ArtVandelayImporterExporter Reviews

The Revengers (1972)

Good ol' fashioned injun killin'

[5/10 · 20 May 2024]

The scenery in The Revengers rivals anything put on the big screen.

The cast features William Holden and Ernest Borgnine at the top. Holden is solid, as always. But Borgnine steals the show as the comic relief. As the moral centre of the movie, this might be Woody Strode's finest 90 minutes.

Comanchees ride into Holden's idyllic wh1te ranch and pointlessly slaughter his entire family. His buddy also catches a couple of fatal bullets, but before he dies he conveniently describes one of two white men who were riding with the Comanchees, a dude with one pale eye.

Holden sets out for revenge. First stop, some prison camp. He recruits some reallky bad dudes. They go on a killing spree across Texas while pursuing the dude with the pale eye.

That's as complicated as it gets.

Susan Hayward shows up at the end of Act 2 with a terribly fake Irish accent to nurse Holden back to heatlh after he catches a bullet. Her scenes are pointless padding.

It all leads to an unsatisfying ending. Did they run out of budget?

I could see this being entertaining as the ABC Wednesday Night Movie of the Week in 1974. Grampa always enjoyed seeing the white guys killing Ind1ans.

Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me? (2012 TV Movie)

The Making of The Who's OTHER rock opera

[8/10 · 16 May 2024]

Everybody in the western world knows about Tommy, The Who's rock opera featuring the deaf, dumb and blind boy who sure plays a mean pinball.

The Who made another rock opera a few years later, the story of Jimmy the Mod (a movement in Britain in the 60s). Many fans of The Who consider Quadrophenia to be the band's greatest album. Full disclosure: I say their best is Who's Next. But why should friends quibble.

This documentary pieces together studio footage from the time of the album's recording, along with 21st-century interviews with Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Richard Barnes, Bill Curbishly and a host of others who help put the album's story, music and recording in historical perspective.

I still say that if they'd dumped the pretense of the story and issued a single album it not only would be the greatest album by The Who, but maybe by any artist of the rock n roll era. Here's the tracklist I propose would make it unbeatable:

The Real Me Cut My Hair (re-work it into a proper rock song instead of a story-telling bridge) The Punk and The Godfather I'm One I've Had Enough That's a 21-minute, give or take, Side 1

5:15 Drowned Doctor Jimmy Love Reign O'er Me Edit Doctor Jimmy down to just over 5 minutes and you'd have a 22-minute, give or take, Side 2

With a stronger outside producer (Kit Lambert was so wacked out on heroin by this time the band fired him) to turn Townshend's songs into a proper rock album there's no telling how many units they would have shifted.

Professionals for a Massacre (1967)

Shoulda hired some Professionals from the Movies

[3/10 · 16 May 2024]

Three Confederates sell their own regiment's guns to some union soldiers. Just before they're shot at dawn as traitors, General Sibley steps in and commissions them to recover a wagon of gold stolen from the Confederates. At least, I think that's the plot.

Edd Byrnes, with this super-cool hair. George Hilton as a dynamite-happy priest. And some random fake Mexican are the hired guns. Lots of mayhem ensues. Lots of fights and gunplay. And they up things real good.

I couldn't follow the half of it, since the one thing that marks spaghetti westerns is the total lack of continuity. I swear most of these movies - from the lowest dregs right up to Sergio Leone - were filmed, cut up by a blind butcher, and randomly taped back together by studio janitors.

The most memorable thing about this movie is that some of the random characters are extraordinarly ugly, even by spaghetti western standards. I mean, they're repulsive.

The Big Trail (1930)

How The Oregon Trail Was Won

[6/10 · 6 May 2024]

Bunch of Missouri dirt farmers are headed for the lush Willamette Valley in Oregon. John Wayne, in his first starring role, agrees to lead their wagon train. Tyrone Power Sr features as Yosemite Sam, the rootin'est, tootin'est, meanest hombre west o' the Pecos.

About 6 different versions of this film were apparently shot simultaneously, including a 70mm version that is quite incredible to see in its digitally restored state (thank, to the Museum of Modern Art for the restoration and TCM for showing it). The widescreen shot of the wagon train leaving the station, all spread out, kicking up dust, is right up there with the all-time great shots in cinema history.

The pacing can seem slow to modern audiences. But I think that's a deliberate choice by director Raoul Walsh. I mean, it's a long ride from Missouri to Oregon. It took a while. There were phsyical and psychological challenges. There was LOTS of smoke and dust. We really get immersed in it.

I'm not sure what it was about John Wayne's performance that critics objected to. He looks like a star right from the first time he appears in the frame. Sure, he's stuck with plenty of cornball dialogue but that's not his fault, he's the lead actor, not the head writer.

Marguerite Churchill was a good-looking dame. Refreshingly a brunette in an era that came to be dominated by blondes with helium-filled brains.

Considering how stagebound sound films were for much of their first 20 yearsw, The Big Trail is nothing short of a miracle. I'm not saying it's a great film. But it's undeniably an epic one.

The Liquidator (1965)

Get better as it goes along

[7/10 · 5 May 2024]

As WWII draws to a close, British spy Trevor Howard is walking the streets of Paris when he's set upon by a couple of baddies. Tank Commander Rod Taylor happens along and, somewhat inadvertendly, saved Howard's life. Years later, when Howard is tasked with plugging leaks at MI5, he hires Taylor to be The Liquidator.

Taylor's bumbling in the opening scene gives viewers the impression that we're about to see some broad comedy spoof of the Bond films. What follows after the credits is neither spy spoof nor remotely funny. In fact, it's a straight-up spy film. And a pretty good one.

Trevor Howard as the Liquidator's handler plays it no-nonsense, just like all the M's do in the Bond films. Jill St. John as the female lead isn't there for comedy. And neither are any of the supporting cast, including Wilfrid Hyde-White, David Tomlinson, Eric Sykes and. John Le Mesurier.

The plot has considerable grit to it and it deals with a mature subject matter, esp once the action switches to Nice.

OK, Akim Tamiroff is way over the top. But that's comic relief. John Ford movies had Victor McLaglen or whomever as comic relief. That didn't make those John Wayne movies comedies or spoofs.

I think what happened is that the producers watched the daily rushes and recognized that Taylor couldn't pull it off. Sure, he was handsome. But when he's objecting to something he's more peevish than p1ssed off. Instead of a tightly wound coil like Sean Connery's Bond, Taylor is more like a limp creme brule.

So they decided to salvage the production by (this is my guess based on the fact it wasn't released in the U. S. for a year) by re-shooting parts of Act 1 to emphasize Taylor's eye for the ladies and - most importantly - tacking on that goofy opening scene.

Taken as a legit spy film, it's very entertaining after the dubious start. If you fall for the "it's a comedy/spoof" gaslighting you'll probably be disappointed.

My Fair Lady (1964)

The penny finally dropped

[1/10 · 2 May 2024]

I've always hated My Fair Lady. It's stiff, pompous and dull. It features songs that were hopelessly dated by 1964. And It stars charmless Rex Harrison and human stick insect Audrey Hepburn. As an added discredit, Hepburn was cast as Eliza Doolittle over the obvious choice: Julie Andrews.

Today, watching it in fully restored Technicolorama on TCM, with the sound barely on because I loathe the songs, the light bulb finally went off.

It's not a romantic musical that shows how a semi-literate girl from the gutter can - with the help of her "betters" - overcome class distinctions and enter society as a "proper" woman. A movie for lovestruck cat ladies and dudes of dubious s3xual orientation.

In fact, it's a satire of empty-headed upper-class twits who think that if they simply apply some polish to the working stiffs all will be well in England. With proper posture and unimpeachable diction we can lick the Hun and probably beat back the Bolsheviks while we're at it. Pip pip and jolly ho!

But, of course, the source material is George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Be hard to find a more strident class warrior than the ol' marxist gasbag himself.

So what we really have is the Eliza fighting to retain her working class dignity in the face of heavy-handed polishing by the preening Prof Henry Higgins. Not to mention the society twits he hangs out with. Watching it on mute, I get it now. As an added bonus, Id din't have to listen to Hepburn's screeching (her spoken dialogue) or whoever dubbed her singing.

So we end up with a stage play with a marxist theme turned into an unlistenable musical. Talk about a bad combo.

La Notte (1961)

La Nap

[6/10 · 25 April 2024]

Italian New Wage director Michelangelo Antonioni cranks out the second of what I call his Navel Gazing Trilogy.

Headliners Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni are a married couple just barely hanging on. They don't do anything as crassly American as yelling or throwing pots and pans at each other. These are Euros. Sophisticated, high-class Euros. Moreau wanders the streets feeling ennui. Mastroianni stares ahead, longing to be elsewhere.

There are three key scenes that make the film worth watching at least once.

Firstly, the opening scene where they visit their friend in hospital. He's afraid of dying alone. His mom takes a 7-hour train ride to sit quietly by his bedside. He's desperate to be forgiven, the most regrettable thing being the time he's wasted. If you're old enough to have helped a loved one through the end of their journey, this is a very moving scene.

Secondly, amidst a night-time garden party, Moreau walks into the house to call the hospital to inquire about this friend. The entire phone call is just her dialogue. One shot. No cutaways. Heartbreaking.

And lastly, the final scene, Moreau and Mastroianni sitting together in the edge of a golf course the morning after leaving the party. She confesses she no longer loves him. Then reads a letter out loud. This time there are cuts, capturing Moreau from different angles. And Mastroianni's reactions. Wow. Such beautiful and subtle film-making.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie didn't grab me. I just don't care about disaffected artists and rich Euros. Maybe their detachment, isolation and self-involvement was Antonioni's point, given that he was a marxist.

There's just too much flab. Beautifully photographed flab, I'll grant you. But clocking in at 2+ hours it tried my patience.

Diamonds of the Night (1964)

A harrowing one-act movie

[6/10 · 23 April 2024]

Two boys jump train en route from one concentration camp to another. Or so we're lead to believe.

I offer that proviso because we get a harrowing escape through the woods that appears to be as linear as it is harrowing. The lengthy tracking shot goes on for so long the actors need to bend over and use their arms and hands to continue to propel themselves forward, like a lower primate would. BTW, this was for decades my recurring nightmare.

At this point if you're not hooked you better check your pulse.

However, once the boys have put enough distance between themselves and the gunfire that is whizzing past their heads, they slow their pace and one of the main characters starts to hallucinate, likely from intense hunger.

From that point on, we don't know what's real and what's Memorex. But it's so exhilirating that I was 57 minutes into it before I realized the plot, such as it is, wasn't going anywhere. Then I noticed that the film was only 67 minutes long.

We get an unlikely resolution to the chase that appears to be a return to linearity. But then Directir Nemec subverts even that before we're done.

By the end, I wasn't sure whether any of it was real. It's ultimately a one-act escape film with hallucinations, plus a prologue. Memorable for its artistry, but not what I'd call ground-breaking storytelling. The synopsis of the novel upon which this film is based sounds a lot more interesting, to be honest.

1917 (2019)

Self indulgent

[1/10 · 23 April 2024]

You know how Act 1 of most movies introduces us to the main characters and their situation? Yah, well, there's no Act 1 to 1917. Instead, the movie begins with Act 2, where our protagonists are told during some random break in the action that they've gotta make some perilous sprint across No Man's Land to deliver a message.

About 60 seconds later we're off and running.

Yes, they are in a sprint for their lives, but since we never got to know these two, it's like watching a video game. I was no more invested in them than I was any random character in a video game jumping over barrels thrown at him by a cartoon monkey.

The conceit is that the entire film is one long tracking shot from beginning to end. Even though - of course - it's not. However, because of the conceit, we also have to accept all sorts of chicanery, like entire divisions coming out of nowhere to appear at a farmhouse to surprise our heroes.

Frankly, even accepting the "single long shot" premise I didn't find their journey all the harrowing, to be honest. It's noisy spectacle and little else.

Ultimately, it's an empty spectacle.

Bataan (1943)

They died bravely defending the Paramount lot

[3/10 · 22 April 2024]

Pretty decent cast with Robert Taylor, Thomas Mitchell, Loyd Nolan George Murphy, and several well-known others. But man is this an el-cheapo. It's shot on the studio backlot with mostly straightforward tight shots and rear-screen projection. And although the actors have a lot of filth smeared on their faces and uniforms, I just never got a sense of genuine grit. It seems more like LARPing. Mitchell is 50+, too old and too fat to be in this movie.

The prologue says these men were putting up a defence that allowed America to build up its forces to take it to the Japanese. It looked like they were killing time until the canteen was ready with the roast beef sandwiches.

There's a lot of gung-ho talk about shooting "J3ps," which probably played well in P0dunk, Kansas in 1943. But these days it's obvious war propaganda meant to whip up the farm boys so they don't mind getting pointlessly slaughtered on some faraway island that no American could find on an unmarked map. Audiences only had to wait a couple years for They Were Expendable, which had actual outdoor locations, had a legitimate sense of dread, a heartbreaking love interest and an ambiguous ending that ripped your heart out for everyone who had been over there. For my money, John Ford's best movie.

There's nothing at all fresh in this movie. Unless you count Desi shouting like a Latin lunatic at a short wave radio as Tommy Dorsey's Orchestra plays.a song that may or may not feature Gene Krupa during his brift stint in Dorsey's band.

Easily bottom-of-the-barrel genre fare.

Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

Escalator to a nap

[2/10 · 15 April 2024]

Starts strong, with two lovers on the phone, nervously planning their meetup after what turns out to be a murder. So those first 5-10 minutes are pretty entertaining.

Dude makes an amateur mistake and has to return to the scene of the crime. Gets stuck in an elevator. Meanwhile, GF thinks she's been stood up so starts to get nervous.

And that's when the movie gets packed into a Citreon and heads straight off the white cliffs at Calais.

For one thing, the movie almost entirely abandons the male lead, Maurice Ronet, who is super cool. It devotes barely any more time to the female lead, the super s3xy Jeanne Moreau.

Instead, we get a plot about a shopgirl and her degenerate boyfriend who steal a car and then keep making very bad decisions, let's just say.

My patience ran out well before the first hour had expired. But I kept grinding in the hope that the young couple would get kidnapped by Algerian rebels or something. I had long lost interest in Ronet and Moreau.

If they'd written a full movie around the lead couple and their initial crime, this could have been great. The cinematography and music are amazing. But I just don't care about teen rebels. In French movies. In Hollywood Movies. Nowhere. Never.

Bad Seed (1934)

First-rate crime caper

[7/10 · 12 April 2024]

Henri Pasquier is the prodigal and profligate son. Daddy Warbucks takes away his car so the kid goes rogue. Steals a car and before long we're treated to an excellent car chase through the streets of Paris. Remember, this is 35 years before Bullitt and French Connection. Hollywood movies at the time barely left the studio.

Henri soon finds out the car-theft business is an organized racket. Luckily for him, they're hiring.

The plot then really gets going, with beautiful women distracting wealthy car owners from daring daylight car thefts on the streets of Paris. The head of the international car-theft ring is devious and charming in his own way. We get a plethora of interesting side characters. And a gorgeous love interest for Henri.

Complications arise when Henri goes to bat for better wages for the crew, so the boss cooks up a scheme to get rid of him.

Now I'm supposed to note that Bad Seed is Billy Wilder's directorial debut. He was temporarily in France after fleeing Natsy Germany. While the exterior scenes are very well done, the interior scenes are, at times, pretty stiff. Maybe that was the work of co-director Alex Esway.

Luckily, Wilder co-wrote the screenplay. The plot works on every level. The characters are believable, gritty, and lively. The setting is second-to-none.

The Tunnel of Love (1958)

Movie full of cretins

[3/10 · 12 April 2024]

Richard Widmark and Doris Day are unable to have a baby. Neighbours Gig Young and Elisabeth Fraser can't stop having kids.

Instead of trading in those twin beds for a queen and - you know - having s3x, the childless couple decide to adopt. Unfortunately their plans get sandbagged when the investigator from the adoption agency - played by gorgeous Gia Scala - drops in unannounced and catches Widmark with no pants on, and drinking in the middle of the day. Even worse, Gig walks in and makes a pass at the investigator, who storms out.

It's already bad enough at this point, but the beginning of Act 2 sees Scala return to Widmark's house to say she finds him to be "a very attractive man." At which point I moaned, "oh come on now."

Now, that's not a knock on Widmark. He's a favorite of mine. And unlike other reviewers, I don't think he's miscast here. In fact, I think he's perfectly charming.

I'm complaining about the entire premise. I'm no feminist, but the notion that the Scala character would return under any circumstances, much less to announce her attraction to Widmark, wearing a designer gown, and then sit down at his home bar to bang back scotch while talking about s3xual theory, bleecccchchh.

By gawd it gets worse. They decide to go for a night on the town, and while driving (remember they've already been drinking at home) Widmark is so nervous he bangs back not only one but TWO "tranquilizers" (sedatives) which results in his waking up the next day in a strange motel, wondering just what happened the night before with Scala.

Hi. Larry. Us.

Was this supposed to be sophisticated comedy in the Eisenhower era? I've seen kinescopes of 50s television shows that had more edge.

On a side note, did notorious drunkard and wife-murd3rer Gig Young have it written into his contract that he could drink in every scene? And that the booze be real? A couple of times I thought he was gonna tip over. It's not quite as bad as in A Touch of Mink, where Gig can't even keep his eyes focused, but it's still not hard to spot.

The Gold Rush (1925)

A grind full of unlikeable characters

[3/10 · 11 April 2024]

Chaplin had a formula for The Tramp: outcast scuffles his way through life yet somehow finds love and prevails against the odds.

The Charlie Maudlin approach works if we fall in love with the female lead as quickly as The Tramp does. They must suffer their travails and enjoy their ''triumphs" together. Then we can overlook when Chaplin lays it on a bit thick.

What are we supposed to do with Georgia Hale's character, then? She doesn't even appear until Act 2. And when she does, she's a narcissistic glorified call girl in Bumbfk, Alaska, hitching a ride with some bully gold miner. She and her entirely unattractive (and one fat) friends treat The Tramp abominably.

Sadly, The Tramp has been stuck in a cabin with two fat guys for so long he's starved for female company. His efforts to woo Georgia aren't romantic, they reek of sick desperation.

When one of his cabin buddies hits the motherlode, fortune favors The Tramp. So we get a resolution that no way, no how, no matter one's romantic inclinations, strikes the right notes. The Tramp might not realize it, but we know he's still a first-class sap.

Acts 1 and 3 are basically set pieces in a snowbound cabin. It feels like the same gag gets recycled to pad the running time. It wore out my patience at times.

If you take out the famous dancing potatoes scene, this movie is a frozen turdsicle.

Sense and Sensibility (1995)

Perfect Novel, Perfect Movie

[10/10 · 9 April 2024]

There are library shelves full of books analyzing Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility down to the finest detail. Let me be crass and just say that a family consisting of the widow (second wife) and three daughters is set adrift, close to but not quite penniless, and this is their effort to survive in an England still very much bound by propriety. There is so much here about the class system, manners, urban vs rural, duty and honour, gender roles, and maybe most importantly, money.

But that sounds too sombre and stiff. Austen was anything but. Heck, the clue is in the title. Emma Thompson adapts Jane Austen's magnificent novel of manners, capturing and - as I understand it - augmenting Austen's words. It is, of course, romantic above all. It is, at times, heartbreaking. But crucially, the screenplay also loses nothing of Austen's humor.

Director Ang Lee is entirely up to the task. He paints the scenery around the words with such generosity that we're spoiled with a movie that hits all the right notes textually and visually. He draws remarkable performances from every single actor who appears here.

Emma Thompson as the eldest Dashwood daughter is the Sense of the title. Logical and reserved. Kate Winslet as the middle daughter is the Sensibility. Passionate and expressive. Watching it tonight for the first time in more than 20 years, I realized that, at the end, those roles are reversed.

For my money, Alan Rickman steals the show among the male actors. To that point, most people in North America would have known him as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, and the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood, surely among the most memorable "can't help but like the bad guy" roles in cinema history. Here he gets to play the reliable, manly yet sensitive Colonel Brandon. Hugh Grant as Edward Ferras works because, at the time, audiences didn't realize "bumbler" was Grant's one-note shtick so here it seemed sincere. Greg Wise as shallow pretty-boy John Willoughby would reliably send any woman's heart fluttering. But let's not forget Hugh Laurie of "Black Adder" and "House" fame. His role as Mr. Palmer expands as the plot moves along; his character grounds the emotions at times when they threaten to spin out of control.

It would be easy to say the performances of Winslet and Thompson should have been rewarded with golden statuettes on Oscar night but 1995 (the late 90s, really) was a time when they were still making quality pictures. Let us be satisfied that those fine actresses (and many others I haven't mentioned) turned in such great work here. I dare say, note perfect work. OK, I'll say it, Ang Lee should have won for Best Director. Nothing against Mel Gibson, who is a lot smarter and talented than his more recent blacklisting would suggest, but Braveheart is a revenge picture. Anybody can play dressup and make a revenge picture.

I don't like giving away 10s on imdb. This might actually be my first. But to dock Sense and Sensibility I'd have to find a fault. Until then, I'm giving it a 10.

Violence (1947)

Fight Club of 1947

[6/10 · 9 April 2024]

The movie has veterans of WWII being recruited to be part of a group that will use violence to accomplish the goals of bigger men. A young go-getter female reporter infiltrates it. Very early plot twist: on the way back to Chicago to file her stories, she gets in a motor vehicle accident, her typed-out stories are burned up in the car fire, and she gets amnesia. Dun-dun-duhhh....

Nancy Coleman is convincing as the reporter who is distressed about her loss of memory, although she rubs her temple too many times. Steve Fuller, who surely must have got his start as Kirk Douglas's stand-in, is a convincing male lead here, but he's clearly in support of Coleman.

It's gritty, adult fare for 1947. It might not be splattered-blood Bonnie & Clyde violence but sometimes implied violence is actually more dramatic.

At one of the rallies - these are all recently released WWII vets, remember - one guy stands up and gives a highly unlikely w0kified speech right out of 2024 about how "hate and violence alone won't solve any of our problems." He is quickly ushered out.

There are some unlikely plot twists that rely on characters making very bad decisions or things that happen a bit too conveniently to keep the running time tight and the sh00ting schedule on budget.

But it's an entertaining way to spend 90 minutes just the same.

There's enough meat to this plot that good writers with a respectable budget could churn out an excellent first season of a short-run prestige-cable show. Of course, the reporter would be a bl3ck tr2ns-g3nd3r and the underground club would all wear red baseball caps.

Which brings me to Eddie Muller's presentation of this movie on April 7, 2024. He suggested that movies such as Violence might have "inspired the House Un-American Activities Committee to launch investigations into 'purported' (here he gives an ironic hand wave) communist influences in Hollywood." It's well established by now that Hollywood (and Washington) were completely infiltrated by commies, as they are today. One's credibility takes a big hit to pretend otherwise. I expect better from Muller.

Don't go w0ke, TCM. Cause you know what rhymes with w0ke.

Rumble Fish (1983)

The Horror! The Horror!

[1/10 · 6 April 2024]

In Rumble Fish, Francis Ford Coppola doesn't have his main character travel up river to find a charismatic leader as he did in Apocalypse Now, along the way encountering all sorts of wackjobs in surreal situations.

Instead, he has his main character (Matt Dillon) travel up his own sss to find himself, along the way encountering various wackjobs (his brother, played by Mickey Rourke; and dad, played by Dennis Hopper) in surreal situations.

Rumble Fish, let me just say, is a lot less entertaining than Apocalypse Now. Instead of being glued to the screen, I wanted to throw a brick through it.

Now let's talk about the actors: instead of veteran pros Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne and Martin Sheen turning in memorable performances, we get a quartet of lightweight doofuses, Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Chris Penn and Nicolas Cage. Dillon faded away because he can't act - and I mean, AT ALL. Mickey Rourke fell off the face of the earth until his remarkable revival as the bloated t1tular character in The Wrestler. Penn had a memorable role in Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs before, um, binging his way to an early demise. Only Nicolas Cage went on to have a highly successful career despite having even less acting ability than the other three. In Hollywood, it pays to be Francis Ford Coppola's nephew.

Hopper couldn't act, either, to be honest. But here, as in Apocalypse Now, his name helped sell tickets, probably.

Considering how wealthy Coppola is from the Godfather films and his winemaking, I would have thought that by now he'd have bought up all known prints of this dreck and burned them.

Weekend (1967)

Another dud from the French Commie Pervert

[1/10 · 5 April 2024]

Breathless was such a...well...breath of fresh air. JL Godard's subsequent films - the half-dozen I've seen anyway - are unmitigated cr3pola. Weekend is one of them.

Movie opens with a couple discussing how they hope her dad and brother will die in a car accident so she'll get all the inheritance. Below their apartment a fight breaks out between two motorists that leaves one nearly dead. And then the wife tells a very boring 10-minute story about a threesome. Whoooooo. Edgy.....

Very soon thereafter the couple is one the road, inching past a traffic jam on a country road that features the celebrated 8-minute tracking shot. Big deal. None of the motorists they pass is doing anything remotely interesting. Turns out it was a traffic fatality. Whoooooo. Edgy....

Then they pull into town and there's another accident between a convertible and a tractor. Male passenger dies. Wife freaks out at farmer. Townspeople gawk. Whoooooo. Edgy.....

Now we are a half-hour into this dull, noisy (did I mentions somebody is always blowing their car horn?) and I've had about enough. I'm not waiting for the scenes of animal cruelty.

Kinda reminded me of David Cronenberg's Crash in its depravity. Or A Clockwork Orange.

If this is what passes for intellectual movie-making among the Frenchie marxists, we definitely fought the wrong team in WWII.

A Slightly Pregnant Man (1973)

The Hormone Fed Chicken Theory of male pregnancy

[8/10 · 2 April 2024]

Marcello Mastroianni is a driving instructor. His common-law wife Catherine Deneuve is a hairdresser. He's not feeling well one day so he sees a doctor, who suspects he might be pregnant.

There are many funny set pieces in this movie.

The initial visit to his general practitioner where she suspects pregnancy.

Back home, Mastroianni has to reassure a nearly hysterical Deneuve he doesn't have a fatal illness without telling her he's pregnant.

Together they go to the gynecologist for confirmation. Get a load of the way the specialist explains his theory of how men can get pregnant. If his theories hold water, male GenZers will be the solution to our birth-rate crisis.

And then back at work, trying to tell his co-worker.

What makes the movie funny to me is that everybody underplays it. Unlike in American movies where, say, Tom Hanks would be yelling his lines or Adam Sandler would be talking like a r3trrd, or Jim Carey would be pulling faces. Everyone here understands that the premise is ridiculous so to avoid descending into farce they play it straight.

As funny as it is, it's rewarding if you pay attention to what they're talking about. They get in their digs about gender equality. It's very much a movie inspired by the women's liberation movement of the 60s yet somehow it's still topical and fresh in 2024.

Summer with Monika (1953)

Feel bad hit of the summer

[5/10 · 2 April 2024]

Callow youth working in some kind of dishware distribution centre meets rando town skank.

She leaves her noisy, drunk-fuelled family. He gets fired.

They decide to run away and spend the summer on his dad's boat.

Lots of makeout scenes.

She gets pregnant and then things really gets rough for them, so they head back to the city. Guy gets a job on a train. Wife sleeps around.

Pretty much as depressing as every movie Bergman ever made. I learned nothing of human nature. But Harriet Anderson was pretty hot in her heyday. At least we got to see some Swedish flesh.

I just finished watching this movie 2 minutes ago and I've already erased it from my memory.

The Conquering Power (1921)

Valentino seals the deal

[8/10 · 1 April 2024]

There are certain screen idols who, a hundred years on, exist more in the popular culture than they do in their work itself.

For me, Rudolph Valentino (along with Greta Garbo) was a chorus name-drop in the wistful love song, Right Before Your Eyes (written by Ian Thomas and recorded by America). That was decades before my wife introduced me to classic movies and saw for myself what a miracle both Valentino and Garbo were.

In The Conquering Power, Valentino leaves no doubt why he was the superstar of his age. He is the attractive, assured son of a ridiculously wealthy Parisian. Unfortunately, dad loses it all in stock speculation and sends Valentino to live with a rich but miserly uncle before topping himself. Sounds like the feel-bad hit of the summer, right?

Well, hold on to your panties, ladies, 'cause you ain't seen nothing yet.

The uncle has a beautiful daughter (naturally) played by Alice Terry. They fall in love but the uncle schemes to keep them apart and recover his brother's lost fortune.

Alice Terry is wholesomely beautiful and her acting leaves no doubt why Valentino would fall for her.

Ralph Lewis as the greedy uncle gets a lot of screen time and he portrays his character so well you forget you're watching a silent movie. His facial expressions and body language are remarkable.

Director Rex Ingram got superlative performances out of his leads, in a story adapted from Balzac. But credit also is due to groundbreaking cinematographer John F Seitz, whose captured faces, motion and light in ways that make this movie still feel fresh 103 years later.

The climax is a thing to behold. To describe it would be to wreck it.

King of Kings (1961)

The snooze of snoozers

[3/10 · 1 April 2024]

If the hstorical Jesus had been this dull, he would have had trouble scraping together 12 Apostles, never mind scores of followers that spawned one of the world's great religions.

Beautiful, ill-fated Jeffrey Hunter - whose second wife Barbara Rush died today, Easter Sunday 2024 - just stares at stuff. Similar to screen titan Max Von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told. It would be another decade before Norman Jewison's Jesus Christ Superstar put an earthly, manly Jesus up on screen.

Rip Torn does his best in a bad wig as Judas. Harry Guardino as Barabbas is some all-time bad casting akin to any movie that has Ken Branagh trying to speak in an American accent. Screen tough guy Robert Ryan as John the Baptist should have worked, but they neutered his natural ferocity and had him play John as a punching bag.

If you've ever been to church on Good Friday when the congregation reads - or if you're really lucky, acts out - the Passion of Jesus from one of the gospels you know it can be an incredibly moving experience. I can still remember my mom sobbing quietly.

Alas, there is none of that dramatic tension in this movie. It's like flipping through a picture book aimed at children. I might even be so crass as to suggest the only thing missing was a shot of a bunny rabbit and some colorful eggs.

Pushover (1954)

Mostly for the cinematography and character

[7/10 · 31 March 2024]

This movie looks great, despite probably having a budget of a buck-fiddy. The streets and cars are always wet. Everything is sharp shiny black.

Character are great . The men are men. The women are gorgeous. The two get together, sometimes with tragic results.

What more could one ask for from a film noir?

The film has a significant weakness, however. Kim Novak can't act. Or at least, she was completely lost in this movie. None of her moves convinced me. Least of all jumping into the arms of the cop played by Fred MacMurray.

The rest of the cast did well, however. I love Dorothy Malone so any movie with her in it gets points just for that.

I might watch it again just for the look of it.

Ginger & Fred (1986)

Was Fellini actually ripping in TV freak shows, tho?

[6/10 · 30 March 2024]

A couple of dancers who were Italian knockoffs of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire during WWII reunite for an appearance on some low-brow variety show in the 80s.

Marcello Mastroianni and Giuletta Masini - their own brilliant careers in twilight - play the leads. Their performances are flawless. They recall their past lives and love wistfully, but honestly. And without the sickening schmaltz you'd usually see in a similar Hollywood movie.

It all takes place within the framework of the variety show, which included soothsayers, m1dgets, animal acts, and various weirdos.

Fellini's movies are full of sideshow freaks at the best of time. Often in incongruous, fantastical settings. So is he really ripping Italian television here? Or celebrating the same circus freaks he always did, but merely framing them within a television variety show?

Maybe it worked for Italian audiences at the time. I can't see it landing with American audiences.

If you want bona fide satire of television, Mankiewicz did it a decade early in Network. If you want the best affectionate satire of television, watch SCTV. Those writers drew their inspiration from real performers, real shows, real advertising. And the performers infused them with an affection that's missing in today's cynical world, where cruelty is mistaken for cleverness.

Anyway, it was great to see two fine performers late in their careers, if nothing else. One could make a very good case that Mastroianni was the greatest actor of all time. Masini didn't take second place to too many actresses, either.

Don't Drive Here: Delhi (2013) Season 1, Episode 1

NOW I understand

[10/10 · 26 March 2024]

Premise of the series is that Andrew Younghusband, host of Canada's Worst Driver and Canada's Worst Handyman, travels the world trying to drive in various shyttholes.

First episode sees him visiting Delhi.

Andrew gets behind the wheel of a cab, whereupon he learns there are no rules. Well, except for one: be responsible for what's ahead of you, forget about what's behind you. And even then, his Delhi cabbie/tutor doesn't show much regard for what's ahead. They weave in and out of traffic, cross into oncoming traffic, and cut off other motorists with impunity. 50 people die on Delhi streets every single day.

That night, Andrew goes to dinner with a couple of dudes of obvious Indian ancestry who've moved back to the homeland from, respectively, Ireland and Australia. They fill Andrew's head with tales of lethal road mayhem and drunk drivers. They note that you can run over a kid, but if you mow down a cow, "you're fkd!"

Next day he's in the car with a Delhi comedian who tells him "no shoulder checking" and admits he got his driver's licence not by taking a test but by bribing a police office with six bucks.

And that, Canada, is how you getr fresh-off-the-boat Sikhs behind 18-wheelers showing complete disregard for the safety of other drivers, plowing through a stop sign at a rural highway intersection, killing 16 members of the Humbolt Broncos on April 6, 2018.

If only Canadian Immigration - or at least various provincial road testing authorities - had watched this TV episode. We'd never let another Sikh - or any Eastern version of Indians - behind the wheel of so much as a rickshaw.