A KISS IN THE DARK (1949)

Loud, fast, not particularly funny.  A good description of most Golden Age Warner Bros. comedies.  This one isn’t even fast.  Putative explanation follows.  Contract star Jane Wyman, after a decade’s slog from featured player to second leads, finally breaking onto A-list leads in THE YEARLING/’47 (on loan to M-G-M) then surprising the heck out of Warners execs when JOHNNY BELINDA/’48, a film no one wanted to make, hit big.  So, having nothing on deck for her, they called in comic script doctor Harry Kurnitz to punch up this dusty screenplay about neurasthenic concert pianist David Niven whose controlling manager has just bought an Upper West Side apartment building for his growing portfolio.  (He’s also robbing Niven blind.)  Checking out his new property, Niven finds a whole building of sweet eccentrics, falls for pretty model Wyman, woos her away from overbearing fiancé Chester Morris and is freed from psychological ailments by getting to know and appreciate New York's hoi polloi.  Alternately over or under played, it was director Delmer Daves only attempt at light comedy.  And it does alter the Warners model by not being particularly fast, but only because building manager Victor Moore has such a deliberate manner.  Not for nothing was Moore’s style best caught on film under Laurel & Hardy experts Leo McCarey and George Stevens.  Only at the end, when most of the comic complications have been dealt with, do you suddenly notice how charmingly Wyman & Niven work together, an adorable mismatch.  But by then it’s much too late.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Niven bats 1000 at similar comic weight in BACHELOR MOTHER/’39.  Wyman’s best in these things came during her Second Lead days.  Try PRINCESS O’ROURKE/’43.  (Note both films written by Norman Krasna, who’s often mistaken for Harry Kurnitz.)      https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/08/bachelor-mother-1939.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/06/princess-orourke-1943.html

THE HEAVENLY BODY (1944)

Why bother using top M-G-M producer Arthur Hornblow Jr, and director Alexander Hall, on loan-out from Columbia, still hot from HERE COMES MR. JORDAN/’41, for such a throwaway comedy?  (Plus the great Al Hirschfield on this trade poster!)  Granted, just about anything made money during the war years, but this is some kind of lame.  Our main gag: World-famous astronomer William Powell, in the headlines for discovering a comet on track to crash the moon, is exasperated when wife Hedy Lamarr keeps mixing up ASTRONOMY and ASTROLOGY.*  And now, thanks to busybody neighbor Spring Byington, in thrall to a new horoscope reading from Fay Bainter predicting a warm-blooded man (Clark Gable fill-in for the duration James Craig) is coming to sweep her off her feet.  Not a lot to get out of this set-up, yet the film is all but essential viewing just to see William Powell lose his comic mojo for the only time in his long career.  Largely in the first act, when he has most of his solo scenes against Lamarr.  Always gorgeous, always dramatically inert, her line readings flat enough to discombobulate the usually unflappable Powell technique.  She’s like a tennis ball that won’t bounce back.  Mind you, Powell’s timing plus-perfect with everyone else; even with Lamarr when there’s a third-party involved; or working on his own in reaction shots while taste-testing flavored vodkas with some new Russian pals.  (1944 - a very Hands Across the River Neva year.)  But Powell’s face plants with Hedy are unique, like watching the Statue of Liberty sit down to rest her torch.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Kinda ironic when Lamarr may have been the smartest actor in Hollywood.  Her experiments with avant-garde composer George Atheil in electronics & physics picked up by the Army Air Force for use in bombing runs, and currently part of that ‘smartphone’ you may be reading this on!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Powell’s next had him running for cover with another THIN MAN pic, THE THIN MAN GOES HOME/’44.  And if it hardly covers him (or anyone else) in glory, at least he’s back to form in what elsewise is the weakest of the beloved series,    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/thin-man-goes-home-1944.html

LOVESICK (1983)

Woody Allen was known to complain (or perhaps puzzle is the word) on why a Dudley Moore rom-com like ARTHUR/’81 commercially buried even his most successful work.  And though we (and Woody) can only guess at the reasons, we can know how Moore would fare in a Woody Allen film by looking at LOVESICK, written and directed by Allen collaborator Marshall Brickman, co-writer of ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, SLEEPER and MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY.  Loaded with Allen tropes, characters, locations, social milieu, NYC-centric supporting actors, couplings with participants separated by decades, etc.  And, wouldn’t you know it, LOVESICK grossed about a third of next year’s Dudley Moore mid-life crisis pic MICKI + MAUDE/’84, which covered similar territory.  Brickman, who only directed a handful of films, has a great cast and crew on paper, but the comic doings of an indulgent psychiatrist for rich Upper East Side Manhattan neurotics isn’t much more interesting than one of the 45 minute sessions boring Dr. Moore to tears.  And that includes his latest couch sitter, playwright Elizabeth McGovern, whom he barely hears but instantly falls for.*  '80s attitudes & sexual politics being what they are, what once might have been considered charmingly romantic behavior by Moore now looks like stalking.  And the laugh lines that do come off only make the situation feel more uncomfortable.  The one thing that still plays is a sort of corporal ghost of Freud giving sage professional & personal advice, not of the patient but of the good doctor.  Underplayed to perfection by Alec Guinness who doesn’t miss a beat or a laugh, he seems to float above the film, coming off as the only modern (or is it timeless?) character in the movie.  While Brickman, back among the living, cheats by letting everyone off the hook with conflicts resolved by fiat.  Woody would never have let him get away with it.  He’d also have put the kibosh on the bouffant comb-out on Dudley’s hair.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *As mentioned, Blake Edward’s MICKI & MAUDE, every bit as blinkered in passé Freudian methodology and ‘80s sexual attitudes, but playing out (hilariously) as a period piece rather than dated/objectionable.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/05/micki-maude-1984.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Even a cinematographer as gifted as Gerry Fisher is flummoxed by the McGovern face.  Something about the square jaw and the luminescent blue eyes make her always look disconcertingly out of focus.

THE MAN WITH A CLOAK (1951)

Don’t be fooled by a few ‘name’ stars and some top-line tech, this is basically an M-G-M programmer with a bit more polish than usual.  It’s mid-1800s New York (actually M-G-M’s backlot Londontown) and young French gal Leslie Caron (in her second film) is new in town, lost in the big city till friendly stranger Joseph Cotten points out the creepy mansion she’d passed by as too unsavory a place for the rich grandfather of her fiancé, currently in Paris fighting for the Republic.  Naturally, Grandpa Louis Calhern is a Monarchist with no intention of helping out his sole living relative.  Chances are he couldn’t anyway as respectable houseguest Barbara Stanwyck (who runs his life and debaucheries) along with venal butler Joe De Santis are planning on inheriting everything . . . and soon.  Only diff?  Babs willing to wait for the apoplectic old man to die naturally while De Santis wants to speed things along.  No doubt some studio exec thought this could be worked up as a period suspenser along the lines of GASLIGHT/’44.  (This guy couldn’t even come up with a decent title.)  Cotten the dead giveaway as he plays nearly the same character and has the exact same structural function as he did in the earlier classic.*  (They did give him a meaningless identity twist which you’ll guess easily.)  In ways large & small, the film feels like an expanded episode from some high quality tv anthology show; all pedestal and no statue.  Just where director  Fletcher Markle would soon be headed.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *As mentioned, GASLIGHT/’44.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/05/gaslight-1944.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Impeccable dubbing by Harriet Lee for Stanwyck's throaty vocal.

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 epic?  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 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

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.

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.

POLICE PYLON 347 (1976)

Poet and pulp-fiction writer Kenneth Fearing got a lot of mileage out of THE BIG CLOCK, his sole story picked up for feature adaptation.  A twisty murder story with the usual innocent man having to prove his innocence before an eye-witness works up his portrait.  With Ray Milland & Charles Laughton, the 1948 original was set in a publishing house before this French policier made it an all cop inside job followed by relocation to the Pentagon as a military suspenser for Kevin Costner in NO WAY OUT/’87.  (And more! - there’s also an unofficial ripoff with Denzel Washington as OUT OF TIME/’03, again in a police setting.)  Not a lot of surprise left in the story, generally look to your boss to find the guilty party.  What does surprise is that this French version, from regular Yves Montand/Simone Signoret collaborator Alain Corneau is the stinker of the bunch.  Mostly because the victim, Stefania Sandrelli’s sloe-eyed vamp, is such an insufferable tease (stalker?) on the pair of middle-aged men (Montand and François Périer) she’s targeted.  One slaps her; the other brains her with an ashtray; audience cued to applaud.  Ugh.  Only Simone Signoret, invalid wife to Périer, has a bit of fun plotting from her bed.  Are all Corneau films this dull?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  John Farrow’s original shot at THE BIG CLOCK/’48 is an over-rated film noir, but it sure beats the other tries.

12 MONKEYS (1995)

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

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

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

PUNJAB '95 / SATLUJ (2026)

Controversial, still officially unreleased film on a painful period for the Sikh community in the Punjab region of India where a separatist uprising was used by government and military authority as an excuse to abuse human rights to anyone who objected to State policy . . . or simply was around at the time and in the way.  Tens of thousands of innocents affected: abducted off the streets, jailed without trial, tortured, murdered, pressured to inform, with illegal treatment used as a lever for extortion.  (Or just for the fun of shooting someone and speeding up a 'quota' promotion.)  And barely a soul speaking out, especially those who lived in the region, till human rights activist Jaswant Singh took a stand, spoke out, forced newspapers to cover the atrocities, went abroad to let the world know what was going on, then returned home in spite of the danger to continue the fight.  A remarkable story, and one that was in a way mirrored by the treatment of the film itself which is still being held back by the current Indian film censorship board (in spite of different people and parties in office at the time).  Banned, censored, over a hundred cuts ordered, finally switching from a theatrical release to legally unfettered streaming options only to be taken down from all Indian platforms after two days.  Yet for all the goodwill, good production values, good cast and good intentions, the film remains dramatically inert.  It’s nearly a built-in defect in many bio-pics, but just piling on ever-worse incident is not development.  Here, there’s likely a better film to be found in a behind-the-scenes look at the troubles in getting this 5released than there is in the one they’ve found to tell of this still important, still unfinished episode of shame in recent Indian history.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Costa-Gavras knew how to make these political stories come across on screen: Z; THE CONFESSION; STATE OF SIEGE.

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

HIGHEST 2 LOWEST (2025)

Spike Lee has made better films (a few) and worse (quite a few), but never one more unnecessary.  A glossy, but empty remake of Akira Kurosawa’s stunning realization of Ed McBain’s KING’S RANSOM, reconfigured as a suspense-filled experiment in film structure for HIGH AND LOW/’62.  The basic set up remains: cash-strapped mogul holding the line on quality & integrity in his product (Lee swaps out shoes for music) has the rug pulled out from him in the middle of a risky business gamble when his son is kidnapped.  Suddenly his financial maneuvers all meaningless.  Dropping company deal-making for family business, he bites the bullet on bail bargaining to save his son only to discover the kidnappers took the wrong kid; they grabbed the chauffeur’s boy.  Yikes!  Will he still go thru with the payout?  It’s a pulpy plot (hey, Ed McBain/87th PRECINCT - see post directly below!), but what Kurosawa did with it was genre genius.  A long still-life Act One, set entirely inside the family’s apartment.  Short Act Two leaping into movement on the street/in the subway for the cash drop-off.  Act Three a brief presto of a chase, then a quick cadenza of a coda.  (Kurosawa not a Western classical music buff for nothing.)  Lee sticking to usual hostage genre tropes & tripe (second & third act all nonsense - that ultra-coordinated  bail drop!), lets his aging star, Denzel Washington, take the glory where Kurosawa all but pushes Toshiro Mifune out of the pic.  Mifune 42 at the time; Washington older and thicker than you remember, is 71.  Worse, he works too hard to show he’s still got what it takes when he ought to be paring back.  (Call it Kirk Douglas syndrome.)  Over-produced/under-characterized, with a weirdly ineffective ‘cool jazz’ score by Howard Drossin and would-be chart-busting hits to show Washington’s still got ‘the best ears in the biz.’  Where’s Quincy Jones when Spike needs him?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Go with the obvious choice, HIGH AND LOW.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/07/tengoku-to-jigoku-high-and-low-1962.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Look sharp when Washington & chauffeur Jeffrey Wright investigate a lead at a crummy apartment building.  The apartment number?  A-24.  Get it?  Lame-O, Spike.

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988)

Opening with an apologia (from the Nikos Kazantzakis novel?) to anticipate accusations of blasphemy, we’re told upfront this is not a tale of the Christ from one of the Gospels.  But it is: The Gospel of Martin.  And Scorsese acolytes have long bent over backward to praise the film and spread the Not-So-Good-News: Jesus not only sacrificed his life to save mankind, he also gave up a putative home life as suburban dad with wife, kids & carpentry business.  (Or at least thought of doing so, a la  Ambrose Bierce.*)  That’s the bit that got Scorsese in advance trouble with the usual suspects (Conservative/Evangelical Christians who hadn’t seen the film . . . and never would), but St. Martin didn’t help his cause with barriers that kept ‘friendlies’ away, too.  Jesus as expert crucifix carpenter (such irony; and think of the shipping fees from Nazareth); Harvey Keitel’s Judas as henna-haired BFF; scripter Paul Schrader’s streetwise locutions (plus not a single line of dialogue given to a person of color . . . in the MidEast?); and in Willem Defoe a Christ more Scandanavian in looks than Max von Sydow’s Jesus in George Stevens’ dismal THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD/’65.  (At 2'44" this one only seems as long as TGSET’s full-cut of 4'20".)  Oddest of all, with all the echoes of rough-hewn religious bio-pics from Roberto Rossellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini*, Scorsese’s endeavor, doesn’t feel so different from those mercenary, commercially-oriented Hollywood epics; and the religiosity even worse.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Get a lot closer to the subject with Monty Python’s THE LIFE OF BRIAN/’79.  Really.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/05/life-of-brian-1979.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Specifically, Bierce’s short story ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,’ appearing here as An Occurrence at Golgotha Heights.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:   *But the poster following a different director; Otto Preminger from his classic Saul Bass period.

ELEANOR THE GREAT (2025)

Venturesome actress Scarlett Johansson had her own ‘but what I really want to do is direct’ epiphany in this modest One-Little-Lie-and-How-It-Grew story; a sort of Senior Citizen DEAR EVAN HANSEN: Holocaust Edition.  94-yr-old June Squibb stars as the 94-yr-old fabulist who moves into her daughter’s Upper West Side Manhattan apartment after the death of her Holocaust survivor BFF/roommate.  Demanding, feisty, always kidding-on-the-square, her over-tasked daughter signs her up for JCC activities she ducks out on.  Instead, wandering down the hall and into a Holocaust Survivor support group.  Embarrassed to be there on false pretenses, she impulsively relates the real-life experiences of her late roommate as her own.  Yikes!  Worse, an eager-beaver journalism student (Erin Kellyman) gloms onto these purloined memories for a school project.  Worse², the kid’s a grief-stricken nepo-journalist.  (Dad Chiwetel Ejiofor, yet to grieve for his wife, the girl’s late mother, is a tv commentator.)  And before you can say Jacob Rabinsky or belated Bat Mitzvah*, our faux Concentration Camp pixie centenarian is getting press coverage, tv attention and general kvelling.  Naturally, this house of cards must collapse, but not before the distasteful set up leaves a foul taste in your mouth.  (Those sit-com comeback lines for Squibb from scripter Tory Kamen are the least of it.)  And as for Johansson behind the camera?  The expected over-reliance on close-ups to do the work.  (One measly piece of narrative info conveyed visually when Squibb sits alone on a beach bench.)  Still, kudos to Johansson for landing one of these directing debuts without having to also star in it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  In our continuing survey of food and cooking gaffes on film, note the poorly stocked section of shelf-stable pickles Squibb complains about to show her ‘fearless’ character.  No one noticed they’re loaded with jars of Ba-Tampte Pickles, traditional salt-cured Kosher varieties that must be kept under refrigeration.  Now that would be something to complain about!  ‘Are you trying to kill me and my friend with your spoiled pickles?’

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *For a late in life adult Bar Mitzvah, check out one of the sweetest of all DICK VAN DYKE SHOW episodes: BUDDY SORRELL: MAN AND BOY/’66.

PUSHER (1996)

Hard-boiled Danish writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn was at Cannes this year with his first feature film in a decade.  Easy to see how he could have burnt himself out watching this debut.  In his mid-twenties at the time, he looks fresh out of the THIS IS SPINAL TAP ‘Crank it to 11' School du Cinema.*  A character study on a week in the life of drug supplier Frank (Kim Bodnia) and his inconstant mates (including a feral Mads Mikkelsen),as Frank rapidly sinks into dangerous levels of debt to various drug dealers a mere step or two above him, but far deadlier.  Shot entirely with jumpy hand-held camera (Morten Søborg), it has the opposite effect of Refn’s intention (a rookie gaffe), constantly calling attention to itself (especially in fast back & forth pans between actors) pulling you out of the action when it wants to pull you in.  With actors playing to Refn rather than to each other . . . or to us.  Guru cinéma vérité something of an oxymoron.  Worse, when Frank finds his back against the wall on the seventh day, Refn starts pulling melodrama out of his hat (character & plot reversals via guns, romance, power balances, cash & friendship) that might work in a more stylized film, but here look like cheating.  On the other hand . . . two sequels.  It made Refn’s rep.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *We much prefer Refn’s poorly received ONLY GOD FORGIVES/’13.  Perhaps because rather than crank it to 11, he aims for 12.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/08/only-god-forgives-2013.html

WYATT EARP (1994)

Kevin Costner is seriously underrated.  Not as an actor, fine in the right role (underdog striver/ornery father-figure).  No, he’s underrated as a Hollywood survivor.  Few movie stars could slip past career-ending debacles like WATERWORLD/95*, THE POSTMAN/’97, the on-going HORIZON/’24 and EARP with nary a nick to their commercial standing.  In EARP’s case, big losses on writer/director Lawrence Kasdan’s dead serious/reasonably factual bio-pic on the legendary lawman were chalked up to the recent release of George P. Cosmatos’s more light-hearted lob at the same subject, TOMBSTONE/’93, sucking all the air out of the market.  (Ironically, using the rowdy tone of SILVERADO/’83, Kasdan’s previous Western epic.)  No doubt that’s part of the story, but EARP didn’t need help to fail; a 3+ hours length and grim predetermination turned possible audiences off all on their own.  (One thing that does make both films a must-see are the two enormous all-star casts, offering the chance to sample half of Hollywood's best late-twenties/early-thirties actors at the time.)  Kasdan’s main take on the saga is decidedly Freudian: Earp’s Old Testament revenge against GOD for taking away his young bride (and unborn son) before he’s redeemed (after murdering towns-full of gun-toting strangers*) by a beautiful Jewish prostitute.  Yikes!  But the film is a drag (if not for Gene Hackman with but ten minutes on-screen); at times (particularly in James Newton Howard’s windswept overblown score) even a disgrace.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  John Ford’s MY DARLING CLEMENTINE/’48 remains tops in EARP mythology (very ‘print the legend’) though low on accuracy.  Even though Ford, in his early Hollywood years, knew Earp.  OR:  Edward Cahn’s fascinating (if hit & miss) Early Talkie LAW AND ORDER/’32, with Walter Huston as Wyatt Earp (called ‘Saint’ Johnson here) with a script by son John.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/my-darling-clementine-1946.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In spite of critical ridicule, WATERWORLD, in a variety of ‘improved’ re-cuts, eventually recouped.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Hard not to wonder at The Wild West’s ‘liberal’ gun policies that ordered NO GUNS in town.  Pick ‘em up again on your way out.  It’d never happen today.

AQUARIUS (2016)

Last year’s international must-see, THE SECRET AGENT/’25 (not seen here), was a breakthru for Brazilian writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho, in spite of nearly twenty years’ work.  But this earlier high-profile film probably not the best place to start.*   Sonia Braga, best remembered Stateside for KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN/’85 and the popular, if vaguely appalling DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS/’76, stars in this lumpy saga as a hold out tenant who refuses to leave her handsome, if frozen-in-time beachfront apartment, stopping a big development project by stubbornly refusing even good offers family and ex-tenants pressure her to accept so they can get their payouts.  We’ve seen this one before, though with a lot less sex.  Everyone seems to be getting it on.  Even those pushy developers rent the deserted apartment directly above Sonia for a noisy orgy.  It doesn’t drive Braga away; instead, a peek at the action makes her horny enough to call up a handsome sex worker and have a go at her place.  (Okay, we’ve not seen that one before.)  There’s something ‘off’ (performative) about her encounters with middle-aged gal-pals and worried family members; as if we were watching The Real Widows of Recife.  Things get only weirder as Mendonça Filho strips gears to shift into a third act of skullduggery & property rights in a dastardly plot to degrade the building and force her out with a termite-riddled coup de théâtre.  Well, something’s termite ridden.

WATCH THIS, NpOT THAT/LINK:  *Instead, try Mendonça Filho’s intriguing first feature NEIGHBORING SOUNDS/’14.  (THE SECRET AGENT is in our cue.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/o-som-ao-reder-neighboring-sounds.html

SYNCHRONIC (2019)

ALL SPOILERS!  Skip this if you don’t want to know everything in advance.  Better yet, skip the film.  Anthony Mackie & Jamie Dornan, joined-at-the-hip New Orleans EMT paramedics, currently inundated with ODs from a new, potent designer drug marketed as ‘Synchronic,’ find this powerful hallucinogenic leaving a wake of dead or disappeared users.  Something almost sentient about this pill: its favorite book would have to be A WRINKLE IN TIME; favorite movie BACK TO THE FUTURE.  So when Dornan’s teenage girl goes missing from using the stuff (a runaway from home or lost in a time continuum?), perhaps there’s an explanation.  Going thru a bad personal patch, Mackie & Dornan may be fighting like an old couple, but hey!, family’s family, and a recent diagnosis of brain cancer emboldens Mackie to test the waters on Synchronic’s metaphysical properties and bring the girl back.  Co-directors Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead (Benson also scripted) play blind man’s bluff with the audience (a spare one, the film tanked) with spooky lighting, creepy score, inexplicably precise time leaps.  Really nothing you wouldn’t expect here, dumb genre logic, but cross the line with ‘progressive’ racial tropes long past their sell-by date.  From the late ‘50s/early ‘60s, the sacrificial Black Man giving his life to save his White pal* (here the pal's daughter) and, far worse, a revival of the ‘80s/‘90s Magical Negro character.  Benson doubling down by setting the climax at some Civil War battle with Mackie mistaken for a runaway slave.  Yikes!  Pretty good reviews and award action on this one.  Go figure.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT (not that you could find it!):  *On a DANNY THOMAS HOUR anthology show from 1967 (‘The Enemy’), Sammy Davis Jr, who got stuck with a lot of sacrificial Black friend to White ‘brother’ roles, outdoes them all in a little WWII drama when he discovers who the Nazi infiltrator is in his army unit after the undercover German agent mispronounces the ‘N’ word as ‘Neigher.’  Sammy risking all to save the unit yelling back ‘It’s Nigger, you Nazi rat!  Nigger!.’  (Or something like that; it’s been a while!)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  One happy surprise is a neat bit of support (about a scene & a half) from Ramiz Monsef as Synchronic’s remorseful developer, now trying to undo some of the damage.

LE DERNIER MILLIARDAIRE* (1934)

French writer/director René Clair had something of a charmed career from his first silents to his early sound features (late ‘20s thru 1933).  Everyone has their own favorite.  (SOUS LES TOITS DE PARIS/’30, anyone? https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/04/sous-les-tois-de-paris-under-roofs-of.html)  But his luck ran out (or was it his talent?; he never quite regained his standing) on this mega-flop satire on money & international finance.  Playing like an aria-free operetta, it’s a reverse-image MERRY WIDOW; here THE MERRY BACHELOR.  That’s middle-aged Max Dearly, the richest man in the world, called to return (with checkbook) to his country of birth as financial savior and proposed spouse of the country’s much younger princess.  Only this Native Son has stipulations: citizens must become a productive labor force, not the casino freeloaders they’d been before recent bankruptcies at the country’s gambling palaces shut off the easy money spigot.  Meanwhile, the Princess already has a young lover, a secret baby, too.  Over-dressed funny sets & funny costumes combined with over-eager funny playing hardly help.  Most painfully unfunny.  Clair imagining that everything is even funnier when repeated a dozen times.  Yikes!  Film scholars tell us that the film failed from Political Party Line critical response: for the LEFT a betrayal; for the RIGHT, a false prediction.  But even centrists bailed on this one.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  The year before, The Marx Brothers’ DUCK SOUP/’33, took on WAR instead of ECONOMICS, and hit all the marks Clair missed.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *MILLIARDAIRE = BILLIONAIRE.

BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ (2018)

Still untold.  A glitzy, wasted opportunity from Pamela B. Green (her sole feature credit as director) pays tribute to forgotten female film pioneer Alice Guy, but misses her importance.  The facts get on screen, in distractingly imaginative graphics, but we never get into what made her click as a filmmaker.  No comparisons with other early filmmakers.  No decent length clips to help judge her.  Her achievements taken on faith.  Mme. Guy had yet to turn twenty when she started working for Leon Gaumont in 1895.  Yep, same family as today’s distribution giant.  M. Leon brought her to a preview of Lumière’s legendary/first-ever projected film showing.  By the next year, Guy was directing some of the earliest film shorts.  And continued doing so over the next twenty-five peripatetic years; till the film industry became big business post-WWI and women, other than actresses, writers & editors, largely disappeared from most positions.  Famous for the early studio she and husband Herbert Blaché built in Fort Lee, New Jersey, he wound up directing in Hollywood* while she looked for work.  It’s a fascinating story, she lived till 1968 and there are filmed interviews of her, mostly from 1964, but we never find out what we really want to know.  The clips are tiny, yet collections of her work are available, but we don’t get enough to form even a preliminary opinion, or see how she was different (better?) than others at the time.  Worth a look, but meaningless without better support from the films.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  A couple of years before this came out, Thierry Frémaux’s LUMIÈRE!/’16 used Auguste Lumière's eternally fresh 19th century actualités to tell his story and the story of the start of The Movies.  Getting everything right this one flubs.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Husband Herbert Blaché, a far less important figure in film history (and a real shit), yet now far more seen than his wife as he directed Buster Keaton’s first feature, THE SAPHEAD/’20.  Not really part of the Keaton canon, Buster only a hired actor here just as he was beginning his own post-WWI shorts and features.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-saphead-1920.html