Least and Most Favorite Movie of the week

[laffite]

Any movie that has both Cary Grant and Myrna Loy can't be all bad, ...

But it at least half bad. Myrna I would like in just about everything.

[skimpole]

Last week I saw three movies. What can one say about the 1931 The Maltese Falcon? In its defense Ricardo Cortez is strikingly oily as Sam Spade, his womanizing made crystal clear in the first few minutes. Much of the dialogue is the same here as in the 1941 version. One problem is the 1931 version's counterparts are no match for Astor, Lorre and Greenstreet. The second best of the cast is Una Merkel, as Spade's secretary, with Thelma Todd playing Archer's widow. Not everyone is enthusiastic about Huston's direction, so one might accept Roy del Ruth for telling the story twenty minutes faster. But the real problem is that Cortez and Bebe Daniels have no chemistry together, so their climatic scene is no match for Bogart and Astor's. (And Cortez even gets an extra scene visiting Daniels in prison).

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is another nonsensical Hammer prehistoric movie where dinosaurs are running rampant 65 millions years after their extinction, and where the quarrel over a virgin who refuses to be sacrificed is the excuse for dressing the women in skimpy fur bikinis. One odd thing about this movie is that the star was a brunette Playboy playmate whom the story insisted had to be a blonde. Rather than dye her hair, she successfully insisted on wearing a blonde wig, as opposed to the filmmakers actually asking a blonde Playboy playmate to take her place. Sambizanga is an early Angolan movie, or would be if the makers were not actually too busy fighting for Angola Independence to make it there (the credits thank Congo-Brazzaville). The movie made Sight and Sound's top 250 movies of all time last year. It tells the apparently true story of a man arrested by the Portuguese colonial authorities. He is ultimately beaten and tortured to death, while officials give his wife the runaround while she tries to find him. Although the editing shows a certain curiosity and technique as the simple story is told, it's hard to deny that is a movie is more of political and historical interest than of aesthetic one.

[EP Millstone]

. . . When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is another nonsensical Hammer prehistoric movie where dinosaurs are running rampant 65 millions years after their extinction, and where the quarrel over a virgin who refuses to be sacrificed is the excuse for dressing the women in skimpy fur bikinis . . .

I always chuckle -- and shake my head -- when I read complaints and criticisms about inaccuracies in cinéma fantastique.

Hello! They're movies. Fiction. Flights of fancy. Not historical records. Not scientific reports. Not statistical data. Not reality.

Some folks go to the movies to escape reality. Some folks go to movies because they want more than reality. Some folks go to movies because reality isn't enough or is dull . . . or downright horrible.

For me, the wonder and marvel of movies such as When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is the artistic and technical collaboration, determination, dedication, effort, craftsmanship, and financial investment -- collectively, the magic -- of and by the filmmakers to make the unreal real, the impossible possible -- to make dreams come true!

Bikinied blondes cavorting and frolicking with dinosaurs? Not a problem, as far as I'm concerned. Au contraire! BRING IT!

[skimpole]

Last week I saw four movies. Let's start with the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front. The remake has found a new way of structuring the narrative. And it's all to the worse. Instead of taking some time to remove the illusions of the new German soldiers, the movie has a prologue where everything goes to hell in the first 24 hours at the front. Then we move to the last four days of the war. Now all of the incidents of the novel have to be told while the Germans are trying to negotiate the armistice. The flaws of this approach quickly become evident. First, it removes the key element of all great world war one movies, the sheer unending attrition. Now the characters should know that the end is in sight. But the soldiers don't act like that way at all. They don't react to the Kaiser's abdication, let alone that a naval mutiny helped bring down the army. Even though much of Germany is in revolution, the protagonist Paul and his comrades don't have any politics at all. (Did the director think it might alienate the audience?) Second, we're supposed to wonder whether Paul will survive to see the end of the war. But Paul's death in the Milestone film is one of the most famous scenes in film history. It may be the first sound film scene readers of this forum remember after Al Jolson. So of course Paul is going to die. Of course he will die at the last possible moment. So the whole film is based on an extremely obvious and absurdly predictable irony. Third, the rest of the movie is structured around two battle scenes, with their owns flaws. In the first, Paul and his friends are ordered to go on the offensive. Oddly, they reach the Allied trenches. But then they are forced back by an offensive of Allied tanks, which you might think would have been launched before the Germans reached the trenches and killed their soldiers. The second battle scene is launched by a bigoted militarist general to start just 15 minutes before the Armistice. Aside from Paul's death, the offensive has historical problems. First, it's utterly pointless--the armistice makes it clear the Germans have to evacuate France. Second, when some soldiers protest this pointless offensive, the general has them summarily executed. Never mind that in the actual first world war, the number of Germans shot for desertion were only in the double digits. And it ignores the widespread politicization of German soldiers. Third, and again, there is yet another surprisingly easy run to the trenches, so it could end with more violence and desperate action by Paul in contrast to the economy of the Milestone version. So what does the remake have over the 1930 Milestone film, considering there has been 92 years of improved technology and increased cinematic frankness? Nothing. Not one bloody thing.

The other three movies are much better. Crown v. Stevens is an early Michael Powell film. Its young handsome protagonist soon finds himself in a pickle of a situation. He has a spoiled selfish fiancee who won't return the engagement ring he unwisely showed her. He has a stiff, narrow-minded boss who won't give him the raise to cover for the ring. And the moneylender/jeweler is very angry he does not have the money nor the ring. When our protagonist returns to the jeweler he finds he has been shot by his boss' young wife. And so we find ourselves in an interesting situation. And then after fifty minutes the people funding the movie told Powell he had to wrap it up in fifteen minutes. And so he does, somewhat abruptly. But he does show the talent that would later be put to better use. Prisoners of the Earth is a 1939 Argentine film about a plantation in the wilderness that uses tricks and brutality to keep its workforce virtual serfs. I recall the stories by the Uruguayan author Quiroga being more effective in its depiction. And admittedly, the love interest is a bit of a drip. But the last third shows more power as the three main characters meet their fates. The villainous overseer is whipped for several minutes while the other two face more abrupt ones. Soleil O is probably the movie of the week. Like last week's Sambizanga it's an African movie from the early seventies, with clear radical opinions. This time the director is Med Hondo, from Mauritania. But unlike last week's movie this story about an African immigrant coming to France, only to encounter French racism is directed in a much more interesting and less conventional narrative, mixing documentary, satire, some slapstick and musical numbers, even some animation.

[skimpole]

Last week I saw six movies. Gypsy is an odd movie. It is supposedly about Gypsy Rose Lee but the star and main focus of attention is her incredibly dominating and demanding mother. The one song everyone remembers is "Everything is Coming up Roses," sung by her mother. But her ultimate "triumph" is that Natalie Wood is pretty enough to make a living taking off her clothes. This would hardly seem a vindication by mothers considerably nicer than Rosalind Russell's character. I've heard Ethel Merman sing "Everything is Coming up Roses," I've seen her sing it on The Muppet Show, hell I've seen her sing it in Airplane!. Having never seen her on Broadway, I don't know if she makes this odd plot "work." But I do know that Russell, with her singing dubbed, doesn't.

The Fox starts off with interesting cinematography of the Canadian landscape, cut up by some dubious editing as the two female protagonists try and fail to kill the fox that threatens their poultry. As a movie, it suffers that its once shocking theme (Missouri prosecuted it for obscenity) is infinitely more tolerated. It also doesn't help that the (oscar-nominated!) score is jarring and annoying, nor is the death of one of the key characters shot very well. It is here that Mark Rydell began his career making movies that got more oscar nominations than respect. All Through the Night starts off as a curiosity, the wartime movie that Bogart, Lorre and Veidt appeared in a few months before Casablanca. And it includes a crudely racist "joke" early in the proceedings, while Kaaren Verne is no Ingrid Bergman. Yet despite these problems this story of Bogart the good-hearted gangster finding a ring of Nazi spies while investigating the death of the maker of his favorite cheesecake actually works well as a comic action picture, including an extended sequence where Bogart has to explain "his" sabotage plan to a nest of German agents despite not speaking German. 20000 Years in Sing Sing is the kind of Spencer Tracy movie that Warner would make, with Tracy starting off as a cocky criminal who learns to smarten up after facing a tough warden. Tracy is good, Michael Curtiz is competent, although the conclusion involves Tracy being executed out for a crime he didn't commit, and with a warped sense of honor conveniently ushering him off the stage.

Aftersun was considered one of the few "adult" movies of last year, winning Sight and Sound's choice as best film, and providing what appeared to be one of the few competent acting performances in what appeared to be a rather weak year for lead actors (only two of the five nominees were from Best Pictures, and one of them was for Elvis). So it was easy to think Aftersun was penalized by the Academy in missing a Best Picture nomination for being too good. Yet having watched I'm inclined to be more impressed with Frankie Corio as the daughter rather than the nominated Paul Mescal as the father taking what turns out to be a final vacation. I'm also a bit inclined to think that the movie is a subtle trick, with people projecting on to Mescal what is ultimately an underwritten role. Marcel the Shell with Shoes on is shamelessly twee and cute. I am inclined to tolerate that and let it go about a tiny sentient shell who can conveniently walk and manages to live in a BnB while helping his aging grandmother. Jenny Slate is winning as the title character.

[skimpole]

Over the last two weeks I saw six movies: five this week, one the week before. Four of these I watched because they got major golden globe nominations and so far they have not improved my opinion of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Crossing Delancey is based on the idea that Amy Irving would have trouble finding a proper boyfriend, and even less interestingly, must choose between two rather dull suitors. Jeroen Krabbe is best known for playing the murderer in The Fugitive that Harrison Ford's high-priced lawyers should have found in the first five minutes. Peter Riegert strongly suggests that Bill Forsyth was all the brains behind Local Hero. Dear Heart is a movie that wishes Glenn Ford dumps his fiancee Angela Lansbury for Geraldine Page. However Page is so mousy an actress it's hard to have much sympathy for her, even though Lansbury, who only shows up in the last 15 minutes, is an extremely trying character.

The other two Golden Globe nominees are basically sitcoms, except they lack sitcoms' economy and pacing. The Teahouse of the August Moon has Marlon Brando playing a Japanese interpreter to army officer Glenn Ford. The casting is dubious, and that Ford is no Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The most striking thing about the movie is that after a brutal war in which a more poorer Japan was still able to make the United States bleed, this movie on Okinawa seems satisfied with portraying the Japanese as peasants stuck in the 18th century. The only unpredictable thing about Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell is that having set up its premise (Gina Lollabrigida conceived a child with one of the three soldiers who stayed with her over a ten day period, and has been dunning all three for child support) it does not bother to explain which one is the father. To be fair, paternity tests were extremely inexact in the sixties, so the movie probably can't take credit for ambiguity. Otherwise this is a story of people making things worse with poorly thought plans, played at inordinate length.

To say that Amsterdam is David Russell's best movie since I Huckabees is not meant to be much of a compliment. And this movie about a potential fascist coup in the thirties looks more like a rough draft that would have been better worked on by Wes Anderson. Also, the last twenty minutes devolves into the Capraesque pseudo-populist rhetoric that brought down Three Kings. So Emily the Criminal is clearly the movie of the week. Granted, this is because of really underwhelming competition. The protagonist, hampered in her career by student debt and a criminal conviction, gets involved first in credit card fraud. But the movie is reasonably taut and the possibility that she could be killed at any minute certainly makes it worth watching. Gina Gershon provides an especially smug cameo.

[skimpole]

Last week I saw three movies. I thought Quartermass and the Pit was a BBC serial that was edited into a movie. It turns out the BBC serial and the Hammer Horror movie are two distinct entities. The latter one, entitled Five Millions Miles from Earth has an interesting plot,[SPOILERS!!] made at a time when interesting sci-fi plots were a lot rarer than they are now. The titular scientist finds evidence of aliens in the London underground. Not only does he find that Martian insect-like creatures manipulated our ancestors five million years ago, their antennae has reminded humans since then of demons. Not only that but the Martians are even worse than demons, they're Nazis, massacring their own kind out of racial purity and infecting us with it as well. The plot is the most interesting part of the movie, and admittedly it does not have the effect seeing it now, more than six decades after it was thought up.

Welfare is certainly the best movie I've seen so far this year, essentially two and three-quarter hours of welfare clients trying to argue with a bureaucracy that seems more interested in paperwork than in assisting them. It is the sort of movie which American politicians have spent nearly half a century avoiding, and the difficulty in seeing has certainly made their job a lot easier. Its immersive effect is certainly foreign to much Hollywood film-making, as well as its purity of form. What can one say about Babylon, which certainly does not have those virtues? In its defense, its panache and vitality make the film more interesting than Elvis. True, the movie could reduce its swearing by 75% to even 90% to be more like the period. The urination, vomiting and defecation scenes are hardly necessary. And Margot Robbie does not really physically resemble any actress from the period. Many critics I respect despise it for how little the movie says about the achievements of silent film. But then old Hollywood didn't appreciate those achievements either. Not only did they choose Wings as first best picture, but given the opportunity to reconsider several months later and choose Sunrise, they opted for it again. And given the chance to award Chaplin, Keaton, Murnau, Lubitsch, von Sternberg and Hawks with a director's prize in its first ten years, the Academy gave them nothing. (And never would.) You can't entirely blame Chazelle that Hollywood's connection with art has been, to put it mildly, rather contingent. And that Chazelle chose to reference Ivan the Terrible Part II, Vivre sa Vie and Persona deserves some credit.

[skimpole]

Last week I saw five movies. The Hit is more the idea of a cool movie rather than a successful cool one. It's certainly promising with John Hurt as a ruthless hit man, Tim Roth as his young assistant and Terrence Stamp as his enigmatic victim who seems surprisingly cool with his imminent execution. Unfortunately the psychology of the movie is less enigmatic, or even clever than conveniently underdeveloped and all too conveniently resolved. What! No Beer? is a farce that takes place just before the end of prohibition, in which Jimmy Durante and Buster Keaton start going into the beer business just a bit prematurely. Durante is the more amusing actor, with his constant malapropisms. Some of the slapstick is tolerable, but hardly brilliant. Keaton doesn't give a bad performance, but it is undercut realizing that his career in Hollywood features ended, more or less, with this film, partly because of his drinking which is evident as you watch him. The Emperor's Candlesticks is an unnecessarily complicated tale of intrigue involving late 19th century Tsarism which is more indulgent to any of the Tsars than they deserve. William Powell is his effortlessly charming self as the aristocratic Polish protagonist. As the Russian agent who tries to stop him and eventually falls in love with him, Luise Rainer is her effortlessly dull self.

More interesting are the two movies I saw from last year. You might think Till would be perfect Oscarbait, since all Danielle Deadwyler has to do is present a picture of understated dignified outrage. Except that Deadwyler ended up with nothing, notwithstanding giving a performance better than four of the five actual nominees, including the winner. And while the story is simple that doesn't mean it's not effectively done. R.M.N. is a more complex movie. Marin Grigore gives a striking performance as the not particularly sympathetic lead, someone who has clearly messed up his relationship with both his wife and his lover, and who abruptly returns to his small Romanian town after his son is traumatized by a sight that is only revealed later in the course of the movie. Meanwhile the town becomes outraged that the bakery, whom the lover helps run, has decided to fill its minimum wage jobs with three Sri Lankans. This sort of racist resentment and fear is all too familiar in the "Western" world, notwithstanding Romania's own history and its own tenuous connection to Europe. It certainly make me wish I was able to see the three movies Cristian Mungiu made between this and his Palme D'or winning Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days.

[skimpole]

Last week I saw five movies. Let's start with the three musicals. To appreciate A Chorus Line today you would have to appreciate the impact its relatively realistic plot had when it appeared on broadway in the mid-seventies. I was in no position to appreciate it then, and I think I know the exact moment when its cultural moment had passed. It was in the 1994 Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" in which, at the end, a fog turns the Simpsons inside out, but their horribly mutilated bodies break into a rendition of "One." So I can't be sure whether the reason I was underwhelmed with the movie was because Richard Attenborough botched it (hardly an unreasonable assumption) or because the musical wasn't that very good. That the movie stars Michael Douglas and then asks us to sympathize with 16 actors whom we've never heard from again is a bit of a problem. (Although a look at Wikipedia reveals that one of them would be the future Mrs. Wayne Gretzky.)

One can imagine why Hollywood thought a sequel to Funny Girl might be a good idea. That doesn't mean the result, Funny Lady, is a particularly engaging one. Streisand is acceptable, but there's no number as memorable as "People" and the arc of the movie is about Fanny Brice's relationship with a husband she ultimately divorced and who wasn't the father of her children. I think the most striking thing about The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm is that it has the killers from Peeping Tom and The Manchurian Candidate as the title characters. That it chooses three lesser known fairy tales is probably the best idea the movie has. It must be said that the Cinerama process looks odd on the TV screen. Also, while the stories are acceptably presented, the relationship between the brothers and children is presented in a saccharine manner. Particularly unconvincing is a scene where fairy tale characters beg Laurence Harvey to recover, otherwise they'll be forgotten, even though Charles Perrault had gathered many of the stories decades earlier.

Better are two movies from last year. The Banshees of Inisherin boasts four good oscar-nominated performances about a friendship on a fictional Irish island a century ago that cools, and then dramatically falls apart. Gleeson and Condon are particularly good, better than this year's oscar winners. I suppose I would have appreciated the sense of humor more had I been able to enjoy it with a cinema audience. A good movie, but not good enough to be nominated for best picture, in my view. Even better is Suzume about a Japanese high school girl who finds herself desperately trying to stop a malevolent worm from escaping magical doors and destroying Japan. Much of this is engaging and exciting as the title character races all over Japan, finding other young women to help her, and dealing with her guardian (her aunt). Perhaps the most amusing idea the movie is that the handsome young man who should be responsible for closing the magic doors, is trapped into a toddler's chair by a mercurial sentient cat. The climax of the movie is perhaps a bit disappointing, and it prevent an otherwise enjoyable movie from reaching Miyizaki greatness.

[skimpole]

Last week I saw four movies. The Confrontation was probably the best of these, another one of Miklos Jancso's elaborately long-take vistas on events in Hungarian history. In this movie, it's about a group of Communist youth in the postwar period who try to engage Catholic seminary students in debate, while dealing with their own Stalinist impulses. Since this movie was made under the communist Kadar regime, the basic problematic is shown with some subtlety and considerable tact. Shot over what is apparently one of Budapest's more beautiful neighborhoods, the innately sinister effect of the Communist seizure of power is mitigated by having the youth dress closer to 1969 than 1947 and having the most sympathetic character wear a red shirt. If not as engaging as Jancso's earlier The Red and the White or later Red Psalm, it's still interesting in its own right. Last year saw the 2022 Sight and Sound poll, and several feminist and African-American films benefited from the choices made. Somewhat at the tail end of the interest is the documentary Tongues Untied. Rather short (it's only a bit more than fifty minutes) it discusses what it is like to be an African-American homosexual at a time (the eighties/nineties) of AIDS and considerable African-American homophobia. Personally I think this is more interesting (both thematically and visually) than The Watermelon Woman which made the Sight and Sound top 250 for little more as its pioneer status as the first African-American lesbian feature film.

The 1952 The Importance of Being Earnest is probably the version that best displays Wilde's special kind of wit. I remember an early 21st century version starring Judi Dench and I think this works better, though it's not the movie that works best while working at your desk. Triangle of Sadness is easily the worst movie of the week. Despite apparent political provocations about the unspeakably rich on a luxury cruise and the turnabout they face, the overall impression is one of cheap misanthropy. It's as someone took the worst elements of the Coen brother movies, and then removed everything that made the characters interesting, all stylistic interest and distinction, and any story-telling ability (Triangle's plot points are invariably unsurprising). But arguably that's unfair. Ruben Ostlund also gets to cheapen films as varied as L'Eclisse, Weekend, The Rules of the Game, The Exterminating Angel and Eyes Wide Shut as well!

[skimpole]

Last week I saw four movies. The Opposite Sex is a musical remake of The Women whose main attraction is that has a less interesting director and less interesting actresses. The original didn't have any men in it, but having Leslie Nielsen in the remake in romantic lead mode is hardly an improvement. I finally saw Coma, which keeps turning up on TCM. It's an OK thriller, Bujold is OK, the most interesting aspect of the movie is whether she and we can trust Michael Douglas. But any movie whose idea of a climax involves us trusting Richard Widmark is going to be a little disappointing.

The 1963 Lord of the Flies is certainly competent, but notwithstanding William Golding's Nobel Prize the whole conceit appears kind of facile. It's hard now not to think of parody ("After 24 hours trapped on a desert island, we were shocked to find these well brought up British public schoolboys acting like...Belgians!) No Bears is probably the best of the movies of this week, where we see Jahar Panahi making one of his house arrest movies. While directing a movie about a couple who want to leave what appears to be Turkey, Panahi finds himself accused of taking a photo in what appears to be a romantic dispute involving neighborhood bigotry and attempts to flee the country. It's probably worth rewatching, but it didn't make the biggest impression on me while I was watching it.

[skimpole]

Last week I saw four movies. Flower Drum Song is not by itself a very interesting movie. Indeed Miyoshi Umeki quickly becomes insufferable in her mousiness, and the plot basically revolves around her. It's more interesting as an artifact, as a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that people don't easily remember (I certainly didn't know it was one before I saw the credits). It's interesting that that the most memorable number, "I enjoy being a Girl," is probably the first time Hollywood asks us to enjoy the beauty and sexuality of an Asian-American woman. Indeed given the puritanism of Indian cinema, the political restraints of Chinese cinema, the underdeveloped nature of cinema on much of the rest of the continent, conceivably the first time any movie asked this of any Asian woman. (I imagine Japanese cinema before 1961 probably had crasser images of women than the relatively austere dramas TCM shows, but still...) It's striking that this movie, like the other big color musical of 1961, deals with the struggles of tradition and assimilation. Though not remotely as interestingly, memorably or effectively as said big color musical of 1961.

The Apple was said to seriously damage the movie musical back in 1980, though at the time I remember people hating Xanadu and Can't Stop the Music much more. Certainly the movie has a misc-en-scene that is memorably and remarkably tasteless which, along with its silliness, helps one to deal with the rather uninteresting plot and anodyne heroes. In retrospect, the main interest of the movie is psychological. What possessed two of the people synonymous with mediocre eighties movies to make a movie where such an entertainment maker is the literal devil?

The 1935 Anna Karenina ends up making a very valid point: you can't hope to make a competent adaptation of the novel in 95 minutes. Garbo is just about OK as the title character. But Vronsky both has to be charismatic enough to win an otherwise respectable woman, while at the same time being clearly serious enough to be both devoted to Anna and to changing his life. March is just conventionally handsome. Rathbone is good at the pedantic and strict aspects of Karenin's character, but shows no signs of the Christian love that overwhelms him. Stephen, Dolly, Kitty and Levin are basically reduced to cameos, while the movie completely omits the fact that Anna and Vronsky have a girl together. Clarence Brown went to some effort to show a military party, an aristocratic ball, a scene from an opera, even some attempt to film Venice. The expense would have been spent filming another half an hour to develop the characters more.

Ratcatcher is clearly the movie of the week. This is a grim movie about Scots living on a Glasgow housing estate in 1973 which has to provide subtitles for the accents. It would be interesting to compare it to Fish Tank, made several years later which I saw last year, and involved a girl several years older than the 12 year old protagonist. It would also be interesting to compare it to Rosetta which came out the same year, won the Palme D'Or and shows the desperate nature of precarious work in present day (i.e. 1999) Belgium. There is a scene where the protagonist wanders around a house being built, which suggests that this inspired a scene in The Florida Project which that movie completely botched. I don't think Ratcatcher is of the same order as Kes, but it certainly fits into the large category of "Is this 1999 movie better than American Beauty? What are you? Some kind of moron? Of course it is."

Also, I rewatched Hatari! this week.

[skimpole]

Last week I watched three movies. Several decades ago I read a book which referred to Leslie Howard's "uncanny ability to such the life out of anything he's in." Berkeley Square does little to alter such a view, as this movie, about a contemporary (i.e. thirties) American who imagines or finds himself in 1780s Britain, only to be increasingly annoyed in it, does little with this interesting premise. And this notwithstanding an appearance on the National Board of Review top 10. I watched X Y and Zee for one reason: it's one of the few movies that begin with the letter X. It's sort of a diluted Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Taylor being slightly more attractive than her Martha. One problem in watching it fifty years later, is that back then Michael Caine and Susannah York's reserve was probably more in keeping then with how English people were supposed to conduct themselves. Now York appears dull and Caine cold and unsympathetic.

So Decision to Leave is easily the movie of the week. Director Park Chan-wook is best known for his thrillers Oldboy and The Handmaidern and their cunning twists. And indeed there is a twist in the second half of this movie, but it's qualitatively different from those two. Park Hae-il may have been the best actor of last year. Lee Jung-hyun is good as his increasingly estranged wife, Go Kyung-pyo as his somewhat violent partner, and Kim Shin-young as his second (female) partner. But Tang Wei is also very good, certainly vindicating her performance in Long Day's Journey into Night as a character who brings new meaning to the term femme fatale. If not the director's best film, it is certainly worthy of interest.

[skimpole]

Over the last two weeks I saw seven movies: six this week, one the week before. The Woman King is not uninteresting in its story about the female warriors of early 19th century Dahomey. But it's hard to be too upset that Viola Davis didn't get a best actress nomination. She plays a conventionally tough general at the beginning of the movie, and she's essentially the same at the end, notwithstanding some contrived plot twists. Inside Moves is best known today for two things. It contains the second performance of Harold Russell, and Diana Scarwid got a surprise best supporting actress nomination. But this movie about several disabled people centered around John Savage who congregate around a bar is hardly special, even granting that such conceits were rare in 1980. Scarwid is pretty enough, but the plot point in the last third of the movie where she becomes Savage's girlfriend, then tells him she's been with their mutual friend and then gets back together with Savage is clumsily handled. Garden of Delights is a 1970 movie by Carlos Saura is an opaque critique of the Franco regime, as a wealthy man is confined to a wheelchair after a traffic accident. Facing with severe memory loss, family members got out of their way to recreate memories. The result is too obvious to avoid Franco's censors, but not interesting enough on its own terms.

I also saw two comedies. The Phynx I watched because of its strange title, which I may have confused with a supernatural movie made around the same time about a scientist trying to scientifically catch a soul. This is a silly cold war parody in which four young men are shanghaied by America's National Security bureaucracy to form a rock band. Albania has been kidnapping various celebrities of the thirties and the forties and the idea is that they will allow a popular rock band to enter the country who can then rescue them. That the actual Albania at the time was extremely xenophobic and not likely to allow any Americans in, let alone a rock band, is merely the most obvious problem with this only mildly amusing comedy. Road to Zanzibar shows Crosby and Hope running around Africa, especially after their human cannonball trick causes a major fire. Eventually they find, and are conned by Dorothy L'Amour and Una Merkel. This is a reasonably amusing comedy, and until the protagonists encounter cannibals in the last act, not as offensive as it could be.

Much better are the last two movies. Asteroid City contains plentiful amusing characters, many strange incidents, is the first movie from 2023 I've seen, and Wes Anderson's trademark misc-en-scene, this time set in a tiny western hamlet of the title. By those qualities, the movie works on its own terms. Ostensibly about five teenagers at a sort of science fair competition, it is then surrounded in an elaborate framework, (the movie we're seeing is actually being staged as a play, and we meet the author, director and actors). One might find the characters suffers from a surfeit of deadpan. In fairness, if Jason Schwartzman's protagonist has a more limited range than Ralph Fiennes' Gustave H, he is (at least most of the time) playing a man whose wife has recently died. And perhaps the most moving scene is when Schwartzman, who also plays the actor playing his character, encounters the actress who was to play his wife, only to be written out of the play. Would you see a musical that is two minutes shorter than The Best Years of Our Lives and only use ordinary singing and dancing skills from its actors? Such is Up Down FragileThe movie also uses Jacques Rivette's elaborate improvised techniques for a movie where the first number is about an hour in. It's admittedly not for everyone as three young women wander around Paris, living their lives, encountering each other, various other people and Anna Karina in particular. It's not an exuberant movie, and the three women don't come to any usual climax or even epiphany. One might say it's an acquired taste.

Also, I wanted to remind myself that I rewatched Dog Day Afternoon and should remember Penelope Allen.

[skimpole]

I saw four movies last week. Kimi may have been the most disappointing, although it does contain the usual competencies one expects from Steven Soderbergh. The story does itself no favors by making several obvious comparisons with Rear Window, except here Zoe Kravitz is confined to her apartment by a nasty case of agoraphobia instead of a broken leg. About halfway through the movie, Kravitz manages to overcome this so it becomes more of an aggravating factor than a real problem. One rather striking plot hole is that Kravitz is almost kidnapped off the street only to be rescued by a nearby demonstration. You would think this would lead them to call the cops, or get the license number of the vehicle involved, instead of the villains just trying again later. Mrs. Tom Hanks is good in a brief role as a particularly oil corporate goon. By contrast, Illegal was a pleasant surprise, and this is largely because of a good performance from Edward G. Robinson. He plays a prosecutor whose career collapses when one of the people he sent to death row is exonerated, but not quickly enough to stop his execution. Robinson movies from drunken self-pity to becoming a ruthless criminal lawyer, breaking both the spirit and the letter of the law, but doing with a certain panache. One can't help but show a certain respect for a man who argues the poison his (guilty) client is accused of using is useless by drinking it in open court, correctly gambling that the prosecution will call a recess so he can reach a doctor in the 45 minutes before the poison kicks in.

Tokyo Chorus is not a bad movie, with elements that would be seen more successfully in Ozu's later I was born, but... such as a corporate flunky and demanding small children. It strikes me as a softer version of The Crowd. Happening is probably the movie of the fortnight. Not to be confused with the most reviled of M. Night Shyamalan movies, this deals with a young movie in 1963 France who is trying to get an abortion when it is, still illegal. Anamaria Vartolomei gives a good performance as the protagonist, who does little to attract conventional audience sympathy. Perhaps the most striking moment is the revelation that the drugs one doctor gave her actually served to strengthen the embryo. It's not as good as 4 Monts, 3 Weeks and 2 days, it is more successful than the more recent Never Rarely Sometimes Always.