Tag Archives: alfred hitchcock

May 30, 2020 · 5:10 am

Vampires, Hitchcock, Nazis and witches: movies and TV

BLACULA (1972) doesn’t have the best vampire makeup (though it must have been the first, or one of the first films to show vampires changing their face before they kill) but I still enjoy the story of how Mumuwalde (William Marshall) makes the mistake of trying to enlist Count Dracula’s support in his 1700s anti-slavery campaign, for which the arrogant count bites Mumuwalde, then leaves him chained in a coffin for 200 years. When a couple of swishy gay antique dealers (and there’s a lot of “faggot” tossed around too) buy up Dracula’s furnishings and transport them to Los Angeles, Mumuwalde (the “Blacula” name is only used once in the film) awakens, discovers Vonetta McGee is the lookalike of his long lost wife — now if he can only stop pathologist Thalmus Rasulala and McGee’s sister Denise Nicholas from realizing what he is and stopping his seduction. This is annoyingly inconsistent on the vampire rules (they rise instantly or after dying depending on what the plot calls for) but the leads are strong enough to make it work. Elisha Cook plays an ill-fated morgue attendant. “Look around this room — memorize every corner — for it will be your inglorious tomb!”

Alfred Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES (1938) starts off as a quirky rom-com, with soon-to-be-married Margaret Lockwood stranded at a small European inn where she makes the acquaintance of Michael Redgrave — the most obnoxious, irritating man she’s ever met! — as well as cricket obsessed Brits Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, adulterer Cecil Parker, brilliant surgeon Paul Lukas and May Whitty as an elderly British governess. After Lockwood, Whitty and the others board the train taking them home, Whitty vanishes — but everyone in the carriage with her and Lockwood insists there never was an old woman there. A set-up that’s been reused countless times, this is an excellent mix of romance, comedy and suspense. “It has always been my contention that Hungarian Rhapsody is not their national anthem!”

When kindly Cornish squire Charles Laughton helps innocent virgin Maureen O’Hara reach her relatives at JAMAICA INN (1939), O’Hara is blithely unaware that not only is the inn the center of the local wreckers, Laughton is the secret master; before long, however, she’s working with undercover man Robert Newton (who would later play Long John Silver in Treasure Island, one of the classic pirate performances of all time) to save his life and take down the gang. This was the first of Hitchcock’s three Daphne DuMaurier adaptations, and tanked miserably, as it wasn’t at all what was now defined as a “Hitchcock film.” That said, I did enjoy watching, though it’s definitely not A-list — for Laughton to capture O’Hara at one point she basically has to walk up to him and let him tie her up. This wraps up the Hitchcock DVD set I’ve been watching, but it won’t be hard Netflixing the rest of his films. “Nature has been against you from the start — and everything else has been against you since.”

Taika Waititi’s  JOJO RABBIT (2019) is a bizarre black comedy in which a ten-year-old Hitler Youth discovers Mom Scarlett Johansson has a Jewish girl living in their attic, plunging him into an agony of uncertainty about how to deal with this demonic creature (“They have batwings and climb down chimneys to eat German children.”) — and what if his imaginary BFF Adolf Hitler finds out about it? With Sam Rockwell as a gay Nazi and Rebel Wilson as a proud Aryan Woman (“I have born 18 German babies!”) this definitely isn’t for everyone but it worked for me; I’d probably suggest John Boorman’s Hope and Glory as a double bill for another (but less off-the-wall kids’ eye view of the war. “I don’t want you to kill yourself over me, which a couple of girls have done in the past.”

The TV series MOTHERLAND: FORT SALEM is set in an alternate history where witches ended the colonial-era witch hunts by offering to put their magic in the service of the military. In the present day we follow three teenage witches in basic training — general’s daughter Abigail (Ashley Nicole Williams), idealistic volunteer Tally (Jessica Sutton) and rebellious draftee Raelle (Taylor Hickson). Complicating their struggle to make the grade is the Spree, a terrorist movement dedicated to ending the militaristic use of magic, and whose undercover agent Scylla (Amalia Holm) becomes Raelle’s lover.

I really liked this. It’s an overwhelmingly female cast, sex-positive and just plain good. I’d like a little more on the backstory (we know that the U.S. map is different, and that WW I was fought in 1908-11, but not much more) but the front story holds me fine. And I really like that “the work” (AKA magic) is performed by singing — it makes for a nice change from the usual “magic as psi-power” approach TV takes. I look forward to S2 with pleasure. “Once I forced her to eat part of a dead pigeon.”

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May 23, 2020 · 5:03 am

From Gotham City to Dunsinane and points in-between: this week’s viewing

BATWOMAN‘s second half-season kept up the level of the first half, which makes me sad Ruby Rose has decided one season is enough in the role of Kate Kane (there’s no official statement, but I’ve heard this credited to injuries in action scenes, the time suck of being a star in a weekly series, or her and the producers not getting along). She’s done an amazing job and plays great with her deranged sister Alice (Rachel Skarsten) and her step-sister Mary (Nicole Kang), who’s easily the best character in the show (I blogged this week about her and the show at Atomic Junkshop). In addition to the running battles with Alice and Mouse, Kate has to deal with her relationship with her closeted ex, Sophie and the discovery that Lucius Fox’s convicted killer may have been innocent, which doesn’t sit well with Luke Fox (Camrus Johnson).  Due to the pandemic the season ends, like Flash, without the final episodes, but I will say the one they did have works well as a cliffhanger. “Kate knowing what she’s doing can be worse than most people not knowing what they’re doing.”

SUPERGIRL‘s unplanned finish was much less successful, mostly because the season’s been a mess. The big challenges carrying over from the first half were Leviathan, a ruthless alien cabal plotting mass destruction and new boss Andrea’s Obsidian system bringing billions of people into a virtual fantasy world; and Lena’s (Katie McGraw) plan to cure humanity of evil with an experimental mind-control system. Adding to this, the post-Crisis reality-altering turned Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer) into a respected businessman and the head of the DEO without changing his evil agenda any; while Cryer’s good in the role this repeated last season’s twist of revealing he’s been manipulating and playing all the various villains for his own ends. It’s too repetitive (he mocks Eve Tessmacher for her foolishness much as he sneered at Red Daughter a year ago) and it doesn’t help when the villains are so unsatisfying. Leviathan’s members are powerful but not notably different from any other conqueror; the buildup with Obsidian felt pointless (despite one great episode with Alex as a VR version of Supergirl) as Andrea doesn’t have an evil agenda. Lena’s arc, finally coming back to the side of good, was the only one that really worked. So the season just fizzled out — it didn’t help that winning (though with Lex still a threat) relied on Supergirl making a very unconvincing inspirational speech. “You arranged a battle with Earth, Wind and Fire and didn’t invite us?”

I don’t think I’d heard of Hitchcock’s YOUNG AND INNOCENT (1937) before watching it, or if I did I confused it with Rich and Strange. It turns out to be a good version of one of Hitch’s favorite themes, the Innocent Accused (it’s very much in the mode of The 39 Steps). When an actress turns up strangled on the shore (shortly after a private argument with her estranged husband), beachgoers spot Tisdale (Derrick de Marnay) running away from the body. He claims he was going for help but nobody believes him, including his incompetent attorney (there’s a lot of comedy in this film). Tisdale escapes and goes on the run with the help of Erica (Nova Pilbeam), a police officer’s daughter. Can they find proof that Tisdale didn’t do the deed? The leads’ love at first sight works much better than the romance in Secret Agent and the film is a good one with some clever suspense sequences, like the leads being stuck in a kid’s birthday party when they have a desperate need to be elsewhere. That said, I’m not sure the plot holds together (there’s no indication the police even tried to contact the husband) and the climax involves a nightclub band in blackface, so be warned. “You forget, it’s my petrol.”

MACBETH was a Folger Theater production streaming through the end of July. A well-executed, energetic production of the “Scottish play” but despite a striking opening (a staffer discussing trigger warnings for violence gets stabbed) it doesn’t stand out from other productions despite Penn of Penn and Teller co-directing (while some of the magic scenes are striking the play doesn’t make a huge thing of them, which is good). “Methought I heard a voice cry out ‘Sleep no more — Macbeth doth murder sleep!”

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April 11, 2020 · 5:10 am

Flight 828, Freedonia and sabotage: TV and movies

While I enjoyed the first season of MANIFEST, the second season, which wrapped up this week, left me disappointed.

The first season introduced us to the passengers of Flight 828 — most notably siblings Ben and Michaela Stone (Josh Dallas, Melissa Roxburgh) — who disappeared for five years before landing, unaware any extra time had passed. They and the families who wrote them off for dead have to adjust to their new reality, and to the mysterious “callings” in their heads that keep sending them out to save lives.

There’s a lot I like in the second season, such as Jared, Michaela’s ex (he moved on while she was gone, comes back to her, then loses her) accepting it and just becoming a friend, and one passenger founding a church that sees them as agents of God (only to later reconsider whether they’re false prophets of the Biblical end times). But the general tone of the series is that “all things work together for the good,” with the Callings working miracles even when they go against common sense. This is a hard sell for me because it usually comes off way too pat (as in Kiefer Sutherland’s 2012 series Touch), as was the case here. The season climax, involving a trio of drug-dealers getting revenge on Michaela, could have been on any number of cop shows, and one of the B-plots was just ridiculous (even shadowy government conspiracies can’t simply revoke someone’s medical license overnight). I’ll watch S3 if there is one, but I won’t be heartbroken if there isn’t. “For the record, we both turned on me.”

DUCK SOUP (1933) was the last of the Marx Brothers’ anarchic Paramount films, wherein Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) becomes the new leader of Freedonia, which undercuts a neighboring nation’s plot to take over. Fortunately they have two spies (Chico and Harpo) to find Firefly’s weaknesses — that can’t possibly go wrong, can it (“Wednesday we fool Firefly. We not show up.”)? Although this bombed at the box office, it’s wild, funny film with many great lines (“We’ll fight for this woman’s honor, which is more than she ever did!”) but the ending is an unsatisfactory resolution to all that energy; still, it makes me appreciate why MGM imposing a more conventional story structure on the brothers worked against their strengths (with the exception of Night at the Opera). “Will you marry me? Did your husband leave you any money? Answer the second question first.”

After the poor The Secret Agent, Alfred Hitchcock’s back in top form with SABOTAGE (1936), based on Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (retitled to avoid confusion with his previous movie — but that only made me confuse it with Hitch’s later SABOTEUR). Oscar Homolka plays a cinema owner married to Sylvia Sydney, earning a little money on the side by acts of sabotage. Now he’s been given a really big assignment; can the greengrocer next door, who’s actually a Secret Service agent, charm Sydney enough to get the goods on her husband?

This is a well-made movie that shows Hitchcock’s belief that the McGuffin doesn’t matter: like the much later North by Northwest, we never learn what, exactly the  bad guys’ agenda is or what they want. It’s not important. It also shows Hitch’s mastery of suspense: a long sequence involving a character unwittingly carrying a time bomb, and constantly encountering delays before he can drop it off, is an absolute nail-biter. I did find the suspense at the end somewhat overwrought, though; after everything that’s happened, it seems Sydney’s actions are more likely to earn her a medal than jail time. “I don’t think I want any cabbage.”

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March 28, 2020 · 5:12 am

One winner, two meh in this week’s movie viewing.

The winner was THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936) which I mentioned in passing Tuesday. Errol Flynn plays the Lancer stationed in fictitious “Suristan” who copes with personal drama — fiancee Olivia de Havilland loves his younger brother! — while warning his superiors that the Suristan king (C. Thomas Gordon in brownface) is not happy they’ve cut off his slush fund and that things could get very dicey very soon …

When they don’t listen, the king takes a bloody, treacherous vengeance, then flees to Russia (Britain’s rival in the “great game” of empire). When the Crimean War erupts, Flynn and his Lancers are sent into the thick of things and finally get a chance at revenge — but only by defying their commanding officer to make the eponymous charge.

The real charge was the result of a stupid screw-up, but Alfred Lord Tennyson made it sound epic and heroic in his poem about the battle. This film makes Tennyson look positively anti-war (he did at least acknowledge the blunder) but it’s the kind of old school imperial romance that I get a kick out of, even knowing it’s unhistorical nonsense. Along with Flynn and de Havilland we have Nigel Bruce as a henpecked officer who proves to have the right stuff, Donald Crisp as the man who warns Flynn off ( (“You can’t charge, Vickers — it’s a valley of death!”) and David Niven. There’s also the spectacular final battle, which is truly epic, though aided by the brutal “Running W” for tripping horses (some sources say its use here triggered the animal rights protests that eventually led to abandoning it). “That is why the 27th Lancers has been ordered to Sevastapol.”

Based on W. Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, the WW I-set spy drama THE SECRET AGENT (1936) works better than Hitchcock’s silent melodramas but that’s not the same as saying it works. John Gielgud plays Ashenden, a novelist/war hero who discovers the Secret Service has faked his death so that he can work undercover tracking an enemy agent carrying vital intelligence back to Germany; Madeline Carroll, who was wonderful as the love interest in The 39 Steps is much less effective as the agent posing as Gielgud’s wife here.

This has some interesting elements such as the protagonists’ growing horror at the ruthlessness of their work, but Gielgud (this is the first time I’ve ever seen him as a young man) feels miscast: he’s stiff and unconvincing and having him and Carroll fall in love comes out of nowhere. Robert Young plays a likeable American and Peter Lorré plays a British-employed killer. “What is this strange power you have over coachmen?

IN ANOTHER COUNTRY (2012) falls even flatter as a Korean woman distracts herself from her troubles by writing three different fantasies about French immigrant Isabelle Huppert showing up in the woman’s small seaside town and having romantic adventures. Way too meandering. “Why Are You So Quiet?”

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February 22, 2020 · 5:10 am

Batman, a fake pirate, and a man on the run: movies

BATMAN AND BILL (2017) is a documentary by Marc Tyler Nobleman following up on his earlier book Bill the Boy Wonder. Like the book, it lays out the overwhelming evidence that Bill Finger deserved co-creator status on Batman (to say nothing of credit for such classic stories as the Joker’s debut, below), and that when fans began confronting Bob Kane with this, he made outraged denials (the success of Batman on TV is a particular sore spot as Kane’s percentage made him rich while Finger lived in lonely poverty). The documentary traces Nobleman’s efforts to track down an heir who could make a copyright claim for Finger, and eventually succeeded — the closing scene is Nobleman seeing Finger’s co-creator credit on Dawn of Justice. On the whole, better than the book. “This is a statement about Bill Finger as an unsung contributor by the man who’s most responsible for Finger not getting credit.”

I also caught BATMAN: The Scheme Is Sound, a 2019 tribute by the Parkview Elementary School Music Club to the 1966 TV show: Why does the Riddler kidnap a dishwasher heiress? What happens when Catwoman and Batman dance the Watusi? Who can save the Dynamic Duo from death by dishwasher? This was fun, though the actors playing the villains had  more to work with than the straight man roles of the heroes. “This adventure ended on a good note.”

THE PIRATE (1948) is my delayed double-bill to last week’s The Black Pirate as Gene Kelly’s swaggering bravo here is partly a riff on Douglas Fairbanks’ role in that earlier movie. Kelly plays Serafina, womanizing leader of a Caribbean circus troupe in the 1830s. He’s instantly smitten with Manuela (Judy Garland), a repressed, convent-raised girl about to marry her town’s stuffy mayor, Don Pedro. Serafina puts Manuela under hypnosis to get her to admit she loves him, but instead she reveals her fascination with the legendary pirate Black Macocco (“Mac the Black” is one of Cole Porter’s delightful songs added to the non-musical stage show this is based on). When Serafina realizes Don Pedro is Macocco, retired, he contrives to pose as the pirate and win Manuela, but of course that kind of imposture is just bound to go wrong … The leads are awesome, bounding with energy, as are the talented Nicholas Brothers in their one dance with Kelly (black entertainers were limited to numbers the studios could cut out for prints in the south) and the songs are fun. The romance should be unconvincing (there’s really no set up for Manuela falling for Serafina) but the stars make it work; however Serafina’s pursuit of Manuela has enough creepy overtones, it’s not going to be to everyone’s taste. “Now that I’ve seen ya/Niña, Niña, Niña/I’ll have neurasthenia/until you are mine.”

THE 39 STEPS (1935) was Alfred Hitchcock’s very free adaptation of John Buchan’s same-name novel, a hit book which introduced Buchan’s series hero Richard Hanney (one of the forgotten adventurers covered in Clubland Heroes), but even Buchan admitted Hitchcock improved on the source. Robert Donat plays Hannay, temporarily staying in London; when a woman invites herself up to his apartment, he’s game, but then she reveals she’s part of a spy operation and staying with him to hide. Doesn’t work: she winds up knifed in the early morning and Hannay, realizing he’d be the prime suspect goes on the run. Can he clear his name? What is the secret of the “39 steps” and the man with no little finger? Will Madeline Carroll, who winds up dragged along with him, come to see that Hannay’s on the side of the angels?

It’s a first-rate film, superior to Hitch’s previous movie, The Man Who Knew Too Much. It’s also very much a model of the themes and tropes Hitchcock would play with for the rest of his career. The man falsely accused of a crime. Traveling hither and yon to bring the bad guy to justice (something that also happens in North by Northwest and Saboteur). The “McGuffin” behind all the espionage not really mattering — we know it’s something involving aviation, but the explanation is just a string of technobabble. The Hitchcock Romance argues that Hannay also undergoes a typical romantic/maturing arc for a Hitchcock protagonist. He starts out unattached — no permanent home, willing to have a casual liaison — and ends up happily restored to society and in love with Carroll.

#SFWAprof. All rights to images remain with current holders. Comics art by Jerry Robinson

 

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February 8, 2020 · 5:17 am

Runaways, Nancy Drew, assassins and pirates: TV and movies

With Disney sucking all Marvel back to its streaming service, RUNAWAYS‘ third season is its last (I suppose it could have continued there, but as SyFy Wire says, it doesn’t fit neatly with the MCU brand), but at least it went out on a win.

At the end of S2, the alien Gibborim had taken over several of the Runaways’ parents, and one sleeper among the kids. The kids open the season fighting back, trying to stop the Gibborim before they open a portal and bring more of their people through. By the time they succeed, they have a new problem: Morgan leFay plotting to take over the world by mind-controlling people through cell phones! This actually works well as a story (certainly a better threat than S2’s dirty cops) though they hand-wave that the Staff of One is now really magic rather than quantum physics passing as magic (there’s a reference to magic as unexplained science, but that’s not how they’re playing it). We also get a guest appearance of Cloak and Dagger from that short-lived show, which worked okay but I could have done without. Overall a satisfactory season that ends well — too bad it’s the last. “We’ve done a lot of bad things for our kids — it’s time we do something good for them.”

Sophia Lillis, the Nancy of NANCY DREW AND THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE (2019) strikes me as awfully young, but unlike the Emma Roberts version not awkwardly so — it’s probably that I’m at the age where a lot of people just look really young (plus Lillis comes across as wholesome — though not implausibly so — which implies younger to me). This has Nancy and her friends help Linda Lavin investigate her haunted mansion and discover the secret behind the spooks; it’s not as fun as the Bonita Granville films, but it’s reasonably enjoyable. “Only one person has purchased a large supply of nutmeg recently.”

With THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934) Alfred Hitchcock finally broke out of the mediocre crap he’d been doing and began the kind of film that would make him a legend. Leslie Banks and Olympic sharpshooter Edna Best are the unfortunate recipients of a dying agent’s message about an upcoming assassination; to ensure they don’t interfere, Peter Lorré kidnaps their daughter to keep them silent. Hitchcock himself considered this the work of a talented amateur and it’s certainly not his best, but it is enjoyable, which can’t be said about Easy Virtue. “Before June 1914, had you ever heard of Sarajevo, or even of Archduke Franz Ferdinand?”

Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk is a great swashbuckling novel that has nothing in common with Errol Flynn’s swashbuckler of the same name. 1924’s THE SEA HAWK is a faithful adaptation wherein a retired Elizabethan privateer gets framed for murder by his dishonorable brother, then shanghaid by pirate Wallace Beery before he can clear his name. By several twists of fate he winds up as a legendary Barbary corsair and eventually heads back to England with his pirate crew to kidnap his lost love and get revenge on his brother. This is a competent swashbuckler (it also has a lot of white people in brown face for the Arab roles), but it badly needs the screen presence of someone such as Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks. “Nearby lived a matron whose conscience was elastic and whose husband was — old.”

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January 25, 2020 · 5:10 am

Bruce Lee, Alfred Hitchcock and More: Movies viewed

And I also reviewed the 12 Monkeys TV series on Atomic Junkshop.

After reading Bruce Lee’s biography, I Netflixed ENTER THE DRAGON (1973), the movie that showed Bruce Lee’s dream of superstardom was within his grasp (he died too soon to realize it). Lee plays a Shaolin monk recruited by British intelligence to hunt down a Shaolin renegade running a crime empire, including a sex-trafficking ring. Getting to the bad guy requires competing in his martial arts tournament against John Saxon (who only realized midway through the film that he wasn’t the hero) and Jim Kelly (the trio of white/black/Asian fighters was part of Lee’s idea for another, unmade film). Solidly entertaining, though now that martial arts films are so mainstream, it doesn’t have the seismic shock it must have given audiences in ’73. “A man’s strength is measured by his appetites — no, a man’s strength is fueled by his appetites!”

Alfred Hitchcock again — MURDER! (1930) suffers from being a yet another Filmed Stage Melodrama in which actor-producer Herbert Marshall tries to clear a former protege of murdering a rival (“If I hadn’t told you to gain experience in the provinces, this wouldn’t have happened.”). Despite several stagebound scenes, though, some of the visual moments are interesting, such as a couple getting ready in the morning, the pressure on Marshall to vote guilty with the rest of the jury. “We use life to create art, then we use art to critique life.”

NUMBER SEVENTEEN (1932) is another filmed play, but with a lot of what would later be classic Hitchcock elements, such as lots of identity games and a very visual final chase. However, after an initially great shot of a windswept street, the results are dull and confused as the various cast members explore the eponymous address which contains a dead body, a stolen necklace and possibly an undercover cop. Hitch’s next film was the equally forgettable Waltzes of Vienna but I’ll be jumping over that one to the classic Man Who Knew Too Much. “You don’t have to do nothing — in this house things just happen.”

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (2001) has a cop infiltrating a street-racing ring with an eye to bagging alpha racer Vin Diesel for a series of highway robberies, only to find himself going native as he bonds with Diesel and falls for the racer’s younger sister (Jordana Brewster). I watched this because any series with this many movies in it must be doing something right; while fast cars, sexy people and male bonding all have time-tested viewer appeal, I can’t see anything that made this in particular stand out. Michelle Rodriguez plays Diesel’s woman. “I watched my dad burn to death — I remember hearing the scream.”

Directed by Hiyao Miyazaki’s son, Studio Ghibli’s TALES OF EARTHSEA (2006) has magic mysteriously going haywire, forcing the wizard Sparrowhawk (Timothy Dalton) to search out the cause and restore the balance. A young man guilt-ridden over having slain his own father joins with the wizard and together they confront an immortalist (Willem Dafoe) desperately struggling to open the barriers between life and death, no matter the cost. This was good, though the young man’s patricide doesn’t make any sense to me. “You turned away from light so that you could see only darkness.”

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December 7, 2019 · 5:08 am

Christmas movie binging begins!

But before I start the constant flow of Christmas treacle into my brain, I caught a few other items Thanksgiving weekend:

A young couple become something RICH AND STRANGE (1931) when a relative’s gift of money lets them travel around the world, only to find themselves pulled apart en route by everything from seasickness to romantic rivals (a dignified veteran falling for the wife, a golddigging fake princess preying on the husband). This Alfred Hitchcock film has some striking visual moments including the husband’s silent-comedy style evening commute and its frustrations and a moonlight walk across a ship’s desk that focuses entirely on feet and floor. However the film’s story is trite and uninteresting, even though The Hitchcock Romance considers it a masterpiece. “The thing about beautiful women like you is that you don’t want enough.”

I had much more fun with ROADSIDE PROPHETS (1992) whose biker protagonist strikes up a new friendship only to have the guy die minutes later. The biker impulsively pays for the cremation, then sets out to scatter his buddy’s ashes at the place in Nevada he requested — assuming the place is findable. Along the way the protagonist meets the usual array of road-trip oddballs including a hero-worshipping teen, a vagabond stripper, a terminally ill couple, an officiousmotel clerk, John Cusack as a dine-and-dash petty crook (“It’s entrapment — the sign said ‘free buffet’!”) and David Carradine, Timothy Leary, Arlo Guthrie and Abby Hoffman in cameos. Self-consciously quirky, but a lot of fun. “I didn’t get to be a management trainee by breaking rules!”

And now the Christmas stuff — CHRISTMAS PERFECTION (2018) combines the premise of 2007’s  Snow Globe (the female protagonist is magically transported to the perfect Christmas village) with William Dean Howell’s short story Christmas Every Day, in that the village never stops celebrating Christmas. No surprise, the protagonist is soon sick of perfection and thinking her imperfect male best friend is looking much more attractive. This is too sugary and low-key to work for me, and there’s something unsatisfying in her BFF/love interest (like they carefully calibrated the soft spot between “conventional” and “too oddball to be sexy.”). “This is some kind of reality show where they gaslight the children of divorce with happiness!”

SNOW GLOBE (2007), by contrast, seems to be turning into a Christmas perennial for me. Christina Milian is really likable as the lead, a Brooklyn baker who’d love an old-fashioned Christmas but her Italian/Cuban family are so loud and obnoxious and green lasagna is their traditional Christmas dinner — but then Milian stumbles into a world inside a snow globe where everything Christmas is picture-perfect. Part of why I like this is that where the preceding movie buts the blame on the protagonist (too much of a control freak to tolerate imperfection), Milian has valid reasons for getting fed up with her family, even though they all work it out in the end. Rewatching, I do wonder about how the magic works — the village is literally in the snow globe, but it somehow has an independent existence — but like wondering how Santa’s sleigh gets around the world so fast, it doesn’t stop me enjoying.  “Aren’t you having an existential crisis right now?”

I’ve had the soundtrack of RAGTIME (based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel) on my iPod for a while and love it, so I plunked down the money for TYG and me to catch a local production. It was money well spent as 1906 America deals with Emma Goldman, polar exploration, Evelyn Nesbit, Harry Houdini and a Ragtime pianist who retaliates for his true love’s death from a police beating with a wave of terrorism, all set to music. Powerful, though downbeat (reminding me of the book American Movie Musical‘s argument that where musicals traditionally showed music bridging strife in the community, modern productions no longer see the rifts as bridgeable). The production was minimalist in design (you can see the set above, though parts of the show took place on the risers above the audience) and used modern dress but effective nonetheless. My only complaint is the way the script paints Nesbit, a rape victim, as some kind of publicity-seeking adulteress. “When you’re trapped/And destruction seems imminent/Look to Houdini/The ultimate immigrant!”

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November 30, 2019 · 5:10 am

A smuggler, a teen detective and a power struggle: movies viewed

SOLO (2018) is, of course, the story of how young Han (Alden Ehrenreich) got a Wookie BFF, won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), lost his Great Love (Emilia Clarke), made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs and shot first (doing so in the final showdown with Woody Harrelson can’t be unintentional). This was a lot of fun, but not entirely satisfying — my big problem is that Han comes off too noble an anti-hero to be the money-hungry cynic and crook of A New Hope.  With Thandie Newton as a crime lord. “Did you forget? Never trust anyone.”

NANCY DREW — DETECTIVE (1938) stars Bonita Granville as an impetuous Nancy, convinced the mysterious disappearance of an old spinster right before she could donate her wealth to Nancy’s school is a sign of something sinister (spoiler: she’s right). While I’m not terribly familiar with the Carolyn Keene novels, Granville’s wide-eyed naif seems less like the book version and closer to amateur female sleuths like Deanna Durbin in Lady on a Train. This has the odd catchphrase “I’ll bet you $23.80” (supposedly it’s a standard WPA weekly paycheck) and I wonder if Nancy driving her own car didn’t have different meaning back then (it’s common today for a teen, but I imagine it must have been an unattainble fantasy during the Depression). “The password was bluebell — and a bluebell is also a larkspur.”

Granville becomes NANCY DREW — REPORTER (1939) as part of a school competition, then contrives to cover a sensational murder trial in which her woman’s intuition tells her the accused is innocent. Trying to prove otherwise, of course, plunges her and quasi-boyfriend John Litel (they don’t seem to be dating, but she’s quite possessive of him) into deadly danger, not to mention boxing. This was an improvement on the first film. “The man had a cauliflower ear.”

SKIN GAME (1931) is another of those stiff upper lip dramas Hitchcock seems to have made in his early career, a stagebound adaptation of a John Galsworthy play (even Juno and the Paycock opened the sets better). Ed Gwenn gives an excellent turn as a man of business whose plans for a country village put him on a collision course with the local squire, with both of them playing increasing hardball until a tragedy ensues. Better than Easy Virtue, but if this had become a lost film, cinema would not have suffered.. “Papa, may I spit in his eye?”

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November 23, 2019 · 5:11 am

Marital discord in Ireland and Scandinavia: movies

DIE NIEBELUNGEN: Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924) is Part Two of  Fritz Lang’s silent film (I watched Part One, Siegfried, a couple of months back) and disappointing after the epic fantasy of the first. Here, Siegfried’s wife Kriemhild is not only dealing with Hagen murdering him but her brother’s refusal to punish his loyal follower. When Attila (yes, the Hun) proposes marriage, Kriemhild agrees, convinced she can turn him into a deadly weapon against Hagen. And if her family get in the way, too bad … This is a much a more straightline story than Siegfried and correspondingly less interesting; I’m also unclear why Hagen kills Attila’s son at a crucial turning point (from what I recall of reading the prose Niebelunglied, this is a problem with some versions of the story too). Impressive visually though. “You swore on the edge of your sword.”

Alfred Hitchcock again — JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK (1930) is a filmed stage play I’d never imagine comes from the same director who later made Rope. Where the later movie is visually compelling despite taking place on a small set, this film comes off way too stagebound, though Hitchcock uses sound to create a sense of things happening off-screen.

The story didn’t work for me either, though apparently it’s much-beloved in Ireland. The story involves a working class family with a shiftless father, goodhearted daughter, son who’s fighting for Irish independence and Mom trying to keep it all together. When a wealthy relative leaves them an inheritance it looks like the clan’s hard luck story is turning around. Then it all comes crashing down and their doom is so heavy-handed I don’t know I’d have cared even on-stage (but a good stage production would certainly work better than this film). “Yes, that’s right — I have fallen to so low a state.”

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