THE WRECKING CREW! (2008)

Not the 2026 WRECKING CREW, Dave Bautista/Jason Momoa's action-comedy; not the 1968 spy spoof for Dean Martin’s Matt Helm; not even the 2000 Black Actioner with Ice-T & Ernie Hudson Jr.  This WRECKING CREW! (note exclamation point), is a homey documentary charting the ‘60s heyday of a tight group of about 20 or so West Coast studio session musicians whose careers peaked just as the center of Pop music influence shifted from New York to L.A., from the Brill Building to that stack of 45s known as the Capitol Building.  Sinatra & Co. to the Beach Boys; and everything in-between.  The ‘crew’ played for/with everyone.  (Boomers should stick around for the end credits to hear clips from fifty to sixty hits they’ll recall not included in the main film.)  There’s a bias in the film since it was put together by Denny Tedesco, son of main guitar player Tommy Tedesco (there’s a better film somewhere inside the clips & fresh interviews), but these nostalgic touchstones offer a lot.  Especially if you don’t mind a bit too much of interviewee Dick Clark’s idea of Rock ‘n’ Roll.  You might even be surprised to find out the Wrecking Crew played all the music not only for The Monkees, but also for The Byrds, The Association, even a lot of Beach Boys stuff under Brain Wilson.  Good vibrations, indeed.  On the other hand, imagine the thousand of schlock ‘pop’ they were paid to polish.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Gary Lewis without ‘the Playboys’ a typical interview, speaking on how his band was swapped out for Wrecking Crew musicians at recording sessions.  The Playboys’ names on the album, but not a note.  BTW Gary’s dad, Jerry Lewis set the bar for passive/aggressive parenting naming his first-born not Jerry Jr., but the near sound-alike Gary.  (Later raising the bar by disinheriting him.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Their slow ‘70s decline came two ways.  From new bands who wrote & played their own stuff; and (as told by Plas Johnson, the crew’s saxophonist famous for laying down The Pink Panther solo in two takes, thru the rise of twenty-four track technology which had them record in sections rather than together with the singer as a band.

DOUBLE-BILL:  20 FEET FROM STARDOM/’13, has a somewhat similar take on the great girl backup singers for some of the best known Black Pop vocalists of roughly the same period.

THE STALKING MOON (1968)

After seven films from 1957 to ‘68 (including TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and FEAR STRIKES OUT), producer Alan J. Pakula and director Robert Mulligan* went out with a bang.  But only because their final project was a violent Chamber Western with lots of shooting.  Elsewise, it’s something of a whimper.  Gregory Peck (only 52, but looking at the downside of his career) is a retiring Cavalry man who gets stuck escorting Eva Marie Saint’s abducted White woman, and her unwilling half-Indian eight-yr-old son, East after a decade of life on the range with her Tribe.  Two problems: ONE - she hasn’t got a home to go to (or any place for that matter); TWO - the boy’s father, a full-blooded Native American warrior, our Stalking Moon, is already on the Trail, killing anyone who comes between him and the boy.  It’s not bad, though the film takes its time getting a move on thru all the desert dust, but it sure could use a bit of surprise.  Something easier to get from an unpretentious B-list Western without so many big names in front & behind the camera on what is a pretty straightforward Avenging Father/Isolated Cabin Under Siege story.  Note that A-list scribes Alvin Sargent & Wendell Mayes let third-wheel ‘good’ Indian Robert Forster break thru the troubled Indian boy’s defenses rather than giving Peck a warm fatherly moment.  Kudos to Peck, not that many big-time movie stars would let that scene go to someone else.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *After this, Mulligan continued directing with various producers to reasonable effect, but Pakula’s switch to producer/director went into award-winning overdrive.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Pakula post Mulligan doesn’t need a push, but Mulligan post Pakula less celebrated.  Try clever/creepy THE OTHER/’72.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/02/other-1972.html

MILLE MILLIARDS DE DOLLARS / A THOUSAND BILLION DOLLARS (1982)

Patrick Dewaere’s penultimate film; sadly unworthy of his great talent.*  It sounds okay, a French take on ‘70s conspiracy thrillers, not political/military conflict & subterfuge, but focusing on International Business practices and near-sighted Investigative Journalism.  Dewaere’s steady/determined reporter unaware his latest exposé of a major figure in French business, culture & politics used him (and his publication) as part of a plan to make the man's murder look like suicide.  But once Dewaere starts investigating the suicide, he puts himself and his family in jeopardy.  If only we weren’t under the dependably mediocre hand of writer/director Henri Verneuil, here surpassing himself with some of the dullest exposition of his career.  And the film’s all exposition, the dramatic underpinnings facile/suspense-free.  Talk,, Talk,Talk: all in medium shot.  Four short, carelessly staged bits of action in a two hour film while Mel Ferrer’s conglomerate mogul squeezes competitive companies into his orbit and secretly sends out agents to keep Dewaere from finding a folder of evidence proving his story before attempting to kill him.  There's even a trick populist ending that's pure Frank Capracorn.  Jeanne Moreau shows up briefly as the suicide's widow to claim she got married in 1941 (she’d have been 13), while Verneuil calls in other big names for near cameos to bulk up his cast and make the film seem important.  And Philippe Sarde's four piano score?  A Verneuil stunt.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  What was lost in Dewaere’s early death at 35 can be well judged by watching the raucous soccer comedy of COUP DE TÊTE/’79 and the family drama UN MAUVAIS FILS/’80.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/03/coup-de-tete-hothead-1979.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/11/un-mauvais-fils-bad-son-1980.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Stateside, Dewaere still best known by two early films teaming him with Gérard Depardieu, acclaimed in their day, they’ve aged as poorly as M. Depardieu.

SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION (1932)

David O. Selznick, for better or worse the epitome of a Golden Age Hollywood producer, only made two films that deeply resonated with his personal life.  The WWII homefront drama SINCE YOU WENT AWAY/’44 (like a tribute to wife Irene Mayer Selznick whom he’d soon leave for that film’s Jennifer Jones - as we said, for better or worse), and this, his first at R.K.O. as Executive Producer after leaving Paramount, showing striking elements from his own family: NYC setting with Yiddisher Mama; overworked/cash-strapped Papa (Selznick’s ill father dying soon after this film's release); materialistic older brother; et al.  Adapted from a Fannie Hurst short story, we’re considerably below the real Selznick’s finances, specifically Lower East Side Jewish Ghetto (‘ghetto’ the term used thru-out the film), it might be a trial run for a previous Hurst movie, Frank Capra’s far better realized Part-Talkie THE YOUNGER GENERATION/’29.*  Both films featuring Ricardo Cortez as a gifted doctor to the needy who moves uptown (first 89th/West End; then Park Ave.) and regrets it, losing his soul to become a rich society doctor.*  In the earlier film, Cortez even pretends not to recognize his unrefined tenement parents, while here losing confidence in his ‘miracle’ surgical hands when he can’t save his father on the operating table.  It’s the film’s best scene, with striking direction, lighting and daring agogic editing from Gregory La Cava, Leo Tover & Archie Marshek.  It also points up Max Steiner’s pioneering underscoring, ironically by having it suddenly drop off the soundtrack.  Generally, the cast plays broadly as possible, Papa Gregory Ratoff in his film debut straight from Second Avenue Yiddish theater.  Only Irene Dunne, as Cortez’s limping childhood pal, now teaching blind students near his old free medical clinic, holding down the emoting to Episcopalian levels.  It’s all a bit much, but also just right.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Ricardo Cortez, né Jacob Krantz, got his movie name during the Valentino craze.  Brother Samuel Krantz, great cinematographer of MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, followed suit, becoming Stanley Cortez.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned, superior Hurst in Capra’s THE YOUNGER GENERATION, as well as hands-on producer Selznick’s sole original screenplay credit in SINCE YOU WENT AWAY.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-younger-generation-1929.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/03/since-you-went-away-1944.html

THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK (1941)

Just before starting as contract player at Warners (and all his best remembered Hollywood films), Peter Lorre was ‘jobbing’ at various studios, M-G-M, Republic, and here Columbia on this modest Horror programmer.  As an enthusiastic naïf, a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant, his plans are literally burned to hell when a fire at his residential hotel leaves him with a face so ghastly no one will employ him in spite of his abilities with anything mechanical.  Stopped from suicide by passing bum George E. Stone (excellent*), he finds a use for his talents in robbery, stealthily moving in & out of shops, vaults, warehouses, anything.  Lorre’s once strict moral code crumbling in the face of rejection by decent society, only the underworld having any use for him.  One exception: Evelyn Keyes, a blind costume jewelry maker who can’t see the hideous face or how Lorre gets around unnoticed by hiding himself (and his tortured soul) under a latex mask.  But then the possibility of recovery with new plastic surgery techniques raise hopes and he tries to go ‘straight’ with disastrous results.  The rest surprisingly bleak.  Director Robert Florey must have talked a good game, his films never quite matching his ambitions after making his name on the experimental LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413, A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA/’28.  His films don’t ‘swing.*  But he holds this to just over an hour and gets a boost from cinematographer Franz Planer, still fairly new in town, but soon a regular for greats like Wyler, Zinnemann and Ophüls.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *More horror for Florey & Lorre over at Warners in THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS/’46.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-beast-with-five-fingers-1946.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Stone very much part of the criminal gang, yet not only does he receive no punishment, he’s rewarded!  The Hollywood Production Code ‘raped in its sleep,’ as James Agee would soon put it (though for a different film).

STALLION ROAD (1947)

This modest feature is mainly interesting for figuring out why its three stars teetered just below the A-list*, and for an unusual lack of dramatic incident in its first half.  It’s like everyone’s on holiday in SoCal horse country.  Rather pleasant.  It’s midway in before life & death melodrama, along with romantic tangles kick in.  Pity journeyman director James V. Kern, out of his depth in both halves.  But for as long as nothing much is happening (other than a scare for Alexis Smith’s kid sister at the beach), horse rancher/veterinarian Ronald Reagan, visiting novelist pal Zachary Scott and pants-wearing/horse breeder neighbor Alexis Smith play a friendly game of catch and release visits to figure out which two parties make the natural couple.  Stephen Longstreet, scripting from his own novel, happy just to observe.  Then anthrax comes to cattle country, and melodrama breaks out.  Stupidity, too; one of those plots where you’re not allowed to make a simple explanation if you want to keep the plot going.  So Doc Reagan may be saving the entire livestock population of the area and working on an experimental serum, but Smith isn’t told of his heroics.  All she knows is he didn’t show up for her sick show horse.  It gives Scott an opportunity to move in, leaving Reagan with a clinging married gal he once dabbled with.  It’ll take a (near) fatal diagnosis to sort this one out.  A shame, that directionless first half was something singular for ‘40s Warner Brothers.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Watch how the film gets around the Hollywood Production Code during an unethical medical procedure.  People say editing can save a film, it also can save a hero’s life.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Why didn’t these three hit the A-list?  Best guess: Reagan only able to play one note at a time.  Smith too tall for three-quarters of Hollywood’s leading men.  Scott . . . well, that’s a tough one.  Too good for his own good?  See what he does under Jean Renoir in THE SOUTHERNER    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-southerner-1945.html

DISCLOSURE DAY (2026)

Steven Spielberg had a ‘New Coke’ moment in 1980, re-releasing his 1977 blockbuster CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND in a Special Edition that slightly trimmed the original cut, then added a final sequence taking us along with Richard Dreyfuss inside the Alien Mothership.  Pretty much everyone hated it.  At best a mistake in intention; at worst something leftover from a  World’s Fair exhibit.commissioned from Disney.  Spielberg took the hint and axed the sequence from subsequent editions.  But he’s a stubborn guy, and, 46 years later, he’s still trying to get it right, now as the climax of this new Aliens Are Real/Aliens Are Here thriller.*  The film and the man treated with kid gloves by critics as something of a last hurrah (print puff pieces downright painful), not that he doesn’t deserve the attention, and not that the film is a dud, but something’s definitely off.  The basic story, and raise your hand when you recognize the idea, is that documented evidence of alien visitors long suppressed by a special military unit led by Colin Firth is heading toward international exposure by a break-off group led by Colman Domingo.  Platonic couple Josh O’Connor (math whiz) and Emily Blunt (inexplicably speaking in Alien tongue) are earthly messengers on the run.  Naturally, the film is well accomplished, perfectly judged pacing and plenty of close calls staged to a technical fare-thee-well.  But about two reels in, it’s hard to miss that everybody involved thinks they’re making a suspense comedy . . . except Spielberg.  Most noticeable when miscast Blunt goes into her speaking-in-alien-tongue routine.  (She does international languages, too.)  You keep expecting to hear a giggle of self-surprise burble out of her at her own unexplained ability after these exchanges.  And not just any giggle.  But the rumbling joyful snort and laugh that were a Goldie Hawn specialty.  (Spielberg’s first leading film lady in THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS/’74 when she would have been just the right age for this.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-sugarland-express-1956.html)  And it wouldn’t have altered the general tone of legit suspense, either.  Think of all the big laughs Spielberg put over as part of the mix in JAWS, RAIDERS, JURASSIC, etc.  Spielberg, always something of a square; it's a large part of his charm.  Now pushing 80, has he become too square to get the joke that over half a century of Alien footage showing hundreds of witnesses hasn’t leaked from any lips in seven decades?  (At 94, composer John Williams seems in on the joke when needed.)  Perhaps Spielberg simply can’t go home again; or can’t without Goldie Hawn’s giggle.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *How stubborn?  Counting GOONIES as a junior-league Indy pic and TINTIN as Indy français, Spielberg went to the Indy well seven times, only bringing up water twice.  Then watched from the sidelines as the recent PADDINGTON BEAR in Peru pic filled the bucket.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Note Spielberg pointlessly circling his subject like some kid just out of Film School.  Then turning uselessly old-school Hollywood with fussy matching edits.  Trying too hard?

DOUBLE-BILL:  DISCLOSURE ends with a tease, a message to the world from an interplanetary friend that’s  cut off before we get the translation.  Odds are it’s the same speech Michael Rennie’s Alien gives at the end of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL/’51.

THE GREAT WALDO PEPPER (1975)

After a Zeitgeist-grabbing two-fer for Paul Newman & Robert Redford (BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID/’69; THE STING/’73), director George Roy Hill soloed with each: this for Redford; SLAP SHOT/’77 with Newman.*  All four hits, the budget-conscious Hill bringing each in for about 5 or 6 mill, but only the first two smashes, earning five times the gross of the last two.  Nowadays, SLAP SHOT holds first critical position (rightfully so - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/slap-shot-1977.html), and it’d be a stretch to say BUTCH or STING has grown in esteem, but odd-man-out WALDO looks considerably better than once thought.  Some of this has to do with a lighthearted ad campaign misrepresenting the film in hopes of STING-like grosses.  Or perhaps the film just looks more interesting than it did in ‘75.  (Original story by Hill/script by BUTCH’s William Goldman.)  Redford, perfectly cast, is an intensely likeable scapegrace, a narcissist who always came on the scene a bit too late to live up to his potential.  A pilot in early aviation days, he missed action in  WWI then ran out the clock on barnstorming and big-time Air Circus shows.  Perpetually in trouble with cash, he’s soon skirting the new laws taming old-school flyboys as aviation matures from daredevil freak-show to big business.  Hill manages to segue from fun adventure to doomed lives in an instant (you can’t miss it), charting a diminishing trajectory from midpoint down, all the way to Hollywood stunt flyer, old scores to settle and no turning away from implications.  Certainly not from Redford who locks onto that now empty heroic grin; and Hill never showing his hand.  No wonder the film sputtered in comparison.  Technically superb, lenser Robert Surtees ditching THE STING’s glossy look of the same time period.  Loaded with real planes, real flying, real pilots offering plenty of pre-CGI thrills.

DOUBLE-BILL:  More daredevil pilots in Douglas Sirk’s too little known THE TARNISHED ANGELS/’57, from William Faulkner’s PYLON, with Rock Hudson, Robert Stack & Dorothy Malone.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Technically, it’s another Redford/Newman pic, not Paul, but with ill-fated son Scott Newman in a small role.

HOPPERS (2026)

The sound you heard coming from PIXAR hometown Emeryville, CA last March was likely a collective sigh of relief.  They’d just released their first original (non-franchise) hit in some time.  (Since the pandemic?*)  No mega-smash, but a solid stand-up double.  In many ways it’s an odd film (a good thing after so much formula PIXAR), HOPPERS' story a variation on the old ‘pave paradise/put up a parking lot’ trope, with nods toward Cinderella’s time-limited transformation, as unlikeable characters & unattractive design choices seem to hint at self-criticism & acknowledged course correction.  This being PIXAR, reset comes with a $150 mill price tag.  (But who stuck those scary sharp teeth in a duck’s bill?  Yikes!)  Our nominal heroine, a self-righteous pain, is 19-yr-old squeaky-wheel Mabel, determined to save her spoiled childhood pond (and the critters who once lived there) in the face of highway development.  Her antagonist a self-infatuated mayor (Jon Hamm, very good) who can’t compromise without losing face.  The gimmick a science project that ‘hops’ personalities from one species to another.  Mabel zapped into a beaver bod.  The script, trying too hard to be fair to all sides, winds up celebrating false equivalency as if it were compromise.  Not quite the same thing.  But that’s politics; we’re here for art, yes?  Good to see PIXAR questioning so much about itself.  Even if it’s yet to find answers.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Dear PIXAR character animation team.  The ‘cartooniness’ of the character animation design is worth pursuing, but this in-between stage is uncomfortable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  They miss an opportunity when the various animals play call-and-response with their distinctive vocalizations.  It plays like a song cue (‘I Bought Me A Cow’ from Aaron Copland’s Old American Songs?), but nothing comes of it.  Pity.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *A sure theatrical hit lost to PIXAR when LUCA/’21 turned streamer in early pandemic days.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/luca-2021.html

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (2014)

You’ve heard of the so-called ‘Cilantro Gene,’ a condition causing 23% of the population to taste rubber tires when eating the popular herb?  Less known/equally powerful, the MARVEL Comics Movie Mutation, a genetic response presenting as doziness, hives, nausea, rejection to endless cross-plugging of the MARVEL Universe, characters & franchises within a single film; all exacerbated by CGI abuse; battle-palooza fatigue; ‘fatal’ blows of zero consequence; and no built-in bathroom breaks for three hour running times.  A MARVEL-phobic effect, once rare, now showing alarming spikes of growth in casual viewers & loyal fanboys.  It's one reason the first Chris Evans led CAPTAIN AMERICA film (THE FIRST AVENGER/’11) was such a pleasant surprise to gene carriers.  Perhaps because its origin story held to a single hero; perhaps because period elements gave an analogue feel to practical and non-practical (CGI) effects; perhaps because old-school director Joe Johnston brought mid-century æsthetics from his THE ROCKETEER/’91 with him as well as action chops that bothered to connect the thigh bone to the leg bone.  Alas, as noted at the time*, it couldn’t last; and this sequel, generally considered the high point in MARVEL’s film renaissance, figuratively put the cilantro back in the recipe.  Here, directors Joe & Anthony Russo* packing back in all the allergy inducing elements on a story about a splinter group sabotaging the Super-Hero good guys of S.H.I.E.L.D. from within.  A story built for cross-plugging at every exposition stop and story beat.  Sure tastes like rubber tires to me.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Bearing in mind that you should never take advice from anyone who says, ‘I don’t usually like (fill-in-the-blank) genre movies, but this one is worth seeing.’  But that first Evans CAPTAIN AMERICA film is darn entertaining.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/04/captain-america-2011.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Remarkably poor editing (especially in hand-to-hand action stuff) for a film costing near 200 mill.

12 MONKEYS (1995)

A polite way to describe the films of Terry Gilliam is to call them maximalist.  A more accurate description might compare them to a hungry teenager overloading a dinner plate at his first open buffet.  If only someone had told him you can go back for a second plate if you’re still hungry.  This one, philosophical future preposterous Sci-Fi, comes off better than most, it certainly did commercially.  Bruce Willis is the time-traveling guinea-pig for a group of experts trying to figure out the mystery of the 12 Monkeys, a gaggle of infectious primates who unleashed a plague, killing about 5 billion Earthlings.  Unfortunately for Willis, time coordinates not always on-target for the correct year to find out about the deadly man-made monkey virus and bring the info back-to-the-future.  Christopher Plummer and lunatic son Brad Pitt keep popping up at various landing points, as does helpmate Madeleine Stowe.  But don’t sweat the big stuff, the whole shebang is a shaggy-dog story (oops, shaggy-dog tragedy) with a ‘red herring’ not as a wrong turn, but as solution.  Brad Pitt nearly steals the pic with his escalating rants of insanity, letting his inner Gene Wilder out.  (If only he didn’t pull the same stunt every time he comes on screen.)  And Gilliam’s big sentimental finish?  Indefensible.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  At one point in the ‘present,’ Willis & Stowe go to the movies to watch VERTIGO and THE BIRDS at an Alfred Hitchcock retro screening.  Later, Gilliam riffs on VERTIGO story beats.  It adds little to the film, but does offer a chance to see how much available prints at the time needed the major restoration (largely overseen by Robert Gitt) it got for it’s successful re-release a year later in 1996.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Gilliam credits Chris Marker’s half-hour short, LA JETÉE/’62 as source, probably good advice.

STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR (1940)

Hour-long B-noir earns its cult rep from one of Nathanael West’s last scripts (dead this year at 37), thru some off-the-beam direction by gadabout writer/producer Boris Ingster (first of only three directing gigs*), but mostly in the no-holds-barred cinematography of RKO film noir specialist Nicholas Musuraca, largely shooting on the studio backlot NYC tenement block.  Then there’s the half-reel dream sequence for leading man John McGuire (pretty good) as he re-imagines the murder trial where his testimony could send young cabby Elisha Cook Jr to ‘the chair,’ now repeating as a nightmare with all that circumstantial evidence pointing at him.  (Both cases absurdly weak, a black mark on West.)  The girl in the pic, McGuire’s worrying fiancé Margaret Tallichet (pretty bad), mopes around to bring the running-time up to feature length and be a possible victim, but keep your expectations under control and there’s lots of Hollywood-style German Expressionist art direction to gaze at via fancy dissolves, canted angles, pore revealing close-ups and psychologically penetrating double or triple exposures.  Presumably done with an optical printer, yet showing no grain deterioration.  In silent days, these effects got done right in the camera by rewinding the negative for another exposure, leaving grain unchanged.  But that technique little used for over a decade, since the Talkies came in.  So how’d Musuraca do it?  (Assuming it was him and not the special effects unit.)  Elsewise, top-billed Peter Lorre shows up here and there to look suspicious & vaguely disturbed; threaten the girl and (no surprise) eventually confess to the killings.  (Lorre filling in with one-shot jobs in the interegnum between his wonderful MR. MOTOs at 20th/FOX and upcoming classics under contract at Warners.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Right at the end of his career, Ingster hit the jackpot, producing a slew of MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. episodes.

PROJECT HAIL MARY (2026)

Winning, intensely likeable ‘original’ (adapted, like its near-cousin THE MARTIAN/’15, from an Andy Weir novel), seems to be following the heavily-trod path of one of those Earth Doomed By Approaching Meteor films.  All tropes on-board as an international staff of problem-solving scientists and a mixed-crew of brave astronauts go full-speed-ahead to save the planet from extinction.  Here, with a failing sun going on as understudy in a role usually played by fast-moving space-mountains.  The film a smart, funny version of duds like METEOR/’79 and SUNSHINE/’07, just to name two unhappy attempts.  But what truly sets this one apart from previous good versions is how it shifts in the second act* toward a different main storyline, the one where a single person accidentally finds himself alone on some g-normous (space)ship, stumbling toward competence, confidence & enlightenment by mastering his vessel.  Even finding a partner to accompany him on the journey.  All straight out of Buster Keaton in THE NAVIGATOR/1924.  Admittedly, Buster does it in an hour while directors Phil Lord & Christopher Miller take 2½*, but you can’t miss the parallels.  Even if Keaton gets a cute deadweight girl for a mate while Ryan Gosling, in a showstopping turn as a Middle-School teacher/contrarian scientist who’s pulled into heroic orbit, gets a stalwart CGI granite figure who nearly steals the pic.  Oddly, what plays best and sticks with you here are less the big set pieces than quotidian moments simply watching Gosling on routine duty.  Not so for Keaton, perhaps because his set pieces so obviously real things really happening, captured on film at 22fps (give or take) for our amazement.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *The general nit being picked against PROJECT is its length.  But the filmmakers use every minute for something necessary and the film earns its 156" running time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Film structure is scrambled between past & present all thru the film so that act divisions crisscross along with time lines.  But architecture very clear from the film’s start which happens to be in the Second Act.

ÉL / THE STRANGE PASSION* (1953)

One of Luis Buñuel’s greatest films from his Mexican period; also one of his least liked.  ÉL (HE, or should that be HIM?) often said to be as close to a self-portrait as Buñuel ever got, opens with typical perversity as beautiful young boys in a lux Catholic Church, aristocratic looking with antiseptically clean bared feet, receive a ritualistic foot bath, then patted dry before being tenderly kissed on said foot by their chubby middle-aged priest wearing his finest vestments.  Maybe it was all less suggestive in 1953.  But even if it were more innocent at the time, it certainty doesn’t stop rich land developer Francisco Galván (Arturo de Córdova) from a bit of foot-fetish transubstantiation from little boy toes to ladies’ pumps, especially the delectably shod foot of engaged beauty Gloria Vilalta (Delia Garcés).  Losing her in the crowd, he happens upon her at a dinner party at his grossly over-decorated estate.  And, before you can say FATE (or linear leap), he’s replaced her fiancé with himself and his suffocating jealousy and accusations of infidelity.  Climaxing (if that’s the word for an unconsummated marriage) with his own DIY attempt at a chastity sew-up.  Yikes!  And the wife doesn’t leave because . . . ?  Well, where exactly shall she go?  How exactly would she support herself?  At the Church, the priest tells her to give the rich creep another chance.  Mother says stick it out; it’s probably your fault.  And Buñuel?  Po-faced to the point of seeing absurdist humor as this Grandee goes over the bend, something comic about his epic lack of self-awareness.  With a final cascade of hallucinatory mockery that’s up there with any of Buñuel’s ultra-vivid dream sequences.  And, just this once, showing his hand.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Criterion’s 2025 edition comes with three unusually compelling EXTRAs.  A conversation with Guillermo del Toro who, comparing Buñuel with Hitchcock (the other director he feels the closest to), says while EL is Buñuel at his most Hitchcockian (at least in formal design), Hitch’s most  Buñuelian is MARNIE/’64.  (Hmm, the ‘correct’ answer is FAMILY PLOT/’76.  Indeed, the attack on a priest at mass anticipates PLOT, so too bits of VERTIGO/’58.  While the Hitchcock ÉL is most indebted to is SUSPICION/’41.)  Also included is a neat visual essay and a priceless interview with later Buñuel Euro-collaborator writer Jean-Claude Carrière who actually succeeds in getting Bunuel to talk about himself and about film.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That anodyne English title accompanied the original Stateside release which clipped about ten minutes off the full 1'33" running time.

LADY ON A TRAIN (1945)

After keeping Universal solvent in her teen heyday (late-‘30s/early-‘40s), soprano sensation Deanna Durbin survived a chubby adolescence only to shed pounds and lose star standing as she hit her twenties.*  Surprisingly, the studio didn’t give up easily, here laying out a lux cast (lux by Universal standards) of small-potato swains, but top character support around Durbin in this well produced comic whodunnit that almost works.  The comedy tanks badly (comedy writing hard!*); but ‘straight’ film noir elements unexpectedly fine; from its Miklós Rózsa score to Elwood Bredell’s chiaroscuro lensing, and, frankly, AI could write a decent murder mystery.  Durbin’s a nepo daughter taking the train to New York when it stops just long enough for her to witness a murder in a room across the elevated tracks.  Only problem, no one will believe her.  (This set-up, fresh at the time, would be famously used by Agatha Christie a decade later in  4:50 FROM PADDINGTON.)  Neat twists (Dan Duryea NOT the bad guy!) and a rattling pace from director Charles David.  Something of a film Jack-of-all-trades in Europe, David only directed twice, his second and last RIVER GANG/’45, a Universal B-pic starring Gloria Jean, a teenage singer meant to be ‘the next’ Deanna Durbin.  No dice.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Two years after this, Durbin would walk away from the screen, marry this film’s French director (49 years wed), never look back, move to France and refuse all offers for books, interviews or recording.  She’d had it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *One good joke in the whole script: at a nightclub, but in mourning, Duryea orders a martini for his very proper Aunt.  But with a black olive.    

VIGIL IN THE NIGHT (1940)

As if doing penance for past pleasures, Carole Lombard (coming off the delicious melodrama of IN NAME ONLY/’39) and director George Stevens (fresh from Kipling’s tallest tale, GUNGA DIN/’39*) went all high-minded on the noble (if underpaid/appreciated) profession of nursing as seen in A.J. Cronin’s novel.  The popular Scotch novelist having something of a cinematic moment with VIGIL closely following THE CITADEL/’38 and this year’s THE STARS LOOK DOWN, both British-made prestige hits for M-G-M.  This one opens with Lombard (more Goddessy beautiful than ever*) trying to stay awake all-night with her young diphtheria patient before turning duty over to kid sister Anne Shirley (looking like the young Lana Turner) who immediately drops the ball, then lets Lombard take the blame.  Similar incidents pile up against a blameless Lombard as benefactors, bosses and big shots leave our good nurse holding the bag whenever things go wrong.  And they go wrong a lot!  Nonetheless, Carole perseveres, eventually proving her worth during a raging smallpox epidemic in a London isolation ward with the help of Brian Aherne, a devoted doctor who’s bothered to take note of what’s really going on behind the snubs and shifts in blame.  Heck, even that deadbeat sister comes thru by the end.  Dreary and self-sacrificial as this all is, the film builds sympathy, narrative interest and character as it goes along, but those two British-made adaptations have the edge on this one in almost every way.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, THE CITADEL and THE STARS LOOK DOWN.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/citadel-1938.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-stars-look-down-1940.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Plenty of big, stunning close-ups of Lombard at 32.  Stevens and cinematographer  Robert De Grasse obviously transfixed.  ALSO:  *That GUNGA DIN plot largely repurposed by Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur from their own play, THE FRONT PAGE/’31.

DONGJI RESCUE / DONG JI DAO (2025)

Think of it this way: If Michael Bay can reduce the Japanese attack on PEARL HARBOR/’01 into a loud, pseudo-patriotic, fast-paced, dumbed-down Michael Bay film, why shouldn’t Chinese directors  Zhenxiang Fei and Guan Hu give a ‘Pop’ patriotic spin to a heroic WWII incident that took place on a small isolated island in the East China Sea where Native fisherman were living under brutal Japanese occupation.  Especially when these two filmmakers easily best Bay at his own game.  The actual incident started when an American submarine successfully torpedoed the Japanese freighter Lisbon Maru, unaware that 1,800 British P.O.W.s were locked inside.  (Beyond this, truth leaks faster than water on the fast-sinking Lisbon Maru.)  One prisoner, blown off the ship’s deck and out to sea, is rescued by the kid brother of a pair of fisherman living alone of the far side of the island.  His older brother knows saving this man will mean nothing but trouble and tries to throw him back like an undersized catch.  Yikes!  Sure enough, word gets around, and the Japanese, already feeling disgraced by the ship attack, hold the entire island responsible.  Meanwhile, 1800 prisoners in the holds below deck are sure to drown when the ship sinks.  On the island, Japanese miscalculate with extreme cruelty which backfires, causing an uprising by the islanders who mount an attack before taking to sea with a flotilla of small fishing boats to try and save what men they can; the attack heroically led by that once reluctant older brother.  Marvelously characterized and cast, with spirit and humor in the first half, followed by astounding action footage (CGI fakery kept to a minimum) in the second; islanders showing pluck, cunning, sacrifice and courage.  Showmanship and flair aided by the use of a striking, extra-wide  format (frame ratio 2.85 : 1) while story and character development never let up.  Particularly so for older brother Bi-An (Yilong Zhu) who brings a level of physical swagger to personal vengeance rarely seen since Daniel Day Lewis bared his torso and started to run down his enemies in THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS/’92.  Stirring stuff, reveling in its sure audience manipulation.  Plus a moral: Learn to hold your breath underwater for a good four minutes!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  Best guess is that co-director Zhenxiang Fei (mainly with tv background) played kid brother to director Guan Hu whose last film was BLACK DOG/’24, a sort of anti-epic epic as subtle and abstract as this one is broad and concrete.  Note cinematographer Weizhe Gao came along with him.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/04/black-dog-gouzhen-2024.html

DOUBLE-BILL:  A documentary on the incident, THE SINKING OF THE LISBON MARU (not seen here), released in 2024.

THIS REBEL BREED (1960)

Descriptions of this zero-budget exploitation indie might as well be promising THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE meets 21 JUMP STREET (the earnest  ‘87 series, not the winking 2012 film).  Drug-fueled, racially-charged High School on the edge of violent gang-led implosion admits a pair of undercover cops posing as (very remedial) students to investigate the problems.  And damned if this description ain’t accurate.  At last, truth in movie advertising!  But directors Richard L. Bare & William Rowland so incompetent, the product so dreary, so starved of invention, there’s hardly a bit of fun to be had.  Worse, in trying to squeeze out an extra dribble of cash (from where? - Drive-In triple-bill rentals?), they tacked on a few make-out sequences which pop up at random moments for half-minute orgasmic rug rolls with skimpily-clad sexpots & horny boyfriends not in the rest of the film.*  Even a belly dancer as Special Guest Boob.  Rita Moreno is in here for the big dramatics as a Hispanic with a taste for White boys.  One knocks her up before getting knocked off.  (And why not?  When Moreno knocked off work she presumably was nailing her audition for WEST SIDE STORY/’61.)  BTW,  Moreno already 29, and all the other speaking parts cast with ‘teenagers’ also nearing 30 who’d soon be seen on tv; like Mark Damon in swarthy Mexicali make-up; Al Freeman Jr. there to give racial peace a chance; Richard Rust trying to hook the whole school (and selected kid brothers) on ‘Mary Jane.’  This ought to be a hoot.  Instead, it’s a pass.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The re-release with softer-than-soft-core trimmings retitled THE BLACK REBELS.  Pretty insulting; especially as the Black gang gets less footage than Whites or Hispanics.

SKYLARK (1941)

Even in the ‘20s. ‘30s, and ‘40s, when B’way’s footprint on mass culture was at its height, reigning stage divinities rarely made the movie version of their latest smash.*  Take Gertrude Lawrence, the hard-to-photograph stage star of this Samuel Raphealson play.  Here, she’s been replaced by Claudette Colbert as an advertising man’s wife who succumbs to ‘the Five Year Itch’ when husband Ray Milland puts business first once-too-often and a flirtatious Brian Aherne pitches woo.  Colbert proves one of the best substitutes in locating the elusive Lawrence charm, poise & presence.*   (Previously, Colleen Moore, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford & Ginger Rogers took turns; later Deborah Kerr.)  Raphaelson’s rueful, but rather sour play is perilously ‘opened up’ by ‘Hollywood Ten’ scripter Allan Scott.  (One of the few on the Communist Blacklist who actually tucked a bit of Leftist ideology into a film.  Listen up in a subway sequence where bickering husband Milland & wife Colbert hear out various riders’ comments, including a proletariat type behind his newspaper.  It’s Scott’s best addtion to the play.)  Elsewhere, he’s content to dumb things down with physical shtick and a kitchen cooking fiasco for Colbert.*  Director Mark Sandrich shows a limber touch when he can (see prologue), but elsewise has to deal with the arguments on work, life and compatibility reduced to a level that makes Colbert’s final choice even more unsatisfying than I think Raphealson wanted it to be.  Still, if not particularly funny, pretty interesting as a period piece on marriage & mores if you read between the lines.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Katharine Hepburn, an apparent exception to the substitution rule on her ‘comeback’ role in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, only got the film because she controlled the show rights.  *BTW note Kate also played the kitchen fiasco scene from this film for her PHILLY follow-up in WOMAN OF THE YEAR/’42.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  To see Colbert really run with the idea of fixing a stale marriage with a flirtation, Preston Sturges to the rescue in next year’s THE PALM BEACH STORY/’42.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-palm-beach-story-1942.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  STAR/’68, the Julie Andrews/Robert Wise bio-pic on Lawrence famously missed capturing the aura that saw Noel Coward, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Kurt Weill all write SongBook Standards for a woman unable to stay on key.

THUNDERBIRDS (1965 - ‘66)

Irresistible.  Of the fantasy/adventure puppet shows created by Sylvia & Gerry Anderson in the mid-‘60s for British tv (filmed in SuperMarionation!; still syndicated ‘round the globe), this 32 episode series about a top-secret/family-run/last-resort rescue outfit is the best-remembered.  Not that it's so superior to similar Anderson shows of the ‘60s.  It’s more that where the others made do with half-hour time slots, THUNDERBIRDS got a full-hour.  Subtracting commercials and credits means a bit over 20" vs. a bit over 40"; the latter proving a perfect length for set-up, characterizations, unfolding disaster; late plot twist and dangerous mission hitch before saving  things from catastrophe in the nick of time!  Set a century in the future (2065) our heroes a family of five grown-up boys, The Tracys, commanded by their widowed dad, and living on a secret island with Grandma and a few non-family assistants (technical genius 'Brains' like a nerdy sixth sibling) while underground silos store fabulous jets & space rocket rescue vehicles.  Stories mostly the same: futuristic technology goes haywire and the family is contacted to save the day.  (A ‘clip’ show ends season one and a Christmas Special ends the series.)  What makes it so charming & fun is watching them solve all the technical tricks in scale within the limitations of marionette puppetry.*  (Occasional cheats come via close-ups of real hands and real scenery.)  Spot the modest improvements in detail work: immovable mouths loosen up; eyes start to blink, hair is restyled, but keeping extravagant eyebrows on all the villains.  A ‘Cool Britain’ vibe lasts for the first ten episodes (very SECRET AGENT MAN; THE AVENGERS) with Barry Gray’s pulse-pounding score (bongos to the fore, then refraining till the penultimate episode).  And note how Dad Tracy favors eldest son Scott (the only one with dimples!); and constant changes to London agent Lady Penelope’s coifs and couture.  Plus sexual tension on the isle; so much testosterone and only one eligible gal.  (Son Virgil Tracy mentions a wife and kids, but we never see them.)  But if there’s no sex, we do get plenty of suggestive space docking and surface drilling.  Yikes!  That rubber cement glue used for all those scale-model space ships and hovering jet planes must have lingered in the air on set.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  The Tracys always end ship to ship or ship to base messages saying ‘F.A.B.’  Apparently, it’s no anagram, simply a phrase like A. O. K. or Roger & Out acknowledging reception.  F.A.B.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *One thing Andersons & crew can do little about is getting water and fire to match scale.  A problem only solved (if that’s the word) once CGI came on the movie scene.