own cynicism on life, love, politics and the bottom line.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, IN A LONELY PLACE/’50.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/07/in-lonely-place-1950.html   

ATENTION MUST BE PAID: If our four leads offer brutal variations on those CASABLANCA players, Zero Mostel plays clean-up with bits and pieces of three or four of that film’s famous supporting cast.  While Zero’s infamous comb-over also puts an unfortunate spotlight on the unconvincing hair pieces sported by Bogart and Cobb.

THE BURNING SEA / NORDSJØEN (2021)

Crackerjack thriller from Norway (dir. John Andreas Andersen) on the rescue of a single man left behind on a half-sunk North Sea oil platform, is dramatically structured like a ‘70s disaster pic, with the third act concentrated down to an intimate three-hander.  A larger-scaled prologue sees a different platform go down while land-based technicians use unmanned underwater mobile cameras to assess damage, count bodies and watch in horror on monitors as a lone survivor, trapped in an air pocket, plays out his final moments.  The disaster a mere taste of a future where the land mass underneath hundreds of derricks & platforms is destabilizing.  Mass evacuation and remote shutdown the only answer to prevent total destruction of coastal land & sea.  But one valve needs a manual shut off or it could explode and trigger the rest to blow.  One man left behind getting it done, doomed if not for his stubborn technician girlfriend (she’d seen the man in the prologue die) who breaks orders on a personal mission to save him from the only solution available to save things: setting the floating crude oil spilling onto the ocean ablaze.  Dog-eared tropes to be sure.  Naturally there’s a single-parent tyke involved, that stubborn savior was about to move in with them, and there’s even a relative to play martyr.  But when done in exemplary fashion, excellent acting and no more CGI than necessary, it works just fine.  Especially with a government official as villain even though he’s just balancing the lives & livelihoods of millions, along with industry & coastal waters, against one man.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  You might not imagine a late ‘50s Japanese horror pic as Double-Bill fare, but a real classic, THE H-MAN/’58, showed the way with a climax that sets fire to oil on a river.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-h-man-bijo-to-ekitai-ningen-1958.html

SNAKE EATER (1989)

High-octane/low-mileage action/revenge trash is, inexplicably, good violent fun with hunky, hirsute, torso-torqued Lorenzo Lamas returning to the big screen after five years.  (Growing the chest hair back?)  Released just months before Patrick Swayze’s ROAD HOUSE/’89, it might be begging to be its Drive-In second feature mate.*  Director George Erschbamer, unfazed by narrative lacunae, an amateur supporting cast or multiple off-screen saves in the nick of time, shows decent action chops as wiseguy city cop (and ex-Marine Special Forces ‘Snake Eater’ Lamas, heads to White Trash county (think DELIVERANCE/’72) where a motley crew of inbred brothers have murdered his vacationing parents and abducted his sister.  Locked in a swampy shack, guarded by the boys’ love-starved little sister, you can guess the rest.  But the sheer gusto in boundary breaking bad taste, along with the Lamas bod and weirdly ‘off’ line readings of lame comic comebacks, was entertaining enough (perhaps objectionable enough?) to suffer two sequels.  (neither seen here)  And you know what you’re in for right from the start when the credits come backed by pure ‘80s synthesizer sounds.  The film so up-front about itself, you root for it to work on some level.  And, in its fashion, it does.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Realize that Drive-In double bill with your own Midnight screening of ROAD HOUSE.

OFFICIAL COMPETITION / COMPETENCIA OFICIAL (2021)

Well received vanity project, but not a vanity project in the usual sense.  No, a film about vanity, specifically the vanity of four principles making a film: 80-yr-old pharmaceutical mogul José Luis Gómez, with an unread Nobel Laureate’s book he hopes will give him a cultural legacy; trendy writer/director Penélope Cruz, in fright wig; and the country’s two most distinguished actors: highbrow Oscar Martínez/lowbrow Antonio Banderas.  A scabrous/satiric look at current moviemaking mores from writer/directors Mariano Cohn & Gastón Duprat promised as these four self-centered obsessives rehearse, strategize and go to absurd lengths to be top dog.  But with nary a laugh or well-aimed dart showing up.  See Cruz touch base with character thru extreme acting exercises.  Watch our actors play buddy/buddy then try to lie their way past each other.  How droll, you think before the reveal.  One unintentional gag does land, it's when Cruz gives a speech at some pointless award ceremony and stops speaking at the exact right length.  (Never has happened.)  The only part of the production to come off is the stunning use of the office complex that serves as the film’s only location; call the design style Monumental Modern.  Stunning.  Perhaps we could order a better drama in a la carte.  This one, neither funny nor insightful; and with sitting ducks for targets.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  1935 Hollywood proves more trenchant and knowing on the subject of big-time movie production in a fun, underrated recent discovery THE STAND-IN.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/03/stand-in-1937.html

CHINA (1943)

Moderately effective pre-Pearl Harbor set WWII flight-to-freedom story (PLOT: In Japanese-invaded China, politically neutral American gas dealer picks a side to fight for) undercuts its strength going from specific responses to something as generic as its title.  Not that Paramount execs cared.  What they were looking for was the right vehicle to carry new star Alan Ladd over from the ‘Good’ Bad Man roles that established him a year back (THIS GUN FOR HIRE/’42) into full-blown heroics.  Normally disinterested director John Farrow gins up the opening with a minute-long single-take shot as Ladd partner William Bendix dashes thru a Chinese city under aerial attack.  Then lengthens the unbroken take with a repeated optical printing trick to add another half-minute.  Not really Farrow’s style.  Did freshly Oscar-nominated lenser Leo Tover come up with the idea?   (And why is it not celebrated?)  Pity, nothing that follows is as showy or fun.  Instead, Loretta Young and her gaggle of lovely Chinese students commandeer Ladd’s truck to take them to safety.  Various atrocities along the way, coming from wartime Japanese racist stereotypes.  (Real atrocity footage from the period far harder to watch.)  Not all the F/X convinces, but the model planes are cleverly used & half a rocky mountain pass gets blasted for a finale.  But too much in here could have fit just as nicely into any dangerous dash-to-freedom film.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Ladd, famously on the short side (5'6"), but loaded with movie star glam, gets a chance to display his Olympics trained physique at a time when such well-defined torsos were rare for top Hollywood actors.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Check out the billing order after Ladd and Young get above the title and Bendix right below, the next five positions all actual Asian actors, if not all Chinese.  Still, a nice touch.

DISHONORED (1931)

Third of the seven legendary (and legendarily eccentric) collaborations between Josef von Sternberg & Marlene Dietrich (1930 - ‘35) is usually considered the runt of the litter.  But recent reviewing suggests otherwise.  A MATA HARI WWI spy story, it beat M-G-M’s Greta Garbo version to theaters by months*; von Sternberg’s original story both stranger and stronger.  Dietrich’s a classy ‘working girl’ picked up by Austrian Secret Service Chief Gustav von Seyffertitz (that’s the actor’s name) for ‘Patriotic Sex,’ literally sleeping with the enemy for info on troop movements and battle plans.  Quickly proving her mettle in foreign agents & Austrian traitors, she’s undone by unbidden love when Russian spy Victor McLaglen gets the better of her.  The two soon caught in a deadly game of catch-and-release before their luck inevitably runs out.  Sternberg’s pacing remains Early Talkie languid (next year’s SHANGHAI EXPRESS got him fully up to speed), and McLaglen’s lack of elegance pairs awkwardly against Dietrich, but the film never turns excessively camp, instead witty and knowing on many levels with Dietrich looking stunning (even by her standard) in all sorts of outfits; in and out of makeup.  With great sets and set pieces sprinkled into every reel (most famously right at the end touching up her makeup, its spot on the list falling dead center in the series.  SHANGHAI EXPRESS remains the best Dietrich intro, sexy, funny, downright zippy.  But even there, what’s missed is the boost the young Gary Cooper uniquely gave her in MOROCCO where equal beauty made the usually untouchable Dietrich ‘touchable.'*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned, 1931's other Mata Hari film.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/mata-hari-1932.html   

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *So, if Coop adds the beauty factor McLaglen misses, what of Cary Grant in  BLONDE VENUS?  The quick answer is VENUS is just too extreme in style, story, art direction (even Dietrich’s tweezed look) to add that ‘touchability’ quotient.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1949)

Available in an assortment of running times (73, 81, 91 minutes); the longest from the original French cut returns a reel of scattered footage . . . in French.  (see LINK below*)  But if you can deal with the unstable AnscoColor, the unsteady picture quality and the hop, skip & jump narrative continuity, you’ll be rewarded with something that comes within spitting distance of a Lewis Carroll vibe.  Casual viewers may not be able to get past all the technical problems, just as the film producers couldn’t get past Disney’s legal team, hoping to protect the upcoming 1951 release of their ALICE by suppressing this upstart.*  All for a title that’s proved inimical to film adaptation.  (Disney alone three times: too domesticated in that 1951 cartoon feature; then twice from Tim Burton: commercially buoyant but artistically DOA in 2010 & 2016.)  So, daunting artistic & historical obstacles to overcome in this maddening marvel, largely the work of stop-motion puppeteer/filmmaker Lou Bunin who makes it work with his wildly stylized puppets, and by not trying to tame the material.  He takes Carroll’s logic-defying stream-of-conscious story as is.  Perhaps more Edward Lear/Gilbert & Sullivan than Charles L. Dodgson, if delightfully so in the musical numbers.  Bunin’s creepy Wonderland inhabitants feel truer to the original’s logical nonsense.  A hit and miss first half (note the WIZARD OF OZ influence) yields to a wilder/more musical second half that really takes off with British Music Hall flavor; and Carroll’s curdling, nasty tone.  If he’s kidding, he’s kidding-on-the-square when he has the Queen shouting ‘Off with their heads!’  A proper digital restoration might prove revelatory.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Note that while Live-Action English dialogue sequences were handled by Dallas Bower, the French equivalents were directed (apparently) by Marc Maurette.

LINK:  *No proper restoration, but this ‘fan cut’ version shows the way.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kafS_Cy4CjE

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Hollywood's most famous film suppression saw M-G-M stop distribution (and try to destroy all prints) of the 1940 British version of GASLIGHT (later retitled ANGEL STREET), before their 1944 version came out.  Both very fine films, though critical consensus sides with the underdog.  Mistakenly  so.

THE CHARGE OF THE LANCERS (1954)

Hard to imagine who in front or behind the camera was interested in this lighthearted Crimean War romp.  Certainly not William Castle whose po-faced direction, long before he made those campy exploitation horror pics, falls victim to a minimal budget.  Nor waning star Paulette Goddard, trying to protect escaped war prisoner Jean-Pierre Aumont (back in Hollywood after WWII service for this?!) in her gypsy wagon.  (Don’t ask.)  Scripter Robert E. Kent, whose many mismatched credits go from Westerns to ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK/’54 to Ophüls’ THE RECKLESS MOMENT/’49, works up a spy story about Russians on the hunt for a new, ultra-powerful British cannon which could end the war in the seven minutes it takes to change the guard.  Really?  With atrocious acting up and down the line, and Goddard’s voice turning unpleasantly metallic, only Aumont gets off the hook, too pleasant a fellow to do anything but his best, regardless of the circumstances.  The funniest thing in the plot sees his fellow war prisoner Richard Stapley pretending to be catatonic to keep from revealing anything about that revolutionary cannon.  The least funny thing is the comic relief; a poetry reciting fellow officer.  Yikes!  They could have ended the war in less then seven minutes by forcing the Russians to listen to this guy.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  No doubt prolific/lowball producer Sam Katzman hoped the film's title would remind potential audiences of another Crimean war pic: THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE/’36.  And it worked!  Reminding us to remind you of that vastly superior film.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-charge-of-light-brigade-1936.html

CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981)

Stop-Motion animation master Ray Harryhausen (monster division) and producer Charles Schneer, with beloved B-pics of Outer-Space Horrors and legendary Mythological Bestiaries since the 1950s, at long last classed up their act on this, their final collaboration, bringing in A-listers* to play the Gods and generally upping the ante in all departments.  (Though not with journeyman director Desmond Davis.)  No wonder fans were disappointed, if more in sorrow than in anger, on the 'improved' product.  Somehow the style of these films, poised between kiddie matinee adventure and sophisticated charade, missed the all-of-a-piece quality seen in some of their earlier films, and especially in the recent Jason & Sinbad films.  (That’s ‘missed’ in both senses of the word.)  And with indispensable composer Bernard Herrmann no longer there to gild the product with classically influenced orchestral thrills, and with the rise of STAR WARS giving Schneer impetus to turn a wise owl into a C-3PO knock-off, true believers took to nitpicking Harryhausen’s work as not being up to snuff.  Yet time has once again, tamed a lot of doubts, even if losses in color & crispness remain, you’ll still get caught up in the story as Greek Gods & Goddesses watch from above while their half-mortal off-spring fight for the hand of Princess Andromeda.  Guided by an unusually subdued Burgess Meredith, Harry Hamlin’s heroic  Perseus (thick of hair, thick of neck, thick of lip) is obviously worthy, not only for fair-haired Judy Bowker, but equally for loyal military aide Tim Pigott-Smith.  (Who deserves him more?)  The two men, and crew, spend the film fighting one Harryhausen monster after another.  Though a finale lifted from KING KONG, is largely aimed at Andromeda with Perseus to the rescue.  (Stolen from or by KONG?)  It's more or less irresistible.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A-listers indeed!  Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith (the latter brought in by scripter/husband Beverly Cross?).  Ursula Andress also shows up, but instead of dialogue, she got a new boyfriend, Harry Hamlin.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS/'63 is probably the closest match-up.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/01/jason-and-argonauts-1963.html   

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  For Family Friendly viewing, let the kids know that the film is ‘back-loaded,’ with the three  Stygian Witches, Medusa (her life-force spilling out like a tube of toothpaste - yuck!); and finally the Kraken all appearing in the last two reels.

COHEN AND TATE (1988)

Call it Roy Scheider’s dilemma.  Always an unlikely star, but in demand after JAWS/’75 proved not simply a huge hit, but a generational Hollywood game changer.  Yet even then, Scheider was typically second or third choice (if that) for top directors on his best projects (SORCERER/’77; ALL THAT JAZZ/’79) and continued to play in support on other stars projects (MARATHON MAN/’76; THE RUSSIA HOUSE/’90).  And this was before he became tricky to photograph with a medical condition that made his skin look a couple of sizes too loose for his face.  By 1988, he’s down to this lowball Neo-Noir debut from little seen writer/director Eric Red (five projects over the next four decades).  Partnered with Adam Baldwin, they play mob hit men assigned to kill a family under witness protection.  But a botched job leaves the main target in hospital and his 10-yr-old son in the killers’ backseat.  Violent, gory and dislikable (the film and the men), the kid proves a psychological master, getting the men to bicker, feud & eventually attack each other while he looks for an escape plan.  What does catch fire here is the film’s odd comic tone.  Sneaking in around mid-point, and with an alarmingly funny angle once you note how much the hitmen mirror the characteristics of Laurel and Hardy . . . in ultra-violent modern drag.*  Baldwin as over-sensitive/thin-skinned, quickly hysterical Stan.  Scheider as Oliver, slow, methodical, thoughtful, with a put-upon grudge and not as smart as he thinks he is.  Was this intended?  Accidental?  Serendipitous?  Who knows.  But it adds something sly & silly to the kinetically charged mayhem.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Most Neo-Noir come with an active sense of sick humor, but rarely raid silent comedy routines or personalities.  And though Laurel & Hardy never played hit men, they did play grave robbers in HABEAS CORPUS/’28, recently restored with its original soundtrack and easy to find on the internet.

THE GOOD DIE YOUNG (1954)

Solid Brit-Noir can’t quite live up to the potential of a mouth-watering cast (Stanley Baker, Richard Basehart, Joan Collins, John Ireland, Gloria Grahame, Laurence Harvey*, Margaret Leighton, Robert Morley), but gets darn close.  Especially in its down-to-business final act.  A glance below the line shows why: soon-to-direct producer Jack Clayton; a score by Georges Auric between WAGES OF FEAR, ROMAN HOLIDAY and LOLA MONTES; Hammer Pictures go-to EastmanColor lenser Jack Asher, here in crepuscular b&w; and an early credit for co-writer/director Lewis Gilbert, later a major James Bondsman after SINK THE BISMARK and ALFIE.  A prologue shows four desperate men caught in destiny’s maw before jumping back in time to show how they got there.  Pregnant young wife flailing under neurasthenic Mother’s thumb in spite of a husband’s urging to get away (Collins; Basehart).  Washed-up boxer with £1000 in savings after 12 years in the ring lost by the wife (Baker; Rene Ray).  Career military man gone AWOL when his actress wife starts an affair (Ireland; Grahame).  Irresponsible wastrel son, scrounging off the wife while waiting for Sir Dad to die (Harvey, Leighton, Morley).  Each story strong enough to support a feature, here filling two acts to believably get the four men together and not quite as believably into an ad-hoc botch of a Postal robbery.  There’s even a moral: Never rob a money truck with a sociopath.  Especially when the old Hollywood Production Code is still in place.  A few scares can still make you jump, but it’s the quality of the cast that ultimately makes this one stand out.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Fate and futility gives this the tone of a John Huston classic.  Try it with THE ASPHALT JUNGLE/’50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-asphalt-jungle-1950.html 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Harvey only 26 and looking even younger, but don’t worry, he’s already a horse’s ass.  Revoltingly posh in a bespoke suit.  

CITY OF BAD MEN (1953)

 A major star (mid-‘40s to mid-‘50s, with solid credits under directors like Mankiewicz, Cukor, Preminger, Kazan), 20th/Fox contractee Jeanne Crain ought to be better-known/more celebrated than she now is.  But I wouldn’t start to play catch-up on this slightly post-peak item.*  Under journeyman director Harmon Jones, this near-Western not so much bad as unnecessary, with action entirely driven by callow co-star Dale Robertson.  He’s the prodigal mercenary, returning to Carson City after six years fighting for the wrong side in Mexico, unaware his old hometown is now big enough to host a Heavyweight World Championship fight.  That little bank he planned to rob no longer such an easy target.  But there’s good money to be found in a town where banks ain’t the only thing he and his cadre can rob; the box-office is overflowing.  Of course, Robertson not the only guy in town with that idea.  And Crain’s part in all this?  She’s his ex, still in love after a six-year wait, but scheduled to head East with the fight promoter.   Even camouflaged with TechniColor, this one feels like a pumped up programmer, best for spotting future tv luminaries before they got their long-running shows: Lloyd Bridges/SEA HUNT; Richard Boone/HAVE GUN - WILL TRAVEL; Carl Betz/THE DONNA REED SHOW.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Perhaps the least known great film for both Crain and director George Cukor, THE MODEL AND THE MARRIAGE BROKER/’51 (Thelma Ritter co-stars) very much is waiting to be rediscovered.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-model-and-marriage-broker-1951.html

ORPHANS OF THE STORM (1921)

Not that he didn’t have a few good films left in him, but this was the last time D.W. Griffith was able to put together the old formula, the one that made him one of the founding fathers of narrative cinema in the ‘teens.  Needing to repeat last year’s big success in WAY DOWN EAST/’20, Griffith took Lillian Gish’s suggestion for an even older, cornier stage melodrama (THE TWO ORPHANS from the 1870s) that had great roles for her and sister Dorothy.  Using it as a sturdy framework for elaboration & spectacle, Griffith added to the simple Pre-French Revolution story of two orphans (one poor/one half-aristocrat) who become lost, adding post-Revolution Terror along with liberal helpings of Dickens & Hugo, plus Danton and Robespierre as hero & villain.  And working up a thrilling parallel edited ride to the rescue at the local guillotine to finish.  Like so much Griffith, at once ridiculous and magnificent; even better when it's both at once.  Here, even that roaring climax is topped by an earlier episode when those separated Gish sisters (one abducted/the other gone blind) find each other while four different narrative threads weave about them in an orgy of coincidence and fate.  Who but Griffith would have dared?  Who but Griffith would have gotten away with it?  Surely, no one else would have turned it into an anti-Bolshevik allegory!  (Don’t ask.)  But then, all the titles are ludicrous.  The film something of a fever dream you sweat out before you recover.  And even then . . . 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  In his American film debut, Joseph Schildkraut makes a striking aristo figure.  (Note the Young Napoleon hair style.  Abel Gance visited the set, might he have seen it?)   Naturally, he’s in love with Lillian’s orphaned commoner rather than Dorothy’s half-aristo.  And if he was exhausted, shuttling back & forth between Griffith’s Mamaroneck, Long Island studio and B’way where he co-starred on & off stage with the legendary Eva Le Galienne in Ferenc Molnár’s LILIOM, it doesn’t show.

DOUBLE-BILL:  (An aspirational Double-Bill.)  Generally, after early joint appearances and one film that Lillian directed (now lost), the Gish girls didn’t work as a pair.  Dorothy in light comedy; Lillian in drama.  But three years on, after splitting from Griffith, they went to Italy for Henry King’s ROMOLA with Ronald Colman & William Powell, a story of Renaissance Florence under Savonarola.  But as the film needs to be seen in good condition to make an effect (outstanding Italian craftsmen rebuilt a jaw-dropping Renaissance Florence), and though it survives in mint condition prints (color tinted & toned to fabulous effect), it’s only available to the general public in butchered subfusc editions.  If only the Gish estate would give their very generous annual cash award to themselves and restore it for digital showing

BLACK BAG (2025)

Top ‘Pop’ purveyor David Koepp (JURASSIC PARK; MISSION IMPOSSIBLE; SPIDER-MAN) tries to let his inner Harold Pinter out . . . and finds he isn’t there.  But as Nobel Laureate Pinter never wrote one of these Spy vs Spy things, the results, cryptic as a Times of London Sunday puzzle, prove more than acceptable.  Especially with director, cinematographer, editor Steven Soderbergh keeping it all within a 93" running time.  Michael Fassbender, in character defining eyeglasses (purposefully recalling Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer in THE IPCRESS FILE/’65?*) is the high-placed agent assigned by a square-faced Pierce Bronson to uncover a program leak (stolen for cash or ideology?) that naturally could compromise the entire British spy network.  (Or some such blather.)  There are five likely suspects (all A-list actors), including Cate Blanchett as Fassbender’s wife, herself a top company spy.  Blanchett, hurting our comprehension by showing up camouflaged in long dark hair (who is this person?) just when we need to concentrate on the plot.  (Or has she been deliberately obscured to cultivate inscrutable Pinter panache?)  Inviting them all home to dinner (Fassbender a gourmet cook), Koepp lowers himself to get at their character by having them play one of those insipid ‘truth games.’  Here, ‘outing’ not themselves, but their dining table neighbor.  (Really, Koepp?  A truth game?  Among spies!)  Later, a nerve-racking surveillance set piece will make everything clear.  Too clear, yes?  Are we being set up?  Seems Koepp is not only no Harold Pinter, he’s also no John le Carré.  But that turns out to be less of a problem than you might think under the beguiling visual surface Soderbergh crafts for us; the film too much fun to watch for narrative nitpicking.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Thanks to director Guy Green, FUNERAL IN BERLIN/’66 is probably the best of the Harry Palmer trio.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/05/funeral-in-berlin-1966.html

THREE CAME TO KILL (1960)

Workhorse B-pic director Edward L. Cahn, typically busy in 1960 with eight short features, never flinched at genre or quality.  All meat to the grinder, as with this standard issue hostage drama where criminals take over a home to commit some horror that demands a specific staging area to accomplish.  Assassination, robbery or prison-break, what matters is location, location, location.  Available at various price points: high-budget A-list packaging in THE DESPERATE HOURS/’55; mid-budget indie like SUDDENLY/’52; or zero-budget time-fillers like this, meant for grind-houses, drive-ins or theater chains that promised ‘Always a Second Feature!.’  That’s Cahn territory.  Behind the camera, Cahn knew what he’s about, making the equivalent of a two-part tv serial.  If only he’d vary the pace now & then, and not hold off suspense for the last reel.  He gets it done with two prominent dodges: Mastershots to cover two-thirds of the footage; and an omniscient narrator (school of Edward R. Murrow) to fill in any missing pieces.  Cahn helped by two better actors than he usually got: Cameron Mitchell as the gunman setting up the perfect shot to take down the departing plane of a foreign Prime Minister (functionally, the Humphrey Bogart spot in DESPERATE HOURS) and John Lupton (a fair-haired missing link between Bruce Dern & Anthony Perkins) leaving the other hostages behind to head off to his job at the Airport Control Tower (just like Fredric March in HOURS.).  In the Cahn oeuvre, damning with faint praise is praise indeed!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, THE DESPERATE HOURS.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/02/going-back-at-least-to-1912-and-gish.html

THE AMATEUR (1981)

Just opened, an action-oriented remake (not seen here) with Rami Malek in a new adaptation of this Robert Littell novel.  The same ‘70s paranoid political thriller used here with another fragile looking shorty, John Savage (both stars 5'7"), playing the cipher code-breaker turned unlikely avenger after his intended is murdered by a gang of political terrorists.  The gimmick?  He starts his amateur international hunt with CIA blessings, unaware they’re only humoring him to keep things under control.  But when he starts showing natural abilities at the job, and besting pros in the field, he’s quickly labeled a nuisance, and eventually an adversary they have to take down.  Trouble is, he keeps beating them at their game.  Add on confused Ruskie agents in Czechoslovakia (as it was then known) with their own agenda, and of course the terrorists he’s stalking, and Savage is putting everyone in grave danger, including Marthe Keller, the CIA contact who thinks she’s still under orders to help him.  Sounds passable if not probable, but script & technical execution as shabby as any Golan/Globus production made at the time for quick pre-sell in the international market.*  Lucky for journeyman director Charles Jarrott, Christopher Plummer shows up about halfway in as a university professor of literature whose real job is Russian KGB head in Czechoslovakia.  He starts his own cat-and-mouse game with Savage and things come to life.  Plummer single-handedly lifting the film toward something near its potential.  The big set piece, a bombing of an indoor pool, is cleverly done (and apparently an even bigger deal in the remake), but there’s more fun spotting weird production choices, like a near quote of the theme from Henry Mancini’s PETER GUNN at a church rendevous.  Or in trying to figure out why Marthe Keller was a certain commercial kiss of death for so many films at the time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *But it ain’t the notorious Golan/Globus boys this time.  Instead, Garth H. Drabinsky, a Canadian producer more active in live theater before he got caught with his hand in the till and went to jail.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Jarrott, a decent enough megger (his rep peaking on two Tudor pics: ANNE OF A THOUSAND DAYS/’69; MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS/’71), but infamous for all-time terrible films like THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT/’77; THE LAST FLIGHT OF NOAH’S ARK/’80; CONDORMAN/’81; and most of all the disastrous 1973 musical remake of LOST HORIZON.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/search?q=jarrott

THE BIG LAND (1957)

The only thing BIG about this mid-sized Western is the title.*  But still, an okay mid-sized ‘oater’ from star Alan Ladd’s production company, with some nice twists in a story about a Texas cattleman driving stock up North in the unfriendly post-Civil War market, hoodwinked out of a fair price when crooked buyer Anthony Caruso runs off the competition.  Broke, Ladd figures he’ll try again with newly sober pal Edmond O’Brien and a fresh idea: If You Build It, They Will Come.  Here, that means a new spur line for a newly built town.  Enter Virginia Mayo, not only O’Brien’s pretty sister, she’s also engaged to a wealthy railroad man who’s looking to expand.  (No points for guessing that he’ll gain a franchise and lose a fiancée.)  Uneven journeyman director Gordon Douglas in so-so form, with Ladd’s favored late career lenser John Seitz on board, here stuck using unstable WarnerColor stock.  (Upgrade desperately needed.)  Ladd showing particular generosity letting O’Brien run away with the pic (DTs, reformed drunk ordering sarsparilla all ‘round!, finally stoic hero), while Ladd merely gets a poorly staged shootout with the two BIG villains.  Perhaps Ladd was content having real-life son David in a nice little role.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Was the film originally planned to be bigger?  Note what sure looks like a pause for intermission at the 50 minute mark. And on a film that runs a mere 92".  (And that’s with an unnecessary song for Mayo tossed in.)  Was this being developed as a Road Show attraction before being downsized during production?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For young son David Ladd this was something of a tryout for next year’s co-starrer, playing Ladd’s deaf son in THE PROUD REBEL/’58.  A real undiscovered gem, it’s probably Ladd’s last good role; the last time director Michael Curtiz’s showed good form, and a last airing for Olivia de Havilland as an ingenue.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-proud-rebel-1958.html

BAD EDUCATION (2019)

Deliciously appalling true tale of massive embezzlement at the top rungs of a suburban New York school district, led by Hugh Jackman’s charismatic, seemingly picture perfect superintendent: charmer, problem solver, desirable widower; backed by Welker White as his highly creative accounts manager, who generously shares her ill-gotten qains with the family.  This HBO movie won Best Pic Emmy, but leaves too much dramatic potential on the desk in home room.  Not that it doesn’t work, but director Cory Finley, in his second feature, feints when he needs to jab.*   So conventionally laid out, it might be a film from 2002, which is when the events occurred.  Not a bad idea, but hard to tell if that’s what Finley was aiming for.  What does come across is how everyone’s putting up a facade of some sort; Jackman most of all.  A gay quasi-husband (legal marriage yet to come) to a longtime partner he shares a Park Avenue apartment with, there’s also a much younger lover living in Las Vegas.  (A very good perf from, I think, Calvin Coakley, looking a bit like young Brendan Fraser’s kid brother, yet Coakley has no further credits listed on IMDb.)  Geraldine Viswanathan, who plays the student reporter at the school newspaper, ought to be having a better time than she shows.  Why so dour?  She’s breaking real news and feeling empowered just when the film needs a bit of sass & pinpricking moxie against Jackman’s powerhouse plays.  His lack of vanity as an actor at showing his character’s utter absorption in personal vanity quite the show.  But the film needs more counterweight on the right side of things.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Try Alexander Payne’s ELECTION/’99, with Reese Witherspoon & Matthew Broderick, to get an idea of what's missing.

THE BIG NOISE (1943)

Simply put, the problem with even the best of the Stan Laurel/Oliver Hardy features is that the boys’ act was built for two-reelers.*  At feature-length, a bit over an hour at seven-reels, even the barest of narrative logic fights against the distinctively slow working tempo of their signature routines.  Stranded oases of mirth amid storylines that only stood in the way.  That said, this, their antepenultimate feature (not counting UTOPIA/’51 after six dry years) is probably the best of their late work.  For plot, ‘Babe & Ollie’ play bodyguard to an eccentric bomb-maker threatened by a criminal gang living right next door.  Setting themselves up as a target with a phony facsimile of the real bomb, cleverly hidden inside a concertina ‘squeezebox,’ they soon realize they’re carrying the real bomb.  Yikes!  Actually, the real highlight has little to do with explosives, but was ‘borrowed’ from one of their own early Talkies (BERTH MARKS/’29*) where the boys fight for space in a shared single berth in a train’s sleeper car.  The 1929 short is largely about changing their clothes in ridiculously tight quarters; here it’s mostly fighting for sleeping space in their nightshirts.  (There’s also a drunk who forces his way into the upper.)  Best of all, director Malcolm St. Clair (a vet with roots in light silent fare) shoots most of this roly-poly play in a long single take.  And with Hardy at his heaviest, it’s pretty funny stuff.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *The year before BERTH MARKS, Buster Keaton improvised a similar bit with Edward Brophy, sharing the narrow changing cubicle at a Public Pool.  Funny here with L&H; a humbling display of comic genius when Keaton’s involved.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-cameraman-1928.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Breaking my own dictum, possible the greatest of the Talkie shorts, THE MUSIC BOX/’32, is a three-reeler.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/music-box-1932.html

QUE NADIE DUERMA / SOMETHING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN (2023)

Award-winning oddity from Spain, co-written/directed by Antonio Méndez Esparza, stars Malena Alterio (she’s the one who got the awards) as staff computer techie at a big dental supply firm who’s having a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad day at work before heading home to find a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad situation with her failing/elderly dad and his sub-par caretaker.  Next morning is only worse as now it’s her workplace having  the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad day: building locked/company shut down, zero notification, thousands in uncollected salaries, hundreds unemployed.  Starting from scratch, Alterio ditches I.T. for Taxi; a newly purchased car and you can be your own boss.  And what a chatty boss she is to her customers, who amazingly all seem to enjoy sharing life stories back and forth.  Bad news from the doctor?  Back to your hotel for a life-affirming shag.  A theater producer?  Perhaps you know the mystery actor living above me; the one who plays Puccini’s TURANDOT all day.*  And imagine picking up your old boss in some bad neighborhood, drunk, injured, needing a hospital.  What a chance for revenge!  Like the river in the old adage, sit long enough in your taxi cab and the whole world will pass by.  Ready for revenge, she soon starts murdering those who done her wrong.  (Frankly, dying preferable to being trapped in the back seat once she starts talking.)  And right at the finish?; a tag ending offering a narrative get-out-of-jail-free card.  Best wait for the next taxi.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Just about any Pedro Almodóvar film from the last five decades.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Credit someone for using the best recording of Puccini’s TURANDOT: Sutherland, Pavarotti, Caballé, Mehta conducting.  Come to think of it, The Princess Turandot is also out for revenge, but I can't see her pulling a rickshaw.

THE BRIDE COMES HOME (1935)

After her 1934 annus mirabilis (IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT; CLEOPATRA; IMITATION OF LIFE), Claudette Colbert hit the top-ten list in 1935 & ‘36, more often than not in reliable (rather than inspired) romantic comedies like this, playing the default character home studio Paramount had developed for her: wealthy society type suddenly gone cash poor.  In those Depression days, it served as a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too persona, giving Colbert by design or accident a perfect excuse to look richly chic yet still relatable to the masses.  It could even, on occasion, rise to greatness (see Preston Sturges’s THE PALM BEACH STORY/’42).  Here, it’s pleasantly serviceable.  Waking up to a cut staff in the family manse, Claudette goes job hunting.  Clueless and skill-less about the workforce, her ace in the hole is longtime beau Robert Young.  He’s starting up a Men’s Magazine with a 3.5 mill. inheritance and current bodyguard/former journalist Fred MacMurray as editor.  (Baby boomers note: this ain’t your MY THREE SONS MacMurray, but a nearly unrecognizable stud.  Young also very fit & toned.  Colbert, of course, famously looked nearly the same - wonderful - over six decades on stage & screen.)  The gimmick, as if you hadn’t already guessed, is that Young has been proposing to Colbert since they were eight, but as soon as the bickering starts between MacMurray & Colbert, she only has eyes for Fred.  (And you thought Paramount would let M-G-M loan-out leading-man Young prevail over two long term contract stars?  Journeyman director Wesley Ruggles runs a smooth show, but more distinctive contributions come via cinematographer Leo Tover's dark glowing interiors and from costume designer Travis Banton.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   To see Paramount go off auto-pilot on this kind of romantic trio: Ernest Lubitsch & Ben Hecht’s reworking of Noël Coward’s DESIGN FOR LIVING/’33 with Gary Cooper, Fredric March & Miriam Hopkins.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/01/design-for-living-1933.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *While Columbia was too cheap to splurge on Banton for Capra’s IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, Colbert did make it happen at Universal in John Stahl’s IMITATION OF LIFE.

ACT ONE (1963)

Everyone’s favorite theatrical memoir, a surprise bestseller for playwright/director Moss Hart, limps to the screen under Dore Schary’s direction.  His one attempt at megging pure self-sabotage, with his writing, casting & producing little better.  Schary, previously a major Hollywood producer who rose to M-G-M head-of-production before quickly flaming out, a lifelong friend who’d been Hart’s assistant in the ‘20s, tosses out the first half of the book, losing much of a rags-to-riches saga that goes from tenement to Tamiment (the Catskills adult camp resort/B’way incubator) that made the book so memorable.  (Streamers?  Are you listening?)  Reduced to Hart’s first B’way success on ONCE IN A LIFETIME, about Hollywood’s silent-to-sound transition, co-written with established playwright George S. Kaufman.  As Kaufman, Jason Robards Jr is a reasonable choice compared to George Hamilton’s doorstop of a Hart.  Made even worse as best pal George Segal is so obviously right for the part.  That’s the way things go here.  Only Jack Klugman, Hart’s non-pro friend, coming across as a fully lived-in character.  And with the film’s compressed grey scale and Skitch Henderson’s OTT score, things can get pretty dire.  Fortunately, the tropes of getting a play up & running nearly impossible to kill.  Other than that, screwing up nearly everything wise, warm & witty from the book.  And most likely missing your favorite moment. (For me, it’s when play producer, and general mensch, Sam Harris notices at the last minute how loud the play is.  A casual comment that helps Hart fine tune the last act and turn out a hit.)  James Lapine’s recent rewrite for B’way got closer, but still not quite there.  Maybe if Sam Harris had been around to say something sage . . . 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Lots of once well-known Algonquin Round Table celebs flit by, all unrecognizable as cast by Schary.  But look for Eli Wallach as top B’way director/producer Jed Harris, here called Warren Stone for legal reasons.  Famously awful, he’s the man Laurence Olivier modeled his Richard III on.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  A literary rite of passage for all theater nerds, ACT ONE easily lives up to its rep.  And knowing that Hart died at 57, only months after completing it (and that his last two credits were directing MY FAIR LADY and CAMELOT), makes the never written ACT TWO only more tantalizing.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Many Hart (and Hart/Kaufman) plays were adapted for film: YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU/’38; THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER/’41; LADY IN THE DARK.’44.  But his best film work came adapting GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT/’47 and in his stunning Hollywood savvy in the rewrite of A STAR IS BORN/’54.

CONTEST:  Name two connections between this film and the Marx Brothers’ A NIGHT AT THE OPERA/’35 to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice.

REAL GENIUS (1985)

After Val Kilmer’s recent death, it was both touching and surprising to see how many people on social media singled out his first two films as special favorites, this rude college comedy and his spy spoof debut in TOP SECRET!/’84, wacky comedy not being the first thing that comes to mind on Kilmer.  But where TOP SECRET!, while uneven as any from those AIRPLANE!/’80 guys (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker) probably looks better now than it did on release (good fun at its worst/fall on the floor hilarious at its best), REAL GENIUS looks DOA in every department.  Basically, it’s ANIMAL HOUSE meets YOUNG SHELDON as college senior Kilmer mentors 14-yr-old genius Gabriel Jarret at the lab and in the dorm, tasked by professor William Atherton to finish a Pentagon laser-from-space war weapon.  Hormones vs. hardware; and it’s tough to know what comes off worse: dialogue; characterizations & acting (Jarret & girlfriend Patti D'Arbanville wouldn’t make it on SAVED BY THE BELL); director Martha Coolidge’s lack of comic chops, the cheap/unfunny production design, or the hideous lensing.*  And Kilmer?  Working too hard to be the cool guy, the life of the campus party, the irreverent class clown with a sackful of funny faces, comic tumbles and goofy leaps of joie de vivre.  (He’s much the same, to equally bad effect, in WILLOW/’88.)  One of the Zucker brothers is quoted as saying he tried, but failed to get Kilmer to loosen up and be silly on SECRET!, when Kilmer just wanted to bring some realism to his ridiculous character; which of course made his work there all the funnier.  But then, Coolidge seems to have given everyone, cast and crew, the same bad advice: 'be funny.'*

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *My advice?  Stick to TOP SECRET!  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/top-secret-1984.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Hard to believe that cinematographer is the great Vilmos Zsigmond.  The last time he’d been so out of touch with his material, he manned up, accepted defeat, and ankled the project (FUNNY LADY/’75), admitting he simply didn’t know how to light the huge interior sets.  To the rescue?  James Wong Howe, coming out of retirement to shoot one last project.

ARABIAN NIGHTS (1942)

First (and best?) of three popular escapist entertainments made at Universal for that most exotic of screen trios: Sabu as the scamp, Jon Hall as the hunk and the mysterious Maria Montez for sex appeal.  (Hall may not look exotic, but Mom was a Tahitian Princess!)  Wartime anxiety no doubt helped put these things over, but this Thousand & One Nights tale has a lot going for it.  Mostly its storybook TechniColor look, courtesy of cinematographer Milton Krasner (later first choice for directors as different as Minnelli & Mankiewicz), especially in the first act where matte shots, miniatures & painted cycloramas give this Hollywood Bagdad the quality of a child’s cherished die-cut Pop-Up Illustrated volume, the kind that barely survive a kid’s heavy hand.  Now looking wonderful in restored prints, lighter, airier than the later ones shot by Krasner’s assistants.  (Like W. Howard Greene, Oscar’d next year for his glutinous 1943 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.  He did one of the two follow-ups: WHITE SAVAGE 43 or COBRA WOMAN 44.)  The plot?  Well, you see everyone is vying for the throne that rightly belongs to Jon Hall.  He’s been reported dead, but is really in disguise (thanks to clever Sabu) to see if Montez’s crown-loving Sherazade could love him for himself.  Leif Erickson’s the usurper, Billy Gilbert’s comic relief (with a bouncing stomach punch), Shemp Howard (!) a loyal follower and John Qualen a blue-eyed Alladin on the hunt for his missing magic lamp.  At 86", this one not a moment too long.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Check out all our Montez pics here.  Note, whichever one you are watching lowers your I.Q to the point where you think that’s her best!   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/search?q=montez 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Presumably, our German poster (see above) didn’t come out till after the war.

BLACK DOG / GOUZHEN (2024)

Much deserved International award winner (including Cannes’s Un Certain Regard), Guan Hu’s site specific drama, set in a near ‘ghost town,’ part of the boom-to-bust economy of 2008's Northern China, features some of the most dramatically spectacular Wide-Screen landscapes since Chuck Jones took Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner to an animated Monument Valley.*  Here, the focus is on recent parolee Lang (a very lean/very fit Eddie Peng), home after early release on a manslaughter charge where his involvement is unclear.  That makes our Road Runner figure a skinny, possibly rabid, black dog, part of the packs running wild over what’s left of the city.  But while Hu is specific in his use of location, he’s purposefully sketchy on character & narrative.  So it feels right to have Peng communicate only with gesture & whistling.  Letting us understand just enough Hu’s modus operandi here, and we pick up on Lang’s situation obliquely.  Former musician & circus acrobat; father a recluse dying of cancer; town being cleared out, especially of those roving packs of dogs, to facilitate a new industrial development program.  And 2008 has big events guiding the few still in town: an upcoming solar eclipse, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, even the circus coming to town.  This last bringing possible employment and romance to Lang.  Hu lets us put the pieces together, like one of those glueless Asian paper constructs that magically hold together on their own.  And lenser Weizhe Gao makes it happen by giving his images the participatory vibe of silent movies.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Mid-to late ‘50s Chuck Jones’ ROAD RUNNER cartoons.  *Apparently Looney Tunes were generally shot in Academy Ratio, but Jones must have designed his preferred frame projection to work best in ultra-wide ‘scope’ ratio.  (Experts in this field are welcome to tell all in the Comments.  Thanks!)   NOTE:  This is such a weird suggestion for a film match-up, I guess it also counts as a SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY.  But, in case you didn't notice, this was posted on April 1st!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  After the completion of filming, Peng adopted his Black Dog acting partner.