THE BALLAD of GREGORIO CORTEZ (1982)

Actor/producer Edward James Olmos was the driving force behind this groundbreaking ‘Chicano’ Western, based (pretty accurately) on a simple verbal misunderstanding during an arrest-gone-wrong that snowballs into a manhunt and scores of innocent dead.  A real life ‘failure to communicate’ tragedy from 1901 Texas.  Olmos is Gregorio Cortez, a man on the run after killing that local arresting officer, a sheriff who drew a gun on Cortez, murdered his brother and put Cortez on the run, but doomed to be caught.  The non-linear presentation, along with actions repeated from alternate POVs, lifting this beyond simple suspense.  All while a unit of Texas Rangers blunder into indiscriminate murder of uncomprehending local Mexicans they take for Cortez confederates.  The purposeless killings only stopping when a legit sheriff takes charge, informing the Rangers there’s no gang involved, it’s been a one man job . . . and possibly self-defense.  Once arrested, Cortez is soon being mythologized by the Mexican community in Texas (as he is to this day) though the situation remains complicated.  Something Olmos doesn’t shy away from, hiring Robert M. Young, a superb technician too often pigeon-holed as a one-trick socially-conscious director, who rewrote an overly hagiographic script to admit nuance without softening the basic injustice.  Even more important, making a one million dollar ‘Super 16' budget look fully realized.  (Superb natural-light lensing from Reynaldo Villalobos.)  Only a few bad actors and a synthesizer score giving away the cost factor here and there.  The film doubly important for offering a rare Mex/Tex tilt historically (1901) and currently (1982) in presentation & attitude.  (It plays in English and Spanish without subtitles to emphasize language barriers.)  The film briefly heralding a road across a cultural  border still not taken.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Instead of another film with Chicano orientation, watch the excellent Extras on the Criterion edition, especially Olmos’s talk on how it all came about and, especially, how its distribution was purposefully fucked up by the head of Embassy Pictures.

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.

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.

PRIMAL (2019)

Russian-born/Chicago-raised, gifted animator Genndy Tartakovsky returns to his best form in this prehistoric fantasy about MAN and DINO-BEAST.  The Adult-Swim series a visual knockout.  (And it better be as there’s no traditional dialogue, just grunts, snorts & screams in this paleo-world.)  With a storyline all but entirely about survival, Tartakovsky manages to find plenty of variety within a narrow narrative window as Early Man (‘Spear’) and Late Dino (‘Fang’) bond thru hunting game and fending off attack after losing their families to (I think) a T-Rex.  Obviously, Tartakovsky knows these two were never on Earth at the same time (or did he visit that Biblical Museum down South?), but the stories regularly deep dive into genre material of fantasy and horror.  Realism not a goal.  Instead, a sort of learning curve of ‘mutualism’ for brain and brawn, though that’s a 60/40 split between Caveman and Dinosaur, more partners than benevolent owner and loyal pet.  The tastelessly amusing, if one-note FIXED/’25 was released just as this series reached its end.  (Three seasons, only the first seen here.)  And if not the visual/narrative bomb-blast of his astounding SAMURAI JACK/’01 - ‘17, PRIMAL isn’t trying to recapture that sharp-edged look, moving to near-naturalistic backgrounds (at times almost like watercolors), interspersed with blasts of blistering speed, macho aggression and ultra-violence more often found in Graphic Novels.  Exceptionally well developed in character & story, with excellent production all the way down to its eclectic rock-influenced score and imaginative sound design.  Next up for Tartakovsky, theatrical feature BLACK KNIGHT.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Tartakovsky has done lots of kid-oriented work, so if that’s not your thing, go with SAMURAI JACK, best in earlier episodes.

PROJECT HAIL MARY (2026)

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

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

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

ÉL / THE STRANGE PASSION* (1953)

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

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

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

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.

THUNDERBIRDS (1965 - ‘66)

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

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

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

O AGENTE SECRETO / THE SECRET AGENT (2025)

Extrapolating from the four films I’ve been able to see, Brazilian writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho has been turning out well-made, enigmatic, politically-minded shorts, tv & features for two decades.*  (Not much distribution Stateside.)  Now, he's upped his game from solid to great.  This film awarded everywhere but the Oscars®.  (Four noms/zero wins: you can always count on Mr. O.)  The film a portrait of Brazil in 1977 (there’s also a 2025 epilogue) less focused on military rule and atrocities than the wide, often banal effects (deadly in their own way) of a corrupt government: venal cops threatening to ’plant’ evidence on shakedown targets; eagerly cooperating bureaucrats in State offices; highly organized Southern gangs using Quotidian Horrors and Mob Murder to control the obsequious North of the country.  Actor Wagner Moura (probably new to most viewers*) in protean form, is Marcelo/Ambrose, a man trying to leave the country, along with his young son after the mother’s death from cancer, finds he's being blocked by past politics.  Going North for possible escape, he travels under an assumed name and pays the expected bribes & fees to get his papers & passport in order, waiting it out in a house of similarly desperate people.  Filho handles the large cast. sweeping action & events with the dexterity of a Disney artist with a multiplane camera, everything clear (character & narrative) with lines of action indirectly indicated rather than being pointed out.  The elliptical style giving a timeless/universal quality to events.  With the sort of thrillingly choreographed suspense and compound street chases Francis Coppola was a master of when he still regularly made movies.  Filho’s film immensely satisfying on multiple levels.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Now 50, if looking about 35, Moura is suddenly a hot property with upcoming co-stars like Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes & Kristin Stewart.  You may already know his voice as he was ‘Wolf’ in the superb PUSS IN BOOTS sequel, THE LAST WISH/’22.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/puss-in-boots-last-wish-2022.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Try Filho’s hauntingly enigmatic NEIGHBORING SOUNDS/’14, a film that blows up inside your head months after watching it.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/o-som-ao-reder-neighboring-sounds.html

MILLENNIUM ACTRESS / SENNEN JOYÛ (2001)

The early death of ‘millennial’ anime-tor Satoshi Kon (at just 46 in 2010) seems an even greater tragedy (an artistic tragedy) after seeing this remarkable film; possibly his finest.  Its story, advanced in an unusual narrative form, vibrantly visualized and ‘meta’ to the max, using a particularly fluid technique & superior characterization (as drawn & written, with nothing prefabricated) a perfect fit for telling the life and career of studio actress Chiyoko Fujiwarara just as her old studio is being torn down.  A young cameraman and an older interviewer are out to get a rare one-on-one chat and surprised to find the reclusive actress (older, but still beautiful) so open & welcoming.  And here’s where Satoshi Kon (who also co-wrote) shows his special qualities as the contemporary reporters come along inside her memories.  At times, watching from the side, other times participating in the action.  The older reporter having been a besotted intern/assistant on her post-war projects, he’s either working on-set or playing a part in front of the camera (sometimes as he appears now, sometimes as he was then)  Underneath the reporters’ hunt for her personality, Chiyoko also on the hunt for a man she helped cheat death when he was being hunted by the military.  The two promising to meet again after the war; a promise symbolized by a key that comes & goes throughout the course of her working life.  Told without definite lines of division between what she’s living and what’s she’s shooting on film.  Often stepping in and out of the narrative continuity in a fashion that puts the SpiderVerse (and its constant confusion) to shame.  Wonderfully uplifting as pure anime (Satoshi had the best color palette in the biz), the film’s also not afraid to be wonderfully sad in the telling.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Young anme master Makoto Shinkai picked up the gauntlet from Satoshi Kon, see YOUR NAME/’16.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/kimi-no-na-wa-your-name-2016.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Satoshi Kon loved to quote from classic Japanese cinema, here Akira Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD/’57 shows; and isn’t that Kenji Mizoguchi’s  THE LIFE OF OHARU/’52?

THIS IS MY DESIRE / EYIMOFE (2020)

Debut film of twin Nigerian brothers Arie & Chuko Esiri* is fittingly a twinned story; fraternal not identical.  DESIRE both a portrait of two disparate personalities and of Lagos, Nigeria.  The first, and more original of the two, is something of a Book of Job update about a single forty-something man,,a naturally gifted electrician  trying to get everything together for his move to Spain.  But a series of tragedies and losses take away almost everything he has: sister & nephews, inheritance, job, cash reserves, all of it playing out in a slow motion series of unforced errors.  But it’s his demeanor (calmly accepting, stoic; with one exception) and the way he manages to be down & out yet holding his head above water that sustain interest; along with the portrait of life in Lagos.  If this man can carry on . . .   The second story navigates the fast swings from favor to failure of a younger woman, a bartender with fashion model looks, who longs to run a dress-shop in Italy, but has nothing but trouble trying to put together the forms needed to travel out of the country and restart her life in a more promising fashion.  It’s those good looks that lead to the troubles, constantly proposed for dates, but not proposals.  Except from the guy she doesn’t want: her landlord.  What about that White American with a crush and a hefty wallet?  Meanwhile, her younger sister has tied herself up in an iffy pregnancy and a baby-selling racket.  Here, the twins preference for indirection/indication rather than clarity leaves a few too many unfilled holes, but there’s enough to hang on to.  (And the first story also get a hopeful epilogue.)  Easy to forget how one of film’s earliest appeals came from its ability to bring the world to viewers in costumes, customs, cultures and countries we might not otherwise experience.  The Esiri brothers have mastered that part already.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *CLARISSA, their free adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s MRS. DALLOWAY, a hot item at this year’s Cannes.

THE SHEEP DETECTIVES (2026)

Irresistible and slightly disappointing, often at the same time, someone (scripter Craig Mazin?; top-listed producer Tim Bevan?) had the madly wonderful idea of reconfiguring Leonie Swann’s German novel (a proposed animated production had collapsed) as a combo-platter of two favorite British genres: an Agatha Christie/Dorothy Sayers rural murder mystery; and one of those sweetly eccentric (or is it maddeningly daffy?) isolated/insulated U.K. countryside character comedies so popular a few decades back.  (And before that, the old Ealing Studios model.)  We open with a prologue for contented shepherd Hugh Jackman and his flock of sheep.  So preferable to people!  He knows them all by name & personality; he reads them a murder mystery chapter every night before bed.  Then one morning, he’s found dead . . . by his sheep!  Natural causes or murder?  Unhappy with a lack of action by the local policeman, there’s but one thing for the devastated flock to do; solve the case on their own.  Who says sheep are dumb animals?  Lily the Sheep (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) takes the lead, with an all-star cast voicing the many other varieties of sheep Jackman had.  Problem: how to communicate their findings to those humans in town.  This is all fun, and quite touching at times (a flashback to Jackman rescuing a sheep quite emotional; as is the look at lamb prejudice).  The sticking point is the CGI work on the sheep which probably needed to be either considerably more or considerably less realistic.  As it stands, the technical gaffes (usually from asking the digital magic to do too much) can pull you out of the story.  Also, rather like the likable THE CAT  WHO... Murder Mystery series by Lilian Jackson Braun, the clues and inevitable solution come too easily.  No matter, you’re sure to fall for the film’s nicely reserved sense of whimsy.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Not a film that first comes to mind, but watch what Gene Wilder does with a non-CGI sheep in Woody Allen’s  EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX/’72.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know.html

HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A. (1976)

The trick to Barbara Kopple’s classic film on the thirteen-month Kentucky coal-miners’ strike against Duke Power & affiliates (1973 - ‘74) is that it’s not only a great documentary, but great filmmaking.  There’s an unusually high percentage of superb films on life in the mines (fiction & non-fiction), what it does to those who ‘go under’ and those who only stand and wait.  But you need to go to Zola/GERMINAL or those gobsmacking first two chapters of George Orwell’s THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER to find the like of what Kopple, in only her second film, does here.  It stems from the personalities she captures, the dramatic organization, the stealth shots of actions captured, the dull ache of showing up at five in the morning (in numbers for safety) to beat the opposition.  And the high bar you need to meet when opponents contain not only expected foe (owners, politicians, police), but also your own union reps, the local priest(!) and the fucking United Mine Workers President, the guy who also votes ‘for’ you.  (Soon replaced.)  It’s a tough story to lay out clearly, but is clear as a bell under Kopple & Crew.  (Note the high percentage of women in key spots, no easy thing at the time . . . no easy thing now.  Yet the deeper tragedy of the whole film, not only the murder of a teen supporter that hurries resolution, is the legacy of a work force doomed to win modest concessions while shrinking year by year to a meaningless number of jobs now only used as political fodder by Luddites for non-renewal energy and the pipe dream of what’s still heralded as Clean Coal.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Hard to imagine just how much unused footage might still exist in some warehouse.   A 2007 restoration of the original cut, out on Criterion, is excellent.  But a brief clip during a miners’ rally near Manhattan corporate offices features a highlight in a conversation between a NYC cop and one of the miners comparing wages, hours & benefits.  Priceless; surely, there’s more of it.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK:  As mentioned, Zola’s oft-filmed GERMINAL.  (It nearly comes across in a recent French mini-series.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/06/germinal-2021.html )  OR:  Orwell’s WIGAN PIER, which devolves into statistics, but is untouchable in its early chapters.

THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND (2019)

Best known for acting in 12 YEARS A SLAVE/’13, Chiwetel Ejiofor, added writer/director to his shingle on this Family Film that’s also a family story.  Fact-based, earnest, uplifting; not the sort of adjectives that get people to watch; it just sounds  good for you.  Don’t let that put you off.  Ejiofor does exceptional work (in all three categories) as a father in a small Malawi village suffering thru early 2000s drought conditions that endanger not only this year’s crop, but a whole way of life.  The situation made worse by a Strong-Man government setting bad priorities and leading to civil unrest.  While at the same time, there’s celebration at home with Ejiofor’s teenage son, William Kamkwamba (played by Maxwell Simba), making it into the local school; if he can come up with the entrance fees.  So far, his mother’s managed to save up for the school uniform, but Dad won’t pay for anything in advance, especially when he hasn’t got the money.  Eventually dropped from classes, William holds on to library access only because his older sister is informally engaged to one of the school’s teachers.  And the library is where William, a natural tinkerer, finds his calling in a small book on the principles of energy.  And with the fast shrinking village collapsing into despair & poverty, the father’s mad idea of planting a new crop in the dry season (sow in the day/pray for rain at night) almost seems doable.  But it’s William who figures out a way to make it work with his wild notion of a windmill for water & electricity.  Or might if his practical ideas weren’t dismissed as toys.  And if this all sounds worthy rather than film-worthy (like some African set After-school Special), you may not be taking into account the film’s superb sense of place, scary outbreaks of violence, public & private misunderstandings, family loyalty and emotional payoffs.  Nothing novice about Ejiofor’s work here; it just might give Family Films a good name.

DOUBLE-BILL:  (not seen here)  In 2024, Ejiofor again acts/writes/directs on his second feature, another fact-based Struggling dad/High-achieving son story in ROB PEACE.   Seen it?  Worth a look?  Let us know in the Comment Box - see link below.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Extra kudos to Ejiofor for not milking the climax for ginned up suspense.   The film has more than enough legitimate emotion to carry us thru without it.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025)

While it’s a fool’s errand to expect Oscar’s Best Pic of the Year to be the best pic of the year, recent years have further degraded the award into a Buyer’s Remorse contest.  What title has curdled fastest?  One recent ‘winner’ took the remorse card while they were still handing out the prize!  So credit to Paul Thomas Anderson for winning the little man on a film that’s holding up.  Yippee!  (As for best of the year . . . ?)  Loosely built on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel, VINELAND, the main action takes place seventeen years after a prologue detailing the inner-workings of a Weather Underground-like group of American Radical Left terrorists.  A problem here since 17 years prior to Pynchon’s 1990 novel would put those events in ‘the ‘Seventies.’  But when exactly are they happening here?   PTA refuses to pin this down to any specific year, but it plays as if it’s seventeen years before now.  That’s 2008, the year Obama was elected.  After that, we follow Leonardo DiCaprio’s time tamed terrorist, now a laid-back paranoid (if that’s possible), a single dad whose daughter pooh-poohs his vigilance against unchecked Fed danger till they each come under attack by various shadowy quasi-government authorities.  Mainly a force under orders from unforgiving DiCaprio rival Sean Penn, overdoing it by letting his inner Dustin Hoffman out in the film’s only bad perf.  (Naturally winning the film’s sole acting Oscar®.)  It soon escalates into a (not-quite) innocent-man-on-the-run (with daughter) picaresque, with PTA doing a swell job of keeping all parties (left/right), action, and prey vs. hunter set-pieces straight.  For once, you don’t need a scorecard.  As an old Party Line pal, still in the game helping ‘illegals’ avoid arrest, Benicio Del Toro is revivified, eyes wide-open and just about stealing the pic.  He also looks like he might be DiCaprio's cousin from certain angles.  (This a mixed blessing as DiCaprio, also from certain angles, looks like Elisha Cook, Jr.  No kiddin’.)  Shot largely in the old VistaVision format, PTA uses the extra-clarity to juggle loads of moving pieces and intersecting action that make the film play less like heightened true-to-life drama than living Venn Diagram.  If only he knew when to end the thing.  Flaws and all, this is deservedly PTA’s first film since 2007's THERE WILL BE BLOOD to work critically & commercially.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Paid to the location scout who found a perfect ultra-dippy section of hilly two-lane rural highway to set the action finale on.  (Where have I seen this stretch of road before?)

12 JOURS / 12 DAYS (2017)

Prolific French documentarian Raymond Depardon, often doubling as cinematographer and now in his 80s, hasn’t released a new film since this one.  But if it does prove to be his last, he’s gone out with honors; a calmly fraught look into a unique custom in the French Code of Justice that calls for a ‘Freedom and Detention Judge’ to revisit the status and rights of involuntarily admitted criminal patients held at psychiatric facilities within 12 days of incarceration.  Using simple non-narrated techniques (no voice-over to set the scene or give info), Depardon relies on static shots, basic reverse angles between judge and ‘patient’ (with assigned legal representation), we might be watching ‘Dogme’ filmmaking principles in action or a film along the lines of the late Frederick Wiseman . . . only much, much shorter.  (Running time about 90".)  The patients are split between three judges, all kind, all seen-it-all-before; all taking doctors’ reports ahead of patients explanations.  Half of them know they need more time before requesting a change in treatment or early release, all on some sort of sedating medication regimen, nearly all able to put across a five minute sanity pitch only to start showing mental cracks or something more complicated in rising order of sad, scary, delusional.  And just once, after a patient has left the room, does a judge let us in on something terrible from a patient’s past she’s aware of.  And it’s devastating.  All this fascinating to watch, but plainly exhausting to the players on both sides of the judgment table where they go thru the motions of observable justice with unexpected civility and hidden hopelessness.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  A fine correction to the cute/sentimental slush seen in so many fictional films dealing with mental health conditions & 'holding' facilities.  And no one playing it up for the awards circuit.

REMEMBERING GENE WILDER (2023)

Once past the generic title (fit for a local memorial service) and the generic structure (movie clips & fresh or archival interviews set between self-narration from Gene Wilder’s audio version of his autobiography), and not withstanding occasional non-linear jumps to pre-fame days, this Ron Frank/Glenn Kirschbaum documentary on the iconic/unorthodox comic movie star is mainly unusual for its sheer niceness.  As was its subject.  (No given with great comic actors!)  But what it does best of all is getting you to reconsider films you’d either overlooked (SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL/’89) or actively avoided (THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER/’75 with wife Gilda Radner).  And simply by listing THE PRODUCERS, BLAZING SADDLES, and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN showing how indebted Mel Brooks’ film career batting average was to Wilder.  Behind the movie roles, more personal heartbreak than you recall.  Touching stuff.  It also serves well as a Wilder starter pack without giving away too many highlights or spoilers.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Our regular suggestion for the funniest/lesser-known Gene Wilder pic remains START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME/’70.  OR: Type Gene Wilder into our Search Box (Upper Left corner on the Main Site (e-phoners scroll below to the link) for a pot-pourri listing of various Wilder films & mentions.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/02/start-revolution-without-me-1970.html

LA FEMME INFIDÈLE / THE UNFAITHFUL WIFE (1969)

Often beginning his films with little inflection and just-the-facts directness, gourmet gagster Claude Chabrol could come off as the Jack Webb of the French Nouvelle Vague.  Often as not, this tactic was a fake-out meant to leave you off-balance, uncertain where you were being led till you’d digested the first act.  By then, you’d know if you were watching good or bad Chabrol.  This one of the good ones.  Stéphane Audran (then married to Chabrol) is the beautiful, blank wife of well-heeled businessman Michel Bouquet; working in Paris/living with their 10-yr-old boy in Versailles.  Right now, Bouquet’s visiting mother is about to head home, but not without first telling her son to lose a little weight.  Seems rude, but Maman has picked up on the ‘off’ vibe between the couple.  And a stealth phone call by Audran cues us in to some sort of relationship troubles before the pair share a joyless night out with friends, highlighting a couple at cross purposes.  Soon after, Bouquet hires a P.I.; Audran disappears every other afternoon; an affair of no great passion is confirmed; and civilized confrontation turns on a dix sous piece into violence.  The mix of family comfort and discomfort; smiling lies & unpleasant truths; married & unmarried beds of iniquity.  Like the jigsaw puzzle the young son is trying to complete, there’s a piece missing in this relationship.  Then two detectives knock at the door after dinner.  Death and domesticity.  Chabrol couldn’t always be bothered, but when he could, he knew how to tighten the screws.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  And dig how Pierre Jansen’s atonal score keeps you off-balance.

CONTEST:  Along with fellow Nouvelle Vague-er Éric Rohmer, Chabrol co-authored one of the first books to make the case for Alfred Hitchcock as more than ‘mere’ entertainer. (As if that alone weren’t enough!  Ah, the French.  See: HITCHCOCK; THE FIRST FORTY-FOUR FILMS.)  So, no surprise to see Chabrol lift a major scene from a major Hitchcock film here.  Use the Comment Box to name the film and the scene to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of a streamable film of your choice.