LA CAPTURA / FACING EL CHAPO (2026)

If other Mexican tv-movies are this good, sign me up for a subscription.  Directed by Chava Cartas (script by Bernardo Esquinca from Héctor de Mauleón’s magazine series), a story too amazing to be anything but true.  Naturally well constructed, too.   (Who’d believe it as a piece of fiction?)  It opens as El Chapo, Mexico’s top-drug lord (Hector Kotsifakis) and top cartel second El Cholo (Juan Pablo Cruz García) wade to freedom thru one of his infamous escape tunnels.  Moving thru the watery muck in their underwear, they emerge (weapons intact) then steal a car after tossing its middle-aged driver & passengers out.  The incident, initially reported as a simple stolen vehicle, and the car quickly spotted by roadside Federal Policemen (Alfonso Herrera; Noé Hernández), patrol car partners just reassigned to night shift.  Family man Herrera and near retirement loner Hernández strangers without a known history to have built trust on.  And with bigtime drug money corruption so rampant, it’s naive to have trust between agencies; from one desk at headquarters to the next; let alone  to the guy sharing the front seat of your police vehicle.  Even more so with two of the most dangerous people in the world cuffed and wearing dirty underwear behind you.  (No wonder some crucial info gets ‘slow walked’ thru the system, there's always someone  on the take you've got to work around.)  Overtaking that stolen car, the pair immediately know who they’ve got and what the stakes, bribes and odds of survival are.  Plus, they’re running out of gas in unfriendly territory and a stop will surely expose the men in the back seat.  Sure enough, word inevitably leaks thru mobile phone pics and a hostage drama quickly ramps up as cops & criminals race not only to the scene, but also to Herrera’s family home.  All this honestly and cleanly handled without having to push the situation.  Yes, massed military-style standoffs in the mix, but at heart this is a chamber piece.  And all the more effective for it.  (NOTE:  Once again, for those on the Main Site who see our LABELS which don't show on e-phones, another Family Friendly listing, but definitely not kiddie fare,  Think Junior High and up.)

DOUBLE-BILL:  Instead of other drug cartel action/suspensers, go for a Western that works in similar fashion, 3:10 TO YUMA/’57, the Delmer Daves classic with Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, everyone at their peak.  Not the over-egged 2007 remake.

SON OF THE GODS (1930)

Fourth and last of the consecutive films silent star Richard Barthelmess and director Frank Lloyd made to ride thru the Silent to Talky transition (1929 to 1930).  Lloyd, by now, pretty much back on his feet technically, if anything, a bit ahead of the curve.  Barthelmess, on the other hand, never quite adjusting to ‘30s tempo, but holding on to stardom by moving into stories on controversial social issues.*  Here, it’s race prejudice.  Barthelmess who became a major star with his YellowFace turn in D.W. Griffith’s BROKEN BLOSSOMS/’19* (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/06/broken-blossoms-1919.html), again plays a Chinaman (as he’s pejoratively called here), but without YellowFace, since his Caucasian features are half the plot.  Sent into the White man’s world by proud, rich father Anders Randolf (very much in YellowFace), Barthelmess is not so much ‘passing’ as ‘not mentioning.’  And while he’s considered a great guy by his old college pals (always good for a loan), whenever his heritage leaks out to people who don’t know him, especially to hopeful young women, the reaction is vicious, as if getting a good table they’d never manage on their own was the equivalent of rape.  And the film doesn’t hold back on these attitudes.  Realizing he’ll never succeed, especially by living off his father’s largess, he tries Europe, finding a job and living on his own resources.  Once more, a white admirer, Constance Bennett, swears nothing could come between them, but a confession leads to a public flogging for being ‘deceptive,’ cunning as all Chinamen are!  Meanwhile, Dad is dying back in New York’s Chinatown (is that a set or a location shot on Doyers Street - looking much as it does today?).  You’ll know how the rest plays out, even the appalling cop-out for the censorship board to facilitate the ending.  That’s kinda fascinating, too; subject matter and rawness of presentation quite unexpected for 1930.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Unfortunately for Barthelmess, his series of socially engaged films (‘30 - ‘34), though often worthy as commentary and as film, never hit the way Paul Muni and Mervyn LeRoy did in I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG/’32.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/i-am-fugitive-from-chain-gang-1932.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *To Barthelmess's credit, YellowFace more in attitude than in makeup.

COLORADO (1940)

Republic Pictures stalwart Joseph Kane directs this atypically ambitious Roy Rogers programmer.  (Admittedly more aspirational than fully achieved.)  No Western (and with hardly a verse of song), but a Civil War meller about Captain Jerry Burke (Rogers), assigned by no less than General Ulysses S. Grant to break up a Sessionist Conspiracy in Colorado illegally selling guns to the Indians and letting outlaws run wild, all so Union soldiers are needed to keep the peace and patrol the territory and can’t be sent East to fight in the war.  True Southern loyalists and venal public officials joining to help the cause or make a buck.  This complicated by a neat personal story with pretty Pauline Moore joining the stagecoach with Roy and sidekick Gabby Hayes (hey!, it’s still a Roy Rogers’ pic, no?) on her way to meet fiancé Milburn Stone (later Doc in GUNSMOKE), a turncoat Captain who Rogers keeps giving a break to (and vice versa).  Hmm, what’s that about?  Running about an hour, well acted and shot on locations John Ford wouldn’t have sneered at.  If only we could properly see it!  Alas, yet another poorly preserved slice of American cinematic history left to fall into public domain purgatory, but worth the hunt to find a minimally acceptable download amid the subfusc crowd.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Rogers, not yet 30, has yet to acquire that ageless look or Dale Evans.  But did already have Trigger.  (Acquiring the horse not long after Olivia de Havilland rode him in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/’38.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *A pair of properly restored Rogers in Republic’s own TruColor system out via KINO.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/03/sunset-in-west-1950.html

LA FRENCH / THE CONNECTION (2014)

A fact-touched, but largely fictional, drug-trafficking thriller out of Marseilles (1975 - 1981), structurally neat as a pin, and unusually easy to follow.  (And note how its French & International titles are combined on our poster to reflect a certain 1971 movie.*  Writer/director Cédric Jimenez earning rather than coasting on the reference.)  A mano-a-mano duel between the lawman and the dealer, with Jean Dujardin’s magistrate, just promoted from juvie drug crime to the big leagues, playing new sheriff in town to go after longtime drug boss Gilles Lellouche*, a man whose tentacles reach all; from murdering henchmen to judicial bench men and disco club investors,  desk-jockey police dicks and political appointees.  What he didn’t figure on was the obsessive/addictive personality and workaround legal tactics of Dujardin’s Judge, a man who puts everything aside (even family and his own survival) to bring down decades of backroom deals and delivery infrastructure.  Jimnez is technically fully up to date in action-driven movement and editing, but he gets real period texture by shooting 35mm in a style that (abetted by cinematographer Laurent Tangy) mimics the color, tone and film stock of the late ‘70s.  (Note the '70s animated Gaumont logo, too.  As much a throwback as the sideburns.)  Not a great film or even a great story, but solid, pleasurable work.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Naturellement, FRENCH CONNECTION/’71.  (In France, they dropped the article.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/french-connection-1971.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Jimnez gives the leads a Michael Mann stare-off meeting midway along.  A misstep, though you can see why he felt he had to.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (2024)

Excluding the rare exception where actor-identification in a role supercedes the person they play (think Gary Cooper/Lou Gehrig), Hollywood bio-pics come in two often self-defeating flavors: WAXWORKS and LITE.  Neither necessarily pejorative; each can be screen worthy, both in use recently.  (Churchill bios always leaning WAXWORKS; Musicians tilting LITE.)  More noticeable (and positive) is a general move away from cradle-to-grave in favor of finding the crucial act to tell the tale in a single stroke.  So, no surprise to see co-writer/director James Mangold going Single Arc-Lite on Bob Dylan: fresh acoustic folksinger to electric literary-rocker.  Alas, no superceding identification in sight, it’s all Bob Dylan Lite (Timothée Chalamet - with a high polish shine); Pete Seeger Lite (Edward Norton - very good); Joan Baez Lite (Monica Barbaro - less good); and so on.  But what ultimately kills the film is what’s not in here: Mangold missing any sense of danger or revolution; something all these culturally revolutionary BabyBoomers had in spades.  Pollack, Mailer, James Dean, Johnny Cash; you never knew what you’d get when they showed up . . IF they showed up.  Here, we know exactly what’s coming and it boils down to the surrogate Father/Son dynamic between Seeger & Bob.  (That and a bit of bed-hopping from Dylan.)  Adolescent rebellion a decade late (arrested development from Bob Dylan?), leaving surrogate Dad and his politically activated acoustic folk behind to play his own electronic-flavored rock/R&B) and bring out a voice of his own.  Mangold’s reductive explanation only defangs and domesticates a difficult/complex personality.  The times they are a’changing, but bio-pic bromides are forever.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Another way to do these things is to have the celebrity figure cast a shadow from just out of frame, as the Coen Bros. have Dylan do in the unsatisfying INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS/’13.

THE WOODEN HORSE (1950)

Fact-based, yet by-the-numbers WWII P.O.W. breakout story (THE SO-SO ESCAPE?), decent rather than pulse-pounding, ‘veddy-veddy’ stiff upper lip British and intended that way.*  The gimmick’s in the title, a bespoke wooden ‘vaulting’ horse, built in the Stalag by officer-prisoners as a Trojan Horse able to hold three men inside.  It's an A-frame structure hiding a tunnel digger who secretly burrows while incarcerated officers camouflage verboten activity with jumps & flips over the ‘horse.’  Ease boredom!  Keep in shape!  Finish the hole!  All this still fresh in 1950, but for modern audiences the film only comes fully to life after three men (Leo Genn, Anthony Steel, David Tomlinson) clamber inside and are carried to a tunnel entrance hidden in plain sight.  Only then does director Jack Lee* get the engine to turn over as we stick to Genn & Steel and watch them finesse their way thru German occupied cities trying to find the resistance and a passage to Sweden.  Great locations and period detail backing the intriguingly uneven relationship growing between Genn’s helpless English-only superior officer and Steele’s indispensable multi-linguist.  The ending’s a bit abrupt, but better too little than too much.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For fuller realizations of U.K. precursors to THE GREAT ESCAPE/’63 try THE  COLDITZ STORY/’55 or THE PASSWORD IS COURAGE/’62.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-password-is-courage-1962.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Writer/producer Ian Dalrymple had a freakishly strong year in 1938 earning two Oscar® noms for co-adaptations of G.B. Shaw’s PYGMALION and A.J. Cronin’s THE CITADEL.  Then never nom’ed again.

CANOA: A SHAMEFUL MEMORY (1975)

Working off a straightforward/fact-based script by Tomás Pérez Turrent on how small-town mass hysteria led to a mistaken-identity mob-lynching (the corrupt local priest falsely tying the victims to the 1968 international student uprisings), Mexican director Felipe Cazals used linear deconstruction and Brechtian distancing devices to create this classic of political engagement and generational cinematic change.  The story simple enough for a fable, a Grimm fable, as a happy-go-lucky group of 20-somethings, low-wage University workers, head off for an overnight hike on a nearby mountain.  But bad weather leaves them seeking shelter in an unfriendly rural town.  And while they find welcome at a farm building for the night, word has already spread (even on the town loud speaker system) that these kids are front men for a Communist invasion of rioting students out to destroy the church and local monuments.  Hasn’t their priest been warning of this for months?  The rest plays out like a lethal game of rumor, lies multiplying into violent attacks on the outsiders, though the first victim is a long distrusted local.  And neither the law nor a Hollywood-style voice of reason to stem the vicious tide of hate.  Cazals over-eggs the first half of the film with too much endearing larky behavior by the university crew, but there’s no denying the power of the inevitable atrocities of the something wicked this way comes second half.  Or the lack of justice after the fact.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Stateside mob violence of a different kind, but with a similar feel comes over strongly in Joseph Losey’s THE LAWLESS/’50.  OR:  *Take director Cazals’ advice, as seen in an Extra on the Criterion edition where, in conversation with fellow Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu (BTW  Guillermo del Toro introduces the film), Cazals says the only film influence on this was Juan Bustillo Oro & Fernando de Fuentes’ EL COMPADRE MENDOZA.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/10/el-compadre-mendoza-1934.html

THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES (2018)

The work of film essayist Mark Cousins can be a bit precious and navel-gazing.  (Fine if the navel in question weren’t his but the subject’s!)  But in this fresh take on Orson Welles’ life & legacy, the style suits Cousins and subject equally well.  Probably the best film on Welles.  (Or is till Cousins misguidedly continues into post-mortem supposition.)  Aided by Welles' lifelong habit of sketching everything he was thinking about, Cousins organizes a peripatetic life with drawings casual and frame-worthy; by-passing protective moats to enter the Wellesian fortress.  Focusing more on the work than the life, this telling is immediately enveloping even for what’s not in here.  Not a word on weight.  Nothing on Hollywood disappointments.  Passing over the WAR OF THE WORLDS scandal.  Indeed, not quite enough on mundane commercial success as actor (largely for self-financing projects) or showing how Welles could coopt the system when it fit his purpose.  Instead, his astounding range of media reinvention (radio, film, theater), and nods at some bravely controversial political stands, particularly on race issues far ahead of the curve.  Much of this told thru a previously overlooked treasure of archival holdings of those quick-stroke drawings.  The University of Michigan archives seems an especially rich repository.*  Revelatory stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL:  The film points out a couple of attempts at dramatizing events: Richard Linklater’s ME AND ORSON WELLES/’08 surprisingly worthy; Tim Robbins’ CRADLE WILL ROCK/’99 weirdly mean-spirited.  Or look for most of his own work covered within.  Just type the title wanted into our SEARCH Box located on the Main Site (left side/top of the page).

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Has an exhibition of drawings using works spread across various institutions been attempted?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Cousins errs in showing clips from TOUCH OF EVIL/’58 in Academy Ratio (1.33:1).  The full frame negative was meant to be cropped down to 1.85:1, common practice at the time in many non-anamorphic films.  Universal Pictures was apt to send out uncropped full-frame prints where, if shown without the correct aperture plate, they'd reveal all sorts of studio-set artifice (lights, girders, wiring) hanging above the intended image.

THE TRIBE / PLEMYA (2014)

The sole feature from Ukrainian filmmaker Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi is distressing, but worth it.  (Surrounding this, he’s made about a dozen short subjects.)  A real misérable story, it follows (and ‘follows’ is the word for his tagalong/long-take film technique) a just-arrived deaf teenage student at his new boarding school.  Co-ed, though more boys than girls, the all-deaf institution a horror house for ‘parking’ unwanted kids in a kind of Survivor Academy of little learning and scams on & off campus, organized thru a pecking order of seniority rule.  Daringly, Slaboshpytskyi leaves the (Ukrainian?) sign language entirely untranslated (no subtitles/no voice-over, just natural sound) as 16-yr-old Sergei is greeted with a series of rough hazing assaults to put him in his place before he’s even found a dorm spot.  Later, he’ll be assigned various low-level jobs to make a few bucks selling crap on trains or pimping girl students at a truck stop.  Cash split between him, the girls and the older boys.  Sergei will wind up paying for his own session, losing his virginity and his heart.  He’s already losing any sense of humanity.  (Sex, violence and an edit-free bathroom abortion all Hard-R level.)  Everything fascinating and horrifying.  As for teaching , a smattering of subjects.  We see history and shop; if there’s any literature, the reading matter would likely be LORD OF THE FLIES.  Finally pushed too hard, the worm turns in Sergei with grisly finality.  No gloss, no answers, certainly no happy ending.  Really, no ending at all.  Just departure.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: We’re a long way from ZÉRO DE CONDUITE/’33.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/05/complete-jean-vigo-1930-34.html

POLICE STORY / GING CHAAT GOO SI (1985)

Though a star in comic-leaning Hong Kong actioners for a decade (directing for five years), to the international audience, this film was Jackie Chan’s ‘calling card.’  (A previous self-directed ChopSocky period piece, PROJECT A/’83, likely primed the pump.)  STORY still one of Chan’s best, well-balanced between thrills, impossible stunts done ‘for real,’ slapsticky Martial Arts, a game gal adversary who flips, turning from reluctant to enthusiastic helpmate, a Mr. Big & gang out to silence or frame Jackie, his own police force hunting him, and chases via car and foot thru tight corners on streets and inside public spaces.*  Yet still human-scaled so you can just believe what you’re watching could happen.  (Nothing like ‘practical’ effects to sell a scene thru punches that land with consequence via camera angles, timing and editing rather than vapid CGI.  Why there’s even a plot you can follow.  Mostly about Chan peeling off mob secretary Maggie Cheung to testify against her boss in court.  A partnership with Chan that’s starting to look fishy to fiancée Brigitte Lin.  (Her evolving relationship with Cheung an unexpected treat.)  Jackie Chan’s film idols were Bruce Lee and Buster Keaton, and while he hasn’t the line or grace of either (more young Douglas Fairbanks, even in build), STORY let’s you see the connection and makes a great introduction.

DOUBLE-BILL:  This is probably Chan’s Goldilocks of a film, not too big, not too small, the size just right.  STORY 2 not seen here, nor 3 (and there’s a NEW POLICE STORY in the works for the 72 year-old veteran star), but as mentioned above, PROJECT A would pair well.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *A tricky solo comic bit for Chan and a bunch of landline telephones needs a one-shot/one-take approach to work properly.  Here, it’s funnier in concept than in execution.  Chan not quite having the physical chops to pull it off.

FRANZ (2025)

Polish-born/Prague-trained director Agnieszka Holland, still making smart, provocative, accessible films 55 years into her career/35 years after hitting the international circuit with EUROPA EUROPA/’90, finds new angles on Franz Kafka less in content than in execution.  It freshens the conversation on this over-analyzed modernist to good effect.  Hopscotching around his short life (40 years), Holland’s Kafka (Idan Weiss) grows less neurotic, if more fragile (TB did him in) as the years pass, and with more public success in his lifetime than you may recall.  Decently, if unhappily employed; published, even a major literary prize; public readings; no unknown recluse.  Plus quite a bit of sex.  (What a lot of male nudity in the film.)  At home, a sympathetic family with the notable exception of his loud, large, dominating businessman father, always on the edge of financial failure at work or an explosion at the dining table.*  All beautifully caught in the film’s physical production.  And all relatively standard readings.  But Holland’s not only making a bio-pic, but also an Essay Film.  So we not only jump around his life span (1883 - 1924), but also into the present day with tour groups & guides talking us thru his work and workplaces.  Objects and physical spaces Holland has Franz enter as well, as if he were one of the tourists out to see where the great man lived and worked.  It sounds gimmicky, but doesn’t play that way.  More like a living tribute.  The film isn’t meant to be definitive.  It just wants to restart a conversation we thought was no longer going anywhere.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For all his literary influence over the past 100 years, Kafka’s film record is mostly misses.  A bit of THE TRIAL at a reading in here with lots of laughs would have been pleased Orson Welles whose film adaptation always made him laugh . . . if no one else.  Instead, the most successful Kafka on film is merely ‘Kafkaesque.’  Béla Tarr’s WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES/’00 and Roman Polansky’s THE TENANT/’75 about as close as anyone gets.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-tenant-1976.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/04/werckmeister-harmonies-2000.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *That’s Peter Kurth as the Father, a dead ringer in voice & face for classic Hollywood supporting actor Sig Ruman, a favorite of Ernst Lubitsch & Billy Wilder.  (On purpose?)

TORRENT (1926)

The Great Swede, Greta Garbo, opened her Hollywood career playing two Latin louches from Vicente Blasco Ibáñez potboilers.  (M-G-M had a thing for the novelist, see FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE/’21 and MARE NOSTRUM/’26.)  Garbo would go on to more appropriate fare but the Spanish-set TORRENT and the even more enjoyable Argentinean TEMPTRESS* make for an irresistible, if trashy, introduction.  Here, Garbo’s penniless small-town gal with a natural gift for song, is all but affianced to Ricardo Cortez, the richest young man in town.  Then Mama Cortez forbids the relationship, sets her son up with a proper senorita, and forecloses on the Garbo family home.  Vowing to elope and marry in Madrid where Garbo hopes to become an operatic Prima Donna, the pledged pair split as Cortez breaks his promise and concedes to Mama’s reality.  Decades later, Garbo (looking not a day older) discovers great divas can only go home temporarily while Cortez (looking worn and bored from years with a loyal wife and gaggle of kids) falls hard all over again.  And what of the torrent?  More symbolic than real, as the ex-lovers ride waves of emotion while the actual floods promise more destruction than they deliver.  (Kinda like the movie.)  Garbo’s cinematographer for nearly all her work, William Daniels, is already on board, while journeyman director Monta Bell, often called on for sub-Lubitsch sex comedy, does well enough once he gets past the first act countryside pastorale.  Much happier in big city theatrical life and playing with model effects during the torrential rains.  Surviving print in reasonable condition.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Garbo’s dresser brings a regular menagerie with her wherever they go.  And Garbo gets a nice scene with ‘Jocko’ the monkey when she goes home to visit.  And that’s not just any Hollywood capuchin, but Harold Lloyd’s co-star in THE KID BROTHER/’27 and Buster Keaton’s adversary in THE SCARECROW/’20.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Garbo’s other Latina minx in THE TEMPTRESS.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/temptress-1926.html

THE RETURN (2024)

Perhaps you’ve heard, there’s a new version of The Odyssey on screen.  Yet two years ago, this chamber version (just the last act, ‘Return to Ithaca’) flew by with a token theatrical release and nary a ripple on the cultural Zeitgeist.  Pity.  In its own way, it’s very good.  We open as Ralph Fiennes’ Odysseus washes ashore at his old stomping grounds, much worse for twenty-year’s wear and naked as the day he was born.  (Nearly naked & distressed the fashion in Ithaca so he fits right in.)  Rather than announce himself, the former leader, and already legendary victor at Troy, stealthily takes stock of the situation on his island.  Faithful wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche sporting Julia Roberts’ profile & considerably more acting chops) anxiously fending off hunky/premature/avaricious suitors; abandoned son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) having Daddy issues; the island at a standstill.  Situational baggage barely clearing the dramatic bar under inexperienced director Uberto Pasolini.*  But as Odysseus is successively recognized, complications (personal & public) kick in to move things along and cover a host of unforced filmmaking errors.  By climax, Fiennes has bulked up to rather amazing (and believable) action-figure form.  Return of the Trickster?  The film, no mere addendum, but a worthy thing of its own.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Director Uberto Pasolini (more active as producer) is related to a famous Italian director, just not the one you’re thinking of.  He’s Luchino Visconti’s nephew.  Though that other Pasolini’s take on ancient Greek tragedy in MEDEA would make an interesting followup.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/medea-1969.html

THE WARRIORS (1955)

Errol Flynn buckled his last swash in this low-budget period adventure.  The usual nonsense, but not bad, a tale from the French/English Hundred Years War (1400s) with Flynn (fleshier in face & figure at 45) as son & heir to Britain’s King Edward, going incognito to infiltrate the French Court as the unknown Black Prince.  He’s really on the hunt for battle plans from archenemy Comte De Ville (Peter Finch) and hoping to rescue kidnapped Lady Joan (Joanne Dru).  Director Henry Levin and producer Walter Mirisch, working in the U.K. on their way up the Hollywood ladder*, take advantage of two built-in obstacles.  ONE: By necessity, battles are small and ad-hoc, believably messy; and TWO: heavy period armor meant the aging Flynn wouldn’t be needed on camera during the tough physical action, but only after the main fighting and dangerous bits when he’d put his metal vizor up.  (Thousands of £s saved by using stunt doubles not only for stunts, but whenever possible.)  Diminished as a force on screen thru age, bankruptcy (the main reason he signed on), drugs, booze and hangers-on,  Flynn at half staff still better at this sort of thing than anyone other than 1920s' Douglas Fairbanks.  A natural in the genre’s unnatural poses.  How he’d fare in today’s gory iterations is anyone’s guess.  But since CAPTAIN BLOOD twenty years  ago, he was only challenged by his former self.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Henry Levin a journeyman director of B+ programmers made this shortly before his temporary career bump (late ‘50s - mid’‘60s) to A-list fare.  While already prolific producer Water Mirisch followed this with classic Bs (THE PHENIX CITY STORY/’55; INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/’56) on his way to permanent Oscar’d A-lister.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/invasion-of-body-snatchers-1956.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Young Flynn certainly was a hard act to follow.  See CAPTAIN BLOOD/’35.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/captain-blood-1935.html

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1920)

James Fenimore Cooper’s novel has been lucky in its movie adaptations; more than a half dozen so far.  (No eight-part streamer?)  Main contenders out in 1920, 1936 & 1992, all respectable.  Surprisingly, it’s this silent version, at about 75", that sticks closest to the novel, keeping its largely tragic ending and daring racial mix-and-match coupling.  It also lays out the story best: two sisters visiting from Europe, caught in a war between French & British territorial claims while Native Tribes ally with opposing sides.  Since our POV lies with the Brits, their Native allies are the ‘good’ Indians (including that Last Mohican) and Hurons the Baddies.  The main action a journey for the sisters thru a No Man’s Land Forest to reunite with their father.  The small group led by an Indian Scout they, and their British escorts, don’t fully trust.  (Great White Scout Hawkeye more a supporting character here.)  Easy to tell French and Brits apart by their uniforms, while different war paint does the same for Native Peoples.  (Good thing too since the whole cast is White.  That’s Wallace Beery as the film’s Indigenous villain.)  Co-directed by image-oriented Maurice Tourneur (mostly on interiors) and future M-G-M stalwart Clarence Brown* (mostly locations), the film’s much admired visuals hard to judge in the just acceptable available editions.  Good elements are said to exist, but have they ever come out?  Meanwhile, various meh copies on line, some of the best looking accompanied by hopelessly inappropriate canned classical music cues.  But you can still get a pretty good feel for the film.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Best known sound versions.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-last-of-mohicans-1936.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-last-of-mohicans-1992.html

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *Long overdue bio by Gwenda Young in CLARENCE BROWN - Hollywood’s Forgotten Master.

THE DIRTIES (2013)

Early sighting of talented Canadian writer/director Matt Johnson (of the excellent workplace dramedy BLACKBERRY/’23* and current well-received Portrait of A Chef as a Young Man pic TONY/’26 - not seen here) is worth a look, but has aged rapidly.  Pushing thirty at the time, Johnson plays a film nerd high school senior (hyperventilating over classic film like Quentin Tarantino having a celluloid orgasm), alpha-male to a gang of two, himself and BFF Owen Williams, who’s starting to find the act a bit jejune, even creepy.  Their class project a film takedown of the school hall bullies needling them, ‘The Dirties.’  Told as a revenge fantasy, Owen worries that Matt (they both use their real names) is leaning into the scenario as if they were plotting a real shooting.  Some of this extremely well observed; unusually for these things, the girls, if less active than re-active, at least are allowed independent thought not about boys.  But after a while, you notice that the hand-held, slash & dash style of our filmmaking buds covers not only what they shoot, but also how the film shoots them.  It begs the Brechtian question, by whom?   The  basic conceit of narrative filmmaking, here pulling you out of the story..  Yet it could have worked dramatically if Johnson tied this destabilizing style to Matt’s deteriorating mental state.  A psychopathic loss of control accelerated as Owen starts turning away.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, BLACKBERRY.  (If TONY shows equal growth, it must be all the critics say.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/07/blackberry-2023.html

WINDS OF CHANCE (1925)

The Alaskan Gold Rushes at the turn-of-the-last-century (four or five major runs) held more space in America’s collective conscious than we can imagine.  Two major silents in 1925: Charles Chaplin’s ever popular THE GOLD RUSH (though only a few establishing shots made on location) and this sprawling adventure with exteriors largely shot in the Canadian Yukon, even at Dawson City where much of the story is set.  A genial mix of drama, romance, thrills and comedy from a Rex Beach novel, more Henry Hathaway/John Wayne NORTH TO ALASKA/’60 romp than a truly great & terrifying look at  the scene as found in Clarence Brown’s astonishing TRAIL OF ‘98.*   The two leads: strong/stately adventurer Ben Lyons, honestly working up a stake to make a claim, and slightly used Dawson City hall owner Anna Q. Nilsson.  (Yep, the same Nilsson who’s one of the bridge-playing ‘Waxworks’ in SUNSET BOULEVARD/’50.)  These two pair up on the way to Dawson City*, but their dalliance ends when her cheatin’ husband shows up.  Also on the journey, fragile Dana Viola, left alone after her father falls off the wagon and gets shot.  She’s taken under the wing of hearty, river hauler Victor McLaglen playing a Frenchman!  No matter, these two easily steal the pic.  (And our poster knew it.)  Also tops, the thrill-sequence down the rapids with everyone's belongings.  (The real deal, no tricks.  Note Buster Keaton’s ‘props’ genius Fred Gabourie, just off THE NAVIGATOR/’24, in the credits.)  Plus cunning villainess Dorothy Sebastian (later Buster Keaton’s co-star on and off-camera), along with a pair of bickering old-timers for comic relief.  It’s all a little pokey, a little corny, but looser than director Frank Lloyd was in his prestigious sound films.  Available for free on TUBI (one reel missing, but elsewise, other than faint ‘blasting,’ in good shape.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Dawson City history, along with some preserved films from their end-of-the-line film exchange (a landfill), on view in DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME.  Also a link to THE TRAIL OF ‘98.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-trail-of-98-1928.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/06/dawson-city-frozen-time.html

THE MAN WHO SHOT THE GREAT WAR (2014)

Belfast volunteer George Hackney, Royal Irish Rifles, 14th Division, took his camera along to France in the Great War.  (A ‘pocket’ camera that needed a very large pocket.)  Unusual for the time, especially at the front where he served from 1915 to '16 (Hackney about 30 at the time) as amateur photography was strictly banned.  (There’s not an amateur composition in his work.)  He got around detection largely by shooting on plates rather than film. It allowed him to process in the field, each plate holding multiple images.  Unsurprisingly, he came back a changed man, many friends lost, his religious beliefs in question, though he long remained an elder in the Presbyterian Church.  Carefully made into prints for albums, the collection went largely unseen before albums, prints, negatives, accompanying diaries were donated to an Ulster Museum.  Rediscovered in time for the WWI centenary, this BBC documentary gave them new circulation.  This film, though filled with too much supposition and not enough detail on his process (dir. Brian Henry Martin/script Ian McElhinney), brings some remarkable images, sharp in clarity and in Hackney’s choice in subject matter, to light.  Probably at its most revealing in the visible changes that appear before-and-after the 1916 Battle of the Somme.  And it’s thru these casual portraits of men, including many who were lost, and their grave sites, that Hackney  best captured his temporary world.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The film uses a technique that pans, scans and lifts certain elements to create a 3D effect.  Peter Jackson did something different with restoration and color on his digital revamp of WWI archival motion pictures in THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD/’18.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/03/they-shall-not-grow-old-2018.html

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.

MINAMATA (2020)

With a new version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL in the can (EBENEZER/’26), much press on how Johnny Depp has beaten ‘Cancel Culture’ after nearly a decade without a mainstream Hollywood release.  (A domestic ‘He said/She said’ dispute Depp legally, if not in all hearts, won.)  But being ‘cancelled’ not the only crisis Depp has faced, already in career decline from being ‘enabled’ to death, done in by success.  Specifically the one-two commercial punch of the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN series and ALICE IN WONDERLAND.  Depp taking all the wrong lessons from these mega-hits, doubling down on OTT eccentricity to steadily diminishing results, less interested in character development than in seeing how much he could get away with before someone called his bluff.  Enablers never do.  (Depp hadn’t co-starred with late-stage Marlon Brando for nothing.)  But then a can’t-miss’ ALICE sequel missed, THE LONE RANGER failed and he was axed from FANTASTIC BEASTS.  (The last something of a blessing in disguise.)  Could Depp still play a normal human-scaled character?  This true story (and it’s truer than most) involving a difficult character in a tragic situation ought to be right up Depp’s alley.  An American  photo-journalist approached by a group of Japanese admirers with a terrifying job, W. Eugene Smith (Depp), an on-and-off LIFE magazine regular, pitches their project to expose mercury poisoning by the Japanese factory that controls the town of Minamata.  But he’ll not only have to break thru all sorts of local protocol, a local police force working for the owners, bribes from the factory to lay off, refusals from families unwilling to allow victims to be photographed (the heart of any LIFE Magazine article), Smith must also confront personal demons that have kept him off the camera and on the bottle for too long.  (We're not so far from Depp’s own situation.)  Excellent characterizations on all sides (in Japan and back in NYC), and truly lovely interactions between Depp and a young victim learning to take photos.  Yet, the film barely makes its mark.  Some of the problem stems from Depp’s old-age makeup (was he going for elderly Groucho Marx or Billy Crystal?), but more from the inexperience of co-writer/director Andrew Levitas on just his second film.  He misses a lot and explains less, with flat staging even in a riot.  Then, when he does try for action, it’s overdone.  Still, except for an awkwardly handled romance with his interpreter, Depp is able to show what he can do given the chance.  If only his comeback project didn’t call for a return to OTT eccentricity in a story that’s been done to death.  (As well as to a T.*)

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Lots of CHRISTMAS CAROL coverage on this site.  Type Scrooge or Christmas Carol in the Search Box (Upper Left corner on the Main Site - Link below if needed) to find heaps of previous Ebenezers.