THE ODYSSEY (2026)

An epic hit with the hoi polloi, Christopher Nolan’s square-shouldered literalism was less embraced by academia, a bit sniffy at finding more prose than poetry in his Homer; beloved  dactylic hexameter flattened to Mid-Atlantic Conversational.*  No doubt, the only choice considering the budget, and largely brought off in a style not far off the Oscar-bait Biblical & Historical RoadShow spectaculars of the late-‘50s/early ‘60s.  Think Wyler, Kubrick, Anthony Mann.  A bit grandiose for impatient modern tastes, those films purposefully padded to assure program-clutching customers their premium advance tickets were worth the price.  (You thought the writers & directors wanted to put in those dancing girls interludes?)  Under Nolan, cult ceremonies instead of metaphoric orgies add to the running time, with the men generally coming off better than the women.  A seriously buff Matt Damon effectively plays Odysseus on his post-war voyage home from Troy, as more straight-man than trickster to friends, foes & monsters.  But that daily exercise routine on his abs didn’t do a thing for that unheroic snub nose.  (Back in the day, Olivier & Welles filled out their inadequate ones with putty.)  Standouts among the men include Robert Pattinson, Elliot Page and John Leguizamo while on the female front, only Anne Hathaway & Zendaya seriously miss the mark.  Debits to Nolan for some poorly staged action, undercooked meme moments and subpar fly-wire work.  But nothing dishonorable here.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For a bit more of the poetry, try THE RETURN/’24    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-return-2024.html

THE FALCON IN SAN FRANCISCO (1945)

Another Hollywood detective series that finesses the business side of things.  Who employs this suave crime solver?  Is he paid for his services?  And what of his classless/clueless assistant?  Awfully charitable fellows, no?  This late entry in the enjoyable R.K.O. FALCON series (seventh of nine with Tom Conway*) standard-issue doings in spite of having Joseph H. Lewis at the helm.  An outstanding director of B-pics, Lewis’s next, MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS/’45, ought to have led to A-list gigs.  And while films like GUN CRAZY/’50 and THE BIG COMBO/’55 followed, rote 'B’s and tv series his only reward.  Here, there’s just so much Lewis can do as Conway’s Falcon and rough-edged partner Edward Brophy, while traveling by train to San Francisco, stumble onto a smuggling conspiracy thanks to a little dog and a little girl they try to help.  All they want to do is get the rich tyke safely home, but murder, abduction, ‘reformed’ crime boss Robert Armstrong, arrest and mob enforcers keep getting in the way.  But with its polished look, clunk-free cast and explosive finale, FALCON on the high end as these little programmers go.  Though, after witnessing so much mayhem & murder, that little girl will be traumatized for life and need her inheritance for med bills.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *George Sanders was the first ‘Falcon,’ but passed the baton on to real-life brother Tom Conway who co-starred with Sanders as the original character’s brother in the fourth title,  FALCON’S BROTHER/’42, then nine more times on his own.

THE WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (2016)

With a long and fertile history of adaptation, top-tier Agatha Christie titles are no longer simply remade, but must be re-imagined.  Or so film producers think.  (YOUNG POIROT in the pipeline.)  WITNESS, which started as an early short story before Christie turned it into a play in 1953; Billy Wilder a film in 1957*; along with multiple outings on tv and radio, here gets refreshed right from title, gaining an article: THE.  On the whole, it does better than most Christie rethinks, but errs fatally in putting too much dramatic weight on her construct.  Christie can support murder, but not tragedy.  The basic story’s there: handsome drifter charged with killing a rich older woman for her fortune is screwed in court by his common-law wife’s testimony, only to see the outcome go topsy-turvy.  Wilder’s version famously added an extra twist-and-a-half to the fun right at the end.  But fun is exactly what this latest version lacks.  Trying for real tragedy with two different twists of fate that overplay their hand.  Christie believed in evil (it’s what made Miss Marple so insightful), but tragedy  not in her range.  As the accused, Billy Howle makes the most of things, with a tricky restrained/yet anything goes sexual vibe not much seen since Michael York’s heyday.  Everyone else gets their points  across: Toby Jones’ coughing solicitor (not TB, just bronchitis), Kim Cattrall’s wanton lover; Andrea Riseborough’s cunning vixen.  But like the choking, yellow-filtered atmosphere of 1920s London, it’s laid on too thick.  The Christie narrative DNA still works its magic, but cutting thru the fog is more work than need be.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Wilder, at his most impersonal, sticks to the play and let’s Christie’s clever narrative mechanics do the heavy lifting.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/09/witness-for-prosecution-1957.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Not 100% sure, but I think this is the only version that has the solicitor (here Jones) rather than the barrister (Charles Laughton for Wilder) as lead.

L’AVVENTURA (1961)

Michelangelo Antonioni was nearing 50, with a handful of impressive features behind him, when he found his true subject and broke thru internationally with this enigmatic classic.  A contrarian in the midst of Italy’s successful Il Boom economy, his reaction might be summed up as ‘is that all there is?’  Rejecting the notion that No Man Is An Island, Antonioni tells us EACH man (or woman) is an island unto themself.  It’s his only theme.  Following films like a portrait studio offering to roll down different backdrops (identity, environment, class, murder), but with main subject unchanged.  So choose your first Antonioni carefully; you can only get that big initial reaction once.  As first in the series, L’AVVENTURA is a good choice, though BLOW-UP/’66, with London Mod Era trimmings and a half-hour shorter the better intro.  L’AVVENTURA, first of four with Monica Vitti, is the one where a small yacht’s-worth of difficult/unpleasant Euro-Trash types (lots of LA DOLCE VITA/’60 in here) lose (misplace?) one of their own on an island stop.  The point less how they react to the missing friend than how they don’t react.  Three days later, affairs and business back to normal; as if she’d never been.  Chilly stuff , chic & elegant as haute couture.  And possibly as unnecessary.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Check out the young painter one of the yachters picks up once she's back on dry land.  In hair and pictures, the kid's a ringer for young Picasso.  And you thought Antonioni didn't have sense of humor.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Though it has its modern-day defenders, Antonioni never recovered his Prince of Disconnected Modernism & Existential Ennui rep after he fell flat on his Counter-Culture face in the hapless ZABRISKIE POINT/’70.  He knew it, too.  Barely one feature per decade after it.  But THE PASSENGER/’74 does at least manage to get into gear.

DAVID HARUM (1915; 1934)

Small-town Americana from Edward Noyes Wescott’s best-selling (semi-autobiographical?) book about a curmudgeonly banker who secretly acts as Fairy Godfather to half the town.  Filmed twice: Allan Dwan/1915; James Cruze/1934; the earlier version mainly of interest as a prime example of the ‘Famous Players in Famous Plays’ philosophy soon dropped when fresh-minted movie personalities proved far more popular than established stage vets by the company that became Paramount.  Here, our ‘Famous Player’ is William H. Crane, Harum three times on B’way and on tour (1900 - 1904).  Dwan establishes strong rural atmosphere from the start with a striking tracking shot (cinematographer Harold Rosson*) that runs up the town’s main street to the Harum bank.  But with character bits instead of plot, the film never builds.  Harum sets up a local romance; Harum trades horses with townies; Harum takes over a poor widow’s mortgage.  Worse, Dwan lets stage action & (inaudible) dialogue play intact, with 70-yr-old Crane demonstrating little camera rapport.  All improved in 1934 with Will Rogers able to take advantage of his quasi-improvistory manner, adding subtle jabs & jokes delivered at a walking pace while retaining the same moving pieces (marriage, ‘mudders,’ mortgage) and adding a real horse-race in the third act.  Cruze, who never lived up to the promise of his mega-hit THE COVERED WAGON/’23, lets Rogers be Rogers (all you really need to do on his films*), keeps controversial Black icon Stepin Fetchit reasonably understandable, and is blessed with tasty supporting players.  It also helps that whereas the silent version plays as 1915 contemporary, the remake helpfully distances the story back to the 1890s.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Rogers best seen in his John Ford films, especially STEAMBOAT ‘ROUND THE BEND/’35, and in Henry King’s STATE FAIR/’33.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/steamboat-round-bend-1935.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/06/state-fair.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *HARUM Rosson’s debut.  51 years on, Howard Hawks’ EL DORADO/’66 his last.

LADY IN A JAM (1942)

Starting in early silent animation, but mostly celebrated for two best-of-their-kind mid-‘30s ensemble comedies: ‘screwball’ MY MAN GODFREY and drama-tinged STAGE DOOR; you’ll look in vain to find their equal in other Gregory La Cava directed films.  Not that there aren’t worthwhile candidates, but nothing anywhere near that level.  (Lost silents and hard-to-find sound titles might prove otherwise.)  This, his penultimate release, shows him at half staff, riffing off GODFREY to reasonable effect, especially if you hang around till everyone goes west to reopen a ‘played out’ family gold mine.  Irene Dunne is remarkably committed to her rather unpleasant entitled character, a broke/mentally flighty heiress who can’t adjust to reduced circumstances.  Lucky for her, the sanatarium funded by her family in better times feels they owe her special treatment, so she’s followed by staff psychoanalyst Patric Knowles (charming at his most Errol Flynn-like), convinced he can fix her up in an afternoon; then tagging along to the depleted mine where the rest of the family live a threadbare existence.  Watch for Jane Garland, great in her only film role as a chubby young niece who knows the score.  Ralph Bellamy also there, reimagining the same third-wheel hayseed he’d tried out against Dunne in THE AWFUL TRUTH/’37.  But now, as extroverted as he’d previously been introverted.  Undoubtedly derivative, but La Cava makes it swing in spite of a scrappy script.  The truth is, screwball tropes without the Great Depression to anchor the craziness in real desperation rarely work even as well as they do here.*  Just don’t expect too much.  (Except for Hal Mohr’s lensing which is pretty phenomenal.  Especially out of Universal.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Book-ended by La Cava to finish his career on two more flawed comedies with Dunne (UNFINISHED BUSINESS/’41; LIVING IN A BIG WAY/’47).  Together, they showed better form with straight drama in  SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION/’32.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/07/symphony-of-six-million-1932.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *But what about Preston Sturges at the same time, I hear you ask.  Well, that’s one reason Sturges ain’t screwball.  He’s Sturges; a category of one.

THE BIG EASY (1986)

Many a nit might be picked in this New Orleans set policier that’s really about the sexed up relationship between showboating Police Detective Dennis Quaid and Incorruptible Assistant D.A. Ellen Barkin as they fuck & feud their way thru court battles and a drug-fueled gang war (or is it?).  But the end product is too entertaining to bother about shortcomings.  At their physical peak (Barkin’s cock-eyed looks a match for Quaid’s shredded physique, each with movie star smiles that could melt asbestos), they overcome director Jim McBride’s tourist’s view of New Orleans, careless plotting, and some unconvincing vowels in the local patois to make the case & their relationship mean something.  Though McBride’s painfully sloppy work can stop you in your tracks; the poor editor can barely match shots  while four or five action set pieces are downright painful.  And the big ‘reveals’ wouldn’t surprise a police intern.  On the other hand: no one pronounces New Orleans as ‘Naw-lins’ (hurrah!) or makes a late-night pit stop for Beignets at  Café Du Monde.*   Best of all is simply being reminded of what a naturally gifted/shamefully under-valued, actor Quaid was/is.  Still making it look too easy to land on the awards merry-go-round. 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *They couldn’t avoid all the local clichés: Chef Paul Prudhomme comes tableside to serve his Étouffée and Barkin gets stood up at Antoines.

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT / YEK TASADOF-E SADEH (2025)

With decades of major award bait material (Palme d'Or; a rare Original Screenplay Oscar nom. on a foreign-language pic; dozens more on this one alone), co-writer/director Jafar Panahi would have been Iranian cinema royalty by now if only his moviemaking weren’t suppressed in his own country.  This latest one of his best, a strikingly original prisoners’ revenge story that opens and closes in deadly earnest, but daringly plays out as farce in-between.  It starts when a car accident brings one-time prison warden (along with pregnant wife and young daughter) to a rural car garage where the grizzled mechanic recognizes the driver as the man who tortured him in jail.  But is it really him?  Followed and then abducted by the former prisoner, his life and health destroyed by the beatings he took in jail, he suddenly has doubts just as he starts to bury the man alive. He seeks absolute identification to ‘justify’ his actions.  And from here up to the last reel, the tone turns to absurdist journey as we gather other victims to verify identification.  A professor, a wedding photographer, the bride (groom in tow), a wild galoot hungry for vengeance.  Largely played as a dark roundelay in some bizarro On the Road farce Feydeau couldn’t have thought up.  With laughs that ought to stick in your throat, but don’t.  What can you do but laugh between the bribes you need to pay for just about any service.  Iran’s landscape may look like Utah, but laminated ‘No Tipping Allowed’ cards on every diner table unheard of.   Dangerous stuff from Panahi.  Wondrous, too.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: You don’t expect an Iranian film about delayed justice between a sadistic prison official and his tortured victims to make you think of a tweedy period farce like THE WRONG BOX.’66, but it does.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-wrong-box-1966.html

MEMORIAS DEL SUBDESARROLLO / MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT (1968)

Was Tomás Gutiérrez Alea the only Cuban director to remain in the country and develop a significant international reputation?  This inventive work, both ‘essay film’ and Rake’s Progress report, his best known.  Released in 1968, it covers the early ‘60s in Cuba’s revolution (think Bay of Pigs thru the Missile Crisis) with a style that’s pure Nouvelle Vague, and a startlingly apolitical protagonist, a Cuban flaneur to walk us thru layers of Havana society.  Played sympathetically in spite of his actions by Sergio Corrieri, very much in the manner of Marcello Mastroianni*, we first see him bidding an unemotional farewell to his family: parents, wife, relatives, off to Miami, part of the White middle-class flight from revolutionary mores, manners and financial upheaval.  So what’s keeping Sergio there?  Inertia?  Income from rental properties?  Possible sexual adventures?  That’s how he gets into trouble.  Seducing a girl he met on the street.  An innocent young thing.  Turns out she’s 17.  Warning signs all but posted on every curve of her body.  Intellectually naive, too.  Watch on a tour of Ernest Hemingway’s home; already a tourist site with the man fresh in his grave.  (Her hysterical family not far behind her in self-serving motive.)  Sergio seemingly unharmed and unchanged by these personal bothers, indolence unshaken by the events churning around him.  Somehow Alea even got away with showing what a bore Castro was whenever you put a microphone in his front of him.  The whole film even more fascinating now than it must have been in ‘68.  With a recent restoration that has it looking better than it has in decades.  Essential viewing even at its most unpleasant.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *The echoes of Mastroianni the main exception to Nouvelle Vague style.  Not that Mastroianni didn’t make any Nouvelle Vague, but not what he’s known for.  Corrieri superb in the part yet with only 10 other film credits.  Few opportunities at the time in Cuba?

JACK ET LA MÉCANIQUE DU COEUR / JACK AND THE CUCKOO-CLOCK HEART (2013)

Co-directed by Stéphane Berla, but elsewise this physically impressive animated fairy-tale* is all Mathias Malzieu.  Adapted by Malzieu from his own book, musical score & songs by French band Dionysos (lead singer/front man Mathias Malzieu), he’s also the speaking & singing voice of Jack in the French version originale.  Auteur overkill?  It helps explain what goes wrong.  The Dickensian opening follows a desperate pregnant woman in a snow-filled landscape fainting on the doorstep of a witch-like midwife.  Birthing a nearly perfect boy (with an alarming crop of hair), he has but one defect: a frozen heart.  Luckily, the childless midwife has a closet of cuckoo-clocks to take its place.  But the boy must abide by three rules - ONE: Never touch the hands of the mechanical timepiece.  TWO: Never get over-excited.  THREE: Never fall in love!  Leaving the boy in the midwife’s care (she’s long longed for a child of her own), Mother sneaks off without looking back, and the boy grows up, goes rogue, and, like fellow imperfect adventurer Pinocchio, breaks all three rules before finding his fate.*  On the whole, the film is a joy to look at, but neither characters nor tale register as they must to gain emotional traction, largely because of Malzieu’s pre-immersion in his material.  He forgets that while he’s familiar with everything in here, we ain’t.  He doesn’t need a narrative nudge, but we do.  And by never bothering to swing back and give us proper entry, we’re lost after granting him an entire act to clue us in and get us up to speed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *CGI animation digitally styled to look like Stop-Motion.  (I think.)  In the English-language version, you can see the characters’ mouths are ‘speaking’ French.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Lots of Pinocchios out there.  But stick with the 1940 Disney classic for comparison.

BLÜCHER / THE BATTLE OF OSLO (2025)

Moving from previous documentary features to a WWII historical, Norwegian director Daniel Fahre tackles this locally famous war incident to good effect without overstating the case.  Keyed to the 1940 defense of Oscarsborg Fortress, an old structure meant to serve as a waterway buffer 30 minutes from the seat of government and the King in Oslo.  The fort underfunded and undermanned (largely with untrained recruits) in spite of pleas from aging fort commander Colonel Birger Eriksen (Bjørn Sundquist).  With the Norwegian military on high alert from nearby German/British naval activity and a large warship of unknown origin approaching, Norway’s neutrality & independence is on the line.  And no one can make out the markings or even an accurate distance to aim the fort’s two poorly maintained cannons.  Ordered to hold out as long as possible, the Colonel is running on instinct.  Something he’ll need to call on again when further attacks and a demand to surrender follow.  Told in flashback from a 1946 military investigation that's shot in b&w, the after-the-fact procedure is either mere face-saving or historical rewrite.*  Fahre works very close, presumably to save on the budget, but there’s enough large-scale battle sequences and explosions to get the situations across.  (Though too much ‘70s style rough hand-held camera work not a help.)  But the military dilemma and critical need for fast decisions register strongly.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *As they say in the Navy: Even if the Captain’s on the crapper when the fuck up happened, he’s still responsible for everything that happens on his ship.

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!