THE DOG STARS (2026)

Now in his mid-80s, Ridley Scott is on a tear losing staggering amounts of other people’s money with every new project.  And eight more already announced.  The idea is when the Grim Reaper comes a’knockin’, Scott can say: ‘Sorry Grim, I’m already booked.’*  Exclude a pre-sold property like GLADIATOR II (disappointing in plenty of other ways   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/01/gladiator-ii-2024.html) and he’s had nothing but poorly received flops for a decade.  Now we get something no one asked for: a romantic, action-packed, near future dystopian fable.  Another major flop . . . and also the best film he’s made in years.  Even in handling the storyline; Scott’s Achilles heel.  Based on Peter Heller’s straight-forward bestseller helps: A post viral plague, a sparsely populated Earth, landsman survivers, roaming/ultra-violent scavengers, a Fight to Live another day.  (Make that Live to Fight another day.)  Easy.  Tall, hunky mechanic & pilot Jacob Elordi (with dog) is teamed with grizzled vet Josh Brolin (morphing into Nick Nolte), the two stocked with a warehouse of ordinance.  But when Jasper the dog goes down, widower Elordi asks ‘Is That All There Is?’ and takes off to find . . . something.  Crash-landing on Guy Pearce's isolated ranch, he finds daughter Margaret Qualley and so much in common.  For one thing, these gentle souls have all lost their spouses!   Another attack and a flight on the now fixed plane brings them to Scorched Earth Utopia . . . but is it?  Some of this is just silly, but handsomely observed (Scott’s strength), with four underrated actors perfectly cast.  Perhaps if it didn’t end three times, or found a new puppy for Elordi, it might have broken the current Ridley commercial curse.  Still, worth hanging in for.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Flashbacks to Elordi and his late wife include Jasper, the German Shepard, as a pup.  Only the pup’s fur is darker than the grown dog we’ve already met.  The opposite of what happens when that breed matures.  Scott’s reached the ‘Your Eminence’ stage where no one tells you when you’re making a mistake.  Including making a dystopian mediocrity when the genre is played out.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *An old George Burns joke based on his advance Las Vegas booking when he was approaching 100.

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE (1985)

A Hallowe’en tie-in article touting SCREAM, QUEEN! MY NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET/’19 , a documentary on the making (and subsequent history) of the second ELM STREET fright-flick, and its current status as an ‘80s horror pic with a closeted gay sub-text (not so ‘sub’), along with the closeted gay actor in his first lead in it, hooks you in.  Heck, why leave the idea as a documentary?  This is feature film material.  Reboot the series!  But having never seen an ELM STREET, best to watch the film before the doc.  No?  Bad idea.  ELM STREET had already lost Johnny Depp (does he die in #1?), but as Part 2 had even bigger grosses than the first, how bad could it be?* (Rhetorical question.)  With writer/director Wes Craven replaced by crass horror specialist Jack Sholder and debuting scripter David Chaskin (only two further feature credits), the quick answer is very bad.  (Okay, it’s also the long answer.)  Above and below the line/in front and behind the camera; insultingly bad.  Featuring more bare male chests than a BAYWATCH marathon, but nary a fright or a giggle in this all-White suburban body-horror about creepy slasher ‘Freddy’ who shows up in the nightmares of 26-yr-old High Schooler Mark Patton, looking thin, miserable and out of condition.  And that’s before ‘Freddy’ bursts out of his flaccid bod as a corporal monster.  Featuring laughable effects, nonsense for logic, and Romper Room level acting.  (Are all the NIGHTMAREs this bad?)  It feels more like it's trying for a John Carpenter/HALLOWEEN/’78 vibe rather than Wes Craven.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Once upon a time, income on sequels were generally keyed less on intrinsic quality than on Box-Office results from the previous series release.  It often meant a one-film delay before a new word-of-mouth kicked in.  Pre-2000 James Bond films chart this theory nearly perfectly.  But recent decades no longer follow old patterns as the internet made old marketing theories and practices obsolete.

AS THE EARTH TURNS (1937)

In his twenties, he worked concept & special-effects on Golden Age Disney animation, then took to the air for his WWII service, returned for mostly non-theatrical, then won the 1950 documentary Oscar® with THE TITAN: The Story of Michelangelo.*  But what Richard Lyford is now remembered for are his amateur films, made as a teen film enthusiast.  Particularly his last, a forty-five minute sci-fi/mad scientist (chamber) spectacular.  How’d a kid in the Pacific Northwest do this?  And on a dime.  (Ever wonder what Ed Wood might have done if he had talent as well as moxie?  Here’s your chance.)  Spiffed up with decent restoration and a good music track by Ed Hartman, Lyford acts, directs, edits, shoots & produces this 45" b&w cautionary about the search to find Mad Scientist Pax who’s threatening world destruction unless peace breaks out on Earth.  Luckily, girl reporter Barbara Berjer has a lead on Pax and a mentor with pull in senior reporter Arther Verill (Alan Hoelting, not bad among the all-amateur cast).  Heading North by NorthWest to track the guy, the daring twosome surmount obstacles thru action-packed chases and adorable miniature special effects to reach Pax’s mountain cave lab.  There’s only one bad sequence (Berjer's kidnapping in the forest), but the rest of the film is what you always hoped a good Poverty Row Monogram feature would look like.  Great fun, legitimately exciting at times, and weirdly prescient in all sorts of ways.  The film’s been tagged as Early Indie or Experimental.  It’s not; more like the prize-winning amateur club fan entry of 1937.  Had Lyford’s momentum in commercial cinema not been stopped in its tracks by the war, who knows what he might have given us.  Watch with tolerance, but watch.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *TITAN, itself repurposed from an earlier release, available free on various platforms.  (Alas in pretty rough shape.)  It too was cribbed, inspiring the one & a half-reel intro that was in the RoadShow presentations of THE AGONY AND THE ECSTACY/’67.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/06/agony-and-ecstasy-1965.html

PANDORUM (2009)

Magpie doesn’t begin to do justice to this End-of-Days/Brave-New-World mash-up from co-writer/director Christian Alvart, a regular burgoo of ‘borrowed’ tropes from Noah’s Arc/Space Frontier stories, all seriously overdue at the DVD library.  Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster wake from hyper-sleep capsules on The Elysium, a huge vessel carting thousands of Earthlings on a long-distance/multi-year trip to colonize a replacement planet.  So where is everybody?  Searching for the control room on this Cruise Liner of a space-ship, Foster gets lost, then waylaid by various survivors and challenged by mysterious monsters.  It’s the ‘pandorum’ virus doing the dirty work, turning people into Cos-Play Zombies.  And should they survive these vicious SPLAT machines, the ship gets locked into oblivion countdown.  The best gag in the pic is how fit everyone looks!*  Those sleep pods work better than Ozempic and a free gym membership.  Meanwhile, back in the dark and grungy ship corridors, our lost brigade pretend they’re remaking THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (different sort of ship) a zillion miles from Earth. (Though a late twist does land them in hot water.)  Meanwhile, Quaid makes like Captain Nemo at the control panel; good guy or bad?  With feral fighting female Antje Traue for Foster to favor when not mourning his apparent widowerhood.  Oh, let’s not forget everyone’s least missed racist ‘80s cliché, the disposable Person-of-Color supporting actor.  Also on display, cut & paste action editing laid on with a trowel so you can’t tell action figure A from action figures B-thru-R, smothered in a propulsive/percussive score goosing up the pace like NFL highlights.  Nonetheless, secret happy ending: the film flopped badly enough to put the kibosh on two planned sequels.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  You wonder how post-millennial audiences handle the mesmerizing slowness of something like 2001/’68 when they’ve been inundated with ADHD speed in their space operas?  That distinctive slowness, one of things that made Kubrick’s masterpiece stand out and play in a believable manner, now hard to imagine getting a positive rating from influencers.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/08/2001-space-odyssey-1968.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *One more good joke in here . . . but was it intentional?  You know those Emergency Light Sticks all the hardware stores stock?  You probably keep one in your closet for a power outage?  The ones where you shatter the interior glass tube and it glows with a greenish light?  Turns out, they’re standard issue for space travel two-thousand years on.

THOMPSON’S LAST RUN (1986)

Back when it was something of an event when an old-time movie star hit the small screen, Robert Mitchum splashed-down in Dan Curtis’s WWII maxi-series THE WINDS OF WAR/’83 and its follow-up WAR AND REMEMBRANCE/’88.  Mitchum’s disengagement growing steadily over the nineteen episode run.  Turning seventy between all that heavy-lifting prestige, he’s more engaged and far more animated in some of the tv pics he started to embrace.  None more so than this modest ‘find,’ tonally something of a  partner to THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE/’73.*  Here, he’s in prison for his safecracking ways when a surprise visitor comes by; niece Kathleen York, his only living relative other than her little boy.  Unaware he’s about to be transferred to Texas on a life sentence, and desperate for a new start (she’s been turning tricks to get by, she steals Mitchum from Wilford Brimley, the about to retire Sheriff handling the friendly transfer.  These two geezers with a long history between them, the inevitable cat-and-mouse chase nicely structured by writer John Carlen and believably staged by director Jerrold Freedman.  Even a neat double-helix bit of crisscross justice right at the end.  Keep expectations in check and swallow hard at some contrivances in the first half of the third act, and you just might be pleasantly surprised at how satisfying this is.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *EDDIE COYLE no modest/pretty good surprise, but a full bore masterpiece that holds its cards close to the vest and speaks quietly.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-friends-of-eddie-coyle-1973.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  A foot race at the end features a lot of stunt doubling for a wheezing Brimley; whereas Mitchum appears to be doing all his own running.  No slow-cranking fakery for Bob!  What a pity no one thought to steal the scene from GUARDIE E LADRI / COPS AND ROBBERS/’51 that sees Robber Totò totally running out of steam just as Cop Aldo Fabrizi also runs out of steam, their chase continuing on foot, but at a slow, exhausted crawl.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/guardie-e-ladri-cops-and-robbers-1951.html

SLEEP, MY LOVE (1948)

Now in her mid-forties, Claudette Colbert was just off THE EGG AND I/’47 (that alarmingly successful city-folk-go-hayseed comedy that not only birthed Ma & Pa Kettle, but eventually GREEN ACRES), when she made this transparent ripoff of GASLIGHT/’44.  (One of many, GASLIGHT itself a remake.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/05/gaslight-1944.html)  ‘Presented’ by Mary Pickford, though husband Charles ’Buddy’ Rogers takes screen credit, it’s impeccably produced in all ways but the one that counts: the screenplay.  Again, there’s a ‘caring’ husband (Don Ameche in the Charles Boyer role) ‘gaslighting’ wife Colbert to drive her nuts & grab an inheritance (Ingrid Bergman’s spot), while Robert Cummings takes on the Joseph Cotten role of guardian angel.  Knowing the audience is going to be ahead of the action, this iteration reveals the villain by reel two, but has more than enough juice left from cast & crew to hold interest.  (Supporting players include Raymond Burr, George Coulouris, Key Luke, Rita Johnson, Ralph Morgan and a stellar Hazel Brooks.)   Plus director Douglas Sirk covering studio sets & exteriors like a curious crab.*  (Influenced by George Cukor’s use of vertical tracking in the 1944 GASLIGHT?)  A tricky shoot-out climax especially fine.  Shot with noir trimmings by Joe Valentine, a Hitchcock regular at the time.  All good. If only the script knew when to tighten the screws and when to loosen up.  Poor Claudette has to go ON or OFF crazy more often than 'La Sonnambula’ in Bellini’s opera.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   *Sirk & Colbert had better luck with THUNDER ON THE HILL/’51.  And Colbert got closer to GASLIGHT in THE SECRET FURY/’50.       https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/12/thunder-on-hill-1951.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-secret-fury-1950.html

BURNING / BEONING (2018)

With just seven features over three decades, Korean writer/director Lee Chang-dong  has a buzzy new film out (POSSIBLE LOVE/’26 - not seen here), his first since this award-winning creep-out from eight years ago.  At once straight-forward and nuanced, it moves like a daydream following the affairs of a lonely/longing young man (Yoo Ah-in), living by himself at his fast emptying rural family farm close enough to Tokyo for his warehouse job, while considering himself a budding writer.  (William Faulkner his favorite.)  On a work delivery, he bumps into an old acquaintance (Jeon Jong-seo), one-time neighbor who went to his grade school a few years behind him.   Then it’s chat, drinks, bed.  Yoo Ah-in only looks shy; Jeon Jong-seo a bit of a flake.  And while they’ve only just been reacquainted, and she’s off the next day for a dance/music course in Africa, perhaps he could watch her cat while she’s away?   But when she returns, she’s partnered with a smooth operator (Steven Yeun), a rich guy with an odd, indiscriminately seductive vibe.  The rest of the film, which involves disappearance and maybe murder, invokes metaphor, a term discussed by the literate threesome; one you’ll grasp long before anyone on screen does.  And that’s a problem as the film feels stretched out of all proportion.  Two and a half hours for something that might have fit in a half-hour anthology format.  Pretty thin gruel.  It would have worked better as one of those tri-part portmanteau films that seem to have gone out of fashion.*  It’s well done by all; and has a finish both obvious and satisfying.  Perhaps a period setting was needed to add social heft and the difficulty of breaking etiquette between classes, giving reason to reticence.  Perhaps Lee Chang-dong’s new film lives up to the buzz.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *With current financial  models governing theatrical releases, are the days of portmanteaux pix gone for good?  Back in the 1950s, Somerset Maugham alone had three (ten stories worth); while in Italy, Vittorio De Sica was likely champ.  Three or four of them on his own (plus another in English) and multiple contributions to ones with multiple directors.

MARS ATTACKS (1996)

Tim Burton functions best when the budget is tight and content pushes him past his comfort zone.  (In other words, not one of his ALICE films.)  So why is MARS ATTACKS so much fun?  The exception that proves the rule?  It could lose a reel or two, but you’ll be giggling too hard to mind.  Based not on a book (comic or otherwise), but on a series of TOPPS Chewing Gum Trading Cards*, story and tone largely inspired by ‘50s Sci-Fi (think THIS ISLAND EARTH/’55; WAR OF THE WORLDS/’53*).  With a huge, unnecessary All-Star cast showing who can get their laughs within the agogic Burton rhythm (Jack Nicholson, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Lukas Haas, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, and especially Sylvia Sidney can; everyone else can’t).  But the film’s propulsion doesn’t come from smart dialogue, dumb gags or narrative inertia, but from its elegant high-concept design and lo-fi execution.  Particularly out in space when enemy space craft ominously orbit Earth.  Twenty years after STAR WARS, these may be retro toy models, but grandly purposed and displayed like the imaginatively painted box the scale model kits came in.  Commercial artwork that both ignited and ultimately limited the Burton æsthetic.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  *The idea man behind the TOPPS card series, Len Brown, isn’t properly credited on screen, but did recently get this excellent NYTimes obit.  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/arts/len-brown-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1

DOUBLE-BILL/SPOILERS/LINK:  *Just as WAR OF THE WORLDS had the aliens defeated not by weapons of mass destruction, but by ‘the little things,’ viruses and such, so here, where they are felled by a double dose of sub-operatic kitsch: Rudolf Friml operetta sung by Grand Old Opry’s Slim Whitman.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/10/this-island-earth-1955.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/war-of-worlds-1953.html

THE REPLACEMENTS (2000)

In a film full of mostly bad surprises, the first is that it took 13 years for Hollywood to turn the 1987 NFL players’ strike, and the brief series of games using semi-pros & amateur ‘replacements’ into a film.  Such a 'can't-miss'  idea.  The second is that, while the template follows 1974's THE LONGEST YARD, at core this is a PRO-scab celebration.  (And you assumed Hollywood was purely closed-shop/Pro-Union in thought & deed.)  Third is: Who knew A.I. was writing major motion pictures in 2000?  (Even scarier, it’s not bad.  Grade it a ‘Gentleman’s B.’*)  Faceless journeyman director Howard Deutch should have been just the guy for this, but his on-field completion rate is low, and the cast either works the gags too hard (see Jon Favreau) or carbon copies past triumphs without background seasoning.  (Jack Warden & Gene Hackman knowing a lost cause when they see one.)  As a once-promising quarterback, Keanu Reeves went to the trouble of putting on enough pounds to unchisel his facial structure, but is ultimately defeated by a zero chemistry girlfriend.  And yet this ain’t a ‘can’t miss’ idea for nothing; the damn thing more or less gets by on field goals or punts it's way out of trouble.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Grade inflation has upped the old Gentleman’s C to B.  (Actual scripter Vince McKewin, last of his three feature credits.)  ALSO: Attention wandering?  Decide if sportscaster Pat Summerall or John Madden is the worse actor.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Not always the case with ‘can’t miss’ football pics.  Eight years on, George Clooney fell on his ass with a look at the early days of pro-football, LEATHERHEADS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/07/leatherheads-2008.html

THE GANGSTER, THE COP, THE DEVIL / AKINJEON (2019)

Slick, ultra-professional crime thriller from South Korean writer/director Lee Won-tae (just optioned for Stateside remake*), a dandy slice of violent police procedural mayhem that lifts off when a brainy serial killer (your standard super-ego sociopath) chooses  the wrong guy as his latest victim since inside the pricey car he regularly targets, no thick-set CEO to stab at will, but a thick-set mob boss who fights back.  Injured, but alive after the killer takes off, it means the cops already on the case at last have an eyewitness to interview.  If only the survivor weren’t also a wanted criminal, a top player in the city’s gangster scene.  Played by vet villain Ma Dong-seok (shades of old-time movie star Wallace Beery, he reluctantly winds up playing ‘down-low’ partner to cock-of-the-walk police detective Kim Mu-yeol (shades of now-time movie star Brad Pitt.  Both men outstanding, each with his own reasons for finding the serial killer first.  They also have lots of backup and lots of rivals to fend off.  A neat set-up, and Lee Won-tae directs the hell out of it, much helped by Se-Seung Park nighttime lensing.  For once in one of these things, you can really follow the plot along with the elaborate fights.  Too bad Won-Tae is so addicted to over-editing, as the film's flow would benefit from a few one-take/two-shots to vary pace, especially when the leads are working out who’s gonna get what out of this unusual collaboration.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *A cleverly satisfying have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too ending begs for a follow-up.  No doubt visions of franchise helped set-up remake rights.  Did they try a sequel in Korea?  And that Stateside remake?  Keanu Reeves attached.

HER HIGHNESS AND THE BELLBOY (1945)

Beautiful as ever at 31 (with ravishing portrait shots from cinematographer Harry Stradling); the acting a bit more animated than usual; lucking out with fast-rising Robert Walker as co-star, stepping in for a just drafted Mickey Rooney; and getting a solid hit* out of the standard issue Euro-Royalty meets Stateside Commoner playbook; yet for Hedy Lamarr at M-G-M, the writing was already on the wall and her contract wasn’t renewed.  (She only made two more A-list pics: C.B. DeMille’s SAMSON AND DELILAH/’49 and Bob Hope’s MY FAVORITE SPY/’51 before her acting career began to fade away.)  It's directed by M-G-M company-man Richard Thorpe, but family-friendly producer Joe Pasternak pulls the strings behind this sentimental corn that sees NYC hotel bellboy Walker ditch bedridden girlfriend June Allyson once he mistakes visiting Princess Lamarr’s friendly manner at the hotel for love.  Pasternak being Pasternak, there’s a big musical sequencer so Allyson can get off the couch where she paints porcelain figurines (really!) to sing and dance in her dreams.  (Nothing physically wrong with the lass, she just needs a proposal from Walker’s distracted bellboy to receive a ‘love cure.’)  Loaded with ill-used M-G-M contract players (Agnes Moorehead as a chilly royal relative; Carl Esmond as designated fiancé, slow-witted ‘dese-dems-dose’ Rags Ragland for comic relief) . . . and the damn thing goes on for nearly two hours.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  You’d think these impossible Royalty/Commoner romantic dramedies would have died off ages ago.  But no; still being made today. ROMAN HOLIDAY/’53 (Wyler; Peck, Hepburn) still the ideal.  Best from M-G-M: THE STUDENT PRINCE.  Worst from M-G-M: THE STUDENT PRINCE.  See LINKS for details.  (Hint: the bad one directed by this film’s Richard Thorp and produced by this film’s Joe Pasternak.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-student-prince-in-old-heidelberg.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-student-prince-1954.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Keep in mind, just about anything made money in 1945, the last year of the war seeing Hollywood’s all-time highest attendance numbers.

THE ARENA (1956)

Before prolific tele-scripter Rod Serling discovered he could sidestep network censorship by sneaking (mildly) provocative ideas into his work under the guise of fantasy/Sci-Fi in THE TWILIGHT ZONE, he wrote for various prestige anthology shows.  So-called Golden Age TV like this hour-long drama for STUDIO ONE.  (Under Westinghouse sponsorship at the time, most editions retain the awkwardly ‘live’ original commercials; mini tele-plays for new appliances and actress Betty Furness.)  This one, a political drama about a senatorial feud played out on the Senate floor, a fair representation of the Serling model & method.   Just appointed Senator Wendell Corey holds a grudge against his state’s senior U.S. senator (director John Cromwell in a rare actor gig) who had denounced Corey’s corrupt senator father.  Corey’s newly hired advisor, Chester Morris, superb as a wise/wily D.C. operator, knows to play the long game, but on a drunk, blurts out an old damning secret.  Will Corey use the bomb or take the high road?  The same moral dilemma supplies the narrative motor in Gore Vidal’s THE BEST MAN/’64.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-best-man-1964.html  It also shares ARENA director Franklin J. Schaffner.)  Main reason to watch is to check on one-time Hollywood A-lister Morris in a return to form with far better material than Hollywood offered after he’d slipped to programmers.  But the unfortunate main takeaway is seeing how commonplace Serling looks without genre camouflage and metaphoric trimmings.*  Censorship did him a favor.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Past THE TWILIGHT ZONE (try ‘To Serve Man’), Serling’s subcutaneous message technique (including his beloved O’Henry twist endings) is best seen in PLANET OF THE APES/’66 (again with director  Schaffner).  But his best without obfuscating genre elements is SEVEN DAYS IN MAY/’64 under John Frankenheimer, another Golden Age tv director.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/02/seven-days-in-may-1964.html

WORLD WAR III / JANG-E JAHANI SEVOM (2022)

For those who think Romania writer/director Cristian Mungiu (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS/’07) isn’t tackling enough of his signature Modern Romanian Misérables tales*, here’s Iranian writer/director Houman Seyyedi to the rescue.  If that’s what you’re looking for, he’s damn good at it.  This award-winning downer, a convincingly tricked out nihilistic fable features Mohsen Tanabandeh as a homeless, middle-aged day laborer drifting from town to town after losing wife & child to an earthquake.  Finding temp construction work on a low-budget Holocaust film, he’s roped in (along with other day laborers) as a Concentration Camp extra in gas chamber scenes where he and his faceless building crew get treated a bit too realistically.  There’s a sense of irony run amuck as film production herders rush from shot to shot to keep on schedule.  But Seyyedi has much worse in mind than unsettling cos-play as Tanabandeh’s character inexorably sinks toward disaster: tapped to play Hitler; sleeping in the unheated gas chamber set, forced to double on early call kitchen duty, blackmailed by relatives of the local whore who secretly moves in with him on site.  Luckily, since he can’t read lines, he ‘acts’ by counting up to his next move; dialogue to be looped in later.  But any remaining laughs freeze in your throat as a series of missed communications lead to on-set tragedy and a revenge any Nazi resistence fighter would envy.  The film a bottomless black hole of Misérables’ revenge.  Fascinating, but very bleak.

DOUBL-BILL/LINK:  *Cristian Mungiu used different paths and more complicated character motivation to cover similar territory in GLORY/’16, where no-good-deed-goes-unpunished.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/01/glory-slava-2016.html

THE PAPER TIGERS (2018)

American-born Quoc Bao Tran, with a background in Martial Arts action-editing, made his writing/directing feature debut on this good-natured, if rueful Kung Fu comedy.  Modestly released to even more modest sampling, he’s put out nothing since.  A shame as half of the film has a lot of fun following three one-time Kung Fu prodigies who reunite after 15 years for the funeral of their beloved former master.  All three nearing some sort of mid-life crisis, all three sure they’re still unbeatable, if a bit rusty from age, disuse or injury.  A workout or two should bring it all back.  Yes?  Making fast enemies out of later students now claiming the late master’s legacy, they’re easily goaded into challenge matches only to find clean fights, won or lost, can turn enemies into comrades.  And if these formal grudge matches can’t fix all life problems, flexing the old disciplines still has lessons for them.  Heard this one before?*  But as long as Quoc Bao Tran holds to ‘buddy’ tropes & character comedy, the cast is able to make something out of this ‘curate’s egg’ of a film.  First-among-equals Alain Uy as a divorced dad trying too hard to cover all bases a particular pleasure.  But the script keeps slipping in moral uplift, kidding-on-the-square fortune cookie aphorisms and nods toward the power of positive thinking.  And we’re not even mentioning a final climax against a deadly legacy usurper/villain who’ll be defeated if one of our former prodigies can only ‘feel the force’ once more.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Not seen here, but is this what COBRA KAI/’18 - ‘25 manages  better?

THE GENERAL (1998)

John Boorman’s superb direction on the rise and fall of Dublin gangster Martin Cahill can’t overcome problems in a script by . . . John Boorman.  Outmaneuvering the police in one crime caper after another, Cahill became something of a folk hero after record-breaking heists in the ‘80s.  (Around the same time, ‘Dapper’ John Gotti built similar public appeal in the States simply by being well-dressed where Cahill was slovenly.)  Boorman shows some of the violence & collateral damage, but largely soft-soaps the thuggish aspects of Cahill & Co., working the underdog/Irish darling tropes with stylish WideScreen monochrome (Seamus Deasy lensed) and a shitload of good acting.  Normally, Brendan Gleeson’s broad-stroke Cahill would have blown everyone else off the screen, but he gets a run for his money with the whole cast, especially Police Captain nemesis Jon Voight.  (Forgotten what a great actor he can be?  Not Boorman who directed him in DELIVERANCE/’72 and brought him in as a last-minute replacement.)  So what goes wrong here?*  It starts at the beginning, which is actually the end, with Cahill assassinated.  It sure looks like an IRA thing.  And is there anything audiences are more weary of than the Irish ‘troubles?’  Cahill was more likely an IRA victim.  (Is the answer known?)  In any event, he wouldn't play ball with them.  Perhaps Boorman picked the wrong POV to tell the tale.  Here, the gang who couldn’t shoot straight is the hapless/incompetent Dublin police force.  The bane of Voight’s despairing Javert.  It’s an off-the-beat option that might have refreshed a lot of threadbare story beats.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Well, there’s that misleading title.

MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA / CHELOVEK S KINO-APPARATOM (1929)

Experimental Russian film journalist Dziga Vertov (the nom de kino means Spinning Top), was born Denis Kaufman, older brother to cinematographers Mikhail, who shot this, and Boris, who didn’t.*  Other than France’s Jean Vigo, Vertov likely owns the biggest reputation on the smallest body of work in film; basically the hour & change seen here.  But while Vigo an immediate natural behind the camera, Vertov looks like he had to work hard for every shot; plus self-burdened with the goal of creating Cinematic Esperanto for the masses.  He’d been making progressively less objective/more artistically subjective ‘kino reports’ since shortly after the 1917 revolution, but MAN still a stylistic leap.  (Though so many of the films missing or unavailable; who knows?)  Yet the film marks not a beginning but an end for Vertov; only one major project remaining: THREE SONGS OF LENIN/’34.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/three-songs-about-lenin-tri-pesni-o.html)  And he was only 38.  (Another case of Stalin shooting down an artist who was ‘too formalistic?’)  Long available only in shabby prints that didn’t help Vertov’s case, a recent BFI restoration (with a new score from Michael Nyman) brings back visual mischief & luster.  So, in hindsight, Vertov now seems to be one of the pioneers in the new City Portrait films coming into vogue.  Brother Mikhail would make one (IN SPRING) from Kyiv later this year; while 1930 saw Boris shooting Vigo’s cinematic letter from Nice, while the most famous of the lot, PEOPLE ON SUNDAY, from Berlin, involved Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak & Edgar Ulmer.  CAMERA a speed tour of Moscow, celebrating everything from street tramps to nude mud bathers, trolleys to kinemas, parades, delis, fashion and anything electronic that spins.  All handled in clever multiplane action and edited as closely as a pedestrian's swerve to avoid motorcars in crowded streets.  Building toward self-operating animatronic cameras and rapide montage Abel Gance would envy.  The film a marvel, though possibly an empty one.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Vertov obviously closely followed international trends, but it’s still a surprise to see so many Buster Keaton gags.  Buster wildly popular in Moscow at the time.  Look for lifts straight out of SHERLOCK JR./’24 and THE CAMERAMAN/’28.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Boris was already living in Poland at the time and would soon go to France where he shot for Jean Vigo, eventually debuting in the States on Elia Kazan’s ON THE WATERFRONT/’54.

THE IPCRESS FILE (2022)

The insatiable maw of streaming services has recently glommed onto various iconic star-making suspense films of the 1960s & ‘70s.   Movies one might have thought untouchable.  What young British actor (and they’re always Brits) would want to risk their RIPLEY against Alain Delon's in PURPLE NOON/’60?  Compete with Edward Fox’s JACKAL/’73?  Or take on Michael Caine in THE IPCRESS FILE?*  Yet this is the one that sparks on all cylinders, indeed, a big improvement from the Caine/Sidney J. Furie 1965 original.  (Caine great; director Furie a hack.)  For a change, its six episodes never feel padded, scripter John Hodge able to top off the tank entirely from the Len Deighton novel.  With Joe Cole bringing skinny, but steel-tested strength to the film’s making-of-Harry Palmer-spy concept.  (The famous black glass frames slightly thinner than Caine’s.)  The same Cold War setting, now opening with some backstory on how Palmer’s Berlin blackmarket past sent him to jail; and the subsequent spy-in-training deal that got him released.  Turns out, he’s a natural at the game and soon has a major assignment concurrent with a JFK visit to the U.K. while international nuclear scuttlebutt plays out in the plot’s foreground.  (No surprise, the two events merge toward the climax.)  I’d forgotten how much is lifted from THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (published ‘59; film ‘62), but it works just as well here.  Great support from a lesser known cast (only Tom Hollander's spy boss a familiar face*), but all spot on under James Watkins unusually site specific direction.  This IPCRESS a paradigm of a streaming remake.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DB:  The ‘65 IPCRESS worth it for early Caine (those gourmet cans of fish, now quite ‘in’).  So too both RIPLEYs, though René Clément’s PURPLE NOON makes author Patricia Highsmith a moralist, while even a very chilly Andrew Scott as Ripley in the remake is unable to make eight episodes seem necessary.  As for DAY OF THE JACKAL, the Fred Zinnemann original is the one truly great film of the bunch while the Eddie Redmayne rethink thought it a good idea to make him a family man.  Yikes!  (Check ‘em out using our Search Engine.  Upper Left-hand corner on the main site.  E-phone users scroll down to find the Web Version link.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Palmer works for Hollander who runs an MI6 offshoot.  Think SLOW HORSES but staffed with high achievers rather than disgraced also-rans.

THE GRANDMASTER / YI DAI ZONG SHI (2013)

Thanks to Harvey Weinstein, Stateside and Euro audiences for Wong Kar-Wai’s action-charged/poetically-realized bio-pic on mid-20th Century Martial Arts master Ip Man had to make do with his slaughtered edit, trimmed from 123" to 108" with sequences re-ordered for ‘clarity.’  (See: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-grandmaster-2013.html)   An egregious act against a well-established director unequaled since The Ladd Company lopped and ‘linearized’ Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA/’84 in similar fashion for similar reasons, down from 3'49" to 2'19".  That short edit tanked before it disappeared, completely replaced by the fuller cut.  Things didn’t turn out as well for Wong Kar-Wai after the Weinstein desecration grossed a bare 6 mill Stateside while the longer/far superior Asian release did better overseas, finally appearing internationally from a different company, though still not much seen over here.*  The LINK above to our post on the Weinstein edit remains largely accurate in story description, but everything in this longer cut feels more lived in, more elegiac, more drop dead gorgeous (main scenes shot on super 35mm/special effects mostly digital).  Ironically, neither version especially more or less clear in narrative effect.  (Hey, it’s Wong Kar-Wai; soul rather than story.)  But the relationships feel deeper; the sense of missed opportunity and lost time really register; and the Martial Arts set pieces gain by having more space around them.  That banister balancing in the 64 Hands battle about as thrilling as these things get.  (Again, for story detail, click on the LINK above.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  In the earlier post I was dead wrong about The Weinsteins eventually re-releasing a ‘Director’ Cut,’ happily those rights went elsewhere.

COLD STORAGE (2026)

Good gross-out fun (Evil Fungus from Outer Space division), but only if you’re willing to work with it.  The ‘tell’ in producer/scripter David Koepp’s method of madness, hiding in plain sight, is substandard F/X (practical & CGI), purposefully a few steps behind state-of-the-art.  Sure, the film’s modest ten mill. budget brings limits to director Johnny Campbell’s options, but Koepp* is less interested in scaring the shit out of you than spoofing the snot out of your nose.  (Ewww!  Yuck!)  It doesn’t all work; Campbell not up to the subterfuge.  But if you accept the concept of a 1950s Alien Cautionary (long buried Killer Fungus from Space threatens to melt in its unstable deep-freeze storage unit and infect all mankind) revived in a modern time frame, the film offers a classy cast eager to run with the ball.  Liam Neeson as a Cassandra of a scientist (getting those laughs he missed in THE NAKED GUN); Leslie Manville as his once-and-future ‘Girl Friday,’ and Vanessa Redgrave, having fun for a change as a suicidal secret weapon.  Plus young, minimum-wage storage warehouse guards over their head in alien gore (Joe Keery by way of STRANGER THINGS; Sosie Bacon by way of Kevin’s loins); and a surprise winner in Georgina Campbell, nailing the impossible role of ’straight man’ amongst the crazies.  Shut off the left side of your brain and bring in your more disrespectful teens for full enjoyment.  (Another Family Friendly label meant for tweens and up.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Koepp hasn’t had this much fun behind a keyboard since JURASSIC PARK/’97, which you’ll recall had more believable digital trickery thirty years back.  (Actually, not quite thirty as STORAGE sat on the shelf for three years before Samuel Goldwyn Films picked up Stateside distribution.  Not that anyone went to see it.)

DOUBLE-BILL:  William Cameron Menzies’ INVADERS FROM MARS/’53 the sort of period Sci-Fi Koepp must have had in mind.

LOS FUERTES / THE STRONG ONES (2019)

Pleasingly modest queer bromance; a first-rate/award-winning feature debut for Chilean writer/director/editor Omar Zúñiga.  Limited theatrical release beyond Chile; the film, no doubt designed for the inbred Film Fest echo chamber before eventual internet distribution.  But Zuniga’s film too good/too well-observed to be left to die in that critical bubble.*  Thirty-something Samuel González, stopping to visit his dental technician sister in a small coastal fishing town on Chile’s Southern coast on his way from Santiago to Grad School in Montréal , sees sparks fly after a casual meeting in a bar with slightly younger Antonio Altamirano.  Gay romance not exactly taboo in such a confined, traditional community, but not exactly welcomed.  The men discreet in public, passionate (if a bit on the tasteful side*) in Altamirano’s off-the-beaten-path cabin.  The main problem for the men location, location, location, as Antonio’s a local boy hoping to build his own fishing biz with a starter boat while Samuel wants a wider canvas for his life and art.  Yet they’re such a natural match, you ache for a solution.  And that’s about it.  But when something is this solidly told, it can be enough to move you to tears.  What an eye Zúñiga has for building drama out of striking waterfront locations.  With cinematographer Nicolás Ibieta nominated for an Pedro Sienna Award . . . whatever the heck that is.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *None of that rolling off the bed in blinkered ecstacy crap for Zúñiga, and the handsome pair look like people rather than models, but a few tip-toeing camera angles feel too arranged, and a little behind the times.  Perhaps a Chilean dodge to get funding or the necessary PG-13 equivalency.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *But that’s just what happened, Zúñiga’s done nothing since.

BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL (2025)

Entertaining, if self-indulgent/soft-pedaled look at the 360° of hubris that led to the critical & commercial drubbing of THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, director John Boorman’s risible response to William Friedkin’s fright phenomenon of four years back.  This pic-bio peppered with smart interviewees (including an 85-yr-old Boorman) all looking back more in sorrow than in anger at their ‘contributions.’  (Only one happy-talk critic to ignore.)  Easy in hindsight to see what went wrong . . . EVERYTHING!  Less investigated, and far more interesting are two stories we don’t get in this well-reviewed autopsy.  The first miss perhaps inevitable as the Warners studio execs of the day, the guys so eager to milk a putative franchise they ran their empty promise up the flagpole, are no longer around for debriefing.  They’re the ones who started the chain-reaction by hiring visionary director John Boorman instead of a journeyman hack.  (Say, next year’s OMEN II director, Don Taylor.)  Or in imagining chipmunk-cheeked Linda Blair, dead to the touch Richard Burton or know-the-face/can’t-place-the-name Louise Fletcher could ‘open’ a big-budget film in 1977.  (Had they ever?)  Then approving a high caloric, thrill-free script; Corporate Group Think at its worst.  With lemmings like this, who needs hindsight?  And a second missed storyline; mentioned, but undeveloped; ironically involves director of the original EXORCIST William Friedkin, who turned this down to make SORCERER for Universal/Paramount, released concurrently.  Costing far more; bringing in even less.  There were two very different outcomes: SORCERER now a belatedly acknowledged masterpiece whereas HERETIC remains, at best, a minority acquired taste.  Yet it was Boorman who went on to make some of his best work, and Friedkin who never really recovered.  That’s the story that should have been made out of this material.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Quick jumps to the films mentioned above.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-exorcist-ii-heretic-1977.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/sorcerer-1977.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/hope-and-glory-1987.html   Note all the jokes repeated here (without a prompt, honest!) from our EXORCIST II write-up.  Boo!

WENDELL & WILD (2022)

Best known for collaborating with Tim Burton on THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS/’93, a shared taste for the macabre has seemingly held Stop-Motion animator Henry Selick in the Burton orb even on Burton-free projects.  As here where Selick’s main collaborator is Jordan Peele, yet the Burton æsthetic clings.  And that’s saying something considering this death-infused fable has a major Black vibe to it.  It opens with a nightmare-inducing scene (don’t bring the little ones!) as young ‘Kat’ escapes a car drowning, but her parents don’t.  Blaming herself (and not without reason) for partially causing the accident, she’s even more fucked up for having survived.  Growing up with an ‘attitude,’ she’s determined to be a ‘bad girl,’ winding up in a juvie facility with a progressive motto: ‘Break the Cycle!’  Sounds great, but there’s something fishy about the sponsors; using good public relations in hopes of taking over this dead factory town.  They also have eyes on the dead in the local cemetery.  What a waste of land development!  Fortunately, a couple of demons from the underworld (Peele and partner Keegan-Michael Key*) have got a big tube of ‘reviving’ cream able to raise the dead.  (Convenient, no?)  Selick’s OTT style gets a real workout with dozens of live school friends, half-dead mentors, a scientist who looks like Marlon Brando, Nuns and a Zombie Priest vying for Kat’s soul, while Kat longs to use that rejuvenating cream on her dead parents.  The storyline another maximalist mess (think EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE/’22 or SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE/’23), covering a lot of territory before Kat can learn to accept, mourn and move on.  Still, mighty enjoyable just to watch because Selick’s playful sense of style (baroque Goth) and gruesome characterizations are so joyously witty.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Is Jordan Peele purposefully doing a sly tribute to James Baskett, the young actor who played Uncle Remus in SONG OF THE SOUTH/’46?  Rarely noted, Baskett also did the voice for Br’er Fox which Peele is almost certainly copying as ‘Wild.’  Who else would have dared?   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/song-of-south-1948.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID (by me!)/LINK:  We’ve spaced out yet again and accidentally done a second write-up on this film.  (Teach me to swap '&' for AND in the title.)  At least both posts are interesting!  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/10/wendell-wild-2022.html

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.: THE HELICOPTER SPIES (1968)

Early in U.N.C.L.E.’s four-year run (especially after it switched to color), when its popular appeal seemed bulletproof, their M-G-M masters figured they could spin the occasional two-part episodes into eight ready-made  theatrical features simply by ‘letterboxing’ tv’s 1.33 to 1 Academy Ratio frame into standard ‘flat’ (1.85 to 1) for that big screen flavor.  Regularly done for international sales, here they also played Stateside under new titles.  What M-G-M didn’t count on was the show cooling off as fast as it did.*)  This seventh release seems representative of the lot.  Not necessarily a good thing as, with the notable exception of agent Robert Vaughn/Napoleon Solo’s trim worsted suits, and agent David McCallum/Illya Kuryakin’s floppy flaxen locks, not much held up . . . then or now.  Director Boris Sagal does pull off a tricky train hijacking (a NASA rocket stolen by the bad guys), but what’s crucial in these ‘60s Spy-vs-Spy near spoofs is setting & holding tone.  Here, all over the place with some aiming for fun, some aiming for funny, others playing straight, and a few going full tv BATMAN camp.  The silly plot has Bradford Dillman tricking Solo & Kuryakin into helping him steal mad inventor John Dehner’s deadly Thermal Prism.  With it, he and his religious cult gals can control the world . . . IF they can launch it into space.  Maybe if they’d left the commercials in we’d have some real, as opposed to guyed, period flavor.  Instead, it now seems neither fish nor fowl; just spoiled.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  IMDb viewer ratings give the two-part original tv version (THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS AFFAIR/’67) a 7.5 whereas the one-part movie release earns a mere 5.7.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A failed spin-off, THE GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E./’66, sapped mojo from the original series, which never quite recovered its early buzz.

COUP DE CHANCE (2023)

While a combination of age, scattershot quality, cancel culture, artistic exile and sagging box-office has reduced Woody Allen’s former release pattern (one a year for five decades; his last truly popular success MIDNIGHT IN PARIS/’11), this most recent film (after a three year break) shows revived filmmaking chops, and more interest in design, character and content than he has offered in years.  Working with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro in Paris no doubt helps.  As does shooting in French, a language Allen ain’t idiomatic in.  But as his last few films featured English that might have been written and spoken by foreigners, perhaps lack of fluency is an advantage.  (As blindness was to Allen’s director in HOLLYWOOD ENDING.)  Seriously old-fashioned melodrama: infidelity, murder, accidental retribution; only a period setting goes missing.  Pity.  But still amusingly mean-spirited within Allen’s typical upper-crust milieu.  Lou de Laâge plays distracted wife to Melvil Poupaud’s shady/controlling personal money manager for the rich & striving.  Accidentally bumping into former classmate Niels Schneider, de Laâge falls into a casual affair that turns serious.*  But when M. Cuckold inevitably sniffs it out, he quickly decides to snuff it out . . .  permanently.  Later, when his visiting MIL hears her daughter’s confession, she puts two-and two together before placing herself in harm’s way deer hunting with the son-in-law.  (Really, Woody?  Deer hunting?)  More society gossip anecdote than developed story, Allen smartly skates over the plot in the manner of French masters Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol.  (Probably more like Hollywood loving Chabrol who adored the ‘40s fare this apes.*)  All told, good late Allen.  And an encouraging sign for his next, now filming in Spain.  Hopefully in Spanish!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Note the use of his signature jaunty jazz at even the darkest parts of the film, playing against story tone. 

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *If this had been a real 1940s Hollywood pic, there’d be a late second act reveal on how there was nothing accidental about the meeting.  It was all a plan by her former schoolmate.  As for our Chabrol wet dream suggestion, he’d definitely have been thinking of 20th/Fox as the studio; and holding out for Gene Tierney, Tyrone Power and George Sanders.  But the MIL gets a sex change with either Edmund Gwenn or Clifton Webb taking over.  I’d watch that in a minute!

OPERA (1987)

Four & a quarter centuries after its premiere, Shakespeare’s HAMLET is again inspiring the year’s most moving film.  Last year, HAMNET/’25 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/03/hamnet-2025.html), this year, uncontrollable sobbing likely to come from ELSINORE/’26, the true story of how CHARIOTS OF FIRE actor Ian Charleson took a leap of faith, stepping in to play Hamlet in spite of rapid physical decline from AIDS, taking over the part on short-notice when Daniel Day Lewis ankled mid-performance.  A ‘can’t miss’ idea if there ever was one.  Only that wasn’t the original idea.  Most of the creatives (producers, writers, lead Andrew Scott) initially got behind this project when it was being developed as a ‘behind-the-scenes’ film on the making of this Italian giallo.  (Giallo: those stylishly gory, color-saturated, tits & terror Italian horror films.)  Giallo master Dario Argento, past his ‘70s prime by ‘87, but still up for big, bloody set pieces between his near random notions of drama.  (Argento never much for ‘leg-bone-connected-to-the-thigh-bone’ story construction.)  Charleson co-stars, playing a high-concept film and opera director taking on Verdi’s MACBETH when his Lady Macbeth ankles the high-flying tessitura and her replacement is young, willowy, much pursued Cristina Marsillach.  Argento tosses in a bit of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA in some skulduggery to get her on stage in the role, but the main plot involves murder attempts, Charleson’s role as off-stage protector and a handsome police detective as rival.  The big climax typically has little bearing on the plot as an ‘unkindness’ of ravens is released in the opera house where they attack a well-heeled crowd of music lovers.  (Hitchcock’s Bodega Bay Elementary School in THE BIRDS has nothing to fear.)  And while the film is reasonable Argento, it’s hard to see what the ELSINORE crew were planning to develop out of it.  (Though Charleson does recite a couple of lines from Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' speech in here for no particular reason.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  This was Charleson’s last feature film, dying at 40 in 1990, six weeks after he completed his run as Hamlet.

LEBANON (2009)

And you thought DAS BOOT/’81 was claustrophobic.  Award-winning film from Israeli writer/director Samuel Maoz takes a near abstract look at war, following (in tight close-up) a single tank carrying five hardened fighters and one barely trained newbie as they cross into Southern Lebanon during the 1982 war,  part of an ill-defined mission to destroy PLO bases and launching sites.*  Without a specific goal, their job merely to reach a designated contact point so they can pick up orders for the next designated contact point.  Between man and machine, things quickly begin to break down: misread oncoming vehicles (friend or foe?); planned and unplanned attacks; a comrade lost; banned weapons renamed so they can be ’legally’ used; a chaotic village assault where enemy Arabs use civilian women & children as ‘living’ shields, encouraging collateral (and non-collateral) damage by Israelis; that tank newbie unable to pull the trigger (literally) having previously shot at nothing more dangerous than empty barrels; all while the tank turns into a abattoir of human filth and rotting offal, their view becoming ever more restricted to a tank POV.  No heroes or heroics, but with opportunistic ‘Phalangist’ warriors grabbing the prize for worst-of-the-worst.  Fortunately, the mission, which opens & closes on the same ironic shot, reduced on screen to only 90 minutes of horror.  But you’ll not forget a searing minute in this brilliantly shot and acted journey thru some of Dante’s darkest circles of Hell.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For a bigger picture on the war, the remarkable animated documentary WALTZ WITH BASHIR/’08.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/waltz-with-bashir-2008.html

SIGNAL ONE (2026)

If you’re going to make yet another First Alien Contact movie (think THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL/’51 & 08; CLOSE ENCOUNTERS/’77; ARRIVAL/’16; many more*), especially if you’re on a lowball Canadian budget, you better have imaginative filmmaking chops and a fresh concept.  But the only fresh thing in writer/director Jonathan Sobol’s assault on the subject is Dennis Quaid’s face.  Even that, less fresh than unnaturally refreshened.  Quaid’s the billionaire visionary searching the heavens from his private island, built up to receive Alien Contact signals and staffed with space research geniuses leading the hunt.  Borderline psycho David Thewlis; college wiz Isabelle Fuhrman; never laid Josh Hutcherson.  The twist is that Thewlis crosses protocol and SENDS rather than only RECEIVES the coded calls and the beings respond in ways that scare the planet into a panic.  Hours later, the island is invaded by overbearing military types who don’t understand the nuances of alien call-and-response etiquette.  Will they take the whole operation down before friendly relations are established?  Dull, dull, dull.  And Sobol’s eccentric idea of even simple reaction shots less communicative than 'Gort' was in STOOD STILL.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Sobol does have one stylistic quirk to watch out for.  Though shot 1.85 : 1, he stages shots for a wider anamorphic frame with severe left/right positions that leave the middle empty.  But since he places the conversations for two within a ‘flat’ frame ratio, the backs of some heads are out of frame.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Simpler & more effective (also really funny/really scary), less pretentious and far more emotionally affecting, Robert Wise’s ‘51 STOOD STILL still stands ahead of the pack.

AGATHA (1979)

Decently reviewed and reasonably popular, this speculative fiction on the true eleven-day disappearance of mystery writer Agatha Christie in the 1920s probably looks better now, when Mid-List ‘civilized’ entertainments no longer grace the big screen, than it must have on release.  Worked up by Kathleen Tynan (wife of top stage critic Kenneth, it's her sole film credit), and directed in comfy fashion by Michael Apted, the film is consistently fun & clever (Tynan just managing to layer in a bit of suspense* ), but mostly posh slumming for a cast of high wattage stars enjoying a period field trip while handing out narrative l’amuse-bouche.  Vanessa Redgrave is Christie, ennobled by height, beauty, ‘20s couture and Vittorio Storaro’s creamy lens stylings.  (The real Christie tall but horsey.)  Undone when Timothy Dalton’s husband (channeling the chilly Laurence Olivier of REBECCA/’40) asks for a divorce, she has a meltdown before hiding out in the very spa town used by his mistress.  Waiting to do mischief?  Enter American-in-the U.K. reporter Dustin Hoffman, groomed, dressed and polished as never before or since; if still a half foot shorter than his target.  With the whole country looking for the missing Queen of Whodunits, can he get a scoop before word leaks out . . . or Agatha does something stupid?  One of the last films made by First Artists (a briefly functioning Streisand, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Hoffman outfit), you have to presume Hoffman had more than usual input, gently fashioning one of the least self-regarding films on his C.V.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/SPOILERS:  *A bigger mystery is how no one, then or now, caught on to Tynan using ROMAN HOLIDAY/’53 (William Wyler/Gregory Peck/Audrey Hepburn) as template.  Runaway celeb hiding in plain sight under a false name; reporter finding/befriending her, also under an assumed identity; mutual, but deflected romantic feelings; inevitable split with the reporter nobly burying his exclusive.  At least Tynan knew to steal from the best.

THE UPRISING (2026)

Between misleadingly advertizing promising a proto-Robin Hood foundation tale (more grime/more gore/more ‘realism’) and a strong back-wind from Peter Watkins’ monumental (and monumentally over-praised) ‘you-were-there’ LA COMMUNE (PARIS, 1871), Peter Greengrass’s downbeat take on Britain’s doomed 14th Century ‘Peasant Rebellion.’ equally crippled by an inadequate budget making do with Revell® model towns & river ships, never had a chance.  A pity as the history is fascinating and little known outside the U.K.  Basically a tale of overreach by the rich & titled, now underfunded after the Great Plague, and how they went back to pillage villages once too often, arousing revolt in the South and up to London; the Peasant Rebellion.  Unsustainable, but not before churches were looted and upper-crusts killed, along with many innocents.  Andrew Garfield is intensely touching as the bereaved farmer who becomes figurehead to the movement, but Greengrass can’t structure the chaos that outran the noble ideas.*  Once we reach the final betrayal  and epilogue (which finally brings in the Robin Hood angle), he’s lost touch with cast & audience.  So, in an ironic twist, it’s King Richard II, switching sides & allegiances like a weather vane, who becomes (by default?) the guy we’re interested in.  Barely 14 at the time (late puberty in those days, you wonder if his voice had even changed*), his assumption and use of his power over subjects and Council, the sudden growth as political/military strategist is the thru line Greengrass misses.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Richard II, ten when crowned, at his most impressive in his teens.  Shakespeare’s RICHARD II focuses on later decline and dethronement.  See this Richard in the opening segment of THE HOLLOW CROWN/’16.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-hollow-crown-2016.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Here spoken in modern Mid-Atlantic English at a time when Chaucer, later patronized by Richard II, was writing.  (You still can't understand a word.  Subtitles suggested.)

COYOTE VS. ACME (2026)

Few things regularly fall as short of expectations as seeing some previously lost film you’ve waited years (decades?) for.  A legendary silent miraculously found in some Russian film archive turns out to be a formula programmer by a famous director on autopilot.  A print of some Early Talkie discovered in a dusty studio vault reunited with synch-sound discs found in the Seattle attic of a deceased private collector, where the pristine visual element turns out to be the alternate silent release.  An acknowledged masterpiece (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA/’62?) brutally trimmed from its original 22 reels down to 19 for a ‘70s re-release, finally restored to its original length, sent off to theaters with two reels printed in reverse.  Yikes!  So, when Warner Bros. opted to take a thirty-mill tax write off in 2023 and effectively erase the completed negative of this Live-Action/Animated mash-up (based on Ian Frazier’s dry/witty New Yorker piece on how Wile E. Coyote sued ACME Industries for years of malfunctioning products), you knew to keep your hopes down when Ketchup Entertainment came to the rescue with a Buy-Out/Theatrical release offer.  Surprise!  The film is a 1'43" ear-to-ear grin, studded with legit guffaws every couple of minutes.  (Including slapstick toppers topping the toppers on gags.)  This time, your wish is fulfilled.  Having previously spent much of his time doing big budget visual effects, director Dave Green segues smoothly into integrated visuals (CGI animation coaxed toward a hand-drawn æsthetic) and has consistent fun rug-pulling the narrative line with perfect pacing, pitch-perfect comedic acting (from animated humans and animators) that mesh seamlessly.  (Extra points to Tweety & John Cena!)  And shout outs to Will Forte for not attempting to compete with the Zanies, but letting his Personal Damages Attorney get his laughs playing straight man (Rowen to a gaggle of Martins).  And to Merry Melodies copycat vocalist Eric Bauza repeating from THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP/’24.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Remarkably for a pick-up, ACME grossed more than six times what BLEW UP made for the same releasing company.  That one’s all animated, so perhaps the better second feature might be WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT/’88.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-day-earth-blew-up-looney-tunes.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/12/who-framed-roger-rabbot-1988.html