DR. NO (1962)

The most recent James Bond film/s (in case you forgot, it was split into two parts) goes on five & a quarter indigestible hours.  This first James Bond film (now an improbable senior citizen) runs an hour 50 minutes and plays better than ever.  Long considered a trial run next to its two top-rated follow-ups (FROM RUSSIAN WITH LOVE/’63; GOLDFINGER/’64), a look at the refreshed print, proves it holds its own in the early Bond pecking order.  And has a just unpacked quality on a laundry list of Bond iconography.  From bloodied gun-barrel kickoff and Monty Norman’s hot electric guitar-lick theme; into Maurice Binder’s opening credits; that unstirred martini; brief banter with Miss Moneypenny; chemin de fer at the card table, the formal introduction ‘Bond . . . James Bond’; Ken Adams sets; Richard Maibaum script & quips.  And, of course, Sean Connery’s Bond; classic & classy, but with an indelible touch of working-class bully-boy in his cruel curled lip.  Only two missed elements of much importance: no John Barry score* and no final credit notification saying ‘James Bond Will Be Back.’  The storyline (wacko genius, think Asian Captain Nemo, hopes to disrupt NASA’s latest moon-prep launch from his secret ocean fortress near Jamaica) as clever & lean as Connery’s never surpassed Bond.*  Both story and character driven, the film blessedly bloat-free (bloat crept in early, starting with THUNDERBALL/’65.  And note, those early films came out every year, no six+ year wait between.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Per that famous Bond theme: John Barry (and his band) credited with the rendition, and Barry long claimed partial authorship. 

CONTEST:  *People also think Connery the hairiest of all Bonds.  (Not on his head!  Look close, it’s already going,)  He’s not!  Name the most hirsute 007 to win your choice of a MAKSQUIBS writeup. 

ARCO (2025)

Well intentioned, critically well received, this Oscar nominated French animation (Ugo Bienvenu/Gilles Cazaux direct) is a ’Gaia’ friendly botch on Earth’s short & long term future.  A 2070s robot serviced/A.I. organized near future vs Earth reborn centuries on via personal responsibility & humanism.  The two time periods coming into contact when a ten-yr-old kid, officially too young to ‘rainbow fly’ thru time, takes a forbidden joy ride, loses control and crash-lands in the 2070s.  Taken in by a young girl who lives near the crash site, they’re soon on the lam from state & police authorities and from a nutty trio of comic-relief conspiracy stooges.  (Dubbed to annoying effect in the English edition by Will Ferrell, Flea & Andy Samberg.)  Only when the runaway boy’s parents show up to collect their son, does he discover the true cost of his careless irresponsibility.  And what of his out-of-time playmate who now wants to join him on the ride back?  (Imagine Eliot going ‘home’ with E.T.*)  A mess of borrowed ideas, this might have worked with a more physically appealing look.  What to call it?    Euro-anime?  It certainly carries the minuses, if not the pluses of that style.  Character design a particular problem.  (What’s up with the weird mouths?)  Ambitious ideas alone aren’t enough; you’ve got to execute.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Yes, lots of E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL/’82 echoed here.  But the main influence is more likely youngish anime master Makoto Shinkai.  Especially WEATHERING WITH YOU, his follow up to YOUR NAME./’16.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/11/tenki-no-ko-weathering-with-you-2019.html

UNEXPECTED UNCLE (1941)

No film genre is more unforgiving than Screwball Comedy.  Most examples of the form not even Screwball, merely uppity Rom-Coms, studded with a few classic Screwball elements: rich, dysfunctional family; mansion with majestic staircase and sassy servants; disdain for their own inherited wealth; furs treated like pets/pets treated like furs; et al.  And the most important one that later films were unable to use: The Great Depression as social/financial backdrop.  It gave weight & irony to the weightless principals.*  Compared to Noir or Westerns, to Courtroom Drama or Police Procedurals where thresholds for success might be low as 45%, or to the second toughest genre, Musicals, which might be saved with a couple of standout numbers, Screwball needs a batting average of 750.  And that’s just to get to first!  So credit this little number for getting the gist of things right.  And for hiring Charles Coburn (sixty before he got into films) to replay his Grandpa Cupid speciality and bring the couple together.*  Here, that’s Anne Shirley at her prettiest and James Craig at his tipsiest.  The rest is cringe city.  Premise: sales girl Shirley loses her job after telling off tush pincher James Craig, unaware America’s youngest industrial tycoon also owns the shop.  Coburn offers himself as Fairy Godfather and connives to get them back together . . . for keeps.  The film is hardly helped by changing mores that have turned Craig’s attempts at ‘making love’ (as the old phrase used to put it). into what now would be called out as sexual harassment.  Also ‘hilarious’ episodes of drunk driving and kidnaping for love.  Yikes!  While as a rom-com stylist, Craig no Cary Grant.  Even the vocal cadence all wrong for this sort of thing.  Director Peter Godfrey, under producer Tay Garnett, manages a wicked traveling shot around the sales floor, but elsewise too unvaried in pacing.  Plus the usual lack of simple explanations just to keep the ball rolling.  Co-writer Eric Hatch, the source of superior Screwballs like TOPPER and MY MAN GODFREY should have known better.  And the suggested happy ending, ‘millionaires!, you have nothing to fear but your own wealth’ doesn’t cut it in 1941.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Coburn got his Oscar® doing similar duty for Jean Arthur & Joel McCrea in THE MORE THE MERRIER/’44.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-merrier-1943.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *You'd have thought The Great Depression would have made the idea that wealth drives these people crazy wouldn’t have played in those days, but the reverse ('money isn’t everything') was the unspoken moral.

ATOMIC BLONDE (2017)

David Leitch, in various capacities, has had his hand in some of the biggest action franchises of the last decade.  JOHN WICK; DEADPOOL; FAST AND FURIOUS.  But after watching this ‘original,’ where he feels fully in charge as sole director, you may wonder how much of a positive influence he was on those successes.  Told in flashback, 1989 Berlin is erupting in the societal unrest that will soon lead to the ‘Wall’ coming down.  With spillover instability bringing on chaos in the world of international espionage, there's little time to settle scores and grab the upper hand before everything changes.  No wonder East/West divides of loyalty feel fluid.  Whom to believe as the Cold War goes into its death rattle?  So, it makes sense there’s a race to find the ultimate Spy vs Spy Big Book o’ Secrets floating around Berlin.  Crackjack agent Charlize Theron is getting all beat up divining the various gangs keeping the ‘other side’ frm getting their paws on it.  But just how many ‘sides’; are there?  The vaguely delineated book the McGuffin to end all McGuffins.*  Theron works with double-agent James McAvoy to figure out a ‘safe’ way to get it out.  But can it be gotten, and can he be trusted?  Other gangs, East German Stasi and KGB also on the hunt), so Theron is forced to fight or shoot her way out with acrobatic moves and the trick rope skills of a circus vet,  Theron can take care of herself, but also shows the effort involved.  She’s pretty beat up at a debriefing for spy lords John Goodman and Toby Jones (another untrustworthy pair) and quite undone physically in a blonde fright wig.  This all should work a lot better than it does, but Leitch can’t decide what style it will best play in, alternating OTT martial arts with logistically unconvincing shoot-‘em ups.   Should actors simply brush off impossible blows like gnats or show real injuries and pain?  (So unlike WICK where it’s all of a piece, all dance and decor.)  Same goes for choices in set design and lighting.  As if Leitch wanted to order test swatches of style from all the films he was involved with, only to find they cancel each other out.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A McGuffin is the important thing everyone in the film is trying to get their hands on, but of little importance to the audience.  Hitchcock came up with the term, but the idea is pretty common.  What’s less common are the three iconic Hitchcockian moments Leitch (and his writers?) rip off.  From DIAL M FOR MURDER, a woman stabs her attacker in the back, but the blade really goes in when the guy falls on it.  From THE 39 STEPS, a Mr. Memory figure who’s memorized the ‘McGuffin’ and dies because of it.  (Though here it’s also pointless within the film plot.  Boo!)  And finally, repurposing the decoy umbrella murder gag from FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT.

BILL CUNNINGHAM: NEW YORK (2010)

Richard Press’s terrific documentary follows street-wise fashion photog icon Bill Cunningham (free at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6vFJv3Mnh4), a classic New York character who naturally lives in a teeny studio at Carnegie Hall.  (Not near it; in it.)*  Productive and personable, the eccentric Cunningham seems to have no life beyond his work, beginning in the ‘50s as a fashionable milliner before gravitating toward photojournalism (Women’s Wear Daily; DETAILS) before landing at The New York Times with matched columns to fill.  Here, pushing 80, but still dashing about town on his bike to cover Night-Life Society: parties, openings, art shows, happenings among the rich and arty/the beautiful and the hip.  While during daylight, hitting the streets on his three-speed bike to snap unstaged Found Fashion spottings from encounters among the hoi polloi.  Judgmental on fashion, but non-judgmental on people, Cunningham’s speciality might come off as stalking if he weren’t so elfin & asexual.  Brilliantly caught by Press & Co. who must truly believe that neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night should stop them from pursuing their subject.  Indeed, they go all the way to Paris where he’s feted and honored without having to change his blue work smock.  It’s the most touching part of this elsewise NYC-centric story.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The last two rent-stabilized Carnegie Hall studios were being phased out as the film was being shot.  Too bad we don’t get a better look at the eccentric layout of Cunningham’s.

IL TRADITORE / THE TRAITOR (2019)

Maestro of Italian cinema, Marco Bellocchio, writing and directing since 1965*, celebrated  his 80th year by sweeping the Italian Film Awards with this excellent, straight-forward docu-drama on Tommaso Buscetta.  A Sicilian mob boss (living in Brazil as the film starts in the early 1980s), his clan under attack in Italy by rival gangs and by special police forces, while he faces crimes of his own, agrees to work with Prosecuting Judge Giovanni Falcone, Patron Saint of Mafia busters.  Il Cosa Nostra, as Buscetta insists on calling what had long been, in his warped view, an honorable association now falling into chaos.  Backed into becoming the first inside informer to testify against the organization after losing so much manpower and territory.  He and his family are given witness protection in America, yet he’s drawn back to Italy so he can settle scores after Falcone is assassinated.  Superbly done, note details like how Pierfrancesco Favino, as Buscetta, wears facial prosthetics before he has face altering plastic surgery so he can play the final act without the props.  Good as it is, there’s a built-in structural weakness in that all the more juicy rub-outs (so damn cinematic a cow could shoot them effectively) come cheek by jowl in what amounts to the prologue, leaving the rest of the film largely without easy kinetic excitement.  The interrogations/interviews between Falcone & Buscetta and, of course, the trial & testimonies have plenty of drama, but can’t really compete with graphic killings.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Bellocchio (whose name translates as ‘beautiful eye’) will always be shadowed by his debut, the revolutionary masterpiece FISTS IN THE POCKET/’65.  There are worse curses to carry around your neck.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/fists-in-pocket-1965.html

DAVID (2025)

Angel Studios (now simply ANGEL), specializing in the (supposedly) under-served Christian-friendly market, moves into big-time Old Testament animation with what could have been titled YOUNG DAVID.  You know the one, shepherd boy; too many brothers (one source lists seven!); lion killer (here, catch & release); slingshot Giant killer (Goliath, not catch and release); singer of song to ailing King Saul; then on the lam as falsely accused usurper; finally hailed as the anointed one/King of what would become, under his forty-year rule, Judea..  Oh, that David.  (Serial love-making and personal betrayals saved for the sequels.)  All this covered more faithfully than expected here, but, like the promise of David’s beautiful son Absalom, ultimately unfulfilled.  But where Absalom’s tragedy is tricky to explain, DAVID’s (the film that is) very easy: ANGEL took the generic route and wound up with Biblical Brand X.  The songs, each working overtime to become next year’s church camp sing-a-long hit, faux Alan Menken at best, with glints of Elton John’s LION KING & Lloyd-Webber’s JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR at worst; character animation a la 1990s DreamWorks, with a spritz of 1950s hairspray for that stiff finish look; lame lamb jokes for the kiddies/pointless older references to thank the grown-ups for driving them.*  A shame, as the bones of the story are there.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Best gag for the adults: when they swap Davids from PRE to POST pubescent, using the mere flick of a cape (Brandon Engman vocals out/Phil Wickham vocals in), suddenly young adult David morphs into Michael Landon.  Make that, Michael Landon with the same Groucho Marx eyebrows everyone in the film has.  Do co-directors Phil Cunningham & Brent Dawes have them, too?

TOGETHER / HE NI ZAI YI QI (2002)

Even the English-language title is a bit corny in this wide-eyed Father/Son tale of a small-town violin prodigy and self-effacing dad who head to the big city (Beijing) to find a music conservatory professor willing to help the boy’s natural talent take wing.  Why not embrace corny since the film’s legitimate sentiment plays like some semi-classic/half-remembered Hollywood fable.  (Though more over-processed 1940s than rougher-textured ‘30s.*)  With two standout perfs from Father Peiqi Liu (pushy, proud, persuasive) and disheveled teacher Zhiwen Wang (definitely not using cat-gut strings).  These two splitting nominations and awards at all the Asian Film Contests that year.  And with writer/director Kaige Chen doing triple duty by playing the well-connected violin professor who takes over when 13-tr-old Yun Tang switches masters for the third act competition.  Unexpected complications come with a Party Girl neighbor who hires the boy to play for her (watch for a lift straight out of Chaplin’s THE GOLD RUSH/’25); a rival student with chops but no passion; and note the far more sophisticated choice in music selections than usual.  Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto for the big competition, but also a sneaky bit of commentary from Gershwin’s ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’ (in the Heifetz transcription) and especially in the film score’s main throb going to Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy: third movement.  A three-hanky sob-fest all on its own.  The film’s inevitable father/son finale both manipulative and ridiculously moving thanks to director Chen’s smash editing, pulling off a win-win/have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too ending.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Golden-Age Hollywood's go-to teenage coloratura, Deanna Durbin, could do this sort of thing with blinders on.  Peaking with the Father/Daughter/Depression number 100 MEN AND A GIRL/’37.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/03/100-men-and-girl-1937.html

THE GOLDEN FORTRESS / SONAR KELLA (1974)

In the 1960s, at the height of his early international fame, Indian writer/director Satyajit Ray was also putting out YA novels (in Bengali) for local consumption.  (Were they ever translated for Stateside publication?)  The most popular featured private investigator Feluda (more Holmes than Maigret), played here by Ray regular Soumitra Chatterjee, a know-it-all with modest eccentricities.  (The character went on to further film & tv adventures, but after the first two without Ray or Chatterjee.*)  You can see the appeal, even if much of the fun & charm gets lost in translation, especially in some of the broader characterizations (comic & villain) whose reactions wouldn’t feel out of place on a TeleMundo soap.  This story concerns an 8-yr-old kid more communicative with drawing than with words, currently fixated on a hard to find Golden Fortress and the gems supposedly hidden inside.  That possibility enough to bring out a trio of bad guys claiming to have the boy’s interest at heart, along with an opposing trio of protectors, including Feluda, hoping to find the castle first, then wait to nab the abductors.  With better picture elements (the colors look right, but the image isn’t sharp), the picaresque elements built into the storyline might carry us past any weak spots, but I’d guess it would still seem too local for broad appeal.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *The second of the Ray-helmed Feluda films, THE ELEPHANT GOD/’79 (not seen here) sounds pretty similar in style & quality.  Perhaps it’s out in better condition.

TRAIN DREAMS (2025)

In his second feature as writer/director, Clint Bentley trims his frame ratio down from a horizontal WideScreen of 2.35 to 1, well-suited for his horse-racing debut in JOCKEY/’21 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/jockey-2021.html), to a more vertically inclined ratio of 1.5 to 1 for the tall trees of the NorthWest and the intimacy of family life found here.  (Both films with cinematographer Adolpho Veloso’s emphasis on using natural light and too many backlit silhouettes.)  The film a career definer for Joel Edgerton as a still-waters-run-deep loner, an orphan working for the railroad as a logger whose life improves when independent-minded Gladys (Felicity Jones) takes an interest.  Romance, marriage, house building, child, played in stages between long separations on dangerous work trips.  But even this unsatisfactory on & off family life will seem precious next to the whims of God & Nature that leave Edgerton with little more than haunted memories.  The film, generally moving and refusing to push emotional buttons (it hardly needs to), though in the end, somewhat one-note in theme and execution.  The biggest shame is that while digitally shot, the laconic characters and spectacular landscape might have played with far more power on the big screen*, and NetFlix barely gave this a short award-qualifying theatrical run.  And regardless of promises currently being made, that’s the likely future of film; or rather the end of it.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *A proper release might help stop the blather on how only productions with casts of thousands and pricey screen-filling special effects get major boosts from theatrical showings. Ultimately, nothing’s bigger/more powerful than the human face shown in close up 50' wide.  See Garbo at the end of QUEEN CHRISTINA/’33 for confirmation.

YELLOW SKY (1949)

The last of three films made by favored 20th/Fox wrier/producer Lamar Trotti and tough guy megger William Wellman isn’t nearly as well known as their second collaboration, the much acclaimed OX-BOW INCIDENT/43, but, if no classic, is a far better work.  OX-BOW, with its mournful bearing (a Western Greek tragedy) and airless soundstage ‘exteriors,’ is usually deferred to for its downbeat content and taking a bold stand against lynching innocent suspects.  (An attitude known in Hollywood circles as Texas Liberal.)  This less arty item, loaded with on-location exteriors, follows a passel of Civil War vets who rob small town banks but are eventually chased by a military posse into taking a 70 mile crossing over ‘the sink,’ an ‘anvil flat’ that’ll kill you surer than a rope.  And since they shot in Death Valley, you believe it.  Miraculously, on their last legs, they come upon a town out there . . . a ghost town.  Two inhabitants and a hidden spring; it offers a chance, or could if Grandpa and Granddaughter don’t shoot them first.*  They’ve been prospecting for years and have a fortune in gold stashed away.  Info that perks up the revived gang almost as much as the good-lookin’ tomboy granddaughter.  Fill in the blanks; just don’t forget to add on a passing group of reasonably reasonable Indians, long time pals of G’pa.  It makes a fine set up, with plenty of suspense, horniness, venal backstabbing and possible redemption for robbers Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark (just his third pic), Harry Morgan & John Russell; alternately ogling the gold and curvy granddaughter Anne Baxter.  Trotti cops out at the climax (twice!), but at least Wellman doesn’t try for the artistic flourishes he’s rarely comfortable handling.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *James Barton, Anne Baxter’s prospecting G’pa, was a longtime B’way star, a sort of stage Irishman since 1919.  Most recently the original Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s THE ICEMAN COMETH.  It’s the role Lee Marvin filmed in 1973.  Back on B’way, after some Hollywood work, Barton followed ICEMAN with Lerner & Loewe’s first hit musical PAINT YOUR WAGON, playing the same role Lee Marvin did (with many a change) in the 1969 film.  Even stranger, the relationship between Barton and Anne Baxter’s tomboy granddaughter suddenly thrust into womanhood, was replayed by Barton two years later, now with Olga San Juan as daughter, on B’way in PAINT YOUR WAGON.

THE 300 SPARTANS (1962)

A glance at the date and style of advertising for this telling of the oft-told Battle of Thermopylae (the legendary Fifth Century B.C. holding action by vastly outnumbered Spartans against Xerxes’ Persian hordes) suggests one of those Sword & Sandals epics-on-the-cheap flooding the market in the wake of the huge commercial success of HERCULES UNCHAINED/’59.  Not so.  This was meant as a quality release, boasting a decent mid-level cast of Hollywood leads; top-drawer Brits in support (Ralph Richardson, David Farrar); two great cinematographers (Rudolph Maté, directing since 1947, and the great Geoffrey Unsworth lensing); generous seaside location work; and a few thousand marching soldiers scenically hugging the shoreline for spectacle.  The problem is that we only get so far in the quality department while missing the chance for campy fun from poorly dubbed, over-muscled beefcake in leading roles.  In comparison, this seems too sobersided, a little dull and a lot dutiful.  Still, not bad at telling the tale, a true legend we stick to with reasonable fidelity; only losing our way in some added-on straight romance for a disgraced young Spartan whose eventual sacrifice can’t come soon enough to spare us from his emoting.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The film probably best watched before something like the artsy, eye-popping, but narrative-challenged 300/’06, Zach Synder’s OTT vision of the even better graphic novel by Frank Miller & Lynn Varley.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/07/300-2006.html

DEEP COVER (1992)

As so often the case, unsung director Bill Duke can't put a foot wrong in this undercover cop story.  Laurence Fishburne is the regular beat cop recruited by Charles Martin Smith’s Fed NARCO to plant in the West Coast drug trade, embedded deep in the organization so he can rise to expose the top California supplier.  Two problems: ONE: to get there, he’ll have to play the game for real as an insider; TWO: by the time he gets to the guy, he’ll be no different than the men he’s been stealth hunting.  Nothing original there, but Duke makes it feel fresh and suspenseful with cross-play between the corrupt and the corruptible.  A distinction that certainly includes Washington, D.C., apt to change who they want to take down depending on changes in Central American governments.  Scripter Michael Tolkin (just off THE PLAYER/’92) fills in Fishburne’s character with a father’s death, a surrogate son, a romance with a beautiful art gallery manager/money launderer, but mostly with a bromance with partner in crime Jeff Goldblum, reminding you he can do a lot more than recycle Jeff Goldblum tics.*  These two a fascinating double act; straight, but with sexual voltage steaming out of their ears.  It leads to a veritable liebestod of a finale with Fishburne confessing he’s working for the Feds and Goldblum confessing how it needn’t change the relationship.  They might be Jack Lemmon and Joe E. Brown at the end of SOME LIKE IT HOT/’59, when Lemmon pulls off the wig and says ‘Because I’m a guy,’ and a still smitten Joe E. Brown replies, ’ Well, nobody’s perfect.’  Except this is no comedy.  Technical chops, brilliant stylized use of color, relentless pacing, no dull content, standout perfs, how does Duke pull these things off so consistently?

DOUBLE-BILL:   Now in his 80s, Duke remains active as actor & director.  Best known for Urban Crime pics and ‘quality’ series tv, his first feature-length work, THE KILLING ROOM/’83 already a near classic.  It can be tricky to find since it was made for PBS American Playhouse, and is often listed under the series’ title.  Complex and sophisticated filmmaking on the beginnings of the Chicago Meat Workers Union, and how racial issues affected work relations before and after WWI.  Why Duke never gets mentioned as a pioneering Black filmmaker is beyond me.  Maybe he was just too good to need that sort of special pleading.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:   *Goldblum quite the clotheshorse in this film.  But then, he probably wears them as well as any male star since Rex Harrison in UNFAITHFULLY YOURS back in 1948.

SOUTHERN COMFORT (1981)

LORD OF THE FLIES meets DELIVERANCE in Walter Hill’s chilling survivor tale about a small platoon of National Guardsman on a training exercise that goes haywire in the swamp-lands of Louisiana Cajun country.  An easy allegory to American interventionist policies, here weekend warriors fire blanks, justify action with patriotic patronizing & arrogance, or cite first-world entitlement with empty phrases of pigheaded stubbornness and feverish religion.  Hill smartly lets parallels to recent foreign entanglements speak for themselves to concentrate on how the men got into deep shit with unseen/unfriendly natives.  (You can’t call Cajuns indigenous people, but that’s the idea.)  No surprise then that the lost men's desperate situation is entirely brought on by the Guards' own actions and willful ignorance; the squad misreading themselves and their attackers.  Peter Coyote and Fred Ward are part of this Ugly American team, but the film belongs to new Texas import Powers Boothe (able to see things plain), and local reservist Keith Carradine, a good ol’ boy of character; no redneck he.  Carradine never did anything finer.  Filmed in hellish swamp locations, Hill is phenomenal with his cast, and with the settings.*   While staging the action, especially a last attack in the middle of a small town food festival, in terrific fashion.  What action chops!  Clear logistics and believable consequences.  Hurrah!  (It really shouldn’t be so rare.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/SPOILER:  *Hill's sole unforced error a major one, yet another example, typical of the time, in tagging the one meaningful Black player with the most gruesome death.

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK (1998)

Leonardo DiCaprio was still in his ‘Tadzio’ period when he followed TITANIC/’97 with yet another version of this Alexandre Dumas perennial, it’s the one where the aging Three Musketeers plot to replace bad-boy King Louis XIV with his secretly imprisoned identical twin.  Grand entertainment from Dumas, here over-elaborated by BRAVEHEART/’95 scripter Randall Wallace making a queasy directing debut.  Wallace showing a positive knack for placing the camera too close or too far from the action.*  But about halfway in, Dumas’s narrative irony and sheer gusto, along with good teamwork by the male leads (Jeremy Irons, Gérard Depardieu, John Malkovich and Gabriel Byrne showing rare positive energy) come to rescue him.  Alas, the women less memorable.  Like the generic sets & costumes, they may be real, but look rented.  And DiCaprio?  Fine as the ‘nice’ twin (if only we had a chance to see him grow into his the Pretender King), but not so convincing as a cruel debaucher.  And what’s with composer Nick Glennie-Smith?  Usually an arranger, he uses a Pan Pipe for a wistful melody.  A Pan Pipe?  In Versailles?  (Maybe he thought the company was still making BRAVEHEART.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Not that this version is unwatchable.  But so many superior versions, some even follow the book!  Hard to beat Douglas Fairbanks’ 1929 farewell to silent cinema, THE IRON MASK.   By 1998, light, literate period adventures hopelessly out of fashion when not guyed as ‘camp.’  Yet one of the best in decades had just showed up, LE BOSSU/’97 a late effort from Philippe de Broca with Daniel Auteuil & Vincent Perez in terrific form.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/le-bossuon-guard-1997.html

SCREWT THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *You got the feeling from attempts at the genre around this time, that not only had filmmakes forgotten how these things worked, but that they were embarrassed to be trying.

TRUCK TURNER (1975)

With films that moved more freely between HIGH Art and LOW than nearly anyone else in Hollywood at the time, director Jonathan Kaplan, who died last year at 77, didn’t put up the usual neat career arc.  His epitaph might read: Memorably Malleable.  Here, he’s down for a Blaxploitation pic with Isaac Hayes as an ass-kickin’ Bounty Hunter working with partner Alan Weeks in violent pursuit of bail skippers.  Hayes in big gun/love machine mode; Weeks making like Richard Pryor as sidekick.  Both hitting the mark.  The first half holds to larky fun (sex, bloody fights, snappy comeback lines, car chases), but the second half changes gears with the belated entrance of Yaphet Kotto.  Not that it gets serious, we’re still pushing Blaxploitation tropes, but deadly consequences are suddenly in effect.  Kotto taking over a revenge mission of Hayes’ enemies, backed by Nichelle Nichols’ rich avenging Madame; Kotto a more formidable antagonist and, as actor, good as it gets in this sort of thing.  Actually, Kotto good as it gets in just about anything he turned his hand to.  (But as a Black actor at the time, he simply didn’t get the chance to show his full range often enough.)  TURNER remains good fun of its type, and very well-handled by Kaplan given the low production values you expect with American International Pictures.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Quentin Tarantino’s Blaxploitation pastiche JACKIE BROWN/’97 probably got as much from this film as it did from the Pam Grier films of the ‘70s.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/04/jackie-brown-1997.html

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY (1980)

Call it THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD GOOD FRIDAY.  Highly-rated British mob pic, regularly short-listed for U.K. honors is something of a disappointment.  Blame journeyman director John Mackenzie, not that he does anything blatantly wrong, but he rarely rises above the adequate.  Still, a pretty good snapshot on the early Thatcher Era as seen thru the Rise & Fall of Gangster Capitalism pursued by Bob Hoskins’ Lower Class mob boss, a sort of Cockney Little Caesar.*  Over the course of one long day, he tries to close a waterfront development deal with help from American Mafia investor Eddie Constantine (excellent) while trying to figure out who’s attacking him and his organization.  Refined partner Helen Mirren tries to distract everyone from what’s going down (bombings, murder, financial melt down, Hoskins’ quick-trigger temper), but not even police quiescence and a roundup of rival gangsters can keep news from spreading.  With plenty of odd period detail to hold your attention (hideous menswear; apology-free gay players; an IRA angle), but the package feels both over and under-cooked.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Hoskins, at 5'3", even shorter than Little Caesar himself, 5'5" Edward G. Robinson.  But for a better match here, skip CAESAR for a mob pic made soon after with Eddie G. and James Cagney, SMART MONEY.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/04/smart-money-1931.html

NIGHT MOVES (1975)

Improbably, this private detective pic has, in the long run, proved director Arthur Penn’s best work.  Improbable when you consider how seriously he was taken, commercially & critically after THE MIRACLE WORKER (tv/stage/film), LITTLE BIG MAN/‘70 and of course BONNIE AND CLYDE/’67.  Yet NIGHT MOVES now the one Penn title whose rep has improved rather than diminished over time.  An also-ran on release, the oxygen having been sucked out of the room by Francis Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION/’74, first out with too many similarities and a seductive Euro-Art tone.  (It was also, as Coppola’s team must have known, BLOW-UP for Beginners.)  Similarities start with Gene Hackman starring in both as an investigator with a troubled private life misreading recordings (audio in CONVERSATION/16mm here) to deadly effect.  An underlying human alienation and dirge-like inevitability that seethes just below the surface.  Finally surging over its limit with a technically challenging flourish.  Writing off MOVES as just a genre vehicle for Hackman’s P.I. a mistake; and a poor excuse then & now to skip this well worked up missing person case that leads to a murdered man and half-a-million bucks in stolen art.  Plus four lying dames if you include a cheating wife and 16-yr-old Melanie Griffith's nude debut.  And Penn's got the cast to pull it off: Susan Clark’s inconstant wife; Jennifer Warren as tempting stand-in; Edward Binns as careless movie stunt arranger; James Woods as car mechanic & probable accomplice and Harris Yulin as limping lover.  A personal best from scripter Alan Sharp and boasting a grounded ‘70s Cali style look from cinematographer Bruce Surtees, elsewise shooting everything Clint Eastwood & Don Siegel were doing at the time.  Penn never tried something like this again.  Perhaps he considered it slumming.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, THE CONVERSATION.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/conversation-1974.html

EKO / EKÕ (2025)

Indian director Dinjith Ayyathan had a local hit on this mixed genre film, shot in Malayalam, a language mostly spoken in the South which boasts some verdant mountainous terrain used here for some spectacular views & action sequences.  Spanning decades, the non-linear story construction goes back to WWII and forward to . . . when?  Now?  Just how old is that health-compromised loner supposed to be?; living with her attack dogs in a mountaintop cabin with a  hunky helper who’s not what he appears to be.  He’s surely no gentle caregiver, turning into a fighter with Martial Arts chops for an acrobatic battle with the two baddies who’ve been tracking granny.  For those pedigree dogs?  For land rights?  Hard to know under Ayyathan’s incomprehensible style of unmotivated camera movement (panning, circling, spinning in place) used for all occasions, worsened by quick, off-the-beat editing.  Scene by scene, you can tell the bad guys from the good, but even that’s subject to misreading.  (Ayyathan got his start in animation, so perhaps the technique worked better there.)  Or does Malayalam culture regularly flaunt the time/space continuum?  These eyes were lost in translation.  Literally so as the subtitles whiz by too fast to read.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (2008)

Unnecessary corporate product, director Scott Derrickson’s wholly unmemorable remake of the beloved 1951 Sci-Fi classic misses on all fronts.  (Though it does serve to represent a lot of what we won’t miss about our current Hollywood trends.*)  While still the story of a ‘man’ from Outer Space come to warn Earthlings on the consequences of screwing up the planet (War, Pollution, Self-Destruction), it’s without wonder; philosophy; believable F/X working for rather than instead of plot; quotidian exploration of big city life by a stranger in a strange land; New-Age metal on a spaceship that has no seam (a simple, but wonderful detail in the original); nor the most thrillingly suspenseful PAUSE in film history.  (Imagine anyone quoting lines from this remake seven & a half decades later) and you sure won’t find a cast to equal the one in 1951 or match Bernard Herrmann’s groundbreaking electronically enhanced music score instantly setting scene & tone.  Keanu Reeves sounds right as Alien Cassandra, but he seems to have beamed up to play Mr. Spock.  Or is it the man who fell to Earth?  As the girl in the case (don’t be fooled by her role as expert scientist), Jennifer Connelly has zero chemistry with Reeves, though perhaps on purpose.  At least you don’t want to slap her every time she comes on screen as you do with obnoxious step-son Jaden Smith.  Yikes!  Positive notes?  Well, the film won’t wreck any feelings you hold for the original.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Naturally, the Robert Wise 1951 beauty, personal bests for Patricia Neal, Michael Rennie, Sam Jaffe and Gort.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Giving credit where credit is due.  Here that's scipter David Scarpa whose most recent are NAPOLEON/’23 and GLADIATOR II/’24, both for Ridley Scott.

THE RAT (1937)

Remembered today, if at all, as the vain, age-denying wife of Walter Huston’s plainspoken businessman in William Wyler’s superb 1936 adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s DODSWORTH (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/04/dodsworth-1936.html), Ruth Chatterton found her highest acclaim in the role; and, at merely 44, a full stop to her Hollywood career.  Previously known for sex-hungry Pre-Code feminists, she tried England for two final pics before hanging it up as far as film was concerned.*  Here, in spite of that off-putting title, she found something of a return to her daring Pre-Code heyday as a French society lady stringing along an older SugarDaddy to foot the bills while seeking sexual excitement and the thrill of danger in a low-down joint in Montmartre.  She finds it in Anton Walbrook, still new to British film after leaving Nazi Germany, a cat burglar more interested in her pearls than herself.  Always on the verge of getting caught, Walbrook is currently stuck with a pretty young thing, his ward René Ray, daughter of a condemned pal who swore him to watch over her; the platonic pair sharing a garret above the bar/brothel where he’s something of a local hero.  Robbery, rape, defenestration, redemption, they all lead to a notorious court case where each of our principals either lies to protect someone or ruins a reputation with honesty.  A feast of renunciation.  Director Jack Raymond isn’t much known, but with Herbert Wilcox producing from a play by Ivor Novello & Constance Collier, got names like Art Director David Rawnsley, cinematographer Freddie Young, and actors Felix Aylmer & Leo Genn to play a few scenes as counselors-in-court.  Surprisingly good stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: * The same year, Kay Francis, another Warners star dimmed by strict enforcement of the Production Code, got similarly good results with similar elements in CONFESSION/’37. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/confession-1937.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Note the title card billing that has Chatterton first-billed (on the left), and Walbrook top-billed (on the right).  A first?

KNIFE IN THE WATER / NÓZ W WODZIE (1962)

On his debut feature, Roman Polanski is already a master of elegant malice & menace in a compact three-hander about a day-trip at sea for a married couple and pick-up that goes wrong, but comes out right.  The Polish film industry, still State controlled, but loosening up to accommodate the Polish New Wave, gave Polanski development funds, perhaps unaware this leans more toward Michelangelo Antonioni (L'AVVENTURA/’60;  LA NOTTE/’61), a sort of Existential Shaggy Dog tale.  Driving to their boat, a blasé, slightly put out couple stop (or rather get forcibly stopped) by a solopistic hitchhiker, a college-age jerk who piques their interest.   At worse, he’ll liven things up.  But the boat trip keeps drifting off course, in every possible way as a mano-a--mano pissing contest breaks out between the men after they’re too far out to turn right back.  Then rough games, missing swimmers, missing rescuers, a storm that traps them overnight, lust unbound, a session of pick-up-sticks (!), and a knife for five-finger-filet before it goes overboard.  (The knife in the water.)   All beautifully staged (no easy thing at sea), well acted and neatly structured.  The film more than just advance notice for more than sixty years of film to come.  Listen closely and you’re sure to recognize Polanski doing the dub for the kid.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL:  If you get the Criterion edition, a second disc collects Polanski’s early shorts.  There's your Double-Bill.  And look on Disc One for an excellent interview from 2002 that reveals Polanski at 69 as a dead ringer for Danny Kaye at 69.

CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED (1964)

The late Baby Boom years of the early ‘60s weren’t only fecund with tots but also with fears of their eventual takeover.  No wonder Creepy Kids genre pics came into fashion as The Greatest Generation started having second thoughts on what they’d wrought.  In the U.K., British M-G-M showed the way with VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED/’60 and this follow-up.  While horror house Hammer Films unofficially made it a trilogy with THESE ARE THE DAMNED/’62 coming in-between.*  All three featuring a new wave of dangerous brats (super alien brats at that) bringing death or disease (or could it be salvation?) to earth.  The films unusually grown-up horror, far removed from the super-charged monster movies aimed at kids.  (The elevated tone beginning perhaps on THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL/’51.)  This one fairly effective, but losing punch in shifting its focus from local in the first film (native blue-eyed blondes from interstellar seed) to international (six global Junior U.N. representatives of various ethnicity appearing with a million years of DNA evolution in their blood).  Structured as a chase, the hunt for the six brilliant boys & girls by military and scientific forces, it’s mostly fun, cleverly worked out to end up at an ancient gothic cathedral* (a real one) where the kids gather to hide out while authorities panic.  Briskly helmed by journeyman director Anton Leader, with strong low-key noirish cinematography from Davis Boulton, who’d just shot Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING/’63.  Plus a better than usual cast for the genre than was common at the time.  The kids let their glowing eyes do most of the work; none as memorable as the look-a-like crew in VILLAGE.  But it’s always a kick to note just how much Alan Badel looks like Peter Sellers under a comedy restraining order.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *A triple bill if you start with VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED and follow with THESE ARE THE DAMNED.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/03/village-of-damned-1960.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/these-are-damned-aka-damned-1963.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *No wonder they wind up in a Cathedral, as all the kids born of ‘virgin' mothers.

BUG (2007)

Easy to see how effectively Tracy Letts’ scary thriller might work on stage.  Even with a cast of five, it functions like a classic ‘Lost Souls’ two-hander.  Or does till Letts swerves into Body Horror in the last act.  Creepy stuff with sadder-if-not-wiser waitress Ashley Judd meeting up for the night with shaky military vet Michael Shannon.  The two something of a match: she’s being stalked by violent ‘ex’ Harry Connick Jr (excellent); he’s stalked by demons in his head.  Her monster corporal/his a manifestation of bug infestation.  Yikes!  Their deteriorating psychological condition visually climaxing in a last act coup de théâtre opening curtain.  All dutifully recreated by director William Friedkin in this low-budget, yet technically immaculate film transfer.  But any effect doomed without the possibility to think Shannon’s bug paranoia might be real.  And Shannon, repeating his stage triumph, is far too obviously paranoid schizophrenic, even with those nasty skin bruises, to let us imagine they ain’t self-inflicted.  Judd also too busy working the sensitively angle.  You see what they’re all trying to get across, but the modest result is predictable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  CHILD’S PLAY/’72;  SLEUTH/’72 & 07; DEATHTRAP/’82; the list of stage thrillers that went flat on film is a long one.  Though there’s always Alfred Hitchcock’s DIAL M FOR MURDER/’54 (which hardly changed a thing) and George Cukor’s GASLIGHT/’44 (which changed a lot).  Go figure.  (Look up most of these in our SEARCH BOX - upper left corner.)

THE FLYING ACE (1926)

All-Black ‘Race Film,’ the credits tout an ‘Entire Cast Composed of Colored Artists,’ but that’s in front of the camera.  ‘Behind’ is led by White producer/director Richard E. Norman.  And probably the rest of his crew at this ‘Pop-Up’ Florida studio.  Lots of unusual elements here, good ones, starting with it being what we’d now call a dramedy.  Most race films, made for bookings on the Black Film Circuit or as a Special One-Night Screenings in non-race houses, were either comic burlesques, educational, or for social/religious uplift.  This one’s just entertaining, especially once the action gets up to speed in the third act.  (Even more unusual, it’s come down to us in good physical condition.)  Classic cops & robbers stuff, it opens when a handsome young payroll man for the railroad comes to town a day early with $25 thou in cash, and without his usual guards,  Overheard by three shifty locals: a layabout; a corrupt cop; a high-flying bootlegger (literally high-flying, he does his rum-running by plane).  But, after stopping to see the railway station master, the one with the pretty daughter, he and the payroll go missing and the station master is blamed.  Enter the Flying Ace, a World War One hero, back on his old job as chief railroad investigator.  A regular Sherlock Holmes at figuring out crimes, he’s also not afraid to use his fists or his skills in the air when that booze smuggler takes off with the station manager’s daughter and tries to rape her while flying in his two-seater.  Yikes!  And no auto-pilot!  Double Yikes!  Naturally, payroll is saved, station master & courier cleared, now only the daughter must choose between two upstanding men.  This touch of romance cleverly shot by Norman who holds on their legs; a neat bit of mise-en-scène.  And not the only one in here.  One qualifier, the use of the lightest skinned actor in the film as the WWI hero.  Was it noted by Black audiences at the time?  On the other hand, a more welcome idea sees his assistant, played by a War vet amputee, a one-legged wonder who uses his crutch as a weaponized limb.  Bashing bad guys, pedaling his bike, making instant U-turns, and more or less stealing the pic.

LINK:  Here’s the excellent high-def Library of Congress restoration:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSE-WksQwIg 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Other than a bit of Schubert at the end, the film score has been skillfully arranged from classic film music cues from the late silent era.  Hear them on ’The Pioneers of Movie Music’ on CD and many music streamers.

WAKE UP DEAD MAN (2025)

Third of the Rian Johnson KNIVES OUT murder mysteries; all with Daniel Craig as dapper Deep South free-lance detective Benoit Blanc, now with less accent.  It’s the darkest yet.  Not dark in tone or topic, but in lighting.  Interiors: murky church naves; clubby lamp-lit offices.  Exteriors: dense moody woods; twilight excursions.*  Elsewise, more or less the same Agatha Christie manqué, Johnson even showing us a typed list of literary inspirations for this ‘impossible crime’ knock off.  And if it goes on a little longer than it has to, it’s mostly good fun when a controversial priest gets knocked off mid-mass, and his acolytes are the suspects..  (Never-mind the Pop religious philosophizing.)  A game cast eagerly gnawing the scenery with displays of bravura acting include Josh O’Connor, new young priest under hard-nosed fanatic Father Josh Broslin.  With Glenn Close, spinster church manager; Thomas Haden Church, church property caretaker.  Plus church-going regulars Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Renner; local Police Chief Mila Kunis, many more.  And you won’t drift off during the extended investigation (the murder is ‘solved’ multiple times), because Johnson appears to have had movie stars of his film going youth in mind for the major characters.  See if you can spot his substitutes for Gene Hackman, Cloris Leachman, Nick Nolte, George Segal², Diahann Carroll and (maybe?) Steve McQueen.  It’s more inetersting than solving the obfuscated, but oddly simple murder.

ATTENTION MUST BEPAID:  *The crepuscular cinematography would look infinitely better on the big screen.  With an arc-lamp projector running actual celluloid film stock.  But even in digital, only KNIVES OUT/’19 had a proper theatrical release, grossing well over 300 mill.  GLASS ONION, with but a token release nudged 20.  And WAKE UP?  Only a brief award qualifying vanity release that totaled one & a half million before it went online.  The NetFlix financial model obviously working for someone, just not the vanishing film going public.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  GLASS ONION’s tag ending teased us with a peek at Hugh Grant as Craig’s significant other, suggesting an obvious sequel with the pair doing a Nick & Nora Charles routine on the next case.  What a missed opportunity!

CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY (1951)

Published in 1948, South African writer Alan Paton’s novel put apartheid, his country’s policy of strict racial segregation, in the political conversation as few books had.  A near miss in its first theatrical incarnation (the 1950 Kurt Weill/Maxwell Anderson musical LOST IN THE STARS*), then quickly followed by this film.  Later, two more straight adaptations; on tv in 1958/another feature in ‘95, with the musical filmed in ‘74.  None come off, they’re ‘worthy’ and slightly afraid of what they’ve gotten themselves into.  But at least this 1951 attempt, a passion project for director Zoltan Korda, has real South African verisimilitude going for it, which helps counter the stiffness.  Canada Lee, remembered from Alfred Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT/’44, only made five films, staying mostly on B’way.  (Orson Welles directed him in NATIVE SON.)  Here he’s a rural minister on his first trip to Johannesburg, where people go, but never come back.  His brother, sister and son all lost there one way or another.  Mostly his son, whom he tries to find with help from a 24-yr-old Sidney Poitier, a fellow minister, but savvy to the ways of the city.  (Watching these two, we might be witnessing a passing of the torch.)  But once they do find the son, it’s worse than they could have imagined.  A prominent anti-apartheid progressive murdered, a man whose family lives not far from the minister.   By this point, the film has gained a fair amount of power and passion, somewhat overriding the dirge-like tone Korda holds to.  Paton c-wrote the script, which may explain some of the problems.  But the film still deserves a look, and not only for historical reasons.

LINK:  *Here’s the title track from the original cast album of LOST IN THE STARS.  Anderson with an aching lyric to match Weill’s genius.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygkCMrC5t0Q

PARIS, TEXAS (1984)

While not immune to the usual post-passing downturn in critical reputation, this Sam Shepard item (self-adapting his own story) remains a loving/haunted human comedy under director Wim Wenders’ patient hand and knack of finding just the right location.  Especially as shot by Robby Müller, perfect down to the grain in the film stock.  No surprise to see Shepard with a tale of two brothers, though no rivalry here, instead a Prodigal Brother (and wife) fable.  Older brother Harry Dean Stanton, a lost soul stumbling toward a small Texas town (today’s audiences might assume he’s ‘on the spectrum’), a victim of personal rot as becomes increasingly clear when ‘good’ brother Dean Stockwell flies in to bring him to his home in L.A.  (It’s a Road Pic so detours along the way inevitable.)  There, Stockwell and wife Aurore Clément have been raising Stanton’s eight-yr-old boy for the past four years so there’s a period of adjustment.  But a quickly improving, Stanton is soon determined to find missing wife Nastassja Kinski who's somewhere back in Texas.  And he's thrilled in his undemonstrative way to find his son wants to come with him.  The last act plays out in a different style, less interested in making every step believable or even dramatically justified.  But Shepard can only find his satisfyingly logical conclusion by flipping Stanton from helpless inarticulate to being psychologically articulate as hell.  As if William Inge had been brought in for a rewrite.  (BUS STOP, anyone?)  Meantime, Wenders over-indulges in onanistic Americana quirkiness.  But the film is endearing enough and strange enough, so you go with it even when you (as well as Wenders & Shepard) know better.  Its magical grace worth it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Apparently the script didn’t originally treat Stockwell & Clément in quite such a cavalier manner.  They deserved better.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  Shepard, helped by his high public profile (actor, craggy good looks, glam marriage) no doubt got him more than his fair share of film adaptations.  At his most persuasive, with off-the-charts cool factor, in THE RIGHT STUFF/’83.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-right-stuff-1983.html

NORA PRENTISS (1947)

A stable upper-middle-class husband (wife, two kids, good job/good pay, two-level colonial with garage, cabin in the country) casually gets involved (then entwined) with a younger woman, succumbs to passion and loses everything . . . including the mistress.  An oft-told tale, notable here because of how closely it follows the pattern of Theodore Dreiser’s SISTER CARRIE.*  Or does for the first half.  After that, running amok with melodramatic tropes, plot-driven coincidence and a series of convenient crimes of opportunity.  Ann Sheridan’s penultimate film under Warners contract, she’s the object of desire, a nightclub chanteuse working for gentlemanly club owner Robert Alda, who meets-cute with Dr. Kent Smith after a traffic accident brings her to his office and reminds him what’s missing in his life: passion.  The promise of divorce hovering, but always out of reach.  Then the death of a patient brings swapped identity, bank withdraws, a move cross-country, another promise of divorce, a life in hiding (first for her/then for him), misery, boredom, madness, plastic surgery . . . the works.  Not without its amusing OTT moments of gloom & doom, but with also-ran director Vincent Sherman in charge (often assigned to escort fading stars on their way off the lot) the movie can’t make the stylistic turn it must between the mundane and stark melodrama.  Still, nice to see Warners giving good roles to B-Listers: Kent Smith’s doctor on the mark when he doesn’t have to hit extremes (he also looks a bit like Laurence Olivier who took the equivalent role in William Wyler’s CARRIE - see below), Alda, as mentioned, and a typically excellent turn from reliable Bruce Bennett, the carefree bachelor partner at Smith’s doctor’s office.  Sheridan, who rarely got roles worthy of her talent (Warners execs blinded by the va-va-voom rep they first gave her), handles this Lana Turner-esque role with ease.  But a chance to make something more than claptrap is squandered.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned, William Wyler’s CARRIE/’52 covers all the bases on this wandering husband storyline with stunning precision. Even for those allergic to Jennifer Jones’ studied charms.  While Olivier never did anyting better on film.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/carrie-1952.html

LA GRANJA / THE FARM (2015)

Exceptional, if exceptionally depressing cross-section of Puerto Rican Lower-Depths, told thru multiple stories put together like an interlocked wooden puzzle to form an ensemble portrait of have-not society.  Puerto Rican born writer/director Angel Manuel Soto, whose fast rise took a hit after the poorly received BLUE BEETLE/’23 (not seen here)*, proves just the guy to handle the mobile structure and difficult subject matter.  A barren hospital midwife, working intensive natal care, takes desperate action to ‘save’ an infant for herself.  A promising young boxer and his elderly trainer, picking up small change in the same ring used for lucrative cockfights.  The boy encouraged to bring the same cutthroat tactics to his fights as the killer roosters.  Highschoolers negotiating sex-for-drugs meet-ups, while the cool kids flirt, gossip, put out for the physically attractive and mete out rough justice for those trying to break in to their cliques.  The unlikely sympathetic loner, a bullied fat kid (‘Piggy’) who spies on his sister having sex, steals the camera the boyfriend used to photograph them in action, reads books (!), and swallows condoms of drugs to cart past police check points as a bike riding ‘mule.’  Pretty much everyone dancing to the tune of the aging, but ruthless smalltime neighborhood crime boss.  Soto’s direction, plainspoken, but not without style, perfect for his purpose; emotionally gripping yet letting action speak for itself.  A film natural.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  We’re not so far from Luis Buñuel’s early Mexican post-Neo-Realist masterpiece LOS OLVIDADOS/’50.  Just don’t go looking for any surrealism,    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/los-olvidados-aka-forgotten-ones-young.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Soto apparently back in good graces with the just released/well reviewed buddy/buddy action comedy THE WRECKING CREW/’26.  (not seen here)

FOLLOWING (1998)

Writer/director Christopher Nolan never went to film school, but you’d never guess from this zero-budget feature which looks, talks & acts like a graduation project from the smartest kid in class.  A beginner’s film noir pastiche, it might be afterglow off the ‘80s Neo-Noir revival.  (Perhaps unnoticed because the over-saturated color & formal set-ups of those films gets replaced by mournful monochrome & handheld jitters.)  Jeremy Theobald is physically right as a failing young writer filling his days aimlessly following strangers, hoping to find a story.  Instead, one finds him.  Alex Haw, as a deceptive fellow who just may be following him. Or does he want to get caught in one his burglaries, swiping sellable goods from apartments when he hopes no one is home.  Soon, these two are partners in trade and romance.  You thought Nolan would leave out the classic femme fatale (Lucy Russell)?  But who has the upper hand?  Who’s leading whom?  What’s being staged for effect and who’s being set up to take the fall from the small fortune in cash hidden in an office safe?  Nolan giving this story his preferred non-linear timeline treatment; counting on that approach to add depth, complexity and a puzzling vibe.  (Succeeding at only one of the three.)  Something that’s proved to be an Achilles Heel in about half of Nolan's subsequent films. 

DOUBLE-BILL:  A very short double-bill: Nolan’s apprentice short DOODLEBUG/’97 (it’s included on the Criterion edition of FOLLOWING), playing like some TWILIGHT ZONE episode (or is it ONE STEP BEYOND?), but reduced down to its essence at less than three minutes.  (The disc also holds an alternate ‘Linear Cut’ of FOLLOWING - not seen here,)

FLESH AND BLOOD (1922)

Typical Lon Chaney vehicle from 1922; ten films that year, moving him up from support to top-billed.  (Mostly, naturally his Fagin in OLIVER TWIST puts him below child phenom Jackie Coogan’s Oliver.}  This one something of a template for much of Chaney’s career: Wronged years ago by some powerful man, he nurses a grudge before returning in disguise for his chance at revenge.*  Here, framed by a wealthy businessman via forged signatures, he finaly breaks out of prison after hearing of his wife’s serious illness . . . too late!  He watches from afar as her coffin is carried out of a tenement apartment before spotting his daughter, now a young woman who has no memory of him.  Complications?  ONE: the entire police force on the hunt for the escaped prisoner, so he’s forced to hide in plain sight disguised as a twisted cripple, sheltered by Chinatown Tong Lord Li Fang (Noah Beery!) while hunting down the true guilty party, that businessman.  Complication TWO: his daughter is about to be engaged to the son of that very man, the villain Chaney plans to take down.  Yikes!  Alas, three major obstacles hold the film down.  ONE: Chaney’s oddly ineffective disguise as a cripple with twisted legs and crutches.  (Likely more uncomfortable for Lon to play than for us to watch.)  TWO: Irving Cummings’ duller than dull direction.  (Cummings peaked in the ‘40s with light fare at 20th/Fox.)  And THREE: sadly subfusc surviving picture elements.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Chaney was one of the fortunate few who went to M-G-M and was paired with a series of truly outstanding, visually oriented directors..   Tod Browning, George W. Hill, Benjamin Christensen, Herbert Brenon (far better in silents than in Talkies) and Victor Seastrom whose HE WHO GETS SLAPPED/’24 (co-starring Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Tully Marshall) is a paradigm of the standard Chaney narrative formula.

DER TIGER / THE TANK (2025)

DAS BOOT in a TANK.  At least, that’s the idea till the last reel takes a couple of sharp right turns in a double epilogue.  Your reaction to them (it’s a big ask!) sure to determine your response to this generally excellent German POV WWII film.  Co-writer/director Dennis Gansel, with numerous episodes of tv’s BOOT behind him, an obvious choice (and a good one) to helm as we tag along with the five-man crew of a German ‘Tiger’ tank.  Theirs the last vehicle to make it out of Stalingrad in the 1943 retreat. And now the first sent back in.  The mission?  Retrieve a Lieutenant Colonel along with his notebook of codes, plans and final goals covering the next phase of the war.  Orders being orders (and Germans being Germans), the men mount up with only minor grumbling, driving their tank thru corpse-filled battlefields and blasted village remains.  At one point, hiding from enemy tanks underwater in their submergible tank.  (Now we’re really redoing DAS BOOT.)  Believably handled and often suspenseful (land mines; engine start-ups; fuel shortages; partisans), at least we’re spared the true deafening noise levels inside those metal echo chambers.  (Thanks tech people!)  They also keep things as apolitical as possible so we can root for our crew; saving Nazi atrocities for soldiers met along the way.  (A cheat and a cliché that’s been standard procedure for decades of largely sympathetic German-made WWII films.  Non-German ones, too.)  Well staged and acted, without blowing the budget on CGI overkill.  But just when we reach our destination, after sacrifice and loss to man and machine, the storyline shifts into something out of HEART OF DARKNESS before spinning again into one of those cop-out endings so popular back in UFA silent cinema days.  See Lang, Murnau, Weine.

DOUBLE-BILL:  DAS BOOT/’81, go for the 209" ;director’s cut.