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.)

NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER (1980)

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

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

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

REPULSION (1965)

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

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

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

LE PARADIS / THE LOST BOYS (2023)

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

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

LILO & STITCH (2025)

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

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

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

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987)

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

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

AVATAR: THE WAY OF THE WATER (2022)

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

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

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

SUNDAY BEST (2025)

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

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

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

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991)

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

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

PRESENCE (2024)

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

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

THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND (1956)

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

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

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

CLOUD / KURAUDO (2024)

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

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

MOON OF ISRAEL / DIE SKLAVENKÖNIGIN (1924)

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

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

JAWS @ 50: THE DEFINITIVE INSIDE STORY (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS (2021)

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

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

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