MOKEY (1942)

Fascinating and horrific in unequal proportions, this M-G-M B-pic, taken from Jennie Harris Oliver boys-will-be-boys magazine stories, likely a test run for a series that didn’t happen.  Directed by journeyman scripter Wells Root (a second & last megging credit, he’s lucky to have Charles Rosher as DP), all about 8-yr-old Mokey, motherless troublemaker, and his racially mixed neighborhood pals.  (Unusual for 1942.)  Played by young Robert ‘Bobby’ Blake, Mokey’s no domesticated DENNIS-THE-MENACE type or even the middle-class (juvenile delinquent-worthy) scamp of Booth Tarkenton’s PENROD (how that boy ever got to SEVENTEEN), but downright pathological, Mokey, meant to be lovably misunderstood, more serial risk taker who nearly gets two people killed* with self-centered lack of empathy and the attention span of a gnat  Dan Dailey (with a just grown mustache) is the neglectful/on-the-road dad who dumps child bride Donna Reed on the kid and lets his domestic go.  (Look!  It’s Hattie McDaniel’s sister Etta.)  Step-mother & kid a quick misalliance, with a lack of communication and Mokey fucking up over and over.  Eventually he gets in real trouble (Grand Larceny, nearly killing his new half-sister), runs away and (BLACKFACE ALERT!) hides out with his Black pals for three weeks in Blackface!  (Not the stylized showbiz type, but blacked up to ‘pass.’)  Meanwhile, Step-mom and Dad think the boy’s dead.  It takes a judge to untangle this mess and extend probation, but Mokey finally shows contrition by drinking a whole glass of warm milk to save this budding American family.  As a look at child-rearing and race relations of the day, this is gasp-worthy stuff; a Bizarro World to the corn-fed Mickey Rooney/Andy Hardy movies.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Highly likely that in real life, Blake got away with murdering his wife.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Watch for a strange haunting bit where Mokey’s almost adopted by a sad farming couple who’d lost a little boy just about Mokey’s age.  (This is where the movie ought to have been all along.)

LES YEUX SANS VISAGE / EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960)

1960 saw two seminal/groundbreaking horror pics.  One everyone knows: Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO.  One everyone should know: Georges Franju’s LES YEUX SANS VISAGE, the original Body Horror movie.*  Unlike anything in the horror canon (though I’d wager both Franju and cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan saw Carl Dreyer’s VAMPYR/’32 in its now lost first-generation print), the story* is a classic (science going too far) and simple (if at first you don’t succeed . . .).  But in execution: poetic, dreamlike, it’s more ballet than tragic folk ballad.  A surgeon’s beautiful daughter has lost her face in a near tragic accident.  Alive, but hideous, he’s determined to find the perfect match for a complete face graft.  Too bad he must kill an abducted girl to first treat the skin so the graft will not be rejected.  On the other hand, a murdered 'donator' can be identified as the body of his ‘late’ daughter.  With a grief-stricken fiancé to move the plot, and a loyal operating aide (Alida Valli with a corpse in the back of one of those Citroëns with the horsepower of a lawnmower) to assist the doctor.  Only a failed outcome could lead to detection . . . and the need for another face to lift off and graft on.  These scenes had people fainting at the time.  And while we’ve gone far beyond them in gory reality on film, the graceful terror and pulse-free forward momentum retain most of its uniquely effective horror.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Some of the influences close enough to suggest a possible plagiarism suit (see THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF/’62), but most less direct.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-awful-dr-orlof-1962.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Adapted from their novel by Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac of DIABOLIQUE/’55 and VERTIGO/’58 fame.

SUPERMAN (2025)

After three films that took GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY/’14;’17;’23 from ‘found delight’ to unwatchable overkill; James Gunn has managed to make SUPERMAN unwatchable in his first attempt.  Progress!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Of course, the purpose of this exercise was less to make a movie than to reboot DC Comics as a legit rival to MARVEL.  (Themselves currently in the doldrums.)  But if nothing beats SUPERMAN for audience awareness, the fan base is more wide than deep.  And, perhaps by design, low in Cool Factor.  (A bit like PETER PAN that way.)  He's Superman: the super hero too perfect to cast a shadow.  Add one, and he’s not Superman.  He’s an IP conundrum studios can neither count on nor count out.  Usual point of positive reference SUPERMAN/’76, thought to have solved these problems.  It didn’t, even the F/X thought poky at the time.  (Lots of problems, especially with the color grading whenever Supe went in the air.)  Three great things: John Williams’ score (constantly alluded to here); Glenn Ford's accidental Dad, waking as an actor after a decades nap; Geoffrey Unsworth’s wondrous countryside cinematography.  And that missing shadow?  Christopher Reeve’s aquiline nose.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Best to stick with the famous series of Fleisher Bros. Cartoons from the early 1940s.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/07/superman-1941-43.html

THE PROSECUTOR / NG POON (2024)

Having accomplished pretty much everything an international Hong Kong-based Martial Arts actor/fight-choreographer/director can do (even STAR WARS took a bite), Donnie Yen is now on track to break a longevity record, retaining top form as he begins his fifth decade in film.  Here, he stars in and directs a modern Hong Kong actioner split between the police force prologue where an innocent young man gets a long jail sentence for unknowingly receiving drugs; followed by Yen’s new job at the Department of Justice where he’s able to see the enormous money laundering operation that set up the young man.  Power and corruption all over the place.  (Whatever did the current Chinese authorities make of the Dark Side of power politics portrayed here?*) But of course, we’re watching not for the Civil Service office procedural (damn complicated, too!), but for the chop-socky action.  Five or six mega-set action pieces with two standout sequences for Yen to show the choreographic elegance that’s the foundation that allows him to release some powerful violence.  First, in a parking lot sequence that feels as much a visual fugue as a fight (curving lines of action/vertical drops); and then in a climatic subway showdown as Yen and a key witness must survive an ambush of killers to reach court and testify.  Handsomely made thru-out, exciting and cast with a pitch perfect touch for easy character identification.  Yen, who’s already been announced for a JOHN WICK spin-off only has seven directing credits.  Are any of the others this good?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A hard to swallow title at the end credits says Based on a True Story.  Really?

RETURN OF THE BAD MEN (1948)

From R.K.O., a big boned Western with the soul of a pint-sized programmer; the epic and the mundane canceling each other out under Ray Enright’s solid but faceless direction.  Up against the most famous Outlaw Brothers in the West (the Jameses, the Youngers, the Daltons; plus one sister*), Randolph Scott delays his move to California (with fiancée Jacqueline White) to help maintain order during the Oklahoma Land Rush.  A segment likely put together with footage  from R.K.O.’s Oscar® winning CIMARRON/’31, just the sort of prestige piece this film would like to be.  With comic relief supplied by George 'Gabby' Hayes’ banker and loads of fellow program Western stars, Robert Ryan stands out a mile as main villain Sundance Kid.  Put in this company, Ryan’s so powerfully modern he overwhelms everything around him.  A post-war element (that’s post-WWII not post-Civil War) breaking the Hollywood model for these things.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Producer/writer/actor Stacy Keach and undervalued director Walter Hill managed to corral real brothers Keach, Carradine and Quaid to play all these brothers in THE LONG RIDERS/’80.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-long-riders-1980.html

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981)

Everyone’s in peak form for this treasurable pop entertainment, a paradigm of pulp movie making.  Even writer/director John Carpenter’s typically repetitive score feels right on target.  Made for a relative pittance (six mill), the tight budget undoubtedly helped rather than hurt, triggering imagination & vitality, with wit & charm in its playful scale-model trickery and proudly low-tech effects.  It’s 1997 (NOW as the screen tells us) and much decorated/now disgraced military vet Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell in excelsis) is about to start a sentence in Manhattan’s top-security prison facility . . . it’s the entire island!  Once you’re on it, you never get off.  Only possibility, POTUS Donald Pleasence (the real 1997 saw Bill Clinton in office) has just ejected from a hijacked plane* and landed inside the island prison.  Snake’s mission: Save the Prez and get-out-of-jail-free.  The rest, a series of escapes from vicious gangs and death traps with tasty co-stars like Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau joining in the hunt.  All ridiculously satisfying.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That terrorist commandeered plane weirdly prescient of 9/11.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Scroll three posts down to ROAD HOUSE and LINK to a NYTimes discussion of ‘good’ bad films.  Check the Comments in that article and you’ll find ESCAPE mentioned again and again as the ‘perfect’ Good Bad movie.  What are these people thinking?  There’s nothing Bad about this quirky masterpiece.  Bad because it has a small budget?  Bad because it’s an actioner?  Because it’s genre?  Because the F/X is fanciful?  Similarly, ESCAPE is also no Guilty Pleasure.  What’s to be Guilty about a minor masterpiece built out of distressed materials?  More like a miracle; a miracle of moxie.

DOUBLE-BILL:  In a lesson Hollywood never seems to learn, ESCAPE FROM L.A./’96 cost ten times as much and was about a third as good.

FIXED (2025)

Puerile when not scatological, it’s plain to see how co-writer/director Genndy Tartakovsky’s strenuously ribald animation about a horny househound trying to stay ‘intact’ by running away from his appointment with destiny has gotten a rocky reception.  It’s one thing to be a sex-addled comic film made for the puberty-preoccupied BIG MOUTH gang, quite another to play out as if it was conceived, written & drawn by them!  The leg humping, sack swinging, anus obsessive gags quickly grow tiresome.  And that’s a pity as the all-star vocal cast for the neighborhood animal pals is just as much fun to listen to as the choice of palette, design & presentation is to look at.  A bright, hand-drawn, 2D throwback style, riffing on 1990s cartoon æsthetics like REN & STIMPY.*  But for those who can wade thru the jejune-ity of the first act, things improve noticeably once our boy (and his boys) make it to the city, get lost, and enter a testicle-free zone of misadventures & close calls that are rude, crude & lewd in their own way.  Starting with a mass cat attack and continuing with some pretty funny, smoothly handled, testicle-free, action-oriented comic set pieces.  Set your patience level UP and your expectations level down to MEDIUM and you’ll find a decent piece of entertainment in here.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *And note how often a cut to close up reveals details reminiscent of some Dr. Seuss character, presumably from the production's 'fixed' model sheet.  (Those tufts of top hair!)

CONTRAATAQUE / COUNTERATTACK (2025)

Without a smidge of explanatory backstory, we’re driving thru rural Mexico: five guys on holiday (‘bros’ to judge by the banter) on a freshly paved two-lane road when, wham!, we’re  ‘T-boned.’  It’s an ambush.  Robbers?  Terrorists?  Drug cartel killers?  Boy!, did they pick the wrong car.  Those ‘guys’ are an elite military attack team.  A quick pivot and defense turns offense, the ‘bros’ working as a well oiled group and the attackers quickly going down.  It’s a prologue that plays out like a variation on those small-time crooks who unknowing steal from the mob.  If only, the script went with this idea.  Instead, we jump back three days for hoary explanations.  Our ‘vacationers’ indeed are an elite military unit (think Navy Seals), on downtime after a successful mission against a major crime organization (Cartel/Sicario).  That’s who’s out for revenge.  We also get a collateral kidnapping: Mom and pregnant teenage daughter.  Soon, our five warriors are on the run to reach a safe pick-up spot after another battle to free the two women, with the odds heavily stacked against them amid an unending supply of vicious replacements.  Plus a Government Cabinet Secretary with fresh info corrupted by unlimited mob cash as an informer.  Much of this constant pulsating action well-handled by director Chava Cartas, but darn familiar.  If we knew less it might have played better.  What sticks with you are the bust-ready facial planes of team leader Luis Alberti, an all-in-one study in Mexican identity.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *If you switch to the English language track, you might think you were watching one of those CBS international crime shows  Like SWAT which Alberti has guested on.

ROAD HOUSE (1989)

After decades of missing (okay, avoiding) this rockem-sockem cult classic about a Zen-loaded bar bouncer in a new town, I broke down last night only to find it featured in today’s NYTimes as the #1 ‘good’ bad film of all time.  (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/movies/road-house-patrick-swayze-good-bad-movie.html) No question about the bad part, it’s the good that’s debatable.  (Surely, the Patrick Swayze ‘good’ bad film is POINT BREAK/’91, no?.*  Perhaps even a great ‘bad’ film.)  On the other hand, RH does meet the good/bad criteria that holds ’were it any better, it wouldn’t work at all.’  Everything is OTT even before Swayze is called to clean up a lawless town; he’s like the new sheriff in this quasi-Western where evil, land-grabbing Ben Gazzara has the power to bend everything his way.  Lots of pointless nudity (so many tushies!) & violence (so much blood!), with most of the action a bit sloppy under director Rowdy Herrington (a well-deserved Razzie nom).  On the other hand, the many car stunts and explosions darn good!  The rest, amateur in execution and lacking chemistry between anyone.  Not necessarily a bad thing here, as it gives the mayhem the weightless quality of a Tex Avery cartoon.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Tellingly, both these films were loosely remade to little effect.  Stick with the originals.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/12/point-break-1991.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  If you get this film in a physical format, you’ll likely find a little extra where cast & crew look back on the film with a mixture of pride at its ever expanding popularity and embarrassment at its crudity.  That’s about right.

THE AFFAIRS OF ANATOL (1921)

Remembered almost exclusively for big, bigger, biggest epics (mostly historical; secular/religious), Cecil B. DeMille began with Westerns (which he continued to make) before starting a series of signature OTT upper-crust social dramedies (which he didn’t).  From the late ‘teens to the early ‘20, these silents contain much of his best work, often seasoned with slightly nutty allegorical rhymed flashbacks to show how little things had changed since ancient times.  ANATOL, one of the largest if not one of the best, served as something of a farewell to past DeMille stars (Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, Agnes Ayres, Bebe Daniels) and, if no flashback, particularly OTT sets & costumes from Paul Iribe, especially for Daniels who plays stage star Satan Synne.  Taken, rather loosely, from an Arthur Schintzler play about a playboy testing for tru-love, he 'tries out' three woman while on his honeymoon (in the play, he isn’t married) and is fleeced each time.  That’s really it for the story*, but DeMille loads in production value (as usual with deMille a poor substitute for style) and encourages a heightened acting that fits his purposes.  Reid & Daniels take acting honors, while brilliant cinematographer Karl Struss joins regular DeMille lenser Alvin Wyckoff in providing all sorts of opportunities for some elaborate color tinting effects.  Come 1923, Ernst Lubitsch would come to Hollywood and shortly take over these things with a humorous knowing touch and a level of cultural & visual sophistication unknown to C.B.

LINK:  Good print, if no score (provide your own!; I used Delibes ballet scores) via this link.   https://archive.org/details/silent-the-affairs-of-anatol

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *DeMille’s attempt to return to the genre in 1934 with FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE failed.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/four-frightened-people-1934.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Or is unless you read Elliot Dexter’s platonic pal for Swanson, whom Reid grows jealous of, as gay.  In the play, he’s the guy’s BFF.

GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI (1999)

While writer/director Jim Jarmusch and actor Forest Whitaker were well established by 1999, GHOST DOG feels like something of a calling-card project, an attempt to expand their mainstream base with genre elements, crowd-pleasing violence (mob thuggery vs samurai finesse) and a coating of sentiment hidden behind chess matches and an appreciation of classic literature.  It works, but there’s a price to pay.  Whitaker, playing possum under his bulky, phlegmatic presence, is a mob hitman (on retainer), waiting in his rooftop coop with carrier pigeons for a new assignment.  But the hit turns complicated as the ‘made man’ target had mob friends and wasn’t alone when the kill went down.  A girl Whitaker lets go, leaving a trail to follow and pushing Whitaker into defensive offense: he’ll have to rub out a whole gang of old-school mobsters while staying within the bounds of his personal Way-of-the-Samurai code.  With a tasty cast Jarmusch put together for Whitaker to take apart (Henry Silva & Cliff Gorman best known and slimmest of a dozen ‘dese-dem-dose’ wide-load wiseguys.  On the side, or rather on Whitaker’s side, a pair of supporters: one book loving little girl; one French speaking ice cream truck owner.  Precision shot by Robby Müller and scored with a beat by  RZA, the fly in the ointment (alas a disfiguring one) is that by the second act, it’s become too cute for words.  And no matter how many people Jarmusch guns down (awkwardly with Whitaker doing the balletics) blood is spilled, or sacrifices made, he can’t straighten up in time for the film to acquire the philosophical gravitas he needs for the soufflé to rise.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  In the credits, Jarmusch tips his hat at the many influential filmmakers referenced (sometimes quite specifically) in the film.  Including Japanese genre great Seijun Suzuki.  A director who never recovered from gaining his freedom from studio restrictions and interference after going indie.  Best intro to Suzuki probably YOUTH OF THE BEAST/’‘63, stylistically decades ahead of its time.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/youth-of-beast-1963.html

BRAINSTORM (1965)

Jack-of-all-Hollywood-trades William Conrad: radio star/GUNSMOKE; tv star/CANNON; in-demand supporting heavy at major studios; ROCKY & BULLWINKLE narrator; director/producer mostly for tv.  This twisty thriller, a rare feature, opens when computer whiz Jeffrey Hunter comes across a locked car, parked on a railroad crossing.  Driving it off the tracks just in time, he saves the life of drugged/drunk/despondent would-be suicide Anne Francis.  After that, things get very stupid very fast.  Turns out, our sleepy car occupant is unhappily married to Dana Andrews, the rich, controlling owner of Hunter’s company among many other Fortune 500 companies.  So when the inevitable affair between Hunter & Francis turns serious, Andrews starts to ‘gaslight’ and sabotage their lives.  Only murder will stop this psychopath  Just the thing for Hunter to take care of, working up a perfect crime and a perfect insanity defense.  His twist?  He’ll plead guilty by insanity!  At this point, you realize you’re not the only person in the room who’s seen Samuel Fuller’s SHOCK CORRIDOR/’63, where a newspaper reporter goes undercover into the loony bin to research a story only to come out loony.  But where Fuller is sui generis; Conrad is a competent hack.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  As mentioned, SHOCK CORRIDOR/’63.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Likable, handsome, Jeffrey Hunter’s career never seemed to recover after playing Jesus for Nicholas Ray in KING OF KINGS/’61.  He kept working till his early death at 42 in 1969, including starring in the STAR TREK pilot, but his A-list days had been crucified.

WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR (1965)

Everybody’s got the hots for nightclub D.J. Juliet Prowse* in this low-rent indie so eager to titillate it teeters on camp.  Just don’t get your hopes up, implied masturbation is about as far as you could go in ‘65.  Dance crazes fill the gap: the Frug, the Pony, the Watusi (what, no The Locomotion?).  All because Prowse got the heebie-jeebies after a few ‘ghost’ phone calls.  Or was that faint heavy breathing at the other end of the line?  Comedian Jan Murray has a rare dramatic turn as a detective who seems a bit too interested in this victim.  Sympathetic club owner Elaine Stritch is way too sympathetic . . . if you get my drift.  So when doe-eyed club go-fer Sal Mineo shows up at her public swimming pool (fit as a freestyle gymnast), Prowse is open for a friendly relationship . . . just not the kind he wants.  Yikes!  How many hands does a girl have to fight off in this town?  Occasional feature film director Joseph Cates captures some of the rapid decline in ‘Fun City’ Manhattan thru mindless club life and dank under-lit street corners (kudos to D.P. Joseph Brun), but he’s all thumbs on plot mechanics and suspense in what is essentially a prurient stalker pic.  Unique for the time, which helps explain its current cult following.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  1965's indie New York film scene wasn’t only sleazy drama.  See the sit-com stylings of A THOUSAND CLOWNS, bringing similar visual æsthetics to cozy/acerbic family dramedy in an era when sincerity was tabulated by the level of visible grain on your film stock.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/02/thousand-clowns-1965.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *After debuting with a featured dance role in CAN-CAN/’60, Prowse next co-starred with Elvis Presley in G.I. BLUES the same year.  All downhill from there.

EISMAYER (2022)

I suppose there’s got to be a Drill-Sergeant-from-Hell movie every few years to keep the tropes in play and remind us the hoary clichés are still true.  But how to reset, or at least refresh them?  Austrian writer/director David Wager manages with this apparently true story (real-life protagonists shown at the credits) of an ‘out’ gay soldier and the screaming closet case officer who’s terrorizing the newbies into shape over their mandatory six-months stint.  Married with kid (loves the boy/avoids the wife), Gerhard Liebmann’s Lt. Eismayer grows intensely focused within his unit on openly gay/openly obstinate Bosnian recruit Falak (Luja Dimic).  Surprisingly, the harder he comes down on the kid, the more pressure he gets from his superior officer to tone it down.  But a needless accident during training (actually a forced one by Falak on himself) turns Eismayer into something of a public hero; and what had been a fraught relationship winds up opening a window into Eismayer’s repressed self.  A lot of clichés in here, but two things keep it more interesting than you expect.  First, the changing attitudes toward queer culture and a younger generation’s openness about it; and second, the relationship & conversations between Eismayer and his young son.  Additional drama with illness and declarations of love may honestly reflect the facts, but feel crammed into too small a space.  Still, the playing is good enough and a general briskness help cover action when we get ahead of the storyline.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  How things have changed since Marlon Brando longed for a soldier boy over wife Elizabeth Taylor in John Huston’s REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE/’67.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/reflections-in-golden-eye-1967.html

ARSÈNE LUPIN RETURNS (1938) ENTER ARSENE LUPIN (1944)

Maurice Leblanc’s principled jewel thief, rarely out of circulation in French cinemas, came to Hollywood in 1932 as John Barrymore’s M-G-M debut against older brother Lionel’s detective/nemesis.  The two less motivated by stolen jewels (and the Mona Lisa!) than by a disparity in salaries.  The film serving as holding place till better things came along.  (Just around the corner GRAND HOTEL/’32.)  After this ho-hum affair, a six-year wait before M-G-M tried again, reduced to a B+ budget with fading director George Fitzmaurice (Paris born, here offering no je ne sais quoi) and ‘featured players’ rather than  ‘stars’ in Melvin Douglas's gentlemen thief and Warren William's detective.  (William, often second choice to John Barrymore, here getting the Lionel role.)  Now a reformed crook, Lupin is back in action to steal a fabulous emerald from unofficial fiancé Virginia Bruce, but only to  protect her from imminent danger. 

No M-G-M sequel this time, but a whole new studio, 1944 Universal with accent agui lost and new discovery Charles Korvin in.  Hungarian rather than French, with a cavernous sink-hole on his cleft chin, he’s out to steal a fabulous emerald from romantic interest Ella Raines, but only to protect her from imminent danger.  (Where do they come up with these ideas?)  Faceless Ford Beebe directs and gets a neat look in the first reel from lensing legend Hal Mohr before sinking into Universal criminal procedural tropes, broad comic antagonist, cardboard glamor, England in for France, a disjointed plot & messy action.  So much for LUPIN in America.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  A fresh take on Arsène Lupin, only loosely inspired by the original books, in French tv series LUPIN/’21 (not seen here), with Omar Sy as a justice-seeking jewel thief.

TABU: A STORY OF THE SOUTH SEAS (1931)

Of the four films F.W. Murnau completed after leaving Germany for Hollywood, three are masterpieces; one is lost.  This, the fourth, premiered shortly after Murnau died in a car crash.  Begun in collaboration with documentarian Robert J. Flaherty, hard to know just how much input Flaherty had.  A very slow worker, he left over ‘creative differences,’ but there’s nothing in the film to indicate a split personality, so let’s assign full authorship to Murnau.  A simple fable from Bora Bora in the South Seas, it opens in Paradise (see title card) as the island’s youth collect food from the sea and mates from gambols on natural water-slides.  (Real-life E-Ticket stuff.)  But when a modern schooner is spotted arriving, you know it means trouble in paradise.  Just not the trouble you’re expecting.  No white man corruption or domination of indigenous peoples, leave that to the guilt-ridden apologists of AVATAR or MICKEY 17.  A century back, Murnau allows these tribal societies to generate drama on their own terms.  Here with young lovers being separated by an ancient custom that chooses a Maid of Good Fortune, chaste & untouchable, TABU to the boy who loves her.  Rather than submit, the two break tradition and flee to a more developed island, in spite of no funds, the boy having carelessly signed away a fortune to Chinese merchants eager to trap the best pearl diver on the island.  To raise funds, the boy will dive for the gems in a spot so dangerous it’s marked TABU.  Technically silent, and wondrously shot by Floyd Crosby (Oscar®), it’s loaded with ceremony, ritual chant & dance for the new Maid of Good Fortune.  Presumably authentic, though the added soundtrack all South Seas musical clichés and Smetana’s The Moldau!*  Just where Murnau, recently dropped from FOX after refusing to add Talkie segments to CITY GIRL/’30 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/05/city-girl-1930.html) might have gone from here is anyone’s guess.  (NOTE:  Family Friendly label, but with a fair amount of 'National Geographic Nudity.') 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  A recent edition (not heard here) replaces the 1931 soundtrack with a more authentic ethnic music track, though whether it better fits Murnau’s period sensibility is debatable.  Have a listen and let us know your thoughts in the Comments.  (NOTE: Comments automatically come up on I-Phones, but need to be clicked open on laptops.)  

THE LIFE OF CHUCK (2024)

With a massive literary output, but little consensus on quality or even favorites among Stephen King’s work, two things both fans and non-fans can agree on: ONE, the most acclaimed film adaptations of his work come out of his short stories/novellas, and TWO, his devilishly clever set ups often as not paint him into a narrative corner he can’t get out of.  (Particularly so on his longer horror novels.)  So, what a smart idea to take these two items into consideration when developing this film, a truly superior King adaptation.  Taken from a novella (√); and burying its turn-out-the-lights ending (√) by reversing the running order of it’s three acts so that Act Three (‘End of Days’) comes first, followed by Act Two (spontaneous celebration of life thru dance, think symphonic scherzo), and finally, Act One, with major themes & character motivation sketched in as an orphaned boy finds life’s balance (sweet/sour; sadness/joy; dance/accounting) thru his grandparents.  (We're being purposefully vague here as the film plays better left in discovery mode.)  Efficiently directed by Mike Flanagan (something of King’s house director these days*), if a bit studio bound in Act Two.  Well designed & cast, Mark Hamill gets a real acting role for a change as Grandpa, and a career-defining turn from Tom Hiddleston as the mysterious ‘Chuck’ everyone talks about.*  All ending with a rare sense of satisfaction for a King project.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *So much so, King entrusted Flanagan with DOCTOR SLEEP/’19 (not seen here), a close relative to THE SHINING/’80, the Stanley Kubrick adaptation King disparages.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Speaking of turns, CHUCK confronts us with the question of who’s the more surprisngly good dancer: Tom Hiddleson here or Mads Mikkelsen in DRUK/’20?    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/02/druk-another-round-2020.html

MICKEY 17 (2025)

Preternaturally gifted Korean writer/director Bong Joon Ho, now regularly working in English, has a great story to work with here . . . if only he’d stick with it.  Starting in classic fashion, a pair of lowlifes (Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun) go on the run from murderous loan sharks, getting out of town (make that out of the solar system) by grabbing the first interplanetary flight opportunity colonizing a frozen planet.  Yeun’s got a connection while Pattinson signs up to be a human guinea pig, an ‘Expendable,’ placing himself in harm’s way to test the waters (literally), experimental meds, air quality, local critters, and, should he die, getting ‘reprinted’ (DNA, memories and all) via 3-D techniques; a freshly made perfect copy, ready to die again.  But a problem arises when he’s left for dead, but recovers to return to the space station on his new planet after a replacement Mickey (that’d be Mickey 18) has already been cloned & printed.  Yikes!  Endless possibilities here for moral & physical doppelgänger dilemmas: farce² or metaphysical morals & mortality.*  But the film is stopped in its tracks by a cast playing so broadly, the gags stick in their throats; and with Pattinson also putting on a ‘funny’ voice.  (Dennis Weaver from GUNSMOKE?)  While Mark Ruffalo, the pseudo-religious visionary villain trying to start a brave new world tilts Trumpian.  But an even bigger problem finds Bong Joon Ho moving past endemic complications for overworked anti-colonizing allegory with an Earthling crew cleansing ‘their’ planet of its indigenous population of ‘monsters’ who turn out to be nice enough ‘roly-poly’ beasts when respected/left alone, only acting like  interstellar Comanche warriors when attacked by the likes of . . . us.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Both AVATARs/’09; ‘22 work the same colonizers vs indigenous storyline.  But give MICKEY credit for more jokes and an hour’s less running time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *You’ve no doubt noted how the prologue mirrors Billy Wilder’s SOME LIKE IT HOT/’59 while that extra Mickey gumming up the works pulls from Dumas’s twin princes in THE IRON MASK/’29, usually done as a romantic swashbuckler.  (In 1998, Leonardo DiCaprio played it.)