MICMACS / MICMACS À TIRE-LARIGOT (2009)

Typically, French writer/director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, best known Stateside for AMÉLIE/’01 and DELICATESSEN/’91, demonstrates a bad case of the cutes along with a weakness for excessively ornate design that makes someone as OTT as Baz Luhrmann look more severe than Mies van der Rohe.  Cinematic vices that allow even his most popular successes to quickly exhaust themselves and his audiences.*  At least this fabulist caper, an eccentrics’ tale of revenge against rival titans of industrial war weapons, comes with a literary background as it’s straight out of Jean Giraudoux’s equally twee THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-madwoman-of-chaillot-1969.html), though missing Giraudoux’s farcical boulevard grandeur.  Jeunet opens with farcical tragedy² as a land mine kills a father before thirty years pass and his son takes a bullet in the head.  (Collateral damage from a terrorist incident.)  But the son recovers to seek revenge against that pair of international arms dealers, helped by some  ‘Court of Miracles’ eccentrics who design a plan of action worthy of Rube Goldberg.*  You have been warned.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *From our limited Jeunet list, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT/’04 shows him at his most digestible.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/very-long-engagement-2004.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The shame of it all is that Jeunet shows real technical chops at almost everything he tries.  Maybe someone could get him and, say, Terry Gilliam enrolled at some lion taming school . . . as beasts who need taming.

AMÉLIE ET LA MÉTAPHYSIQUE DES TUBES / LITTLE AMÉLIE OR THE CHARACTER OF RAIN (2025)

Inexplicably well-reviewed (if little seen) animation from France (feature debuts for directors Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han), best described as Whimsical/Creepy.*  Largely focused on Little Amelie as she passes from two to three years-old in the 1970s at the lux pagoda-style house her Belgian family (Mom, brother, sister, house helper) live in while Dad works a year in Japan.  Discovering some new natural wonder every day, Amélie develops a kiddie God Complex, getting into trouble with every adventure.  Mom weirdly unconcerned with safety in spite of near drownings and spills.  No matter, that local housekeeper serves as surrogate while late developer Amélie coos in wonder before finally starting to walk & talk.  If she’d only shut up!  A regular French philosopher manqué!  Now, we’re supposed to coo.  Short and stocky compared to her family, as if she needs to be shown thru an anamorphic lens.  (Or was she designed by Botero?).  The family does share unnaturally round cat’s eyes, just not the feline kind.  More Cat’s Eye marbles.  Yikes!  Though not the villainous landlady, a war survivor who hates Europeans.  But it’s Amélie you’ll want to slap.  The film like one of those over-sized child’s picture books your Grandma thought would make a nice gift, but which you never took out of its shrink wrap.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Hard to get behind a film that uses White Chocolate as Proustian Madeleine.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *TURNING RED/’22 director Domee Shi needs only eight minutes to land a lot of the ideas being messed with here in the hilarious child/parent horror of BAO/‘18.

DEADLY HERO (1975)

Where Michael Winner/Charles Bronson’s DEATH WISH caught the populist Zeitgeist of vigilante justice in a violently out of control, graffiti-ridden 1974 New York City; and Martin Scorsese/Robert De Niro’s TAXI DRIVER caught artistic psychoses from similar elements in 1976, DEADLY HERO just got caught in the middle*, falling on its face in 1975 using many of the same ingredients, splitting the difference between those iconic titles, but too crappy as film to work even as bridge.  Don Murray is all over the place as a vet patrol cop looking for trouble alongside young partner Treat Williams, then finding it when James Earl Jones’s phony African ambassador pulls a knife on theater conductor Diahn Williams at her 88th St. brownstone apartment and forces his way in.  Between a confused script & Ivan Nagy’s inept direction, you can’ t tell if this is attempted rape or sexual role playing.  They sure seem to know each other as they gag about.  But when frightened neighbor Lilia Skala calls the cops, Murray & Treat respond.  And the deadly shooting of a big Black man turns the senior cop into a tabloid hero-for-a-day.  Only the victim's story turns out not to match Murray’s version of events, and his increasingly desperate attempts to fix the mess turns deadly.  Like WISH and DRIVER, downbeat NYC locations emphasize the city’s ‘70s decline, but it all becomes more than a bit ridiculous* in spite of some fun spotting New York’s acting pool being used in the days before LAW & ORDER took over that operation.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *In their wildly different ways, DEATH WISH and TAXI DRIVER now look unexpectedly complimentary.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *This must be the only film where a damsel in distress is abducted by her pursuer along with her ‘cello!  It makes for an odd looking shot, but works to our heroine’s advantage when she invents a new use for the instrument.  Yikes!

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (2017)

Having written off SPIDER-MAN after ‘3' (lowest IMDb rating of the bunch), it’s been quite the wait between SPIDER-MEN on this site.  (Other than out-of-series efforts like the meta-clever ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE and its over-egged sequel.)  But with BRAND NEW DAY setting all-time Box-Office records, and likely the last for 30-yr-old Tom Holland as Spidey, took a chance on his first.  (Sorry Andrew Garfield.)  Holland actually came in thru the side door, thirteenth-billed in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR/’16 (not seen here), now top-billed.  This is unquestionably THE Spider-Man to see for anyone who ever wondered what Michael J. Fox would have made of the role in his BACK TO THE FUTURE days.  Did Holland drop his U.K. accent listening to Fox tapes?*  No trace of the character’s NYC upbringing, instead Fox’s flat, Canadian, high-pitched, slightly croaky little voice that tends to speed up for no reason.  Same build and height, too; plus superior comic timing without any heat or threat.  Fox never did the Teen Beat beefcake shots they foist on Holland , but even that can’t sully Holland’s sunny disposition.  Backstory has him as Iron Man’s protégé, with Robert Downey dropping in like visiting minor royalty, acting supercilious.  A big downer.  While the main villain is Michael Keaton whom Spidey takes on before he’s primed for the big leagues.  That’s the main plot.  But as Keaton plays a sort of Anti-Iron Man and not Anti-Spider-Man, the whole film feels dramatically imbalanced.  Other characters (and there are a lot of them) make little mark (they even give Spidey the ‘wrong’ girlfriend).  And the effects often have a herky-jerky feel to them in spite of obvious masses of money thrown their way.  Guess we’re back to our lonelier than ever Spidey boycott.  (For all our Spider-Man content, type SPIDER-MAN in the Search Box in the top left corner on the MAKSQUIBS main site.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: These films are as producer-led as any big studio film from Hollywood’s pre-‘50s heyday.  Initially Laura Ziskin, now Amy Pascale.  Even promising more Spideys at the final credits as if this were James Bond.  That financial juggernaut probably less valuable than the SpideyWorld now is.  Nevertheless, there is a faceless director in charge, Jon Watts whose COP CAR/’15, made right before his SPIDER-MANs, is a smart little thriller that likely cost less than ‘craft-services’ for a week of a SPIDEY shoot, yet has far more personality and pleasure to it.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/06/cop-car-2005.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Just read on IMDb that Holland did indeed base his characterization on Fox.

THE SUBTERRANEANS (1960)

After winning his first Oscar® on GIGI/’58, composer/arranger/conductor André Previn’s next call from producer Arthur Freed had him not only score, but also perform ‘live’ on camera as jazz pianist within the club settings of this adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s best-selling novel about ‘The Beats.’   (Not hep to the term?  Think late ‘50s hipsters.)  Knowing the story was about Kerouac as a struggling writer (miscast George Peppard) unable to love before he encounters a mentally troubled mixed-race (Black/Cherokee) beauty who breaks thru his reserve, Previn asked the studio exec, ‘Who’s playing the Black girl?’  ‘Leslie Caron.’  Which explains everything.  At least, everything that's wrong here.  Not just Caron.  There’s clueless director Ranald MacDougall replacing clueless initial director Denis Sanders; Robert Thom’s script tossing out all but three of the novel’s characters; Freed’s conception of a small, raw, b&w film losing out to standard studio policy for MetroColor & CinemaScope; savage cuts to the film without input from Freed or MacDougall . . .   You get the idea.  Checking out old tv clips of the real Beats is embarrassing enough.  (Some of the writing, too.)  But this is off the charts.  (Excepting Jim Hutton whose scraggly attempt at a beard looks downright authentic.*)  M-G-M buried the remains, making this one of their few films never given home video release in any format.  (The curious can find Pan and Scan copies online.)

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *The year before, Roger Corman’s b&w horror cheapie BUCKET OF BLOOD/’59 got closer to the mark on The Beat Generation.  (It’s actually more in line with Freed’s original conception.)  If only the poetry club denizens snapped their fingers rather than clapped their  hands.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/11/a-bucket-of-blood-1959.html

DESIERTO (2015)

Mainstream commercial debut for Jonás (son of Alfonso) Cuarón, this Mexican illegal immigrants-on-the-run thriller is more interesting than first appears; just not for the right reasons.  Gael García Bernal (doing Alfonso a favor?) stars as the nice fence-jumper, a fair-minded guy trying to get back to the son he had to leave in California.  But when the truck he’s riding in breaks down, it leaves him, along with a baker’s dozen of fellow border crossers, with no choice but to hike thru the desert on foot in shadeless temps touching 120°.  Then things really start to go wrong as sharp-shooting ‘patriotic’ homicidal maniac Jeffrey Dean Morgan, along with his ferocious dog Tracker, spot the desperate group.  The rest of the film standard chase stuff, the hunter and his prey.  But what makes it interesting is just how far Cuarón goes to depoliticize the situation; never stopping to ask if it should be depolitized.  The only legit cop we see runs into, then drives away from Morgan.  Each miming disdain for the other.  Elsewise, Cuarón models the film on totally apolitical classics like THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME/’32, an oft-filmed story of a wild game hunter releasing human prey to chase around.  Or, say, THE LOST PATROL/’34, a John Ford film about an unseen enemy sniper taking troopers down one-by-one.  Plus Morgan brings in his own layer of inappropriate references from his long run in THE WALKING DEAD.  Odd decisions.  And if you are going to emphasize the sheer sports-like horror of a human hunt, you need a surer hand at action and suspense than Cuarón shows.  Where’s Raoul Walsh to work out those now-you-see-him/now-you-don’t angles between hunter and prey as they climb round rocky cliffs?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  For a great angle on the Mexican immigrant experience, I CARRY YOU WITH ME/’20.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/i-carry-you-with-me-te-llevo-conmigo.html

THE CHRISTOPHERS (2025)

Maybe Steven Soderbergh needs to direct fewer films.  (To say nothing of his work as producer.)  For well over a decade his projects (even the more obviously commercial ones) have been reasonably well-received critically, sometimes commercially, too, but forgotten so fast, it’s as if they never existed.  So too here on this well acted, but empty whimsy on failing artistic powers, greedy children, a truth-telling assistant and the difference between what art costs and what it’s worth.  Not strictly a two-hander, though it feels like one; a throwback to faux-stylish death-haunted ‘70s play adaptations like SLEUTH or DEATHTRAP.  Ian McKellen plays the fast-fading chattering bore of a painter whose estranged children (Tweedledum Jessica Gunning and Tweedledee James Corden) hope to cash in post-mortem on a late work, THE CHRISTOPHERS, a series of unfinished portrait studies on his last great love.  Lucky for them, talented but undiscovered painter Michaela Coel needs a job and hits it off in an antagonistic way, to get hired by McKellen as his assistant.  Her secret assignment: finish The Christophers after his imminent death using his paint & brushes to hide the forgery, then split the sales with the siblings.  Has no one told these dopes that unfinished ‘lost’ work can fetch prices equal to if not higher than finished second-rate stuff?  In any event something of a real relationship develops between the painters scuttling the plot . . . but in a good way.  A fun watch, if you have the patience.  Some of the heavily improvised dialogue does go on (McKellen not one the great Shakespearean monologists for nothing!), but the teasing will he or won’t he destroy his unfinished work before he kicks the bucket, holds less interest and puts out less tension than Soderbergh counts on.  So this time, the film was forgotten before it hit the screen.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  For something in the same ballpark: aging gay writers/artists confronting their demons, try LOVE IS THE DEVIL/’98 or QUEER/ 24.  Each with Daniel Craig, but going from object to subject.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/01/queer-2024.html

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.