COME NEXT SPRING (1956)

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

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

KAILI BLUES / LU BIAN YE CAN (2015)

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

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

21 DAYS TOGETHER (1940)

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

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

STRAIGHT SHOOTING (1917)

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

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

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

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025)

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

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

PIANOFORTE (2023)

Inspired by Poland’s Olympics debut in 1924, the International Chopin Piano Competition started in 1925, returning every five-years, (October 2025 will be its centennial.)  This documentary (dir. Jakub Piatek) follows six contestants in 2020 thru the four increasingly selective/nerve-wracking stages.  First Stage: Chopin Etudes.  Yikes!  Some of the toughest pieces ever written.  Then climaxing days later with one of the two piano concertos Chopin wrote when barely out of his teens.  Dozens of these fly-on-the-wall classical music documentaries out there.  (Or streaming: daily posts or full coverage like the Van Cliburn.)  What sets these competitions apart, aside from the prizes, is who came out of them.  The Chopin boasts Krystian Zimerman, Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini.  And what sets this film apart is that it’s less fingers; more head, heart & backstory.  Actual stage action limited.  Advantages: We get to know the chosen six as people.  Disadvantages: Hard to judge talent/musicality from snippets; other than differences in articulation.  We end up rooting on looks and personality . . . which would be fine if it was their musical personality.  Showing at its worst with seamless intercut playing of the same piece, like passing the baton in a relay race.  But at least there, you’ve got a stop watch keeping score.  Pianist Stephen Kovacevich (once married to Argerich) dismissed a lot of current competition playing as ‘typing.’  Accuracy over art.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Hollywood tried dramatizing one of these in THE COMPETITION/’80 (not seen here) with oldest contestant Richard Dreyfuss falling for Amy irving, one of the youngest.  Apparently Sam Wanamaker does a wicked Leonard Bernstein as jurist/conductor which does sound tempting.  Seen it?  Thoughts?  Leave a Comment.

THE ORDER (2024)

True Story from the early 1980s: seasoned F.B.I. agent Jude Law is on his own when he starts to investigate a series of bank robberies & counterfeiting in rural Idaho/Pacific NorthWest.  Unwelcome by local police, he’s still able to see involvement linked to the quasi-religious Aryan Nation cult.  What he doesn’t know is that he needs to be focusing on an even more extremist splinter group quickly devolving into a national terrorist threat led by charismatic (make that messianic) Nicholas Hoult.*  Helped by one of the few cops not willing to let sleeping terrorist dogs lie (Tye Sheridan whose Native American wife literally puts skin in the game), Law & Sheridan can barely fathom the size of the organization they’re up against and the scope of their plans.  Finally, more crimes bring in more FBI, but the response remains unequal, even inept.  Closer to the facts than these films often are, it’s well played (Hoult exceptional) and well organized for dramatic effect, but also with very few surprises.  (Our main victim might as well be wearing a Shoot Me placard.)  And the film only half as effective as it might be, less from over familiarity as from a mischosen visual style from cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, director Juton Kurzel and the film’s 19 (!) producers.  Opting for glare, haze, and obfuscating filters & backlighting when the obvious choice would have been to make this ‘80s story look like an ‘80s film, sharp, bright, razor edge clear, with color saturation to match, throwing literal light on a dark story.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  A late ‘80s FBI thriller about ‘mid-‘60s White supremacy, MISSISSIPPI BURNING, shows the visual spark missing here.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/mississippi-burning-1988.html 

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Perhaps focusing on splintering within the Aryan Nation (extreme, very extreme, crazy extreme) rather than using an FBI POV would bring a new angle to this familiar story.

THE KING OF KINGS (2025)

Less ‘Good News’ Gospel than indigestible kiddie indoctrination; Christian pablum served in cutesy CGI animation that’s blocky & unattractive.  Strictly for believers, of which there are more than enough to turn a profit.  Especially in country of origin South Korea where, surprisingly, nearly one-third of the population identifies as Christian.  Note all the ‘Kims’ in the credits of this Angel Studios product which specializes in Up With Christianity movies.  A framing device goes back to Charles Dickens who famously wrote A CHRISTMAS CAROL and less famously a Story of the Christ, largely for family consumption.  So, we begin at one of his histrionic stage readings of The Carol, interrupted by his obnoxious, though meant to be adorable, son.  Unable to calm the boy down, stop sneezing from cat allergies or get the tyke to appreciate Christ over King Arthur and the like, Dickens tells him the whole story.  And with Dickens & son stepping right into the Biblical past as participants.  Missing pieces in the Life of Christ filled in as needed.  (By Dickens or by Angel Studios?)  With ghastly Christian Pop over the end credits and a depressingly impressive All-Star voice cast.  (Oscar Isaac’s Jesus a hoot, tossing in the occasional Bronx infection even though he was raised in Miami.)  The film offering something inappropriate for believers and non.  God knows what other ANGEL Studio Films are like.  Oh, yeah . . . God knows.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  This, the third KING OF KINGS iteration we’ve taken on, does make you appreciate the highly flawed films from Cecil B. DeMille (1927) and Nicholas Ray (1961).  There are, of course, scores more under various titles.  (Like the unexpectedly silly/serious LIFE OF BRIAN. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/05/life-of-brian-1979.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/01/king-of-kings-1927.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/king-of-kings-1961.html

LINDA (1929)

Fascinating on many levels.  If only it were a better film!  Directed by Dorothy Davenport, one of Hollywood’s few female directors at the time, the story, which has D.W. Griffith written all over it (not a plus in 1929) charts the sorry, if eventually triumphant, path of teenager Helen Foster, a kid from a penniless Appalachian family (wastrel dad, worn out mom, many siblings), bartered by her father into a loveless marriage with much older Noah Berry Sr., then blindsided when a previous wife and child show up.*  Yikes!  Pregnant herself, she gives birth before heading north to improve herself with help from a rich benefactress.  Finds love too, with the lady’s brother (no thank you) and the inner-city physician she’d met back in the woods (Warner Baxter, yes thank you).  Lots more in this vein.  Yet, as melodramatic and filled with coincidence as it is, Davenport was a natural behind the camera, and got lucky in cinematographer Henry Cronjager who knew the territory from his superb work on TOL’ABLE DAVID/’21.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/06/still-freshly-felt-moving-in-its.html)  And what a backstory on Davenport.  Not only the daughter of character actor Harry Davenport (kindly doctor in GONE WITH THE WIND; Grandad in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS), she’s also the widow of silent film star Wallace Reid (note billing as Mrs. Wallace Reid), a major Hollywood star who died addicted to the morphine Paramount got him hooked on to complete a picture in production.  Some things never change.  (NOTE:  LINDA has been successfully restored by The Library of Congress - though with a rather odd be-bop influenced score.  Find it here:  https://archive.org/details/linda_1929)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *When the first wife shows up with the kid she had with Noah Berry Sr could it be Noah Berry Jr, best known as James Garner’s Dad/sidekick on THE ROCKFORD FILES?  No credit listed, but he’d have been just the right age.  I’d put money on it.