WHAT ARE WE WATCHING ON TV OCT-DEC 2023?

What caught your attention on TV (including DVD players), streaming device, even at movie theaters (!)? Note that the thread is going to quarterly updates. The thread will now be restarting in January 2024 rather than November 2023, so post thoughts here on anything you've viewed not only in Oct., but Nov. & Dec. 2023 as well.

Ladies in Retirement (Charles Vidor, 1941) -- currently streaming as part of the Criterion Channel's "Noir by Gaslight" package. It's the mid-1880s -- a tune from the big new hit The Mikado plays a role in the story -- and Ida Lupino is living as companion/housekeeper to Isobel Elsom (recreating her role in the then-recent Broadway play). Lupino invites her two troubled sisters (Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett) to stay for a few days, which turns into a few weeks; when Elsom's patience for the unwanted guests runs thin, Lupino must resort to desperate measures.

Lupino's significantly too young for the role; she was 23 trying to pass for 40-ish, and even that is younger than what the original play script calls for. It's a sign of the problem that the role of her nephew is played by Louis Hayward, who was Lupino's husband at the time and nine years *older* than her.

But aside from that, it's a pleasant little thriller with solid performances. Elsom has some nice comic moments as a former chorus girl who, it is strongly implied, is living in comfortable retirement because she was smart enough to wisely invest the gifts of her many gentleman friends; Lanchester and Barrett are effectively off-kilter as the unstable sisters.

I’m catching up on the films of Terence Davies in memory of the British director. On Amazon Prime, just finished viewing The Deep Blue Sea (2011 or 2012?) (not to be confused with the one with the sharks). 1 hr 38 min. Based on a Terence Rattigan play, & sometimes the dialog resonates more of theater than film, though visually all-movie. Cinematography Florian Hoffmeister, though Davies’s eye I believe is dominant in his oeuvre. Lady Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) leaves her husband Sir William (Simon Russell Beale) for a dashing RAF WWII vet Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston). Takes place in 1950s postwar England, so divorce is no easy matter. This is Weisz’s picture, where Rattigan has lust trumping love without being judgmental about it. Music plays a big role in Davies’s films, with Hilary Hahn’s violin playing of Barber’s Violin Concerto for ultra-romantic background, and the use of choral & group singing of popular period songs evoking the community of feeling. (At one point a suicidal Collyer is held back from jumping on the London Underground tracks with a musical memory of sheltering there during the war, with she & her husband and huddled groups singing the folk song “Molly Malone” -- the song continues to the last verse, where the subject is no longer alive alive oh)-- as bombs shake the foundations & a wonderful long tracking shot begins with the black end of the tunnel, past all the singers, past Hester & William, to anonymous shelterers mouthing the words). The other key song, “You Belong To Me” (”see the pyramids along the Nile …”) has friends & lovers singing to each other in a pub – I remember it vividly from the 90s TV series Ally McBeal, where it recalled the AM radio of my youth – then taken over by singer Jo Stafford. (I watched with closed captioning, where I had the benefit of songs & performers identified) It’s almost immediately followed by Hester & Freddie’s breakup. Not a film about romantic disillusionment, in my opinion – I get the sense that for Davies the romantic sexual feelings are real, and just as valid as the love Hester’s landlady manifests for her dying husband. That Hiddleston does not make a particularly attractive lover (in my opinion, perhaps influenced by is Loki persona, but Freddie makes it clear that he doesn’t love Hester the way she loves him) might be intentional on Davies’s & Rattigan’s part; Hester loves what she loves. Favorite half-remembered line: Freddie: “You’ll find me with the Impressionists.” (He’s offended because Hester doesn’t like his joke about the Cubists)

Via the Criterion Channel. The Long Day Closes (1992). Continuing exploration of director Terence Davies’s films. Not a long film, 1 hr 25 min; the end, a long take with the title song, came as something of a surprise. Reminded me of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but seemed far more elegiac. Beautifully photographed, with a re-creation of 1950s Liverpool based not on contemporary photographs but on the writer/director’s memories (filtered through fictional characters) of his boyhood between the ages of 7 & 11 (rather resembled the production design of the Netflix series Peaky Blinders). A couple of motifs that carried on later to The Deep Blue Sea -- the figure at the window (Weisz in Sea) & Davies’s surrogate Bud (Leigh McCormack) looking out at the world, and, most strikingly, the musical clips that are used to evoke the emotional retrospect rather than dialog. In some ways, it occurred to me that the rather brief length of the film might have been economic – the rights fees for the songs must have been enormous. His mother (Marjorie Yates) singing to herself (and him, the youngest in the family), the communal feeling of neighborhood groups singing spontaneously, everyone at a New Year’s party singing Auld Lang Syne, Bud & sister Titch (haven’t been able to identify the actor) singing Berlin’s “A Couple of Swells” – after a family/neighbor gathering trading popular songs (was this after a clip of Judy Garland doing a song?), the long series of dissolves with Debbie Reynolds singing “Tammie,” and of course the concluding “Long Day Closes.” But the shortness of the time covered, as I later learned, reflects the brief period of Davies’s childhood happiness, between the time his father died of cancer, and his large family was freed from his brutality, and the time he was sent off to secondary school, where he was mercilessly bullied, in part because he was seen as a “fruit.” (There are suggestions of the beginning of Bud’s isolation due to his dawning sexuality, but these are often suggested indirectly by the child’s sense of sin which Davies attributes to the Catholic Church of the times) A beautiful film, that perhaps throws light on possible underlying personal themes in The Deep Blue Sea, of being on the inside looking out, of missing out on the happy bonds of family life recalled in Long Day. A couple of documentaries that Criterion includes were enlightening, one on the use of Davies’s use of dissolves, one on his early life & film education, and one on his sexuality (he apparently lived alone all his life). Additional credits to the cinematographer, Michael Coulter, production designer Christopher Hobbs, Art Direction Karen Wakefield, film editor William Diver, & everyone in the music department, as well as the cast, mostly unknowns, especially the bickering couple with the husband who does impressions. I want to see this one again, plus take another look at The Magnificent Ambersons, an important dialog clip that Davies uses in the soundtrack, almost as an anti-technical allusion to Orson Welles’s voiceover, something Long Day notably does without.

It’s October, so horror is a theme for the movie streaming services. I stumbled across Cure (1997, 1 hr 51 min). Writer/Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Highly recommended; I caught it via the Criterion Channel, but it’s streamable/rentable at a low price on Prime Video. Another discovery for me, like Terence Davies, but thankfully KK is still with us; this appears to be the first film to put him on the international map & he’s made several more, so there’s much to explore. This is a horror/psychological thriller genre film, but though there is gore, the film's power is based on suggestion rather than plot, though I noted complaints from one IMDB poster that the Criterion version is less explicit & more ambiguous than the original theatrical release. I think this might be a feature rather than a bug with regard to the Criterion version. I’m probably in agreement with a recent article in the New York Times by Beatrice Loayza, 10/08/2023: When Did the Plot Become the Only Way to Judge a Movie? This is not a murderous ghost crawls out of the TV Ringu-type movie. Opens with a mentally troubled patient (Anna Nakagawa) reading from a Japanese translation of the Bluebeard story, with her doctor trying to get her to focus. Then cut to a scene with a man walking down a tunnel, ripping out a piece of pipe. Then a longshot of a woman being beaten to death with a piece of pipe & the killer showering like a full body Lady Macbeth. Then, police on the scene, & we’re introduced to detective Kenichi Takabe (Koji Yakusho) & psychologist Makoto Sakuma (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) examining the body, with a large X carved over her throat. No problem finding the culprit, who’s been crouching behind a wall panel. At the station, culprit admits he did it; can’t explain why. “Devil made me do it,” Sakuma comments sarcastically. Scene on a desolate looking beach where a man sketching encounters an apparently lost man who can’t recall his identity. The artist takes him home & the man without an identity notices the artist’s wife in passing. Despite the artist’s questioning, no information forthcoming. Cut to a scene with the artist bursting through the upper story window of his house, then a shock cut of a bloody bed. At this point, KK has introduced the key players: the detective, the psychiatrist, the detective’s wife Fumie (the Bluebeard lady), and the mysterious stranger, later identified as Kunio Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara). Mamiya, a former psychology student, comes across as the embodiment of a Dostoyevsky character, empty inside, with an uncanny ability to observe & manipulate the inner lives of any of the characters who come within his orbit; he is presented as a kind of reincarnation of the scientist/occultist Franz Mesmer, whose research on trance & suggestion would eventually influence Sigmund Freud & psychoanalysis, the “talking cure,” though KK seems to indicate that talk leads nowhere. If there is anything concrete in terms of psychological observation, misogyny seems to be a theme; either Mamiya induces men to murder women or induces women to get the jump on their potential murderers & do the deed themselves. All this through the power of suggestion, with one of the Criterion commentaries suggesting that the film viewer is also taken in by the power of suggestion, as well as whether the last section of the film is actually Takabe’s fantasy brought about by his adversary.

I am delighted that the 1980s series Moonlighting is finally streaming (at Hulu) for the first time. I never saw the show during its original run, and it's delightful. If you've forgotten it, or weren't around at the time, it stars Bruce Willis -- his first major role -- and Cybill Shepard. She's a retired supermodel whose financial advisors have stolen all of her money; all she's left with is a tiny detective agency that she bought as a tax writeoff. Willis is the guy who runs the agency, and he convinces her not to shut it down, arguing that with her fame to bring in clients, they can make a go of it. Lots of rapid-fire banter -- the scripts for a typical hour-long episode were said to be as long as those for the average feature film -- delivered with glorious screwball energy. From what I've read, the show gets increasingly meta as it goes along, with jokes that break the fourth wall; the on-set relationship between Shepard and Willis apparently got very strained by the end of the series, and that too was written into the show, with jokes and plot points making deliberate reference to the behind-the-scenes drama. Only 67 episodes, and I'm so looking forward to finally seeing it.

>6 KeithChaffee: I loved that show so much when it originally aired and I'm delighted that it's finally streaming. I'm a little jealous that you get to experience the delight for the first time.

Yesterday watched Meg2: The Trench (2023; 1 hr 56 min) because according to my cable service it was going to cycle off HBO/MAX on Oct 15. Wasn’t expecting much, but it wasn’t all that bad. Appears to have been co-financed by Chinese production companies, so Hollywood star Jason Statham & Chinese cinema star Jing Wu both live to fight super sharks another day. Nor does rapster Page Kennedy get the usual POC early death shuffle even though it’s hard to tell whether he’s a martial arts or a comedy supporting character. I will say all the bad guys meet bad ends, including a nasty Tyrannosaurus Rex in the cold open featured in the trailer. The usual clichés are played for laughs – e.g. the pet dog that gets grabbed by the Giant Squid but is rescued by Meiying (Sophia Cai), the adolescent stowaway with the schnozz; the rather ineffectual villain Montes (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) reaching for his pistol when Statham puts down his machine gun when … well, guess what happens -- and Jess (Skyler Samuels) gets the Samuel L. Jackson treatment in a call out to the earlier shark picture with the similar title to the Terence Davies movie.

Statham (who cares what his name is in the movie anyways; it’s JS) seems to me the modern day Buster Stone Face Keaton in much of the movie’s action sequences; this is the stuff that would have wowed the audiences in Buster’s day; my guess is he would have grumbled about the inauthenticity of CGI even if it requires the staffing size of a third world country he & his production company would have killed for; the stunts are funny & thrilling, as they are in Sherlock Jr. and all the others silent comedy classics -- and about the same amount of dialog. The sea monsters do their business at a colorful Thai vacation resort; people, porpoises, & boats are devoured; there are carnivorous amphibians vs a small army of incompetent mercenaries, including remote villainess Sienna Guillory who for some reason decides to helicopter in – but the copter is put to good use, in the end.

>6 KeithChaffee: I've held off subscribing to Hulu for years; with Netflix, Prime, & my cable service I feel overwhelmed with content. But Moonlighting makes it even more tempting. Get thee behind me, but ... are you watching the version with commercials, or, if not, does it make a difference?

>9 featherbear: I'm watching with no ads.

Streaming at Criterion: The Blue Caftan (Maryam Touzani, 2022).

We are in Morocco, where Halim (Saleh Bakri) works as a tailor, making caftans for the local women. His wife Mina (Lubna Azabal) works the front of the shop, negotiating with fabric salesman and soothing customers who are impatient with Halim's slowness. Halim is a traditionalist, doing all of the intricate decorative embroidery by hand. In order to keep up with the work, Halim and Mina hire Youssef (Ayoub Missioui), the latest in a long line of assistants, none of whom have lasted long enough to graduate from assistant to apprentice. But Youssef may be different. He has a genuine skill for the work, and seems to be interested in learning it. He also seems to be interested in Halim, and Halim in him.

Because the movie is set in, and made in, Morocco, not a particularly welcoming place where gay men are concerned, this setup raises dreadful expectations; it feels inevitable that the movie will end in, at the very least, painful humiliation for one or both men. But this is not that movie; the upheavals here are primarily emotional, not physical, and it is a calmer and gentler movie than you might expect. It's a movie with deep compassion for all of its characters, filled with grace and forgiveness.

Rather boring (American) football game, & one of the Criterion Channel’s interviews with Terence Davies got me on the track of Orson Welles. Apparently The Magnificent Ambersons was a major influence (Davies signature move is recalling the past). First began by catching up on films Welles directed (and often wrote & edited) I hadn’t seen before: The Stranger, Mr Arkadin, The Immortal Story, & Othello. The last I haven’t gotten to yet, & I’ll probably need to review the Shakespeare text at some point. Next, I’ll try to re-watch Ambersons, Lady From Shanghai, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight, & Citizen Kane. Not sure how far I’m going to go with this!

The Stranger (1946; 1 hr 34 min) I accessed via my cable service’s MGM+, but it’s also available on Amazon Prime. The print looked a bit old -- MGM+, unlike Criterion, is not very quality selective -- like most of Welles’s movies, this one’s in black & white -- The Immortal Story is the only one on my Welles to-view list that’s in color -- it was an RKO production. Before I got around to it, I tried watching a Jim Brown American International Picture from the 80’s called Slaughter, what Quentin Tarantino calls a “revengeaumatic,” (one of Tarantino’s fond childhood memories, just as American movie musicals press Terence Davies’s nostalgia button) – also on MGM+; probably on Prime as well. I found Slaughter’s pacing and posturing to be too slow; the acting wasn’t so hot either. Not the case with the Welles film from 1946, which moves right along. Although credited to Ernest Nims, I wondered if Welles had a hand in it, but if I understand correctly, RKO had issues with the film length & Welles’s production schedule, & cut out some of the scenes, so some of the pacing might be credited to the studio. Aside from the print, where Welles’s fondness for shadows makes the film more visually obscure than he may have intended – the cinematographer Russell Metty did I fine job, as I recall, on Touch of Evil -- the studio score by Bronislau Kaper seemed overbearing & telegraphic in the old fashioned way.

Edward G. Robinson is Wilson, a war crimes investigator, on the trail of Hans Kindler, mastermind of the Nazi genocide planning, a secretive fellow who somehow managed to never be photographed. To find him, Wilson convinces the investigators to release Konrad Meinike (Konstantin Shayne), one of Kindler’s minions, & trail him (the trail led to some scenes in South America cut by the studio to Welles’s chagrin) eventually to a small (fictional) college town in Connecticut (no Nazis at Yale by golly!). As it turns out, Kindler has surfaced as history professor Charles Rankin (Orson Welles), about to be married to a supreme court justice’s daughter Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young). Rankin is obsessed with clocks & time; his hobby is repairing the town hall clock reminiscent of Medieval Germany with near life-size figurines that circle the clock face when the hour chimes (at least when the clock gets fixed). Meinike (I kept thinking of the car dealer in Connecticut that advertises on TV) meets Kindler/Rankin at a secret rendezvous in the woods, where Rankin strangles his loyal minion so the masquerade & wedding can continue. Unfortunately, Mary has a nosy golden retriever that thwarts Rankin’s efforts to hide the body, so Rankin poisons the mutt. Meanwhile, Wilson tries to convince the now married Mary that her husband is a war criminal, even showing what appears to be real life documentary footage of the concentration camps, but she can’t be convinced her new husband is Kindler. Kindler/Rankin, on the other hand, decides that Mary needs to go the way of her dog, & sends her a message to meet him at the clock tower, where he has prepared a booby trap. There is a comic figure in general store manager Mr Potter (Billy House); he came across to me as a bit of a jerk (note the way he treats his elderly assistant); I wonder if he was Welles’s American equivalent of a Good German. He plays a role in a Hitchcockian checkers game with Rankin when R/K tries to establish an alibi far from the clock tower where the trap is set to kill his wife. Welles clearly had no truck with the Nazis, but I couldn’t help thinking how the “enemy among us” scenario would be flipped to communists in the 50s. Anthony Veillor gets the screenwriting credits; how much Welles contributed I don’t know, but I wonder what he thought about the use of the plot mechanics of his film by the right wing in later years. PS: while I kvetched a little about some of the photography, many of the close-ups of Loretta Young are exemplary Hollywood glamour photography; they don’t shoot ‘em like they did back in the day.

Via the Criterion Channel, with documentaries & interviews that I assume are included with the Criterion disk. The Immortal Story (1968; released 1976; American version 57 min.) This was intended as a film to celebrate a French TV network’s switch to color; Welles was more comfortable shooting in B&W but the network prevailed. In any case, Welles spent so much time diddling with the editing the deal fell through, & the original production company was bankrupted; I believe it wasn’t released until years later. There are at least 2 versions, one in French & one in English; the French version is 7 min shorter; has to do with editing & slightly different scenes. The selling point for the TV network was not Welles but Jeanne Moreau, a big name in France. Based on a novel (?) or novella by Isak Dinessen; one reason for the release delay was Welles left town to work on another Dinesen project in Hungary & only came back after the financing of that picture fell through. Dinesen set the story in Canton in the early 20th century; Welles re-set it to Macao because it was easier to fake Macao through discreet shooting in Spanish villages. The Anglo-American version is narrated by Welles; in the introduction he explains that the merchant Charles Clay bankrupted his partner Ducrot, who committed suicide, leaving his family destitute. (The bankrupted producer of the film might have had some thoughts.) Clay (Welles) lives in Ducrot’s mansion, alone & without family, his only companion his accountant & general assistant Elishama Levinsky (Roger Coggio; Welles originally wanted Joseph Cotten, but Cotten couldn’t adjust to the schedule; Coggio is fine; it’s hard to imagine Cotten as an Ashkenazi Jew). Clay’s recreation is to listen as Levinsky reading through Clay’s old accounts. Clay is aware that he is near his end (a very bulky Welles suggests subliminally that there might be an autobiographical resonance) and asks Levinsky to read something else. Levinsky, who lost his family in a Russian pogrom, first reads from a prophecy by Isaiah, passed on to him by another pogrom escapee, but Clay is uninterested in prophecy, since (as we later learn), he used such predictions to assure investors, and is quite skeptical of their validity. Then Levinsky comes up with a story about an old rich man with a young wife, who picks up a sailor in the streets & pays the young man 5 guineas to get his wife with child, so the rich man can have someone to leave his wealth. Clay has heard the story himself, and they agree that the story has no more validity than Clay’s investor predictions. Unlike the stories told in his account books, the sailor story is just a story, not based on actuality, but Clay becomes obsessed with making the story real. Although he has no wife, he orders Levinsky to find a young woman to have the child. As it turns out, Levinsky finds Virginie (Jeanne Moreau), the only daughter of Ducrot, the partner Clay drove to suicide. Clay finds a destitute sailor, who has survived a shipwreck & needs money to buy passage out of Macao. The sailor’s name is Paul (Norman Eshley; Brit playing a Dane). Assuming Dinesen was having fun with naming the puppet lovers Paul & Virginie after the Chateaubriand* romance – the polar opposite of “real.” Welles (as well as the TV network) wanted Moreau (she had parts in other Welles films – e.g. Doll Tearsheet in Chimes at Midnight), but I don’t know whether it is Dinesen or Welles who have the sailor as a young man & the surrogate “young” wife a 40 year old (Moreau b. 1928) in an ironic duo; with the sailor seemingly convinced the “wife” is a young woman. The apparently rich old man having two people act out a fantasy story to “make it real” seems like Welles being self-conscious about his art (his former partner destroyed all of his possessions before leaving the house – except for the mirrors); perhaps there is an implication that the anonymous story telling collective of sailors’ tales finally is stronger and more lasting than the works of a self-involved auteur. Or that an aging & rather dour looking actor like Moreau can become the Virginie of fantasy through movie magic.

*My oops; Paul et Virginie is by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.

On MAX/HBO using the Studio Ghibli channel, Ponyo (2008, 1 hr 41 min). Writer/director Hayao Miyazaki. I’d seen it before years ago; watching it again (got bored with college football) and struck by how much I’d forgotten – though Ponyo running on the typhoon waves was unforgettable. Watched most of it late last night in the Japanese version w/subtitles, finished this morning, then a 2nd viewing of the entire English language version.

Sort of a relief to watch a modern animated film without the self-conscious jokes for the grown-ups associated with Pixar et al. The practice of using name actors for the voices adds a Hollywood effect that does somewhat undermine the overall vision of the movie, though only Liam Neeson’s voice as sorcerer Fujimoto was too distracting in this one – confess I didn’t recognize the voices of Tina Fey, Matt Damon, or Cate Blanchett. I’m not familiar enough with contemporary Japanese cinema/TV to identify any voices in the Japanese version.

The MAX caution of this G rated family film is “magic.” This one might seem to be low hanging fruit for Moms for Liberty, since Miyazaki’s fantasies are nowhere in any Christian universe: here all the forces are pagan-Buddhist, all of nature is potentially conscious, with a super Granmamare (did I hear some reference to Kwan-Yin in the dialog somewhere?), mother of Ponyo, the Great Mother in ultimate control.

The story is an eclectic soup of Little Mermaid, 20K Leagues Under the Sea (Fujimoto as Captain Nemo battling the human pollution of the oceans), Spongebob’s pineapple, Wagnerian Gotterdammerung, Noah’s flood, & the aforementioned Shinto/Buddhist religious amalgam I associate with Japanese culture (as well as the eclectic cultural borrowings). Ponyo is a big sister goldfish (she has a school of sister goldfish), the progeny of Fujimoto & Granmamare. Apparently infected with a Pandoran curiosity, she escapes the bubble of Fujimoto’s submarine, gets trapped in a bottle dragged up by a garbage trawl, where she is found by 5 yr old Sosuke.

In breaking open the bottle, the boy cuts his thumb, Ponyo licks up the blood, & acquires language, love, & a desire to become human. Sosuke takes her to school in his beach pail (filled w/fresh water somewhat oddly), next door to an elder care facility where his mother works. (Sosuke’s level of comfort with the elderly, even the rather abrasive Toki, is a nice touch) On the way, Ponyo acquires a taste for ham. (A non-kosher preference though not sure what level of transgression is implied; better than human blood in any case)

Fujimoto eventually recovers his wandering goldfish & traps her in his lair beneath the sea, but Ponyo refuses to be a fish, magically grows chicken legs & arms, eventually human limbs, and then lets the ocean into the controlled environment of Fujimoto’s lair, where she opens Fujimoto’s Bluebeardish innersanctum & releases the forces that unbalance all of nature. Ponyo escapes the lair with her sisters on the backs of magic infused fish in a titanic typhoon with a Wagnerian soundtrack (here is where she scuttles over gigantic wave-enchanted fish -- Fujimoto had named her Brunnhilde before Sosuke renamed/liberated her).

The waves & Ponyo follow Sosuke & his mother Risa as they escape the elder care facility to get home. Risa & Sosuke meet up with their former goldfish, which they accept without much fuss. Risa introduces Ponyo to milk & honey & -- separately -- ramen (with ham topping of course); Ponyo falls asleep – her liberation has upset the balance of nature & the dream-like result has most of the world (or Japan) submerged by the rising ocean as the moon comes perilously close to earth (all the satellites drop out of orbit, so no telephone service!), and the oceans are now reverted to fish & other fauna of the Devonian age (great bit where Sosuke & Ponyo identify the fishes by their scientific names).

Risa leaves Sosuke with the sleeping Ponyo to check up on the elders in her care; when she doesn’t return, Sosuke & Ponyo set off to find her in the drowned world after Ponyo magically turns his toy boat into a working yacht for two (powered by a candle). Interesting meeting in the middle of a flooded forest, where they encounter a boat with a mother and baby. Ponyo offers soup to the baby, but the mother explains that the baby is not ready for soup. However, the mother explains that she herself can eat the soup & turn it into milk for the baby. The transformation of food into mother’s milk seems to be a theme I’m unable to fully unpack – Granmamare has a noteworthy expansive chest, and recall Risa’s milk and honey. (Learning experience for the little ones that may require Parental Guidance; possible Moms for Liberty No No.) Balance is finally restored. Switching now to NFL Red Zone, yearning for a ham sandwich & a glass of milk.

Finally got a chance to see My Dinner With Andre (1981) via my cable service’s TCM “in case you missed it” movie base (but it may also be available via MAX’s TCM channel). Directed by Louis Malle. I’ve always associated it with another Louis Malle film Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) – never realized that there was such a chronological difference. Vanya is a wonderfully conversational “rehearsal” of the Chekhov play that I’ve loved from the first time I rented it from a downtown New Haven VHS store back in the day. As I’ve noted elsewhere, I do like conversation films, but this one was something of a disappointment.

We have an intense conversation in an expensive NY restaurant – entirely staged, of course, and according to IMDB, filmed at a hotel in Virginia. The waiters are unobtrusive (rather rudely ignored as people in my view). Though the actors claim their characters are fictional personae regarding the world views they present, they use their real names, I’m pretty sure the names of their significant others, & their (general) residencies & career backgrounds. Wallace Shawn, son of the New Yorker editor William Shawn, does the voiceover intro, presenting himself as the struggling playwright forced to take on acting jobs to put food on the table (he refers to his girlfriend, Deb – I’m assuming we’re supposed to fill this out as author Deborah Eisenberg – supporting the two of them since the acting career hasn’t been doing well either). Andre Gregory, in contrast, is the avant-garde theater director/producer, a friend from the past who summons Shawn for a dinner conversation out of the blue (he does pay though I suppose this isn’t noted until the end).

Shawn notes that via the mutual friends grapevine that Gregory has been acting a little freaky – seen weeping on the street after viewing Bergman’s Autumn Sonata (just added it to my tbw list, though the reference sounds like a Woody Allen joke). Gregory dominates the first half. He’s going through an existential crisis, leaving his family to visit the Sahara, India, Tibet, Scotland, Norway. Feels unable to teach (which I assume is how he sees directing/theater), acute awareness of the meaninglessness of it all. I would say this might have something to do with my disappointment, since he presents as a person you want to avoid at parties you shouldn’t be going to in any case. At a certain point I was holding my head to prevent it from exploding as gas seemed to be flowing directly from my TV soundbar into my frontal lobes as Gregory told of eating sand in the Sahara with his monk friend from India or Tibet (who later entertains Gregory’s children by levitating his body on his fingers). Malle waits for the right moment, then Shawn counters with his defense of rationality, science, living in the moment with Deb, delivered with the appropriate Woody Allen regular NYU guy local accent (Gregory has the smooth patter of someone used to obtaining arts grants). This seems a little off, since, while financially not anywhere in Gregory’s league, Shawn still seems a tad more privileged than the waiters, even though he tries to come across as the hick. Gregory partially concedes, and the conclusion seems to lead to a discussion about living into old age with your significant other without getting bored – Gregory tells of being rejuvenated in his relationship with his Chita (Cheetah?) after a mock live burial -- with Shawn in a taxi as a panorama of the shops of affluent NY serve as a background to the credit roll, as he returns to home and hearth. Granted, less obvious than Woody Allen outside looking in satire of intellectuals, but still …

Catching up on movies as the month of October wanes. For Halloween, pulled The Devil-Doll (1936, 1 hr 18 min) from my cable service’s TCM database. This one was directed by Tod Browning, with screenplay by Garrett Forte, Guy Endore, & Erich von Stroheim. This is probably the only Tod Browning film I’ve seen other than Freaks (1932); I associate him with the bizarre.

This one uses the technique of film miniaturization as its gimmick; Lionel Barrymore is central to the acting, playing an escaped convict & an eccentric grandmother/dollmaker. Barrymore is Paul Lavond, a banker framed by his Parisian partners. The film opens with him escaping with a mad scientist he has befriended, who leads Lavond to his secret laboratory. Mad Scientist Marcel’s bright idea is to save the world by shrinking all living things in order to conserve the earth’s resources. Side benefits: the shrunk can be mind-controlled by their unshrunk creators (how the screenwriters envisioned the new world order working seems disturbing, but the film has more limited purposes in … mind); another is that the atomic shrinkage allows half-wits to become full-wits, though unfortunately this does not seem to have been developed.

The MS dies of an unexpected heart attack before world domination can be set in motion, & Lavond relocates to Paris with Marcel’s wife, Malita (Rafaela Ottiano, with a Bride of Frankenstein lightning streak in her hair & a talent for bulging her eyes that rivals Marty Feldman’s in Young Frankenstein). Lavond’s ambitions are more limited than Marcel’s: revenge on his partners, checking up on the progress of his daughter Lorraine (Maureen O’Sullivan), & secretly touching base with his mother (Lucy Beaumont). As grandmotherly Madame Mandilip, Lavond opens a shop specializing in surprisingly life-like dolls with Malita as his assistant. Most of Barrymore’s emoting is his travesti portrayal of the murderous matron whose wares are used to take revenge on his partners. In the climax, he/she uses their campaign of terror to persuade the surviving partner Matin (Pedro de Cordoba) to confess – so Lorraine will no longer blame him for her mother’s suicide & free up his fortune so she can marry taxi driver Toto; father & daughter never knowingly meet; Lavon has too much baggage to return to society. Entertaining, but not a Freaks; interesting suggestion that the wildest horrors of science can be subverted by the minor vices of revenge & greed.

Also from the TCM database, I watched Orphée aka Orpheus (1950, 1 hr 52 min) & The In-Laws (1979, 1 hr 43 min). Avant-garde vs Mainstream laughs, but both had me laughing out loud. The former is written & directed by Jean Cocteau (restored film in French w/English subtitles); this was a re-watch. Cocteau takes classical myth (poet Orpheus rescuing wife Eurydice from Hades), combines it with surrealism, then with the domestic bickering of French farce, which is what made it hilarious for me – there's similar domestic infighting in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast which I’m currently re-watching. I'm seeing retroactive David Lynch & Luis Bunuel in Cocteau's Orphée melange, though Cocteau's jokes seem more subdued.

On the other hand, I was seeing The In-Laws for the first time, and it’s a funny combination of borscht belt humor with Max Roach physical comedy. Stand-out performances for me include the many reactions of Alan Arkin as dentist Sheldon Kornpett, Peter Falk’s unflappable “CIA/consultant” Vince Ricardo, and Richard Libertini as the mad General Garcia (supporting actor his alter ego fist) with plans for world domination via inflation, though James Wong has some nice moments emoting (not sure whether in Mandarin or Cantonese). Funny almost from the start thanks to Andrew Bergman’s script; directed by Arthur Hiller. Maybe the last 8 min or so not as frantically funny in order to stage the wedding always looming on the horizon as Ricardo & Kornpett scam CIA man Ed Begley out of 5 million or so of Garcia’s money – weddings can be so expensive. Speaking of re-makes in the other thread, hard to believe somebody had the nerve to re-boot this one. The nerve!

Sabotage
Crime, Thriller

"A Scotland Yard undercover detective is on the trail of a saboteur who is part of a plot to set off a bomb in London. But when the detective's cover is blown, the plot begins to unravel." Synopsis from IMDB
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Sylvia Sidney, Oscar Homolka, Desmond Tester, John Loder

I feel that I have neglected Hitchcock's work so am ordering a few movies of his from our library. He is and was the master of the thriller drama!

Oh, you have so much good stuff to look forward to!

>18 JulieLill: I don't think I've seen this one, but I understand it's based on The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, which I read long ago in college & would definitely recommend (caveat: per Wikipedia, the movie is "loosely based" on the Conrad novel).

Last minute Halloween viewing the night before. Criterion Channel. Duel (1971). Director, Steven Spielberg; screenplay Richard Matheson. Dennis Weaver (as David Mann = Mann against the Machine; David vs Goliath) in a 70s orange Plymouth Valiant (my mom drove one of these back in the day but baby blue though – telling you tougher than it looks) being persecuted by a gazillion ton diesel tank truck (tank has FLAMMABLE in quite legible caps on it) for rudely tailgating on largely empty highways & byways of the Southwest. Spielberg’s direction triumphs over Matheson’s writing of Mann’s “internal dialog,” with its notable lack of expletives. Somewhat disappointed that Spielberg didn’t exploit the FLAMMABLE at Mann’s triumph over the truck (it was a TV film so budget limitations?). But did like the photography of the said highways & byways by Jack Marta, which had to have influenced the last part of Tarantino’s Death Proof, Q’s nostalgic tribute to 70s drive-in (& TV) movies. I don’t see why this couldn’t be re-made as a TV movie on FX with a Tesla driven by Gwyneth Paltrow vs an anonymous 4X4 gas guzzler, silence vs sound, set on the Texas highways. If Weaver had been packing this would never have happened … updated version Gwyneth has an AR-15 in the trunk in the climax.

PS Forgot to mention the great scene where Mann unable to push-start a stalled school bus & drives off; the truck pauses the pursuit & instead of running over the children gives the bus the decisive push to show who's got the bigger one. Plus Weaver in the telephone booth with the truck crashing through the poor gas station lady's snake collection!

Caught this just before Amazon Prime cycled it off: Pulse (2001). Written & directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Early cinematic philosophizing about Internet causing social isolation; ghosts on the computer monitors induce incels to hang themselves or they lure the lonely into literal chat rooms & transform them into grease spots. Dated computer equipment (including the sound of the computers connecting over the phone lines) has something of the nostalgia hit of the sideburns & aviator glasses of Duel. Those in the know try to seal off the doors from which the ghosts emerge with Red Tape; not sure if red tape has the same bureaucratic implication in Japanese culture. One character speculates that with deaths over the years, the ghostly realm has run out of space & the population is starting to emerge into the realm of mortals. Plus speculation that when we pass to the other side there will be no “we” but each one’s isolation continues, so are the ghosts emerging looking (in vain) for company? As the film continues, the human population seems to be vanishing. Japanese Antonioni. Checking out KK cause I really liked his Cure (1997), which seems less dated than this one & still highly recommended, but the later movie is still worth a watch -- not on the Prime rotation, but surely rentable somewhere or other.

Confession: spent much of the evening watching the FXX Simpsons Treehouse of Horror marathon. Some interesting movie parodies, including one of Parasite, the original of which I have yet to see.

What a blast from the past! I remember watching Duel when it first came out! I might have to find a copy of it to re-watch!

On MGM+ (but also available via Amazon Prime, I believe) watched El Dorado (1966) & Lady of Burlesque (1943). The start of two potential deep cinematic dives. Recently finished the Howard Hawks interview by Peter Bogdanovich in Who the Devil Made It – will probably wait till TCM revives some of the Hawks, as they do periodically -- and Criterion Channel has some great Barbara Stanwycks in its Pre-Code Divas, November Noirs, & Women of the West, not to mention a few Stans I have lingering on my DVR. Lady of Burlesque, directed by William Wellman, with a screenplay by Gypsy Rose Lee & James Gunn, based on a novel by Lee. We’re on 42nd St NY, at a popular burlesque theater which has recently replaced an opera house (changing times), where the former Wagnerian baritone is the mail sorter for the staff. The sound track static was so loud I had a hard time following the dialog, but the comedy & dance routines offered a glimpse of the period’s entertainment (not sure when it was set chronologically; the 30s? – it looked like a 30s movie to be honest). Rather startling to see Stanwyck’s skills as a singer & dancer in her number with Michael O’Shea (as Biff Brannigan), though one needs to recall that she began her career as a NY showgirl (in the movie she plays burlesque queen Dixie Daisy, formerly Deborah Hoople). She survives 2 attempted murders, there’s a girlfriend-beating gangster who’s a suspect, a Russian “princess” from Toledo Ohio, and a G-string used as a garrote. More interesting & entertaining than I would have suspected, especially the musical number with Stanwyck & O’Shea.

What struck me throughout El Dorado was the cinematography by Hawks stalwart Harold Rosson. Did MGM do a restoration? To me the print I was viewing could have almost passed as HD. Sharp all the way through in a 1966 film -- in fact, it's clear throughout that it's all taking place on movie sets, emphasizing the artificiality of Hawks World. I can’t remember the number of times I’ve seen it; Western comfort food. Based on a novel, but Hawks & screenwriter Leigh Brackett (I think I just learned she was an early pioneer in pulp SF writing) thoroughly redid it into a Hawks movie. John Wayne is the professional gunslinger Cole Thornton, Thornton’s old friend is alcoholic sheriff J.P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum), James Caan is Thornton’s young sidekick, Mississippi, Arthur Hunnicutt has the Walter Brennan deputy sheriff role of Bull. I’m not sure the Hawks code of the west business of “man’s gotta be a man” still works for me, but Hawks kept me watching, even when I knew what would happen next. One part I had mercifully forgotten was Caan’s racist Chinese delivery boy act that he uses to sneak into the back of the saloon; interesting to compare with Stanwyck’s treatment of a Chinese waiter in the earlier film, where he appears to be treated as a fellow human.

I get very jealous when I hear about TCM programmes. How I long to see the 'Pre-code Divas'. I'm a huge Stanwyck fan and over here in the Uk its difficulr to obtain her early films on DVD/Bluray.

As to TCM it has been lost to British viewers altogether(previously available through Sky or Virgin) and when we did have it the programming was nothing like the variety and depth that US viewers get. I am aware of changes within the company and wonder what regular viewers are noticing with a change of management.

>24 Maura49: I'm generally accessing TCM via my cable service Xfinity here in Connecticut. For some reason TCM is thrown in as part of a sports package; films broadcast on the TCM schedule can also be accessed for a short period (between a week to a month generally) from the network database. Films can be DVR'd on the day of broadcast, but not during the post-broadcast network database period. The DVR option is also useful because on the US East Coast the international films are broadcast after midnight.

My Xfinity package also provides access to the MGM+ database, which seems to parallel the Amazon Prime streaming database; MGM+/Amazon Prime just seem to throw in practically anything (including out of copyright silent films) just to maintain breadth of service. I also use Amazon Prime (via my Samsung TV app but also accessible via an Xfinity app) to access Freevee, which also is a source for older films, but with commercials. Amazon Prime also has a large database of streaming rentals; the older films (e.g. some of the major Howard Hawks movies) usually for less than $5 for 48 hrs. This is comparable to the old video rental stores. Downside is the Amazon Prime subscription itself is pricey, though I'm not sure if renting a streaming video on Amazon requires a subscription to Prime.

I'm also able to access TCM via HBO/MAX streaming, though the organization of the MAX website is pretty awful. Points to MAX for including the Studio Ghibli films (in both dubbed English & also original Japanese w/subtitles). TCM on MAX tends to hold classic old films in its database for a longer period of time, but also includes high grossing older films I wouldn't call classic, which I blame on HBO/MAX's merger with Discovery+. For now, the merger hasn't seriously affected the cable version of TCM that I use. Of course, the MAX subscription includes the many excellent HBO series & documentaries, some CNN series including Anthony Bourdain travel docs, & a number of good BBC Planet Earth documentaries. (HBO & Showtime were bundled into my Xfinity sports package, which also allowed access to MAX)

Another good source for older films is the Criterion Channel. This is also a streaming service I subscribed from my desktop computer but am able to stream on my Samsung TV. Criterion organizes films in collections somewhat like a film museum curates retrospectives, so right now I'm checking out a Women of the West collection which includes Johnny Guitar (w/Joan Crawford), The Furies (w/Stanwyck & Walter Huston, dir. Anthony Mann) & Forty Guns (Stanwyck, dir. Sam Fuller). The Precode Divas is another Criterion Channel collection. How long a film stays on CC seems unpredictable, though usually for at least a month. Was watching The Lady Eve w/Stanwyck & Henry Fonda last night; I forget if it was attached to any collection. CC is particularly good for international films, much better than TCM.

There are cheaper streaming services (some free w/commercials) though I haven't explored them in depth. You can usually find out what's available by searching a particular film on IMDB.

>25 featherbear: Thank you for the tips. I have been thinking about the Criterion channel and must investigate that. It is particularly interesting as only a small number of Criterion discs are available over here unless one has a multi region player and I'm not sure that they are even legal.

>6 KeithChaffee: I have seen several clips and got hooked on the clips. I still have not seen full episodes yet. Thanks for letting us know where it's streaming currently and I hope you enjoy.

Via TCM: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Director Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay, Charles Bennett, D.B. Wyndham-Lewis, & Edwin Greenwood. This was Hitchcock’s British version; remade & reworked in a Hollywood version featuring James Stewart & Doris Day (Wyndham-Lewis also gets credit for the 56 screenplay). I’d seen the 1956 version before, wasn’t sure what to expect in the original. Albert Hall assassination attempt is in both. What I didn’t foresee was the extensive gun battle that concludes the 1934 version. Foreshadowed in the opening, where the wife, Jill Lawrence (Edna Best) is taking part in an Olympic-like winter shooting tournament in Switzerland against Ramon Levine (Frank Vosper); he wins when she is distracted by her daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam). You know Jill’s shooting skills are going to be key at the climax.

Clumsy Betty messes up a ski jump competitor Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay) who looks to be getting a little too intimate with Jill at an apre-ski dinner dance when he is assassinated by a sniper. Not Jill’s husband, stolid Bob (Leslie Banks), who is just around the corner though the obvious suspect would be a very good shooter from distance; who could that be?? Turns out Louis is a spy whose dying words convey vital but cryptic information to Bob, centering around a slip of paper in Louis’s shaving brush holder. But before the Lawrences’ can make head or tail of the info, Betty is kidnapped & they are instructed to keep quiet if they want to see her again.

The couple depart for London, where they confer with wealthy friend/relative (?) Clive (Hugh Wakefield); they are visited by officials from the British spy services where they are told that the late Louis had information about an assassination attempt that could start another World War, like Sarajevo. The Lawrences are unhelpful, because family first – they get further reminders to hush up, along with a phone call that confirms that Betty is in London. Bob does some sleuthing that gets him involved with a dentist, a group of sun worshipers, and Peter Lorre & a gang of anarchists (or sun worshippers) bent on starting the next World War from behind closed doors at a certain London church/dentistry. Bob figures out that the assassination will be at the Albert Hall, & dispatches Clive to phone Jill to get to the Hall to ward off the assassin.

Though the plot is foiled, Bob & Betty still need to be rescued from the clutches of the gang. The police come a knockin, but the gang is more heavily armed than the police. In Who the Devil Made It?, Hitchcock explains to Peter Bogdanovich that the London police were most reluctant to suggest that the constables were familiar with firearms, so it was necessary to have a plot point where the police requisition rifles from a nearby gunsmith; their shooting is not SWAT level, while inside Bob has made contact with Betty & they try to escape. Lots of historical ironies, but a fun story, with small Hitchcock jokes in passing.

very hesitant to watch Hunger Games the Ballad of birds and snakes, but trailers looked good. Very pleasantly surprised by this, tho it could have cut a half hour of the show fixing the end and cutting back some of the fights. But I think its a worthy intro to the rest of the books/movies. Rache Zegler and Tom Blyth are outsanding, and a very villianous Viola Davis, evil Peter Dinklage, and a MC that is a great precurlor to the rest.

Oh Zegler shows off her singing skills very well here

>6 KeithChaffee: Loved Moonlighting! didn't realize it was streaming, will need to watch, and introduce David to what he'd missed. I had hoped that Castle would be a good follow up, but the jumped the shark in season 6 and we never looked back...

The Holdovers
Wonderful film about a teacher who has to stay behind to watch students that had nowhere to go during the holidays. Paul Giamatti (one of my favorite actors) starred in this. The rest of the cast was also very good. I highly recommend this film!

Ok, need to see that!

Mallorca File
Just finished watching both season 1 and 2. Mallorca Files They will be airing Season 3 early next year. This is an entertaining mystery drama that takes place in the island of Mallorca. Through this series you see the mystery as well as see how life long residents, new residents, and tourist all live in this highly tourist island. Between the Spanish speaking captain and the main two characters one is German and the other is British and their interactions between each other and others this adds an interesting layer.

>29 cindydavid4: You may be interested in the Vox review: Alex Abad-Santos, Vox, 11/17/2023: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes might be the best Hunger Games movie yet.

Saltburn (Emerald Fennell, 2023) -- This is Fennell's followup to Promising Young Woman, and two movies into her career, it's pretty clear what her shtick is: Push every button you can push in hopes of being praised as "provocative" and "thoughtful," without stopping to provide your characters with any psychological consistency or motivation to do whatever they're doing.

This one is a mashup of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Brideshead Revisited with Barry Keoghan as the poor Oxford student invited to spend the summer at Saltburn, the palatial family estate of wealthy classmate Jacob Elordi. There's lots of barely repressed gay lust and even more (even less repressed) envy of wealth and social glibness.

Whenever you find yourself thinking that surely Fennell isn't going to go there, she goes there. If you fear that cranking a particular directorial dial all the way to 11 might have been overkill, wait five seconds and she'll crank it to 12. It's as if she has a fatal allergy to subtlety and nuance.

The only way for an actor to survive a movie like this is to give a performance that's just as big as Fennell's own level of excess. Keoghan comes close at moments, but Elordi isn't up to the task, giving a performance that might be perfectly fine in a saner version of this story, but only feels washed out and insipid here. Coming off best is Rosamund Pike as the wealthy matriarch; she's over-the-top in all the right ways.

There are a handful of striking images, but the movie as a whole is a triumph of style over substance, and to give it even that much credit feels generous.

>34 featherbear: thanks for that. I also enjoyed checking out the rabbit hole of other articles. One was "Here’s what The Hunger Games does really well" I liked what the commentators had to say, then I remembered when it first hit me what this is about - Its adults setting trapes and changing the environment that allows these children to die, and non of them has the least bit of hesitancy to do so; I think such things cant possibly happen, but that was years ago. I don't know anymore if such reality tv would go this far, and if anyone would care, as long as they are having fun

Happy Thanksgiving to all that celebrate!

Got up late but watching the 2nd half of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade!

>37 Carol420: Ditto!

Caught up with a film I’ve seen in spots but never all the way through. Prometheus (2012; 2 hr. 4m). Director, Ridley Scott. Writers, Jon Spaihts & Damon Lindelof. Via Netflix streaming. Looked pretty good on large screen HD, though intended to be viewed in 3D.

Intended as a prequel to the Alien franchise. Scott seems to be attracted to stories about “the best laid plans of men” (and gods) – and then igniting the chaos: my favorite of his movies is Black Hawk Down. Space explorers at the end of the 21st century in search of the origins of mankind (though as in the other Alien movies there’s another agenda) find a planet that has a landscape similar to backwoods Iceland (where the exteriors were filmed) based on recurrent star maps found in archaeological digs. The explorers find a huge armory, where it appears the giant Promethean creators of mankind were planning to exterminate their creation with bioweapons but were killed off by their own bioweapons, but the curious humans resurrect one of the Prometheans who begins to re-start the original mission.

Why the Prometheans want to destroy their creation is not explained, but the theme of abortion is suggestive. Dr Shaw (Noomi Rapace), unable to conceive a human baby, is impregnated by her husband/colleague Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) when the android David (Michael Fassbender, made up to look like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, David’s favorite movie) slips some of the armory’s slime in Holloway’s drink; and one of the bioweapons begins to develop rapidly in Shaw’s womb. Her graphic self-abortion (with a kludged robotic surgical device) earned the picture an R & might have influenced the more conservative members of the US Supreme Court. The creepy aspect of “humanity,” as portrayed by trillionaire Guy Pearce & his daughter Charlize Theron who aspire to David’s immortality, suggest that the Prometheans recognize that the creation of humanity resulted in the ultimate bioweapon – we have met the aliens (in the earlier movies) & they is US – and the only solution is to abort. But the conservative storyline, thanks to the resurrection of the aborted fetus, postpones the destruction, at least for this episode; and the film has an epilog where death and rebirth are highlighted. I’m curious as to how Scott handles the Promethean aspirations of Napoleon, another agent of chaos. Glad I finally watched it (Prometheus, not Napoleon. Yet), but there are some slimy scenes, so be warned.

On TCM, re-watched The Maltese Falcoln (1941, 1hr 40m), one I haven’t seen in years. Director-writer, John Huston. After late night Thanksgiving football; should have gone to bed but had me under its spell. Humphrey Bogart’s smiles I found to be on the verge of horrifying. I expected Sydney Greenstreet to be murdered, confusing it with half-remembered Mask of Dimitrios. I’m sure some academic has already suggested this, but why do we have to believe Sam Spade’s explanation of whodunit? (i.e. the woman dunnit, or maybe the inept treasure hunters) The more logical explanation seems to me that Spade murdered his lover’s husband & his partner, in a hostile takeover of the business, & killed the never seen Thorsby to deflect the police investigation to the treasure hunters or to Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor). Upon re-watching, I’d forgotten the women Spade was stringing along besides Astor: needy Iva Archer (Gladys George) & devoted secretary/administrative assistant Effie Perine (Lee Patrick), whom Spade casually puts in danger a number of times. Let’s not forget how he bullies Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr) & Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), and in fact outlines his fall guy strategy to Gutman (Greenstreet) using Wilmer as he will/may later use Brigid. Does Huston make Spade the hero merely because of force of personality?

Beecham House
I just finished watching season 1 of Beecham House. Currently there are no plans for a season 2, which is a bit frustrating because it was left on a cliffhanger with at least two of the storyline. This was a period piece set in India in the late 1700s.

May December is director Todd Haynes's riff on the Mary Kay Letourneau case; it's getting a brief limited theatrical release to qualify for the Oscars, but it'll be on Netflix on December 1.

Julianne Moore plays the Letourneau analogue; she and husband Charles Melton have been together for 23 years, a relationship that began when she was 36 and he was 13. They're being visited by Natalie Portman, playing an actress preparing to play Moore in a movie about the case. Moore and Melton hope, somewhat naively, that the new movie will tell their story in a more sympathetic light.

Fine performances from all three principals, especially from Melton; the renewed attention to his story seems to be waking him up, shaking him into actual adulthood after spending so many years of living under Moore's romantic/pseudo-maternal control.

I didn't care for the score by Marcelo Zarvos, which incorporates and adapts parts of Michel Legrand's score from 1971's The Go-Between; it's pounding the campy melodrama button too hard, fighting against the otherwise relatively naturalistic style of the movie.

Worth your while, and I'd expect Melton to be part of the awards race this year.

Women in peril watch. On TCM, one of those movies I’ve never gotten around to until last night. Wait Until Dark (1967, 1h 48m) Director: Terence Young; Screenplay: Frederick Knott play adapted for film by Robert & Jane-Howard Carrington. Commercial vehicle for Audrey Hepburn (produced by her then husband) that works well enough, though Hepburn doesn’t inhabit the role like Patty Duke in Miracle Worker. Recently blinded, Susy Hendrix is learning to cope with blindness; she’s married to Sam (Efram Zimbalist, Jr.), a photographer who is kept out of the picture most of the time. They live in one of those crowded middle-class New York basement apartments I’ve always fantasized about since World of Henry Orient, the New York I was introduced to when I attended college in ’67. The McGuffin is a doll filled with packets of drugs (heroin I assume) smuggled out of France that the courier slips to Sam to avoid turning it over to the receiver, Roat (Alan Arkin). The plot thickens when a pair of free lancer crooks, Mike Talman (Richard Crenna) & “Sgt” Carlino (Jack Weston) join forces with Roat to find the doll in the Hendrix apartment. The courier Lisa (Samantha Jones) has led them to the apartment, which the hoods turn over discreetly, while leaving Lisa’s body in a suit bag in the closet; when they come back to retrieve the body, Susy has returned from handicap training & they have to get the body out without alerting her – sort of comedic, but more suspenseful since Lisa’s body implies what will happen to Susy if she figures out what’s going on. The main reason she isn’t killed because the hoods think she knows where the doll is hidden, and they think Talman can charm her (he introduces himself as a friend of Sam’s) into disclosing its location; they seem to be convinced the doll’s in a safe for which she can provide access (it’s a red herring). The hoods are continuously led astray because they assume the Hendrixes (or at last Sam) are as crooked as they are, although the couple are in fact clueless. Not to mention Susy is blind & has the physique of Audrey Hepburn. Actually, the doll has been temporarily snatched by Susy’s part time helper, Gloria (Julie Herrod); Hepburn & Herrod have some good scenes together.* The climax is gripping, partly because Arkin is so menacing (though his earlier appearances in older/younger disguises seem to wander off into comedy), and partly because Hepburn’s frailty is so palpable – unlike the avenging angels of contemporary thrillers. Excellent use of blackouts at key moments. Terence Young’s oeuvre seems to have been mostly James Bond movies.

*Herrod was age 11 when she played the part in the stage version (per IMDB)

Women in peril continued.

This next one was broadcast on TCM via cable; DVR’d it. Seen it back in the VCR days, so this was a re-watch. Suspicion (1941, 1h 39m, B&W). Director, Alfred Hitchcock; screenplay Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, Alma Reville. I also liked the film score by Franz Waxman. Strangers on a train opening, with near-sighted Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) charmed by Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) into paying the difference for a 1st class ticket (he sneaked in w/3rd class ticket). The film is anchored by these 2 performances, Fontaine’s as a lonely & naïve general’s daughter who fears spinsterhood, who goes from trusting to suspicion, & Grant as a playboy who has a touch of larceny who may or may not have murder on his mind. Grant does a good enough job showing his dark side that the Hitchcock (or RKO mandated?) ending might be a bit hard to take, especially nowadays. This is the one with the illuminated glass of milk scene. Also good is Nigel Bruce as Beaky, who reacts badly to brandy.

Another TCM gem saved to DVR (might be rentable via Prime Video). This was something of a discovery, picked up on a Richard Brody recommend in a New Yorker film note. Part of a TCM Gloria Grahame festival; host introduction by Alicia Malone in leather pants as a bonus. In a Lonely Place (1950; 1h 34m; B&W). Director, Nicholas Ray. Screenplay, Andrew Solt & Edmund North from a story by Dorothy Hughes. “The Bogart Suspense Picture with the Surprise Finish” (from the movie poster). "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”—Dixon Steele quoting from the book he’s trying to adapt. Dixon (Dick) Steele (Humphrey Bogart) is a screenwriter with writer’s block who seems to have a very short fuse that explodes into violence. At a nightclub, his agent Mel Lippman (Art Smith; good performance) gets him an offer to write a screenplay based on a trashy bestseller. Steele is not that interested, but is intrigued by the club’s hat check girl Mildred Atkinson (Martha Stewart; not that one) who loves it – the audience he would be writing for. He invites her to his apartment to tell him the story in her own words (she’s comically illiterate); she naively agrees, even canceling her date with her boyfriend. Steele gets the girl’s summary: depressed at the thought of writing it up, he gives her cab fare & sees her out the door. Early in the morning, Steele is visited by the cops; it appears Mildred was murdered that night, her body tossed into one of those Hollywood ravines from a speeding car. (I’m wondering if this is a deliberate echo of the climax of the Hitchcock Suspicion). However, Steele’s new neighbor, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) gives him an alibi, affirming that Mildred left Steele’s place intact. She and Steele become an item, and, as his muse, she helps Steele to recover his screenwriting rhythm and he is able to transform the novel into something of artistic merit (for Hollywood). However, the police continue to suspect Steele, and lean on one of the detectives, Nicolai (Frank Lovejoy), to renew his relationship with Steele hoping he will give himself away inadvertently or that they can break Laurel’s alibi with the help of his wife Sylvia (Jeff (Jean Marie) Donnell). The police suspicion amplifies Steele’s paranoia & violence, & Laurel begins to wonder if she has alibied the murderer. The movie has so many levels going on. Graham was married to director Nick Ray at the time, and the marriage was on the rocks – is some of this reflected in the Gray-Dixon relationship? But is the proto-O.J. performance by Bogart actually mirrored by Bogart’s personality – the manic glimpses I was seeing in Maltese Falcoln? Nicolai’s friendship with Steele is based on his positive military experience when Steele was his commanding officer. Is Steele’s violence & paranoia an early recognition of PTSD before it was captured by the term & diagnosis? Going back to the murder, could this be a kind of reimagining of the Hitchcock Suspicion’s “Hollywood ending,” ironically taking place in a Hollywood backlot setting, with Grahame reprising the Joan Fontaine role, and Bogart doing Cary Grant as Captain Queeg?

>42 KeithChaffee: Far From Heaven is on my list of films I need to see; I will definitely be looking out for May December in, well, December on Netflix. Might take a look at the Mildred Pierce re-make if it's still around on MAX.

>45 featherbear: Oh, Far From Heaven is lovely!

I have just seen the Mildred Pierce serialisation. I gather that it is much closer to Cain's novel than to the Joan Crawford movie. The cinematography is wonderful and performances are all good and yet, to me, there was a flatness about it. Perhaps I was influenced by the Crawford version -very operatic in tone and with Noir influences, one of my favourite 1940's movies.

Susy has returned from handicap training & they have to get the body out without alerting her –

waaaaaat? is that really what they called it? anyway I saw wait until dar decades ago and remember loving it

>42 KeithChaffee: This might be of interest:

Aja Romano. Vox, 11/25/2023: Mary Kay Letourneau, the grim inspiration for May December, explaine.

>47 Maura49: I need to add that version of MP to my list of movies to watch.

>48 cindydavid4: I was improvising since I didn't know where Hepburn was learning to play a blind person; in addition to "handicap," another sign of the past times: a key element in the movie was the refrigerator you had to defrost; struggled with one of those back in the day

I have no doubt Hepburn was giving tips on how to move like a person who is blind, yeah disabled training comes on the same level as handicap....would be interested to knnow things like this; wonder what training a young patty duke had. Id hope in both cases they were taught by people with similar disabiliites. One of the few things I loved about all the light we cannot see were the two actors playing the lead were visually impiaired

yup remember defrosting. . my mom used to let me play with the ice outside (a treat when it was 110 out side) till I was big enough to do it by myself

>52 cindydavid4: Suzy Hendrix (the character played by Hepburn) had recently become blind due to an accident; she is still learning through formal training how to navigate in a sightless world, though the training seems to be in the later stages & she doesn't seem to have significant adjustment issues. I wonder if the playwright & adapters wrote her background intentionally to cover awkwardness or inconsistencies when played by a sighted actor? A well done star vehicle.

In contrast, Helen Keller was blind & profoundly deaf from birth which would be something else entirely; Duke in The Miracle Worker really seemed to inhabit a world that seems unimaginable to me -- am I misremembering that she played the role countless times on stage & that it no doubt helped immensely? As an allegory of (half blind) teacher and the awakening of student intellect I've always found the film to be so affecting.

this is a misnomer; Keller became deaf and blind after a bout with meningitis at 18 months; which means she was starting to talk and probably understood lots of language plus had lots of visual memories before her illness. So as a teacher its not a surprise that with the right teacher she could unlock all of that. that does not disminish her acheivment or the dedication of her teacher, just saying its much harder to be born deaf and blind.

and no I cant imagine what it would be like. except for thie; She said blindness keeps me from things, deafness keeps me from people Being hearing impaired I so agree with that. even with hearing aids if the room gets too noisy it doesnt matter how close I am to the person next to me; their sound is lost.

and no you remember correctly; she played the role on stage from October 19, 1959 and closed on July 1, 1961 after 719 performa

>54 cindydavid4: Thanks, I did not know that!* (Though, still not the same as the Wait Until Dark situation for Suzy Hendrix)

*And I should have; I seem to recall that the connection between her illness & her deafness/blindness was implied at the beginning of the film.

no not the same for her.

finished the 6th episode of the crown season 6, and wow; its not just about Princess Di, gets into the history of British and Russian relations including the massacre of the The tsar and his family. I was starting to get bored with the series, but this woke me right up. You might need to look away a few times, I know I did

The most interesting thing about Disney's Wish is its political subtext, which was surely unintended: The citizens of Rosas are so charmed by their charismatic king that they overlook his authoritarian tendencies; when the possibility of absolute power turns him so sharply towards dictatorship that his cruelty can no longer be ignored, the people must rise up in rebellion.

The movie is intended to be a celebration of Disney animation on its 100th birthday, so there are easter eggs and callbacks to Disney history scattered throughout -- a forest scene includes not only a deer named Bambi and a Thumper-esque rabbit, but a clump of mushrooms that will remind you of Fantasia; the heroine has a group of seven friends whose personalities evoke Snow White's dwarves. There's even a good old fashioned Disney villain in King Magnifico, nicely voiced and sung by Chris Pine.

Pine and Ariana DeBose do as much as can be done with the movie's songs, written by Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice in a style that combines the worst traits of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Pasek/Paul. The best of the bunch is the big villain number, "This Is The Thanks I Get?!," and even that works more on the strength of Pine's performance than of the song itself. "Knowing What I Know Now" tries to capture the revolutionary energy of Les Miserables and falls short; "I'm a Star" attempts in vain to translate the massive choreographic energy of "Under the Sea" or "Be Our Guest" to a group of forest animals.

The animation is an odd mix of 3-D for the main characters and traditional 2-D for the backgrounds; there are a lot of crowd scenes, and it's hard to ignore the jarring contrast between the two styles when the characters are side by side.

Not the celebration Disney had hoped for, I'm afraid, but it'll probably keep the kids happy for a couple of hours when it arrives at Disney+ in a few months.

Caught The Parallax View (1974) just before TCM cycled it off from the Xfinity database. First impression was the striking Gordon Willis cinematography. Didn’t realize it’s considered the obscure member of the Alan Pakula “paranoia trilogy” that features Klute & All the President’s Men, so watching all 3 in a row might be an experience. The TCM broadcast included before/after comments with the guest selector, Jonathan Scott, whose day job is a host for one of Discovery+ celebrity HGTV shows. I hope this is not a trend resulting from the merger of Discovery & HBO masterminded by an investment group (not unlike the Parallax Corporation I suspect) -- did I hear "synergy" as part of the background noise?

That said, I’m glad I caught the movie. Warren Beatty is the investigative reporter as action hero who constantly underestimates the murderous intentions of the corporation he’s researching. Not one of his more sympathetic roles – I prefer his story arc in McCabe and Mrs Miller, Robert Altman’s Western, where the expression of his courage is forced & awkward, but more affective emotionally. There’s enough paranoia going around nowadays such that it makes All the President’s Men seem more outdated when Woodward & Bernstein don’t get their throats cut, though don’t forget The Manchurian Candidate, with the right wing Presidential hopeful & his wife in league with a Communist China/North Korean psy-ops unit. It does give Scott an opportunity to make some banal observations about the relevance of Parallax when he isn't promoting his celebrity "reality" show. Hopefully TCM will survive (the TCM host whose name I didn’t get came across to me as sycophantic as any corporate underling).

Watched “A Haunting in Venice” with Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

>60 nrmay: I recently finished reading Halloween Party; I understand A Haunting in Venice is loosely based on it; curious to see how loose, though by the time I get around to it, I'll probably have forgotten most of the novel. Bobbin' for apples!

Overwhelming number of items I'd like to see in December! Just finished All the Light We Cannot See, so I need to take a look at the Netflix version which per cindydavid4 sounds a bit problematic; anyway, glad I read the book! Will also try to catch May December on KeithChaffee's rec; and I confirmed that I can still view Haynes's Mildred Pierce series on MAX.

TCM Star of the Month is Cary Grant. So far I've DVR'd I Was a Male War Bride, His Girl Friday, & Bringing Up Baby (all directed by Howard Hawks); just started watching War Bride which I've never seen before; the other 2 would be fond re-watches when time permits. On the subject of films that came out years ago but during my lifetime that I never got around to seeing: Midnight Cowboy; I think it's still being revived on Showtime; hope I can watch it before it cycles off; I've also DVR'd a TCM doc on the making of it, as well as (also TCM) a doc on William Friedkin. Plus I just noticed that the Xfinity archive for TCM just added a Fellini I've never seen, Il Bidone with Broderick Crawford. I recently caught Fritz Lang's Human Desire on TCM & was impressed by Crawford's performance (& heartbroken by Gloria Grahame's). Wasn't he the lead in All the King's Men?

On Britbox, via Amazon Prime, a new season of Shetland has begun with an episode 1; Jimmy Perez has really retired & a new Shetland born woman inspector formerly of the London Met has taken over. Haven't had a chance to watch it; still preoccupied watching the freevee reruns of Midsomer Murders (still with the original Barnaby & the second generation sergeant Jones). Also on freevee is Promising Young Woman by the director of Saltburn, which has had some buzz, though not from keithchaffee.

But the real Christmas stuff is on Criterion Channel. Two new "collections" for December: Directed by Yasujiro Ozu, a massive retrospective of the director's work, with many unknown to me films from the 1930's, as well as the ones that made his name from the 50's. Also Hitchcock for the Holidays: emphasis on his British period, though his Hollywood films are also represented, so I'll get a chance to re-watch the Hollywood version of The Man Who Knew Too Much with Stewart & Doris Day -- after seeing the English version last month (which is also on the CC menu); a very extensive retrospective, though it doesn't go past Torn Curtain. Other new December collections: Holiday Noir: films mostly unknown for me, with the exception of Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery Raymond Chandler POV technique) & Nicholas Ray's They Live by Night, but the "unknowns" sound intriguing, including Repeat Performance, a noir It's a Wonderful Life; a number of these take place during the Christmas season, though somebody probably gets murdered in some dark corner. (The Hitchcock collection movies have nothing to do with holiday cheer, though). And finally: MGM Musicals, 9 well known ones, beginning with Broadway Melody of 1940 through Always Fair Weather (doesn't include Singin' in the Rain -- not MGM? -- but it has Band Wagon, Brigadoon, American in Paris, Harvey Girls, The Pirate, & Summer Stock). As a bonus, a number of November CC collections are still hanging around: November Noir -- Precode Divas -- Women of the West -- Directed by Robert Bresson. Also, there's a mini-collection, a double bill of Barbara Stanwyck noirs; forgot to jot down the titles; haven't seen either (there are in additon 2 Stanwycks in the Women of the West collection.

>57 cindydavid4: I'm not a fan of royals, but you should have said Elizabeth Debicki is playing Princess Di. I've been a fan of Debicki since she stole the film Widows & for her cameo as Lady MacDuff in Macbeth (2015). Now I must take a look.

>63 featherbear: didnt mention it coz there were two actresses playing Diana, Debicke as the adult, and Emma-Louise Corrin played a younger Diana. Both were incredibly good in that role!

>62 featherbear: the only complaint I had of the book all the light we cannot see is that the young girl just becomes blind, and while her brilliant father helps her overcome that challeng, she ws able to see many years before that; usually those kiddos are gonna have some serious issues of anger and depression. and was surpriesed that wasnt mentioned in the book, But i suppose that would have dragged the story as he was writing it. Really loved it

It is a truth universally acknowledged that watching documentaries about movie-makers adds to the ever expanding list of films to be watched. As is the case with Friedkin Uncut (2018; 1h 47m), one I DVR’d from TCM. Writer/director: Francesco Zippel. Hard to erase the image of the late “Billy” Friedkin (1935-2023) in classic, baggy Old Man trousers, belted just under his nips, holding forth at the home he shared with his wife, producer Sherry Lansing (she makes a guest appearance in the credits) and at a number of appearances at European film festivals – his rep. might be higher in Europe?

I haven’t seen very many of his films, with the exceptions of The French Connection (1971) & The Exorcist (1973). The doc opens with responses contemporary & retrospective of what appears to have been his most successful film, The Exorcist. This was one of those films I missed when it first came out & viewed only recently; it didn’t have the same effect on me that it did with audiences at the time; the retro clips gave me the giggles if anything; maybe I didn’t have proper religious training. (Friedkin was the son of Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants & grew up in Chicago) Nice anecdote from one of the stars, Ellen Burstyn, about how exorcist Max von Sydow, an atheist, kept getting actor’s block when he was cued to emote “In the name of Christ” to exorcise the Linda Blair demon.

My personal Friedkin film, on the other hand, is French Connection, which I saw in New York when it premiered during my college years. Really captures all the filthy fun of that period in my life. Not being from there, I naively wandered alone in many of the streets I shouldn’t have not knowing any better. My first subway trip was to downtown to get registered for the draft, that done, caught the wrong line and ended up in Brooklyn on the elevated; pretty sure where they did the car chase. The chase was apparently done in live traffic with Friedkin taking over the camera work due to the danger & potential liability! If I understand correctly, Friedkin’s first film was a documentary, People versus Paul Crump (1962), which got its subject off death row & captured his belief in the power of film to do good – until he got to Hollywood, he adds; the doc director clearly believes it is the source of Friedkin’s “documentary style.” Friedkin was notorious for his “one take” mentality, another “documentary” directorial trait; actors seem to have liked him for bringing out their best work focusing on spontaneity rather than controlling performance.

Anyway, the doc unspools a list of (for me) undiscovered treasures: Sorcerer (1977; Tarantino considers it to be his greatest film; greater than the original Wages of Fear -- which in my opinion is pretty damn good! -- though it would have been better (Q believes) if Steve McQueen, for which it was written, had not been sub’ed by Roy Scheider, hot off Jaws -- To Live and Die in L.A. (1985; Willem Dafoe’s first major film; captures 80’s LA as French Connection does 70’s NY; the counterfeiting operation sounds like an allegory of Hollywood studio bottom line productions) – and Cruising (1980), which closes off the 70’s (forgot what arc is being referred to) – according to Friedkin, a murder mystery with gay BDSM sex as the background. Looks better in retrospect, it appears. Also: Killer Joe (2011), which Matthew McConaughey credits for locking him into his True Detective Rust Cohle role & Bug (2006). Other Friedkin non-successes are passed over, e.g. Jade (1995), The Hunted (2003), Rules of Engagement (2000). One film not mentioned is Caine Mutiny Court Martial (2023), his last, which postdates the doc; I’ll try to take a look. One thing I didn’t know was that Friedkin was also a stage director for opera; there are clips for Aida & Wozzeck. By the way, for someone who never went to film school, Friedkin is thoroughly familiar with the film classics, American & European – check out his mike drop at the end of the film.

Streaming at Netflix: They Cloned Tryone, which one of its characters sums up as "A pimp, a ho, and a drug dealer walk into a lab...". They are, respectively, Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), and Fontaine (John Boyega), who stumble into a secret government facility located beneath their neighborhood, which is the blackest neighborhood in their city. The movie combines a lot of genres; it's both an update and a parody of 70s blaxploitation movies in the form of an SF comedy/conspiracy thriller. Parris is particularly good, and the movie was an unexpected delight.

Currently watching Scarecrow and Mrs King. When I initially started watching did not expect much and expected it to be cheasey dated. However, I was pleasantly surprised. I had been watching Burn Notice, which is a good show, but got burned out with the constant intensity of the show. If you want a calmer spy TV show, that has some intensity, but some calming parts to it check out Scarecrow and Mrs King.

Tár (2022)
"Set in the international world of Western classical music, the film centers on Lydia Tár, widely considered one of the greatest living composer-conductors and the very first female director of a major German orchestra." Synopsis from IMDB

I enjoyed this film but it was a little long for me. However, Cate Blanchett did a nice job!

Still in theaters, but probably not for much longer: Dream Scenario, with Nicolas Cage as a mild-mannered professor whose life gets complicated when he suddenly starts showing up in everybody's dreams. He's not really doing anything -- just quietly standing in the background or walking by -- but the bizarre phenomenon is enough to make him a celebrity. I enjoyed the first half of the movie very much, but there's an abrupt turn to the very dark midway through, and the movie gets duller the bleaker it gets.

>70 KeithChaffee: On the off-chance you didn't catch this: Isaac Butler. New Yorker, 12/01/2023: The Enduring Strangeness of Nicolas Cage. Sounds like Dream Scenario might be worth a look; the article also covers a very large swath of Cage's career -- almost an Actor as Auteur piece, including one Cage film I found amusing, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, & reminding me of pics I keep missing, like Raising Arizona, or should (?) miss, like Renfield, & a recent one to keep in mind, like Butcher's Crossing. Hadn't realized there's been a book about him (Age of Cage: four decades of Hollywood through one singular career) too! More to look up!)

More Nic Cage stuff:

Melanie McFarland. Salon, 12/11/2023: Nic Cage embraces his Jungian "notoriety and infamy," living in our collective unconscious rent-free.

The Crown is getting towards the end; even tho I know what happens, the way its being portrayed is making me realize how much I didn't know

Maestro (currently in limited theatrical release; will arrive on Netflix on December 20) is a biopic of Leonard Bernstein, directed by and starrting Bradley Cooper. The movie gives top billing, though, to Carey Mulligan as Bernstein's wife, Felicia.

That's your first hint that the movie is far more interested in Bernstein's marriage than it is in his music or his career. Cooper does make good use of Bernstein's music as the principal element of the movie's score, but his career is basically reduced to a series of "and then I wrote" moments that are the only help we get in following the chronology of the movie. And if you don't have some sense of when West Side Story or Mass or On the Town were written, they aren't going to help much. Your best guide to chronology is, sadly, trying to guess how much older the Bernstein children are than they were the last time you saw them.

That's not the end of the confusion in the movie. The Bernsteins are surrounded by a lot of people, but most of them aren't identified; even when they are, the names fly by awfully quickly, and if you don't already know who Aaron Copland and "Jerry" Robbins are (much less the many lesser cultural figures who pop in and out), the script (by Cooper and Josh Singer) isn't going to help you.

There are some marvelous moments in the movie, and the two central performances (especially Mulligan's) pack an emotional punch. But there's too much style and not enough substance, and why even bother to make a Bernstein biography if you don't much care about the music?

>73 KeithChaffee: thats too bad; I would have thought the most important part of this film was his music Ah well, may skip this one

>76 NothingOutThereForMe: Have to absolutely agree with you about Nick:)

Via Xfinity’s TCM archive, viewed Il Bidone aka The Swindle (1955). I’ve since learned it was the middle part of a Federico Fellini neo-realist trilogy, bracketed by La Strada (1955) & Le notti di Cabiria (1957); I can now recommend all 3. “Neo-realist” in the sense of marginalized people in post-WWII Italy. Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife, has a role in each film, but in this one hers is more of a supporting role & not a very interesting part, to boot. When you search it online, the negative review by Bosley Crowther always seems to float to the top; unfortunate that his opinions held sway for such a long time on the influential newspaper. In fairness, he was probably basing the review on the American release, which was heavily edited; the TCM version is off the Criterion Collection where the cuts are restored. It’s in Italian, with key parts played by Hollywood actors Broderick Crawford (Augusto) & Richard Basehart (Picasso).

As the American title indicates, it’s about 3 petty grifters who show up in rural Italian towns dressed as ambassadors from the Vatican. Based on a “deathbed confession,” a murderer has buried his victim with a hoard of treasure on the sucker’s farm; per the Monseigneur (Augusto), the owner can keep the treasure (on the hush hush to avoid taxes), but only if the Vatican is allowed a small cut to perform masses for the soul of the murderer; cash only. Inevitably, this band of small time crooks falls apart – the middle section has the gang at a New Year’s Party thrown by the far more successful criminal Rinaldo (Alberto De Amicis) – la dolce vita, as it were – though one gets the sense that the small timers know they’ll never get that far – there’s a nice scene where the other member of Augusto’s gang, Roberto (Franco Fabrizi) tries to pocket another guest’s cigarette case & host Rinaldo persuades him to return it. In the crime hierarchy, Rinaldo probably sees Augusto & his gang the way the small timers see the suckers they cheat.

The last third has the trio falling apart, selling over-priced overcoats, or fake contracts for public housing – all of the cons involve stealing from the poor -- and eventually focuses on Augusto after the others drift off. The film caught my attention because of Crawford, whose performance in Fritz Lang’s Human Desire (1954) impressed me; good performance here too, though strange to hear him dubbed in Italian, but he does a good Italian schlemiel. He meets & bonds with his grown-up daughter Patrizia (Lorella De Luca) only to be arrested for an earlier bidone, and then, in the concluding grift, meets her counterpart, a crippled 19 yr old farm girl about her age (Sue Ellen Blake) when he runs the buried treasure scam with another gang. Fellini or his scriptwriter (co-writers were Ennio Flaiano & Tullio Pinelli) do a great cinematic scam within a scam, when Augusto claims to have returned the money to the cheated farm family, touched by the farm girl’s faith. How you interpret Augusto’s intentions I believe is up to you. Nino Rota did the music score.

Streaming at Apple TV+: Sharper; not a masterwork, but a good solid B-movie. Can't say much about the story, because as with all good con games, the characters and their relationships are constantly shifting, and anything I might say would either be dishonest, misleading, or overly revealing. Cast includes Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, Justice Smith, John Lithgow, and Briana Middleton, all doing a nice job of playing the multiple facets of those ever-evolving characters.

From Xfinity’s TCM archive; part of their Gloria Grahame festivus; though her role in this film is pretty minor & she apparently performed under protest. Macao (1952). Directed by Josef von Sternberg, in part by Nicholas Ray, responsible for fight reshoot; screenplay by Stanley Rubin & Bernard Schoenfeld. The heavy thumb of Howard Hughes, then owner of RKO, can be felt behind this collaboration of uncooperative cinema artists. According to TCM host Alicia Malone, Grahame didn’t want to be in a minor supporting role after her star turn in In a Lonely Place, and in fact it caused her to miss a part in A Place in the Sun, taken by Shelley Winters. But enough about Grahame – Macao was surely intended, among other things, as a showcase for Hughes protege Jane Russell’s cabaret skills – I didn’t realize she could sing – a creditable job on the standard “One for my baby (and one more for the road)” (Arlen & Mercer), and a Leo Robin/Jule Styne tune unfamiliar to me, “You Kill Me,” though comparisons with Marlene Dietrich might seem odious.

At the other end of the Sternberg classic Shanghai Express spectrum, the studio lighting in Macao seems overly bright (Harry Wild cinematography) to maintain much of a noir atmosphere, yet the long shots of the crowded casino & camera tracking do strike me as Sternberg’s style; Hughes must have realized Sternberg wasn’t an action director & brought in Nicholas Ray for some of the re-shoots; Sternberg generally disowned the film.

Soldier of fortune Robert Mitchum as Nick Cochran (in the great baggy suits of the time) meets broke singer Julie Benton (Russell) on the boat from Hong Kong to Macao (then a Portuguese colony) – she lifts his wallet & passport (maybe) -- & this raises the suspicions of the corrupt Macao cop Sebastian (Thomas Gomez) who reports to casino owner Vince Halloran (Brad Dexter). Halloran is on the run from the Hong Kong police & the then equivalent of Interpol (the film opens with Halloran’s thugs murdering a police infiltrator); he can’t venture into “the 3 mile limit,” the international waters that would allow the non-Macao police to get their hands on him. Halloran, believing Cochran is the new cop, and suspecting that Benton is working with him, decides to keep his enemies close & hires them. This does not sit well with “receptionist” Margie (Grahame) who is supposed to be jealous of Benton – hard to determine her motivation, & as Grahame feared, I had to look up who was playing Marge. Meanwhile, a key supporting role for William Bendix*, as a hale fellow well met salesman who deals with stolen jewelry on the down low, who persuades Cochran to sell it to Halloran, with resulting complications. Watched it because of Sternberg, & interesting to see Mitchum sleep-walking through this one, some years after Out of the Past (1947), where Jane Greer is a stronger & better written feminine foil than Russell (is Macao rom-com or noir?). For that matter, check out Grahame’s turn with Humphrey Bogart In a Lonely Place.

*I used to watch Bendix in the TV series The Life of Riley; I do go back a ways.

Poor Things is the latest from Yorgos Lanthimos, so you know it's going to be weird. In a broad sense, it's a Frankenstein riff with Willem Dafoe as the scientist and Emma Stone as his creation. We watch her intellectual and social development from a full-grown adult with (literally) the brain of an infant to a knowledgeable woman firmly in control of her own life.

Stone is terrific here, giving an uninhibited, precisely controlled performance; her physicality is particularly impressive. Mark Ruffalo is also excellent in a relatively rare comic role as a lawyer who takes Stone away from her creator to see the world.

Gorgeous costumes, and I love the way that Stone is almost always wearing (when she's clothed; there is a fair amount of sex and nudity in the movie) either ruffled collars or giant shoulders, drawing attention to her neck in a sort of sartorial allusion to the bolts of the classic movie Frankenstein's monster. Sets are spectacular, creating a world that is slightly askew from our own.

My only major complaint is that I hated Jerskin Fendrix's score, an ugly collection of unstable twanging noises.

Ava DuVernay's Origin is having a one-week NY/LA run to qualify for the Oscars; it'll open wide in January. It's not exactly an adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson's nonfiction book Caste; the credits say "inspired by."

Wilkerson's book is an attempt to tie together various types of imposed social stratification around the world into a single phenomenon, and DuVernay's approach is to make Wilkerson the central character (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) and show the process by which she developed and researched her ideas. It's half documentary, half family drama. The ideas of the documetary half are fascinating and absorbing; despite a talented cast, the family drama isn't; and the two are never very well integrated.

Ellis-Taylor is given a difficult task here, since much of her screen time is spent delivering sociology lectures to friends and family, which is a hard thing to make seem natural or dramatically interesting. She works heroically and does as good a job of it as I can imagine being done.

The most interesting performances are in smaller roles -- Jon Bernthal as Wilkerson's husband, Emily Yancy as her mother, and a pair of magnificent cameos from Audra McDonald and Allan Wilayto, delivering striking monologues on their personal experiences with racism.

The good stuff here is very good, and there's enough of it that I'd recommend the movie, but I really wish DuVernay had just made a documentary out of the material.

A series I liked back in the day on A&E was Breakout Kings (2011-2012), about a team of convicts on temporary parole used to track down prison escapees (how compromised is that?). Two of the principals have key & rather similar roles in the second season of Amazon Prime’s Reacher. As you probably don’t recall if you haven’t seen season 1, or never caught the series of novels by Lee Child, Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson, who seems to have added muscles to his muscles from S1; you probably need to look up the series on IMDB to learn Reacher has a first name) is the retired (deep breath) US Army Special Investigations Military Police Major who roams the rural byways of America with his only luggage a toothbrush, absorbing the local color of the country he was once sworn to protect. Rather than carry a suitcase, he buys his replacement clothing (including underwear) at the local thrift store when his current set is soiled by blood & sweat. His expenses (mostly busfare, diner food, & replacement underwear) provided for by his generous military pension; otherwise he’s off the grid: no phone, no credit cards, no driver’s license. He rights the occasional wrong on an incidental basis – S2 opens with him saving a woman & child from a carjacking in a rather blunt manner when he notices the woman in front of him at the ATM across from the thrift store seems a mite nervous. His direct interventions in stopping wrongdoing result, as in S1, with a rather uneasy relationship with local law enforcement, in this case, NY cop Gaitano Russo (Domenick Lombardozzi, the parole officer who ran the convict team in Breakout Kings).

Anyway, to this season’s plot – Prime has released 3 episodes as of this writing – someone is offing members of Reacher’s former MP Special Investigations Team. Unlike Reacher, after the team broke up, the members found gainful employment in various corporate espionage jobs & this probably is what’s causing the mess, though there’s some terrorist arms smuggling here too. He is contacted by his former Master Sgt Neagley (pronounced Neely, Maria Sten), now a private investigator, and the opening episodes involves the pair searching for the surviving members & trying to determine why they’re being killed off. One of the survivors is Karla Dixon, the former team’s specialist in accounting fraud (Serinda Swan, one of the Breakout Kings convicts – rather disappointed that they didn’t recruit slippery convict Jimmi Simpson from the A&E series -- though team member O'Donnell (Shaun Sippos) has a similar semi-comic role). Lots of flashbacks to the doings of Reacher’s Special Investigations Team; maybe foreshadowing some link to the present crisis. Best set piece so far has the surviving members breaking into a house with hired killers coming out of the woodwork like rats. I like Reacher best as an off the grid loner, but this is OK action with a touch of blunt force humor. If the series continues, I hope he goes back to his wandering ways.

PS: just checked IMDB & Nick Santora, writer for Reacher S2 also was the writer for Breakout Kings

Eileen is going for sort of an evil-lesbians Hitchcock thriller vibe, but never quite gets there. Thomasin McKenzie is a mousy secretary at a men's prison in mid-1960s Massachusetts, captivated by the glamorous new prison psychologist, Anne Hathaway.

The movie's biggest problem is an over-reliance in the first half on glimpses into McKenzie's moments of transgressive fantasy -- sex with a prison guard, or shooting somebody -- so when something genuinely shocking actually does happen late in the movie, we're distanced from it and spend the last act waiting for the rug to once again be pulled out from under our feet.

Kudos to Marin Ireland, though, who steals the movie with one magnificently delivered monologue.

(I have not read the Otessa Moshfegh novel on which the movie is based.)

Just caught Barbie (2023; 1h 54m) via HBO/MAX. Director Greta Gerwig, screenplay Gerwig & Noah Baumbach. Sort of a reverse Wizard of Oz, going from Barbie’s fantasy world to the LA of Mattel Headquarters, then back “home” – transformed into a (Temporary) Patriarchy (Ken in LA corrupted by library books stages a coup after returning to Barbie Land). Unlike the MGM movie, with an ongoing gender studies seminar, like a Criterion Collection “extra” (including a virtuoso rant by America Ferrera at the climax*). Dazzling – even the “real” world is fantastical (it’s LA after all) – with musical numbers recalling the studio musicals of the fifties. One of the ongoing jokes is that all the women in Barbie World are named Barbie, reflecting the marketing of being anyone you can be, representation without personality (similarly with the Kens); the stereotypical Barbie heroine is Margot Robbie, and the Ken counterpart is Ryan Gosling. Rhea Perlman has a nice role toward the end as the ghost of the creator of the original Barbie, who has to recount all that the despondent Barbie/Robbie has accomplished – almost like a sappy family musical (Gerwig/Baumbach being a tad ironic?); Will Ferrell is the head of the all-male Mattel board of directors, doing his usual clowning. I wasn’t that crazy about the songs, at least on the first pass.

*Addendum. For reference: Carlos Aguilar, 01/01/2024: America Ferrera and the ‘Barbie’ Monologue We All Talked About.

More from Xfinity’s TCM archive:

The Wild One (1953, 1h 19m, B&W). Although Laslo Benedek gets director credit, producer Stanley Kramer seems to be behind this misunderstood youth movie; the clownish gang had me expecting them to break into Gee Officer Krupke. Rather disappointed that Lee Marvin as Chino (named after preppie pants?) doesn’t have an ultimate role in the plot resolution. Marlon Brando as Johnny scapegoated by the small town Chamber of Commerce; if only he hadn’t stolen that trophy. Origin of motorcycle movies I enjoyed in my misspent youth, but I wouldn’t enjoy re-watching it. I understand Brando didn’t care for it either.

One I did like was The Narrow Margin (1952; 1h 11m; B&W) Remade in the 90s with Gene Hackman & Anne Archer, which I vaguely recall seeing. But this older picture is good stuff. Short, & doesn’t spend a lot of time with exposition, as 2 Chicago cops are tasked with escorting a Federal witness to a trial in California. One of them is gunned down almost immediately & the surviving cop (Charles McGraw) & the witness (Marie Windsor) – she’s the widow of a murdered gang boss & has access to a list of higher ups on his payroll -- have to play hide and seek in various compartments on the California bound train, with hired guns hot on their trail. Plot gimmick somehow has none of the gunsels knowing what the wife looks like, and the cop stupidly/unknowingly (?) associating with a woman (Jacqueline White) in the dining car & putting her in jeopardy. Also thrown in, the woman’s child Tommy (Gordon Gebert), an annoying brat who should have starred in one of those condom advocacy commercials. The cop’s fight with the main killer within the confines of a train compartment is some really good, ahead of its time, montage. Marie Windsor is generally excellent, although the script perhaps allows her to get too much into her gun moll character; McGraw apparently appeared in some good noirs but I don’t think I’ve seen any of his others. This was a re-watch, though it was so long ago it still had plenty of unexpected thrills. Director, Richard Fleischer. Recommended.

Death of a Gunfighter (1969; 1h 34m, Technicolor). This turned out to be a premiere on TCM, with guest co-host Donald Bogle, promoting his new book on Lena Horne; she has star billing but doesn’t actually have a major role. What struck me, perhaps unnecessarily, was the technical remastering: it has lots of close-ups & -- I didn’t realize this was possible – the HD brought out every pore, acne scar, sweat-film, & wrinkle on a lot of sun-damaged faces. You could see the result of too much ultra-violet on people of Scandinavian heritage such as Richard Widmark (as Marshall Patch) plus the various character actors, though Lena’s dermis, as the saying goes, does not crack, but does seem gray-ish at times. Had no idea so much could be recovered from 50 plus film stock.

Directed by a certain “Allen Smithee,” a Director’s Guild pseudonym used when the original director is let go & a replacement takes over. Original director, Robert Totten; finished by Don Siegel. Siegel is the only reason I decided to watch it. In Peter Bogdanovich’s Who the Devil Made It, there’s something about Siegel's unequaled skill at directing violent scenes, & I’m pretty sure he does the extended series of shoot-outs that bring about the death of Marshall Patch (at the beginning of the film we see Lena Horne leaving town on the train as a coffin is being loaded into it). I believe Siegel was selected to take over because Widmark didn’t get along with Totten, & he had developed rapport with Siegel with Madigan (1968,“we don’t need these – bullet proof –vests”); a film I saw a couple of times at theaters in the 42nd St area around Times Square when it first came out – rather similar end for Widmark in that one, & helped to cement Siegel in my auteur pantheon after his Hell is for Heroes (1962) that greatly impressed me in high school. Opposite of the Peckinpah/John Woo slo-mo school (and for that matter Penn’s 1967 liebestod in Bonnie and Clyde); Siegel’s movie violence was quick & deadly. In Gunfighter, the remastering technique undercuts things a bit since the blood looks even fakey-er than it probably did in ’69.

Made some time after the collapse of the studio systems & reflecting the relevancy trend of the times (see Kramer in Wild One above) it ticks off many a box: Lena Horne runs a brothel – unlike Here to Eternity’s “dance & socializing club”), with an opening scene of a prostitute making light of a client’s impotence (something Clint Eastwood would later run with in the 1992 Unforgiven). There's the town council troubled over the Marshall’s shoot first & ask questions later practices. So they bring in John Saxon as “Lou Trinidad,” a Hispanic sheriff promoted to his post by the Marshall before affirmative action, now brought in to take out his mentor. Trinidad is still smarting by everyone calling him a “greaser,” including the Marshall (well almost). There's the passing of the old Western codes & traditions – it’s an early 20th century town with a prominent horseless carriage as in The Magnificent Ambersons. And now seemingly prescient -- a Marshall who refuses to resign from his post – & perhaps appropriately, the townspeople who eventually gun him down seem to be more Chamber of Commerce Republican types –Rinos? Box-ticking & not much more, though. Bogle & Ben Mankiewicz discuss how the interracial “romance” (seems rather business-like) of Horne & Widmark is politely overlooked though that would likely have gotten her lynched at that point in history, perhaps why she’s given the “Hispanic” name of Claire Quintana. It occurs to me that where Brando's Johnny is a scapegoat who doesn't understand, is groping for, his role in life, Marshall Patch is the scapegoat who can't transcend his outmoded role.

I was not wildly optimistic about Wonka -- I've never been a Timothee Chalamet fan, and I'm weary of unneeded origin stories -- but it's surprisingly entertaining. It helps that it's directed and co-written by Paul King, who brought us the two recent Paddington movies; he brings the same sweet whimsy to this one.

This is not, to be sure, Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka; there is none of Dahl's darkness or cruelty. King and Chalamet gives us a sunnier, kinder, twink-ier Wonka. (One is tempted to think that there's already a sequel in the works to explain how this Wonka becomes Dahl's Wonka.)

No, the darkness here comes from an assortment of fine (mostly) British character actors, hamming it up with glee as a wide range of villains: Olivia Colman and Tom Davis as Mrs. Scrubbit and Mr. Bleacher, owners of a laundry/boarding-house/debtors' prison; Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, and Matthew Boynton as the local cartel of chocolatiers, driving off rivals by bribing police chief Keegan-Michael Key with boxes of candy; Rowan Atkinson as the head of a corrupt order of priests.

The movie's songs, by Neil Hannon, are too closely tied to the story for any of them to survive outside the movie, but they're moderately clever, and effective in context. Still, when "Pure Imagination" (from the 1971 Gene Wilder movie) makes an appearance, it puts Hannon's work to shame.

I could have done with fewer fat jokes, and I would have preferred an actual little person as the movie's Oompa-Loompa instead of a stunt-cast Hugh Grant (good though he is). But the screenplay is effective, the jokes are funny, Calah Lane plays Wonka's orphan sidekick sweetly without being too cloying, and I found Chalamet more likable than I ever have before.

>87 KeithChaffee: Thanks for helping us keep up with the current movies.

>86 featherbear: Death of a Gunfighter was, in fact, the film for which the "Allen Smithee" pseudonym (eventually standardized as "Alan Smithee") was created.

Among the several uses of the name are films which are credited under the actual director's name in their theatrical version, but credited to Smithee in later versions as edited for broadcast television or airplane viewing. For David Lynch's Dune, not only is the television version credited to Smithee as director, but Lynch also changed his writing credit to "Judas Booth" (referencing Iscariot and John Wilkes).

There was a 1997 movie called An Alan Smithee Story: Burn Hollywood Burn (which is itself credited to Alan Smithee, but actually directed by Arthur Hiller) in which Eric Idle played a fictional director named Alan Smithee who wanted to disavow his work on a film, but had no way to do so because "Alan Smithee" was the only official name the Director's Guild of America would allow a director to use under such circumstances. The movie was a massive flop, and drew such negative attention to the pseudonym that the (real) DGA discontinued "Alan Smithee" in 2000.

I've been watching various TV Christmas movies. Yes, they are often prefictictable and cheesy. But sometimes after a long day, you need this.

I have been adding Christmas movies I have seen this year and previously to the Library Thing Christmas Movie list.

our list

charlie browns christmas

the grinch (the original of course)

Alistar Sims christmas carol

Home Alone

and adding to the list for next year
Holdovers

>90 BooksandMovies: I was inspired to make my own list! With regard to cheesy holiday TV movies, I still have the Hallmark Must Love Christmas on my DVR because I'm a Liza Lapira fan & in her career she's always the bridesmaid, never the bride except in this Hallmark movie; plus she has great holiday outfits
>91 cindydavid4: So glad someone else appreciates the 1951 Sim version of A Christmas Carol! I used to watch it every year, and it had a special meaning my first year in grad school away from home, watching it alone in the graduate lounge.

My highly tentative list:
A Christmas Carol (1951)
Nutcracker: the motion picture (with the set design by Maurice Sendak, directed by Carroll Ballard; it just gets me in the mood)
The Shop Around the Corner
Scrooged "Put a little love in your heart"
The Nightmare Before Christmas (not sure about this one)
Meet Me in St Louis (it was on the LT list, but is it just because of the song?)
Bad Santa
Christmas Holiday (this is a Deanna Durbin noir picture that was a hit in the 40s; director Robert Siodmak; it was on the LT list; I am eager to take a look because James Harvey devotes a chapter to it in his Movie Love in the Fifties & it sounds very interesting)

I haven't watched Love, Actually all the way through; would it be considered a Christmas movie?
Also, Bad Santa reminds me that Santa is an anagram for Satan (Satan Claws?), so there should probably be some place for Krampus, Fatman, Violent Night, &, of course, Die Hard. Just finished watching Midnight Cowboy for the first time; it somehow reminded me of Christmas in New York when I was there in the late 60s, though not a jingle anywhere (Christmas dinner at a Howard Johnsons! brings back memories)

Love,Actually was considered a chrismas movie, but I really had some problems with it. Other people love it so YMMV

loved little shop on the corner!

American Fiction, based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, is one of the year's best movies, a sharply biting satire filled with marvelous set pieces and punch lines that had the audience at my screening laughing loudly throughout. Jeffrey Wright finally gets the high-profile starring role he's long deserved, and he's surrounded by a stellar cast -- Issa Rae, Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams (how lovely to see her again!).

Wright plays Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a literary novelist who's struggling to sell his latest novel, an update of Aeschylus's The Persians, to publishers who want "a black book." ("I'm black, and it's my book," he protests.) Horrified by the success of books like the fictional "We's Lives in Da Ghetto," he decides to protest by giving the publishers precisely the sort of exploitative trash they seem to want, and is horrified when it's the most successful thing he's ever written.

Highly recommended.

Netflix. Leave the World Behind (2023, 2h 18m). Director, Sam Esmail; screenplay by Esmail, based on Rumaan Alam’s book of the same name. Brooklyn family take a spur of the moment vacay at a Long Island luxury home rental near the beach. The Sandford family is: Amanda, who seems to be the boss (Julia Roberts), husband Clay (Ethan Hawke; easily malleable, gitit?), horny 16 yr old son Archie (Charlie Evans) & 9 yr old Rose (Farrah Mackenzie), obsessed with the Ross & Rachel story from the TV series Friends.

The owners of the house turn up unexpectedly, George “G.H.” Scott (Mahershala Ali) & his college age daughter Ruth (Myha’la), both in evening dress, having attended a concert in the Bronx. Due to a blackout in Manhattan, they decided to seek shelter at their Long Island summer place. When I was around 12, somewhere between Rose’s & Archie’s age, the big End of the World As We Know It novels were Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon & Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (there was a hit movie based on the latter; not sure about the former), both of which I read with (as I recall) a certain avidity. At the time, the atomic bomb was the main suspect; the art film of the time would have been Hiroshima Mon Amour which I haven’t gotten around to seeing to this day.

In Alam/Esmail’s re-visioning the apocalypse is the collapse of communications technology; with the 2 isolated families frantically waiting for further information that never comes, because the satellites & optical fiber hubs have been hacked out of existence, the supply chains have ruptured, disinformation is rampant, & passenger planes, disconnected from their flight computers, come crashing into Long Island. (Archie starts to vomit & his teeth fall out due, as is suggested, to an attack of microwave radiation, though I firmly hold to the old-fashioned diagnosis of excessive masturbation) Eden is an elaborate bomb shelter stocked with canned goods, a giant library of DVDs & electronic monitoring systems, and electric generators.

There are call-outs to Get Out & Annihilation, & Kevin Bacon has a brief appearance as a survivalist of the Norman Reedus type from Walking Dead. One of the weirdest cutaways has Clay & G.H. bargaining with Bacon’s Danny while Ruth & Amanda try to scare off a herd of menacing deer by screaming and waving their arms. Camp classic. Also like Rose’s modest claim that she only watched the Aaron Sorkin episodes of West Wing. Lot of haters in the IMDB comments, perhaps because the Obamas had some kind of production responsibility – or maybe the suggestion of internal coup d’etat by plutocrats? No, probably because viewers were like Rose, who wanted some kind of Ross & Rachel “closure” that would put paid to all the chaos after all that waiting. Spoke to my occasional mood, though definitely not a Christmas movie.

>73 KeithChaffee: Zachary Woolfe. NYT, 12/22/2023: ‘Maestro’ Won’t Let Leonard Bernstein Fail. "Bradley Cooper’s movie has an unrelenting focus on Bernstein’s marriage. What’s missing are his struggles as a musician."

Appears Cooper focused on the marriage to divert attention from B.'s lack of success as a serious composer. That he had his critics as a conductor might be nit-picking when taking in the long view, in my opinion.

>96 featherbear: Interesting, but I disagree with much of Woolfe's argument. The author is almost never responsible for writing the headline, but a movie that focuses on Bernstein's marriage is definitely not a movie that 'won't let Leonard Bernstein fail." The unhappiness of his marriage is what the movie is about.

And I think Woolfe overstates Bernstein's lack of success as a "serious" composer. His symphonies aren't among the very best or most popular of their era, but they're still performed fairly often; Mass, for all the controversy surrounding the piece, has been recorded four times in the last 20 years, which is more than most modern music ever gets.

The Candide overture may have been written for the musical theater, but it's now a staple of the concert hall; Chichester Psalms is a choral standard (and deservedly so; it's Bernstein's masterpiece, if you ask me); and his violin concerto (it's not called that, but that's what the Serenade after Plato's "Symposium" is) is part of most violinists' repertoire.

The 2021 documentary Boulevard! A Hollywood Story (I watched it at Kanopy; it's also available for rent at Amazon) tells the story of two young composers who were hired by Gloria Swanson in the mid-1950s to write a musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard for her to star in. Swanson fell for one of the two men, who were romantic as well as musical partners. And the musical was never performed because Swanson had never actually gotten the rights to do a musical version.

It's hard to tell that story sixty years later; all three principals are dead, and there's very little relevant video footage to show. One of the writers did a videotaped interview with his music publisher in 2009, so we rely heavily on his narration; there's extensive use of a clip from The Steve Allen Show in which Swanson performs one of the songs.

But there's too much reliance on cheaply animated imaginings of key moments in the story, too many talking heads who don't have the skill of giving good interview, and ultimately, just not enough actual story to make a whole movie. "We spent a year writing a musical, but nothing came of it" is an amusing dinner party anecdote, not a 90-minute feature.

I will, I think, find myself in a relatively small minority on this one, but I did not care for All of Us Strangers. I have very much liked the earlier films from writer/director Andrew Haigh, but this one left me cold.

There are, to be sure, a few remarkable moments; a scene in which Jamie Bell and Andrew Scott share regrets about their relationship is heartbreaking, and gorgeously played by both men. But there is a painfully long drug trip sequence (and even a short drug trip sequence is almost always a bad idea); the romance that makes up one of the two primary plot lines is unconvincing; and the movie's ending is so easy to see coming that I felt insulted by it.

Rye Lane (streaming on Hulu) is a romantic comedy set almost entirely on a single day, as Dom and Yas (David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah) have a day-long meet cute wandering through South London together. They're an adorably charming couple; the supporting players bring lively, distinctive pops of energy; and the screenplay by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia is crisp and fresh. A fine debut from first-time director Raine Allen-Miller.

Britbox had a Season 2 Christmas special of Beyond Paradise, which was bittersweet; with the decision on whether to close the Devon station postponed to January (“because it’s Christmas”), waiting for social services to pick up a child “arrested” for stealing a sausage roll, mysterious break-ins where the thief leaves stuff plus a small pile of ashes. I’ve been re-watching Midsomer Murders on freevee over the past months, where the downer for me is less the murders but the unpleasant amount of boorish class behavior in the various village towns (including the treatment of Sgt Jones by his superiors; supposedly humorous); Beyond Paradise is a lot easier to take, with DI Goodman (of course) reconciled with his restaurateur wife Martha (Kris Marshall & Sally Bretton respectively). They’re now living in a houseboat with a duck; Martha’s inability to conceive via IVF (the source of their near break-up in the previous season) might have a potential solution with foster care. DS Williams (Zahra Amadi) is reconciled with her daughter Zoe (Melina Sinadinou) who doesn’t want to play a Santa’s helper elf at the local Christmas festival. Maybe a little Hallmark-y, but soothing.

Once again, I find myself in a small minority on a critically adored movie:

The Zone of Interest is set mostly in the home of Rudolf and Hedwig Höss (Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller). He's a concentration camp commandant, which makes her (as she jokes to her mother) "the Queen of Auschwitz." Their home is tucked into a corner of the camp grounds, separated only by a massive wall topped with razor wire; we can see the chimneys in the background, and throughout the movie, we hear the machinery of death grinding away in the near distance.

Our subject is the banality of evil, and writer/director Jonathan Glazer (working from the novel by Martin Amis) finds a few chilling moments in the early going; listening to Rudolf and his colleagues cheerfully praise the young Nazi who has designed a more efficient multi-chamber oven to speed up the execution process is horrifying. But by the time we get to Hedwig and the other Nazi wives koffee-klatsching about who scored the best dress at the latest Auschwitz Clothes of the Dead Rummage Sale, the banality has gotten -- well, awfully banal.

On one level, I get it. The most chilling thing about an evil regime is how blandly bureaucratic it can be, how easily and unthinkingly people can go about their daily lives, how quickly mass murder becomes just another job. And that's an important lesson that we need to be reminded of every so often (though given that we're currently on the verge of living through it yet again, any movie on the subject is bound to feel a bit redundant at the moment). Even when the subject is banality, though, the filmmaker is obliged to make a movie that is interesting enough to hold the audience.

But Glazer is more interested in using the cliches and tropes of Art Film to remind us that his movie is Important. Shrieking/droning noises in lieu of a score? Check. Weird scenes filmed in photographic-negative night vision? Got 'em. He's giving himself an easy out: This is high art, and if you don't appreciate it, it's because you didn't get it.

Art or not, I literally struggled to stay awake through the second half of the movie, and that's a failure in my book. There's only been one other movie in my decades of moviegoing that actually put me to sleep, and god knows I've sat through more than my share of boring movies.

This movie is going to be nominated for several Oscars, and might even win one or two. And it's utter dreck.

Netflix the other night: Bullet Train (2022; 2h 7m). Director, David Leitch; screenplay Zak Olkewicz, from the novel by Kotaro Isaka. Leitch directed John Wick & was several times a stunt double for Brad Pitt, who stars in this one. Pitt is Ladybug, a professional killer emerging from therapy, supposedly assigned to a simple smash & grab of a briefcase full of ransom money worth $10 million on a bullet train bound for Kyoto (his handler is revealed at the end). The ransom money was for the son of an extremely nasty Russian, White Death (Michael Shannon, looking very fit) who has taken over the Tokyo yakuza. The son’s rescuers (Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Brian Tyree Henry code-named Tangerine & Lemon respectively) are on the train with the son, along with the ransom briefcase, which they have recovered. Also on the train is Kimura (Andrew Koji) with orders to recover the same briefcase or have his already half-dead son Wataru finished off; his handler is Prince (Joey King), responsible for pushing Wataru off a building resulting in the child’s present condition; she’s on the train along with Kimura’s yakuza dad & Wataru’s grandpa (Hiroyuki Sanada). Cameos include Bad Bunny as cartel assassin Wolf, Zazie Beetz as Hornet (poisons specialist assassin with a stolen ultra-venomous snake as her carry-on baggage), & uncredited Channing Tatum always under the impression he’s being propositioned. Pitt plays it as a somewhat befuddled Cary Grant with a special set of skills (including the ability to fog up the conversation with therapy jargon); like Grant in North by Northwest his is a case of mistaken identity; White Death believes Ladybug is Carver (Ryan Reynolds), responsible for the death of the only woman WD ever loved. Yes, the train does crash at the end, although all of the annoying train staff & extraneous passengers have somehow managed to exit in time. My guess is that the Eva Marie Saint surrogate is Sandra Bullock. Maybe not classic Hitchcock, but an entertaining action homage, with more characters running around than a Christmas rom-com.

Just finished recently watching Scarecrow and Mrs. King Complete Series. As mentioned above in thread when I watched the first episode I was not expecting much. Yes there were aspects that were understandable dated. However this a show that sucked you in and kept you interested till the end. If you like spy or drama shows you have to see this show.

>104 BooksandMovies: Source? Streaming? Cable?

Every now and then you see a credit on a movie that you didn't expect, something that seems like an unexpected departure for the person involved. Such was the case when the closing credits started rolling on the animated kid's movie Migration: "written by Mike White." The White Lotus this ain't.

What it is is the tale of the Mallard family, parents Mack (Kumail Nanjiani) and Pam (Elizabeth Banks), preteen son Dax (Caspar Jennings), adorable duckling Gwen (Tresi Gazal), and Mack's curmudgeonly Uncle Dan (Danny DeVito). They have a cozy life on an idyllic pond where they live with a few other ducks. Mack's goal in parenting is to scare his kids so much that they will never leave the pond; the world out there is dangerous, he tells them, and we have everything we need right here at home.

Doesn't work, of course. The other Mallards are restless, and when a flock of migrating ducks makes a brief rest stop at the pond, Mack is eventually persuaded -- very reluctantly -- that the family should migrate to Jamaica for the winter.

Things go wrong, of course, and we're off on what is essentially A Child's First Wacky Road Trip Movie. Plenty of big names pop in for a few scenes to do voices -- Carol Kane as a potentially menacing heron, Awkwafina as a Noo Yawk pigeon, Keegan-Michael Key (overdoing the Jamaican accent) as a scarlet macaw, David Mitchell as the guru-like leader of a flock of ducks on a bucolic farm. There's an evil chef who keeps popping up to menace the family, a marvelously drawn character with enormous broad shoulders cantilevered over what seems to be a 12-inch waist.

This is definitely a kid's movie, with none of the narrative or emotional sophistication you would expect from the best Pixar movies, but it's not so dumbed down as to be painful for the grownups in the room.

The theatrical release includes Mooned, a short film centered on Vector, the would-be supervillain from the first Despicable Me movie. It's a nice bit of Looney-Tunes-ish slapstick.

>105 featherbear: The series is currently streaming for free through Roku and Tubi. I watched episodes through both sources. Both sources were good.

(Tubi, which is a free legal streaming site owned by the Fox Corporation, is avaliable through various streaming devices as well as online. You do not need to set a Tubi account to watch, but it will save a spot if you do. It appears Roku does not require a Roku device to watch and this show could be watched on Roku online. The Roku device hooked up to a TV does seem faster than simply streaming via computer through their website or Tubi.)

>107 BooksandMovies: Thanks!

A pair of fine foreign films at the theater today:

The latest from French director Francois Ozon is The Crime Is Mine, a sort of screwball murder story. It's set in 1935 Paris, where two young women share an apartment. Pauline is a young lawyer who hasn't yet found her first client; Madeleine is an aspiring actress hoping to land her first role. When Madeleine becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a theatrical producer, the two decide they can spin the accusation into celebrity and career opportunities for both of them (shades of Kander & Ebb's Chicago). The story zips along at a jolly clip, with plenty of unexpected twists and turns, and importantly, everyone in the cast is hamming it up to precisely the correct degree. Standouts are Fabrice Luchini as the investigating judge, and Isabelle Huppert as a faded silent-movie star who enters rooms so grandly as to make Norma Desmond look like a timid wallflower.

For something completely different, Germany's entry in the Best International Film Oscar race is The Teachers' Lounge; not much comedy to be found in this one. A middle school is plagued by a rash of thefts, and the fallout spins wildly out of control for faculty, staff, and students; an idealistic new teacher tries frantically to do the right thing for everyone, especially her students, and only ramps up the tension. I suspect that the tension may be even greater for American audiences than it is for German ones. We have been trained by the news of the last several years to expect tension in a school to end in horrific violence; everytime a backpack entered a scene, I had to take a breath and remind myself that it probably wouldn't be hiding a gun. Leonie Benesch as the central teacher and Leonard Stettnisch as a quiet student who is hardest hit by the spiraling drama make the strongest impression in a fine ensemble.

>73 KeithChaffee: One more piece on Maestro. My New Year's resolution to take a look at this controversial pic in 2024!

Tim Riley. LARB, 12/28/2023: Waving or Drowning: On Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro.”

Just watched the 1958 film Auntie Mame. Worth watching for the fashion and the interior design.

Continued in the thread: What Are You Watching in January-April 2024 -TV Shows or Film!