NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER (1980)

They skimp on subway graffiti, but everything else is in place on this tip-top template of grit & grunge ‘80s NYC style, the Daily News FORD TO CITY; DROP DEAD era of near bankruptcy and soaring violence.  You know, the good old days.  TV director Robert Butler, stepped in when journeyman hack Sidney J. Furie ankled*, while leads James Brolin and Cliff Gorman only feel like they’re stepping in for starrier names.  (Cheaper than the A-team, say Kurt Russell and Al Pacino, but here, the B-team probably a better choice, lesser stars & director offering a useful lack of polish and upping the film’s ‘gonzo’ factor.)  Brolin, ex-cop/truck driver, gives chase (by foot/by car; pedestrians be damned) when his teenage daughter is mistakenly kidnapped by Gorman who thinks he’s grabbed a real estate developer’s kid.  And we’re off; never stopping to look back on a race thru parks, avenues & down & dirty city streets.  (Bonus points for getting Manhattan logistics right for a change.)   Local obstacles include traffic jams; street gangs; crashes; even the police.  One in particular, Dan Hedaya, has a beef to settle with Brolin.  Only top detective Richard S. Castellano (unbeatable here) understanding what’s going on.  This mid-range actioner deserves its cult following.  Find it on-line now in halfway decent prints; or wait for the upgrade coming from Kino Lorber, as detailed in the LINK below.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  After the unintentionally ironically named ‘Fun City’ of the ‘60s, ‘70s Manhattan  ran on fumes, with films like ACROSS 110TH STREET/’72 and THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE/’74 pointing the way toward ‘80s Manhattan Armageddon.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/04/across-110th-street-1972.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/taking-of-pelham-one-two-three-1974.html  

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: More on JUGGLER’s difficult path to restoration and distribution.  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/movies/night-of-the-juggler.html

REPULSION (1965)

With over a dozen films and international stardom already in hand, 22-yr-old Catherine Deneuve made her first (and best*) English-language film in this psychological horror that gave Roman Polanski something of a mainstream hit in only his second feature.  Still extremely effective, though it does wear its cinematic influences on its sleeve (mostly Hitchcock & Cocteau*), the film triumphs over a tiny budget with imaginative stylings and unwavering focus.  (Extra points to cinematographer Gilbert Taylor.)  Deneuve plays an introverted manicurist at a fashionable beauty salon, her impassive face betraying diffidence toward job, clients, fellow workers & boss.  Something that might not pass notice if she weren’t such a blonde beauty.  It’s the unspoken subject underneath how people respond to her, elsewise her downward spiral into depression, delusion & violent fantasy might have been caught before it was too late.  Sharing a flat with her older sister, her mental skid is already on track when she’s left alone for over a week while sister & boyfriend take off on vacation.  By the time they return, job, lives and a ready to cook rabbit will have gone ‘off’ in horrifying ways.  Immaculate filmmaking, with Polanski’s uncanny shot choice putting tricky psychological ideas across, without forgetting to unsettle us.  Often scaring the bejesus out of us thru shock cuts, shock pans, shock reveals, angles and smash sound edits.  Unnerving stuff that sticks with you.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *While few actresses chose better directors on their home turf, Deneuve didn’t seem to know the score in either directors or co-stars on her mediocre attempts in Hollywood.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Though easy to see ROSEMARY’S BABY/’68 appearing after a three-year gestation, Polanski more closely revisited this terrain, now playing the lead and speaking entirely with his own fully mature voice, in THE TENANT/’76.  His still underrated, darkly comic absurd Kafkaesque tragedy.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-tenant-1976.html

LE PARADIS / THE LOST BOYS (2023)

That poster, along with the English-language title change, something of a come-on to sell this debut feature by French co-writer/director Zeno Graton as yet another ‘coming-of-gay’ tale.  Nearly a genre of its own these days.  But the story really isn’t going there, not that queer romance between two juvie jailees isn’t an important part of the story, it’s just not the main one.  Nor a sexual revelation to either.  The main motivating factors have more to do with developing minds & mores, immature judgement still short on self-control, unable to handle the pressure of a countdown to freedom.  On his way to early conditional parole, assuming he can keep his impulsive troublemaking under wraps, is Joe (Khalil Ben Gharbia), a 17-yr-old arab kid with a history of breaking out.  He’s started a prison affair with Julien De Saint Jean’s William, a tougher tattooed type, newly returned to juvie jail after a stint at ‘The Castle,’ grown up prison, where the life is considerably rougher.  The crisis that develops spills over after Joe, who’s already destroyed the relationship by not telling William of his imminent release, is unexpectedly returned for an extra three months.  Graton has a great subject here, showing the ways & rules of this fascinating, even nurturing facility for wayward youth.  A place that might indeed look like its original title (PARADISE) to any incarcerated Stateside Juvie.  (If you’ve ever seen the difference between a French school cafeteria lunch and an American one, you’ll get the idea.)  Such caring, concern & resources.  Is it accurate?  Graton errs in making the young inmates (as well as the supportive staff) so fit & handsome, you could do a fashion magazine layout with this crew.  But he doesn’t overdo much else and dramatically knows how to pull off a neat narrative ellipsis.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For a worst case scenario of an Arab kid not in the juvenile jail system, Jacques Audiard’s startling UN PROPHÈTE / A PROPHET/’09 with a career-making debut from Tahar Rahim.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/un-prophete-prophet-2009.html

LILO & STITCH (2025)

Twenty-three years after the original L&S, last of the great hand-drawn Disney animated features, it’d be a kick to call this new version best of the current cycle of Live-Action Disney remakes.*  But as I’ve avoided so many of them, let’s confine ourselves to noting how well this turned out.  LILO 2002, a final success in old-school Disney manner & technique (style, character, musical integration, story construction), grew to mega-hit status after its initial release (sequel, series, now this reboot).  So give Disney credit for hanging in there and then for taking a leap of faith entrusting it to Dean Fleischer Camp, a barely tested director of sublime whimsy & oddball charm as seen in MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON/’21.  Apparently unfazed by the staggering difference in budget and resources, he largely retains story and characters.  (Orphaned Hawaiian sisters with a fifteen year age gap are on the verge of being split up by child welfare services when Stitch, an experimental space alien passing as an Earthly pooch, brings complete anarchy to their lives . . . and to the island.)   Camp handling all the hard technical stuff, character driven mayhem and family-friendly morals beautifully.  The guy’s a natural.  (Standout casting, too, especially Billy Magnussen's hilarious alien Earth expert.)  Most missed from the older film, in spite of 2025's longer running time, is far more native Hawaiian music & traditional dance woven into the plot.  But then, who’s stopping you from watching that one, too!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, the original L&S and MARCEL.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/02/marcel-shell-with-shoes-on-2021.html      https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/07/lilo-stitch-2002.html

SCREWY THOGHT OF THE DAY:  *Just how Live-Action are these films?  Most so loaded with CGI processing, they’re simply animation by another name.

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987)

Leave it to those Cannon Film boys,, schlock producers Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan, here in their ‘80s heyday, to see STAR WARS/’77 in a D.C. comic-book franchise.  From its bold Bill Conti opening fanfare, pure John Williams copyright infringement; to fascist pageantry laced with STAR WARS design elements in sets & costume (check out those glossy black helmets); to a demonstration of deadly force by gesture, you know where you are.  Even a Sorceress in white, held in electronic bondage while a team of space soldiers are sent to recover ‘the key’ so chief villain Skeletor (Frank Langella hamming it up nicely) can rule the universe.  Luckily, their space portal takes them all the way to a double-feature: BACK TO THE FUTURE/’85!  Yep, Globus/Golan have combined the two biggest franchises of the day.  That’s young Courtney Cox as Earthly ingenue alongside boyfriend Robert Duncan McNeill.  But what of the two good guys & one gal, plus freakish goblin?  Busy adjusting to Earth’s ways before helping those two kids who just happened upon ‘the key.’  As ‘He-Man,’ Dolph Lundgren sports a great shag haircut, the jawbone of an ass, the largest breasts on screen, and acting chops that make Cox & McNeill look RADA-trained.  All under first time director Gary Goddard who seems befuddled by so many moving parts.  That’ll teach those Cannon boys to put up a decent budget.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Learn how indie producer Roger Corman made a million bucks by not releasing his lowball try at the genre in the sadder-but-wiser tru-life Tale of Hollywood DOOMED: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ROGER CORMAN'S THE FANTASTIC FOUR/’15.

AVATAR: THE WAY OF THE WATER (2022)

The first of four (!) planned sequels to the original James Cameron CGI-heavy blockbuster offers more (and more and more and more) of the same: super-sleek indigenous planet peoples (this time forest dwellers and coastal paradise types) compelled to join forces to fight off a new round of genocidal attacks by Earthly invaders from the sky out to steal a fountain of youth formula.  Think Amazon tribes & Tahitian natives vs arrogant/powerful East Coast/West Coast raiders in another intergalactic ‘Bad’ Cowboys/ ‘Good’ Indians action adventure.  And since 2009's AVATAR became the all-time top grosser, hard to gainsay a sequel.  This rising to #3 on that list*, though with hardly an original idea in a self-indulgent 3+ hour running time.  (Half an hour longer than the first film.)  Unexpectedly, establishing shots of landscapes and characters look unconvincing.  (Or does if you're not hooked on video games.)  Like a Robert Zemeckis film where improved pure CGI and motion capture techniques reduce rather than improve identification.  Fortunately, this problem soon corrected, unfortunately, not much else is.  And so many borrowed tropes from classic fable and fantasy.*  (The lion with a throne in his paw a real lulu, but you choose your favorite.)  The final battle, when we finally get there, is impressive in its windy manner, but the way Cameron presents his tarnished ideas as fresh discovery comes off as more self-delusional than ever.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Third place on the all-time box-office list nothing to sneeze at!  But even without adjusting for inflation, it’s also a 20% drop from the first film.  Perhaps the underwater heros of the film aren’t the only ones running out of oxygen.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/07/avatar-2009.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *The film so impersonal, you keep looking for a little sign on the wall attributing direction & story not to James Cameron but to ‘School of James Cameron.’

SUNDAY BEST (2025)

Rather than the expected hagiographic look at tv variety show host Ed Sullivan, a fixture on CBS Sunday nights for twenty-five years (late-‘40s thru early ‘70s), documentarian Sacha Jenkins takes a hagiographic look at Sullivan’s unprecedented progressive booking policy on largely excluded Black talent: ex-Vaudevillians up to The Jackson Five.  With generous clips of singers and dancers, the film touches on politics and representation as Sullivan puts his neck out where others did not.  Lots of wonderful stuff in here, some still surprising (Sammy Davis Jr in a duet with White smoothie Tony Martin?), Nat King Cole showing his jazzy piano chops.  But why no Moms Mabley?  Moms told the single funniest, dirtiest joke even heard on broadcast tv on a 1969 Sullivan show.  (How’d she get away with it?)  Sullivan’s fight to get Harry Belafonte on in spite of their political differences.  (Likely, Belafonte wasn’t held back by CBS execs for Leftist leanings, but for being the sexiest man ever put on the tube, period.)  Irresistible stuff.  But Jenkins, or whomever finished the cut (Jenkins died before this aired) also tries to cram in the usual personal details and check off some important White guests (The Beatles; Elvis; Original B’way Casts), which only points up how much else is missing.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Jenkins misses two important points.  ONE: Right thru the 1950s, whenever you saw Blacks on tv, you knew you were seeing the absolute best. How else could they have made it on the air in that environment?  Now, check out any police or medical procedural to confirm that Black actors can be just as bad as anyone.  The other missed point is how important Sullivan was as a sort of ANTI-algorithm.  In addition to giving, say Elvis or The Beatles, an early and a late slot, the rest of the really big show would be filled with things completely different which you would have to sit thru.  So, you might accidently bump into something wonderful, something you kinda liked, even if it wasn’t cool to say so out loud.  A modern ballet company, an opera aria (with the famous Sullivan band snare drum adding a beat for extra emphasis), a foreign nightclub act, Yugoslavian tumblers, plate spinners.  Plate spinners!  Good Lord, two whole generations unaware of Plate Spinners!

DOUBLE-BILL:  *A DIY double-bill is waiting on youtube by adding the name of your favorite (see poster) alongside Sullivan and watching the videos pop up.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991)

Among B’way cognoscente & critics of the time, the general consensus was that the Best Musical of the 1991 - 1992 season wasn’t one of the four Tony-nominated shows that year (CRAZY FOR YOU; FALSETTOS; FIVE GUYS NAMED JOE; JELLY’S LAST JAM), but BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, the animated film playing on the silver screen down the block.  And while a revisit shows the film holding up quite nicely, thank you, it also reveals B&B as less a standard, old-fashioned 1940s-style  musical (like THE LITTLE MERMAID/’89, the previous Alan Menken/Howard Ashman animated project for Disney), but something even more unfashionable in current Pop culture: operetta.  Yet the film was both blockbuster and cultural landmark, making animated features not just respectable (Oscar, Oscar®), but suddenly something adults could see on a date without the kids.  How’d that happen?  Our vote goes to composer Alan Menken, a musical magpie of borrowed genius, he seemed to know exactly what musical genre was needed to match any property.  1960s Brill Building pastiche for LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS/’86; bubbly ‘50s ballads a la Frank Loesser or Richard Adler for LITTLE MERMAID; and here, 1920s operetta stylings fellow musical magpies Rudolph Friml & Sigmund Romberg might have composed.  Especially easy to hear in big group numbers.  So, by the time Angela Lansbury lands the title track, we’re all goners.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:   Co-directors Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise never made another feature after ATLANTIS/’01 tanked.  Hollywood an unforgiving place, even with B&B in your background.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/08/atlantis-lost-empire-2001.html

PRESENCE (2024)

Second of three from director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp (from KIMI/’22 to BLACK BAG/’25), this middle one uncomfortable in its Haunted House tropes.  You can see what they’re up to; going for a literary vibe like Henry James’ TURN OF THE SCREW or Shirley Jackson’s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE.  Both of those with multiple filmings,* they start with a vacant, impassive old house to set a neutral tone; before a dysfunctional nuclear family of four (mom, dad, teenage siblings) takes a look.  Soon moving into this restored gem of a suburban house as they search for a fresh start.  The girl in particular, in bad mental shape after the death of two best friends.  Perhaps a haunted house not the best place to recover?  Soderbergh, showing unease with the paranormal, hides behind technical challenge, shooting the whole film as a series of gliding one-takes, fading to black between setups.  A filming choice that occasionally, but not always, becomes the floating spirit’s roomba ride POV.  But what is it the rest of the time?  Soderbergh setting film grammar only to ignore it.  (Though bravely eliminating shock cuts!)  And why does the family stay put after witnessing things going bump in the night?  If they only trusted the ectoplasm as oracle!  Maybe the daughter’s smooth-talkin’ sexy-ass, controlling boyfriend would have been exposed in time.  With a length under 80" (excluding credits), I think the roomba may have tipped off the filmmakers.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Those two literary suspensers released as THE HAUNTING/'63 and THE INNOCENTS/'61.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/haunting-1963.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-innocents-1961.html

THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND (1956)

Tone-deaf and unpleasant, this misconceived service comedy might well be titled THE GIRL THE FILM LEFT BEHIND as co-star Natalie Wood largely drops out of the picture after the first act.  That’s when boyfriend Tab Hunter flunks out of college, loses military deferment and reluctantly kisses Natalie goodbye to join this man’s Army.  Spoiled by wealthy, politically connected Mom (Jessie Royce Landis), Tab’s a closet Mama's boy, rich, lazy, self-centered & arrogant, a prick for all seasons with an overblown sense of entitlement about class, classes, his girl, and now army life.  Naturally, he’ll fuck up (on purpose, mind you), trying to get out till wising up to himself and coming thru at the finish.*  Did the writers know just how unlikeable they made this guy?  He even let’s a couple of kids (and their dogs!) wander onto a live-ammo training exercise area.  A bit of fun to be had debating who’s cuter: Natalie with her hair bobbed and no makeup or Tab with those chiseled . . . well everything.  (Even his hair chiseled.)  Plus, what a load of up-and-comers in the cast: James Garner, David Janssen, Murray Hamilton, Alan King (!), alongside Jim Backus and Henry Jones.  Vet director David Butler, who made light vehicles and Fox musicals, unable to make Hunter worth the trouble.  Leave this one in the brig.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Silent star William Haines, like Hunter, more or less out as gay within the industry, based his entire career, and rose to the top in the late-silent/early Talkie transition period, on this same jerk of a character.  His careless, carefree cruelty almost shocking to watch today.  But it can work on screen.  See him under director George W. Hill in TELL IT TO THE MARINES/’26.  OR: Haines at his very best the one time he stepped away from that character for John M. Stahl in MEMORY LANE/’26.  Long unavailable except in an out-of-order tinting-lab print, it’s finally been restored and is getting a MoMA premiere on August 5th.  The film, a minor masterpiece, hopefully getting a video release in the near future.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  With the army racially integrated on paper for nearly a decade, and effectively so on the field starting in Korea, this 1956 film tries to keep up with changing times by having a few Black soldiers appear in every group shot.  That is, every group shot but one: there’s no Black presence when Hunter beats everyone playing craps.  In 1956, keeping Blacks out of this game would have been considered socially progressive.

CLOUD / KURAUDO (2024)

A sense of dread and menace can be felt from the start of the latest film from writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa.  On the margins at first, it leaks toward the core of story and character, gaining prominence until it erupts in overcooked violence at the climax.  (Followed by a brief coda that promises ‘the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’)  Meticulously constructed for a ping-pong effect of on/off disassociation, Ryôsuke Yoshii is the emotionally distanced Masaki Suda, an unenthusiastic factory man and, at home, an enthusiastic ‘reseller’ who pre-buys entire runs of consumer goods at low price, then posts the whole supply on-line at a huge mark-up and waits for orders to flow in from the vacuum he’s created.  Pure speculation, but it generally pays off.  He ought to be getting rich; he ought to be thriving with his new girlfriend; he ought to be sharing the wealth with his partner.  But he’s only more addicted to finding the next deal.  Perhaps a new start in a fancy county home would clear a pathway forward.  Instead, exposure, poisoning the well on bad faith transactions, fake designer goods and dud electronics.  Worse, his I.D. and location hacked, then passed to threatening online threads where disgruntled customers and anonymous hate players join.  Suddenly, home, property, life under attack.  Looking for help from non-existent friends, live-in girl or authorities?  Not likely.  Only a local, hired as an assistant (Amane Okayama, excellent), before being poorly treated, shows loyalty.  Resolute, resourceful, and what a skill-set in the violent arts.  Haunting and absurd, this psychological suspenser might be A Don Siegel Film from a Michael Haneke script.  Yet it’s 100% Kurosawa.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Directing since the ‘70s, Kurosawa broke thru internationally in 1997 with CURE.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/cure-1997.html

MOON OF ISRAEL / DIE SKLAVENKÖNIGIN (1924)

Most versatile of Golden Age Hollywood helmers (ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX, THE SEA HAWK, THE SEA WOLF, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, CASABLANCA, a mere sampling of just his ‘38 to ‘42 output), Hungarian director Michael Curtiz was already well-known in Europe when he went to Austria for this quasi-Biblical epic, a gloss on THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/EXODUS story from adventure novelist H. Rider Haggard.  For Curtiz, the film became his American calling-card, in spite of suppression by Paramount who were protecting C.B. DeMille’s TEN COMMANDMENTS/’23.  But widely viewed within the industry, it made his rep.  Astounding & ridiculous in equal measure, the impressive physical production is technically similar to DeMille, but with a more sophisticated design and a style that's more D.W. Griffith than DeMille, specifically the Babylonian sections of INTOLERANCE/’16.  In Haggard’s telling, Egyptian Prince Sethi (Adelqui Migliar), fairminded heir apparent to the 80-yr-old Pharaoh, goes to Goshen to quash a Jewish slave revolt where he meets and falls for Merapi, The Moon of Israel (María Corda) in spite of being engaged to Pharaoh’s daughter.  As things play out, Pharaoh dies at the news; Sethi’s cousin takes his place next to Throne and Royal Daughter; those pesky plagues run their course; first born die (Sethi’s, too!); the Princess will demand extermination of the freed Israelites; and everybody races to pass thru the temporarily parted Red Sea.  Curtiz  brings his usual vigor to the proceedings. But much has to be taken on faith as film elements are . . . uneven.  (The best youtube edition isn’t so bad, but it’s been mastered as a small window within a letterbox, so sit close. –   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db94nsNHCyE), it’s worth squinting thru.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  It was a no-brainer for Warners to assign Curtiz to NOAH’S ARK/’28.  OR: See the DeMille take on THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/’23 where the Biblical tale of Moses gives way to a parallel modern story.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/noahs-ark-1928.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/ten-commandments-1923.html

JAWS @ 50: THE DEFINITIVE INSIDE STORY (2025)

Laurent Bouzereau had a great run turning out behind-the-scenes special features as Extras on premium DVD editions of classic Hollywood films.  Not the academically inclined essays or close-readings of directorial style found in Criterion Commentaries, but gossipy backstory featurettes.  A Value Added Bonus from pre-streaming days.  With less call for such offerings in today’s market, Bouzereau has moved on to feature-length studies, like a recent bio on film composer John Williams.  Now, this Golden-Anniversary look at a single film, and not just any film, Steven Spielberg’s JAWS.  Good stuff as far as it goes: archival clips, talking-head encomium from fellow directors, plenty from Spielberg himself.  (Though why Emily Blunt in here a mystery.)  But heck, who doesn’t like JAWS?  Well, other than the NY’er film critic Penelope Gilliat, who used to split the year with Paulina Kael and whose squib review on JAWS read, in its entirety, ‘Don't bite.’ and ran for years.  We do get a couple of little known surprises about some post-location work in a water tank and even a pick-up shot in a backyard swimming pool.  But this is really no more and no less than a Super-Sized version of the DVD Extras Bouzereau used to make.  And he's always careful to avoid tough issues.  For Williams, not a peep about his many musical ‘borrowings,'  (see here: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/11/music-by-john-williams-2024.html), and now in not mentioning the rift that later developed between Spielberg and one-time film alter-ego Richard Dreyfuss who is only seen in archival material.  (Best guess is that Spielberg blames Dreyfuss for the failure of passion project ALWAYS/’89, but who knows.)  Worth a look, but also a missed opportunity.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  JAWS co-scripter Carl Gottlieb’s original paperback, THE JAWS LOG/’75, often credited as the first bio on a movie production.  But that ‘honor’ should go to Walter Wanger whose My Life with Cleopatra came out in 1963, or perhaps 1973's The Magic Factory: How MGM Made An American in Paris.

ROMA, ORE 11 / ROME 11:00 (1952)

Writer/director Giuseppe De Santis, best known for BITTER RICE/’49 (the sexy Neo-Realist film) rounds up the usual creative suspects from the movement (co-writer Cesare Zavattini, D.P. Otello Martelli many others) for this mixed message of a drama that, by the time it’s done, seems to smell Il Boom, the mid-‘50s/’60s Italian economic miracle, in the air.  But just now, even a modest ad in the newspaper for a low-wage secretarial position gets hundreds of in-person applicants.  Fleshed out with formulaic story beats & character development, it uses a real-life tragic incident as narrative pivot after a first act that leans on Neo-Realism as an army of unemployed women show up, starting at dawn, for the company gate to unlock so they can grab an early interview.  Two hundred before the boss shows.  Plenty of time to fill us in on employment & family histories; sob stories and sacrifice.*  But can they type?  Act Two moves past Neo-Realism to disaster movie tropes as the building’s old staircase unable to support all those eager women determined to beat a line jumper to the office.  Crash!  With buried bodies; crushed bones; missing people and property; instant top-of-the-news notoriety.  Act Three swings portmanteau as we follow a handful of survivors who pick themselves up and find the jolt has altered their view of life’s goals . . . and not for the worse.  Proposals, packed bags and a prostitute’s pledge; goodbye city-life/hello country town for others.  A welcome shock to the system for many.  Lightly sketched, with all the depth of a chalk boundary line on a grass field, but neatly served.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Plus, nearly half the women groomed to look like the next Ingrid Bergman (it’s during her Roberto Rossellini period), but none as compelling on screen as the young Raf Vallone, a struggling artist who gets the girl after she's all shook up on that staircase.  Those Rossellini/Bergman films poorly received at the time.  De Sica fared better with his off-beat Neo-Realist fantasy MIRACLE IN MILAN/’51, out between BICYCLE THIEVES/’48 and UMBERTO D/’52.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/miracolo-milano-miracle-in-milan-1951.htm

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS (2021)

(NOTE:  I know this Write-Up makes less sense than usual, but hey!, it's The Matrix.)  In an attempt at resurrecting their cash-cow/calling-card franchise, the Wachowskis, or rather Lana, who takes sole credit, tries to have her cake and eat it too on their signature Gordian Knot fable of multi-layered realities.*  Playing both sides of The Emperor’s New Clothes fence, the main debate asks if message & meaning exists within these MATRIX films, or can empty pyrotechnics serve as both surface display and subject?  From there, we go ‘meta’ as Keanu Reeves’ Neo, living the corporal corporate life as video game designer Thomas Anderson, suffers thru company conference meetings on the public’s reaction to previous gaming editions of The Matrix.  All this coming after a zoomy prologue that sees digital entities in human form battling for their lives in, on and over skyscrapers.  Though technically, are they alive or merely lithium charged data?  One piece of the puzzle Neo will have to solve while renewing his feelings for Carrie-Anne Moss and his sessions with quirky analyst Neil Patrick Harris on fear control.  Parsing all this well-nigh impossible though subtitles help, if not for gal fighter Jessica Henwick whose diction is so indistinct, you can’t make out two words for every ten with or without the sub-titles.  Lots of famous faces to spot between CGI overkill, and a moral to contemplate: never trust your analyst.  Alas, the cool which sold the original MATRIX in 1999 a thing of the past; subsumed by a new emotion for one of these films: Pity.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Stick with the first in the series . . . only the first.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The ending also a ‘have your cake and eat it too’ cop-out.

CAPTAIN SCARFACE (1953)

Dreary bargain-basement product (for a Grind House triple-bill?) produced by Hal Roach Jr (on Pop’s studio lot) has supporting actor Paul Guilfoyle debuting as director from Charles Lang’s original script.  (Not Lang the cinematographer, BTW.)  Third-billed Leif Erickson takes the lead as a So. American based foreman on the run from his boss and taking the first ship out of port.  That’s how he ends up on Los Baños, mad Captain Barton MacLane’s doomsday vessel.  (Longtime Warners character heavy MacLane failing to pull off his Russian accent.)  Seems the captain has kidnapped an explosives expert and plans on taking down the whole Panama Canal along with everyone on board.  Yikes!  This ought to be a bit more fun than it is, but so flatly lit, written, staged and acted, there’s little to redeem it.*

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Adding insult to injury, most Public Domain and Free Streaming copies in excellent physical shape.  In the history of film preservation: the good die young, while crap endures.  If you’re looking for a man-on-the-run meets Evil Ship’s Captain story, tough to beat THE SEA WOLF/’42.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-sea-wolf-1941.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Well, maybe just one thing.  Somebody managed to get away with naming the ship ‘Los Banos,’ Spanish for The Bathroom.  Flush away!

JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX (2024)

Destined to go down as the most disappointing high profile sequel since EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC/’77 (out four years after the game-changing original), Todd Phillips’ D.O.A. semi-musical continuation of what had been Hollywood’s all-time top grossing R-rated pic (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/04/joker-2019.html) wouldn’t have come as a surprise to many in the biz.*  The story’s simple enough: while in looney prison awaiting trial on past murders & mayhem, Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) buds up with fellow psychopath Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) to bill & coo . . . in song.  Mostly American Songbook classics and ‘60s ‘Pop,’ delivered in what might be called ‘half-integrated’ style.  It’s like a cross between what worked so well in PENNIES FROM HEAVEN/’81 with lip-synched period recordings, and even better this same year with vocalized transgender mob story EMILIA PÉREZ, which gets almost everything right this film gets wrong.  A triumph of execution.  This was the stylistic choice everyone (including upset audiences) jumped on as the key to this film tanking.  But it’s not.  The problem was that the ultra-violence that sold five years back was happening ‘for real’ within the framework of that story.  Not so here, where, with the exception of an explosive finale, all the gory thrills occur in dream sequences Joker wakes up from.  Nothing happened, folks.  It’s as if Phillips didn’t understand his own concept.    . . . oh.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:   As mentioned above, PENNIES and EMILIA PÉREZ/’24.  OR: Play movie sleuth since while Martin Scorsese’s TAXI DRIVER/’76 was the obvious takeoff point for JOKER, hard to say what Phillips was riffing on here.  Perhaps Brian De Palma’s crazy-fun freak show PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE/’74, where there's actually a Batman-worthy villain made with the help of a vinyl L.P. press machine.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/11/emilia-perez-2024.html    

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *More likely, the dismal reception was welcomed as a control lever against Phillips (and others), returning balance of power to the studios.  Pricey, but worth it.

ANIKI BÓBÓ (1942)

Honored Portugese master Manoel de Oliveira, who lived to be 106 and never stopped turning out films (take that Clint Eastwood), a critical darling, especially at film fests toward the end of his long career, never broke thru Stateside, even in an auteurist manner.  And, to go by his late work, easy to see why.  Overloaded with grand themes: obvious, weighty, pretentious, in spite of some tantalizing international casts eager to have worked with the old man.  Could a better encounter be had by going to his beginnings rather than his end?  Say, this very first feature from 1942?  Nope.  It’s no more satisfying then the late works, and a bit rough technically.  Editing particularly bumpy.  Meant as a modest charmer about the games kids play on the streets of Porto, this episodic film best for its location work on the narrow alleys, stairways, roofs and tenement apartment buildings of this seaside city.  If only the kids weren’t a mass of worn clichés and schoolyard casting calls that didn’t pay off.  The storyline, beside all the roughhousing and urban games, follows a couple of rivals for a little girl's favor, a doll stolen from a store display window, and the store owner developing an interest in the kids.  (He proves something of a behind-the-counter child psychologist/philosopher.)  The main action, which opens the film before we flash back, showing a dangerous fall by one of those rivals down a slope toward an onrushing rain.  Will the boy be crushed?   Was he pushed?  And while you won’t be chewing your nails for the next 80 minutes, the film’s pleasant enough and there’s a nice set piece set on dangerously unstable ceramic rooftop tiles.  Next time, maybe something from de Oliveira’s middle period.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  François Truffaut’s SMALL CHANGE/’76 is the go-to pic for this sort of thing.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/small-change-1976.html

DIABLO (2025)

Apparently, this is the third teaming of Good Guy Scott Adkins and Bad Guy Marco Zaror as adversaries in a Martial Arts ‘slayathon.’  Who knew?  Standard issue genre stuff (okay, slightly substandard), but with enough offbeat perversity to keep you from tuning out.  Adkins, a big handsome guy with big handsome fists and a big handsome suckerpunch kick, is just out of prison after 15 years and on a mission to grab (and protect) the daughter he left behind with the mother and the Latino mob boss who married her.  Hard to imagine these three were ever a trio of bank robbers, but when she died, her final wish was for Adkins to save the girl from the man the girl thinks of as her father.  Now, with a huge reward out to find the girl, death-master Zaror enters to kill anyone who gets in his way.  (Often with a curved knife hidden inside his prosthetic metal hand.  Dozens slaughtered along the way by Adkins and Zaror, but hard to get too worked up since our teenage victim is such a willfully blind pain in the ass, it’s tough not to root against her.  And we’re also constantly pulled out of the action by Adkins remarkable resemblance to Ryan Reynolds.  (Check out the left side in three-quarter profile.)  Reynolds & Adkins' striking resemblance might be put to better use remaking some doppelgänger classics: THE IRON MASK?  THE COMEDY OF ERRORS?  THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER?  It couldn’t be sillier than this.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Technically, director Ernesto Díaz Espinoza liberally moves to slo-mo on the fights (to show balletic grace?), more effective are the digital stutter effects he adds here and there, pixilating the image into a sort of living poster.

IO CAPITANO

Writer/director Matteo Garrone (GOMORRAH/’08) has a major work here; awards, Oscar nom., yet not much seen.  A tough watch, but superb, raw, timely, deeply moving.  The story is old and currently unpopular, immigrants leaving their homes for something better, in this case Africans going to Europe.  A touchy topic these days.  Senegalese cousins Seydou & Mousa, 16, but looking like young men, ignore all advice and risk a journey north that proves violent and terrifying, heading thru Africa to Libya and the Mediterranean, then across the sea for Italy to find work and send money home where their families live in flimsy lean-tos hardly better than migrant camps.  Moussa the natural alpha-male, urging on less impulsive Seydou.  But as horrors & brutalities pile on (bribery at every juncture; desert transport by truck and foot more like a death march; outlaw shakedowns and torture; senseless military arrests), it’s Seydou who turns leader and caretaker; though he too will need the kindness of strangers to survive.  Harrowing stuff, yet Seydou’s biggest fear still to come when he’s given charge of the boat taking nearly a hundred refugees on the last leg over the Mediterranean to Italy after a couple of minutes instruction on how to captain a ship.  Stunningly realized by Garrone, technically the film is immaculate, with one location topping the last, a cast filled with unmatchable non-professionals, with incidents of sweeping action and escalating terror seemingly caught on the fly.  International anti-immigration sentiment no doubt held this back, but the film demands to be seen and understood.  Its terrible beauty beautifully captured.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The Greeks in their wisdom would follow tragedy with Farce or Physical Comedy to clear the air with laughter.  Is such a thing even thinkable today?  Could we watch a lightly sentimental cartoon on fresh immigrants coming to America like Spielberg’s AN AMERICAN TAIL/’86 or Rodgers & Hammerstein’s corny musical FLOWER DRUM SONG/'61?  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/01/an-american-tail-1986.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/flower-drum-song-1961.html

ALL FALL DOWN (1962)

Always in the shadow of Tennessee Williams (who he was unfavorably compared to in spite of successes COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA; PICNIC; BUS STOP), playwright William Inge died long before his current (if partial) critical reclamation.  But easy to see why he was seen as a backup Williams in Inge's adaptation of James Leo Herlihy’s overwrought novel about a dysfunctional family down South.  Warren Beatty, in his arrogant pretty-boy prime, repeats the Angel of Death* he’d just played in Williams’ THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/the-roman-spring-of-mrs-stone-1961.html), but sans suspect Italian accent, as irresponsible prodigal son to suffocating mom Angela Lansbury (very Shelley Winters here) and libido-free dipso dad Karl Malden.  Brandon De Wilde (remarkably good considering) is the worshipful kid brother/family peacemaker who finally spots the feet of clay, and Eva Marie Saint is a visiting cousin who brings out a new leaf on Beatty only to discover the new growth is no different than the old.  While director John Frankenheimer, only his third feature after much tv work, can’t find a level of artifice everyone can work in, so the acting is something of a free-for-all.  For the film, hysterical playing and physically drab presentation prove a bad combination.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Next year, next big brother with feet of clay as De Wilde sees Paul Newman plain in the far superior HUD/’63.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Something our foreign poster picks right up on.  (see above)

CONTEST/LINK:  Wildly misrepresentative trailer, even for Hollywood.  Plus a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up on a streamable film of your choice if you can name the tune & the film the trailer uses as playout.  https://www.tcm.com/video/61703/all-fall-down-original-trailer

THE HIGH COMMISSIONER (1968)

For a while in the 1960s, tv networks like ABC and CBS briefly tried to be major players in the movies*, but they rarely got ‘First Look’ at the best material.  Dog-eared scripts working their way down from established Hollywood studios was more like it.  Something that helps explain this, a political thriller, not without potential, but showing fingerprints and coffee cup stains from rival development execs who’d rejected it months ago.  Fortunately, star Rod Taylor is such a darn likable chap, even weathered and a bit thick, as the Aussie detective plucked from the Outback to pick up Australian High Commissioner Christopher Plummer in London on an old, trumped up murder charge, you swallow the narrative bait.  It’s really political payback (from an uncredited Leo McKern), but Plummer gets a short stay to finish up his international conference.  Taylor agrees, but the shit hits the fan when a series of assassination attempts breaks out.  (One at Wimbledon, very MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, a hoot, especially when they go right back to tennis action post-shooting.)  But then, the lighter tone of the first half tries but fails to turn dark in the second.  Lili Palmer looks elegant as Plummer’s mature wife (15 yrs older and dying of cancer); Camilla Sparv is his loyal/sexy assistant; Daliah Lavi is a spy with a shifty nature and shifting skin tone; Calvin Lockhart is the cool dude/foreign diplomat; and a delightful Clive Revill is both comic relief in the first half and dead serious business in the second where he's even funnier.  Plus Franchot Tone, dying of lung cancer at the time, playing an American Ambassador dying of lung cancer.  Director Ralph Thomas is all thumbs at action, but gets his laughs, even the unwanted ones.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *ABC’s initial film production unit ran from 1965 to 1972.  This British RANK product a probable pick-up to meet a release quota guarantee.  Nowadays, Disney owns the joint.

THE GUNS OF TIMBERLAND (1960)

Two years after THE PROUD REBEL/’58, Alan Ladd looks ten years worse.  Not older; worse.  In five years (and five films), he’d be dead, 51, mostly from alcohol.  (Something traumatic post-REBEL?:  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-proud-rebel-1958.html)  But while this is a lesser film, and has the rep to match, it’s a bit of a sleeper.  Mostly, I suspect, from what’s left of the Louis L’Amour novel it comes from.  Unusually nuanced character development, lots of gray areas on all sides, the good, the bad, the conflicted.  A shame director Robert D. Webb so coarse & cavalier in all areas.  Ladd, partner Gilbert Roland and his hearty crew of singing lumberjacks invade a town to strip the forest that protects the watershed of a robust farming community where Jeanne Crain owns a major spread .  Why it’s that old standby plot: Open Range Ranchers vs Crop Growing Homesteaders, just like SHANE/’53, Ladd’s best-known film.  Only Ladd’s on the ‘wrong’ side of the issues yet structurally still the hero.  If only Webb knew how to finesse the film’s dramatic road blocks: two anachronistic Pop songs for a debuting Frankie Avalon; a jolly, heavily scored donnybrook (a lumberjacks vs. farm owners free-for-all hackiest of big-time Western directors Andrew McLaglen couldn’t have made worse); a feisty old bitty as comic relief; a happy ending pulled out of a hat.  Worst of all, putting Ladd next to Gilbert Roland, a working actor from the 1920s to the 1980s who never seemed to age.  Fortunately, cinematographer John F. Sietz, who shot almost all of Ladd’s late films, figured out how to acceptably light him as the film goes on.  Or do we just get used to the decline?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Note the DVD is non-anamorphic and plays best left in Academy ratio without bumping up to fill a 1.85 : 1 frame.  Look out for falsely ‘corrected’ aspect ratios on some streaming services.

THE INFORMER (1929)

Not the 1935 John Ford classic (Dudley Nichols script; Joseph August D.P.; Victor McLaglen lead), but an earlier British version of Liam O’Flaherty’s very Irish novel on ‘The Troubles,’ shot silent before gaining a primitive soundtrack with Talkie elements.  Luckily, all original silent negatives surviving for this fine BFI restoration.  American-born German director Arthur Robinson (his only British production?) pulls off superb atmosphere, re-creating a stylistically believable, studio-bound 1920s Dublin.*  Check out the painted chimney shadows when we hit the rooftops of the city, an illusion all-of-a-piece with the film’s two international leads Lars Hanson (Gypo) and Lya De Putti (Katie).  He’s the jealous Irish Republican National who informs on his best pal when he thinks his girl (De Putti) is steppin’ out with him.  She’ll mirror the mistake in the third act, believing he’s been unfaithful with a girl he’s barely met.  These matching jealousies the main motivating difference between the two film versions.  In Ford/Nichols, motivation lies more with the ‘forty pieces of silver’ (actually £20)  Gypo is paid to inform on his BFF, the man who shot & killed the British Police Chief.  Just as big a difference comes in casting: Hanson’s Gypo no hanger-on, but falling down when he misreads the romantic situation; McLaglen more a tough enforcer, and thick as a brick.  Equally surprising, it’s Ford, not Robinson, who piles on UFA-style German Expressionism.  (A holdover from working at FOX when F.W. Murnau came to town?)  Both films now look a bit deliberately paced, afraid we’ll lose the thread of the story, but in their own way both significant achievements.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  While the basic plot has inspired many films, official remakes come from Ford in ‘35 and, in Jules Dassin’s intriguing, if uneven, Black take in UPTIGHT/’68.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/10/uptight-1968.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *No doubt, the superb, and very un-British, ‘finish’ to the photography due to Robinson bringing in German cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl.  Sparkuhl soon off to Hollywood, with great credits, mostly at Paramount, in the ‘30 and ‘40s.

RUST (2024)

Yes, you have to address the elephant in the room (see below), but first the film.  Something of a missed opportunity here, as this æsthetically up-to-date post-modern Western (nihilistic in tone, dark & brooding) has the look, feel & texture of the new ‘Old West’ sagas inundating streaming services, thanks mostly to the untiring (yet somehow tiring) efforts of fertile writer/director Taylor Sheridan.  His default manner a studied ultra-realist approach that in its own way is as stylistically ‘curated’ as a Natalie Kalmus-certified 1940s TechniColor epic.  Tastes change, artistic blather is eternal.  This one, jonesing for that Cormac McCarthy vibe, follows teen orphan Lucas Hollister (an overparted Patrick Scott McDermott) as he awaits hanging on an accidental killing of a hostile neighbor.  Rescued by the grandfather he didn’t know he had (Alec Baldwin), the two slowly work up a relationship as they ride South toward freedom in Mexico, hoping to outrun the attention a $1000 reward has brought them, and a veritable gold rush of ornery bounty hunters on the chase for it.  Majestic scenery alternates with dusty trails, scrub-land, forbidden Indian territory, and homestead interiors with single-source lighting that turns everyone into backlit silhouettes.  (And who thought it wise to repeatedly copy the famous opening/closing doorway shot from John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS/’56?)  Baldwin, who co-wrote with director Joel Souza, mostly lets his inner George C. Scott out (he’s got the rasp if not the gravitas), but somehow misses the deadly serious joke on the consequences of setting a Dead or Alive reward too high.  No need to fend off professional bounty  hunters when they’re doing the job for you, killing each other off to earn the prize!  Just stay out of harms way and watch them annihilate each other.  Eventually, you and the boy will outnumber the surviving tracker.  Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpah would have loved it.  Burt Kennedy probably stuck the unproduced script in some forgotten drawer.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Attention paid to the very real tragedy of ‘live’ ammo getting mixed with blanks in Baldwin’s rifle, leading to a practice shot killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.  Sad to say, this is anything but unknown on film sets.  From drowned extras in NOAH’S ARK/’28 to Jean Harlow’s ‘double’ (filmed from the back & dubbed) to finish SARATOGA/’37 after her death at 26; to the plane you never see land at the end of FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX/’65 because the stunt flyer crashed it; or another ‘live’ ammo incident, the self-inflicted gunshot that killed Brandon Lee on THE CROW/’94.  Many, many, many more such stories.  The common element?  If there’s any way at all to finish the film it’s always released.  They don't call it show business for nothing.

COMPLÈTEMENT CRAMÉ! / WELL DONE! (2023)

Wealthy, but depressed, a recent widower takes a sentimental journey to the French estate where he’d met his late wife.  But it’s closed!  Or rather, being redeveloped as a sort of luxury B&B and the ad he saw wasn’t for guests but for a British butler.  Ahead of the plot already?  (Ahead by about seven or eight decades, yes?  Good Lord, what was debuting writer/director Gilles Legardinier thinking?)  And whom to get to play the charming Brit who plays butler so he can rekindle some personal memories while fixing up the lives & loves of the staff along with the grounds & plumbing?  Why Mister Charm himself: John Malkovich; speaking his own weirdly uninflected French.*  Fanny Ardant, owner of this pile, appears in brief flashes under the odd staccato editing Legardinier favors when he’s not pointlessly circling chess games on the grass, hélas.  Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert and a good score under Ernst Lubitsch couldn’t have made this work in 1931.  Released in France as COMPLÈTEMENT CRAMÉ!/’23; later in selected English-speaking territories as WELL DONE!; now scheduled for Stateside showings (in near empty bijoux) as MR. BLAKE AT YOUR SERVICE!  Best avoided under any name.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *On a positive note: if your French is as bad as mine, Malkovich’s flat non-idiomatic delivery is understandable in a manner not possible when native French speakers rattle on.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Is it possible the inspiration for this came from something as wonderful as MY MAN GODFREY/’36?

THE RUNNER / DAVANDEH (1984)

Draw a line from the boys in Vittorio De Sica’s mid-‘40s Neo-Realist classics to Antoine Doinel of François Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS/’59, then thru Ken Loach’s KES/’69 and you could well land on the orphaned urchin in Amir Naderi’s THE RUNNER . . . and not be the poorer for it.  This semi-autobiographical work one of the few mature projects Naderi completed before leaving Post-Shah Revolutionary Iran.  Ten-yr-old Madjid Niroumand is Amiro (Naderi’s alter-ego), a street kid living in a Southern port town of oil refineries and a constant flow of international traffic, freighters, planes, trains, Amiro longs to join.  Yelling for attention when they pass, as if to say take me along or at the least SEE ME!  Odd-jobbing to survive (garbage picking, shoeshines for foreigners, collecting bottles gathered by the tide), then fighting to keep what’s his from older boys.  He gets some help from the local guys he plays fierce competitive games with.  (Stamina his secret weapon.)  But while they have homes/families of some sort, Amiro lives on an abandoned ship with little but magazines for company.  Just for the pictures since he can’t read.  Industrious, honest and determined to improve himself, his serious, square face occasionally breaking into a smile so big you could walk inside it.  And the expected movement  toward self-improvement in the third act doesn’t spoil the film with sentiment and good intentions, but does raise the stakes as Amiro finds a program that teaches him to read those magazines, and to see a way forward beyond his mad dashes in the deadly serious games he plays to win.  Remarkable stuff, acclaimed in its day, now too little seen.

DOUBLE-BILL:  The Criterion disc (and presumably their site) has a double-bill from Naderi included, WAITING/’74, a five-reeler made a decade earlier, also with autobiographical elements, but here in dreamlike code.  Again, a young boy (this one as striking as a fashion model - YA PARIS VOGUE?) living with elderly relatives in a perfectly preserved ancient city with little water.  His daily task to fill a large pressed glass bowl with ice he receives from a mysterious house after finding his way thru a maze of streets.  All mood & texture, where RUNNER is rough & solid, this is poetic poverty and utterly bewitching.

KIDNAPPED: THE ABDUCTION OF EDGARDO MORTARA / RAPITO (2023)

Fine as film, even more fascinating as a slice of Italian history, Marco Bellocchio ‘brings to the screen’ (as film trailers used to say on hard-to-sell period historicals) the true story of Edgardo Mortara, a six-yr-old Jew from a large wealthy family in 1850s Bologna who is kidnapped by the Pope.  At heart, that’s the story: call it PIUS IX AND THE BAPTIZED JEW.  Casually baptized in secret as an infant by a house servant, this act proves enough for the church to gather the boy and ‘orphanize’ him when his parents refuse to convert.  Held with other ‘removed’ boys, Edgardo's fate sealed by his finer qualities: exceptionally bright, well-behaved, observant, obedient, eager to please & be praised; a perfect candidate for Catholic indoctrination in ecumenical schooling.  Remarkably, international opinions & repercussions go entirely with the family, an event fed by press and public opinion which only hardens Pharaoh’s heart, so to speak.  And when the parents finally get to see their son, it’s less emotional reunion than ritualized abandonment.  Even an outburst with Mother only pushes Catholic authorities further against her for needlessly upsetting the boy.  Eventually, the case will be taken up as a liberal lever in the Italian Risorgimento, the progressive movement to unify the State under a figurehead King.  (Yes, Italian politics were counterintuitive even then.  For Freedom; Vote Royalty!)  Bellocchio is especially good at setting time & place (the Order of the Inquisition still active in the 1850s!), as well as keeping a lot of family & religious characters sorted, never sensaltionalizing the maddening facts.  Perhaps the film could use a bit of sensationalizing; it grows too tasteful at times.  It also runs a bit long (too many dream sequences?) along with a few odd musical choices  (Rachmaninoff?; Shostakovich?)  But this is nitpicking on a film that got lost in COVID days and deserves more views.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  With a name like Bellocchio, how could Marco not be a filmmaking natural?  Yet the brilliance of his debut with FISTS IN THE POCKET/’65 proved a mixed blessing, placing too much good work in the shade or taken for granted.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/fists-in-pocket-1965.html

POT O’ GOLD (1941)

James Stewart made three Frank Capra films; many more simply Capra-esque.  This is one of them.  His last release before WWII took him off the screen ‘for the duration.’  Five years later, he’d return with his final actual Capra film, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE/’46 playing a small-town family business owner who dreams of leaving for bigger things.  So it’s a prescient surprise to have 1941 Stewart as a small town family business owner hoping to stay put.  That big job in the big city?; no thank you.  What is this, Bizarro IAWL?  And why so little known?  But one reel in, Stewart gives in to the biddings of crusty Uncle Charles Winninger to be heir apparent to the other family business, a big health food factory in the big, unhealthy city.  Once there, he soon stumbles upon a happy clan of musicians living the tenement commune life (it’s Paulette Goddard and her happy band, literally a happy band), and just like that, GOLD leaves IAWL behind and becomes a sort of ‘almost-musical’ variation on the first Stewart/Capra film, YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU/’38.  (That’s the Crazy family meets Capitalism; George Kaufman/Moss Hart stage classic.)  This idea far less interesting; and not much helped by director George Marshall*, a script, that lays it on thick (Mary Gordon’s Irish Dear a particular horror), and lots of bouncy, but generic tunes.  Musicals are hard enough to pull off.  Screwball semi-musicals, jumping in & out of stage conventions to allow people to break into song, way beyond the abilities of this crew.  Including the lousy vocal mismatch dubbing Goddard’s singing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *The Hollywood director who might have pulled this off is Leo McCarey.  See him do it in THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S/’46.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/11/bells-of-st-marys-1945.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Yes, producer James Roosevelt, in his sole feature credit, was FDR’s eldest boy.  No doubt, the guy who forgot to renew copyright which flooded the market with subfusc Public Domain copies.  Decent ones easy to find if you look around.

BARDEJOV (2024)

From the personal memories of its producer, Emil A. Fish, seven when he witnessed the events shown (now in his 80s, this his sole involvement with film), a modestly-scaled Holocaust story from Bardejov, Slovakia that plays like a local folk tale of cunning and hope.  It might be a superior After School Special about a roundup within the relatively well-to-do Jewish  community of Bardejov in the early 1940s, trying to survive under the constantly growing restrictions put on them as local officials & the Slovakian military follow Nazi orders passed along by their own government.  But in a small town where ethnic/religious lines are often crossed between friendly neighbors, so too are lines of command and loyalties.  An attitude that makes a daring life or death rescue just possible.  Robert Davi plays successful businessman Rafuel Lowy  head of what’s left of the Jewish Committees within the Town Council, his authority now little more than a front he maintains thru force of personality.  And when the latest edict comes down to send most of the young Jewish girls to work in a shoe factory hundreds of miles away he’s naturally suspicious.  Powerless, but with a few connections he can still call on, he learns their true destination, along with Jewish girls from all over the country is the Death Camps of Auschwitz.  The theme and storyline by now overly familiar, but there’s something to be said about a straightforward, uncomplicated telling.  And director Danny A. Abeckaser, shooting mostly in Israel, puts up a convincing Slovakian environment.  Or does once you adjust to accented English-language dialogue and filming technique/production values out of the 1950s.  Survivor Emil Fish was determined to get his story on film, not to chase humanitarian awards.  And that he does.  Just remember to set expectations at a reasonable level.  And to have a tolerance for a score that goes heavy on klezmer-like clarinet stylings.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  The go-to orchestral tinta on Jewish stories used to be ‘cello heavy, now, it’s all swooping/squealing klezmer clarinet.