VILLA RIDES! (1968)

In the late ‘60s, a desperate Hollywood tried to join the youth rebellion bandwagon, but couldn’t drop old habits.  Hence, this bio-pic on Mexican Peasant Revolutionary Pancho Villa stars Yul Brynner as Pancho.  A stretch even with a full head of hair.  (On the other hand, the new generation is repped by Robert Towne and Sam Peckinpah on script.)  Brynner led to Omar Sharif in next year’s CHE!, and the year after that to Stanley Kramer stumbling thru college campus riots in R.P.M. (Get it?, Revolutions Per Minute.)  All three films D.O.A.  You’d think the studio execs were permanently out to lunch.  A bigger surprise on this Buzz Kulik film is what a lavish production it is.  (Were they thinking David Lean?  Great lensing by Jack Hildyard; lousy score from Maurice Jarre, both Lean regulars.)  For commercial insurance, Robert Mitchum sticks out his considerable gut as a high-flying weapons dealer (sympathies moving from Federales to revolutionaries) while Charles Bronson always shoots first as Pancho’s top aide.  The story not without interest has Pancho loyal to new President Madero (Alexander Knox), but unable to get on with the other Generals he outshines in the field.  (Including a particular wily rival played by Herbert Lom amusing himself as a sort of Mexican Inspector Dreyfus.)  The whole film simply too odd to hate.  But you do wonder who took the blame.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Pancho Villa really was a interesting case, and not the illiterate peasant stooge as usually portrayed.  Try a print-the-legend version as seen thru an American reporter’s eyes in Hollywood’s VIVA VILLA!/’34 or from a Mexican POV in VAMONOS CON PANCHO VILLA/’36.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/08/viva-villa-1934.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/10/vamonos-con-pancho-villa-lets-go-with.html

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

FAST CHARLIE (2023)

Director Philip Noyce and actor Pierce Brosnan were at their professional peaks about thirty years ago.  Safe, dependable bets to handle medium to big projects and keep anxious studio heads calm, but missing anything distinctive in their work.  Occasionally, Noyce went out on a limb (see RABBIT-PROOF FENCE/’02), but by-the-numbers Tom Clancy adaptations and dud sex thrillers more common.  And Brosnan?  Think of his career this way: while certainly not the worst James Bond, he certainly was the least memorable.  Their past likely making this diminutive revenge actioner (from Victor Gischler’s novel, an Elmore Leonard manqué of a book) seem more satisfying than it might otherwise be.  Still crud, but likeable crud.  Brosnan (sporing a come-and-go North Florida accent), is hitman & fixer to physically & mentally failing mob boss James Caan (his final role).  Caught in the middle of a gang war after a new partner blows a rubout; the partner’s ex (sadder-but-wiser Morena Baccarin, super!) wants the $50 thou he owed her; one of Caan’s deputies about to take over Caan’s territory; and bodies dropping like flies shot thru the head.  The film surprisingly gory.  Just the moment for Cupid to show up for 70-something Brosnan and 40-something Baccarin.  Noyce gets a lot out of basics (car chases, coastal roads & glaring sunlight; action meeting immovable object; logistical complications; Brosnan’s tarnished looks.  All told, I’d pick this over  peak Noyce or Brosnan for something with some distinctive, if borrowed, flavor.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Noyce’s lack of distinctness landing only one other write-up on this site, THE QUIET AMERICAN/’02.  And that post largely leaning toward another version of the story.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-quiet-american-1958-2002.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.

OUR TOWN (1940)

Hitting the screen only two years after its B’way opening in 1938, this film adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic was initially well received.  Later, objections to the revised ending and floods of subfusc home editions (plus maybe a few too many High School  productions) knocked the film’s rep down a peg or two.  Nothing can be done about that :happy' ending (less than a minute long, it’s easy to mentally block), and now, much that might have been done to improve picture quality has, at long last, been done, thanks mostly to The Library of Congress.  (Look for their 2023 restoration.)  And the film’s come up a treat.  Cleverly retrofitted for film by Wilder and actor Frank Craven, who repeats his ‘Stage Manager’ role from B’way, the revolutionary bare/prop-free stage production gets a rethink from legendary Hollywood Art Director William Cameron Menzies, given his head by director Sam Wood to use a stylized realism that heightens every scene.*  The quasi-simplicity of Wilder’s turn-of-the-last-century portrait of a ‘good’ small New England town leaps off the soundstage: daily routine, pleasures & tragedies of home-life: births, young love, weddings, death; laid out by Wilder like a prose poem of details & duties.  Craven is still a welcome surprise as tour guide, brisk, sec, blunt, without nonsense or sentimentality.  The other major holdover from the original production, Martha Scott as young Emily, who marries the boy next door, less successful.  Twenty-eight at the time, a lack of freshness less from being a decade too old than from having already figured out her line readings.*  And playing against a 22-yr-old William Holden only points out the difference.  Holden holds the screen effortlessly, breaking your heart with minimal effort.  A scene where Father Thomas Mitchell takes him to task almost unbearably moving.  With all the Hollywood supporting players at the very top of their game.  So too lenser Bert Glennon, just off John Ford’s STAGE COACH/’39; deftly jumping from Monument Valley to Menzies' carefully worked out stage set perspectives.  All of them memorably cosseted  by Aaron Copland’s perfectly judged score.  (Long a concert piece that’s never gone out of favor.)  The restored film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58O76SinOrQ&t=1027s) now easily besting the many tv versions hanging out online.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Another Wood/Menzies collaboration, KINGS ROW/’42, something of an anti-OUR TOWN.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/kings-row-1940.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Martha Scott’s B’way understudy, Teresa Wright, would have been perfect.

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

ACROSS TO SINGAPORE (1928)

Second of three films taken from Ben Ames Williams’ novel ALL THE BROTHERS WERE VALIANT (also 1923, now lost, and 1953 - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/10/all-brothers-were-valiant-1953.html).  Oddly, only one of its four seafaring brothers turns out to be valiant, the others either lost at sea, lost in the plot or lost in the Mysterious East (from unrequited love or a fortune in stolen pearls).  Only the youngest valiant.  With plot tweaks to match different casts, this one has Ramon Navarro (29, but looking a decade younger) perfectly cast as the teenage kid who’s grown into a young man (delicate, but sturdy) while his older brothers were at sea.  Eager for a first voyage, he’ll miss his girl (22-yr-old Joan Crawford), only to be emotionally waylaid when alpha-male brother Ernest Torrence (50 and looking it) forces an engagement on the terrified girl.  As if that’s not enough, the voyage under stress from storms and a First-Mate who takes advantage of Torrence’s monumental bender, leaving the lovesick man for dead in Singapore (actually he’s leaving him with Anna May Wong!), and commandeering the ship.  Once home, Navarro takes the rap before stealing off with Crawford to find his big brother and clear his name.  Nicely directed by William Nigh (a prestige silent helmer who steadily lost ground when sound came in), though the first two reels of forced roughhousing between the boys before they ship out are a pain.  Thankfully, it’s shot by the great John F. Seitz, a transformative lenser for Rex Ingram, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder.  Serious print deterioration means you’ve got to squint thru a lot, but much remains in pretty good shape.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Torrence’s claim to film immortality came earlier in 1928, playing enormous, disappointed Dad to Buster Keaton in STEAMBOAT BILL, JR./’28.  Then, later in ‘28, repeating the characterization note for note against another son, John Gilbert in THE COSSACKS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/steamboat-bill-jr-1928.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-cossacks-1928.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  1928 was such a phenomenal year for silent cinema.  And Early Talkies generally so stiff.  (In round numbers: 1928 80% siient/20% Talkie; 1929 20% silent/80% Talkie.)  It’s easy to see what was being mourned/what was being lost.

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.

THE GREAT ESCAPER (2023)

Last call for Michael Caine & Glenda Jackson (and with them, a British film generation), who go out not with a bang, but with an anecdote, fact-based/well chosen.  It’s 70 years after D-Day and Normandy Landing vet Caine, now living comfortably with frail wife Jackson in an assisted care facility, realizes he’s too late to join a group for the commemoration in France.  But it’s never too late to pack a few essentials and take off by foot.  Then bus, cab, train & ship.  Near 90, Caine shuffles along with his trusty cane, catching breaks thru the kindness of strangers without sprinkling too much fairy dust in helpful advice on the way; though it’s a near thing.  Journeyman director Oliver Parker is roped in by William Ivory’s workaday script.  All the WWII flashbacks usurping precious acting opportunities from our leads.  But the film has its touching moments and doesn’t plead for tears; nor needs to.  Caine & Jackson left with dignity intact.  Jackson in particular, fierce as ever when need be.  (Unlike the sweet-natured gal who plays her in the flashbacks.)  Sadly, Jackson died shortly before the film came out, while Caine, who announced his retirement upon completion, saw the film fail to get Stateside distribution.  Boo!  (PBS picked it up.)  That’s showbiz.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  These self-acknowledged screen farewells rarely go even this well.  But there’s built in affection toward films like GHOST STORY/’81 and THE WHALES OF AUGUST/’87.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/04/ghost-story-1981.html

THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE / OCHAZUKE NO AJI (1952)

Sandwiched between EARLY SUMMER/’51 and TOKYO STORY/’53, two Yasujiro Ozu classics that fit expectations on the Ozu oeuvre, this modest marital dramedy gets overlooked.  Doubly so as behind an imposing title that promises utmost Japanese subtlety, lies a small film with a light tone.  Yet the film is all Ozu, and not to be missed, especially if you’ve seen WHAT DID THE LADY FORGET?/’37.  That film something of a trial run for this one fifteen years later; offering a unique opportunity to see Ozu’s response ripen from simple sit-com to emotional resonance.  In both films, a poorly matched, childless couple, rapidly stiffening into incompatible middle-age stasis (wife: snobby, custom-bound, social striver; husband: comfort-loving/low-ambition compartmentalist) are jarred out of their routine when their visiting ‘modern’ niece starts speaking up for herself, skipping arranged marriage meetings, going about the city on her own (she’s a crack pinball player), coming home at all hours and finding her own dates . . . whom she also treats poorly.  (The guy loves it!)  Seeing how much of this is just like LADY;  yet how much Ozu has grown as observant filmmaker (the whole last act becomes thrillingly emotional after a marital crisis clears the air for renewal), is like having a privileged moment alone with Ozu.  What could be more valuable?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  This is more like a whole course on Ozu, but here are the films mentioned above.  (Anyway, is there an Ozu film not worth seeing?)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/early-summer-1951.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/tokyo-story-1953.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2026/07/what-did-lady-forget-shukujo-wa-nani-o.html

LA GRANDE GUERRA / THE GREAT WAR (1959)

In the late ‘50s/early ‘60, the height of the commedia all'italiana movement, it seemed like everyone in Italian cinema knew how to make movies.  (Well, everyone at Cinecittà.)  None more so than Mario Monicelli.  And while this broad-shouldered WWI dramedy feels less distinctive/more corporate than surrounding personal masterpieces like BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET/’58 or THE ORGANIZER/’63, this remains masterly mass-appeal cinema.  A really big show, too, with a cast of thousands in stunning set pieces recreating marches, battles and (this being Italy) retreats, mostly against the Austrians during the first years of the war (1914 - ‘16).  Less comic than advertized, it has the bracing/bitter aftertaste of a strong aperitif, the comedy character driven by supporting stragglers and complainers of the 7th regiment, and in leads Vittorio Gassman (as quick-thinking shirker) and Alberto Sordi (the eternal coward).*  It takes a minute adjusting to the post-dubbing everyone used in Italy at the time, but once done, the film plays beautifully, with an exceptional turn from producer Dino De Laurentiis’s wife Silvana Mangano as the company ‘companion.’  Were these official positions at the time?   (Note all the De Laurentiises littering the credits; though it's Giuseppe Rotunno on camera, and Nino Rota on the score.  No ‘nepo’ hires where it counts.)  And just when you think Monicelli is turning soft and sentimental (after burlesquing that famous Christmas truce between warring French & German soldiers by placing a chicken in No Man’s Land), he pays for any sentimentality with an unwilling ultimate sacrifice.  The film fully deserving its big critical & commercial success.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Instead of a mature Monicelli masterpiece, try COPS AND ROBBERS/’51, a modest, yet hilarious minor work for two aging echt Italiano farceurs in Fabrizi and Totò.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/guardie-e-ladri-cops-and-robbers-1951.html

 SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *A Hollywood remake of the time would have used Tony Curtis & Jack Lemmon; and botched the ending.

OUT OF TIME (2003)

Denzel Washington became a film star the moment he came on screen in tidy white shorts fit for tropical climes as Chief of Police in THE MIGHTY QUINN/’89.  But he moved to A-list perennial when he worked with director Carl Franklin on the first-rate L.A. detective Neo-Noir DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS/’95.  So, expectations ran high when Washington & Franklin reconnected for this Chief of Police story, still in tropical climes (now Florida) in less fetching black shorts as uniform.  And the film?  Inexplicably slipshod.  Actually, explicably slipshod.  DEVIL adapted by Franklin from a classic Walter Mosley detective novel.  TIME an ‘original from Dave Collard, a hack writer with few credits before or since.  You’ll see why.  Tricked into ‘borrowing’ seized Fed cash for dying mistress Sanaa Lathan to get that European operation, Washington slowly sees it’s all been an elaborate set-up.  He’s being played.  He takes the fall; someone else takes the cash.  But who?  Meanwhile, those mean guys from The Fed hot to get their cash back (it’s needed for court), while Washington’s soon-to-be ex (Eva Mendes) starts seeing thru his multiple lies as problems escalate.  (Collon must have doted on Kevin Costner in NO WAY OUT/’87, itself a remake of THE BIG CLOCK/’48, as a kid.)  Washington’s fine (considering), and Franklin pulls off some nifty action moves, but nothing is believable; and the rest of the acting is (a-hem) inexplicably bad.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Also inexplicable, DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS was initially a box-office bust.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/02/devil-in-blue-dress-1995.html

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.

YUNOST MAKSIMA / YOUTH OF MAXIM (1935)

Once a staple of Soviet Film Studies, The Maxim Trilogy (or Maksim or Maksima) has long dropped out of sight.  (So too Soviet Film Studies!)  But to judge by the first of the set (RETURN OF MAXIM/’37; NEW HORIZONS/’39 follow), that’s a pity.  The trio, written and directed by Grigoriy Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg, cover the tumultuous years 1910 to 1917 (though year-of-release 1935 is the film’s true focal point) as pre-Revolution Tsarist Russia simultaneously comes to a boil and runs out of steam.  Seen thru the eyes and actions of Maxim as he lives thru a Marxist sentimental education, he’s a naive young man whose life experiences lead him toward political radicalization.  There are parties (not the political kind), secret clubs (the political kind), schooling with anti-capitalist mathematical story problems (a hilarious scene) and near constant surveillance from the Tsar’s secret police.  (Nothing secret about them, they’re everywhere and always in uniform.)  Printing and passing out leaflets  about as far as anyone goes, but that’s enough to get you arrested.  Round ups leading to months in jail (a great place to meet fellow travelers) or to fill a quota for execution.  Eventually, Maxim’s tagged a habitual disturber of the peace (those leaflets) and is exiled from all the Russias.  The sentence both matriculation and set-up for eventual RETURN in the next film.  Though not before declining ‘comradely handshake of farewell from destined girlfriend, for kiss of remembrance.  Da!’  Boris Chirkov, Maxim in all three pics, is allowed to build up a winning presence rare in these Soviet films.  And the sophisticated use of  editing, dissolves & compositions (in spite of early Soviet Talkie ideas on narrative continuity) adds depth of texture and technical interest.*  Plus the largely diegetic score of political period songs well known to the proletariat, leaves just enough space in the opening scene for a snow ride where they let a young Dmitri Shostakovich have his head.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Parts two and three : RETURN OF MAXIM and NEW HORIZONS.  The last with guest appearances from Lenin and Stalin.

LINK: Free youtube link to Y.M. here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg93RFh5sEY

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Lenser Andrey Moskvin would later shoot IVAN THE TERRIBLE/'44; '46 for Sergei Eisenstein.

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.