MY FAIR LADY (1964)

Between 1957 and 1964, Jack Warner, last standing Warner Brother, green lit five B'way musical hits for stage-to-screen transfer (PAJAMA GAME/'57, DAMN YANKEES/'58, GYPSY/'62, THE MUSIC MAN/'62; MY FAIR LADY) that had two things in common: Each almost slavishly faithful to its stage source; All but one replacing their B'way leading lady with a well-established movie star.  The exception, DAMN YANKEES, retaining B'way sensation Gwen Verdon, the only one to flop.  So, the cause célèbre that erupted when Julie Andrews lost out to a non-singing Audrey Hepburn to play Eliza Doolittle on screen was no hard call for Jack Warner, merely Standard Operating Procedure.  Originally, JW also hoped to replace Rex Harrison & Stanley Holloway with Cary Grant & James Cagney in this Lerner & Loewe musical of PYGMALION, G.B. Shaws classy class comedy about a flower peddler who 'hires' a wealthy phonetics professor to teach her 'proper' speech.  So, how'd it turn out?  How's it hold up?  At the time, an enormous success with all but the growing auteurist/academic cinema crowd, who were a bit sniffy, it now seems to have also won over that crowd; especially since an in-the-nick-of-time '90s restoration.  Deservedly so, in the first half which plays with old Golden Age Hollywood confidence in its long-view pacing and solid construction.  The playing lightly elevated so that the move into song feels perfectly natural.  What masterful simplicity director George Cukor brings into play on a stand alone song like 'On the Street Where You Live,' basically shot in two static shots, stunningly lit, as is the whole film, by Harry Stradling.  (He shot three of the five musicals listed at the top.)  Cukor might have been more stylized here & there, and things go droopy a few times in the second half (look for Eliza pulling out a water can), but it quickly gets back up.  With Harrison & Holloway captured in signature roles and Hepburn earning her place beside them with real laughs at Ascot and touching melancholy when she returns to her old Covent Garden flower market.  After falling a bit out of favor, it now looks fairer than ever.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The original Shaw, heavily trimmed by G.B. himself (or at least approved by him) was triumphantly filmed in 1938.  Leslie Howard a bit too sweet-natured as Professor Higgins, but with Wendy Hiller's nonpareil Eliza.  Old tv footage shows Julie Andrews at twenty, during the original run playing the part with striking similarities, as if Hiller could sing like a lark learning to pray.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/pygmalion-1938.html

GHOST IN THE SHELL / KÔKAKU KIDÔTAI (1995)

You can date the international rise of anme (the Japanese style animation largely derived from 'Manga' comic books) from two 1988 films: Hayao Miyazki's MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO and Katsuhiro Ôtomo's AKIRA.  Seven years on, Mamoru Oshii sealed the deal with this futuristic semi-cyborg police thriller.  And while some of the technical aspects inevitably show their age, the ideas & characters certainly hold up/hold their interest.  Plus, feeling the sense of discovery and out-of-the-box strides of everyone involved in making this remain potent.  Heck, you can even more-or-less follow the story, no guaranteed thing in the 'Manga' world, as semi-cyborg policewoman Tanaka and her mostly still-human partner track down the mysterious 'Puppet Master' who may be hacking into everyone's operational system . . . or something like that.  Most endearing touch: Tanaka asking everyone she meets what percentage of cyborg-to-human they are.  (She's like a house guest rudely wanting to know what your rent is.)  But of course, you're not here for plot or character, or even some pretty interesting ideas*, but for the graphic design, city-scape, street signage and computer generated action.  None of which disappoint.  (NOTE:  Re our Family Friendly label, prudish parents should be aware there's a fair amount of female cyborg nudity.  Also, with so much info on screen, dubbed rather than Japanese w/subtitles is the way to go.)

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  With cool graphic trimmings, here's a nifty overview on the Rise of ANIME from a recent NYTimes article.    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/03/magazine/anime-manga-pokemon-demon-slayer-dragon-ball-z.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Look very closely at the lower-left corner of your screen, and you just might spot the Wachowskis furiously taking notes for THE MATRIX/'99.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2017)

While unlikely to match TEN LITTLE INDIANS in Agatha Christie adaptation supremacy, this full-rigged iteration of her train-set whodunit must be the fourth or fifth try.  The first of a series for actor/director Kenneth Branagh’s to play eccentric Belgium detective Hercules Poirot, two followed (DEATH ON THE NILE/’22; A HAUNTING IN VENICE/’23), each doing a mere third the business.  (neither seen here)  A first try at watching never got past Branagh’s whopper of a moustache (Yikes!), nor beyond the pointless over-produced Jerusalem prologue.  But knowing what was coming got us over the hump and into Christie’s interlaced murder puzzle; helped by the generally strong cast.  Unlike the far more sophisticated Sidney Lumet all-star version of 1974, Branagh’s grows progressively dark, even serious.  With a flattened color palette on interiors to set a serious mood while also adding action, unconvincing CGI spectacle, melodrama and his usual disruptive, showy camera moves & angles.  It also replaces the earlier film’s line-up of delectable one-on-one post-murder interviews (they’re like vaudeville turns for the cast to out do each other) with splintered questioning of suspects after vicious businessman Johnny Depp is murdered in his compartment.  It still works, Christie almost always does, but you’re often settling for mild little ‘in’ jokes from the cast.  Michelle Pfeiffer channeling a bit of Lauren Bacall; Josh Gad finding his inner Jack Weston for a vocal model.  Then Branagh lectures us on morality in the modern world for an ending.  Does Branagh really think absence of fun equals serious?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The obvious choice is 1974's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.  But which to watch first?  You only get one shot at not knowing whodunit.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/09/murder-on-orient-express-1974.html

ABOUT FACE (1952)

A year-and-a-half run on B’way, a quick film adaptation (with follow-up sequel), no doubt musicalizing BROTHER RAT/’38 (a service comedy where three Virginia Military Institute cadets cover for the one who’s illicitly married) sounded like a sure thing for Warners in a hard to read post-war marketplace.  Hadn’t Jerry Lewis & Dean Martin recently scored on a couple of service comedies over @ Paramount?  But where those were comedies with a couple of tunes tossed in for Dean, this one tries (halfheartedly) to be a legit ‘integrated’ musical right from its Get-Out-Of-Bed ensemble opening number.  No breakout stars above or below the title; no hit tunes getting radio play; corny old gags; it’s hardly worth the effort . . . and it shows on the actors’ faces.  (Even our poster seems to say, unnecessary.)  Three instantly forgettable girlfriends for the three pals: Gordon MacRae, Dick Wesson and Eddie Bracken - at 37 the world’s oldest cadet.  Plus a baby cadet for comic relief.  Extra comic relief?  When you’ve already got Eddie Bracken in the lead?  Not exactly a vote of confidence.  And yet it’s that comic relief who oddly makes this essential viewing.  It’s 20-yr-old Joel Grey making like Jerry Lewis (and you can’t look away!) in a debut that pretty much kept him off the big screen for the next twenty years.  Till CABARET/’72 made him briefly essential.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Right at the end, journeyman director Roy Del Ruth gives the leash to dance director LeRoy Prinz who promptly comes thru with a lollapalooza of a finish.  Kudos for noticing that Cliff Ferre, hiding in plain sight as the film’s comic butt, was one heck of a dancer.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Seeing shrimpy Joel Grey (5'5") trying on Jerry Lewis for size helps show just how Jerry got away with his Looney Tunes act.  It was playing rather than being the scrawny kid that made the difference.  Lewis, at 5'10½”, a bit taller than straight-man Dean Martin, and with a far more athletic build.  Ever wonder why he wore that ridiculous haircut?  Without it, in a proper suit, he’d look at least as good as Dean.  (Or would if he didn’t take care to slouch.)  Mind you, Jerry remains nearly unwatchable, but dumb he wasn’t.  On the other hand, compare Lewis in ROCK-A-BYE-BABY/’58, a semi-remake of Eddie Bracken’s classic Preston Sturges film THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK/’44, to see the difference between Bracken’s wildly underused humane comic genius and . . . Jerry Lewis.

LIFE AND NOTHING MORE (2017)

Ultra-naturalistic Black nuclear family drama, both granular and quotidian*, watches passively, mostly in short single-shot scenes, thru some tough times.  With Dad serving a long jail term, Mom holds the family together with a decent waitressing job (later she’ll try to add another for more hours), her teenage boy leans toward the wrong crowd at school, and her little girl stays happy and oblivious to the narrow safety margin they tread.  The son is the main focus of change, teetering on the cusp of either adulthood or thug-hood and feeling pushed by anyone who tries to step in and help.  Including Mom’s new boyfriend.  A charmer in some ways, his main attraction is sheer persistence (also the biggest turnoff).  The positives and negatives only heightened when Mom gets pregnant by him, and the kid's absent father suddenly starts writing to his son, trying, from jail, to be a role model of what not to do.  Not a good time for the son to take off after another fight with Mom, wandering in silent despair and landing in a gated community park where he feels threatened by an uncomfortable white family who basically tell him to get lost, provoking a quick overreaction which threatens to decide his future for him.  Writer/director Antonio Méndez Esparza’s slow-burn approach takes a while to pull us in, but eventually gets the job done.  (A home video release with subtitles might help.  The largely improvised dialogue from a non-professional cast as tough to decipher as a North British police procedural.)  But the film grows only more affecting as it goes along.  And Regina Williams, who plays Mom, something of a real find; with a sideways glance lethal at 40 yards.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Long hoped to use ‘granular’ and ‘quotidian’ in the same sentence . . . and I promise never to do it again.

GREEN LIGHT (1937)

After hitting Hollywood top-tier on his first two leads (CAPTAIN BLOOD/’35; CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE/’36), Warner Bros. let Errol Flynn skip action to play sacrificial surgeon in this adaptation of a Lloyd C. Douglas novel.  Even without swash & buckle, Flynn’s fine; everything else the problem.  (The film, BTW, commercially very successful.)  Retracing a similar path between medicine & religion he’d walked in MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (1935; ‘54),  Douglas has rising young surgeon Flynn needlessly take the blame for an operation gone wrong, before meeting-cute with grieving daughter Anita Louise.  A get-together arranged by nurse Margaret Lindsay (long in love with the good doctor) and by the expired patient’s favored radio pastor Cedric Hardwicke.  (He’s really Norman Vincent Peale . . . with polio.  Yikes!*)  Meantime, Flynn’s hospital pal Walter Abel has gone West in search of a cure or vaccine for deadly ‘Spotted Fever,’ his lonely posting a perfect hideaway for Flynn to lick his wounds after resigning his post rather than tell on another doctor.  (And if you think Flynn doesn’t nobly test his new vaccine on himself, you’ve got another think coming.)   Warners laid on decent production value and top talent in cast & crew, but director Frank Borzage, a seriously religious Catholic, probably believed this stuff a little too well to pull the melodrama out of the fire.  Flynn would have better straight dramatic innings ahead, especially in the latter part of his short career*, and of course, was nonpareil in the swashbucklers that kept so many from noting just how damn good he was in just about anything thrown his way.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *ROCKY MOUNTAIN/’50 is a fine example of Flynn’s unexpected dramatic heft toward the end of his Warners contract days.   So too, his run of timely  WWII pics.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/06/rocky-mountain-1950.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Peale famous for ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’; for decades of weekly sermons broadcast  from NYC’s Marble Collegiate Church (29 th & Fifth); and most beloved for taking down Milton Berle when he went on early television against him.  Oh, and for campaigning against Adlai Stevenson as a divorced man and against Kennedy for being Catholic.