THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD (2018)

With time between Tolkien Middle-Earth and late Beatles-mania projects, Peter Jackson got in the trenches with WWI vets for this remarkable documentary largely sourced from long unseen actuality footage shot (in more ways than one) at The Front - 1914 to 1918, now moldering in London’s Imperial War Museum.  Mountains of century-old film less restored than resurrected using a mix of digital enhancement techniques to clean, stabilize, pan/scan and colorize.  The efforts undeniably interventionist; the results entirely involving, especially for nonspecialists unused to watching ‘thru’ visually compromised antique elements.  Yet Jackson’s true masterstroke not visual but aural, pulling us in with the exclusive use of recorded interviews by real WWI veterans to tell their story.  No officer’s offering the broader picture, battle plans or grand strategies, but a grunt’s viewpoint, narrowly focused on getting thru the next watch or special operation.  Often brutally coarse, disinterested in the big picture, but the real thing.  Mesmerizing, and withal the gore & terrors, holding a terrible beauty in the memory of battle horrors seen clearly.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Jackson took eight hours to get thru THE HOBBIT.  (And considerably more in the extended cuts.)  Yet manages WWI in an hour and 38 minutes. 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Made while memories were fresh and sound technology rapidly advancing, the 1930 version of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT/’30 remains an astonishing achievement, far superior to the much lauded, oddly unfaithful recent remake.  But since that’s the one covered on this site . . .  (Both films taken up in the post.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/01/all-quiet-on-wewstern-front-2022.html

OUT OF THE BLUE (1947)

How many good Screwball comedies are there?  How many are even Screwball?  Most might charitably be called Crazy Comedy (as here) or just farce.  No hard and fast rules to the genre; you know it when you see one.  I suppose you’ve got to have a flighty heiress (a bit nuts like Carole Lombard or just taking flight a la Claudette Colbert).  And as antagonist/object of affection a sensible square to loosen up by the end.   Most of all, you needed The Depression to ground all the craziness.  That’s why they never work anymore.  Hence, a ‘30s phenomenon.*  Here, it’s already 1947 and writer Vera Caspary (best known for LAURA/’44 and LETTER TO THREE WIVES/’47) tries a quintette, two couples and a wild card.  Apartment neighbors who bicker over a dog, tenant rights and a reappearing ‘dead’ body.  Turhan Bey’s painter uncomfortably coming on to Virginia Mayo in his uncomfortably short shorts.  Yikes!  Prissy George Brent emasculated by wife Carole Landis.  He gets Cary Grant’s hair, glasses & bow-tie from BRINGING UP BABY/’38*; she’s made-up as a Ginger Rogers clone.  And the reappearing dead body?  That’s Ann Dvorak who’s really only dead drunk.  No comic technique, perhaps, but she wears you down and gets her laughs by the end.  So too the film under journeyman director Leigh Jason; at least by the last reel and a half when everyone’s amusingly chasing their own tail and the background score finally stops acting like a musical laugh track.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *But what of the ‘40s Paramount heyday of Preston Sturges?  Doesn’t THE LADY EVE/’41 meet all Screwball criteria?  Sure, but his films are really a genre of their own: sui generis Sturges.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *BRINGING UP BABY flopped on release in ’38 and wouldn't have been known at the time.  (Broadly rediscovered in the '70s.)  Brent’s slightly fey look standard henpecked husband costume?

C’E ANCORA DOMANI / THERE’S STILL TOMORROW (2023)

Commedia all'italiana lives!  The great run of savvy Italian dramedies of the ‘50s and ‘60s that looked askant at the problematic attitudes of the day, not in despair or contempt, but with a knowing, helpless shrug. Reviving it, singer/actress Paola Cortellesi, makes a ridiculously assured debut as co-writer/director (at 50!) with this epochal drama about a working-class family in Rome (three generations in a small street level flat) during the interregnum between WWII and the Il Boom ‘50s.  With three kids, a brute of a husband, and his bedridden father, Cortellesi stars as wife & family peacekeeper, eking out a bit of extra cash with backside injections for an upperclass family and piecemeal mending for a local clothing shop after finishing wifely duties as cook, servant, nurse, bedmate, go-fer, cleaning lady, whatever her abusive husband demands.  Yet, she's more life force than drudge though her two young boys ignore her; her marriagable daughter despises her for being walked over; the invalided FIL needs constant attention, and the husband blames her for his failures and infidelity.  Her outlets?  The neighborhood gossip queens, a true friend who sells vegetables in the street market, other women who enjoy seeing someone who’s got it worse then they do.  She does find a friendly face in an American G.I., part of the occupying force who’s built up a crush on her, and in a failing auto mechanic who missed his chance thirty years back.  She’s got a crush on him.  But now, her daughter’s engaged to the wealthy boy whose parents own a prosperous café down the street.  Or is this too a facade?  And living so close to the edge, financially/emotionally, leaves little room for error.  Rich human drama: wise/touching/funny, and when it’s too unbearable, given stylized treatment in song and dance as a visual coping mechanism.  Stunningly advanced in conception & execution for a novice; and beautifully caught in period evocative monochrome.  A one-off?  Cortellesi’s made a hard act to follow.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Vittorio De Sica’s MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE/’64 the classic commedia all'italiana match for this.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/12/matrimonio-allitaliana-marriage-italian.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *This exactly the sort of quality General Audience mid-list film the major studios either won’t or can’t make anymore.   Yet it was critically and commercially, the Italian film of ‘23.  Hey, Hollywood: If you make it, they will come.

DEPARTMENT Q: THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES / KVINDEN I BURET (2013)

Cleanly-handled Cold Case procedural from Denmark plays like a pilot for a series.  And so it is; just not for Denmark.  Someone (Dick Wolf?  NetFlix?) out soon with the inevitable Stateside reboot; no doubt hoping for more episodes than the four fat-free films made a decade back.  The first two  directed by Mikkel Nørgaard, who certainly has range (see KLOWN and BORGEN) and a knack for straddling tv & features.*   A prologue shows detective Nikolaj Lie Kaasmade jumping the gun on his last case and now finding himself in recovery; if back on the force, but out of homicide, demoted downstairs to process rather than investigate low-priority/unsolved murder cases.  Aided by low-ranked assistant Fares Fares, they single out a Cold Case worth reinvestigating and soon find it's considerably warmer than expected.  A rare kick these days to be able to follow a plot that adds up.  So unlike today's typical over-stuffed crime shows that need to stretch out every ambiguous moment to fill an eight episode contract.  Seeing these two guys getting into trouble breaking rules and protocol in the name of fighting for delayed justice surprisingly satisfying.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Three more films by almost the same team followed (not seen here, all based on novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen; ABSENT ONE/’14; CONSPIRACY OF FAITH/’16; JOURNAL 64/’18) in presumably similar style.  OR: *Something completely different from Nørgaard in the rudely comic KLOWN/’10.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/06/klovn-klown-2010.html

PADDINGTON IN PERU (2024)

After major huzzahs for PADDINGTONs I and II (orphaned CGI bear finds his name at a London railway station and a loving new family nearby), a drop in quality was only to be expected.  And so it proved with PERU.  The verdict: pleasant, but no match.  But hold on.  Once past a Peruvian prologue and a slapsticky first act that’s more MR. BEAN than MR. BEAR, the film finds its footing when Paddington brings his human family down to Peru where a beloved Aunt has taken ill.  Or so he was told.  Turns out she’s not taken ill, she’s taken off!  Part of a dastardly plot to find the fabled Lost City (and gold) of El Dorado.  Now we’ve found the right path: devious plot by phony Nun, secret goals, villains in disguise/heroes in disguise, and a dangerous journey that nods at RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK/’81  (Only LAST CRUSADE/’89, third in that series, makes for a better INDY sequel than this.  Steven Spielberg pea green with envy.)  Plenty clever, plenty fun, and with a neat touch of suspenseful sentiment for the wrap.)  With most of the original players (the kids touchingly ten years grown), plus some new South American players, including a gamely deranged Antonio Banderas.  Is the film as good as PADDINGTON 2?  No.  But it’s good enough!  And boasting a great last minute cameo appearance by PADDINGTON 2 secret weapon Hugh Grant.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  PADDINGTON 1 & 2.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/08/paddington-2014.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/paddington-2.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Considering how important marmalade is to Paddington, the writers ought to know they’ve got the wrong variety of oranges for a serious marmalade.  You want bitter fruit for marmalade.  Plus a shot of Scotch Whiskey.

THE BRUTALIST (2024)

Nowadays, the bench for budding film auteurs, the ones born with celluloid in their veins, is deep.  And fresh off the bench Brady Corbet reminds me of one who got called up decades ago, Paul Thomas Anderson.  The two sharing a preference for character & theme over narrative; and in taking the long view on composition & pacing.  (In spite of a 3'34" running time, Corbet keeps BRUTALIST from feeling long by doing what Anderson would, refusing to push.)  Less happily, they also share a big fault in not being able to wrap things up properly.  (Corbet’s first two films not seen here, so take this with a grain of salt.)  This intimate epic certainly comes on strong (though putting intermission dead-center in the running time a serious unforced error), its Agony and Ecstasy story following a traditional path with genius artist receiving the commission of a lifetime but running up against Mr. Needy Benefactor; an antagonist who thinks since he’s picking up the check, he owns it; lock, stock & conception.  But rather than Michelangelo & Pope Julius II, we have WWII Hungarian Holocaust survivor Adrien Brody (exceptional, as is the whole cast), a Bauhaus-trained architect who's at first misunderstood by eventual patron Guy Pearce, fierce & unknowingly funny behind scare tactics.  Jumping from micro to macro-projects, he’s hired & fired & hired & fired creating Pearce’s mother-love tribute in the form of an art/community/religious complex on the rolling hills of Pearce Family Property.  (Imagine Lincoln Center plopped down not far from Levittown.)  But Part 2 messes up the situations with post-war refugees (invalid wife of dubious affections); financial realities, rich man’s whims, and a trip to Italy for marble.  The last, with echoes of Bertolucci & Visconti throbbing away, the best thing in the second half.  Mysterious, and making sense of the weird sexual undercurrents running thru every character.  Possible threesomes, incestuous glances, closeted longings, and an obsession (from Corbet?) with breaking the norms of personal space in one-on-one conversations.  You’d think these people were all actors!  Then a rushed ending and hard to read coda that Paul Thomas Anderson might perhaps be able to explain to us.  Stumbles and all, an impressive piece of work at the price: Ten Mill!  A remarkable shaming of regular major studio practices.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  See where a lot of this comes from in two surpassingly silly, weirdly entertaining major disappointments of their day: Carol Reed’s THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY/’65 and King Vidor’s nutso version of Ayn Rand’s nutso THE FOUNTAINHEAD/’46.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/06/agony-and-ecstasy-1965.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/09/fountainhead-1949.html

NOSFERATU (2024)

After three strikingly original feature films (supernatural, Gothically grim, darkly horrific), writer/director Robert Eggers had his big commercial breakthru with this strikingly less original film.  Indeed, the material (DRACULA by way of F.W. Murnau’s famously litigated theft, NOSFERATU/’22) about as chewed over as it gets.  Eggers makes a go of it, largely thru the film’s look (models, mattes, diffused color, practical effects), with playfully crepuscular backgrounds that might have been a puppet theater collaboration between Edward Gorey & Caspar David Friedrich.  And, of course, many a nod toward the Murnau original, even more at his staggeringly fine FAUST/26.*  (Check out the hand shadow covering the overhead/canted-angle town-scape.)  Eggers less assured on his cast: leading lady Lily-Rose Depp’s sacrificial Wagnerian damsel and Bill Skarsgärd’s demon both vocally undermined.  Depp’s fearless physicality done in by underdeveloped vocal delivery; Skarsgärd’s voice lost to echo-chamber gargling.  Elsewise, it’s hit or miss, with Nicholas Hoult physically apt, but holding to a modern American posture while Willem Dafoe seems to have lost two inches from his usual 5'7" frame.  Eggers doesn’t make enough of the ship’s decimation, the voyage of rats, plague & a loaded coffin unable to match Murnau.  So he amps up the gross & the gory as substitute for shock & awe.  This fright-free film bodes ill for Eggers’ next announced films: a sequel to Jim Henson’s underwhelming cult fave, LABYRINTH, and yet another WERWULF.  Two ideas that spent decades in development hell under executive committees.  In other words: Product.  Diminishing returns from this unique talent all but assured.

DOUBE-BILL/LINK:  *Tim Burton’s SWEENEY TODD/’07 probably the last live-action film to bring off this look.  But he used CGI sweetening not seen here.  Murnau’s FAUST a likely guide for both.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/11/faust-1926.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Bram Stoker, author of the original epistolary novel DRACULA, was also famous for being valet/dresser to Victorian acting great Sir Henry Irving, first actor to be Knighted and thought to be a partial model for Dracula.  Why no one has tried to make DRACULA a backstager (Sir Henry as vampire/Stoker as Renfield) beyond me.

MIRROR / ZERKALO (1975)

After making the two best Russian films of his generation (IVAN’S CHILDHOOD/’62; ANDREI RUBLEV/’66) , Andrei Tarkovsky’s gaze turned aggressively inward with films that asked not to be watched, but studied.*  With a mere five films before his early death twenty years after RUBLEV, this, second of the five, came right after his one popular title, SOLARIS/’72, ironically a success in the wake of Kubick’s 2001/’68.  (Ironic as Tarkovsky no Kubrick fancier.)   A poetic look back at themes from his youth (not visually poetic, literally poetic, as in they're read to us), it’s less memory piece than memorabilia: newsreel clips, recreated housing and well-worn foot-paths, covered with high-toned classical music (Bach & Purcell) and Da Vinci prints for borrowed gravitas; family sickness and abandonment the main concerns.  There’s quite a cult for these later Tarkovsky films, but the precipitous drop from a shared vision to hermitic interior view is antithetical to a medium that runs at a set speed.  Yes, we can now pause and rewind from the comfort of our sofa, but it still goes against the nature of the medium.  At least this runs under two hours.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  As mentioned, IVAN’S CHILDHOOD, one of the greatest of all film debuts, along with his masterpiece ANDREI RUBLEV.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/09/ivanovo-detstvo-ivans-childhood-1962.html   OR:  While the sensibilities are different, Hungarian Béla Tarr pulls off much of what Tarkovsky tried for.  See: WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES/’00 and THE TURIN HORSE/’11.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-torinoi-lo-turin-horse-2011.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Stretching to make a point: imagine Robert Altman, after MCCABE & MRS. MILLER/’71 and THE LONG GOODBYE/’73 turning to 3 WOMEN/’77 and QUINTET/’79.  Oh wait, that’s just what he did.

JOHNNY COOL (1963)

Between BEACH PARTY/’63 and MUSCLE BEACH PARTY/’64 (tv’s BEWITCHED with wife Elizabeth Montgomery came next), journeyman director William Asher tried something ‘serious’ to laughable effect with this mafioso crime drama.  Produced by Peter Lawford post-Rat Pack exile (retribution after Lawford’s Kennedy in-laws snubbed Sinatra), he still managed to bag Sammy Davis Jr. & Joey Bishop in roles while Jack Palance stand-in Henry Silva stars as a grown-up Sicilian WWII partisan (speaking Italian rather than Sicilian dialect in the prologue) who’s tricked into coming to America to take out the mob men who informed on Johnny Colini.  Taking the same name, Silva’s tagged ‘Johnny Cool’ and starts crossing names off his list between trysts with an unbecomingly brunette Montgomery.*  The departed include Telly Savalas, John McGiver, Mort Sahl (!), even Jim Backus, who gives us a taste of Mr. Magoo before dying.  (Judging by the haphazard cutting within scenes, I fear the film's editor may also have been  dispatched.)  The mob and the law will catch up with Silva’s Cool, but not before Sammy sings the title track and takes off his eye patch.  That’s a surprise!  Another is seeing how seriously everyone takes this junk and that, in its way, it’s a fun, dumb watch.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Babyboomers of all genders & sexual persuasions knew their fantasies had matured when they graduated from blonde Elizabeth Montgomery in BEWITCHED to Diana Rigg in THE AVENGERS.