HIGH ROAD TO CHINA (1983)

How pissed off was Tom Selleck when ‘the powers that be’ at CBS and MAGNUM, P.I. contractually kept him from making RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in 1981?  First-choice for Indiana Jones, he was enough pissed off for someone (those same powers that be?) to palm off this copycat INDIANA JONES on him two years later.  A similar ‘30s period adventure in serial-style with Selleck as a trouble-prone free-lance pilot stuck with a rich, irritating heiress on a hunt to find missing Dad Wilford Brimley, missing somewhere in the Near-East, before thieving business partner Robert Morley inherits his fortune.  Directed with occasional flair by the unprolific Brian G. Hutton (only nine features in spite of two snappy Clint Eastwood WWII adventures - WHERE EAGLES DARE/’68; KELLY’S HEROES/’70 - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/where-eagles-dare-1970.html ; https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/kellys-heroes-1970.html).  Bouncing from one set piece to the next, all depends on chemistry between the bickering romantic leads, with Bess Armstrong’s strong-arm tactics simply too irritating for Selleck to respond to.  He sulks when he should smoulder.  Dwarfed by RAIDERS’ success and leaving unresolved plot lines at every turn of the tale, the film barely gets by; less debacle than forgettable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  An enormous star on tv, Selleck’s film career never got into high gear.  Ironically, ending with THE LOVE LETTER/’99 which was also a last feature (and something of a vanity project) for co-star Kate Capshaw.  Married to Steven Spielberg whom she met when playing the irritating gal pal role against Harrison Ford in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM/’84, a part that might well have been Selleck’s.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Listen out for John Barry’s fine score.  ONE - because it’s the best thing in here, and TWO - because figuring a grand tune was going to waste, Barry all but reused the Airborne Love Theme in here for OUT OF AFRICA two years later.

SING SING (2023)

Like A CHORUS LINE for recidivists, this prison drama puts a group of incarcerated Sing Sing inmates thru the paces of an ‘in-house’ theater company as they hash out personal demons, wait on parole board hearings and go thru Methody acting exercises under the sharp eye of their outside director.  (The much admired cast, from Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin & Paul Raci, to a host of former program participants, also feeling like over-eager actors exercising for their peers.)  Based on real motivational programs meant to bring in an educational/cultural/socializing alternative to the drudgery of prison life with its dull routine, hopelessness and threatening atmosphere.  (Co-scripter Brent Buell ran just such a project.)   It’s pretty much a can’t miss setup, but the filmmakers (from director Greg Kwedar on down) don’t give us what we need to see for the sort of identification the film asks from us.  Not enough sense of restriction & soul numbing repetition; instead, revelatory fun at rehearsal!  And the play’s no help; a silly time-traveling mash-up of famous literary characters.  (Yes, Hamlet shows up to recite you know what.)  It’s a relief when we cut away from the stage on opening night and miss the actual production.  But the overriding problem may be the sheer likability of the cast members.  A bit like all those prison softies populating THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION; you’d think you were a substitute player filling in at some contract bridge club.*  The film ‘works,’ I guess, but so earnest, hard not to imagine a wicked takeoff with lives changed thru pottery classes or cat grooming.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For comparison, see what the Italian Taviani Brothers did with a similar concept in CESARE DEVE MORIRE / CAESAR MUST DIE/'12    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/cesare-deve-morire-caesar-must-die-2012.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Talk about loading up on unearned sympathy, when a former player stops by for a catch-up chat and goes on about having to put down his beloved dog, where’s ALL ABOUT EVE’s Thelma Ritter to quip ‘What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end.’

A PÁL UTCAI FIÚK / THE BOYS OF PAUL STREET (1968)

Ferenc Molnár’s classic pre-WWI novel on rival Budapest boy gangs (one teen/one tween), once a classroom staple in Eastern Europe (like GERMINAL in France or HUCKLEBERRY FINN in the States), with half a dozen silent to mini-series adaptations, was probably best served by Frank Borzage in Hollywood’s NO GREATER GLORY/’34 (updated to the Depression Era*) and in this Oscar nom’d period telling from Hungary’s Zoltán Fábri.  The story remains largely the same, a YA fable for grown-ups that's also a blistering allegory for the upcoming Great War.  Fighting over rights to a vacant warehouse lot to use as an exclusive playground, the boys’ quasi-military maneuvers and corporal punishments for oath-breakers is both parody and deadly serious business.  The earlier version leans on sentiment while this homegrown remake fixes on Molnar’s comic/ironic tone thru triumph & tragedy, giving an expansive view of the loyalties and cruelties of youth.  If only the cast & style didn’t have that late-‘60s Disney house-style look.  Everything too clean, too cute, too Teen Beat magazine, with freshly washed cobblestones in the street and tousled locks on the boys.  Fortunately, Molnar’s storyline overrides a lot, and halfway thru, during a ‘capture the flag’ raid in enemy territory, his unique mixture of heartless & heartbreaking starts to come across in devastating fashion.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Here's a link to Borzage’s equally fine version mentioned above.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/no-greater-glory-1934.html

CITY HEAT (1984)

Called in to take over direction from Blake Edwards after ‘creative differences,’* Richard Benjamin (in just his third film) can’t find a rhythm to make this featherweight 1930s period piece play.  Clint Eastwood & Burt Reynolds (working under his own hair), cop and P.I. in a glossy if never-named Kansas City*, were the commercial impetus for making the film, but Clint comes off primus inter pares.  And while everyone works to keep this from becoming too cute for words, they only fitfully succeed in resuscitating the hoary tropes.  You can see what they were up against: jazz clubs and book-keeping swindles; an unsolved murder and romance starved dames (Madeline Kahn & Jane Alexander, both underused); machine-gun rubouts & boxing action.  Slick & watchable at a quick 93", you can spot the stars using their pull behind the scenes: Burt gets a favored cinematographer; Clint gets his preferred composer and a final rewrite.  You can also spot something going on with Reynolds’ weight.  Whenever he takes off the raincoat, he seems to drop twenty pounds.  (Apparently, the result of a stunt injury early in the shoot.) 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Working similar terrain, Robert Altman’s KANSAS CITY/’96 is a less light-hearted 1930s jazz-infused underworld drama.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/04/kansas-city-1996.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Edwards’ pseudonym is Sam O. Brown (S.O.B.).  But he got an even better last laugh, since ankling this freed up his schedule for one of the rare films he directed but didn’t write, MICKI & MAUDE/’84, one of his best late works.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/05/micki-maude-1984.html  On the other hand, Edwards repurposed ideas from here into the slapdash SUNSET/’88.

SKYGGEN I MIT ØJE / THE SHADOW IN MY EYE (2021)

An award-winner in Scandinavia & elsewhere in Europe, Danish writer/director Ole Borndal has left little footprint Stateside.  A situation this film might change, but probably won’t with NetFlix slapping the generic title BOMBARDMENT on this exceptional end-of-the-line WWII story.  Based on a real 1945 incident (with speculative characters) where misdirected British bombers are led like moths to a flame from their actual target (Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen) to an inner-city Catholic grammar school after an attacking plane crashes and lights up the wrong location.  Suspenseful without ‘milking’ it, and boasting well-handled period detail & special effects.  But what allows this to rise well above expectations comes from strong characterizations (affected teachers, students, nuns, defecting collaborators, confused RAF pilots, downbeat soldiers, nerve-shattered parents); from its clarity of action; and in how it consistently locates the tone & attitudes of its era.  A rare find in even the best of recent WWII historicals.  It’s not just clothes & behavior, but in the physical response of Danes, Germans, collaborators to what has suddenly become a waiting game on the inevitable Nazi defeat.  With physical posture paradoxically poised and off-balance, uncomfortably held someplace between subjugation and liberation.*  Only the children yet to pick up on this endgame mindset.  The mood of a nation perfectly personified in the exceptional work of young Bertram Bisgaard Enevoldsen playing a traumatized teen who finds his way back thru crisis.    

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *It’s Sweden rather than Denmark, but Hollywood got some of this across in THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR/’62.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/counterfeit-traitor-1962.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: This film earns another MAKSQUIBS ‘Family Friendly’ label that’s for teens, but not for kiddies.  SmartPhone users can scroll down and click onto the Main Site for an explanation of all our labels.  Also SEE them since they don’t display in SmartPhone blog mode.

MY LOVE CAME BACK (1940)

Farce & romantic comedy rarely found the sophistication & delicate touch needed at hard-driving Warner Brothers.  The studio comic sensibility, fast, loud & obvious, funny stuff only to the humor-challenged, often relying on ‘Mickey Mousing’ musical scores to point up jokes like a laugh track.  Yet now & then, Olivia de Havilland got everyone to calm down just enough to allow situations to play out naturally, content to win smiles rather than guffaws.  You can see the effect in THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE, PRINCESS O’ROURKE, and in this modest charmer that works without over-egging the pudding.  It ain’t Lubitsch, but it ain’t bad.  ‘Kurt’ (later ‘Curtis’) Bernhardt made his Stateside debut with this remake of an Austrian hit, EPISODE/’35, bringing a lighter hand than Warner regulars like Lloyd Bacon or Archie Mayo would have given.  Still, for post GONE WITH THE WIND de Havilland, it must have been a disappointing assignment*, featherweight nonsense as a cash-strapped student violinist, unaware that her special scholarship money comes from music mogul/would-be Sugar-daddy Charles Winninger, but on the expense account of his second-in-command (bland Jeffrey Lynn).  Worse, Winninger son William Orr thinks this gives him just the dirt he needs to sully Lynn’s rep and leapfrog ahead at the office.  Worser, de Havilland’s musical BFFs, Eddie Albert & Jane Wyman ‘borrow’ the tainted money for union dues to get that society gig that will establish their Classical-meets-Swing band.  And guess whose grand house they’re playing in?  Yikes!  The sort of plot you expect to become too stupid for words; yet it never does.  Everyone playing mistaken identity/crossed-wires farce as sensibly as possible, and without embarrassment.  Note how quickly Spring Byington, Winninger’s sympathizing wife, figures the whole thing out without hysterics.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Bernhardt not alone making his Warners debut.  S.K. ‘Cuddles’ Sakall, in his third Stateside pic, steals all his scenes at the start of a long, productive Warners’ run.  He’s even passable as a symphonic conductor at the Academy.  No sure thing in Hollywood.

SCEWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *That generic title just one more reason for de Havilland to doubt GWTW had raised her position in the studio pecking order.  Valued as consort to Errol Flynn and . . . ?  On the other hand, she did get the great Charles Rosher lensing.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, STRAWBERRY BLONDE/'41; PRINCESS O’ROURKE/'43.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/07/strawberry-blonde-1941.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/06/princess-orourke-1943.html

WATERFRONT (1944)

Americanized as director Steve Sekely, Austro-Hungarian war refugee István Székely must have been glad of steady employment anywhere, even Poverty Row Hollywood.  Here, it’s Producers Releasing Corporation, an outfit to make MONOGRAM PICTURES look like M-G-M.  Yet, even under these circumstances, you can tell he knows what he’s doing, especially in the first half of this Nazi Fifth Columnists story.  If only you could see it.  Subfusc copies the norm, so a largely nighttime undercover spy drama must be seen through a glass darkly, very darkly.  A shame since John Carradine is just the man to play a Nazi spy combing the San Francisco waterfront district to find fellow traveler/optometrist J. Carrol Naish, only to discover Naish has just been robbed, his ‘little black book’ of codes & contacts gone missing.  Calmly murdering even sympathizers once he gets what he needs, Carradine also enjoys serving up a bit of blackmail, threatening to expose a landlady’s relatives back in Germany when she points to a No Vacancy sign.  Before that, an elaborate meet-cute for two spies as Carradine recites ridiculous passwords while pretending to have his eyes examined; and later a neat scene where a detective sweats thru an interrogation while his suspect stays cool as a cucumber.  So what if the script falls apart in the third act, a decent looking print might have saved the day.  Not that we’ll ever know.

DOUBLE-BILL: Carradine starred in many a crappy B-pic between prestige supporting gigs.  One of the best he made that year (#9 of 11, also at PRC), BLUEBEARD for Edgar G. Ulmer, good enough to hope for a better print to turn up before having a look.

WOLFWALKERS (2020)

In spite of a warm reception, third time’s not the charm for indie Irish animator Tomm Moore after SECRET OF THE KELLS and SONG OF THE SEA raised expectations with their 2D handcrafted folkloric charm.*   The detailed backgrounds, Celtic runes and painterly look remain, along with striking set pieces and new inside-the-panel/split-screen visuals, effectively borrowed from action comic books.  But the film sinks on a messy, repetitive storyline and misconceived/unappealing character development & design.  Our eponymous wolfwalker (call her Mebh Óg MacTíre) comes embedded with a pack of wolves terrifying Kilkerry Ireland in 1650.  And it’s young Robyn Goodfellowe, at first eager to help her father hunt them out of existence, who has a change of heart upon meeting Mebh in her human form.  Soon Robyn’s trying to change hearts & minds in the village and to stop her father before the killing starts.  Moore and his writers develop a sort of Peter Pan/Wendy dynamic between young girl and young wolfwalker as they bond in forest gambols.  (Definite Sapphic notes flooding the air.)  And there’s also a Captain Hook figure in the Lord Protector, certain he can tame the whole pack after trapping Mebh’s wolf mother.  None of this particularly well thought out, the wolf figures and their human counterparts somehow existing in form at the same time, while the girlfriends are equally whiny & teenage-headstrong annoying.  Worse, the wolfwalker art design looks neither human or wolf.  More of a lion cub.  Meantime, poor Sean Bean, the one ‘name’ in the vocal cast, plays the girl’s hunter/father as if he were dubbing Liam Neeson, hushfully growling every line.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: While this is worth a look on graphics alone, Moore is far better represented by his second film, SONG OF THE SEA/’14.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/06/song-of-sea-2014.html

THE TRAIL OF '98 (1928)

Still impressive late silent (with music & effects track) on the quick rise & fast fall of the Klondike Gold Rush, with unusually muscular direction from Clarence Brown on the toughest shoot of his long career.  A constant location work misery (mainly Colorado) in blizzards, mud-clogged thaws and raging rivers.  (Four stuntman died.)  Loaded with one impossible set piece after another when news of an Alaskan gold strike travels the country in Act One; hopeful fools mass westward, then turn right to face a long trek North, hazarding a weather-blasted death march up to Dawson City, staging area for the Klondike.  Act Two; finally heading into unchartered wintry wilds with the unlikely hope of finding a fortune and getting in your claim before it’s stolen in the Third Act.  Unusually for these epics, the human stories are just as thrilling as the big action sequences (avalanche; running the rapids; sled race to make a claim; life or death climb over the pass; a fiery climactic fight to the finish - all boasting still remarkable F/X) as madness, failure, starvation & lives lost claim characters in near arbitrary fashion.  Not just the reckless, old or bad, but Grandparents; bound-for-life brothers turning against the other over a shot of whiskey; a larky go-getting teen.   And hardly a moment to mourn the loss.  Dolores Del Rio (prostituting to survive) & Ralph Forbes (in remarkably sensitive form) are the lovers; Karl Dane, strong as an ox playing a loyal, comic Dane; Harry Carey as the opportunistic villain (stealing land & women); each in top form.  With one of the great fights in film as climax.  Damn hard to make those work without easy sound effects to add oomph to the punches.  And watch how director Brown lets Carey calmly set up the battle.  (It should be noted that Brown, after shooting in miserable conditions with leads he felt were inadequate, was no fan, especially after the film underperformed commercially.)  Extra credit to cinematographer John Seitz, just off his last two films with Rex Ingram (MARE NOSTRUM; THE MAGICIAN) and THE PATSY for King Vidor, for shooting under such conditions.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Some of the more spectacular effects look like ‘Schüfftan Process’ trick work though inventor, Eugene Schüfftan, had yet to come Stateside.  (The process combined live action with miniatures fit into frame with mirrors.)

LINK/DOUBLE-BILL: Charles Chaplin’s great comic take on this madness: THE GOLD RUSH/’25.  (Look for the restored 88" cut.)  OR: The other 1928 Hollywood epic to kill stuntmen (and possibly a few extras!), NOAH’S ARK.  Beautifully restored, but TRAIL is the better pic.) https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/noahs-ark-1928.html

ACCENT ON YOUTH (1935) MR. MUSIC (1950)

Paramount certainly tried to get their money’s worth out of this Samson Raphaelson play; three shots at the material, missing every time.  Naturally, they never asked Raphaelson, one of the all-time great screenwriters, to do an adaption, but enough of his idea survives to make them all watchable.  In a tone much like Ferenc Molnár, it charts a bumpy romance between an older, blocked playwright and his much younger secretary when his stillborn play springs to life once he notices how it mirrors their unspoken relationship.  But in real life, unlike his play, the younger person speaks up first.  A little change that makes a big difference.

The show’s a hit.  But then, again just as in the play, the young leading man confesses his love, complicating things in the real world.  When well played, like a recent B’way revival with David Spade, the writing still makes its effect, but the first film version (released only a month after the B’way closing; Herbert Marshall; Sylvia Sidney; dir. Wesley Ruggles) might be one of those lightly trimmed Early Talkie stage transfers.  Pretty stiff for 1935.  Fifteen years on, Paramount loosely remade it as a Bing Crosby musical, with an unresponsive Nancy Olson as secretary and athletic Robert Stack as the age-appropriate rival.*  The gimmick in Arthur Sheekman’s lousy script has Bing too lazy/too afraid of failure to compose, and Olson there to crack the whip.  With equally lousy tunes from Jimmy Van Heusen & Johnny Burke, not even guest shots from Marge & Gower Champion, Peggy Lee & Groucho Marx help.  Third time round was better, if not the charm (script revamped by John Michael Hayes as BUT NOT FOR ME/’59, with Clark Gable, Carroll Baker, Lilli Palmer.  Maybe they taped the Spades revival.  LINK:   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/12/but-not-for-me-1959.html).

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *In real life, Nancy Olson had just married a songwriter, lyricist Alan Jay Lerner.

MURDER IN A SMALL TOWN / THE LADY IN QUESTION (1991)

Still impish and good company at 66, Gene Wilder called it a day after writing & starring in this pair of not-quite-good-enough murder mysteries.*  Director/manager of a modest Rep Co in late-1930s Connecticut (he left a big B’way career after his wife was murdered), his unusual knack for spotting TRUTH in his actors make him invaluable to local homicide dick Mike Starr, the two a sort of Odd Couple investigating team.  A nifty setup, no doubt meant to serve a longer series of cable movies.  (Hence holding the unsolved murder of Wilder’s wife in reserve.)  Easy going to a fault, we haphazardly bump into clues & relationships till Wilder randomly pulls everything together with the big revelation.  TOWN has one of those richest-guy-in-town bastards as victim, everyone wants to bump him off; LADY (better of the two) poisons Claire Bloom before she can give her fortune to an anti-Nazi fund.  In both, director Joyce Chopra keeps too steady a pace, smoothing out any chance for tension or suspense, but does get decent perfs from her cast, other than portly co-star Mike Starr whose ‘gumba-goodfella’ cop act is tired & overplayed, his buddy/buddy working routine with Wilder never adequately explained.  It’s watchable, and looks pretty good for a cable pic of the day (classy cinematographer Bruce Surtees shot both), but Wilder mostly unable to correct the long-running descent from his mid-‘70s prime.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Excluding two guest turns on the WILL & GRACE sit-com.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: In the second film, Wilder must have gotten a request to stick in one of his signature audience-pleasing panic attacks.  It certainly perks things up!

BON VOYAGE (1962)

There are hints of an attempt to break past the bounds of Family-Friendly-Fare in this Walt Disney Production about solid Midwesterners (Fred MacMurray & Jane Wyman) who take the kids along on a long-planned trip to Paris. But any spark gets smothered by the hangdog, second-hand look that was studio house style under boss Ron Miller, Walt’s son-in-law. As Disney turned his attention to theme parks (with a few exceptions like MARY POPPINS/’64 and JUNGLE BOOK/’67), cinematic flat-lining set in, especially on films with MacMurray as a bargain-basement James Stewart (and alter-ego Walt). This one dribbles on for over two hours with remarkably little location shooting to buttress the stock footage & coarsely handled studio mock-ups & process transparencies. And what other studio was still shooting in Academy Ratio in 1962? Yet, so many odd events transpire. Mom looks ready to throw a party celebrating daughter Deborah Walley’s budding sexuality. "All stirred up,’ is the terminology. Dad gets drunk not once, as a gag, but three times, just about every time he goes out. Little Kevin Corcoran gets to take a pee touring the Paris sewers in the Paris sewers; and big brother Tommy Kirk does even better, sharing a prostitute with dear old Dad. Okay, it happens consecutively; and things don’t progress past a cafe demitasse, but still . . . in a 1962 Disney pic! But who would notice amid the tone-deaf dialogue, thuddingly obvious character development and appalling technical work?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Vincente Minnelli’s THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE/’58 tackles a lot of the same themes with swank, charm & the elegant comic touch of Rex Harrison & Kay Kendall worrying over the over-taxed hormones of Sandra Dee & John Saxon.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-reluctant-debutante-1958.html