INCREDIBLES 2 (2018)

Fourteen years on (and after two Live Action pics), writer/director Brad Bird reanimates his INCREDIBLE Super Hero Family for more of the same. Much more of the same. Maybe too much more of the same! In this one, which picks up shortly after the first film ended, a new toddler in the family is ‘teething’ on newly developing, still uncontrollable Super Powers under Dad’s supervision while Mom is busy taking on ScreenSlaver, a new dastardly Super Villain who’s hypnotizing the world via video screens. The fun factor is largely the same as before, with fashionista Aunt Edna (a mash-up of actress Linda Hunt & costume designer Edith Head, voiced by Bird) again stealing the pic, this time with a brief stint of babysitting. If only the main storylines were as involving: Domestic Duty Dad pretty old hat sit-com territory while Mom stretches out standard procedure heroics that offer little but sound & fury. And Bird knows it, laying on CGI pyrotechnics to the point of exhaustion, an Amusement Park that’s all E-Ticket rides. Exceptionally well done yet vaguely disappointing.

DOUBLE-BILL: With a vibe that recalls the Roger Moore James Bond era, THE INCREDIBLES/’04 is great fun, and far better balanced than this sequel.

BLACKkKLANSMAN (2018)

Like his beloved Knicks, it’s been quite a while since Spike Lee was part of the conversation. (Recently, ten episodes of a rebooted SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT on cable. Who knew? Worse, who cared?) But he claws back to relevance on this deliciously serious absurdity, a fact-inspired, if fanciful story about a Black rookie cop (over-parted John David Washington) who lays an undercover trap for a small Colorado chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, but needs a white colleague (Adam Driver, excellent) to be his physical stand-in. Unevenly fitted with comic & deadly complications (including Driver’s character being a non-practicing Jew), the film gets into its own kind of trouble charting Washington’s romance with hard-core Black Activist Laura Harrier, whose doctrinaire approach to all issues walls her off. It should act as a sort of sexy challenge, a turn-on for Washington, but these two don’t do much for each other. (Reversing the pattern of a ‘70s White/Black Buddy Pic, Driver is given no social life at all.) Halfway along, the film starts to feel like it's all setup/no payoff, with Lee unable to generate suspense, even with a self-indulgent extra half hour running time. But the basic story holds you, the period detail gives a kick, and the last act is helped by a neat turn from Topher Grace as rising Klan Wizard David Duke. But a lot of thoughtful suspense got left on the table.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Lee builds an unexpectedly lackluster climax with weak use of parallel editing on a Ride-to-the-Rescue finale, following a classic technique largely invented by D. W. Griffith and perfected in his BIRTH OF A NATION/’15! Ironic, no?

LEGEND OF THE LOST (1957)

John Wayne must have had a lot of trust in underrated helmer Henry Hathaway, or simply admired his efficient style, making four more films with him after this clunker. Each of them miles ahead of this stinkbomb.* It’s your standard Treasure Hunt adventure with Rossano Brazzi going to Timbuktu and hiring local vagabond Wayne as his guide into the Sahara. He hopes to find the lost city (and the lost gold) his father died trying to claim. Sophia Loren’s the local good time gal & occasional thief who tags along and comes between the men. Romantic triangle anyone? Greed & madness? Lost in the Sahara? Backstabbing? (That’s literal backstabbing.) Equally ridiculous & formulaic, not a happy credit for scripter Ben Hecht. With ace cinematographer Jack Cardiff doing little for either Loren or the Sahara . . . and Wayne & Sophia doing even less for each other.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *The next Hathaway/Wayne pic, NORTH TO ALASKA/’60, is fun & spritely; then CIRCUS WORLD/’64 (not seen here); SONS OF KATIE ELDER/’65 (standard revenge Western with a sharp third act);and a classic, TRUE GRIT/’69. (Wayne also shows in Hathaway’s HOW THE WEST WAS WON/’62, but only in the John Ford directed Civil War segment.)

NIJINSKY (1980)

After unexpectedly strong critical & commercial success dramatizing ballet (on-stage & off) with THE TURNING POINT/’77 (come for the bitch-fest; stay for the dance), married power-couple Herbert Ross & Nora Kaye (director; producer) went a step & a half deeper on this much less well-received bio-pic of Nijinsky, the legendary Russian dancer/choreographer whose meteoric career ended in madness.* Book-ended with a pair of missteps (Nijinsky’s INVITATION TO THE DANCE intro uses needless camera tricks which lessen rather than heighten the experience, and an ending montage with b&w stills from the film when you expect archival shots of the real Nijinsky), almost everything in-between is both better and far more accurate than you expect it to be. As Nijinsky, George De La Pena is physically slighter, more delicate than the model*, but remarkably open and believable in his passions, his dancing genius and his frail mental makeup. His affair with older ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev (Alan Bates in tremendous form) is natural, touching & dangerous, while his ultimately tragic rebound move into the waiting arms of ballet groupie Leslie Browne understandable. And if Bates steals the pic, De La Pena gets its two peak moments: dramatically in a room destruction scene, stunningly set to a furious cut from Stravinsky’s RITE OF SPRING, and balletically in a superb recreation of his scandalous AFTERNOON OF A FAUN, much helped by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth’s stage lighting on both Nijinsky and a stunning replica of Léon Bakst’s original backdrop painting, in rich Fauvist colors. On release, a major disappointment compared to TURNING POINT, it now seems the more significant achievement.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Writer Ben Hecht, in one of his occasional outings as writer/director, had Nijinsky in mind on his ballet themed murder mystery SPECTER OF THE ROSE/’46.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/specter-of-rose-1946.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Billy Wilder tried to interest Sam Goldwyn in this story, but the idea of it ending in an insane asylum, with the greatest dancer of his generation thinking he was a horse (!) was a step too far for Sam. Too depressing! But wait, said Wilder, it has a happy ending . . . he wins the Kentucky Derby!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Mikhail Baryshnikov, who starred in Ross’s THE TURNING POINT, and turned this film down, had a build closer to the real Nijinsky.

LOST HORIZON (1973)

BATTLEFIELD EARTH/’00 and GOTTI/’18 give John Travolta two. Eddie Murphy’s shows on THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH. PEPE/’60, an old default, finds Cantinflas doubling down on AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS to his regret. And honorable mention to George Lucas for HOWARD THE DUCK/’86 and RADIOLAND MURDERS/’94. All canonical choices for Worst Film of All Time (big-budget division). But after viewing a restored to full-length DVD of this Ross Hunter clunker, a remake of James Hilton/Frank Capra’s 1937 nutjob classic LOST HORIZON (see below), now sprinkled with twinkly tunes from Burt Bacharach’s lowest drawer, it surely sweeps the boards! A ghastly representation of a late ‘60s/early ‘70s ‘Family Musical,’ with Peter Finch finding Shangri-La, a valley of Love, Peace & spontaneous lobotomy, run by John Gielgud & Charles Boyer, hidden from the war-torn world amid the snowy Himalayas, alongside fellow travelers Sally Kellerman, George Kennedy, Michael York & Bobby Van. (Bobby Van? The sole cast member with musical comedy chops, he’s all but unwatchable.) Liv Ullmann, like a Zombie Julie Andrews without talent or voice for the genre, gambols with the children of this Utopia and gazes longingly at stout, sagging Peter Finch while Olivia Hussey longs to flee this gilded cage with York. Technically shabby from top to bottom (editing & voice dubbing particularly inept), with exteriors that rival a super-sized Putt-Putt course for beauty, and interiors that glow like a pre-fab Tiki-themed Las Vegas conference room. But only truly reaching its peak on one of its excruciating songs, with a fertility dance invaded by a unit of Polynesian(?) Chippendale dancers in color-coordinated Speedos and waving dancing ribbons. Sounds like mad, campy fun, no? No. Hack megger Charles Jarrott hasn’t a clue. Poor Ross Hunter. After hit mellers with Douglas Sirk and smash coy sex comedies with Doris Day back at Universal, he’d just been pushed out by mogul-in-charge Lew Wasserman after bringing in AIRPORT/’70, the biggest hit of the year*. Moving over to Columbia, this initial project insured he’d never make another feature again.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The Frank Capra 1937 version, nearly as silly/just as racist (Shangri-La your basic slave state with Euro overlords living in a palace while Asians work & live in the fields), does cast a spell of sorts thanks to Ronald Colman’s graceful playing & preternatural empathy, along with the pace, excitement & comic relief of Capra’s directorial legerdemain. For a quick lesson in moviemaking, compare the opening reel of the two versions. The loss of craft between ‘37 and ‘73 painfully evident.     https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/lost-horizon-1937.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *In Hollywood politics, Lew Wassermann’s distaste for Hunter could have survived a flop or two. But owing the survival of his currently struggling studio to the unprecedented success of a Hunter corn-fest like AIRPORT was more than he could stand.

RHYTHM ON THE RIVER (1940)

With the first Bing Crosby/Bob Hope ROAD pic doing blockbuster biz, Paramount upped the ante on Bing’s next: production polish, sets that looked nailed down, even a less ramshackle plot. Bing’s still his default lackadaisical character, now a songster ‘ghosting’ tunes for famous, but stymied B’way composer Basil Rathbone, while co-star Mary Martin, in just her second pic*, secretly does his lyrics. Naturally, they meet-cute, unaware of the connection before wising up after a brief fallout and then striking out on their own. Just one problem: everyone thinks their stuff sounds too much like Rathbone’s! A neat idea (Billy Wilder denies credit on his Original Story credit) that plays as if it had been ordered up for Astaire/Rogers. And no wonder with Fred & Ginger specialist Dwight Taylor on script. But where his earlier stuff was complimented with some of the greatest song & dance ever put on celluloid, the numbers here are no more than charming & pleasant. Still, reasonably good fun, with a surprising amount of live singing when there’s just piano accompaniment. Plus, a striking debut for the mordantly witty, pianistically gifted Oscar Levant, best known at the time as a Gershwin devotee and as the musical expert on radio’s INFORMATION PLEASE.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: More of a HEAR All About It. Sony Classical has just put out A RHAPSODY IN BLUE: the Complete Oscar Levant on eight remastered discs in a fancy LP-sized package (book included), with the famous Gershwin recordings and much more. Pricey though.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Paramount tried Martin in a dark brunette look that doesn’t quite work for her. A problem never fully solved during a short Hollywood sojourn. So, back to B’way for ONE TOUCH OF VENUS and legend in SOUTH PACIFIC, PETER PAN & THE SOUND OF MUSIC.

MACABRE (1958)

Schlock-meister William Castle was slipping into tv gigs when he returned to the Big Screen with this first of his Big Gimmick Pics, here a $1000 insurance policy against Death-By-Fright!* Later P.R. triumphs would hot wire a few seats for that Whoopee Cushion jolt of electric fear or post a fake nurse in the lobby for the faint of heart; anything to distract you from the anemic movie accompaniment. This one has William Prince as a bland small-town doctor whose daughter is reported buried alive, possibly in retribution for a pair of botched cases (two sisters dead) and/or the doc’s complicated love life (dead wife, selfish mistress, lovelorn office assistant). Shot with the visual allure of ‘50s anthology tv, at least there’s an amusingly odd perf from Jim Backus as a seen-it-all local police chief among the startlingly bad ones. But with films like this, $1000 ain’t nearly enough.

DOUBLE-BILL: *The second-billed feature on our poster, HELL’S FIVE HOURS/’58 (not seen here), about a nuclear facility taken hostage, looks more interesting than the top of the bill.

CHARADE (1963)

Everyone’s favorite faux Hitchcock-Lite (deservedly so), and doubly worth (re)watching now in the wake of director Stanley Donen’s passing. He’s in top form, flawlessly managing the unlikely tone of bald comic violence & grisly murder with grown-up Screwball Romance. A remarkably nimble showing, fresh & pacey, as clueless widow Audrey Hepburn tries to sort out the hidden $250,000 legacy of the late husband she hardly knew while holding off a trio of toughs (James Coburn, Ned Glass, George Kennedy); Walter Matthau’s CIA agent; and mysterious, if sympathetic man-in-the-middle Cary Grant. With lenser Charles Lang handling the ‘swellegant’ Paris locations, along with those classic faces, the film seems unable to put a foot wrong. No small concern on a plot carrying so much gun play & spirited, if deadly mayhem with a release date only three weeks after the JKF assassination.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Great light entertainment, like Stanley Donen’s, tends to be taken for granted. After all, half the trick lies in not letting the work show; yet it's famously hard to pull off. See Jonathan Demme come a cropper on his flop CHARADE remake THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE/’02 for confirmation. Even Donen came up short repeating the formula but pushing too hard in his visually stylish ARABESQUE/66. (see below)

FIRST REFORMED (2017)

Writer/director Paul Schrader jonesing like mad for Robert Bresson’s DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST/’51, right down to the diary. Bresson, a curate’s egg of a great filmmaker (‘very good . . . in part’) was a pain, a scold, a prophet of his own making, best in his early works. But even at his most extreme (or worst for non-believers), he always worked from within. Precisely the factor missing in this highly acclaimed, terribly self-conscious masterpiece manqué. Ethan Hawke, hitting character buttons hard enough to gain award traction, suffers from major health issues (he’s pissing blood) and has the sort of raging Catholic Guilt only a Presbyterian Reverend could endure. Divorced after losing his soldier son, he’s cutting off a barely begun affair with a church musician, drinking to excess, tending to a dwindling flock against ‘hipper’ churchly competition, and willfully falling into a relationship with a fresh young widow (Amanda Seyfried) whose husband suicided in spite of Hawke’s attempted intervention. For plot purposes, the husband was something of an eco-terrorist, leaving behind a suicide vest to pump up some last act suspense. Just one of the reasons the film, in spite of mostly static camera shots*; squarish Academy Ratio framing, hushed dialogue and largely functional editing, remains a study in ‘applied’ rather than ‘organic’ severity. The opposite of what Bresson achieves even at his most annoying.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *To his credit, Schrader doesn’t break out of static camera mode until stumbling into a tumbler of scotch and Pepto-Bismol. Something that would give anyone the heaves.

DOUBLE-BILL: Try out Bresson with A MAN ESCAPED/’56 or PICKPOCKET/'59, then proceed at your own risk. OR: For a more satisfying modern look at a troubled clergyman, Nanni Moretti’s fine, thoughtful THE MASS IS ENDED/’85.