NE ZHA / NEZHA: MO TONG JIANG SHI (2019)

CGI (and a half!) animated origin story of devilishly disruptive child Ne Zha, born under a curse that’s stamped him as a demon (though Spirit Pearl also a possibility) in this retelling of an old (and confusing!) Chinese legend that has blown up at the box-office to make ths film’s sequel, NE ZHA 2, the all-time top animated grosser.  2.2 billion and counting.  Just not Stateside where both films all but flatlined.  This one, coming in without name recognition, no surprise, but the 2025 sequel, after doing modest biz a few months back in the original Mandarin, now out in a mainstream English dub at 2200 screens to a disastrous initial 1.5 mill wknd.  What gives?  In this one, Ne Zha comes across as an out of control, unlovable imp, a nasty piece of work, combining the worst aspects of Stitch & Gollum.  (Also, for some reason, ‘reading’ more as a girl.)  Fighting off flaming creatures (lots of dragons) with flames of his own, while his doting parents try to coax the good out of him.  Off-putting at best, the largely positive reviews focused on the technical aspects of the animation (subpar PIXAR) by which the film hopes to overwhelm, but only overloads.  Good news (SPOILER), the kid dies in the end, along with his gentler fighting companion, but sets up further adventures as living spirits ready to inhabit fresh corporal form (human or beast) to flame up once again.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  In the mood for an animated flaming villain?  Try Disney’s HERCULES/’97.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/hercules-1997.html

SUPERMAN (2025)

After three films that took GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY/’14;’17;’23 from ‘found delight’ to unwatchable overkill; James Gunn has managed to make SUPERMAN unwatchable in his first attempt.  Progress!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Of course, the purpose of this exercise was less to make a movie than to reboot DC Comics as a legit rival to MARVEL.  (Themselves currently in the doldrums.)  But if nothing beats SUPERMAN for audience awareness, the fan base is more wide than deep.  And, perhaps by design, low in Cool Factor.  (A bit like PETER PAN that way.)  He's Superman: the super hero too perfect to cast a shadow.  Add one, and he’s not Superman.  He’s an IP conundrum studios can neither count on nor count out.  Usual point of positive reference SUPERMAN/’76, thought to have solved these problems.  It didn’t, even the F/X thought poky at the time.  (Lots of problems, especially with the color grading whenever Supe went in the air.)  Three great things: John Williams’ score (constantly alluded to here); Glenn Ford's accidental Dad, waking as an actor after a decades nap; Geoffrey Unsworth’s wondrous countryside cinematography.  And that missing shadow?  Christopher Reeve’s aquiline nose.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Best to stick with the famous series of Fleisher Bros. Cartoons from the early 1940s.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/07/superman-1941-43.html

RETURN OF THE BAD MEN (1948)

From R.K.O., a big boned Western with the soul of a pint-sized programmer; the epic and the mundane canceling each other out under Ray Enright’s solid but faceless direction.  Up against the most famous Outlaw Brothers in the West (the Jameses, the Youngers, the Daltons; plus one sister*), Randolph Scott delays his move to California (with fiancée Jacqueline White) to help maintain order during the Oklahoma Land Rush.  A segment likely put together with footage  from R.K.O.’s Oscar® winning CIMARRON/’31, just the sort of prestige piece this film would like to be.  With comic relief supplied by George 'Gabby' Hayes’ banker and loads of fellow program Western stars, Robert Ryan stands out a mile as main villain Sundance Kid.  Put in this company, Ryan’s so powerfully modern he overwhelms everything around him.  A post-war element (that’s post-WWII not post-Civil War) breaking the Hollywood model for these things.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Producer/writer/actor Stacy Keach and undervalued director Walter Hill managed to corral real brothers Keach, Carradine and Quaid to play all these brothers in THE LONG RIDERS/’80.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-long-riders-1980.html

BRAINSTORM (1965)

Jack-of-all-Hollywood-trades William Conrad: radio star/GUNSMOKE; tv star/CANNON; in-demand supporting heavy at major studios; ROCKY & BULLWINKLE narrator; director/producer mostly for tv.  This twisty thriller, a rare feature, opens when computer whiz Jeffrey Hunter comes across a locked car, parked on a railroad crossing.  Driving it off the tracks just in time, he saves the life of drugged/drunk/despondent would-be suicide Anne Francis.  After that, things get very stupid very fast.  Turns out, our sleepy car occupant is unhappily married to Dana Andrews, the rich, controlling owner of Hunter’s company among many other Fortune 500 companies.  So when the inevitable affair between Hunter & Francis turns serious, Andrews starts to ‘gaslight’ and sabotage their lives.  Only murder will stop this psychopath  Just the thing for Hunter to take care of, working up a perfect crime and a perfect insanity defense.  His twist?  He’ll plead guilty by insanity!  At this point, you realize you’re not the only person in the room who’s seen Samuel Fuller’s SHOCK CORRIDOR/’63, where a newspaper reporter goes undercover into the loony bin to research a story only to come out loony.  But where Fuller is sui generis; Conrad is a competent hack.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  As mentioned, SHOCK CORRIDOR/’63.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Likable, handsome, Jeffrey Hunter’s career never seemed to recover after playing Jesus for Nicholas Ray in KING OF KINGS/’61.  He kept working till his early death at 42 in 1969, including starring in the STAR TREK pilot, but his A-list days had been crucified.

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987)

Leave it to those Cannon Film boys,, schlock producers Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan, here in their ‘80s heyday, to see STAR WARS/’77 in a D.C. comic-book franchise.  From its bold Bill Conti opening fanfare, pure John Williams copyright infringement; to fascist pageantry laced with STAR WARS design elements in sets & costume (check out those glossy black helmets); to a demonstration of deadly force by gesture, you know where you are.  Even a Sorceress in white, held in electronic bondage while a team of space soldiers are sent to recover ‘the key’ so chief villain Skeletor (Frank Langella hamming it up nicely) can rule the universe.  Luckily, their space portal takes them all the way to a double-feature: BACK TO THE FUTURE/’85!  Yep, Globus/Golan have combined the two biggest franchises of the day.  That’s young Courtney Cox as Earthly ingenue alongside boyfriend Robert Duncan McNeill.  But what of the two good guys & one gal, plus freakish goblin?  Busy adjusting to Earth’s ways before helping those two kids who just happened upon ‘the key.’  As ‘He-Man,’ Dolph Lundgren sports a great shag haircut, the jawbone of an ass, the largest breasts on screen, and acting chops that make Cox & McNeill look RADA-trained.  All under first time director Gary Goddard who seems befuddled by so many moving parts.  That’ll teach those Cannon boys to put up a decent budget.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Learn how indie producer Roger Corman made a million bucks by not releasing his lowball try at the genre in the sadder-but-wiser tru-life Tale of Hollywood DOOMED: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ROGER CORMAN'S THE FANTASTIC FOUR/’15.

PRESENCE (2024)

Second of three from director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp (from KIMI/’22 to BLACK BAG/’25), this middle one uncomfortable in its Haunted House tropes.  You can see what they’re up to; going for a literary vibe like Henry James’ TURN OF THE SCREW or Shirley Jackson’s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE.  Both of those with multiple filmings,* they start with a vacant, impassive old house to set a neutral tone; before a dysfunctional nuclear family of four (mom, dad, teenage siblings) takes a look.  Soon moving into this restored gem of a suburban house as they search for a fresh start.  The girl in particular, in bad mental shape after the death of two best friends.  Perhaps a haunted house not the best place to recover?  Soderbergh, showing unease with the paranormal, hides behind technical challenge, shooting the whole film as a series of gliding one-takes, fading to black between setups.  A filming choice that occasionally, but not always, becomes the floating spirit’s roomba ride POV.  But what is it the rest of the time?  Soderbergh setting film grammar only to ignore it.  (Though bravely eliminating shock cuts!)  And why does the family stay put after witnessing things going bump in the night?  If they only trusted the ectoplasm as oracle!  Maybe the daughter’s smooth-talkin’ sexy-ass, controlling boyfriend would have been exposed in time.  With a length under 80" (excluding credits), I think the roomba may have tipped off the filmmakers.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Those two literary suspensers released as THE HAUNTING/'63 and THE INNOCENTS/'61.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/haunting-1963.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-innocents-1961.html

THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND (1956)

Tone-deaf and unpleasant, this misconceived service comedy might well be titled THE GIRL THE FILM LEFT BEHIND as co-star Natalie Wood largely drops out of the picture after the first act.  That’s when boyfriend Tab Hunter flunks out of college, loses military deferment and reluctantly kisses Natalie goodbye to join this man’s Army.  Spoiled by wealthy, politically connected Mom (Jessie Royce Landis), Tab’s a closet Mama's boy, rich, lazy, self-centered & arrogant, a prick for all seasons with an overblown sense of entitlement about class, classes, his girl, and now army life.  Naturally, he’ll fuck up (on purpose, mind you), trying to get out till wising up to himself and coming thru at the finish.*  Did the writers know just how unlikeable they made this guy?  He even let’s a couple of kids (and their dogs!) wander onto a live-ammo training exercise area.  A bit of fun to be had debating who’s cuter: Natalie with her hair bobbed and no makeup or Tab with those chiseled . . . well everything.  (Even his hair chiseled.)  Plus, what a load of up-and-comers in the cast: James Garner, David Janssen, Murray Hamilton, Alan King (!), alongside Jim Backus and Henry Jones.  Vet director David Butler, who made light vehicles and Fox musicals, unable to make Hunter worth the trouble.  Leave this one in the brig.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Silent star William Haines, like Hunter, more or less out as gay within the industry, based his entire career, and rose to the top in the late-silent/early Talkie transition period, on this same jerk of a character.  His careless, carefree cruelty almost shocking to watch today.  But it can work on screen.  See him under director George W. Hill in TELL IT TO THE MARINES/’26.  OR: Haines at his very best the one time he stepped away from that character for John M. Stahl in MEMORY LANE/’26.  Long unavailable except in an out-of-order tinting-lab print, it’s finally been restored and is getting a MoMA premiere on August 5th.  The film, a minor masterpiece, hopefully getting a video release in the near future.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  With the army racially integrated on paper for nearly a decade, and effectively so on the field starting in Korea, this 1956 film tries to keep up with changing times by having a few Black soldiers appear in every group shot.  That is, every group shot but one: there’s no Black presence when Hunter beats everyone playing craps.  In 1956, keeping Blacks out of this game would have been considered socially progressive.

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS (2021)

(NOTE:  I know this Write-Up makes less sense than usual, but hey!, it's The Matrix.)  In an attempt at resurrecting their cash-cow/calling-card franchise, the Wachowskis, or rather Lana, who takes sole credit, tries to have her cake and eat it too on their signature Gordian Knot fable of multi-layered realities.*  Playing both sides of The Emperor’s New Clothes fence, the main debate asks if message & meaning exists within these MATRIX films, or can empty pyrotechnics serve as both surface display and subject?  From there, we go ‘meta’ as Keanu Reeves’ Neo, living the corporal corporate life as video game designer Thomas Anderson, suffers thru company conference meetings on the public’s reaction to previous gaming editions of The Matrix.  All this coming after a zoomy prologue that sees digital entities in human form battling for their lives in, on and over skyscrapers.  Though technically, are they alive or merely lithium charged data?  One piece of the puzzle Neo will have to solve while renewing his feelings for Carrie-Anne Moss and his sessions with quirky analyst Neil Patrick Harris on fear control.  Parsing all this well-nigh impossible though subtitles help, if not for gal fighter Jessica Henwick whose diction is so indistinct, you can’t make out two words for every ten with or without the sub-titles.  Lots of famous faces to spot between CGI overkill, and a moral to contemplate: never trust your analyst.  Alas, the cool which sold the original MATRIX in 1999 a thing of the past; subsumed by a new emotion for one of these films: Pity.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Stick with the first in the series . . . only the first.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The ending also a ‘have your cake and eat it too’ cop-out.

CAPTAIN SCARFACE (1953)

Dreary bargain-basement product (for a Grind House triple-bill?) produced by Hal Roach Jr (on Pop’s studio lot) has supporting actor Paul Guilfoyle debuting as director from Charles Lang’s original script.  (Not Lang the cinematographer, BTW.)  Third-billed Leif Erickson takes the lead as a So. American based foreman on the run from his boss and taking the first ship out of port.  That’s how he ends up on Los Baños, mad Captain Barton MacLane’s doomsday vessel.  (Longtime Warners character heavy MacLane failing to pull off his Russian accent.)  Seems the captain has kidnapped an explosives expert and plans on taking down the whole Panama Canal along with everyone on board.  Yikes!  This ought to be a bit more fun than it is, but so flatly lit, written, staged and acted, there’s little to redeem it.*

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Adding insult to injury, most Public Domain and Free Streaming copies in excellent physical shape.  In the history of film preservation: the good die young, while crap endures.  If you’re looking for a man-on-the-run meets Evil Ship’s Captain story, tough to beat THE SEA WOLF/’42.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-sea-wolf-1941.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Well, maybe just one thing.  Somebody managed to get away with naming the ship ‘Los Banos,’ Spanish for The Bathroom.  Flush away!

JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX (2024)

Destined to go down as the most disappointing high profile sequel since EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC/’77 (out four years after the game-changing original), Todd Phillips’ D.O.A. semi-musical continuation of what had been Hollywood’s all-time top grossing R-rated pic (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/04/joker-2019.html) wouldn’t have come as a surprise to many in the biz.*  The story’s simple enough: while in looney prison awaiting trial on past murders & mayhem, Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) buds up with fellow psychopath Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) to bill & coo . . . in song.  Mostly American Songbook classics and ‘60s ‘Pop,’ delivered in what might be called ‘half-integrated’ style.  It’s like a cross between what worked so well in PENNIES FROM HEAVEN/’81 with lip-synched period recordings, and even better this same year with vocalized transgender mob story EMILIA PÉREZ, which gets almost everything right this film gets wrong.  A triumph of execution.  This was the stylistic choice everyone (including upset audiences) jumped on as the key to this film tanking.  But it’s not.  The problem was that the ultra-violence that sold five years back was happening ‘for real’ within the framework of that story.  Not so here, where, with the exception of an explosive finale, all the gory thrills occur in dream sequences Joker wakes up from.  Nothing happened, folks.  It’s as if Phillips didn’t understand his own concept.    . . . oh.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:   As mentioned above, PENNIES and EMILIA PÉREZ/’24.  OR: Play movie sleuth since while Martin Scorsese’s TAXI DRIVER/’76 was the obvious takeoff point for JOKER, hard to say what Phillips was riffing on here.  Perhaps Brian De Palma’s crazy-fun freak show PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE/’74, where there's actually a Batman-worthy villain made with the help of a vinyl L.P. press machine.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/11/emilia-perez-2024.html    

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *More likely, the dismal reception was welcomed as a control lever against Phillips (and others), returning balance of power to the studios.  Pricey, but worth it.

ANIKI BÓBÓ (1942)

Honored Portugese master Manoel de Oliveira, who lived to be 106 and never stopped turning out films (take that Clint Eastwood), a critical darling, especially at film fests toward the end of his long career, never broke thru Stateside, even in an auteurist manner.  And, to go by his late work, easy to see why.  Overloaded with grand themes: obvious, weighty, pretentious, in spite of some tantalizing international casts eager to have worked with the old man.  Could a better encounter be had by going to his beginnings rather than his end?  Say, this very first feature from 1942?  Nope.  It’s no more satisfying then the late works, and a bit rough technically.  Editing particularly bumpy.  Meant as a modest charmer about the games kids play on the streets of Porto, this episodic film best for its location work on the narrow alleys, stairways, roofs and tenement apartment buildings of this seaside city.  If only the kids weren’t a mass of worn clichés and schoolyard casting calls that didn’t pay off.  The storyline, beside all the roughhousing and urban games, follows a couple of rivals for a little girl's favor, a doll stolen from a store display window, and the store owner developing an interest in the kids.  (He proves something of a behind-the-counter child psychologist/philosopher.)  The main action, which opens the film before we flash back, showing a dangerous fall by one of those rivals down a slope toward an onrushing rain.  Will the boy be crushed?   Was he pushed?  And while you won’t be chewing your nails for the next 80 minutes, the film’s pleasant enough and there’s a nice set piece set on dangerously unstable ceramic rooftop tiles.  Next time, maybe something from de Oliveira’s middle period.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  François Truffaut’s SMALL CHANGE/’76 is the go-to pic for this sort of thing.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/small-change-1976.html

ALL FALL DOWN (1962)

Always in the shadow of Tennessee Williams (who he was unfavorably compared to in spite of successes COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA; PICNIC; BUS STOP), playwright William Inge died long before his current (if partial) critical reclamation.  But easy to see why he was seen as a backup Williams in Inge's adaptation of James Leo Herlihy’s overwrought novel about a dysfunctional family down South.  Warren Beatty, in his arrogant pretty-boy prime, repeats the Angel of Death* he’d just played in Williams’ THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/the-roman-spring-of-mrs-stone-1961.html), but sans suspect Italian accent, as irresponsible prodigal son to suffocating mom Angela Lansbury (very Shelley Winters here) and libido-free dipso dad Karl Malden.  Brandon De Wilde (remarkably good considering) is the worshipful kid brother/family peacemaker who finally spots the feet of clay, and Eva Marie Saint is a visiting cousin who brings out a new leaf on Beatty only to discover the new growth is no different than the old.  While director John Frankenheimer, only his third feature after much tv work, can’t find a level of artifice everyone can work in, so the acting is something of a free-for-all.  For the film, hysterical playing and physically drab presentation prove a bad combination.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Next year, next big brother with feet of clay as De Wilde sees Paul Newman plain in the far superior HUD/’63.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Something our foreign poster picks right up on.  (see above)

CONTEST/LINK:  Wildly misrepresentative trailer, even for Hollywood.  Plus a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up on a streamable film of your choice if you can name the tune & the film the trailer uses as playout.  https://www.tcm.com/video/61703/all-fall-down-original-trailer

COMPLÈTEMENT CRAMÉ! / WELL DONE! (2023)

Wealthy, but depressed, a recent widower takes a sentimental journey to the French estate where he’d met his late wife.  But it’s closed!  Or rather, being redeveloped as a sort of luxury B&B and the ad he saw wasn’t for guests but for a British butler.  Ahead of the plot already?  (Ahead by about seven or eight decades, yes?  Good Lord, what was debuting writer/director Gilles Legardinier thinking?)  And whom to get to play the charming Brit who plays butler so he can rekindle some personal memories while fixing up the lives & loves of the staff along with the grounds & plumbing?  Why Mister Charm himself: John Malkovich; speaking his own weirdly uninflected French.*  Fanny Ardant, owner of this pile, appears in brief flashes under the odd staccato editing Legardinier favors when he’s not pointlessly circling chess games on the grass, hélas.  Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert and a good score under Ernst Lubitsch couldn’t have made this work in 1931.  Released in France as COMPLÈTEMENT CRAMÉ!/’23; later in selected English-speaking territories as WELL DONE!; now scheduled for Stateside showings (in near empty bijoux) as MR. BLAKE AT YOUR SERVICE!  Best avoided under any name.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *On a positive note: if your French is as bad as mine, Malkovich’s flat non-idiomatic delivery is understandable in a manner not possible when native French speakers rattle on.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Is it possible the inspiration for this came from something as wonderful as MY MAN GODFREY/’36?

POT O’ GOLD (1941)

James Stewart made three Frank Capra films; many more simply Capra-esque.  This is one of them.  His last release before WWII took him off the screen ‘for the duration.’  Five years later, he’d return with his final actual Capra film, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE/’46 playing a small-town family business owner who dreams of leaving for bigger things.  So it’s a prescient surprise to have 1941 Stewart as a small town family business owner hoping to stay put.  That big job in the big city?; no thank you.  What is this, Bizarro IAWL?  And why so little known?  But one reel in, Stewart gives in to the biddings of crusty Uncle Charles Winninger to be heir apparent to the other family business, a big health food factory in the big, unhealthy city.  Once there, he soon stumbles upon a happy clan of musicians living the tenement commune life (it’s Paulette Goddard and her happy band, literally a happy band), and just like that, GOLD leaves IAWL behind and becomes a sort of ‘almost-musical’ variation on the first Stewart/Capra film, YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU/’38.  (That’s the Crazy family meets Capitalism; George Kaufman/Moss Hart stage classic.)  This idea far less interesting; and not much helped by director George Marshall*, a script, that lays it on thick (Mary Gordon’s Irish Dear a particular horror), and lots of bouncy, but generic tunes.  Musicals are hard enough to pull off.  Screwball semi-musicals, jumping in & out of stage conventions to allow people to break into song, way beyond the abilities of this crew.  Including the lousy vocal mismatch dubbing Goddard’s singing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *The Hollywood director who might have pulled this off is Leo McCarey.  See him do it in THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S/’46.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/11/bells-of-st-marys-1945.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Yes, producer James Roosevelt, in his sole feature credit, was FDR’s eldest boy.  No doubt, the guy who forgot to renew copyright which flooded the market with subfusc Public Domain copies.  Decent ones easy to find if you look around.

THE SNOWMAN (2017)

After the much anticipated SMILIA’S SENSE OF SNOW/’97 tanked (so badly it downgraded multiple A-listers to permanent also-ran status), it revived an old Hollywood maxim on snowy settings equaling bad box-office.  (They left audiences cold in more ways than one.)  An excuse not used since; and no data to support the snowy claim.  Indeed, over the past two decades, especially with the rise in Nordic Noir franchises on the page/on the screen, you can hardly shake a stick without hitting something Frosty & Scandinavian.  But SNOWMAN may revive the old adage.  Set in snowy Oslo, with cast members trying on two or three mismatched accents that come & go (suspect J.K. Simmons has the most fun in vocal inconsistency), Michael Fassbender’s the police dick too busy missing killer clues & forgetting which woman is his wife to bother with a steady accent.  (Wait!  That’s me forgetting who his wife is!  Sorry.)  In defense, director Tomas Alfredson claims the released film (a serial murder procedural that features murder by garrotte and snowmen left as death markers) had the plug pulled before he finished and then got re-edited.  Against him are set pieces showing a distinct lack of action chops.  The big climax where the murderer loses the upper hand on three more victims a botch for the books.*  A couple more like this and producers will again start blaming climate for under-performance.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Anderson’s breakthru pic, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN/’05, also snowbound.  But since it’s about a vampire, iron-poor blood part of the story.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/lat-den-ratte-komma-in-let-right-one-in.html

LIEUTENANT KIJE / PORUCHIK KIZHE (aka THE CZAR WANTS TO SLEEP) (1934)

While the last few decades have seen a revolution in the number of live symphonic Concert Hall performances of film music, the scores are still ghettoized, relegated to ‘Pops’ programs or Special All-Film Nights; not pure enough for Subscription Series.  While Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto is now regularly played alongside Brahms, a suite from THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD wouldn't be.  A rare exception?  The suite Sergei Prokofiev made from his film music to LT. KIJE in 1934.  (Prokofiev struck again with the cantata  fashioned from his ALEXANDER NEVSKY/’38 score.)  Yet, while this suite (which contains nearly all the music from the film) was instantly popular (still is), the film remains unknown.  Deservedly?  Well . . . pretty much yes.  But still fascinating to see where the cues come from even when early Soviet film technology leaves a lot to be taken on faith visually and sonically.  In a set-up loaded with comic potential the eponymous Lt. turns out to be no more than a clerical error made during the reign of Czar Paul I.  Born by a slip of the pen 1800; dying by pen the same year.  All because no one dares to admit the Czar could be in error.  Anyway, this phantom soldier is useful as a scapegoat.  A very Russian bureaucratic comedy not too far from Gogol’s THE INSPECTOR GENERAL and all too close to THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES.  The comic acting broad even for The Kremlin; very nudge-nudge/wink-wink under debut megger Aleksandr Faintsimmer.  (No Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Players here.)  But it does tell you something about Prokofiev and why he was so excited to visit the Disney studio years before they got around to making their PETER AND THE WOLF short.

LINKS:  Check it out for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCL_wTViYF0    (Don’t forget to turn the subtitles on.)  

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Really a HEAR THIS with the score far more alive on its own than in the film in this never bettered 1957 recording from Fritz Reiner & the CSO.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK9mOTugCxk

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The KIJE score shows up all over the place in the movies.  Probably best used in Woody Allen’s earliest mature work, LOVE AND DEATH/’75.

THE RISING HAWK (2018)

Looking for a historical actioner?  A blood & guts period piece set a few millennium back?  Hordes of faceless combatants set for slaughter while titled nobles feed family grudges via love, war & rights of succession?  Go East, young man; Go East, and grow up with the Asian film market.  Hong Kong, Korea & Japan with a dozen for each made in the West.  (And of those, half artsy fare like Robert Eggers’ THE NORTHMAN/’22.)  So how does HAWK fit in?  Western financed, though writer/director John Wynn of Asian descent, and a story all over the place.  Tired of village-destroying raids, clans of 13th Century Euro-Caucasian settlers move to the Carpathian Mountains to resettle and form new units and one big protection racket to share in.  If they could only get along among themselves!  What could truly pull them together?  A marriage across family lines?  An attack from without.  You’re both right!  Mongols sent on orders from Genghis Khan are threatening, and a son from one of the clans (one of two beefy, boychik brothers) has fallen in love with the daughter of the one Carpathian baron playing both sides of the East/West fence.  (No actual fences, instead, river borders which turns out to be a major plot device.)  Hey, this is sounding pretty good!  Don’t be fooled.  Between the Pan Pipes on the soundtrack; the tasteful Earth-toned color scheme; director Wynn’s lack of close-action chops; the indifferently handled digital effects, a lack of acting skills (rising in reverse proportion to looks); and a last act that’s basically The 300 Spartans for Dummies; this tight-budget epic likely to send you back to the East.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  John Woo put out one of the more entertaining examples of the form in the two-parter RED CLIFF/’08 - ‘09)    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/chi-bi-red-cliff-2008.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/chi-bi-xia-jue-zhan-tian-xia-red-cliff.html

TROIS SOUVENIRS DE MA JEUNESSE / MY GOLDEN DAYS (2015)

Faux Truffaut from Arnaud Desplechin, a real turkey from this elsewise talented French writer/director.  With an autobiographical feel to it, Desplechin charts the sentimental education of presumed alter-ego Paul Dédalus in the ‘70s and ‘80s; recalled in his fifties by Mathieu Amalric as a middle-aged Paul, but mostly played by Quentin Dolmaire as Paul in his teens and early twenties.  At first,  Desplechin seems content to tick off how some of the major political issues of the day affected Paul & friends (a suspenseful involvement with the Jewish-Russian ‘Refuseniks;’ live tv coverage as the Berlin Wall comes down), but this is just a feint for the real subject of interest, Paul’s on-and-off relationship with ‘the eternal female,’ mostly during his college days over in Paris while his besties & lovers remain stuck in a small town hours away.  The messed up, but alluring girl in question is Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), a wouldn’t-say-yes/wouldn’t-say-no mental case meant to trigger the film’s central JULES ET JIM/’62 situation(s) since whenever Paul has an extended stay for school in Paris, one of Paul’s pals takes up with Esther.  Instead of JULES ET JIM, it’s PAUL ET IVAN; PAUL ET BOB; PAUL ET KOVALKI.  Perhaps if we could see on screen what we are told  we are seeing in Esther (lackluster Lou Roy-Lecollinet with but two features after this), this wouldn’t play like THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES.  Jeanne Moreau, your legacy is secure.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Other than a re-watch of JULES ET JIM (real François Truffaut, too much like great music for a film journal to successfully write about), A CHRISTMAS TALE/’08 is a great place to repair your relationship with Desplechin.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/un-conte-de-noel-christmas-tale-2008.html

OPERATION FINALE (2018)

Inexplicably dreadful.  Wait, it’s a Chris Weitz film, so dreadfulness entirely explicable.  Instead, make that inexcusably dreadful.  Released theatrically, this film on the hunt by Mossad agents to capture Nazi Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann and secretly bring him to Israel for trial looks made for tv.  Not HBO or NetFlix, ABC Movie-of-the-Week.  And while it’s possible that every word and action is 100% true, what matters is that nothing feels believable.  Martin Orton, in a debut script, never convinces us of the stumbles that led the agents thru a series of lucky breaks & missteps to Eichmann, hiding in Argentina under a new name, The cast also no help, right from a prologue that sees them snatch and kill the wrong Nazi.  (Good movie title there: THE WRONG NAZI.)   Acting just as bad.  Nick Kroll is just distracting as one of the Mossad guys, but what’s up with Oscar Isaac as the team's impulsive jokester?  (The sole clever touch a bad dye job on Ben Kingsley’s hair as Eichmann.)  I suppose Weitz thought he was humanizing agents normally portrayed as invincible, but making them incompetent bumblers who trip into success has the effect of making the Mossad look as if they were putting on an amateur theatrical version of THE LADYKILLERS/’55.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Similar themes, tactics and goals covered in Steven Spielberg’s MUNICH/’08 about the hunt for the 1972 Olympic murderers.  And while it’s also unsatisfying (it even earned its own Watch This, Not That label), it fails at an entirely different level than Weitz can manage.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/munich-2005.html

THE APPOINTMENT (1969)

BELLE DU JOUR/’67 meets IRMA LA DOUCE/’63 in this Italian curiosity from Sidney Lumet; less forgotten than purposefully lost.  Newlywed lawyer suspects gorgeous wife is spending the occasional afternoon as the priciest lay in town.  Naturally, he wants to uncover the truth.  Tail her?  Hire a private investigator?  Maybe bring a photo to Madame?  (She’s a fashion model, pictures everywhere.)  Nope.  Instead, call to book the next ‘appointment’ then wait by the door to play your own version of The Lady or The Tiger.  Cost?  A measly £100,000.  Yikes!  With Anouk Aimée, still unthawed from A MAN AND A WOMAN/’66 as the possibly wayward wife and Omar Sharif, still nonplussed post-Streisand’s FUNNY GIRL/’68, each pushing 40 yet acting like awkward virgins on a first date.  Later, wandering together thru fashionably ‘distressed’ Rome locations or waiting in stylish interiors (more than you’ll find in all other Lumet films combined), under the eye of Carlo Di Palma’s ochre-tones lensing.  But no pick up of Stateside theatrical distribution rights.  Lumet at the time in a severe career slump not broken till SERPICO/’73.  Yet there’s real missed potential here.  Only problem?  It’s potential for comedy.  Imagine Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLane (the stars of IRMA) here.  Even better, Peter Sellers & Sophia Loren (of THE MILLIONAIRESS) or Sellers with PINK PANTHER partner Capucine.  For that matter, might as well swap out Lumet for PANTHER’s Blake Edwards.*  Assuming Luis Buñuel wasn’t available.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *You’ll find the same meet-cute in Blake Edwards’ 10.  There, Dudley Moore, distracted by Bo Derek’s bridal beauty, hits the rear end of the car in front of him.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Any of the films mentioned here with the exception of IRMA LA DOUCE, an enormous success in its day.  Pretty bad then, downright awful now; other than the miraculous sets & art direction of Alexandre Trauner.