Quinoa1984 Reviews

Come Drink with Me (1966)

A lot of fun, with top notch fights featuring the great Cheng Pei Pei and Elliot Ngok Wah

[8/10 · 6 May 2025]

Come Drink With Me doesn't have any kind of groundbreaking story - it's about a young man who gets kidnapped by sone punks and happens to be a son of governor and the brother of the powerful Golden Swallow (one of the phenomenal martial arts stars of hers or any generation, Cheng Pei-Pei, what a screen presence and what equally graceful and sharp skills as a fighter on film) and what happens when she goes up against these bad guys to get him back. But you don't necessarily have to watch this to get something all that deep or profound, and director King Hu knows that.

Sometimes there is the pleasure in seeing great attitudes on the faces of these actors who trained their asses off to perform well and to what specifications were needed on the sets and in the fights (camera and editing tricks are used only at minimum and Hu favors longer takes and wide compositions whenever he can, so it's mostly of the time), and Come Drink With Me gives the audience so much pleasure in watching Pei-Pei mess up a whole lot of dudes and then as well the full-of-calm-swagger star Elliot Ngok Wah (sadly both of them are no longer with us) as the Drunken Knight. Just his scenes with Pei-Pei in the second half, particularly where he goads her into throwing that giant rock at him, are wonderful and intense alone.

I do think if you want Hu at his very best Dragon Inn and his epic Touch of Zen are superior, but that doesn't take away from Come Drink With Me as a classic of its own kind when it comes to the many times fights and sword battles break out, everything is clear and dynamic and when the pointy ends hit the flesh it's intense and only sometimes completely blood-and-squib soaking mayhem.

Lastly, I was also impressed by the overall spirit of the story, and that for like five or ten minutes it becomes a Musical with a group of signing small orphan children with the most delightfully weird patches of hair. It adds an innocence to a story that is a little bogged down in some details that aren't as strong. As one small critique: if that Drunken Master could do *that* with his hands at his adversaries before, why not do it a little more? Maybe it was to save on budget, I guess.

The Eagle (1925)

Valentino as the Black Eagle. Fun and has plenty of excitement, even if a weak ending

[7/10 · 1 May 2025]

Overall, The Eagle I'm sure was evem more spectacular for its time and it has some fun moments of adventure a century later - my favorite set up and payoff was with the bear in the cellar and how that attack unfolds when our Black Eagle under duress fights back very easily against it (bearly you might say...) - and it's simplicity in the main bones of the story is its charm. Brown also has some clever lighting effects and staging at times, like when we see the Black Eagle framed in a room as he's entering and his shadow casts a pall over the figure in the bed he's going in to attack.

The thinness of the narrative does make it a little less than a classic, at least for me, and the acting from much of the supporting players (like the guy playing Kyrilla) is rather broad and hasn't held up so well over time. And the ending isn't quite so believable given what we've seen and know about at least one key character. But Valentino is dashing and entertaining and suave and all the things that come with a name like, well, Valentino (doesn't that already sound like someone who comes packing with a romantic adventurous swagger?) Not to mention it isnt just resting on the looks or mannerisms, it's a real performance with layers of physicality and in how he shifts between his created personas.

I don't think I'd seen a film with him in the lead before, and this was not a disappointment as far as a vehicle in being different figures in one film (as the fallen Russian lieutenant, as the vigilante and as another character, seemingly... a French Count!) The more I think on him and the movie as a whole the more I like it. Also, that shot, and you know the one as it's around 40 minutes into the film and because of the seemingly seamless and spellbinding power of the moving camera as it goes over that dinner table that has around 30 people end to end, is one of the truest examples of why cinema is its own distinctive medium (and a darn good one at that)! 7.5/10.

Corridors of Blood (1958)

A good man turns to "Vitriol" in one of Karloff's finest performances

[7/10 · 1 May 2025]

Corridors of Blood (which is so good I'm surprised it isn't a title used repeatedly as a fake movie that other characters go to see like in a Slasher or something) is driven by Boris Karloff's mesmerizing performance as a man with a conscience who becomes consumed by his addiction and his obsession with the potential of his experiments. It's entirely on how he shows through so much of his training and experience as a performer that makes this more than just the B movie curio it purports to be; while a number of the other performers are fairly standard for this material (not counting for sure Christopher Lee or Adrienne Corri), Karloff takes this character and makes him fully tragic and pitiable.

The title may even be somewhat misleading to make this like another of his Horror films - and why not, it was his bread and butter and he was one of the guys on the Cereal Box - but what's important to remember is that Karloff was classically trained as the best of them and found his niche in the world of the Gothic and suspense. And this film, while not so great when it focused on some of the secondary characters (ie I didn't care that much about the younger doctor and his romance with Dr. Bolton's daughter), it almost doesn't matter because of how he gradually and incrementally peels this man down to a knub, even as he is still at heart and good doctor and man.

I also need to note about Christopher Lee, who does also take this up a notch every time he's on screen. At the same time he appeared as Dracula he also performed as this character, and while the Count is the more notable figure forever and ever for genre fans his Resurrection Joe may be the more intense performance; he never lets you have a second where you can relax watching him, and since he's very much a human being as opposed to an undead wine/women/music connoisseur it makes his deeds and attitude all the more ugly and sinister.

Bottom line, it's pretty cool it's something you could just get from a Criterion Closet to boot. That said, any time Lee in this as "Resurrection Joe" gets his hands on a pillow of death I just recoil completely. 7.5/10.

Fedora (1978)

Billy Wilder's The Substance! Kind of!

[7/10 · 29 April 2025]

So, let's start with the Twist Reveal That Isn't Really: what this ends up being revealed is like... The Substance in the scope of an older woman star who decides to have a "younger" version (err daughter) of herself to continue making films (or I suppose for the time one could also say Seconds since that came out before this), though with a spit-shine of Sunset Blvd "we can make this improbable project but hey there's something kooky going on) (only with 1970s cynicism instead of late 1940s Golden Age cocked-eye satire), only if the way that the old replaces herself with the younger version of herself is... Wait, who in society would buy that she is Fedora and just by the hands and, oh, never-mind.

And yet saying all of this does not mean that it makes for a bad movie, really! I can't say with a straight face that Fedora is Billy Wilder at his peak, and in its plotting and how it doubles back with this flashback and that flashback it goes into being grandiose and Melodramatic, sometimes with some real spark and clever dialog and acting (the scene where we see a young "Detwiler" ho ho that's a name but anyway when she meets Fedora on the set and covers up her scantily clad naked body on set), and other times seeming like out of real exploitation pulp (when Fedora asks ala Batman for a MIRROR to see herself post surgery).

It's maybe the closest I can think of with Billy Wilder that could be called "Camp," except that I have to believe he knew what he had in this story and then in the adaptation takes it into much more of a (heh) wild mystery than anything like Sunset Blvd, though there is a similarity that is striking. Once again there is an aged star who sinks into an insulated world and keeps this tight control over what she has even as she is disconnected from the larger industry, except this time it's not an unlikely creative-cum-lover, but a reshaping of the Younger Item to keep the illusion alive (both films also look at aging with a very cynical lens, though in Fedora it has a Gothic, albeit sun-filled, tableau and setting).

I'm reminded of a line from a Woody Allen movie, maybe paraphrasing, our life consists of how we choose to distort it. Wilder is saying, late in his career, it isnt as simple as actors will do whatever they can to put up an IMAGE, but that the audience is culpable in buying it. At the same time, this may be even weirder than The Substance in one sense; imagine if in that Elizabeth Sparkle was (at least initially) really happy for Sue and a collaborator really in taking on this younger and more lively role, like when Henry Fonda appears as... Henry Fonda, natche, to give Fedora a special Oscar at her cilla.

This doesn't mean Wilder has the same innovation in mind as like a Coralie Fargeat; this is largely classically shot and presented, and the second half of the movie is really all about explaining things and thank goodness Michael York pops up to add a little extra life in the last half hour. I think the thing to know about Fedora overall is that you probably shouldn't come to this until you've seen a few of Wilder's other social commentaries that are as if not more laced with boiling acid on the brain, but it is entertaining and has something to say about an industry that will be fine with admitting it's full of bs *up to a point* and that's what sticks out so many decades since.

Until Dawn (2025)

Good enough, but also mid

[5/10 · 26 April 2025]

Until Dawn has a few inspired moment of gore and creature effects (unfortunately my gorehound lovely wife informed me when I went to use the bathroom was right when the spontaneous combustion went off, which I caught some of), and Ella Rubin makes for a pretty good lead (almost, not quite for obvious reasons here) Final Girl, not to mention the always welcome presence of Peter Stormare taking the "It's got a Death Curse" old guy trope character from slashers and becoming the main bad guy. But this is not much more than what the trailer shows.

I want to like this a little more than I do given David F Sandburg's pedigree (Lights Out was impressive and made horror and metaphor come together nicely, and of course Shazam), and he knows how to do a jump scare. It may just be a limitation with the concept and where there was more potential (I haven't played the game and frankly a movie isn't a game, etc), ie (minor spoiler?) All of the horrific things that are killing the characters are coming from the Clover character, and yet a) it would make for more variety if it was like every one of the teens had different fears and manifestations come out to kill them and b) are they also all the former dead/victims of the mining town and this whole time loop death plot, so...

Maybe I'm putting too much thought into this, and for what it means to be as no-frills goopy Saturday matinee horror it is fine and has some real shocks of suspense, if ultimately it is forgettable. One can think of this for right now as a decent if standard appetizer from the slash-o-clock menu as we await the main 3 pound beef of a meal that will be the next Final Destination movie... but if one may be less inspired because we still have the behemoth that is Sinners in our brain, that is to be expected.

56 Up (2012)

Life's little snippets

[9/10 · 24 April 2025]

Peter is back! (He hasn't appeared since 28 Up) I know he's here in some large part to promote his band, but I'd rather have something like that where it's more creative and artistic than when John appeared in 35 just to promote his wife's charity (gosh that felt like the closest this series got to a minor scandal haha). The other great surprise here is Suzanne and Nick together (not romantically but still!) That was really wonderful to see them come together for this, and such lively and candid conversation.

Perhaps it can't be helped by the time you get to the eighth of these films, but there is so much Archival footage by this point from the previous entries that it probably does weigh the new scenes by like 40/60. That is a fairly minor complaint though given the scope of how life's changes are now about the next generations and the younger subjects do a lot to emphasize what is the same/different about the men and women who are still taking part in this (and all but like one or two are still here).

I'm also struck by something Michael Apted said to Roger Ebert in an interview back in 2006 around the time of 49 Up, which is that politics, or just points of view when it comes to how life itself and relationships have political dimensions, come out in the choices that are made about what to do with a life, financially speaking and also with a life in work or retirement (or in Jackie's case on disability).

The financial crash of 2008 also still hangs over at least a couple of the participants, and there is a comment (though think about how much Apted chose to show or leave out) about how far to the right the country has gone in the years since the 60s and 70s and you can see how a framework that keeps people working, keeps people in a system (or who are still doing manual labor like Symon) and then those who can break free of those systems make this really engaging. Even Andrew talking about global warming, though what's great is that this doesn't come with Apted pushing some agenda or something. The reality of what everyone is dealing with speaks for itself (and there's a revelation about John that... how did we not know this till now?! Dead parent!)

What's so special about these films is how much Apted has direct and simple questions that have to do with what being 56 is like, and in the scope of the series up until this point and how the personal and larger macro sense of what this series has meant is in a deeper philosophical sense. 56 Up isn't quite my favorite entry in the Ups, but that's more of a personal quibble (I also kind of wish Apted had kept to the sort of structure of who he was presenting since he stuck to showing like Tony first and Neil last and now it's sort of reversed for seemingly no good reason), but it need not matter much when the interviews are still so revealing and frank and Apted keep it being this great thoughtful gift for the audience intact.

My reaction to Peter, in other words, seems like I am reacting to a return of a comic book character in a Marvel movie, but that's the level of intimate connection that the series has done so well.

49 Up (2005 TV Movie)

Life, love, children, regrets, jobs, grandkids, and the spectrum of highs and lows appearing in an Up film

[10/10 · 23 April 2025]

By the time one gets to 49 Up, more and more it isnt simply about how the subjects are growing or changing in front of us, though there are life changes and some drawings with losses and career upheaval and how much the parts of England they've lived in (or moved away from) have changed as well. You also understand how for at least some of the adults who were once seven and have now appeared in seven of these films that what Michael Apted has done with these films has affected them to an extent.

For some like Tony, it has led to some career opportunities (he was trying to break into bit parts as an actor and lo and behold he got a few jobs thanks to his appearances and producers being fans of the program); for others like Jackie (Jacqueline) there is some anger at Apted for what any subject in a documentary has to reckon with which is how they're depicted in something that has to be edited down to reflect a vision and point of view.

She probably comes down the hardest on the director; he claims to enjoy how she argues with him (I have to think he's dealt with much worse on movie sets with primaddonna actors and the like), though I wonder how true that is but that's also his perspective and who can judge or change that. Because of what has been shown in the films about her struggles to be a mother, of her children, and she wishes that there was more positive things that he showed or this or that or the other thing, there is nuance there. She and others see that there is an intrusive element to just being on camera and being asked questions and having a camera follow them for however many days or weeks it takes to make these things.

That is a tricky point which is that it's not about reflecting the full life stories of these people but about how and where they are in their lives at that moment: have they settled into adulthood or become parents (by now grandparents for some), have they changed careers or found something new to do, have they somehow (in the case of Neil, possibly the most inspirational figure despite his own mental health issues) become much higher in rank in society, or found love or lost it etc. That is a lot to put into a film even if it was just a single subject for an hour and a half or two hours and Apted has around a dozen subjects to go over (one of them, Charlie, stopped appearing in 21 Up but will still get a mention, maybe the one odd point by now that maybe Apted could have dropped after four of these).

In other words, I get Jackie's point, but then again Charlie himself shows (or John who will appear in one and then back out and then come back for the next and back out again) no one is twisting and arm to appear in the film, it is by choice. But then that choice still can't help but make some anxiety about how they will be perceived or how maybe a point of view will cause a clash as Jackie has done with Apted.

On the other hand, I can ponder the sides of the ethics of it all, or even how like for the case of Nick and how he's always going to be better known for the Up films than his books, but it all comes down to this for the audience (and this is just my perspective): Apted is editorializing, but there doesn't seem to be exploitation or a crafting of a narrative for some craven purpose. One of the more captivating bits here is Nick taking a more fair and balanced looks at what appearing in 49 Up and other Ups is like as he sees how important it is and how important it is to others, but that it is still "incredibly hard" and even extends some empathy to Apted and how "wrenching it is to do the interviews."

Ironically by this point in 2005, reality TV was really overcoming media in the US and in the UK, and something like 49 Up is an excellent antidote and a strong contrast to what was and still is much more calculating and crude. This film, which is much closer in style and approach to like News Magaine programs like 60 Minutes, feels revealing and intimately crafted and a camera is showing the lives of the kids who have been adults for a long time and (sometimes) their kids and spouses and so on, but it also feels honest and the questions are meant to be revealing not for salacious details but about mind sets and perspectives and the idea that we can be sitting watching this in a theater or at home and then reflect on our changing lives is a precious and awesome thing.

A Special Day (1977)

"I dont think Im an anti-fascist. If anything, fascism is anti-me"

[10/10 · 21 April 2025]

A Special Day is about a moment in history, a black-cloud hanging-over-society kind of moment where it seems like 99% of people are on board with the worst possible people and the few who aren't on board have to sit and be quiet about it (before possibly escaping the country, that is), but it's also about something more intimate and deeper feeling which is how one moves and has space to think in a room that is normally occupied full of "loved ones" (and I use quotes because Antoinetta loves her children like... well, just barely enough really), and what it means to connect fully with a person who has a soul and a mind about them.

That goes for Gabriele in his way, even though he knows that his neighbor Antoinetta (Mastroianni and Loren in career-best work) is just coming by to his place because her bird has flown off to his spot and that she has a scrapbook that keeps a log of the rough dos and don'ts of capital-F Fascism at the time, for what women should be like and men as well.

The context of them meeting matters, of course, since she is at home to clean up and tend to the apartment (what else would a dutiful wife and mother of 6 - and as we find out of she gets to lucky number 7 they'll get a tax credit or something apparently, guess that was a thing then) and he is an ex radio announcer who was let go for... reasons (and those having to do with him presumably being a homosexual, though it's hard to say if that or the Anti-Fascism has a blacker mark against him to those who know).

But what matters more is that there's something that simply clicks for them, and as much as this is a political film, as it can't not be with the sound of that I'll Duce/Hitler Wrestlemania main event on the radio on non-stop play through the windows of the apartment building, the real political substance is a little less obvious at first but is even more meaningful. What it means for Antoinetta and Gabriele to meet and talk and have coffee and for each to find out more about each other gradually (ie Gabriele's "fascism is anti-me" line) is that they have an intimacy that is less about romance - though there is an attraction for her to him, even if he may not reciprocate - but about a meeting of heart and mind that is antithetical to fascism and the roles that are set in place for men and women.

This probably has more in common in other words with Before Sunrise or Brief Encounter than some other 1970s set in 30s political film; there's conversation, the more Antoinetta opens up the more Gabriele does, though the difference from those films are the darker points this gets to - when Antoinetta briefly but harshly rejects him and he responds with a fierce recrimination that is volcanic - and there's the occasional appearance of the nosy old lady neighbor with too much facial hair who tells Antoinetta to beware of him like the plague. But like those films as well, while there may be a lightness to their connection at points (ie when he shows her how he practices dancing, also an act that has a freedom to it against fascism in its way), there's the sad knowledge that... this won't last. It can't.

Scola in other words has a daringly and almost secretly complex script to play out here, and his leads are really game for it (did I mention John Vernon by the way? He's in this too, that seems just as if not more random than him popping up in Sweet Movie, I didn't get it but what do I know). He also has a brilliantly washed-out, sort of gray-brown look to the film and yet it is not black and white; it's like a photograph that had faded so very much, but you can still see the life in the eyes if you know where to look.

Mastroianni got the Oscar nomination, which is great, but Loren (who claims she was closer to this kind of woman in real life, introverted and all) is heartbreaking as well; she appears sans make up and one might say "well, she's dressing down" but as Pauline Kael pointed out she's still one of the most gorgeous creatures in existence at the time, but that night make one not see how much subtlety and repression she brings out on Antoinetta, how this is a woman who has bought into a system (and a husband) that sees her as another cog in their machine. She also knows how unfaithful her husband has been (with a teacher no less, that stings), and there's much hurt and pain that's played out between the two actors.

At the same time though as depressing as I'm making it sound, I didn't leave saddened at the end of the film. It is left in a place where they are not together, but Gabriele made the point clearly some scenes earlier: she gave him a real special day, unlike what everyone else had in this grotesque Nationalistic spectacle in the central part of the city (which Scola was wise not to film a frame of; we only see some newsreel footage at the start and that's all), and he gave her a book of adventure and action, and they'll have this memory of each other which is good... even as we know how bad things are about to get in the years to come. A special film about the power of the individual against a system!

Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979)

Very good, if more intellectually stimulating than emotionally - Volante brilliant as always

[7/10 · 20 April 2025]

Christ Stopped at Eboli is a captivating film experience (or do we call it a series given its in 4 parts on ah let's not split Southern Italian hairs, shall we now), mostly for how it raises so many ideas and has the time to explore them, though it is so episodic and gradually moving in many ways that it's sort of disappointing that one doesn't connect so much on any kind of emotional level to the men and women and occasional children that Carlo Levi meets and grows closer to and helps as a doctor (and sometimes cannot) over his year in exile as an anti-fascist in 1935 Italy.

There is one conversation that Carlo and the Mayor of this village near Eboli (hence the title), though this mayor speaking tries to do so not as the Mayor vut as a friend, and which stems from a letter Carlo was intending to send out from town to a female friend up North. The letter is telling about how he sees the peasants and townsfolk as not really being this or that but are there own people, and the Mayor Luigi gently but firmly says this isn't so and that the peasants just want more land (and tries to argue that conquering other lands like Italy tried to do in Africa) will accomplish that, and there are other ideas bounced back and forth between the men.

It's possibly one of the times in the film where there's a sense of conflict, and that it is all over the ideas presented - about who the peasants claim to be or who they are and how Fascist ideology spreads and is easy to detect but difficult to eradicate (you can see it right here in America right now, this is where I'd usually say I digress but no, this is a key point), and that one has to really rethink what 'The State' may be as an entity, and if it has to be rethought and changed entirely, to address so many issues that come about with like Nationalism and Pride and that feeling some who have almost nothing that if they, say, go off and fight in a war and come back as a hero it's worth it even at the risk of death, or that othering others and closing ranks with their own is so natural as breathing air, that's what may need to be done.

I may also be including in these observations what Carlo himself comes to understand by the time he's home years later and is talking with other intellectuals who think it's more cut and dry. I really was engaged with these scenes and any time really that Rosi and his writers were having people talk about such things- whether they were these exact conversations in reality or Levi was simplifying things for his book and by proxy the film, I'm pretty sure is the case but can't say for sure- and they are when I leaned forward most to pay attention to the film. I only wish much of the rest of the story/stories, at least for me, engaged me a little more emotionally speaking.

This isn't to say there aren't a couple of characters who have an impact, or at least impress upon Carlo just what life is like in the village: the mother who Carlo stays with (and says she's had 17 pregnancies, and she is really mother and father to all of her children since no one has stayed or have gone to America) and the one Priest who can't seem to reach anyone in the village (they decisively call him a drunk, though is it because they're such crappy people he drinks, one wonders) who Carlo also connects with somewhat, are two such examples. Other times there are some charming and interesting scenes where characters speak on their superstitions and other such issues, and there are some gorgeous shots of the landscapes and scenery (one should say it's due to the skill with finding the right light and tones for DP De Santis that it is so, not just what it is) and the musical score by Piccioni is lovely.

While Carlo does become certainly by episode 4 so emeshed in the community (it helps he has a pretty good track record as a non-practicing but well-learned doctor in a place where the only other medical help sucks, leave to being the Luke Wilson in Idiocracy effect one supposes, now I do digress), it doesn't mean we get a sense that Carlo has grown close particularly with any one person really. This has a pretty terrific reputation, so I looked at some of the less charitable reviews of the film and, putting aside the "it's boring" takes which don't help much, it did ring perhaps more true than not for me that the film does stand at a place (and I don't know if this is the case with the book since that's another medium altogether) where it is at an intellectual high ground, in other words the sort of peasants this is about... would they sit and watch a film like Christ Stopped at Eboli, or is it for us cineastes and art-house film buffs to sit and chew over?

I think Christ Stopped at Eboli benefits most of all if nothing else from being (I hate this coopted dumb phrase but I'll use it anyway) fair and balanced look at how someone who has his own ideas about society and fascism and anti-fasicsm is ironically put into instead of a prison and exile situation where he has to see how "they" live. I think after years of like the NY Times style pieces of "What do the people in diners *really* think" when it comes to looking at "them" and political leaders which are often not genuine, it is good to see a work of art that does try to look at people like this simply and plainly and, through a POV actor as gifted and compelling like Volante when largely listening and observing.

I just wish I felt more shaken on a more profound level by the sense of something more... poetic, perhaps (as a useful comparison, Tree with Wooden Clogs, which I thought this might more resemble, comes to mind). It is beautiful and well made, and yet it is like going to and having a really gigantic mutli-course meal at a restaurant, you'll remember to leave a nice tip and a good rating online, but will one come back to it? Hmm. 7.5/10.

The Ballad of Wallis Island (2025)

Sweet, a little slight, loved the ending

[7/10 · 19 April 2025]

Ballad of Wallis Island may be a little too cute or repetitive in its awkward/uncomfortable one-liners for its own good overall (Charles having a pun or joke at the end of 85% of the lines like a slightly less obnoxious Michael Scott), and the Michael character is a little too conveniently just there to ask for something in one scene and then much later (after he went off on a... Puffin sightseeing trail sure) berates our bearded flawed Male Lead.

But there is worthwhile pathos and reading just a bit in-between the lines makes it a deeper and richer experience - Basden and Key wrote the script by the way so that makes sense - about loss and finding some semblance of peace with the present and/or future, with Tim Key endearing himself I'm sure into a good several supporting roles in years to come. And the ending makes it all work (even though you kind of expect what he'll do with all the money). The location itself sells the idyllic isolation as well; tweak this script about 50 degrees and you'd have one heckuva horror movie.

35 Up (1991 TV Movie)

Life goes on and adulthood means responsibilities and familial loss

[9/10 · 16 April 2025]

Life continues; a parent's life ends (and it is never one that ends too early and you never get over it);; new life is created and comes into family; one of the subject (Tony's) wife takes up some extra work duties and it is clear she has to run the house; life springs some horses to ride around and feel merry; life is a little more awkward when a figure gets recognized in public (though "you get the odd one who is rude..."); life leads you sometimes to Bangladesh (what a mess) or Wisconsin (there are deer, surprised); life is harder because the government under Thatcher was (lightly put) a grave disappointment; another parent died and you can see every bit of the devastation in their eyes and the 30s is the time when people start losing their parents; and life is going to keep going on even if things looked grim (or quite good) for the particular subject at hand.

I find 35 Up to be as on par with the absorbing feeling and interest into this series as the rest - when it comes to absorption and the Up films, just call me a big pack of paper towels - but one of the fascinating parts here is how some of the subjects (like Nick) look back on the previous Up film and how they thought, or really the spouses thought, they came across made it so they were not sure to want to appear in the next film. Charles doesn't appear here at all, a shame as he was one of the more low-key captivating ones from 21 and 28 Up (working for the BBC perhaps ironically he didn't want to appear on TV in this film).

Sometimes seeing oneself on film can do that, and I think that it is remarkable just how many of the subjects agreed to be in the series up till 35 much less than this continued for decades afterward. And in the case of John, of course, they didn't appear in the previous entry and that means we are seeing then go from 21 to 35 and that is also another sort of jump (he didn't even get interviewed by Apted due to a falling out, who knows why, and he's speaking with an assistant here) as he makes his case for Bulgarian charity. Because who doesn't want to give to... Bulgaria!

I'm not sure what else I can add that Roger Ebert didn't touch on in his multiple write-ups on the films in this series, and I'm sure there will be even more to get out of seeing how these adults and their spouses and (if they choose to be included) the kids in 42, but this segment in particular is so striking because of how these children are not only in full adulthood but now, more or less, parents and losing their parents and finding that living any decent life means finding peace in one's work and social situation and, moreover, responsibilities.

Take it from someone who knows: when you're 14 or even 21, you literally don't know how much you are going to bristle and smile and maybe look away from how you were at that age by the time you're 35 (or, if you have kids which I don't, you'll see those qualities in them). That's the power of this series and 35 Up in particular.

Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two (1945)

Fair to middling... until that sequence

[7/10 · 7 April 2025]

Just when you think the film will be fine, Kurosawa takes his team and major players onto a snowy mountaintop, and for a few minutes he pulls out such sublime and absorbing choreography with the camera and fighting that you want to believe you're seeing a film not only on par but better than the first film... but you have to then remember the rest of the film exists.

It has been a while admittedly since I've seen the first entry in this dual-film series (back in, wow, 2007, when the first Early AK box set from Eclipse came out, those were my back when I had hair glory days, but I digress), but I have a recollection that there was more going on with Fujita as the title character and Sanshiro as a whole as a character with a purpose on a journey to learn Judo in that very good (if not great) first film by the great director.

The main problem this time is that Sanshiro is rather dull in his characterization because he has a sort of one-track mind: American boxing is bad, Judo has to be the dominant form of marital arts of Jujitsu, rinse wash repeat. And though once or twice Fujita may break out into a smile in a less tense moment, it's not someone that gives this more than one dimension for 80 percent of the runtime. This doesn't mean the movie isn't watchable or even entertaining since it is Kurosawa directing and he has a cast of supporting actors and characters who are more engaging and pick up the slack (Kono as Genzaburo, who is the crazy one of the Judo bunch, is ths most memorable).

I think I came into this perhaps even expecting something worse since, frankly, this film and The Most Beautiful from the year before were somewhat notorious as being the works Kurosawa had to make under Japanese wartime propaganda conditions. Although there is some almost playful American bashing in the opening scenes - I'm reminded of just how bad English speaking actors can be in the Korean melodramas my wife watches when those shows have equally atrocious and stiff English-language day players - this is rather tame by today's standards when it comes to being anti-Western (you mean Boxing is "not a sport"? I can never believe in anything ever again...)

And yet, despite the slight sense of tedium in some scenes, there are times where you can still feel Kurosawa pushing to make this forced-sequel to be more compelling, like when Sanshiro speaks to one of his mentors and they meditate, only for it to cut to the next morning when he has slumped over asleep and wakes to see his master has fallen asleep while in position.

I have to also stress again just how bad-ass the climactic fight on that snowy mountaintop unfolds; you can tell that this is where the director and the cinematographer and if there was one a choreographer really went all out to make a sensational sequence, and the actors come ready to give it their all as well. If we cared a little more about Sanshiro at this point in the story, the movie would be even stronger for it, but that doesn't take away from the sheer kinetic power of the style that is shown shot to shot.

In other words, this is lesser work by the director, but if you stick with it, and as much as the print that's available via Criterion is completely *un*restored to say the least, you can still experience one of the most assured and marvelous artists of the 20th century pulling out a little magic for the audience (ironically at a time when things were at their grimmest for the country).

The Kid Brother (1927)

Harold Lloyd: a hero to the (four-eyed) everyman!

[10/10 · 6 April 2025]

What makes Harold Lloyd so special and, in fact, a cool kind of comic hero for his time, and set apart from the droopy-faced Keaton and the combustible mix of playful and sincere that was Chaplin, is that he's more of an every-man.

Or, one should note, a kind of Every-Man that was sort of progressive in a way for the mid 1920s. Lloyd and his collaborators, in the case of The Kid Brother at least but also The Freshman and to an extent Safety Last as well, understood that Lloyd's appeal was that he looked bookish with his glasses (today we'd throw the term "nerd" carelessly but not without some standing), and for all the guys who can't be so Big and Large and ready to throw their weight around, he had a good space to take up with his often shocked expressions and nimble comic timing.

The Kid Brother has a great many exceptional set pieces and gags - there's even a little monkey friend that helps him at one point, won't say how (if you know you know) and that manages to be funny and cute - with the capper the fight on the boat. What makes that set piece so suspenseful is once Harold knows that the man can't swim it gives him a goal towards how not only he has to pummel him, he has to get him into water and find some creative ways to do so and to restrain him. It's a different level of slapstick than one might expect from Safety Last or Speedy, but there is still a brilliance and bravura to the choreography between those two and how long Lloyd and director Ted Wilde keep it going building momentum.

The story itself is also quite good, and if it feels familiar it may simply be that it's about hundred years on and we've had so many scenarios like these; in a strange way one might see this as like reverse gender Cinderella, though Harold is a child by blood, he has a dad that thinks he's a weenie and his brothers think he's a joke, only for this traveling medicine van and the arrival of this girl Mary to be the spark that changes ignites some change in him ala the magic moment he needs.

It also has a clear message at heart that Mary communicates when Harold is down which is... be confident in yourself and how good and capable you are will come out. By this point in the story Harold has shown this to a good degree - look how he hops with a lighting quickness out of that one window, and does that trick with the hand acting like it's a lady's - so there's a clear path for the characters to go on in his journey.

I might still find the high-wire finale of Safety Last to put that a little above this as Lloyd's best, but this is still sensational entertainment from start to end, particularly in how it continues to mock the "ideal" of masculinity since Harold's brothers spend much of the film, especially in the middle section, trying and failing to corner Harold only for him to find moment after moment to wriggle his way out or trick them into just being total jackasses. It's also quite smart to have the stakes raised with the missing money since it makes the call to heroism (not sure how else to put that) for Harold all the more clear (but then again... it was a different time and all, Sheriff's star being All). The only character that fell flat for me was the guy who's sort of controlling Mary, but that's a minor detail in the scope of this story.

That final shot and moment is also rather... poetic really? 9.5/10.

Hell of a Summer (2023)

Not quite what you may expect from the trailer, and that's not a bad thing here

[7/10 · 5 April 2025]

One could say that it has an alternate title in it, like say.... In a Slacker Nature (ho-ho). And that's the thing about Hell of a Summer that does make it distinctive in a sea of smart-aleck post modern horror comedies (albeit a pretty weak-sauce title that no one can remember, I even forgot it right before logging it here): this is a comedy first that is very shaggy and loose, and that is what makes the movie so entertaining and different. Think if Richard Linklater - when he is in this mode - tackling this kind of material and you get the idea.

It isn't harshly taking the piss out of all the tropes of the Friday the 13th camp-counselor slasher movie or movies like it (there's also the Burning or Madman, maybe Wolfhard and Byrk saw those maybe not), but it is personality-centered and it's there the filmmakers have their focus. I don't think the movie is ever scary, but it also isn't trying to so the charm is more in how off-key the characters react to their fellow counselors being offed.

A lot of it hinges on Fred Hechinger, who can be in different modes in performances for sure (Fear Street is *not* Gladiator II is *not* Eighth Grade etc), and his amiability gives this an energy where you just like him despite his sort of conflict at the camp: he's way too old for this, he probably knows it somewhere but he also loves the camp so, and... well, you know how these things go, killer (or killers) in the night and now he has to take charge even as he is, everyone else points out to him, not really in charge (he just feels like someone... has to be?)

I think it helps sometimes to have perspective close to another viewing experience; earlier this week I saw an 80s slasher/mystery/whodunnit called April Fool's Day, and it was so dispiriting as a movie where the filmmakers clearly thought the audience were idiots and didn't bother to make it funny as well as not scary and were far too clever for their own good. Hell of a Summer is funny consistently, often in such an off-handed way that feels improvisation-driven (maybe once or twice overwritten may be one knock) that you just want to see where it goes and can feel the filmmakers, both very young and giving great comic performances in this to boot, having a great time and want the audience to as well.

There are a few issues here and there in the script (why one person is shown being killed makes no sense when reflecting back given what we find out about them later in the story) and the lighting (a few nighttime scenes are too dark, maybe my theater's fault), but these are relatively minor. The young cast is really engaging and hangs this together, especially Abby Quinn (good charming kind of hang-out scenes throughout with Hechinger is what adds to the Linklater feel for me) and Gravele, Saremi and Matthew Finlan among the rest, and that attention to their performances, young as everyone is, gives it (again going back to this catch all) personality. And a lot of movies like this don't have it, so... take good things where you can!

Influenza (2004)

Holy mackerel, Bong!

[9/10 · 5 April 2025]

Classifying Influenza as a horror film, now that I ponder on it, makes the most sense. It's not about necessarily any character build up because Bong Joon-Ho knows there isn't time for that in his manifestation of the randomness and bizarre state of how murder and crimes happen in the world.

There is no explanation sometimes for why someone will just go berserk and just start pummeling another person on the street, though here there is the fact that the man who we see on this downward trajectory us joined by a woman who is equally cuckoo for cocoa-puffs early on, and his film is just a series of horrific acts that is impactful not because of the visceral nature but because Bong never forgets the cinematic form.

Notice how much he wants, as De Palma does when he is getting his voyeuristic side on, to make us see perspectives and spaces and how we have to understand the full geography of a space to get how awful these acts become. There's those split screen images of the man being taken off of the subway, and we don't know at first what is going to happen but our eyes are watching for any sudden move... and then there is LOTS of it.

The longer this goes on it is only one CCTV angle, and now that Bong has in his way trained the audience to know what to look for one recoils especially because of how long he let's some moments play (the guy who gets knocked with the bat in the garage and then gets up and fights back and how that unfolds is the prime example).

But Bong being Bong, there is play in how the tone shifts as well; you know this is an artist who can't help but shift into absurdity as the one guy finds himself in the bank - about to rob it, about to attack, we are waiting in suspense - and it turns out that the bank has a surprise for this man as he is the 20th customer of the day on the bank's 20th anniversary and there is a big celebration (ironically it seems just like the kind of moment Candid Camera made it's bread and butter generations ago). How the guy reacts to that is hilarious - I mean, how else would you react to that?

But then right after this is the punishing climax of the short, which ends in an agonizing act because of just how much Bong is playing around still: how much do the people outside know what's happening is real or staged? Does anyone know? When will someone pop in and say "ah, just kidding, we are filming a short on the security camera." So many of these scenarios play out in very public spaces, and the daring is making us question what we might do if we were seeing such chaos break out.

Or... I mean, a truly macabre work that is only marred by a little confusion early on by something we are meant to see that isnt clear. I'd love to see this in a movie theater one day; watching it via streamed casting from Criterion Channel is one thing, but with excellent picture and Dolby sound? What a filmmaker.

Early Spring (1956)

Infidelity, marriage, and the space between; a "lesser" Ozu is still pretty great

[9/10 · 29 March 2025]

Early Spring is a potent example in cinema where the script is one thing that works well enough and the execution of that material on set is another. This starts off seeming like this story could be Yasijiro Ozu's Revolutionary Road, about a suit and tie Salary-Man (one of those you see in long lines walking/trudging to work and then waiting for the train), and that the story leads to the male lead having an affair and creating suspicion in his marriage.

However, that sense is only, at best, in the first half hour (and of course this has much more drunken Japanese bits of business with the husband and his friends). What this does have is Ozu's equally sensitive and honest look at human behavior, and how he tells this story of infidelity is what is not said as much as what is between this husband and wife, who have already as we discover endures the worst tragedy (a son died years before, though we never are told how or how young he was).

What the tone also has here is an extension of something I think he was already showing in Tokyo Story - this was his long awaited follow up by the way, this being three years since that smash hit - which is how life is full of disappointment and how one can endure it is the thing. It is a long film (perhaps a little too long in some spots, though I would've been loathe to try and tell Ozu where to cut), but that may be to a benefit in one sense which is how much Shoji has to live with his mistakes and doesn't grasp at all what he's done to Masako even when she confronts him.

But like Tokyo Story as well, what is so disarming is just how much humor there is in the story, or at least how much we may find ourselves laughing seeing behavior and reactions at points; a highlight for me is the awkwardness (almost bordering on cringe) when Shoji brings home a ciuple of inebriated war-time friends after a reunion to his home at night to stay over and the wife Masako can barely deal with them (she reminds him they are going to visit their son's grave the next day) while one of them drunkenly asks if she'd like to buy a ceramic bowl he's made. There are lines that throw you off for how much Ozu understands irony and sarcasm and even wit, and one can be forgiven for thinking going into his filmography that everything is so classical and staid it can't have a pulse.

I also really admired how Ozu wants to convey so much about the distance between Shoji and Masako in their physical spaces - notice how far apart they often are in their home, how Shoji looks away from Masako and can't look at her in the eyes when he says where he's been (even if it is a true thing he still has somewhere in the back of his mind a lie that is there and Masako knows it, thanks lipstick on the shirt collar). And these are remarkable performances for the restraint that comes through and it feels apiece with the time it's set in; Awashima is often very placid in his demeanor and doesn't show much (why "Goldfish" his bright eyed co worker as she's nicknamed even goes for him is anyone's guess), and Ikebe as well, though for her she is constantly simmering with a rage that just can't come out.

We feel for her even as Ozu doesn't make it about "sides" exactly, since we spend so much time with both of them that we understand why they are so disconnected (and the dead son, who Shoji admits only briefly to someone else that he couldn't stop crying when he died in context of why this other guy will love a child, hangs over always in the background). And I didn't even get to mentioning how much Ozu wants to depict the sort of sterile world of the work place as a "Salaryman" and why it is so tenuous- there's a telling bit of conversation where Shoji even admits to a friend of his who works making things that he would be in trouble if he was fired because "I can't do anything else"- even as this is related to his married life: his privilege is so taken for granted that nothing has challenged it... till this move to a new town and that darn "Goldfish."

Some of Early Spring is the most captivating dramatic work that Ozu got to; he was moving off from his usual terrain, of squarely on parents and their children and "will you get married already" that was his usual bread and butter, and I think it was probably good for him to go for a modern infidelity tragic-comedy. I did feel the length of it all in the last twenty minutes or so - how many goodbyes can you have, my man - but it all does work and it comes together at the end, as the couple have bridged that distance emotionally and physically, in this ending that... well, the train that Masako and Shoji watch will go on. 9.5/10.

World in Action: Seven Up! (1964) Season 2, Episode 28

Captivating as a short documentary on children

[10/10 · 27 March 2025]

Anyway, give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you a man (or woman I would add). But how many of us are really that at seven? I was lucky I knew how to tie my shoes! This is a group of charming and articulate young little tykes, who get asked about many things, from their interest in girls and boys, in how many kids they want one day, what they do when they go home from school, if there should be appointments or elections in parliament (how do they even know to answer that, wow).

It all makes for an enlightening viewing, even as it is more of a short documentary (at 39 minutes), since all of the kids want to be able to answer what they are asked; it is when they have to think and come up with an answer that their shared humanity comes through. Of course it may not all be things we may understand watching today, like when they are all eating around the table and have a bell to tell them when to stop and start.

Then of course the kids are asked about prejudice and money, and the thing is they are... just as bright and have really good answers (probably more on point in some ways than you and I would answer on camera). And you cant help but laugh when the one kid responds to another asking why someone would go to prison: "becauae you've been spending too much!" You are struck watching the kids that they are learning things about the world very quickly and even if they don't process it or put through a lot of critical though (after all they are... seven) there is the sense they may change over time.

But the world of these kids is one where you can feel that they have the whole world in front of them, regardless of whether they're coming from rich or poor backgrounds. This is a wonderful little start to this series - mostly because there was no thought this would continue in this way for the over half a century it has thus far (will there be a 70 Up some day, even minus Michael Apted? We shall see). The point is if you watch this and don't go any further you still can enjoy it as a window into the world of growing minds in England.

A Touch of Zen (1971)

Stick with it, it is packed with visual wonders, action and fantasy

[10/10 · 26 March 2025]

I was already quite enjoying this visually robust and patiently paced epic (that's not a put down, I love how much King Hu and his crew take in establishing the place and time and how still everything seems while there is so much going on if we look carefully enough), and featuring a superb wide-eyed "but I want to learn" perfornance by Chun as Gu... but once they get to those yellow-robed Buddhist monk bad-asses doing everything by self-defense and being so calm/cool/collected on that little mountain halfway through the story, doing so much to diffuse those sword-wielding dummies coming after the formidable lady Yang, I just had to come to the conclusion "yeah, okay, this is pretty friggin' great."

I know some of the elements of the story are things we have seen in other films, both from China/Taiwan and even to an extent from Samurai films from Japan - these bandits are on the run, there's a corrupt magistrate and it all goes up to the Emperor and so on - and coupled with a Hero's journey (and he starts from being a student of strategy so he isn't entirely a beginner) that you know has to unfold as soon as you see Gu being pecked at by his small-minded mother.

But what sets it apart as its own major beast in East Asian action cinema are the details filling the frame and what gifts he gives his actors space to play in; all of the smoke that gently but assuredly drifts in certain moments; how much he trusts audiences to watch characters fighting in the dark and know what's happening; the specificity in the costuming and how he directs attitudes and postures as much as lines.

How long did Hu and his team have to wait for the light to shine through just so in those woods with those bamboo trees to give that fight such gravitas? How many times to get the leaps and bounds off those bamboo? It seems like (according to imdb) it took years to film this. I don't doubt it! I also love when all those fighters are stunned by the various bells chiming at night when they're about to attack, and how Hu cuts from all the reactions and the places where the bells could be coming from and then their collective fright at what might be inside (humans can't fight ghosts, after all) and then there is another great burst of action.

A Touch of Zen is filled with stupendous stuff like that, where you are caught off guard by the fantasy and all of the tricks that Hu is playing, and he wants us to feel when characters are trapped and isolated and when the atmosphere may overwhelm certain small-minded men with swords. It is long and elaborate, but for as long as it is Hu isn't wasting time because all of those shots establishing places and spaces (sometimes grand, sometimes in the shadows of the night, sometimes in ruins) get us acclimated for what is to come. And when it has to get to the swordplay... it gets with sublime choreography.

À nous la liberté (1931)

Brilliantly done slapstick comedy with real pathos and a great pair at the center

[10/10 · 25 March 2025]

This is such a richly executed, lively slapstick comedy that also at times turns to musical numbers that - not musically but lyrically - have the kind of bounce and distinct feeling that we are off our world of the film that the numbers in RRR did (though A Nous La Liberte is far less over the top when it comes to its social commentary).

What is so remarkable with Rene Clair is it will go very serious and sad and the film shifts that tone without a hitch (the scene where one friend helps bandage up the other's wrist comes to mind, though that eventually drifts into some absurdity as well). And while this is a Musical (wonderful score by Georges Auric) with enough songs to qualify, notice where Clair has his characters speaking and it becomes more like a silent film; technologically it is a transitional film, which makes that one long tracking shot of the conveyor belt where the workers are asked something one by one (and the shot goes a while, all the more special that they pull it off).

I'm just also blown away that this goes into being a heist movie for a good long chunk and it is extremely vibrant and funny while also keeping it's eye on the ball, which of course is showing modern Capitalism to not only make people trapped but to make competition where there should be done. And the art and production design (Oscar nominated, which was maybe a first for a foreign film I have to imagine) is extraordinary as well as things are heightened in spaces for how stark things look in the factory scenes alongside more realistically set ones.

A key thing too is the pair in the middle, Marchand as Emile and especially Cordy as Louis, have strong chemistry as friends. Cordy has the kind of face that can't help but get into comedy and he is the engine of laughs here for his timing and how quick his physicality is. But putting that aside is focus in things moving in frames. That seems basic, but there's something about how Clair films an entire line of people through a space or create the sense of monotonous repetition with the factory scenes that cuts through into an ecstacy of itself.

You know you're watching criminals go about their ups and downs, but for all of the mayhem and mischief at least one of these guys gets into over the course of the story (usually both), you still root for them because of how light the tone is, even as it's ultimately about a very bleak subject which is dehumanization in lives of work. If it feels timeless it is because of the humanity on display, in comic and less comic notes, not the message. Lastly, a historical note: while there was a lawsuit against Chaplin and Modern Times (Clair didn't join in though, he thought it a "compliment" if Chaplin did take from his film), the duo at the heart here actually calls to mind Laurel and Hardy, specifically The Second Hundred Years short (look it up).

El (1953)

A nasty piece of work, as masterful and dark a film about jealousy as Raging Bull

[10/10 · 25 March 2025]

It really boggles my mind how I likely watched El many years ago (aka "This Strange Passion," a much more fitful and eye-catching title), and for some reason I can't fathom it didn't register as strongly as the other monumental films by Luis Bunuel.

This is among his most brutal works emotionally speaking, about a pretty well-off businessman with multiple properties who just can't get his mind off of one woman who ge has to pursue until she says yes to him (a perfectly tightly wound de Cordova, the woman playing Gloria, Garces, is so important because she has to play everything realistic and straight for the Mania later to work and she does). Once she loves him, however, he can't let go of the idea that she has had other lovers, and his suspicions make him into the worst kind of boyfriend/husband or just person in general: "I can't live without her, but I know I'll kill for her... or possibly even kill her (!)"

Bunuel's story and direction makes for one of the most potent and engrossingly crazed depictions of obsession I've seen in any film. It's the darkest black comedy on (*thoughts of*) adultery, and you have to laugh at times especially when it comes to how ridiculous and foolish Francisco makes himself to be, especially when other characters around him (who think he is still a pillar of the community) come up and smile and say hi while he is sitting, for example, at a table with his beloved Gloria and it's only a wonder steam isnt always shooting out of his ears. Bunuel has almost no choice but to mock him, and while this is a relationship story there is a blunt irony to the ending as well: in order to stop this "Passion," the only way is to go off into chastity to religion. (Lol).

Francisco, El of the title, is such a ruthless jerk you want to forget when he cries and it's genuine remorse; that is the other extraordinary thing about the film, is that despite how out of his gord this guy can be wifh his abysmal jealousy and how far he makes Gloria so afraid of him (until he tries to pull back), he is still understandable as a human being. But Bunuel is merciless and doesn't leave him off the hook, and the turn halfway through to have Gloria's narration - now it is from her perspective, which we have wondered about and so here is her take on what a mess this is - is bold.

He is, for all of his vulnerability, an abuser and all that (politely) stalker behavior that goes with men like this. Bunuel also gives supporting characters their moments like Gloria's mom and the friend of theirs who Gloria has to turn to in times when Francisco just cannot leave her alone (and the violence - even if it primarily psychological, which makes it all the more rancid - amps up).

Even as it was made in the early 1950s and with little money in Mexico (Bunuel never had extravagant budgets really), it feels like it could be told any time, and for times like these where men get elevated with blackened hearts it feels important still. The musical score also is urgent and compelling, and there are times when Francisco and Gloria's back and forth, especially when it comes to moving about those giant spaces of his home (and those stairs, what a great set of film stairs this has), makes the music get heated. Scolding.

I have to also think there is no way Scorsese didn't watch this at least three or four times before making Raging Bull, it has that same wretched narrative drive of distrust that is also entrenched in religious mania. But unlike Scorsese, Bunuel isnt exactly out to show Gloria, though Delia Garces is a beautiful woman, as this "Madonna/W****" visual thing (there's no subjective POV of legs in a pool, for example), and Francisco is not a working class boxer but a seemingly milquetoast upper-middle class guy (dont buy it). Gloria is ust a woman who has her own sense of herself and does love Francisco despite ::all:: of him, and that's what also makes his jealousy so... strange.

This isn't to say Bunuel isnt concerned about POV - again, we definitely go from Francisco to Gloria halfway through (and there is a moment he freaks out so much it can't help but break to her) - but he also keeps the story moving so that a lot goes down in 95 minutes.

It's all very matter of fact, except when it has to rise into heights of Melodrama I don't know Bunuel ever equalled again. I really love it; a nasty piece of work..

Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

Happy birthday indeed; guilty pleasure with a gnarly twist (or two or even three)

[7/10 · 19 March 2025]

The novel thing about Happy Birthday to Me is looking back not so much from its exact time as a Slasher Horror film but in retrospect after many, many (perhaps too many) horror films with a Final Girl. You get so accustomed to how a film presents its victims and the killer (and or killers) and the one who we think will get away that it is really, what's the word, NEAT to have a very disconcerting POV for the teen girl we should be following - played sympathetically but with a slippery sense of sanity by Melissa Sue Anderson (with poor tired and supposedly according to imdb trivia drunk old Glenn Ford as her psychologist) - and... what if, as Alice in Chains once sang, "The Killer Is Me!"

I don't think J Lee Thompson does much to reinvent anything or even make what is essentially an American Giallo incarnate seem like it has more on its mind than just misleading us until it gets to the Twist-cream Sundae (or if that's not your sweet jam, how about a Horror Movie Reveal Tootsie Pop? How many licks to the center, let's fine out 1 2 3 etc).

But he doesn't steer anything to being so preposterous it is bad either, though some of the supporting performers (like that one big goofy dude who dies by over-extended weights on his barbell) just seem like they want to get through the take and move on. And there are those moments with the cars going over that disconnected bridge that are unsettling and ties into the leads trauma, and that one shot of the brain surgery made me physically ill.

I think again what is so striking here is that you do have on its head the idea of what we are meant to get out of or just expect to see from these movies, and while the twist(s) make things so wild that you wish it might stick to one or the other - either involves an unknown sibling, question just is if it's an evil twin or not - you still can revel in how Anderson plays up the uncertainty and it feels like the somewhat better version oddly enough of what I see in the recent Scream movies (5 and 6), only instead of it being madness driven by a specter in the mind it is just... they literally dug into this poor girl's brain and, dead mom on top of it all, made her crazy! Fun trash, no more no less.

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)

Devil Days

[9/10 · 15 March 2025]

All That Money Can Buy sits as a wonderful sort of accessible middle ground between the ultra German Expressionism of like Murnau's Faust (you reading this might go, a silent film, heck I need sound in my cinema movie) and something a little more like a Fairy Tale as a piece of Gothic Americana like Night of the Hunter. While I'm not sure I could argue this film being greater than either of those, this is worth watching still to this day for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the world of Folk Horror. I wont claim to be an expert on that sub genre, but this definitely feels like it has an essential place in that pantheon.

Probably that's because of how rich and starkly the filmmaker William Dieterle takes the sides of Good and Bad, and how easy it is for a man to go towards corruption because of money, sure, but also influence and power and just stuff in general. We see naive and stalwart Jabez (Craig, who looks so All American as they can get I wouldn't be surprised if he was an understudy for Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper at one time or another) fall prey to Mr Stitch (Walter Huston in his second greatest work after Sierra Madre), who promises him riches for seven years after Jabez has a dire moment in his barn over giving up his soul for two cents.

He gets riches but he also loses all the heart and love that he has with his true love, Mary (Anne Shirley, quite good in a tricky role where she puts up with a lot and really tries to understand Jabez even, specially when, he turns even more foolish and pals around with the maid-cum-harlot Belle), and with his mother (Darwell, fresh off the Joad farm and so pure in her line readings and performance you hang on every syllable she's that good) doubting his bad ways most of all. There is a lot of speeches and clunky dialog in the middle of the film that date things a little much and I was worried that the movie would possibly get bogged down in exposition over Jabez's blasted soul and the sides of bad and good.

I was still with the film though and always impressed by the emphasis on shadows and almost early film-noir level Expressionism in the lighting and framing if many scenes - like Night of the Hunter it's a film that straddles the line between Noir and Horror like any piece of Folsky Americana, though this is New England vs the South - but then Edward Arnold as Daniel Webster, Man of New Hampshire, comes more into focus and comes to the defense of our poor lead, and the film clicked into a stronger place. Some may even make the criticism I just did that the final monologue is just one overlong speech, but Arnold at that defense in the court is so powerful because he is speaking to what is in the proverbial National Character and he's got dialog that you want to believe in.

Is it possible to be too cynical and on the side of Mr. Scratch? Sure. But that's what the movie is at heart about; being tested and really facing the fact that without a soul life has little meaning, past the shallow facade of things and immediate wants and gluttony, is a challenge and one that many are going to face in their lives, and the opening text speaks to that (more for men than women but likely them sometimes too). It's easy for Devil and Daniel Webster to turn into sentimental tripe, but Dieterle latches on to something that, and I'm sure Darwell being there isn't all a coincidence, John Steinbeck did as well in Grapes of Wrath: men who work the farms and plains and spend their lives having to work for a living will be tempted by sin, maybe have to be, and some are also going to fail. Will someone come back from it?

This is classic Gothic Americana and I'm glad I finally got around to it, up to an including that Bernard Herrmann score (won the Oscar for that instead of Kane, which is funny as some of the themes are slightly, if you listen carefully, just like the eerie tones from Kubla Khan... don't forget it isn't a trick to make money if all you want... is to make money).

Black Bag (2025)

One of Soderbergh and Koepp's best in a while

[10/10 · 15 March 2025]

Black Bag is a sleek and inscrutable Espionage Thriller with such a tried and true idea at the center - John LeCarre of course cooked this up, but so did the franchise writer Koepp was involved in at the start, Mission: Impossible, which is: someone has this list, someone has this special formula that will tear apart this or that country and what will become of the operatives, who will turn on who - that the filmmakers understand and take full opportunity that this set up really is an excuse to get some great actors some sharply written characters.

It's also a crackling-good example of how Hitchcock did it to the point of a whole type of film being named after him: what *that* part of the story is about isn't anywhere near what the audience cares about - it's about what, say, Grant and Bergman are going to do talking around it and in kissing one another until, ok fine, back to the story and the MacMuffin or whatever it's called. Black Bag has one of those, and it has oodles of style, but more than anything it has a terrific - but execution-dependant - script, a game cast, and a director returning to and finding new life and ideas in material he's explored before, chiefly: how does a marriage work when put under the strain of trust?

And it's interesting to see that Soderbergh wasn't sure initially how to pull off two very long and essential dinner set pieces hosted by the main married couple, George and Catherine (Fassbinder and Blanchett, as playful and deadpan and funny and deathly serious as they've ever been, and romantic to boot), who are spies in an agency where one may watch the other and the other watching them, but now that it comes down to this all-sacred Lives at Stake list, their marriage will be tested.

Those dinner scenes could be stock and dry in another or lesser director's hands. What Soderbergh shows and how he rises to the challenge there, as throughout this quite talky but always engaging story, is to ask himself and then answer through camera and editing just this: what is the scene about, yes, but what is this next moment or exchange about (Burke and Marisa Abela, wow), who's point of view do we need to recognize now, and what will become significant so that if we return to it later it's not just repeating for the sake of it all? There are plenty of quiet moments here too, times where it's Fassbender thinking on a lake with his fishing line, but even there notice when he cuts back to the fishing line, the subtle ways to give Mary Ann Bernard what she needs on the edits.

And then there are those Polygraph scenes late in the film. By the time we get to those beats between Fassbender and the other actors, Soderbergh and Koepp have set everything up with these players (not counting Catherine, who George of course is not including in the lie detection test because, after all, they're even tighter by that point than ever), it's all so masterful and delightful because it's less about story and more about behavior. Did I also mention much of this is as funny as anything in an Ocean's movie, albeit at a dry-as-sandpaper level? Even a shot of a live fish about to be cut open feels like a set up to something that is paid off seconds later.

I could perhaps presume, as with Soderbergh's long-ago debut film, Sex Lies and Videotape, that there's something personal being worked out in this story, or just something the director sees in this material on some deeper level that hasn't been explored through this genre in such this way (having Fassbender in an icy-cool manner through much of this is meaningful too, especially because there are times that his George does get unnerved and uneasy and even scared, maybe at himself and how he may react more than his fears over Catherine).

I think sensing that personal touch, especially when it comes to what one holds in and holds back and then let's out emotionally, in Black Bag is enough and what is so awesome is because of what the script has to say about a marriage, how much trust is bent in one way and then comes right back around the other way. It's a story of X chemical winding up in Y's hands (though even here there is some taut and relevant political commentary as well visa vi Russia and its war in Ukraine with barely showing more than... two Russians?) And we are riveted because on one level Page can deliver exposition like nobody's business as well as Harris can give a good diagnoses and all these characters form this set (Side Effects comes to mind too).

It's also about how compelling a dynamic is between a couple and anyone who has been together long enough know how strong that dynamic has to be to endure. Or, to put it in my own way, when you're married you'll understand the importance of giving/receiving a back scratch. So, do come to Black Bag for what we come to hope Soderbergh/Andrews/Bernard will deliver on stylistically (wonderful score too, by the by, taut and clever on its own), but stay for a sharp and biting and ultimately really heartfelt examination of how to be in a relationship and how the act of spy-craft itself becomes a sort of metaphor for that.

As the kids say, a "Banger."

Sergeant Rutledge (1960)

A bitter but ultimately proud elegy to the brave and damned Captain Buffalo.

[9/10 · 10 March 2025]

My first hot off the stove take is that while I could never say truly that this is a greater film than The Searchers, I will put forward that it has a better balance between the drama - which is often quite sad and disparities and sometimes quite harrowing - and the comedic bits, which flows mostly from the timing of Willis Bouchey of the court martial and his "water," which is certainly not that, and from his interactions with Billie Burke. My second hot take is the reveal in the climax of this is... really wild.

Watching Sergeant Rutledge so soon, like within days, of also seeing Judge Priest is quite the study in contrasts while being from the same artist and filmmaker - and these both being stories that end up as courtroom sagas may be a coincidence but I have to wonder if it occurred to Pappy Ford (albeit he did his own sort of remake of JP as The Sun Shines Bright, his own personal favorites of his work before this). They are set in different parts of America and one is much lighter and more irreverent in tone, but Rutledge in particular is distinguished not just for the filmmaker specifically but for the time itself that a Black man is in a story about identity and dignity and how quickly judgment is passed because, you know, it was a different time.

It's frankly a good thing that someone like Ford, who was very much into traditions and such when it came to how familys and communities come together and thrive and the poetry to be found in behavior, could change with the times; the Ford who had Stepin Fetchit chucking and jiving and mumbling through his role is not the same Ford who puts Woody Strode, who never had a real leading role like this before and is performing this much closer to someone with Actor's studio intensive training (he was an athlete before being an actor and his physicality on screen is impressive), front and center with as much if not more screen time than his white co-star Jeffrey Hunter (who is pretty good, if a slightly greater star was in the role this could be almost up there with Liberty Valance as a major late work).

There is also the complexity in the fact that Sergeant Rutledge, which is told in flashbacks and there are points of view that jump around in not quite entirely a linear manner (making this almost Ford's Rashomon, kind of, maybe AK was an unlikely but surefire influence), shows Rutledge and a troop of other Black officers in the cavalry, the "Buffalo Soldiers" as they were called, and they too are written and played to be full of dimension and vitality and sadness and when one of them dies in Rutledge's arms it's a real tragic moment... while at the same time showing the Apaches as vicious and the ones we are supposed to root for being gunned down, regardless of what their function in the story as being obstacles and threats.

Those images can't ever not be loaded with their own context - and this is still not that far removed from the towering ultra-complicated work of The Searchers and there is more humanity even as they're the antagonists of that story given to them there than here - but that's not a hindrance to finding so much to admire and like here.

The court-martial scenes are thrilling and engaging and, yeah, sometimes disarmingly funny and that juggling of tones is wonderful to see Ford able to pull off (kudos to Carleton Young who I think may be underrated here), and the scenes where Hunter and Strode have face to face conversations in the flashbacks and they are especially strong together. Constance Towers may just be more okay in her role compared to the men, but even she gets a few moments to show some deeper contemplation about how rough things have been for her and what she's lost.

This is all to say that I was hoping for this film to be a good Ford Western and, to be sure, you have those shots in Monument Valley where it's half the location and more this uncanny poetic sensibility that the director has in putting figures and shapes in those spaces that always feels so special; I was more amazed by the depths of humanity that Ford and the writers strip bare for us to see in this story, how much race and perception and how twisted around masculinity gets when it's threatened by this "other" race especially when it's clear that hate is and always will be an excuse. Ford could get pulled into more conservative ideals in his work, but this is powerful and moving since it has a dedication to the dignity of representation without being preachy.

Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)

Seems simple on paper, but Boetticher, Scott and a few key cast rise it to being very good

[8/10 · 5 March 2025]

Buchanan Rides Alone seems like a somewhat straightforward story of men and money and what may be actual but is really so-called "justice" when the screws are turned, as a man rides into a town, Agry (one letter off from that mean old emotion that many in the film seem to get to being) and is framed for a killing he didnt do. He and a Mexican man are charged and while Buchanan is found innocent the young Mexican is about to be hanged. But can this young man be saved this fate since, it seems, the man he killed was the son of an extremely cold and brutal town power-broker? More dangling chances for money, and for Buchanan to get the money back stolen from him, is played out over a couple of tension and action packed days.

Budd Boetticher and his writing team - Charles Lang credited but Boetticher regular Burt Kennedy did work on the adaptation as well - pack a lot of twists and turns, and yet like the best of their collaborations in this creatively fertile period it's less about the impact of the action and the violence than the choices leading up to it and as a study of what it means to stand up to corruption when everything is against the "good" guy. All Buchanan wants to do is get his money and go to his ranch, and when he first comes in to town he's not some gloomy drifter but genuinely all smiles (he even seems to be taken aback at himself when he punches a man out in the bar in the opening scenes, leading up to his wrongful arrest).

What was always special about these Westerns Boetticher made with Scott, and this despite what seems to be largely stage-bound and fairly mid-tier choices in casting (though a young LQ Jones as Pecos, the young gunslinger who does the right thing in a tense moment when things could be all gone for Buchanan, and Barry Kelly and Tol Avary as two of the Agrys, sheriff and the stern faced judge respectively, are stand outs for some fury and tensions played out in their performances), is the care put into the characterizations.

You're seeing a system of power being challenged head-on and all because one guy simply says and demands (sometimes by gun point but other times through ingenuity) that this town isn't big enough for the ruthlessness... and, equally, a lot of the tuens come down to the more lug-headed deputy. This makes it all sound more talky and heady than it is, as ultimately Buchanan Rides Alone is an entertaining romp with a lot of good action in the climax, a sublimely staged stand-off involving a saddle-bag full of lots of money, with the darker shades of morality tempered by some shafts of humor.