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 Patricia Highsmith a moralist and a very chilly Andrew Scott as Ripley 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

CREEPY / KURÎPÎ: ITSUWARI NO RINJIN (2016)

Slow-burn horror from writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is aptly titled, but ultimately a near miss, mostly from its hard-to-swallow third act.  It certainly starts well with a prologue that traps a psychopathic serial killer after his brief escape from a holding cell in a police office building.  With no way out, the murderer still manages to make his point to the detective who’d been conducting the interview.  The film then jumps ahead a few years as the detective, now retired from the force and teaching college, keeps one foot in the game by investigating a cold case disappearance that happened near his new home six years ago.  Clues point to his odd duck of a neighbor whose personality runs hot and cold*, yet forms an unlikely friendship with the ex-detective’s discontented wife.  And that’s when you start to pick up on how this story is developing into a fool-me-once/fool-me-twice suspense thriller built from lessons not learned in that gruesome prologue.  But Kurosawa gets sloppy, unable to convince us of the creep’s powers of persuasion over his ‘assistants,’ while police forensics go untried on that cold case and putative victims seem to lose peripheral vision so they can be easily attacked.  The whole third act hobbled with implausible story beats and too many shrink-wrapped bodies to dispose of.  Or is it the film that's been shrink-wrapped?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Film composer Yuri Habuka often sounds like she’s channeling Bernard Herrmann.  Effective, but giving this suspenser Htchcockian overtones Kurosawa may not have been looking for.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Japan’s social conventions and physical restraint can look nearly as ‘off’ as the behavior of the film’s creepy villain.  Which doesn’t hurt, as you might expect, but adds an extra note of complexity.

MICMACS / MICMACS À TIRE-LARIGOT (2009)

Typically, French writer/director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, best known Stateside for AMÉLIE/’01 and DELICATESSEN/’91, demonstrates a bad case of the cutes along with a weakness for excessively ornate design that makes someone as OTT as Baz Luhrmann look more severe than Mies van der Rohe.  Cinematic vices that allow even his most popular successes to quickly exhaust themselves and his audiences.*  At least this fabulist caper, an eccentrics’ tale of revenge against rival titans of industrial war weapons, comes with a literary background as it’s straight out of Jean Giraudoux’s equally twee THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-madwoman-of-chaillot-1969.html), though missing Giraudoux’s farcical boulevard grandeur.  Jeunet opens with farcical tragedy² as a land mine kills a father before thirty years pass and his son takes a bullet in the head.  (Collateral damage from a terrorist incident.)  But the son recovers to seek revenge against that pair of international arms dealers, helped by some  ‘Court of Miracles’ eccentrics who design a plan of action worthy of Rube Goldberg.*  You have been warned.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *From our limited Jeunet list, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT/’04 shows him at his most digestible.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/very-long-engagement-2004.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The shame of it all is that Jeunet shows real technical chops at almost everything he tries.  Maybe someone could get him and, say, Terry Gilliam enrolled at some lion taming school . . . as beasts who need taming.

1408 (2007)

While big brother Harvey Weinstein juggled A-list projects, ‘shorting’ profit participants and sexually abusing female interns & junior execs at MiramaX & later his eponymous company, kid brother Bob stayed busy Exec-Producing B-list genre slop, mostly horror (series and one-offs) that played like ‘content’ decades before A.I. existed.  Bob a prophet of schlock before the fact.  This one, a typically profitable terror-torial one-off taken from a Stephen King short story, stars a somewhat thickened/puffy John Cusack* who seems to have misplaced his ‘Epi-Pen’ along with his character’s writing talent as a past-his-prime author of  haunted house/paranormal investigations.  Now burdened by the tragic death of a young daughter, and the marital breakup that followed, he’s eager for a new ghost story to reset his brand.  That’s why he won’t listen to hotel manager Samuel L. Jackson’s pleas to back off from over-nighting in Room 1408 of NYC’s Hotel Duncan.  Sure enough, he hasn’t settled in before a funhouse of horrors starts beating him up with visions of past victims, poltergeist attacks and replays of personal family tragedies.  Still new to English language pics, Swedish director  Mikael Håfström leaves a mess for Weinstein favored editor Peter Boyle to clean up.  But he can’t help the film from over staying its welcome and piling on the poltergeists and shock cuts to diminishing effect.  Somewhere inside here is a pretty good episode of ONE STEP BEYOND or THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Have Oscar nom’d Samuel L. Jackson (hotel manager), Tony winner Len Cariou (dead Dad) or Tony and Emmy’d Tony Shalhoub (book agent) ever been given less to do?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Hard to think of an actor as inconsistent as the supremely talented Mr. Cusack.  His last Stephen King role, a cameo in STAND BY ME/’86, astonishingly memorable considering the brief screen time.  Here he seems to be channeling near contemporary Nicolas Cage for inspiration . . . and besting him by holding something back.

AMÉLIE ET LA MÉTAPHYSIQUE DES TUBES / LITTLE AMÉLIE OR THE CHARACTER OF RAIN (2025)

Inexplicably well-reviewed (if little seen) animation from France (feature debuts for directors Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han), best described as Whimsical/Creepy.*  Largely focused on Little Amelie as she passes from two to three years-old in the 1970s at the lux pagoda-style house her Belgian family (Mom, brother, sister, house helper) live in while Dad works a year in Japan.  Discovering some new natural wonder every day, Amélie develops a kiddie God Complex, getting into trouble with every adventure.  Mom weirdly unconcerned with safety in spite of near drownings and spills.  No matter, that local housekeeper serves as surrogate while late developer Amélie coos in wonder before finally starting to walk & talk.  If she’d only shut up!  A regular French philosopher manqué!  Now, we’re supposed to coo.  Short and stocky compared to her family, as if she needs to be shown thru an anamorphic lens.  (Or was she designed by Botero?).  The family does share unnaturally round cat’s eyes, just not the feline kind.  More Cat’s Eye marbles.  Yikes!  Though not the villainous landlady, a war survivor who hates Europeans.  But it’s Amélie you’ll want to slap.  The film like one of those over-sized child’s picture books your Grandma thought would make a nice gift, but which you never took out of its shrink wrap.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Hard to get behind a film that uses White Chocolate as Proustian Madeleine.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *TURNING RED/’22 director Domee Shi needs only eight minutes to land a lot of the ideas being messed with here in the hilarious child/parent horror of BAO/‘18.

THE BOY WHO CAME BACK / FUMIHAZUSHITA HARU (1958)

Japanese director Seijun Suzuki already shows pulp mastery in this early film from his contentious run at Nikkatsu.  And while he can only do so much with the clunky, repetitive, unmotivated script he was given, superb use of monochrome WideScreen TohoScope super charges his images with enough variety & excitement to set aside objections to sense and sensibility.  (Some male-on-female roughhousing may prove more of a deterrent.)  Sachiko Hidari stars as the chipper tour guide who volunteers at night as a case worker to just released Reform School toughs, helping to ease them back into society.  Place to live - √  New job - √ Staying away from the old gang - √  Keeping them out of trouble - √  This avocation a job in itself, especially with tough customer Akira Kobayashi, an unabashed punk, as your assignment. Good luck keeping this one in line; the attention span of a gnat and a habit of violently acting out when crossed.  Maybe he’ll straighten up after he’s set up by former pals for a gang killing.  The real surprise in here is that rather than stumble his way toward redemption with his attractive social worker, he’s got a girlfriend to reunite with, Hidari’s crush and attention remain platonic.  So the main reason to watch lies in seeing how Suzuki pulls this together visually.  Something he has no trouble achieving.  Though he’ll not hit his stride till the ‘60s when he adds EastmanColor to an increasingly stylized æsthetic that infuriated his studio and delighted his growing international followers.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Can’t go far wrong with Suzuki’s mid-‘60s crime dramas.  Best starting point, YOUTH OF THE BEAST/’63.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/youth-of-beast-1963.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Some downloads clip a couple of reels off the running time.  Look for 1'39".

B.O.Y.: BRUISES OF YESTERDAY / GLASSKÅR (2024)

With the advent of New Queer Cinema, there have been so many gay coming-of-age films, it can seem as if there are distributors releasing nothing but gay coming-of-age films.  More male than female, presumably because there are still three or four men to every woman working in film.  (Back in the day, studios like Republic Pictures seemed to make nothing but ‘Bromantic’ Westerns, so . . . plus ça change?)  That said, Danish writer/director  Søren Green finds fresh paths in the well trod tropes of 'emo' adolescent alienation, with Noa Risbro Hjerrild excellent as a 16-yr-old kid already struggling with his sense of self when he’s sent to spend the summer with his grandparents while Mom goes to work in Italy.  Other than his skateboard, he feels abandoned by everything he’s close to when an already bad situation takes a turn for the worse and he’s shuttled off to his estranged father and his unwelcoming new family, as his mentally failing grandmother has a medical crisis.  Hardly a surprise to find the boy ‘acting out’ (though how to run away from home when you’re basically homeless?).  Desperate to feel something, he starts self-harming, and a mutual attraction with a thirty-something painter his grandfather (a glazier) knows from work also peters out when the man pulls back from this kid.  He likes him too much to cross a line, though the kid lies and tells him he’s 19.  Even a local sex worker says he’s not his type.  That ‘type’ being a paying customer; an idea the kid picks up on.  Under Green’s thoughtful handling, none of this feels forced or exploitive as we watch him hit bottom.  Thank goodness for the Danish health system!  Effective, touching, believable in ways you thought long over-milked.  Much helped by spot on casting from the boy on down.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  If Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne took on the subject, it might be a lot like this in tone if not in style & technique.  Try their breakthru LA PROMESSE./’96    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/09/la-promesse.html