STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991)

Excluding a small B pic (literally a B pic, INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS/’73), writer Nicholas Meyer started his film career at the top with THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION/’76, from his own bestseller*; then never quite lived up to expectations when he turned writer/director, starting with his next project, TIME AFTER TIME/’79.  Yet he holds a special distinction in having ‘saved’ one movie franchise.  Twice!*  First, by getting the original STAR TREK cast back on their feet with THE WRATH OF KHAN/’82; then giving them a proper send-off four films later, a final entry that returned dignity, social conscience, thrills fit for a senior citizen cast, good humor and even autographs for sentimental collectors.  A film to please Trekkers, non-Trekkers and the recently departed Gene Roddenberry.  William Shatner’s Captain Kirk is taking the whole aged crew on a final mission before he retires, escorting untrustworthy Klingons to a Peace Conference when he’s blamed for a Chancellor’s assassination.  Naturally, it’s a setup, cleverly handled by Meyer to give each player at least one star turn.  None more so than Shatner himself, as usual looking like a war vet off to a reunion in pants that no longer fit.  But Meyer makes up for the costume deigns by giving him the funniest bit of his entire run as Kirk in a double act with himself that exploits the love/hate relationship we all feel for the old ham.  A very satisfying film.  Thank goodness they didn’t push their luck with an encore.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Not only a Meyer best, SEVEN-PER-CENT also a best for producer/director Herbert Ross.  And less known than it should be.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-seven-per-cent-solution-1976.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *’Saving’ the franchise explained.  All the STAR TREK films financially successful to reasonable levels.  Yes, even the infamous Shatner directed #5.  What’s more STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION was up and running by 1987, four years before this original cast finale.  But those are mere facts.  It was the franchise’s soggy reputation Meyer saved, refreshing the brand in Numbers 2 and 6.

OPERATION FINALE (2018)

Inexplicably dreadful.  Wait, it’s a Chris Weitz film, so dreadfulness entirely explicable.  Instead, make that inexcusably dreadful.  Released theatrically, this film on the hunt by Mossad agents to capture Nazi Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann and secretly bring him to Israel for trial looks made for tv.  Not HBO or NetFlix, ABC Movie-of-the-Week.  And while it’s possible that every word and action is 100% true, what matters is that nothing feels believable.  Martin Orton, in a debut script, never convinces us of the stumbles that led the agents thru a series of lucky breaks & missteps to Eichmann, hiding in Argentina under a new name, The cast also no help, right from a prologue that sees them snatch and kill the wrong Nazi.  (Good movie title there: THE WRONG NAZI.)   Acting just as bad.  Nick Kroll is just distracting as one of the Mossad guys, but what’s up with Oscar Isaac as the team's impulsive jokester?  (The sole clever touch a bad dye job on Ben Kingsley’s hair as Eichmann.)  I suppose Weitz thought he was humanizing agents normally portrayed as invincible, but making them incompetent bumblers who trip into success has the effect of making the Mossad look as if they were putting on an amateur theatrical version of THE LADYKILLERS/’55.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Similar themes, tactics and goals covered in Steven Spielberg’s MUNICH/’08 about the hunt for the 1972 Olympic murderers.  And while it’s also unsatisfying (it even earned its own Watch This, Not That label), it fails at an entirely different level than Weitz can manage.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/munich-2005.html

BROADWAY LIMITED (1941)

Made to play as a second-feature on double-bills, this Hal Roach Studios comedy is a near (unofficial) sequel to TWENTIETH CENTURY/’34, the great Howard Hawks/Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur screwball classic.*  That's the one where flailing B’way director John Barrymore pursues former protegée Carole Lombard on a cross-country train trip.  This one, pretty entertaining, too, in spite of a mess for a screenplay.*  Lots of character crazies along for the ride (Patsy Kelly, Zasu Pitts, George E. Stone, Sam McDaniel, Leonid Kinskey, J. Farrell MacDonald), with pacey direction from Gordon Douglas (recently promoted from shorts to features) and classy lensing from Henry Sharp who overcomes a budget that limits camera setups by lighting to bring out chiaroscuro, texture & atmosphere.*  Victor McLaglen’s the likeable lead, a train engineer who ‘borrows’ a baby for old squeeze Kelly who needs a tot for a publicity stunt Hollywood genius Kinskey is creating for film star Marjorie Woodworth.  Only problem, unknown to McLaglen, the baby he borrowed is the current kidnapped sensation on the front page on every newspaper in the country.  And now, they’re all accomplices.  Yikes!  (Great tot BTW, Gay Ellen Dakin in her only credit.)  Lots of hide the baby gags once they all find out, along with engine troubles for a bit of suspense and to let McLaglen step in to save the day.  Dennis O’Keefe also around as Woodworth’s old flame, a doctor who’d like to save her from Hollywood . . . and from Kinskey.  Alas, Kinskey and Woodworth no Barrymore & Lombard, but who is?.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Imaginary conversation between writer Rian James (elsewhere a decent enough Hollywood hack) and studio chief Hal Roach about the unfinished script: 

JAMES:  Mr. Roach, don’t press me!  Do you want it good or do you want it Wednesday?  

ROACH:  I want it Tuesday. 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A top cinematographer in the ‘20s and ‘30s, a fave of Douglas Fairbanks, later at Paramount.  Sharp somehow sunk to working for Hal Roach Studios, but kept his professional pride.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *See for yourself: TWENTIETH CENTURY/'34.

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)

Writer/director Roland Emmerich, King of the Empty Calorie Action Blockbuster, always at his worst when trying to be serious, is worried about Climate Change in this would-be pulse-pounding cautionary that’s largely old-school ‘70s disaster pic.  Think EARTHQUAKE meets THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE ON ICE!*  Seems Global Warming has triggered a New Ice Age . . . overnight!  Confused?  Don’t be.  Heroic Paleo-Climatologist Dennis Quaid explains it all to you before dashing thru a wintry hurricane to save college whiz son Jake Gyllenhaal (and pals) stuck in the main Manhattan Public Library Building (the one with the stone lions out front).  How he can help left unexplained.  But we gotta give the guy something to do.  More than can be said for marquee names Sela Ward (Quaid’s doctor wife) or Ian Holm’s Climate Prognosticator.  Mostly it’s all anonymous spectacle: riots in the street; helicopter crashes; ships floating down Fifth Avenue; 12-yr-old Scotch for gallant farewell toasts; 12-yr-old generic kid with cancer who can’t leave his hospital bed.  More fun watching those weather reporters being blown to pieces by the storm.  Too bad the special effects in the first half try mixing scale models and digital imaging to tinny effect.  Better results once the Big Chill covers all tracks with snow.  In the end, just look at how many minds were changed!  Oh, . . . 

DOUBLE-BLL/LINK:  *Shop and compare!  Twenty years since TOMORROW; Fifty for EARTHQUAKE and POSEIDON.  EARTHQUAKE looked pretty lame even on release (Universal’s usual crappy 1970s tech work).  On the other hand, with the exception of the big tidal wave, POSEIDON’s practical effects still lookin’ pretty good.  Bigger surprise, so’s the pic . . . in its corny way.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/10/earthquake-1974.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/poseidon-adventure-1972.html

SUBMARINE (2010)

Already a successful actor, Richard Ayoade added on music video director before making a (seemingly temporary*) move to feature film writer/director with this winning, if familiar coming-of-age story.  Set in a blessedly non-eccentric/whimsy-free Wales, the tropes are all intact (get thru high school; keep from being called on in class and called out by school yard ‘toughs’; find a likeably contentious girl to lose your virginity to; avoid embarrassing talks with Mom & Dad) bringing in fresh laughs that avoid cringe comedy.  15-yr-old Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts, debuting with fully formed deadpan comedy chops) gets thru most of that list by the end of the first act, helped by Yasmin Paige as Jordanna, the contentious girl he likes.  After that, concentrating on the film’s more original ideas.  Namely: trouble with parents.  For Jordana, a sick mom; for Oliver, Mom’s prodigal former boyfriend (Paddy Considine), now a self-help guru pushing VHS tapes.  Yikes!  He’s taking advantage of a rift between Mom & Dad (Sally Hawkins/Noah Taylor, both super).  Complications often funny, always believable, laid out in a pleasing visual style that takes advantage of 35mm film stock for a look that borrows equal measures of‘60s French New Wave and Bill Forsyth’s 1980 GREGORY’S GIRL* without pushing the idea at us.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Though continuing with his acting career, Ayoade only has one other feature credit, THE DOUBLE/’13 - not seen here,  Even worse than the ill-fated trajectory of GREGORY''S Bill Forsyth who was effectively dumped by Hollywood after two more successes (LOCAL HERO’83; COMFORT AND JOY/’84) and four Hollywood misses.  Hardly heard from after 1994.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/11/local-hero-1983.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/comfort-and-joy-1984.html

BELLS ARE RINGING (1960)

Minor, but endearing Betty Comden/Adolph Green B’way musical (Jule Styne score), written for Judy Holliday, once part of their early club act ‘The Revuers’,  Bought by M-G-M’s Arthur Freed, it turned out to be something of a last call for a generation of film legends.  For producer Freed, his last musical; for Holliday, her last film; for director Vincente Minnelli, his last M-G-M musical; for Comden & Green, their last film musical.  Little more than a showcase for Holliday, but that was enough to get Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse involved in the stage production.  The story puts Holliday in front of a switchboard at a phone answering service where she assumes different personalities to play Fairy Godmother to a gaggle of needy clients; especially Dean Martin’s struggling playwright.  He calls her ‘Mom.’  Meeting him for real, she assumes yet another identity to hide behind.  Meanwhile, boss Jean Stapleton is involved with shady bookie Eddie Foy Jr, starting up a horse betting syndicate (in code) using the answering service.  And the Vice Squad already investigating the place as a possible brothel.  Yikes!  Songs range from serviceable to tuneful to American Songbook standards (‘The Party’s Over’; ‘Just In Time’).  With this kind of show, you really had to be there for full effect.  (And how, Holliday beating both Ethel Merman and Julie Andrews for that year’s Tony Award.)  But Minnelli finds his way in by using soundstage artifice for a heightened kind of ultra-reality, and by shooting as much as possible in unusually long takes.  Both Martin and Holliday get one-take complete musical numbers that play on the big screen in ways impossible to recreate thru home video.*  But for the converted, once Holliday drops the lyrics and joyously vocalizes (at a moment of intense unhappiness!) in the second verse of The Party’s Over, you’ll be a goner.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Something Comden & Green discovered when putting together a traveling show of film highlights.  They’d planned to end with, what else, Gene Kelly 'Singing in the Rain,’ only to find that it was impossible to find anything that could follow Holliday’s final number here, ‘I’m Coming Back.’  The combination of Holliday, alone on stage, seeming to be performing live directly at us, with Minnelli’s one-shot approach going against every directing rule to capture a real event happening in front of us by ignoring six or seven obvious go-to-the-close-up cuts during the four minute number is nearly unique on the big screen.  So this all but unknown number wound up as the big finish in their retrospective.

CONTEST:  Did Minnelli have an inkling this would be his M-G-M Musical finale?  Maybe, as he goes all the way back to his first M-G-M film musical for a reference he sticks in the background.  Name the film and find the reference to win our usual prize, a MAKSQUIBS film Write-Up of your choosing.

PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF (2025)

I can find nothing in documentarian Matt Wolf’s short list of credits to have expected the consistent excellence of this two-part/three-hour look at Paul Reubens and the child-like Pee-Wee Herman character he created, less alter-ego than chef d'oeuvre.  Performance art with a spoonful of sugar for mass appeal.  Almost everything on Reubens’ life proves interesting: his family & Sarasota, Florida upbringing (winter home of Ringling Bros. Circus at the time); his college days amid the avant-garde art movements at CalArts; the L.A. comic scene of the ’70s where he found himself professionally attached to The Growlings; the remarkably smooth stage-birth of Pee-Wee.  From there, Part One escalates thru a quick rise to his first studio film with Tim Burton directing his first feature.*  Behind this, the life of an openly gay guy making a calculated move into the closet to advance professionally.  In Part Two, success abounds with his tv Playhouse only to suddenly curdle with a pair of suspect/homophobic-tinged arrests derailing everything.  Told mostly in a straight chronological order with the usual archival clips and fine, if unexceptional interviews from friends & co-workers (and few cultural commentators - hurrah!), plus lots & lots of Reubens’ Talking Head.  Which is just fine since he’s the Talking Head of a documentary filmmaker’s dream: inventive, funny, truthful, teasing, knowing when to get off a point and how much to reveal/conceal.  A constant delight talking about himself or others, even at his prickliest.  These things don’t get much better.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE/’85.  Avoid the unhappy BIG TOP PEE-WEE/’88 follow-up.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/pee-wees-big-adventure-1985.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Perhaps the biggest surprise comes in seeing just how influential Reubens was.  Especially compared to other crossover Performance Arts types you may think of first.

BOY ERASED (2018)

Hard to miss with a story as sympathetic (and horrifying in its way) as the journey thru ‘gay conversion therapy’ Evangelic Preacher’s son Garrard Conley survived in his late teens/early twenties.  But Joel Edgerton (writing, directing, acting) comes awfully close.  As the boy, Lucas Hedges (excellent) is miserably unconfused about his sexuality, but feigns confusion to himself to please the hopes of go-along Mom Nicole Kidman and faux-supportive Preacher Pop Russell Crowe.  So, off to a glisteningly modern facility (a sort of sanatorium/prison) run by Victor Sykes (Edgerton) like a military academy for ‘Christian Values,’ where fellow college-age gays are force-fed lessons designed to encourage self-loathing for their lifestyle ‘choices.’  (Baseball or football?  Reed or brass instrument?  Straight or Gay?)  Edgerton counts on our revulsion at the whole unregulated/untested (and profitable*) mind-altering program. The parents?  Happy to wash their hands of the problem and leave the dirty work to clean-cut uncertified amateur councilors.  But since Edgerton knows his audience is already on his side, you never get a sense that he’s working to change any minds.  Worse, visual choices are stylistically off or lazy.  None more damaging than shooting the film in hazy light with fuzzy grain, as if a scrim of lies is blocking everyone from seeing clearly (they all know exactly what's going on) when those sessions and daily routines need to be exposed, sharp and clinically bright as possible to show the very real power of lies spread with religiously joyous contempt.  Hypocrisy dies in the light, not in shadow.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   Earlier film depictions of conversion therapy spoke in code.  None more so than TEA AND SYMPATHY/’56 where therapy comes in the form of an ‘older’ woman willing to initiate a questioning youth in the most performative manner imaginable.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/02/tea-and-sympathy-1956.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *And while parents are being financially & emotionally preyed upon, they’re not simply uninformed, but willfully uninformed.  Something Kidman’s character (to Edgerton’s credit) briefly admits to near the end.

THE APPOINTMENT (1969)

BELLE DU JOUR/’67 meets IRMA LA DOUCE/’63 in this Italian curiosity from Sidney Lumet; less forgotten than purposefully lost.  Newlywed lawyer suspects gorgeous wife is spending the occasional afternoon as the priciest lay in town.  Naturally, he wants to uncover the truth.  Tail her?  Hire a private investigator?  Maybe bring a photo to Madame?  (She’s a fashion model, pictures everywhere.)  Nope.  Instead, call to book the next ‘appointment’ then wait by the door to play your own version of The Lady or The Tiger.  Cost?  A measly £100,000.  Yikes!  With Anouk Aimée, still unthawed from A MAN AND A WOMAN/’66 as the possibly wayward wife and Omar Sharif, still nonplussed post-Streisand’s FUNNY GIRL/’68, each pushing 40 yet acting like awkward virgins on a first date.  Later, wandering together thru fashionably ‘distressed’ Rome locations or waiting in stylish interiors (more than you’ll find in all other Lumet films combined), under the eye of Carlo Di Palma’s ochre-tones lensing.  But no pick up of Stateside theatrical distribution rights.  Lumet at the time in a severe career slump not broken till SERPICO/’73.  Yet there’s real missed potential here.  Only problem?  It’s potential for comedy.  Imagine Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLane (the stars of IRMA) here.  Even better, Peter Sellers & Sophia Loren (of THE MILLIONAIRESS) or Sellers with PINK PANTHER partner Capucine.  For that matter, might as well swap out Lumet for PANTHER’s Blake Edwards.*  Assuming Luis Buñuel wasn’t available.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *You’ll find the same meet-cute in Blake Edwards’ 10.  There, Dudley Moore, distracted by Bo Derek’s bridal beauty, hits the rear end of the car in front of him.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Any of the films mentioned here with the exception of IRMA LA DOUCE, an enormous success in its day.  Pretty bad then, downright awful now; other than the miraculous sets & art direction of Alexandre Trauner.  

THE OTHER SIDE (2015)

Independent documentarian Roberto Minervini*, though born and financed in Italy, has largely focused on the lives of America’s have-nots, here among politically or economically marginalized White Louisianans.  The first two-thirds of the film focused on the extended family of Mark Kelley, a laid-back, rather likeable drug addict (everything from meth & heroin on down), somethings of the family head, protector to his dying mother (cancer), an equally frail Grandmother and his fiancé.  He’s waiting to serve a three-month prison term, but holding out with help from a handy tool kit to get him into public & private buildings for ‘shopping.’  Something of a Godfather to his many Aunts, Uncles, various cousins, nieces & nephews, none of whom appear employed, all fiercely Right Wing Conservative (their hatred of Obama tinged with racism), proud to vote straight Republican Party line against their own interests.  (If’n they voted.)  Somehow, Minervini was allowed (encouraged?) to get all the way into their lives, right down to some ‘Hard R’/Full-Frontal fucking; the women either sickly thin or tending to fat; the men headed toward meth related gauntness.  You get the feeling those who look on the far side of forty may really be ten or fifteen years younger than you guessed.  The last third of the film (far less involving/original) moves away from Kelley & family to showcase a militaristic far-right outfit and their families over a July 4th holiday where weekend warriors practice defending bedrock American values with ‘live’ ammo against ‘the Left’ taking away their rights.  Sure to occur within the next two months!  You’d think they’d notice nothing happening year after year, but they’re all too busy bro-bonding and blowing up Obama in effigy.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Minervini’s latest, THE DAMNED/’24, moves from Documentary to period narrative.

TWO LOVERS AND A BEAR (2016)

The title is irresistible; the film less so.  Summertime lovers in a perpetually frozen tundra-town, Dane DeHaan (looking like a second cousin to young Leonardo DiCaprio) and Tatiana Maslany are reaching the end point of their romance.  She’s going south to study; he’s stuck in this one-sled town.  (It's okay, they all have snowmobiles.)  Both dealing poorly with their upcoming separation, and both easily triggered by unresolved Daddy Issues they ran away from.  HIM: assaulting an abusive dad.  HER: stalked by a phantom of her dead father.  Passionate, when not too drunk to perform, he decompresses with chats to a friendly Polar Bear.  Not strictly metaphor, BTW, she sees them chatting as does a neighborhood kid.  All this wisely left unexplained by co-writer/director Kim Nguyen; magic realism that's the best thing in the pic, along with its snowy town ambience.  But when the pressure of parting turns love into bickering, and bickering into flight, the limits of romance tell when their snowmobiles carry them only so far thru a wintry mountain pass and leaves them to face an oncoming blizzard.  Even the shelter of a decommissioned military base fails as safe hideaway.  A snowy tomb, allowing for a brief philosophical exchange with Mr. Polar Bear, briefly revives interest, but by now the two lovers come off not only self-centered, but willfully self-destructive.  The film reveling in self-centered pity when a couple of internet therapy sessions could have done the trick.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Racking our brain for a good substitute.  (That confiding bear makes it tough.)  Watch this space.

POKER FACE (2023)

The font’s a dead giveaway.  (Folio Bold Extended?)   If those KNIVES OUT movies saw writer/director Rian Johnson letting his inner Agatha Christie out; this winning streamer (many hands involved, but Johnson's fingerprints over everything), tips its hat at classic tv murder mystery masters Richard Levinson & William Link, by using the same bold, blocky sans serif font Levinson/Link used for decades, starting with the rotating shows that made up NBC Tuesday Mystery Movie which birthed COLUMBO.  Famous for showing the crime up front, the trick was in watching detective Columbo deconstruct to reveal what went wrong.  Here, a similarly front-loaded murder is immediately replayed, but now with human lie-detector Charlie (Natasha Lyonne) on the scene in some peripheral capacity.  The other main influence (also Levinson/Link) is, of course, MURDER, SHE WROTE, with Charlie on the run, stumbling over murder wherever she goes.*  Her motivation, which simmers on the back burner for the middle eight (of ten) episodes, is that a Casino Mob is hot on her tail so Charlie hits the road, not for a Book Tour, like Fletcher, but to keep the 'baddies' at bay.  Consistently clever, with great guest stars; episodes 4 (fading Metal Rock band); 7 (race car drivers); and 9 (buried alive) come off best, likely because they get to closely imitate moviemaking styles of the ‘70s and ‘80s.  Episode 9 exceptional aping an ‘80s Neo-Noir pastiche.  Lyonne, something of an acquired taste (but easily acquired!) with a Kewpie Doll face & whiskey-bruised voice, holds the whole thing together.  And since she gets to solve a case per episode, while her own troubles take the back burner, it keeps filler to a minimum.  All in all, I’ll take this over Johnson’s big screen work any day.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The funniest MSW episode sees the great Patrick McGoohan as a Canadian lawyer note just how dangerous Mrs. Fletcher is.  ‘Everywhere she goes, someone is murdered!'

7 MEN FROM NOW (1956)

Well-received on release, the seven chamber Westerns from director Budd Boetticher with Randolph Scott (1956 - 1960; five written by Burt Kennedy) have only gained in critical esteem in the decades since.  This, first and one of their best, already showing completely assured filmmaking with Boetticher leading us cleanly thru a tricky landscaped-forged story with memorable characters and remarkable narrative economy.  When we open, former town sheriff Scott is already out searching for the seven bank robbers who left collateral damage behind (including his wife) and took 20 thou with them.  Reluctantly stopping to help Westward wagoneers timeworn beauty Gail Russell and ineffectual husband Walter Reed, the three are in turn being closely followed by outlaw Lee Marvin (a threatening standout in his first above-the-title role) and his partner.  Marvin’s letting Scott hunt down the killers, picking them off one by one, before taking his chance at grabbing the ill-gotten coin.  Naturally, bumps and dangerous Indians along the way (neatly finessed by Kennedy to show Scott’s understanding of the cause behind the menace), all highlighted by Boetticher’s feel for spacial logic in building suspense, helped by lenser William Clothier’s precise angles.  A small cheat at the end to free up a possible future romance the sole misstep.  Or is if you don’t include the corny title song.  Recent editions beautifully remastered for John Wayne’s old Batjac outfit, then at Warner Bros.  The rest of the series moved to Columbia and producer Harry Joe Brown.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Actually, a DON’T Double-Bill as the six remaining films in the series work best seen spaced a bit apart.

RASPUTIN / LA TRAGÉDIE IMPÉRIALE (1938)

A roundabout path took us to this Marcel L’Herbier film, a very French telling of the Pre-Russian Revolution power-hungry peasant Monk Grigori Rasputin; his reputation for healing, his debauches, his ill-fated relationship with Empress Alexandra, and his alarming physical constitution against cyanide & bullets.  A comment from a reader (thanks reader!) about the unhappy 1931 Talkie remake of C.B. DeMille’s 1915 THE CHEAT/’15, led to seeing the trailer for L’Herbier’s version of that story, retitled FORFAITURE.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV-CPpuEN3E)  A wowser, but the complete film seemingly unavailable online.  Why not try RASPUTIN, L’Herbier’s next production?  Alas, though fine as far as it goes, it simply doesn’t go far enough.  Harry Baur’s Rasputin almost makes it worth the time, but it’s probably most valuable as an example of the sort of French Cinema of Quality mediocrity that would drive the New Wave crowd to distraction a couple of decades later.  One of those well-made, tasteful, impersonal films you can neither object to much nor get excited about.  It’s also terribly, terribly French in tone.  And while the Russian court spoke a lot in French, and dressed with a French accent, they were all Russian under their fineries as their world crumbled around them.  Perhaps the film is accurate in the way it peters out and loses interest even during the elaborate, and nearly botched, murder sequence.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  L’Herbier best remembered, if at all, for ambitious, not quite good enough silents.  Instead, LE BONHEUR/’34 with Charles Boyer, something of a revelation, the one to go for.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/05/le-bonheur-1934.html  OR:  Best of a bad lot on the Romanovs & Rasputin is probably the much dissed/better than expected M-G-M prestige item with Ethel, Lionel & John Barrymore, RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS/’32.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/12/rasputin-and-empress-1932.html

NITRO RUSH (2016)

French-Canadian Pulp-Actioner, a sequel to NITRO/’07 with lots of repeaters in front and behind the . . . WAIT!  Hold on there.  French-Canadian Action Pic?  Who knew?  I thought Quebec only put out thoughtful Film Fest also-rans, and the occasional deep-think Denis Villeneuve disappointment.  (Before he moved on to grander things.)  But no, here’s a perfectly respectable/reasonable facsimile of international action fare from director/co-writer Antoine DesRochers with sturdy/pint-sized juggernaut Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge as the toughest prisoner in the block, suddenly offered a chance to help the government stop a designer drug epidemic and save his estranged son from the criminal organization he’s joined to spite Pop who wasn’t around when Mom died because they couldn’t get her a new heart and now, if they can only bond as father & son and sneak back in to prison grounds where two psycho researches are working on that drug formula, they just might save the world and . . . Oh, come on.  You know how these things go.  Add one Mr. Big stuck in that prison; a wavering femme fatale with fists of steel and eyes for Father and Son; a power-truck for the caper; a gang member whose loyalties are hard to read; and you could fill in the blanks yourself.  What just might keep you watching is a modest budget that holds set pieces to a human scale (no digital overload or sledgehammer punches to bounce right back from) and leading man Lemay-Thivierge, a 5'6" canvas you can write your own emotions & motivations on.  And note how he pulls himself up to maximum height when standing off against our wavering female baddie.*  It’s endearing.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Why are so many of these action guys on the short side?  Jackie Chan, Jean-Claude Van Damme, et al.  Over compensating?  (Sure, Jason Statham’s an average 5'10", but he’s got the hair thing, no?)

DOUBLE-BILL:  The final scene sets up another sequel that doesn’t appear to be happening.  But you never know.  Nine years separate the original NITRO (not seen here) from this.  Watch it for us and post your thoughts in the COMMENTS link just below.

BENEDETTA (2021)

Aging film provocateur manqué Paul Verhoeven has Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS/’71 meet his own infamous SHOW GIRLS/’95 on this long delayed passion project.  (Passion indeed; lesbian nuns in Renaissance Italy!)  Inspired (make that expanded) from trial records of a 17th Century Italian girl brought into Abbess Charlotte Rampling’s nunnery as a child, grown to be something of a religious hysteric, Sister Benedetta (Virginie Efira, apparently from the Order Bridget Bardot), fakes ‘stigmata’ with a shard of pottery to gain power and a following.  Crucially, she also gains a lover in Novice Bartolomea (Daphné Patakia).  Caught out by Abbess Rampling who gets no help from her male superior, too busy imagining the financial benefits of a possible cult.  We could be the next Assisi!  (This sidebar more interesting than anything else in here.)  Then more complications from two new ‘guests,’ a Vatican Nuncio (Lambert Wilson) and Buboes from The Plague.  These days, the 80-ish Verhoeven must know he can no longer count on shocking us easily and really piles on the sex & violence.  (To little avail, the film cost 24 mill/grossed 4.)  As to how true it all is.  Well, rule-of-thumb on these ‘fact-based’ films holds that the most ridiculous thing is likeliest to be true.  So please tell me those Renaissance court records of the trial mention the little wooden Virgin Mary figurine repurposed by Benedetta & Bartolomea to use as a dildo.  Please, please be true!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT//LINK: Seeing Verhoeven struggling to shock & offend, doesn’t take away from his very real talent when not mislead.  Try STARSHIP TROOPERS/’97, his deeply subversive mainstream blockbuster.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/09/starship-troopers-1997.html

STILL LIFE / SAN XIA HAO REN (2006)

Most people (filmmakers, too!) would imagine the rising waters behind a new dam only for how they cover things up.  Not so Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke, who uses the altering landscape of Three Gorges Dam in Southern China’s Fengjie county for uncovering the lives of people connected to the project, revealing personal burdens alongside societal upheaval.  Working in a style both precise and opaque, this Venice Film Fest winner (among many awards) observes with little comment two estranged couples handling the aftermath of long separation and the possibilities of reuniting; the dam acting as catalyst.  Sixteen years apart for a laborer, recently returned from the coal mines to begin a lower paying demolition job, taking down partially ruined buildings, in hopes of finding the wife and daughter he left behind for better coal mining wages.  Further up the social scale, a building engineer avoids calls from the wife he’s had no contact with in two years.  What could she wants of him?  Some things in here can be tough for Western audiences to fathom: Chinese emotional reserve can appear a closed book, with stoic acceptance coming across as a lack of feeling.  But Jia Zhang-ke locates plenty of depth, laying out what we need to reach third act resolution with his rapt attention to detail and handsome visual coverage juxtaposing the modern city just to the right of the watery ghost town these people labor in.  Yet fine as this is, with so much held at arm’s length, formal design may only carry you so far.  Especially once the film’s liveliest character tragically leaves the scene.

THE LAW AND JAKE WADE (1958)

The clock was ticking at M-G-M in the late ‘50s with everyone waiting to see if BEN-HUR/’59, in production over in Rome, would save the fast-shrinking studio.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Robert Taylor, M-G-M’s longest serving star, was becoming the last contract man standing.  In decline since IVANHOE,/'52 and QUO VADIS, 1951's BEN-HUR precursor*,  thanks to directors Nicholas Ray and John Sturges, Taylor still had a few decent outings left to him, including this solid Western from Sturges, probably the best of the lot.  Lean as a Budd Boeticher/Randolph Scott B-pic Western over at Columbia*, Taylor ups his tepid game, challenged by Richard Widmark greedily returning to the vicious psychopaths of his earliest roles.  The prologue sees Taylor saving his former partner in crime from a hanging; a favor returned as Widmark did much the same for him, only to watch as Widmark leaves a trail of shot men in the street during a botched getaway.  Hoping he’s done for good with the guy (Taylor now a comfortably engaged Marshall in a far off town), he's shocked to find Widmark waiting for him in his office with a ruthless scheme to make Taylor show him where he buried the 20 thou they stole back in the day.  The film becomes a hostage-on-the-move saga with Widmark and his current crew (Robert Middleton, Henry Silva leading a tasty bunch of thugs) also with Taylor’s fiancée Patricia Owens in tow to keep Taylor in line.  Neatly worked up with some stunning location work from D.P. Robert Surtees (think desert mountain territory) and only those ‘50s style soundstage exterior camping sites to disappoint.  One nighttime cyclorama background a real stinker.  (The film stock of the day unable to consistently handle evening lighting conditions?)  No surprise to see Widmark steal the show, but Taylor not bad at all here, while forgotten ingenue Owens comes thru nicely and Sturges keeps everyone on their toes.  A damn good outing for the time and place.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Perhaps the closest match to this from the Boetticher/Scott series is THE TALL T/’57.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-tall-t-1957.html   

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Tempus Fugiit - M-G-M’s last Roman/Christian epic, QUO VADIS/’51, starred Taylor with three of its four principals being M-G-M contract players.  BEN-HUR used no contract players at all . . . and, of course, no Taylor.

ALICE ET MARTIN (1998)

Near contemporaries, French directors Bertrand Tavernier (né 1941) and André Téchiné (né 1943) perhaps inevitably took similar stylistic paths, moving from film classicist (Tavernier from his debut in THE CLOCKMAKER/’74; Téchiné at his most persuasive in SCENE OF THE CRIME/’86 and WILD REEDS /’94), before developing what might be termed ‘Restless Camera Syndrome’ in the second half of their careers.  The results dramatically different.  For Tavernier, loosening up in striking fashion to uncover his own voice & rhythm, something not seen in his overpraised/award-winning earlier films.  For Téchiné, a less happy result, with new found freedom turning slapdash rather than unaffected.  You can see it here in this story of young/troubled Martin (Alexis Loret), something of a feral lad met on the run, but soon landing at the Paris apartment of half-brother Mathieu Amalric and platonic roommate Juliette Binoche.  She’s a struggling violinist; Amalric a struggling gay actor; Loret without prospects miraculously spotted on the street by a recruiter as a possible fashion model.  And  Téchiné just might have pulled this unlikely scenario off if he’d swapped his leading men: Loret looking too anodyne for the couture crowd, Amalric effortlessly holding focus with off-beat puppy-dog appeal any photographer would kill for.  And a similar gap in their acting.  But Téchiné’s new style too busy, busy, busy to take note of the obvious, he’s got an agenda to follow.  So that’s how the story plays out: success & tragedy, couplings, a Freudian-ready father, a suicide & a fatal fall studding the narrative like lardons in a dry roast.  Did Téchiné & Tavernier wave at each other as their careers crisscrossed?

DOUBLE-BILL:  To see Tavernier pulling off this style, CAPTAINE CONAN/’96.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Look for Pedro Almodóvar’s main muse from his early days, Carmen Maura, as Loret’s mother.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  We're in France, 1998, were the gender politics quite as appalling as they now look?  None of the male scripters thought Binoche might just be a little pleased at getting back to her violin?

THE BLACK WATCH (1929)

John Ford’s first full-length Talkie is a case of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  The Good its physical production & smooth technical finish; regular lenser Joseph August giving a master-class in rich chiaroscuro on faces, uniforms, formal military ceremony and atmospheric sets.  (Admittedly, too much of some of this, but all Good!)  The Bad comes with a half-baked storyline of theme & variations on THE FOUR FEATHERS.  (British officer labeled a coward when he avoids joining his regiment in WWI France to take on a secret appointment in India.*)  And the Ugly?  Actually not by Ford at all, but ordered up by FOX producer Winfield Sheehan who brought in British actor Lumsden Hare to expand the love scenes between Victor McLaglen’s British-agent-in-India and Myrna Loy’s Princess Provocateur out to start up a religious war between local sects.  They even gave her a crystal ball so McLaglen can ‘see’ the war going on without him in France.  Here’s Ford on the love scenes and folderol: ‘they were really horrible – long, talky things.  Had nothing to do with the story – and completely screwed it up.  I wanted to vomit when I saw them.’  Those with hardier stomachs will want to watch anyway.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Talbot Mundy’s novel (remade in 1953 under original title KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES - not seen here) has a good rep among the Rah, Rah, Raj cadre.  But FOX was probably more interested in beating Paramount’s new version of THE FOUR FEATHERS (Hollywood’s last mainstream silent release - not seen here) to the screen.  And they did; if only by a month.

WARFARE (2025)

Intimate, clear-sighted, critically well-received, effective, yet less involving and suspenseful than you’d imagine; as if the filmmakers took our reactions for granted.  This fact-based war story (gory & graphic), taken from the survivors memories, follows a Navy SEALs operation in Iraq/2006 with only a brief prologue before we are trapped in a civilian housing unit/turned bunker against enemy attack.  (Three terrified families hiding in a back bedroom.)  Only that prologue set elsewhere as the men bond and relieve stress before the mission by watching a sexy, rock-scored  exercise video, whooping it up as scantily dressed models go thru a workout.  In lieu of anything else, other than the men’s fierce loyalty to each other, it leaves the impression that sexy babes is what we’re fighting for.  In that ill-considered war, perhaps we were.  No forced grandiosity as the narrow focus holds and Jihadist fighters close in with cascades of bullets & bombs, the U.S. combat men start to fall, relief is ordered in and the minutes till rescue seem stuck in repeat mode.  But between helmets, bulky bulletproof gear and medical bandaging on so many faces, you can’t always be sure who’s who.  Again, no doubt accurate, but unhelpful dramatically.  NOTE: Since writer/directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza stick closely to Navy SEALs jargon, you may want to turn on the subtitles so you won’t think you’re missing out when technical terms get thrown around.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  After their pair of BOURNE films, Matt Damon & dir. Paul Greengrass put the Iraq war in their sight to good purpose in  GREEN ZONE.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/06/green-zone-2010.html

THE STORY OF DR. WASSELL (1944)

Cecil B. DeMille’s big sacrifices for the war effort came playing Air Warden for Laughlin Park and in making a contemporary film story; something he’d not tried for a decade.  The impetus was an FDR fireside chat he heard about U.S. Navy physician Corydon McAlmont Wassell*, a small-town Arkansas doctor whose stubbornly heroic efforts early in WWII saved a dozen bedridden patients in Java as Japanese forces approached and a relief ship refused to take patients unable to walk.  Grabbing the story rights, and working much faster than usual, DeMille brought Wassell to Hollywood from Australia and interviewed survivors still in hospital before getting James Hilton to compile a story from the notes and Charles Bennet for a script rewrite.  Gary Cooper made a perfect Dr. Wassell, unlike bland love interest Lorraine Day.  The others more than acceptable, considering half of Hollywood off to war.  The film typically lush, unbelievable, entertaining and atypically lively for DeMille,   Yet, as his famous choreographer niece Agnes de Mille* so accurately put it, in spite of all the diligent research, top technical help, and historical/cultural special advisers he used, the final results always came out ‘pure De Mille.’  (By which she meant, pure hooey.)  The film a big hit in its day, now one of his least known efforts.  Worth it for the 3-strip TechniColor model work alone.  Tinker-toy trains & handmade mountain landscapes (even more noticeable in color than in b&w; not so far from THOMAS THE TANK), a dreamland no one but De Mlle could get away with in his lumbering realistic style.  Largely because, in spite of so many failings, he almost always knew what we wanted to see next; his main gift as filmmaker, and a priceless one.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Note the slight spelling difference between C. B. DeMille (which looks very grand) and Agnes de Mille (which looks downright common).

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That FDR fireside chat (the real thing BTW) serves as the film’s climax.

RED CANYON (1949) COMANCHE TERRITORY (1950)

It took 75 years, but thanks to a Quentin Tarantino sidebar event at this year’s  Cannes Film Fest, two B+ Westerns from stalwart director George Sherman (1908 - 1991/129 credits) will serve as his Cannes debut.  Sherman didn’t only make Oaters, but from serials to programmers/B-pics to a late-career ‘A,’ Westerns are what he was known for.  So, worth the attention?  Well, yes & no. Here, CANYON the better executed (and with an unusually strong supporting cast for Universal); COMANCHE of more interest.  In CANYON, brittle Ann Blyth, tomboy daughter of ranch owner George Brent, wants to show Dad she’s as good as any man when it comes to cutting wild prairie horses out of the herd, specifically Black Velvet (played by the magnificent ‘Diamond’).  Only problem, horse trainer Howard Duff is planning to catch & train the same wild beast to run in Brent’s race.  What makes the film something to see, and likely attracted Tarantino, is the fine location shooting (not a process shot in the film) and the way Sherman turns the riderless horse on the run into a real presence, a real actor.  But you could count the story beats backwards in your sleep. 

COMANCHE completely different, opening with savage In’juns using Macdonald Carey’s Jim Bowie and Will Geer’s ex-congressman for target practice before Chief Quisima (Pedro de Cordoba) stops them to complain about the latest broken peace treaty covering valuable silver mining rights on the reservation.  Seems in spite of first impressions, Indians are the Good Guys by the end.  (The norm in ‘50s westerns.)  Turns out, the town’s controlling siblings, Maureen O’Hara and Charles Drake, have literally pocketed the treaty for their own gain and Carey will have to change her mind or lose the peace.  All handled with an attempt at an underlying comic tone only Geer is able to pull off.  O’Hara pushing too hard; Macdonald hardly light on his feet.  Again, barely a process shot in sight, but putting up a more blatant color palette from D.P. Maury Gertsman than seen under Irving Glassberg on CANYON.  (Glassberg shortly going on to shoot masterpieces for Anthony Mann and Douglas Sirk.)  Both worth a look, probably catching Tarantino’s attention thru Sherman’s work with horses, land, and the big donnybrook of a bar fight in COMANCHE.  Why not catch a flight to Cannes and find out why he choose these two for yourself.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Better than either of these, another director who churned out Tarantino-approved Western programmers was William Witney.  One of his best happens to be with COMANCHE’s Macdonald Carey as a trusting preacher in the fine, largely overlooked character piece, STRANGER AT MY DOOR/’56.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/10/stranger-at-my-door-1956.html

RED ROCKET (2021)

Prodigal porn star parable has a lot going for it.  Intriguingly scrubby deep Texas industrial locations; tasty cast of unknowns other than lead Simon Rex (blisteringly good/hilarious), who displays all the necessary porn star attributes (calm down, it’s a prosthetic); and director/co-writer Sean Baker’s non-judgmental/empathetic view of chain-smoking, drug-taking have-nots.  But it also has just as many things going against it, all self-inflicted.  Book-ended by more fully developed, more original projects from Baker (THE FLORIDA PROJECT/’17; ANORA/’24) and a third act that unnecessarily double-doses on forced melodrama and  a ‘Postman Always Rings Twice’ twist.  Rex’s played out porn star, following Robert Frost’s advice (‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’) returns from Hollywood to Texas and his strung out estranged wife.  She’s unwelcoming and living with Mom, but after a bit of wooing, brings him in on her own terms.  Unable to get a real job after 17 years of screwing for a living, Rex goes back to a high school trade, penny-ante drug sales.  Actually bringing in decent sums, but expanding into a new dangerous market of construction workers without approval.  Meantime, he buds up with a stoned neighbor who remembers him from back in the day for companionship, and with an underage donut counter girl for something a bit more intimate.  Soon, he’s dreaming of future glory back in L.A. with this girl and his own internet porn channel before getting that double-dose of comeuppance at the worst time.  From Baker, who generally shows perfect control over all aspects of his work (he even does his own editing), it’s odd to see him miss the defining character of his own creation.  Rex’s man-child just the sort of over-confident, personable fuckup who doesn’t need unexpected events to fail.  Failure’s his default, his essence, what he does best.  No unexpected bolt from above needed to miss life’s one big chance.  He’ll forget to wind the clock and be secretly grateful to have a new story to add to his complaints on how he missed his moment . . . again.  Not unlike this film* which came and went while FLORIDA and ANORA were out collecting well-deserved honors and coin.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  FLORIDA and ANORA just as good as you’ve heard.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-florida-project-2017.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/02/anora-2024.html    

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That poster certainly part of the reason this one missed its target audience.  (see above)  That’s no ballet guy in a tutu, but a reference to his teenage girlfriend’s job at the Donut Hole.

THEODORA GOES WILD (1936)

Having mastered every genre tossed her way (‘wronged’ woman’s-weepie, historical epic, musical-comedy/operetta, dysfunctional family: WASP to urban ethnic), Irene Dunne wasn’t keen to try on ‘Screwball’ comedy.  (THEODORA surrounded by four Jerome Kern musicals.)  But in spite of trepidations, she came up trumps: second of her five Oscar noms with more comedy to come in next year’s THE AWFUL TRUTH/‘37.*  Less noted is the ace comic technique from former Moscow Arts Players actor-turned -Hollywood director Richard Boleslawski which is just as much a surprise.  Where did the impeccable timing, shot selection, perfectly staged & composed group playing come from?  No doubt the Frank Capra vets on the film (supporting actors, Sidney Buchman script, Joseph Walker lensing) had a lot to do with Boleslawski getting so much out of this enviably human comedy.  Dunne’s a small-town New Englander with a secret: under a pseudonym she’s authored a bodice-burning bestseller.  A scandal in waiting for the town’s bluenose tastemakers.  Worse, her own maiden Aunts are leading the charge to stop the local paper from serializing it.  In New York to meet with her publisher, she’s the talk of the town, and a challenge to Melvyn Douglas’s smitten book-cover artist.  Hard on her tail (today we’d call this stalking), he lands on her country doorstep and sticks to her like glue.  The rest of the first act plays a bit too hard, but it’s really a set up as Buchman’s clever script turns out not to be about Theo getting stinking drunk and going wild, but in how she finds/reveals her true self, revels in it, and causes everyone around her to go a little wild.  And that very much includes Douglas, not at all the free spirit he fashions himself to be, but more inhibited than Theodora ever was.  This brings in an emotional layer rare in Screwball and helps make the last act unusually satisfying rather than a capitulation.  Look for a huge laugh when Theodora gets off the train when she comes home with special little package.  ‘Thirties audiences must have howled thru the end of the film which, in true Capraesque fashion, dashes from there to the finish.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Dunne’s follow up comedy, Leo McCarey’s THE AWFUL TRUTH/’37 even more celebrated.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/awful-truth-1937.html

HIGH LIFE (2018)

Even the title feels second-hand in this film from longtime critic’s pet writer/director Claire Denis, who comes a cropper in this colonizing space opera.  Once again, Earth withers away while a team of criminal volunteers heads to a rendezvous in space to find a new home for humanity.  You’d think someone on the Denis team might have told her just how played out the idea is without a new angle or visual splash.  Robert Pattinson is last man standing, or rather cleaning, caretaker to his dilapidated ship and a little toddler, four years into a mission gone wrong.  A big flashback brings us up on the internecine fights and sex that led the crew to oblivion before they could resupply by choosing the right Black Hole to shop at like some Outer Space Amazon as they pass thru to the other side.  Seems those Black Holes suck up everything and hold for resale.  If only they offered over-night delivery, the line for pick-up can be deadly.  SPOILER: That trip will be put off till Juliette Binoche, the controlling doctor onboard, uses knockout drops on the crew so she can secretly give a sleepy Pattinson the most pleasurable/productive wet dream of his life.*  Before long, this sole survivor's toddler has become a teenage girl.  The future beckons.  Yep, that kind of ending to go with this kind of film.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Attention paid by Pattinson who didn’t learn his lesson here before commercially bombing again with more Space Colonization in MICKEY 17/’25.  (not seen here)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Rape is Rape, Ms. Denis.  Even when it’s a older woman straddling a drugged guy. (Imagine a gender swap to make it all extra clear.)  For similar discomfort, see ‘family-friendly’ BIG/’88, but imagine a gender swap so that Tom Hanks isn’t the 10-yr-old boy in a man’s body, but a 10-yr-old girl in a woman’s body losing her virginity to a thirty-something co-worker.  Not so charming and innocent, no?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  See what these space soliloquies were like back when the ideas were still fresh and film technology to handle space travel was improving by leaps and bounds in SILENT RUNNING/’72: Bruce Dern; Douglas Trumbull - dir.

DESTROYER (1943)

While screenwriters routinely raid their real life experiences for material, full-fledged bio-pics on them are few and far between.  Ignoring those famous for more than writing, there’s MANK/’20, on Herman Mankiewicz; GAILY, GAILY/’69, about the Chicago newspaper days of young Ben Hecht; and John Ford’s very uneven, but fascinating THE WINGS OF EAGLES/’57, on frequent collaborator and this film's writer Frank ‘Spig’ Wead, a career Navy man paralyzed in a freak accident.  Wead, who usefully fed into Ford’s strengths and weaknesses, really had but one story in his quiver when not adapting something, the mid-ranked military braggart/fuck-up (on air or sea) who comes thru in the end, sacrificing himself one way or another to save the crewmen he’d alienated all thru the pic.  In this standard-issue WWII uplifter, short/tubby Edward G. Robinson’s the old salt/former Navy man who helped build the new Destroyer-class John Paul Jones and finagles his way back onboard at his old rank only to find he’s totally out of step culturally with today’s Navy and technically incompetent.  The idea that Captain Regis Toomey would agree to take him back hard to swallow, especially after a ‘shake-down’ trial run goes haywire.  Later, a Navy doc refuses to clear him for duty even at a reduced rank.  But since Wead’s signature plot requires Eddie G. to save the day in the third act, he simply ignores the order and gets back onboard.  Really?  Still, fun to see Glenn Ford in his salad days, rivals with Robinson but giving him a second chance because he’s fallen for the old guy’s daughter, little remembered Marguerite Chapman.  (Chapman a Roz Russell backup type at Columbia.)  Some clever F/X during an aerial attack helps take us thru the drek (one plane blows to pieces flying straight at us), but this version of the Wead formula sees journeyman director William A. Seiter working by-the-numbers, and classy lenser Franz Planer with little to do.  How good can you make Robinson look?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Wead’s best scripts were in the ‘30s: see Ford’s AIR MAIL/’32 or Howard Hawks’ CEILING ZERO/’36.  Or the forgotten HELL DIVERS/’31, with Wallace Beery and fast-rising Clark Gable, from M-G-M’s undersung action-oriented director George W. Hill.  Better yet, try the Ford bio-pic, WINGS OF EAGLES.   That one’s something special, even if you have to hold your nose at times.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/06/hell-divers-1931.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/wings-of-eagles-1957.html

HOUKUTUS LINTU / THE CALLBIRD (1946)

Æsop’s City Mouse/Country Mouse gets yet another workout in this neatly turned Finnish production, written & directed by Roland af Hällström, very well-shot by Esko Töyri.  (The restored print showing exceptionally lovely grain.)  Apparently not released Stateside (you’ll see why), but a big success in Europe, particularly in France (you’ll see why), it’s a Pimp and his Prostitute cautionary about Jussi, user & lover of Marja.  He finds the mark (out-of-towners with cash); Marja beds the victim; Jussi robs the guy blind.  Only tonight’s ‘John’ wakes too early, a fight breaks out and he falls out the window.  Jussi & Marja now split up and on the run.  She winds up working at some wholesome farm thanks to a friendly stranger and her fiancé . . . and the inevitable happens.  But Marja realizes that with her past, any future impossible.  Especially as Jussi has found her hiding place.  Coming to her senses when the two rival women share a Finnish sauna.  That’s the ‘you’ll see why,’ as both women are shot with a frank nudity all but unheard of for 1946.  (Both utterly lovely BTW.)  Wrapping up with an ending that preserves a touch of ambiguity, the film no undiscovered masterpiece, but a solid achievement that makes you wish you could find more from Hällström.  And particularly more from lenser Esko Töyri.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For a City Mouse/Country Mouse masterpiece, there’s F.W. Murnau’s CITY GIRL/’30.  Extraordinarily fine work from everyone, especially Country Mouse gone to the city: Charles Farrell; and City Mouse off to the country: Mary Duncan.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/05/city-girl-1930.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Not sure why, but the movies tend to have women as City-to-Country 'mice,' and men playing Country-to-City.

SIX BY SONDHEIM (2013)

Well-handled HBO documentary of B’way composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim (mainly directed by James Lapine) looks back at his life (a bit) and his career (mostly) thru the prism of six of his songs.  Actually, five & a half as ‘Something’s Coming’ from WEST SIDE STORY has music by Leonard Bernstein.*  The others are ‘Opening Doors’ from MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG*; ‘Send in the Clowns’* from A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC; ‘Being Alive’ from COMPANY; ‘I’m Still Here’ from FOLLIES; and ‘SUNDAY’ from SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE.  And you can’t help noticing that while Sondheim was still active when this was made (he died in 2021), the most recent song of the bunch was written in 1984, which says more in less words than anything else in here.  Still, an interesting watch, with Sondheim, the main interviewee in new & archival clips*, less prickly than usual under questioning, downright agreeable, a natural storyteller, funny and touchingly tearing up with emotion.   You, on the other hand, will likely leave dry eyed.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The best archive material is from ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY/’70.  And the reason so many clips are from, of all places, the old Mike Douglas Show is because he taped in Philadelphia where Sondheim would have been trying out shows headed to B’way.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/05/orinal-cast-album-company-1970.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Sondheim always pointed to ‘I Feel Pretty’ as a slightly embarrassing moment for him after fellow lyricist Sheldon Harnick gently pointed out that his words for a Puerto Rican teen immigrant girl were a little Nöel Coward-ish.  But surely that show’s nadir is reached in ‘Tonight,’ when Tony sings: ‘Today, the world is just an address; a place for me to live in; No better than alright.’   *On a different front, all the confusion as to what the hell Send In The Clowns means?   It’s entirely literal.  What the circus does when something bad happens, like a fall without a net.   While the crew covers and cleans up, the entire troop send in the clowns to circle the performing ring and distract the audience from whatever horror they just witnessed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *MERRILY, Sondheim’s infamous B’way flop (opened & closed in 16 perfs), now probably his most successful/beloved show.   A smash B’way revival three years back nearly sold out its run before it opened, and an unconnected Richard Linklater film is due in about 15 years.  He’s filming in real time before flipping it backwards.  But he’s still stuck with the absurd plot that has the ‘bad’ friend selling out by choosing to make Indie B-pics in Hollywood during the resurgent ‘70s rather than the calcified B’way musicals of the time.  How is that a wrong creative choice?)  The original stage production (seen here near the end of its short run with the house about one-third full) was already loaded with good things.  Just check out the Original Cast Recording.  The main problem was that the show was self-sabotaged between its Hal Prince DOA production and from Sondheim himself, stepping on his own songs so they wouldn’t ‘land’ in a splashy manner he must have found too show-bizzy.  And for true cringe, try Frank Sinatra’s ultra-sincere ‘cover’ of one of the standout songs: ‘We Had a Good Thing Going.’  Yikes!

THE DROP (2014)

Writer Dennis Lehane (MYSTIC RIVER; GONE BABY GONE) takes his literary kit from Boston to Brooklyn for director Michaël R. Roskam’s Stateside debut in this minor mob morality tale.  And why not?, since everything else in here also on loan-out: plot, characters, accents, story beats, over-stuffed interiors.  Not that the movie’s bad, it’s not, but Roskam’s lack of familiarity with the terrain blindsides him in ways that undercut verisimilitude.  Those dese-dem-dose accents laid on thick as impasto.  (Sure, it’s a period piece, but not 1930.)  Particularly by lead Tom Hardy, one of those still-waters-run-deep types and sounding weirdly like Adam Sandler.  (And the Belgium-born Roskam without the ear to notice.)  Hardy’s Number Two guy behind the bar at James Gandolfini’s neighborhood joint.  A very Boston kind of working-man’s dive in Brooklyn (bet they serve Boston-style bar pizza) that Gandolfini lost years ago to the Chechen mob.  (Ah, that’s why we’re in Brooklyn.)  The Chechens use it as an occasional ‘drop’ for thousands in illegal cash.  Too much of a temptation for Gandolfini who’s plotting a scam with a pair of lowlife crooks.  And if you can’t guess where this is going, you’re too young to watch the film.  Meantime, Hardy meets-cute with Noomi Rapace while rescuing a pup out of a garbage can.  She’s an animal shelter volunteer, and the guy who beat up the pup and stuffed him in the can is not only her ‘Ex,’ but also one of Gandolfini’s partners in his Chechen robbery scheme.  Credit Roskam for getting these coincidences to play with a sense of inevitability, helped by crepuscular lighting at all times, inside & out, and with a neat-as-a-pin supporting turn by a smart Puerto Rican Detective (John Ortiz) who figures out the score, but knows what to let pass.  Probably the best way to enjoy the film, too.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Were Gandolfini & Hardy purposefully designed to play like some minor-league ON THE WATERFRONT Brando & Steiger?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Sadly, Gandolfini, who looks like he’s about to keel over any minute, did just that two months after shooting wrapped.  Dying at only 51.