AT SWORD’S POINT (1952)

Faux Alexandre Dumas MUSKETEERS follow-up is historical nonsense, but a nifty idea all the same: Dying Queen Anne, worried about young Louis XIV’s safety, wishes her loyal Musketeers were here to protect him.  Turns out, they are!  Or rather, their sons are.  That’d be D'Artagnan Jr., Porthos Jr., Aramis Jr. and Athos Jr.; Cornel Wilde, Alan Hale Jr,. Dan O’Herlihy and Maureen O’Hara.  Bet you spotted the odd ‘man’ out.  O’Hara not the son of Athos, but fierce fighting daughter Claire.  Honor bound to the Queen, who reveals Louis’s secret location only to them, but word gets out when a trusted Countess proves traitor.  It’s all-for-one and one-for-all (except in that bed built for four) to save the monarchy from dastardly usurper Duc de Lavalle (Robert Douglas).  Alas, that villain is defeatable, while the film’s true villain,  new R.K.O. owner/production chief Howard Hughes, is not; already micromanaging the studio to a premature death.  Note this film held back for two years and its short running time (81").  What remains emphasizes sword play over plot & character development.  (How could they miss having the failing Queen mistake the young Musketeers for the old?)  Journeyman director Lewis Allen not much help, either; pedestrian swash and buckle.  And when you’ve got Olympic caliber fencer Cornel Wilde on hand, why not let him show some honest fencing rather than the usual stunts?*  And what’s with the print?  It looks like it went thru the TechniColor rinse cycle with too much softener.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Wilde left the 1936 USA Olympic Fencing Team for a theater job.  Perhaps in consideration of the games location in Nazi Germany and his own Jewish background.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Douglas Fairbanks' final silent, THE IRON MASK/’29, about the best (and certainly the most touching) of all MUSKETEER pics.  Look for the restored version of about 1'45".

BLUE JEANS (1917)

Fascinating, frustrating, unmissable.  Frustrating in that the film’s in pretty rough shape, a dupe with severe nitrate deterioration.  The widely available George Eastman House print, free online, fortunately improves as it goes along.  Much better by the crucial last two reels where Joseph Arthur’s 1890 stage melodrama’s idea of tying the hero to a conveyor belt at a sawmill is filmed to stunning effect.  And note, it’s the guy on the belt and the gal who saves him in the nick of time.  (As if Snidely Whiplash threw the switch and Nell Fenwick saved Dudley Do-Right.)  But how’d we get here?  Briefly, under top silent scripter June Mathis*, hungry orphan Viola Dana meets-cute with handsome young Perry Bascom by stealing his lunch.  On his way to claim his late father’s sawmill from his Step-Uncle, he’s eager to marry Dana and settle down.  But when he gets involved in politics, a previous wife surfaces to denounce him.  She was already married to another, but can he prove it?  And now, Dana’s past is leaking.  Seems her mom ran off with . . . Bascom’s father!  These newlyweds are brother and sister!  Plus, her kindly landlords, who are about to throw her out, discover they are her actual Grandparents.  This but a fraction of the melodrama Mathis has to parse, which she does neatly under the clarifying direction of John H. Collins.  (The fourth of their five collaborations at Metro.)  Collins, who managed to make good films even at Edison*, shows flashes of brilliance here.  The pastoral courtship (though you have to squint) and even more in that sawmill climax.  What advanced editing, closeups and angles. His early death during next year’s Spanish Influenza Epidemic, only 29, a huge loss to cinema.  To Viola Dana, too, as they were husband & wife.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *The late ‘teens/early ‘twenties saw female creatives squeezed out of the film biz.  The two most powerful women left were writers Frances Marion and June Mathis.  Mathis going on to discover Rudolph Valentino with THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE/’21 only to slip when she lost BEN-HUR to the newly configured M-G-M.  Then dying in 1927, only 40.  A new critical study, JUNE MATHIS: THE RISE AND FALL OF A SILENT FILM VISIONARY by Thomas J. Slater details the life & work.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *More Collins from his Edison days.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/09/john-h-collins-edison-films-director.html

WEIRD SCIENCE (1985)

Dreadful.  Hard to believe that even the current crop of writer/director John Hughes acolytes would stand up for this also-ran item.  (And with only eight directing credits, there’s not much product to spare.)  A FRANKENSTEIN sendup (watch for the colorized clip from the ‘31 classic) that morphs into HORNY CAT IN THE HAT, Anthony Michael Hall is Nerd Number One, a high school loser with three ‘funny’ faces for all occasions, while Nerd Number Two Ilan Mitchell-Smith speaks with an adenoidal voice to let us know either puberty or Jerry Lewis is about to show up.  Together, they create Living Doll Kelly LeBrock to cook & strip for them.  (The boys prefer breakfast.)  As big brother Marine, home to keep order, Bill Paxton gets a couple of decent laughs, but the whole idea is deeply creepy even as a teen fantasy with a sentimental copout moral: Be Yourself.  And even worse when aliens show up (don’t ask) and Hughes thinks it funny to have a huge Black guy on hand (at an otherwise All-White teen party) to faint in fear.  Staged and lit to look like a CostCo warehouse, the film may not be Hughes’ worst, but seems so as you watch.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  If you’re trying to boost Hughes’ rep, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF/’86 and PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES/’87 probably make the best case.

DEATH OF NINTENDO (2020)

Don’t be fooled!  This poster ‘reads’ as Animation, but NINTENDO is a Live Action coming-of-age film, and a good one.  Comfortingly conventional/true to the form, yet holding on to enough curious local custom & cultural specificity in time & place (1990s/Philippines) to make it feel freshly caught.*  Best guess is that writer/producer Valerie Castillo Martinez used her own memories of growing up in Manila for details, well caught by director Raya Martin.  A middle-school  summer break; the matriarchal society in charge at home (not a father in sight); some wary mixing between the boy groups and the girl groups.  Our focus on three buds and a neighboring girl who’d rather hang out with these computer game obsessed guys than those pink-fetishing girly girls.  The boys’ passion for the latest Nintendo Cassette Game only exceeded only by a desire not so much to lose their virginity, but their foreskin under the whetstone sharped razor of an unsanctioned tradition-bound country circumciser.  Yikes!  The boys certain this rite of passage a sure way to increase size.   As the youngest looking of the three pals, Noel Comia Jr. especially charming, a kid who doesn’t realize he’s become a handsome prince fit for the pretty new girl in town, but a much better fit for the smartest, Kim Chloie Oquendo as Mimaw, the boys' tagalong pal.  All while earthquakes and power shortages make this a summer to remember.  And doubly interesting to the viewer as a rare chance to see middle-class Filipino life.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Similarly gaining universality thru local specificity, FRENCH KISSES/’09, a coming-of-age film by ARAB OF THE FUTURE graphic novelist Riad Sattouf.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/03/les-beaux-gosses-french-kissers-2009.html

WESTFRONT 1918 (1930)

Shot and released at the same time as Hollywood’s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, this German production from top filmmaker G.W. Pabst uses much the same ingredients: late WWI infantry, the waste of young lives in trench warfare, futile battle action, a disappointing visit home, a girl at the front to embrace, nihilistic finale.  Technically similar too in advances with some astonishingly free camera movement for an Early Talkie and capturing the horrors of war with Pre-Code honesty.  Yet the two films are quite different in tone.  Hollywood director Lewis Milestone, adapting Erich Maria Remarque’s international phenomenon in a far larger production, weeps over humanity where Pabst despairs.  Both films essential.  Three years on, the Nazis gained power and banned both films.  Seven years on, Hollywood made something like a sequel to QUIET in THE ROAD BACK/’37.  Nobody came; and WWII on the horizon.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Now best known for the Louise Brooks silent PANDORA’S BOX/’29, Pabst followed this with a true story of German & French miners working together after an underground explosion in KAMERADSCHAFT/’31.  OR: The 1930 ALL QUIET . . .  - the much acclaimed 2022 remake is best avoided.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/all-quiet-on-wewstern-front-2022.html

AFTER LIFE / WANDAFURU RAIFU (1998)

Early feature from Japanese writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda, already showing masterful control & balance, is a charmed fable about the path to eternity.  A land-mined field if ever there was one.*  Set in a dilapidated workplace (a  former school or factory?) where a motley group of recently dead meet for instruction on their ‘future.’  Given three days to find the one memory in their lives they’d take with them to the beyond, the deceased, young & old, are assisted in their search by seasoned ‘helpers’ stuck in coaching positions thru their own inability to choose that one pure recollection.  Tough, funny and remarkably clear-headed, the film could profitably lose a reel, but is otherwise all but faultless as the dead seek their unique life-defining moment before helping to recreate it on film for a final group screening before . . .  Well, that we aren’t told.  But we do witness a revelation when one of the aides makes a connection that lets him realize his own epiphany, his moment of clarity.  A decision that finally lets him take his leave, saddening a fellow helper yet to find her moment.  But soon the week has come to an end and a new class will need help from the slowly rotating staff of experts.  Simply handled technically, what an eye for still composition Kore-eda has; wonderfully acted; Kore-eda sets the bar in taste, tone and well earned sentiment very high, but knows what he’s doing.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The passage to the hereafter a surprisingly popular subject, particularly during wartime.  Try this two-for-one package that did service in both WW I and II, first as an Early Talkie - OUTWARD BOUND/’30, then, more polished if less touching, remade as BETWEEN TWO WORLDS/’44.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/outward-bound-1930-between-two-worlds.html

ANIMALS (2014)

Directed by Collin Schiffli (his debut feature), but produced, written and starring David Dastmalchian, this is undoubtedly a vanity project.  Perhaps a good one, but still a vanity project.  Something of a ‘70s throwback, it’s all but a druggie two-hander for Dastmalchian and Kim Shaw, his partner in petty crime, hypodermic nirvana and bed.  We join the White middle-class heroin addicts when they’re still high-functioning narcissists.  A period tagline might read: They’re Young; They’re in Love; They’re Junkies.  Seen at comfortable distance, they display chic angularity with the sharply defined features and blotchy skin of those models manqué you might notice standing in the background of an Andy Warhol production shot at ‘The Factory’ in the ‘60s.  By the time they inevitably touch bottom, their faces have collapsed into Meth addict death masks.  Then, unlike the old period cautionaries on glam degradation, the pair, forcibly separated, get help.  One from Mom; one from a remarkably generous/effective/caring Public Care Program.  Clinging to their last chance the way they once clung to their sense of shitty personal entitlement as they conned, robbed and lied their way past bumps in the road during the height of their druggie run.  Bouncing back with a hard to swallow sense of hope hanging in the air, any chance of an honest portrayal now off the table.

GOVERNMENT GIRL (1943)

Inconsequential romantic-comedy, set in overcrowded WWII Washington, proved to be highly consequential; not as film, but in film business.  How’d that happen?  First the film.  In this directing debut, serious writer Dudley Nichols (writing with Budd Schulberg from an Adela Rogers St. Johns story) tries on a MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON template as sharp government secretary Olivia de Havilland teaches the Washington anagram playbook to hard-charging Detroit auto exec Sonny Tufts (charm-free), brought in to ramp up airplane production.  Two other guys also playing for de Havilland: reporter Paul Stewart and Congressional Aide Jess Barker.  Meanwhile, newlywed friends James Dunn and Anne Shirley (dreadful) hunt the No Vacancy town for ‘sleeping’ accommodations.   Presumably, Nichols thought a fast paced little comedy would make his move into directing simple.  Sorry, Dudley, comedy three times harder than drama.  Talk Loud/Talk Fast; cover with ‘funny’ music about all he’s got.  (Nichols proved no better in his two tries at drama.)  So, what makes the film consequential, a Hollywood turning point?  De Havilland, who started in 1935 at 19, was in the eighth year of her seven-year contract; and not even working for home studio Warners, but on loan out to David O. Selznick who in turn loaned her out to R.K.O. for a film she didn’t want to make.  She’d finally had enough and went to court hoping to win the same case Bette Davis had lost a few yeas back,  Basically, it stopped studios from adding time on to your contract if you refused an assignment.  Off screen for three years, de Havilland won the case, finished her Warners commitment with two films in 1946 and was free to work elsewhere.  What Curt Flood was to free-agency in the MLB (losing his case, but winning the battle),, de Havilland won decades earlier in Hollywood.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Earlier in ‘43, de Havilland nailed this sort of WWII Washington rom-com: winning, spirited, funny, romantic, wistful and lovely in PRINCESS O’ROURKE/’43.  Inconsequential, but good inconsequential.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/06/princess-orourke-1943.html

LE COMTE DE MONTE-CRISTO / THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO (2024)

Feature-length and full-rigged, this recent French adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas classic is big, handsome and slightly homogenized for easy digestion.  The film’s one eccentric note comes from the unlikely casting of Pierre Niney (FRANTZ/’16), thin of frame/beaky of nose (think Gallic Adrien Brody) as our hero, the revenge-minded self-invented Count.  As usual, Dumas plots to beat the band, and, as usual, gets away with every coincidence, over-ripe characterization and plot reversal as Edmond Dantès, a rising young sailor whose selfless deed causes him to gain, then suddenly lose a Captainship thru bitter envy; a bride thru jealousy; and his freedom thru a purloined letter.  Escaping from his prison island to find the treasure chest a fellow inmate promised, he’ll use this fortune to seek a merciless revenge on the three men who done him wrong, helped by two more victims from the next generation.  It’s all ridiculously satisfying, even in a version that occasionally fumbles the narrative ball.  (And blows the staging on the big sword fight finale.)  All told, there’s probably more of the story here than in any other big-screen telling, and you really can’t miss with Dumas in any of these adaptations which rival his THREE MUSKETEERS in number.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Also in 2024, an even better received eight-parter on French tv.  Coming to PBS in ‘26.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Don’t expect to hear the immortal Act Two curtain line, ‘The world is mine!,’ famous from American adaptations.  It’s not Dumas, but was likely added to the famous stage vehicle by its star James O’Neill, father of playwright Eugene.  (Did James really play this 4000 times across the country?)   You can hear the line spoken (most beautifully, almost incanted) by Robert Donat in the 1934 film version.  And don’t ignore the remarkably fine 1922 silent with John Gilbert.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/06/count-of-monte-cristo-1934.html      https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/07/monte-cristo-1922.html

DELUGE (1933)

Something’s up, or rather down (way down) with the world’s barometric pressure.  And it continues to fall as impotent meteorologists scuttle in labs and at conferences, preaching imminent doom, Earthly catastrophe waiting to happen.  No, the sky isn’t falling; the Earth is cracking up!  Quakes will take down entire cities and tsunamis will put everything under water.  And that’s just the first reel and a half in this odd little indie pic, distributed by R.K.O. the same year they had KING KONG.  Maybe that’s why DELUGE is so little known.  Not that it’s a patch on KONG.  Still, that opening is a destructive delight, even if it looks like a Science Fair school project run amok, with scale model skyscrapers collapsing on cue.  And lots of Schüfftan process trickery, using precisely positioned mirrors to visually place people in harm’s way.*  (Look for execs watching the disaster unfold thru ceiling-to-floor windows in multi-story buildings soon to come down as well.)  After that spiffy opening, we’re in a shattered, depopulated world of gang warfare, as nice guy Sidney Blackmer takes on a new wife since he believes his old wife and kids have died in the shake-up.  Guess again bigamist!  Seems it’s a Pre-Code Brave New World!  Journeyman director Felix Feist turns in a bumpy product, but at just over an hour, it’s a wild ride that’s worth taking for that first reel and a half.  Neatly restored and free here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPz9it1fBYo  (Adjust resolution for best pic.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  See how effective the Schüfftan process could be with better technicians and a bigger budget in M-G-M’s lux disaster pic SAN FRANCISCO/’36.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/san-francisco-1936.html

WAKE ISLAND (1942)

Fairly standard WWII action from Paramount (a mid-list item with featured players but no major stars), out within months of the real events (on tiny Wake Island, a Marine unit, some Navy flyers and civilian construction workers, held off wave after wave of Japanese flotilla attacks), was a surprise Best Pic Oscar® nominee, probably because of timing.  Most war films beginning production before the Battle of Midway victory, tended to accent the positive and eliminate the negative; heavy on recruitment messaging, morale boosting and unlikely comedy angles.  Only when news from the front(s) improved did the films toughen up.  WAKE an exception.  Downbeat and tragic, a sort of 300 Spartans story of front line sacrifice, hence the Best Pic nod.  (Not that it won, that would be the redoubtable uplift of MRS. MINIVER.)  Journeyman director John Farrow (Mia’s dad) gets good results from all, though 23-yr-old Robert Preston & William Bendix lay it on pretty thick as comic relief grunts always getting into trouble, but Brian Donlevy and Walter Abel are briskly fatalistic as commanders fully aware of the inevitable, so too underrated MacDonald Carey in an airborne sacrifice, even Albert Dekker goes from ‘me-first’ civilian contractor to fatalistic hero with an automatic gun.  1940s F/X has the usual trouble with scale model ships at sea, but most of the tricks hold up pretty well.  And the cinematography from Theodor Sparkuhl & William C. Mellor, with stunning low-key lit interiors and red filters on location exteriors (those dramatic clouds!), award-worthy any time.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  One year later, even M-G-M figured it was commercially safe to give downbeat victory-thru-defeat heroism to Robert Taylor with  BATAAN/’43.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/bataan-1943.html

ABOUT DRY GRASSES / KURU OTLAR ÜSTÜ (2023)

Known for ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA/’11 (not seen here), Turkish writer/director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to that region for this lengthy, but involving study of Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), a teacher reaching the end of his rope and the end of his compulsory service at a snowbound rural High School.  Three and a half hours of it, with a difficult character who starts sympathetically but turns prickly and self-centered as our guide to petty squabbles and rivalries among students & staff.  Mr. Chips he ain’t.  With fellow teacher & roommate Kenan, he receives a complaint on their attention to certain students.  Nothing seems really out of order, only encouragements to class achievers.  But after a routine (and degrading) bag-check by the principal & lead teacher finds a few harmless personal items (a diary, a lipstick, a secret note that Samet holds onto from a girl in class he favors), this ignites a mess of misunderstandings.  Nothing really comes of it (nothing ever does in this hideaway location) and everyone moves on . . . yet don’t.  Meanwhile, the two men turn into quasi-rivals over an English teacher from another school.  A sadder, but wiser type who lost the lower half of her right leg in a terrorist bombing.  Something worth pursuing when you’re all but certain to leave at the end of the semester?  Quotidian stuff, yet loaded with bitterness and possibilities to, at least, one up your roommate.  What a strangely unsatisfying life the men find themselves stuck in.  Beautifully acted (the amputee, Merve Dizdar, exceptional), and often stunningly shot in very simple long takes.  Ceylan, like the teachers, always pushing against rigid rules of no-frills filmmaking, at one point leaving studio artifice to wander backstage until finding a way back onto his set.  A more Brechtian than Brooksian move to pull back the studio curtain.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The reference, just in case you’ve forgotten,  is to the finale of Mel Brooks’ BLAZING SADDLES/’74.

SINNERS (2025)

Hardly the first time an acclaimed/award-bound film opening early in the year was soon revealed as something less than it was cracked up to be.  In writer/director Ryan Coogler’s case, it's his attempt to add import to horror tropes by grafting on racial commentary between shock cuts and grue (a la GET OUT/’17), here with vampire dogma, but leaning more toward INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/’56 than THE WALKING DEAD/’10.  A pity too, as the first hour (before any vampires comes into frame) is strong, handsome moviemaking thanks to fluid tech* and a handsome physical production.  Especially in a look that doesn’t smother its 1932 setting with cliché faded visuals, instead ramping up dye saturation to pudding-rich 1940s TechniColor levels.  Michael B. Jordan and Michael B. Jordan star as twins, home in the South after seven years in Chicago, flush with seed money to open a ‘Blues’ Juke Joint they somehow put together in a day.  (Musicians, caterers, security, space, ballyhoo.)  An instant success on opening night until a trio of close harmony Whites are refused entry and show their true Vampiric colors.  Worse, turns out they’re something of an Advance Front for the local KKK who come along after sunrise takes out the Living Dead.  Coogler reducing the true horror and evil of the KKK, letting them off the hook by taking away full responsibility.  ‘The vampire made me do it.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  As an old Blues Man along for the ride, Delroy Lindo is the film’s true survivor.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Sure, modern digital techniques have made doubling techniques all but invisible.  But they’ve also taken away much of the fun in them as a visual trick and physical feat.

THE BRASS LEGEND (1956)

Soporific ‘second-feature’ Western goes nowhere fast, other than sending rugged lead Hugh O’Brien, attempting to bust out of supporting roles at Universal, into his signature role as tv’s WYATT EARP.  And perennial film ‘heavy’ Raymond Burr off to his even more identifying part as unbeatable lawyer Perry Mason.  It also led to faceless tv gigs for director Gerd Oswald after just making his striking debut in the off-kilter I Was A College Serial Killer thriller A KISS BEFORE DYING/’56 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-kiss-before-dying-1956.html), the one where handsome, young fortune-hunting psychopath Robert Wagner brings pregnant Joanne Woodward to a rooftop rendezvous and . . . Yikes!  Alas, this programmer is as drab as KISS was CinemaScopically dynamic.  Briefly: Wanted Man Raymond Burr is presumed dead, but spotted very much alive by young pup Donald MacDonald.  Reporting back to Sheriff O’Brien, he’s immediately in danger for his own life as Burr has a posse of bad guys ready to shoot whomever tipped off O’Brien.  Burr is quickly captured, but he’s got that posse of bad guys coming to town to kill the snitch and get him out jail.  None of this makes a lot of sense, nor very exciting.  Only Burr comes through, already quite heavy, yet with a lean, threatening face, and a jarring bit of near violent lovemaking to inamorata Rebecca Welles.  Everyone else leaves no mark at all.  Who was this one made for?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  With scores of Westerns following similar narrative lines*, you only had to wait a year for a superior example in 3:10 TO YUMA.  The 1957 original, not the 2007 remake.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Is the film’s ghastly guitar & harmonica score playing on a loop?

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *An old theory says all films can be boiled down to seven plots.  Maybe.  But with Westerns, we’d say you don’t even need seven; just one: Stranger Comes To Town.  Certainly applies here, where it’s Raymond Burr’s Wanted Man.

NIGHTBOOKS (2021)

You have to assume NetFlix had a slot open for YA Horror and filled the niche with this ill conceived project.  A film so overloaded with creepy crawly CGI, decorative grue and faux degraded animated interludes, it seems expressly designed to shut down the imagination of its intended audience.  The basic idea splices an up-to-date HANSEL & GRETEL story with SCHEHERAZADE as horror obsessed little Alex (Winslow Fegley) slips out of his big city apartment (Mom & Dad none the wiser) and hits the elevator’s lobby button.  But the car gets stuck between floors, opening onto some mystery space between two floors.  The train platform to Hogwarts?  No such luck.  Instead, he goes down the hall and winds up in Witch Krysten Ritter’s apartment.  (A classic New York ‘6', the lucky dog!)  He might be the delivery boy . . . delivering himself . . . as lunch.  Yikes!  Fortunately, the witchy gal is crazy for scary stories and he’s got a dozen ready in his backpack.  One tale a night or he’s toast . . . literally.  But there’s another lunchable in there with him, the house servant, catering to the witch’s every whim & hunger pain.  A slightly older Black girl.  (Yep, the one Black in the film is the maid.  Good grief.)  Naturally, these two plot an escape, discover their witch answers to a higher/meaner/more dangerous witch and find a furnace to shove her in.  Nothing especially wrong with the set up (other than the Black teenage domestic angle), but so physically over-elaborated and choppy in David Yarovesky's directorial execution, you’ll feel nearly as trapped as the kids do.  The ones in the film and the ones watching on the couch.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Nicolas Roeg’s Grand Guignol take on Roald Dahl’S THE WITCHES/’90 is the go-to title on these things.

CLEAR ALL WIRES (1933)

Married B’way playwrights with nearly a score of lightweight comedies from the late ‘20s to the early ‘60s, Bella & Sam Spewack hit the jackpot with BOY MEETS GIRL.  Even that work nearly forgotten today, so they’re only known for writing the ‘book’ to Cole Porter’s KISS ME, KATE.  This one, a fast-paced farce copying Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur’s newspaper classic THE FRONT PAGE, but with a Foreign Correspondent digging up the scoops, had a modest 93 show run.  With catch-as-catch-can plotting as messy as THE FRONT PAGE is meticulously structured, it’s still a fun watch.  Mile-a-minute dialogue and reverses of fortune as our fearless reporter fights off rival scribes and desperate dames on assignment in Russia where his currently tarnished reputation needs an exclusive interview with General Secretary Joseph Stalin to recover.  But the real reason to have a look is that B’way lead Thomas Mitchell, who wouldn’t get to Hollywood for another year, has his role taken by none other than THE FRONT PAGE's original Hildy Johnson on B'way, Lee Tracy (rumpled of face/nasal of voice/rat-a-tat-tat delivery) in the first of his M-G-M films.  Hollywood did well by THE FRONT PAGE/’31, but here’s a chance to see the original in essentially the same part.  It’s also a chance to check out the final film of George W. Hill, the top action-oriented director at M-G-M, recently divorced from top Hollywood scripter Francis Marion.  Only 39, he’d die by his own hand next year.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *And for the template the Spewack’s followed - THE FRONT PAGE/’31.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-front-page-1931.html

HOSTILES (2017)

In the late ‘70s, iconic (and iconoclastic) director John Ford, who’d fallen out of favor in the ‘60s & early ‘70s (partially because his politics were mistakenly tied to John Wayne’s right-wing provocations), had his rep posthumously resurrected.  Less for his Oscar’d prime, than for THE SEARCHERS/’56, particularly by the rising generation of ‘70s filmmakers.  Visually quoting it became something of a rite of passage in such disparate  films as George Lucas’s STAR WARS/’77 (the opening family massacre) and Paul Schrader’s HARDCORE/’79 (a full-dress redo with the modern porn industry taking over from kidnapping ‘Indians.’)  Half a century later, writer/director Scott Cooper picks up on the idea, near-quoting a pioneering White family massacre for his opening (ruthless Comanches) before Indian hating Capt. Christian Bale enters as the film’s Ethan Edwards ruthless avenger.  (That's John Wayne’s bigoted character in THE SEARCHERS though Bale wears a Sam Elliott mustache and speaks in his growl.)  These mere set ups for the main mission, reluctantly returning jailed Non-Comanche Tribal Elder Wes Studi to his Montana homeland before he expires from cancer.  But unlike Ford’s tough-minded portrait of an unrepentant racist on the hunt for his kidnapped niece, a man who only succeeds with an assist from a Holy Fool, Bale learns to respect the hated Indian as his outfit loses men to external & internal forces.  At the very end, finding the greatest enemy of them all is the entitled White.  Handsomely staged & shot, if indifferently acted (you start to welcome the surprise kills), the film turns squishy & sympathetic by design, condescending to all sides on all issues in all respects.  Perhaps never more so than when it turns dying Indian leader Wes Studi into Moses; seeing the Promised Land (Montana), but denied entry.  Then, replacing THE SEARCHERS’ famous door closing end to allow Bale to literally open the last door to hope on a moving train.  Sheesh.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Maddening and magnificent, see what all the shouting is about in THE SEARCHERS.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Five or six times, the film all but stops for philosophical one-on-one conversations so Bale and one of his men can parse the difference between portentous and pretentious to perfection.

AUTUMN BREAK (2025)

AUTUMN BREAK?  No, not a film title, just notice of a week’s hiatus.  But that’s no reason to stop hunting for great video on MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE.  Over 6000 posts to scroll thru, more than a thousand come Recommended, thousands more barely shy of the mark.  (I-Phoners can switch to the Main Site to view all our Labels.  Scroll to the bottom of the screen for a link.  Our Search Box also on the Main Site.  Alas, the big Search Engines only index a fraction of our Posts/Titles.

Meanwhile, here’s a few titles with LINKS to the full Write-Up, two to a category, to get you thru the week.  Most, not all, Recommended, a few flawed but fascinating.  Mostly older ones you probably haven’t heard of.  Or if you have, probably not seen.  Even a few downright famous titles; but have you seen them?   Like the last two; well-known/widely-acclaimed classics, but seen by shockingly few Stateside.

WESTERNS: 

STRANGER AT MY DOOR/’56 :  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/10/stranger-at-my-door-1956.html   

ALL THE PRETTY HORSES/’00 :   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/07/all-pretty-horses-2000.html  

SILENTS:

THE SHAKEDOWN/’29 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-shakedown-1929.html  

THE TRAIL of '98 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-trail-of-98-1928.html  

MUSICALS :

IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/its-always-fair-weather-1955.html  

THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-cat-and-fiddle-1934.html  

EXOTIC:

EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT/’15 :  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/01/el-abrazo-de-la-serpiente-embrace-of.html  

BHOWANI JUNCTION/’56 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/bhowani-junction-1956.html 

LEGAL/COURTROOM DRAMA:

COUNSELLOR AT LAW/’33 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/08/counsellor-at-law-1933.html  

CONFESSION : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/confession-1937.html  

PRE-CODE:

EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE/’33 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/02/employees-entrance-1933.html  

THE CRASH/’32 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-crash-1932.html   

CHRISTMAS:

REMEMBER THE NIGHT/’40 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/remember-night-1940.html  

COMFORT & JOY/’84 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/comfort-and-joy-1984.html  

FILMS NOIR:

ACT OF VIOLENCE/’49 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/act-of-violence-1949.html  

LA NOCHE AVANZa/'52 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/04/la-noche-avanza-night-falls-1952.html  

1960s ITALIANO:

IL SORPASSO/’62 :  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/il-sorpasso-easy-life-1962.html  

THE ORGANIZER/’63 : https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/06/i-compagni-organizer-1963.html  

Back next week!

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (1972)

Considering his literary prominence and popularity, Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s big-screen footprint is awfully small.  And this attempt, director George Roy Hill’s squarely realist adaptation, which failed commercially and as film, helps explains why.  The fantasmagoric tale of Billy Pilgrim, a sort of mid-20th Century Holy Fool, drifts thru an eventful life in jump cuts of time & space, finding love, war, whimsy, kids, afterlife, but never the manner of bemused horror Vonnegut gets on the page.  Instead, a curdled mass of irony, fear, defeat & acceptance, a ‘one damn thing after another’ cracker barrel philosophy.  (‘And so it goes,’ as the book has it.)  Hill too flatfooted, too literal to bring off the coy conceits and wacky juxtapositions.  (Imagine a young, budget-constricted Tim Burton on it.)  Acting no help either; debuting Michael Sacks’ aw-shucks confusion as Billy Pilgrim progresses across time, place & incident without selling us on the concept or on him.  (He’d shortly do better for Steven Spielberg in THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS/’74, but saw his career fizzle out by the early ‘80s.  While in support, Eugene Roche (tragic mentor) and Ron Leibman (obnoxious naysayer) make obvious acting choices.  Don’t blame them, or Hill, the more likely fault is that Vonnegut off the page and made flesh is hard to believe in.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  For what it’s worth, Mike Nichols also came a cropper with this sort of thing on CATCH-22/’70; while Lina Wertmuller (generally not a fan here) had quite the success (deservedly so) with similar ideas in SEVEN BEAUTIES/’75.

COME NEXT SPRING (1956)

With their bread & butter Westerns (budget features; Saturday matinee serials) sinking as tv took over the market, Republic Pictures tried quality.  Then, either didn’t know what to do with it or didn’t recognize it when they’d made one.  So a fine, gently effective mid-lister, like this slice of late ‘20s Americana from Western specialist R.G. Springsteen, made in Republic's own TruColor process, went largely missing, and is still little known.  Pity.  A prodigal husband story with Steve Cochran (a natural screen tough guy who longed to play more complicated characters - even going to Italy to work for Antonioni) returns home after a five year bender (and three more sober), to the family farm now run by embittered wife Ann Sheridan.  He also finds an eight-yr-old son he didn’t know he had, and a traumatized, mute twelve yr-old daughter.  No big surprises here, but all the boxes intelligently ticked.  (Other than de rigueur alcohol relapse, which isn’t so much gone as finessed.)   Not without melodrama, there’s a cyclone to get thru and a missing-person-in-jeopardy  finale to resolve the last few issues, but generally mostly believable steps to redemption/reclamation.  And while other directors might have made more of this, Springsteen’s plainness has a quiet charm and works a sense of inevitability that’s very appealing.*  Plus, you get to see Walter Brennan and Edgar Buchanan at the same time instead of wondering if Buchanan only got his part because Brennan was busy elsewhere.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *At their respective studios, FOX’s Henry King and Clarence Brown at M-G-M handled the rural Americana line with a special grace.  They tend to be underappreciated mostly because their respective studios were always tapping them to take on genres they didn’t excel at.   For King, try DEEP WATERS/’48; for Brown INTRUDER IN THE DUST/’49.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/deep-waters-1948.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/06/intruder-in-dust-1949.html

KAILI BLUES / LU BIAN YE CAN (2015)

Now in his mid-30s, Chinese writer/director Bi Gan is a representative of a new wave of Chinese filmmakers coming after the so-called Fifth and Sixth Generation.  The number designating how removed they are from the establishment of Communist China.  (No one’s thought of calling them the Seventh?)  KAILI, now a decade old, serving as Bi’s international calling card, even though, for non Chinese, it can be frustratingly opaque.  (Nearly typed ‘inscrutable,’ but the term, like the use of ‘Oriental’ as a race designation, has been retired from polite conversation.)  A rural roadtrip film, it moves as much thru time & memory as kilometers, very loosely organized by two half-brothers and the Search for Weiwei, son of one/nephew to the other.*  The father a sometime jailbird with little contact; the uncle more involved before ‘selling’ the boy, now grown and lost.  The uncle takes the lead and we follow as he starts to look for Weiwei on a journey employing a slippery timeline not nailed down for us.  Instead, we (or rather the uncle) randomly meets new people along the way who delineate the society of this back country for us; climaxing in a small town where Bi employs a long (and I mean long) continuous tracking shot to take us around the corners and thru stairways, gateways, inner courtyards and secluded passageways of the small town.  An impressive feat that turns the village into a maze as complicated as the whiff of a storyline allows it to be.  Almost post-narrative in design, the film is worth the confusion.  Later work from Bi may be a pleasure to connect with, but in general, I was more intrigued than carried away.

SCEWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Wei Wei, of course, the name of an internationally famous, Chinese censored, artist.  Whether the name of the son was chosen to reflect this isn’t specified.

21 DAYS TOGETHER (1940)

Even considering mental health issues and stage tours with husband Laurence Olivier, it’s still surprising that Vivien Leigh, as big a screen star as you could be after GONE WITH THE WIND/’39, had only nine more feature films over the next twenty-five years.  And most of them forgotten.  This one, released between GWTW and her personal fave WATERLOO BRIDGE/’41, though actually shot in 1937*, one of the more forgotten.  And that’s in spite of co-starring husband-to-be Olivier, popular Leslie Banks and Graham Greene adapting John Galsworthy’s moral dilemma novel.  Let’s stick most of the blame on director/co-writer Basil Dean, more stage manager/theatre actor than movie man.  His second to last try at film direction has a choppy/stop-start quality to it.  And Czech cinematographer Jan Stallich (later a Soviet Block lenser) has little interest (or ability?) in helping Leigh sparkle or Olivier seem a bit less callow.  These two lovers confronted by a husband who vanished three years ago.  He’s there to blackmail them, pulls out a knife and is accidentally killed in a scuffle.  What to do?  Olivier, scapegrace kid brother of barrister Banks, is strongly advised by him to cover up the crime and leave the country, even though it was self-defense and accidental.  Banks desperate to limit any scandal as he’s up for a High Court Judgeship.  But Olivier refuses to let an innocent man take the blame and Banks has to keep him from doing the right thing.  Not a bad set up though Galsworthy has a twist you’ll see coming that lets everyone (even himself) off the hook.  A miss as a film, but also something that shouldn’t be missed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Note this was filmed two years before director William Wyler, according to a chastened Olivier, ‘taught’ him how to act for the screen while making WUTHERING HEIGHTS/’39.  It shows.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/05/wuthering-heights-1939.html

STRAIGHT SHOOTING (1917)

With only five two-reelers under his belt, novice director John (‘Jack’) Ford, and regular lead Harry Carey, got carried away on the sixth, shooting enough footage for a five-reel feature.  Naturally, Universal execs ordered it trimmed down to the contracted short, only stopped by Universal head Carl Laemmle who recognized a bargain.*  A rare survivor from Ford’s pre-FOX silent output, it’s a find that lives up to your hopes.  And, if less than mature Ford, it still displays an astonishment in Ford style, technique and themes, present & accounted for in this Homesteaders vs. Cattlemen Oater.  With heavy D.W. Griffith influence (lead gal Molly Malone like a brunette Mae Marsh and a big ride-to-the-rescue finish), but Ford’s use of landscape & framing already his own.  (Those backlit door-framed shots might be out of THE SEARCHERS/’56.)  The story is a lot like George Stevens’ SHANE/’53 (tropes already familiar in 1917?), but with Carey’s character a combination of Alan Ladd’s ‘good’ badman and Jack Palance’s ‘bad’ badman.  It takes a pivotal on-screen murder of a young homesteader to shame him.  Carey not only changing sides, but in a riveting shoot-out, taking down his drinking pal, the killer.  How to explain Ford’s filmmaking confidence?  How lucky to have it survive.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In silent days, a reel of film could run longer than the modern standard of ten minutes depending on the cameraman’s cranking speed.  You could get almost 15 minutes if you were as slow as D.W. Griffith’s Billy Bitzer.  Hence, Ford, with forgotten cinematographer George Scott and the great Ben Reynolds (later Erich von Stroheim’s go-to lenser) gets over an hour out of five reels.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   *Avoid lousy subfusc Public Domain downloads.  Click the link to see a proper restoration.  This EUREKA! Edition Comes with a more recent Ford find, HELL BENT.  (not seen here)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=darotFrBNFM

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025)

Best of the recent Animation-to-Live-Action remakes?  We’ve missed (or rather avoided) too many for any definitive pronouncement.  In general, they usually coin big cash, but leave little long-term impact compared to the originals.  But director Dean DeBlois, co-director of the full-animated feature in 2010, makes lots of smart moves; he even made this one for a bit less.  Plus, whatever money was spent is all up on the screen.  Though so much is CGI, calling it Live Action is less truth-in-advertizing than convenient nomenclature.  DeBlois starts smart, gliding toward the small Viking island where man and dragon fight for survival, in a shot that might be CGI, but looks like old-school scale-model work: a doll house village on a terrarium landscape.  It sets the whole film up with a tone of believable unreality, welcome to artifice, fantasy and tall tales.  This particular tale remains largely unchanged: Young Viking-in-training Hiccup happens upon a wounded beast, nurses it back to health (with a prosthetic tail ‘jib’ he fashions) and comes to realize  that dragons are just as afraid of human Vikings as Vikings are of flying, fire-breathing beasts.  But how to convince the town, especially warrior Dad Gerard Butler (repeating from 2010), of possible peaceful coexistence?  Much of this: CGI special effects, character arcs, Hiccup’s demonstrating his control over the beasts at Viking School are perfectly handled.  Yet ultimately, that’s not what makes the film work.  And there are problems too; an animated 300 pound Viking and a live action 300 pound Viking make very different impressions.  At times you think they’ve cloned John Goodman to play half the male adults.  (Too bad they didn’t, Goodman would have pulled it off.)  Nico Parker no better as the natural female warrior-in-training who warms to Hiccup and his new ‘pet.’  (Though nice to see a heroine with the old-fashioned face structure of Depression-Era madonna Sylvia Sidney.)  No, forget what they get right or wrong, what ultimately makes this one work is Master Mason Thames as Hiccup, the most overwhelmingly empathetic/sympathetic/winning juvenile lead seen on screen in decades.  (Since Michael J. Fox/BACK TO THE FUTURE/’85?  Or, closer to the mark, Matthew Broderick in LADYHAWKE/’85.)  Now if only someone could do a Director’s Cut that trimmed the overextended finale . . . and make a sequel a good bit better than the animated HTTYD2.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned above - LADYHAWKE or BACK TO THE FUTURE.  OR: Compare with the animated original and its unfortunate sequel.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-to-train-your-dragon-2010.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-to-train-your-dragon-2-2014.html