PADDINGTON (2014)

A classic screenwriting steal for shrinking down a big plotty novel notes how SIX DAYS OF THE CONDOR got winnowed down to THREE/’75. And, going in the opposite direction, an oft-copied template for loading on missing narrative thru lines (Kids’ Lit edition) uses Disney’s work on the largely plotless MARY POPPINS/’64 books as a model. That must have been the idea on this delightful pic about the little orphaned bear from Darkest Peru, who's spontaneously adopted by a posh London family. But, wait a tick, turns out, they’ve haven’t just gleaned a few structural lessons off POPPINS; they’ve ripped her off! It's an awfully similar family of four, living in an awfully similar London townhouse. Older sister/kid brother; slightly spacey, if well-intentioned mom; stressed-out dad who learns to loosen up & show affection. A nosy neighbor to spot the magical visitor who just happens to fly via umbrella on a gust of wind before bringing magic into everyone’s life. What? No fancy bank for a mini-riot? No problem, set your mini-riot at a similarly formal Explorers' Club. And be sure to find a surrogate father to get drummed out of the place. You can still end with Father & Son bonding over a kite . . . er, rocket launch, but only after Paddington Bear jumps right into a picture on a movie screen instead of a sidewalk. And, since POPPINS hasn’t much in the way of a traditional villain, bring in Nicole Kidman as Cruella De Vil from 101 DALMATIANS/’61. Lifts and all, this is pretty adorable (and imaginative) stuff. And blissfully short on logical explanations. Things just are as they are. Cheers!

DOUBLE-BILL: The film begs comparisons to recent family fare like FANTASTIC MR. FOX/’09 and HUGO/’11, except that the kids will actually like this one. You, too.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Hey! It’s a new LABEL! 'Cause Attention Must Be Paid to the fabulous sound design, especially in the orchestration & recording of the music score. Really stunning sound; those strings! We take this stuff for granted, but shouldn’t.

THE CASUAL VACANCY (2015)

Three-part mini-series from the J. K. Rowling novel lifts the lace curtain on one of those fetching Lake District towns only to find a sinful PEYTON PLACE under the tea cozy; but with the ‘50s-era tell-all novel replaced by a Poison-Pen internet site.* The story-engine propelling the somewhat tired character revelations starts with a death on the parish council, a loss that leaves the ‘casual vacancy’ of the title. It means a special election, and a new board member who will tip the vote on commercial development of an estate long restricted for use as a Community Center. Rowling’s real target is modern Britain, and she writes a despairing portrait of hopeless lives, low social mobility & New Age class warfare. The film works best when it holds to her sense of brutal social comedy with a town apparently populated by Syltherin alumni. But Rowling casts her net too wide, stacking the deck with so much pre-determinism the comeuppances & tragedies give off little emotional kick. (The sheer loathsomeness of the characters must have been less off-putting on the page.) As elderly class- striving meanies, Michael Gambon & Julia McKenzie* are deliciously appalling, but only young Brian Vernel, as a likable horny sod who turns out to be a first class shit, gets to play against his story arc and create something like a whole person.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Julia McKenzie has recently been busy as Agatha Christie’s dowager sleuth Miss Marple. Christie's world-view isn't all that far from Rowling’s, though you won’t find it in the McKenzie version. For that, you have to go back to the 1980s series, starring the remarkable Joan Hickson, where surprisingly dark undertones are pulled out of the stories and the cobblestone streets of St. Mary Mead. A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED/’85 probably pairs up best with VACANCY, though the current DVD edition is a soggy looking thing. OR: For a truly nasty, small town Poison-Pen classic, there’s Henri-Georges Clouzot’s LE CORBEAU/’43.

FEEL MY PULSE (1928)

Director Gregory La Cava (MY MAN GODFREY/’36; STAGE DOOR/’37), with one of the best (and loosest) comedy techniques in the Biz, wastes a nice set-up on this innocuous Bebe Daniels programmer. Orphaned, and chained to an eccentric will that makes her an over-pampered hypochondriac at 21, Bebe swaps Mild Guardian for Wild Guardian and finds she’s about to be forced into a world of romance, adventure & germs. No thank, you! She’d rather take refuge at her family’s mothballed sanatorium, unaware it’s been taken over by a gang of rum-running bootleggers. Quicker than you can say Speak Easy, slick front man William Powell gets his gang to hide in plain sight by feigning a variety of psychosomatic maladies as the spa's pretend patients and passing himself off as Bebe’s new personal physician. And he might have pulled it off if only his handsome assistant (Richard Arlen) didn’t fall for the poor little neurasthenic rich girl. A pretty sweet idea, loaded with comic possibilities, but La Cava barely develops it, tossing out little more than a bit of turf-war slapstick and a messy finale when the cops arrive. Fortunately, Bebe, Bill & Richard are highly watchable stars even in Grapevine Video’s subfusc DVD.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: William Powell stepped up from scene-stealing heavy to major leading man in another release from 1928, co-starring with Emil Jannings & Evelyn Brent in Josef von Sternberg’s phenomenal THE LAST COMMAND. (Available on an excellent Criterion DVD.) Arlen’s major film that year was William Wellman’s BEGGARS OF LIFE, a tremendous entertainment with Louise Brooks & Wallace Beery in tip-top form. Available in lousy Public Domain DVDs, check ‘em out on YOUTUBE, then watch this gorgeous restored trailer to see what it really should look like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S81cMoSP9OA

Addendum - 11/13/25 - And thanks to a fine restoration out on KINO, you can watch the whole film:  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/beggars-of-life-1928.html

AMERICAN SNIPER (2014)

Clint Eastwood’s recent output has felt rushed into production before it's camera-ready. Understandable for a guy in his 80s, if not so good for the films. But this Iraqi war pic is impeccably made, well cast/acted & deftly constructed for clarity & economy. What’s more surprising is the controversial reception for such a conventional piece of work. A fact-inspired portrait of Navy SEAL sniper extraordinaire Chris Kyle, well played by a bulked-up Bradley Cooper, it charts the widening gulf between his sporadic homelife (wife, two kids) and four tours of increasingly disorienting/soul-numbing Middle-East duty. As seen here, Kyle’s tunnel-vision allows him to concentrate on the work at hand, taking down active targets regardless of who the ‘package-carrier’ is. Any global implications/repercussions would only get in the way of Kyle’s phenomenal success as a one-man death squad. Respected, but oddly alone and not particularly liked at home or at war, Kyle is likely something of a self-portrait for the workaholic Eastwood, a man with his own multiple relationship fiascos. (And just as weirdly political naive.) The film cheats with a counter-sniper nemesis, adding a specious note of false drama , but many of the action scenes would have pleased Eastwood’s mentor Don Siegel. (Though not a climactic battle that adds too much literal fog-of-war to the mix.) By the time we leave Iraq for good, Eastwood has to rush thru an unsatisfying three-stage last act that may have been dictated by family concerns. (Something’s missing in here.) But it’s undoubtedly his best film in a long time.

FEAR STRIKES OUT (1957)

America’s Pastime takes a pyschiatric turn in the fact-inspired story of Boston Red Sox player Jim Piersal. So Freudian, even you’ll want to murder the father. A debut pic for the team of producer/director Alan Pakula/Robert Mulligan, and it looks it, with many an awkward transition and no depth to the acting bench in support of sparring father & son Karl Malden & Anthony Perkins. The story tropes of pushy pop living thru a talented son, the kid’s manic/depressive tendencies, a showy public meltdown on the field all feel tattered after six decades of Movie-of-the-Week psycho-dramas. So too, Malden’s habit of dramatically swinging for the fences on every pitch. What keeps us in the game is Perkins. So serious, so charming, so fucked-up, and with those crazy cantilevered shoulders that lend athletic edge to his switchblade physique. He’s the whole show, and worth the price of admission.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Perkins, who’d just made a believably handsome son to Gary Cooper in FRIENDLY PERSUASION/’56, here looks related to Cary Grant, especially in a few extreme close-ups. But Karl Malden as his pop? That’s some 7th inning stretch.

ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM (1946)

Though now best known as the source for its musicalized offspring THE KING AND I/’56, this ‘straight’ version holds considerable interest even without the middlebrow genius of Rodgers & Hammerstein tunes, condensing & restructuring. There’s certainly more room to tell its fascinating, if highly fictionalized story of a British widow who comes to Siam to teach the King’s children, then stays as a sort of unofficial court advisor. On the one hand, it’s a fable about holding off Western Colonialism; on the other, Anna’s espousal of European superiority make her a one-woman stealth hegemonizer. Paradoxically, the story grows more politically confounding the more it oversimplifies. No wonder it's regularly restaged as a musical as well as refilmed for the screen (five versions & counting). The big surprise of this first iteration is just how good Rex Harrison (in a Hollywood debut he found inexplicable) is in what became Yul Brynner’s signature role. YellowFaced (like all the film’s ‘oriental’ principals), he’s slightly absurd, fiercely watchable & totally winning, bringing the nuance & range of a great actor. A smaller surprise is how evenly this film’s Irene Dunne matches up to Deborah Kerr’s Anna in the Brynner film which, to mixed effect, sticks closely to a stage proscenium style that sometimes goes flat on screen. A problem director John Cromwell avoids here with help from Arthur Miller's Oscar'd lensing.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: YellowFace outlasted BlackFace by decades, well into the late ‘60s. Check out Ricardo Montalban on HAWAII FIVE-O/’68. But it was also different in kind since, post silent film days, BlackFace rarely tried to realistically have an audience believe the performer was an actual Negro performer. Not so for YellowFace, where the likes of Alec Guinness & Flora Robson, to name but two from the early ‘60s, were meant to convince as Asians; BlackFace offered a highly stylized caricature, not quite a real person. Which begs the question, which of the two traditions was worse?

THE INTERVIEW (2014)

Now available for home viewing without international incident, the juvenile misfire that was demolished by critics in North Korea and the Stateside press corps. Common ground, at last! At heart, a sort of updated Bing Crosby/Bob Hope ‘Road Pic’ comedy (THE ROAD TO PYONGYANG?), James Franco dumbs-down Crosby’s old-smoothy act, while Seth Rogen tries on Hope’s panicky hyperventilating. The plot (LOL) has tv host Franco’s fluke interview with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un turned into an impromptu assassination assignment by the CIA. (That really is like THE ROAD TO BALI/’52!) And it might have come off if only the film earned a few more laughs. (For the record, there are three; and one of those goes to Rob Lowe in a cameo.) Rogen co-directs in an ADD mode that only makes things more painful when the gags miss, but does manage to stumble thru in his usual blobby manner for those who respond. But what to make of Franco's comedic self-destruct? It almost makes you feel sorry for the Execs @ Columbia. Almost. Blearily emerging from dailies or rough cuts; wracking their brains for constructive criticism beyond ‘Off With Their Heads!’

DOUBLE-BILL: Gregory Peck, with a bomb in his brain & a ping-pong date with Mao, plays a straight, if limp version of this in THE CHAIRMAN/’69.

CONFLICT (1945)

Little more than a glossy programmer, this Perfect-Crime thriller finds over-parted Humphrey Bogart as an unhappy husband whose wandering eye drifts toward Alexis Smith, his wife’s kid-sister. Robert Siodmak’s original story plays second-cousin to last year's hit GASLIGHT/’44, but with the killer rather than the victim getting the ‘gaslight’ treatment.* Not a bad idea, but Curtis Bernhardt’s helming smells of Summer Stock rep. There’s a typically amusing turn from Sydney Greenstreet as college psychologist/amateur sleuth, but the main interest comes early, in the harrowing depiction of a marriage gone dead between Bogart and a vicious Rose Hobart. They’re straight out of Edward Albee. (Bogie knew the territory, battling out a divorce from wife #3 Mayo Methot at the time.) Presumably, Warners was happy with the results, putting Bogart & Smith (along with Barbara Stanwyck) thru similar hoops in THE TWO MRS. CARROLLS/’47. You may feel more conflicted.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Siodmak found more thrills and a better murderer that year as director of THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE/’45.

HOJE EU QUERO VOLTAR SOZINHO / THE WAY HE LOOKS (2014)

Disarming teen coming-of-age pic from Brazil about a platonic guy & gal twosome whose friendship is disrupted by the cute new boy in their class. The twist is that the guy’s been blind since birth and the girl, who’s long had an unspoken crush on him, finds she’s attracted to this new boy with his mop of black curls. Or is she jealous that her BFF seems to favor his new friend. Sounds awfully cute, but writer/director Daniel Ribeiro handles all the high school trials, tribulations & misdirected crushes with a light touch. And never tips into blind-boy bathos to show how tough & lonely things can get when you try to reach out to someone who literally might not be there, or in being a sightless rebellious teenage smart-ass to overprotective, hovering parents. Heartwarming stuff, winning without being sappy; no small achievement. Yet, there’s a built-in problem here. Built-into the DVD, that is! It’s Ribeiro’s own two-reel ‘sampler’ version of the same story (made in 2010 with the same three principals) which is, in almost every way, the stronger piece. Shot in the old squarish Academy Ratio (though probably cropped down to show at 1.85:1), it’s a better visual fit for this story then the feature’s WideScreen frame. There’s a similar fade on the three teens, each four years less vulnerable. And the missing schoolyard bullying & parental misunderstandings puts useful blinders on the action, concentrating focus. Probably, the only notable loss from the full-length pic is a neatly played shaving scene between Father & blind son. It’s paradoxical, but at five times the length (96" vs 17") something’s been lost. (It's the two-reel short with the slightly different title: EU NÃO QUERO VOLTAR SOZINHO/I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK ALONE that earns our Recommended label.)

DOUBLE-BILL: André Téchiné’s WILD REEDS/’94 remains the modern touchstone for this kind of story.