Archive 5, Vol.10

Posted on March 27, 2024 by badblokebob

I have a backlog of 520 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2023 viewing. This is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today, we’ve got quite the variety, from Oscar nominees to straightforward action entertainment; from super-timely recent documentaries to pioneering animation from almost a century ago. But they’re all connected by… the fact I wrote some notes after I watched them. Thank goodness, otherwise reviewing some of them years later would be bloomin’ impossible. (That’s not much of a connection, I know, but it was on my mind after In the Mood for Love last time.)

This week’s Archive 5 are…

A Star Is Born (2018)

Boss Level (2021)

Coded Bias (2020)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

A Star Is Born

(2018)

This is the fourth version of A Star is Born, for whatever reason, but I’ve not seen any of the others so I won’t be making comparisons. I’m sure the story has been modernised (the last version was made in the ’70s, with the previous two in the ’50s and ’30s) without losing its fundamental essence: successful musician (here, Bradley Cooper) uncovers a new talent (Lady Gaga) who comes to outshine him. I guess it’s a timeless tale in the age of celebrity.

Singers-turned-actors have a mixed history, though casting one in a story such as this is fitting, given how you need to believe they’re a top-drawer musical artist. Fortunately, Gaga actually can act as well as sing, so she’s an unqualified success here. The headline song, Shallow — a duet between the two leads, which attracted even more attention for how they performed it at the Oscars — is… perfectly fine. People went a little too crazy for it at the time, I feel. But it’s given weight by how well it’s used in the film, so I guess that could sway you.

Also pulling double duty (well, triple if you count the singing) is Cooper, directing for the first time. (With all the talk this past awards season about how desperate Cooper is for an Oscar, it’s easy to forget that Maestro was only his second time behind the camera.) I seem to remember there being some complaints when he wasn’t nominated for direction for this one, but I think that was a fair omission. It’s not bad, but his directorial choices are a little too wavering. Like, in the early scenes, when the camerawork is all a bit documentary-ish, is effective — it undercuts the “glamorous story”, the almost-inherent fakeness of Musical as a genre, by making it feel Real. But later he gives in to glossy stylings too often; and too many of the song performances are captured with a lazily floating camera, lacking focus or decisiveness. It’s how they often shoot musical performances on TV: just kind of nothingy, moving the camera back and forth and side to side for the sake of making it ‘dynamic’. But, when you remember this is his first film, that’s fine — there’s a lot more good than bad about his work behind the camera.

A Star Is Born was #18 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Boss Level

(2021)

For a long time, there was Groundhog Day. And then someone had the bright idea, “what if Groundhog Day but mixed with another genre?” So now we’ve had the sci-fi version (Edge of Tomorrow), and the horror version (Happy Death Day), and the YA version (The Map of Tiny Perfect Things), and the “what if there were two people” version (Palm Springs), and the TV series version (Russian Doll)… Here, we get the action movie version. And it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect and hope “Groundhog Day as an action movie” would be. That’s praise, not criticism.

Interestingly, considering the context I’ve chosen to place this in, the film itself acknowledges — you might even say relies on — the fact we’ve all seen time loop movies before. Rather than begin at the obvious beginning (i.e. the hero’s first loop), the story starts dozens of loops in, then fills in the backstory with flashbacks later on. It’s somewhere between a sensible choice (who hasn’t seen Groundhog Day?) and a bold move (what about people who haven’t seen Groundhog Day?) That said, I imagine people in the latter group can still follow it, it just might be what’s going on is mysterious for longer (most of us will instantly get “he’s in a day-long time loop”, they’ll just have to wait for that information to become clear).

In fact, it’s a pretty economical movie across the board, hitting the ground running and rarely letting up. There’s very little repetition of “the same stuff every day”, instead taking our hero off in different directions. It does lean on voiceover quite a lot to get through some of the exposition, which won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it means it can hurry through the technicalities and get to what we came for — action and gags — so I can let it slide. On the basis of the kind of entertainment it’s designed to deliver, Boss Level succeeds admirably.

Boss Level was #160 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Coded Bias

(2020)

Given the precipitous rise of AI in the past couple of years, I don’t know how relevant this documentary from 2020 still is. Back then, it was ultra-timely, but tech evolves so fast, I have to wonder if it’s already dated. Well, if you want to find out for yourself, it’s on Netflix.

Not that it’s just about AI. It touches on a lot of interesting tech-related topics, like how facial recognition struggles with non-white people, or how algorithms were increasingly being allowed to control… pretty much everything. It makes a lot of broadly scary declarations about these things, but often lacks the detail to back them up. Not that it’s necessarily wrong, but it doesn’t prove its point; doesn’t clarify what’s scary beyond the gut reaction that this all sounds scary. This is partly because there’s so much to cover — it keeps jumping around between topics in short vignettes — which at least makes clear what a big field this is. There are also signs of hope, with the film offering some solutions (primarily: regulation in law) and highlighting fantastic people (almost all women, incidentally) doing great work to combat these things.

Ultimately, the areas the film explores are interesting and it’s sometimes informative about them, but it’s also unfocused and disorganised in its structure, which is a shame.

Coded Bias was #243 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Shadow of a Doubt

(1943)

I feel like Shadow of a Doubt sits in a certain tier of Hitchcock film; one where it’s not one of his very best known (Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, etc), but regarded well enough that it definitely has its fans, for some of whom it probably is Hitchcock’s best film. Hitch himself repeatedly said it was his favourite of his own work, chiefly because he enjoyed how it brought menace into the surface-level perfection of small-town America. One critic has even described it as Hitchcock’s “first indisputable masterpiece”, which I would certainly dispute considering its predated by the likes of The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, and Rebecca. Well, taste is relative.

Personally, while Shadow of a Doubt definitely has a neat premise and strong moments, overall I felt it lacked any of the truly exceptional elements that mark out Hitch’s real classics. Sure, if most other filmmakers had made it, it’d probably be one of their best; but you’re competing with an incredibly strong body of work if you’re a Hitchcock film and, for me, this one is definitely second-tier. Of course, as I just intimated, being a second-tier Hitchcock film is still some achievement. It’s a shame the relative hype for this one is leading me to focus on the negative. Heck, maybe I’ll like it even more when I rewatch it someday. Until then, I feel it missed the mark of my expectations in places. I even thought it was the kind of movie someone could remake and possibly get something really great out of. (Blasphemy!)

Shadow of a Doubt was #90 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2023.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

(1926)

aka Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed

The earliest (surviving) animated feature film is an ‘Arabian Nights’ fairytale about… well, the short version is in the title.

But story schmory, because the real star here is the medium itself: Lotte Reiniger’s animation. There are so many wonderful little bits of work, it’s impossible to list. Consistent throughout, it’s remarkable how much character and personality Reiniger manages to convey through her ‘simple’ cutout silhouette puppets. Then there’s little naturalistic details, like boats bobbing on the water. Some of it even feels surprisingly modern. Not massively so, perhaps, but it doesn’t have that staid, stilted formality you might expect from a hundred-year-old rendition of a fairytale. And that’s not to mention the homosexual subplot. Plus, there’s so much more to the style than just silhouettes on plain backgrounds. There are shades and effects, to add depth or style: the wavy lines of a river; a mountain range fading into the distance; and subtler and clever things, too. It’s a visual feast.

The restoration could be better, mind. There are a lot of dirt and scratches, which I can live with (there are so many of these, it would have to be manually patched up frame by frame, which would cost a fortune), but more egregious are stability and alignment issues. For example, during one scene, the top part of the next frame keeps appearing at the bottom. Surely that could’ve been fixed?

Better is the soundtrack. The BFI Blu-ray offers a choice: the original 1926 score by Wolfgang Zeller (recorded in 1999) or an English narration (with effects), based on Reiniger’s own translation of her German text (recorded in 2013). Having watched the film with both, I’d say the narration adds nothing of value to the experience, especially as it sounds like narration from a preschool storybook. Just stick to the original music.

But however you watch it, minor technical issues can’t distract from the artistry on display. This is truly the work of a master of her craft. Magnificent.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed was #35 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Silent Shorts Summary

Posted on February 22, 2023 by badblokebob

As well as all the unreviewed feature films in my ridiculously-large backlog (see the Archive 5 series for more on that), there are also a load of short films from the past few years that I haven’t reviewed.

Today, I’m taking a step towards putting that right, by bundling together all the silent shorts I watched between 2020 and today. In original chronological order, they are…

Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900)

The One-Man Band (1900)

The Infernal Cauldron (1903)

Life of an American Fireman (1903)

The Consequences of Feminism (1906)

The Dancing Pig (1907)

Frankenstein (1910)

What! No Spinach? (1926)

Sherlock Holmes Baffled

(1900)

Arthur Marvin | 1 min | digital (SD) | 4:3 | USA / silent

This is noteworthy for being the first film to star Arthur Conan Doyle’s immensely popular sleuth, but it’s an “in name only” appearance by the Great Detective. In fact, he’s not named on screen, so maybe “in costume only” (a dressing gown and pipe) would be more accurate. The actual film is nothing to write home about, either: it’s a 30-second skit, built around showing off then-cutting-edge filmmaking tricks, i.e. using editing to allow a burglar to disappear and reappear out of thin air. No wonder Holmes is baffled.

It’s only really of interest as a curio to fans of early cinema or Sherlock Holmes on screen, even if the latter is only invoked as a hook to attract viewers. Although, I feel like the fact the first Sherlock Holmes film was basically a spoof is somehow significant…

The One-Man Band

(1900)

aka L’Homme orchestre

Georges Méliès | 2 mins | digital (SD) | 4:3 | France / silent

Using the magic of cinema to take the title literally, in this short director Georges Méliès clones himself seven times over to create a musical septet (plus conductor).

Even having the idea to do this kind of visual stunt for the first time is obviously impressive — there’s no doubt that Méliès was an extraordinary innovator — but pulling it off with such technical competency… that could be tricky today, never mind in 1900, when you couldn’t check your footage lined up, nor just do another take if it didn’t, never mind the array of computer tricks (split screen, time ramping, reframing, etc) that could be deployed to make it work nowadays. Here, Méliès was doing multiple exposures on the same strip of film; the original negative — imagine if you messed up on the seventh go-round!

And even with all that, it’s not just an exercise in technique; not just a technical demonstration for those interested in the possibilities of motion pictures. You can set all that aside and still find an entertaining and amusing short — with a couple of extra gags thrown in at the end for good measure. Genius.

The Infernal Cauldron

(1903)

aka Le chaudron infernal

Georges Méliès | 2 mins | digital (SD) | 4:3 | France / silent

A few years later, and Méliès’s work is looking more extravagant — there are sets! Costumes! Props! Colour! Hand-coloured, of course, and the result is glorious. The colours are not only incredibly stable (you’d expect some flicker or judder on static elements from frame to frame, but nope), but they really add to the atmosphere. The sickly green demons and burning red & orange flames really leap off the screen, making the unreality of it that bit more tangible. This would be so much less effective in pure black-and-white. It’s less like a flickering clearly-fake old film, more like a nightmare. You can kinda see how people at the time might’ve believed stuff like this was real. I mean, how else do you explain those ghosts, hmm? (Okay, obviously they’re a double-exposure effect; but it holds up well. Certainly better than the cardboard-cut-out props.)

Intriguingly, there’s a 3D version of the film — a real, authentic one! To quote wholesale from Wikipedia: “In order to combat piracy, Méliès … began producing two negatives of each film he made: one for domestic markets, and one for foreign release. To produce the two separate negatives, Méliès built a special camera that used two lenses and two reels of film simultaneously. In the 2000s, researchers at the French film company Lobster Films noticed that Méliès’s two-lens system was in effect an unintentional, but fully functional, stereo film camera, and therefore that 3D versions of Méliès films could be made simply by combining the domestic and foreign prints of the film. Serge Bromberg, the founder of Lobster Films, presented 3D versions of The Infernal Cauldron and another 1903 Méliès film, The Oracle of Delphi, in January 2010 at the Cinémathèque Française. According to film critic Kristin Thompson, ‘the effect of 3D was delightful … the films as synchronized by Lobster looked exactly as if Méliès had designed them for 3D.'” They were screened again in 2011 and, at least as far as Wikipedia can explain, that was the end of it. To which I say: argh! I really want to see them! A 3D Blu-ray release would be lovely; but, as these screenings happened over a decade ago, I can’t say I’m holding out much hope…

Life of an American Fireman

(1903)

Edwin S. Porter | 6 mins | digital (SD) | 4:3 | USA / silent

Although fundamentally a remake (or ripoff, depending how you look at it) of the earlier British film Fire!, Life of an American Fireman has found a place in film history (it even merited coverage in Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film: An Odyssey) for two reasons: firstly, for pioneering the technique of cross-cutting, a major and significant development in film editing; secondly, for not actually having done that at all.

“Huh?”, you may well exclaim. Well, although for a long time the short was admired for its innovation, research by the Library of Congress eventually revealed that the film was re-edited sometime after its release (possibly in the 1930s or ’40s), and the original version actually played the action out twice, without the all-important cutting back and forth. Viewed in that original version, I’d argue to a modern audience it’s more confusing having the same sequence twice back to back — nowadays we expect intercutting of action, so it’s initially disorientating when the film cuts to outside the house and starts the same sequence of events over again. Perhaps more importantly, watching it twice over feels redundant: the second version adds no new information; and, being outside the house, thus distanced from the threat of encroaching fire, it’s less dramatic than the inside sequence. And that’s not to mention that the timeline doesn’t add up: the fireman is in and out of the window much more quickly during the inside version than the outside version.

Despite all that, this does remain one of the earliest American narrative films, bringing together various innovations that had occurred in the early years of film — primarily, constructing a continuous narrative across multiple shots and scenes. It just wasn’t the first film to do, well, anything.

The Consequences of Feminism

(1906)

aka Les Résultats du féminisme

Alice Guy | 7 mins | digital (SD) | 4:3 | France / silent

Imagine a crazy world where men did housework and looked after the children, while women lazed around drinking, smoking, and cajoling innocent young men into the bedroom. What larks! But such horrors might come to pass if we let those pesky women have their way.

Such once-implausible things are depicted in Alice Guy’s 1906 short. Consequently, this is the kind of film that might be described as “of it’s era” — although, said era probably extended another six or seven decades. I can’t cite any specific examples, but I feel like “wouldn’t it be hilarious if men behaved like women?” sketches were still being done in the ’60s and ’70s, if not even more recently. So, it’s less that it’s dated, more that it shows Guy was ahead of her time. I mean, the film dates from before women even had the vote, yet she has the chutzpah to imagine men taking on women’s roles and women enjoying leisure time. Scandalous!

Considering the short was made by a pioneering female filmmaker, we can but assume it’s all satirical; that its very point is “the consequences of feminism” would not, in fact, be the ridiculous role-reversal presented here. But, in that context, the ending is quite interesting: the men force the women out of the bar and raise a toast. Are we supposed to read that as the natural order being restored? More likely, it’s meant to signify these men achieving equality with women; that Guy’s point is, “if men were in women’s situation, they’d want to change it, too.”

The Dancing Pig

(1907)

aka Le cochon danseur

4 mins | digital (HD) | 4:3 | France / silent

Apparently this had fallen into obscurity for a century or so, when it was revived as an internet meme because of “its creepy atmosphere”. Certainly, stills from the final scene (a closeup of the pig’s head, with vicious teeth and an oscillating tongue) look weird and freaky; and I guess if you slapped an ominous horror-movie-esque score across the whole short then it would become freakish in its entirety. But it was originally a vaudeville act, and with the jaunty score that usually accompanies it, it remains just that: a couple of minutes of daftness.

As such, I can hardly recommend it. It’s a curio of a past era, and while there’s undoubtedly value in preserving such things for historical interest, that’s still all it is.

Frankenstein

(1910)

J. Searle Dawley | 13 mins | digital (HD) | 4:3 | USA / silent

The first screen adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel is such a thorough retelling in just 12 minutes, it almost makes you wonder what takes other versions so long. But what it gains in brevity, it loses somewhat in filmmaking craft: every scene is shown only in a theatrical static wide shot. It’s not entirely without interest, though: one setting places a full-height mirror screen right to enlarge the set by showing us what’s behind the camera to the left, and it’s surprisingly effective, especially when it’s used for a bit of fun cinematic trickery.

The film’s big set piece is the creation of the Monster; not from stitched-together body parts, as is usually the case, but some kind of ‘magic potion’ that makes it emerge from a cauldron, growing and forming before our eyes. The effect was achieved by burning a puppet and then reversing the film, but, rather than presenting an unbroken take, instead the film cuts back and forth to Frankenstein observing and, frankly, skips over what I imagine were the most effective bits. For example, we see the vague outline of a human figure emerge, then cut to Frankenstein, then cut back to see it fully-formed. Would it not have been better to see the Monster’s features ‘melt’ into being amongst the flames? Oh well.

Frankenstein was thought lost for decades, until a single print was found in the ’70s. Imperfect it may be, but it remains a significant milestone in the history of horror cinema.

What! No Spinach?

(1926)

Harry Sweet | 19 mins | Blu-ray | 1.33 | USA / silent

Included as a special feature on the Masters of Cinema Blu-ray of Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances, this little-seen* comedy short, directed by and starring Harry Sweet, “riffs on a number of elements from Seven Chances”, to quote MoC’s blurb. I’d say it’s less a riff on Seven Chances, more a brazen rip-off. It has moments of amusing physical comedy, but it lacks Keaton’s originality or heart. At least it’s brief, although that doesn’t mean it feels whole: rather than ending, per se, Sweet seems to run out of ideas and the film just stops.

Also, it has nothing to do with spinach.

* I couldn’t find a single photo or image from this short online. That there now are some on certain movie databases is because I uploaded screen grabs I took for this review (even editing some into a ‘poster’ for the sake of TMDB/Letterboxd). ^

2023 | Weeks 3–4

Posted on February 4, 2023 by badblokebob

“Wait, did I miss Weeks 1 and 2?”, you may have asked yourself upon seeing this post pop up wherever you see my posts. And the answer is: no, I missed them, because I failed to watch a single film in either Week 1 or Week 2 of 2023. Most extraordinary.

Anyway, I wrote about that in January’s monthly review, so let’s get on with reviewing. I will note that I’ve skipped a couple of films from these weeks. Normally I only do that when I’ve already written their review and it’s long enough I feel it should be posted solo. I haven’t formally started writing about either The Girl Who Knew Too Much or Black Girl yet, but I have an inkling they’re both going to be quite long (the latter, definitely), so I’ve set them aside for the time being. Which leaves us with…

The Magician (1926)

Glass Onion (2022)

My Year of Dicks (2022)

Shotgun Wedding (2022)

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

The Magician

(1926)

Rex Ingram | 80 mins | Blu-ray | 1.33:1 | USA / silent

Based on W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, itself inspired by the antics of real-life occultist Aleister Crowley, The Magician concerns a mad scientist, Oliver Haddo (Paul Wegener), trying to complete an alchemical spell to create life by kidnapping a pretty virginal sculptor, Margaret (Alice Terry), so he can cut out her heart and use her blood. But why just kidnap a young woman when you can hypnotise her into marrying you? And why just kill her when you can use your hypnotic control to, er, take her gambling in Monte Carlo and make lots of money?

Wait, what?

Yeah, The Magician is kind of an odd film. Whether that’s due to Maugham’s original work and his desire to write a takedown of Crawley, or if it was the impetus of director Rex Ingram fancying a jolly around Europe with his wife, who he’d cast in the lead female role, I don’t know. Either way, the varied asides (before the eponymous Haddo even turns up, Margaret is paralysed in a sculpting accident and goes for experimental surgery to get it fixed) slow the pace, possibly to pad out what is really quite a slight story. On the other hand, there are some atmospheric sequences scatted throughout, like a demonstration of Haddo’s powers at a snake charming show, or a devilish orgy (yes, you read that right; no, it’s not at all shocking by modern standards). Plus, as if to balance out all the stuff with dark magic, Ingram finds room for dashes of humour, giving a bit of texture and stopping the film from becoming too self-serious.

However, The Magician remains most noteworthy today as a stylistic precursor to Universal’s initial run of horror movies in the early ’30s — James Whale’s Frankenstein, in particular, seems to have taken some cues from this film’s climax. It’s a fairly entertaining melodramatic fantasy-horror in its own right, but is primarily worth a look for those interested in the early development of the horror genre in Hollywood, or for silent movie fans who’d like something with a supernatural edge. General audiences are probably fine sticking to the established classics it influenced.

The Magician is the 1st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023.

Glass Onion

(2022)

aka Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

In some respects, Glass Onion delivered a movie closer to what I’d been expecting from the first Benoit Blanc mystery, Knives Out; that is to say, a proper murder mystery that is also unabashedly a comedy. Don’t get me wrong, I found Knives Out amusing — even more so with subsequent rewatches — but it has a kind of dry humour, with a wit more likely to raise a wry smile of acknowledgement than a guffaw. Glass Onion surely has such moments too, but it also has big, broad laughs that stand out more on a first viewing.

The mystery at its core remains a true Christie-style puzzler, with enough about-turn twists to keep you off balance — you can try and guess what’s going on if you want, but it’s just as much fun to be swept along for the ride — but the surrounding material is satirical almost to the point of parody. Kate Hudson’s airhead influencer is more caricature than character, for example, while there’s no doubt that Edward Norton’s billionaire is a merciless pisstake of Elon Musk. That’s annoyed certain right-wing commentators. The rest of us can just enjoy the accurate pillorying.

This overall shift in tone will, I think, dictate which of the two movies viewers prefer — i.e. whichever one hews closer to your personal taste. On the other hand, maybe you’ll be like me, and enjoy them both for their own particular quirks. I’ve already watched Knives Out three times, so I’ll have to watch Glass Onion a couple more to make any kind of fair comparison. Fortunately, I intend to.

Glass Onion placed 1st on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2023.

My Year of Dicks

(2022)

Sara Gunnarsdóttir | 26 mins | digital (HD) | 1.78:1 | USA & Iceland / English

One of the standout moments of this year’s Oscars nominations announcement was when Riz Ahmed read out the Best Short Animation nominees, thus having to proclaim “My Year of Dicks” to the world — especially as it was immediately followed by “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It”. Only one of those is currently available to watch online, so I did.

The autobiographical story of screenwriter Pamela Ribon trying to lose her virginity in early-’90s Texas, My Year of Dicks unfolds across five vignettes, each telling a different (but connected) story of sexual misadventure. The chaptered structure gives away that this is kinda five short films strung together; but they’re also a series, with a definite through-narrative (if you’ve ever watched any narrative film before, you’ll easily spot the early supporting character who’s destined to have greater significance). So, while it doesn’t fully work as a single ‘film’ (it feels like binge-watching a series of short episodes), there is at least a reason to lump them all together as a unit.

The parts are further differentiated by employing a variety of animation styles to depict Pam’s fantasies and inner feelings. It’s an effective use of the medium to help overcome the fact that the actual stories are relatively rote “coming of age” tales. The most successful of all is the excruciating “sex talk” with Pam’s dad, in which a bombardment of animated self destruction reflects the desire for escape we’re all feeling at that point.

As a story based around female sexuality, My Year of Dicks has an air of timeliness about it. Equally, it feels like such barriers have been continually been being broken down for the past 20 or 30 years now; in which case, one does wonder if its success has as much to do with the amusement value in seeing that title on the Oscar short list as it does the film itself.

You can watch My Year of Dicks for free on Vimeo.

Shotgun Wedding

(2022)

Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel are about to get married in front of their family and friends at a remote tropical resort when pirates turn up demanding a ransom. Action and hilarity ensue. How exciting the action and how hilarious the hilarity is where opinions may differ.

For my money, the end result is a perfectly serviceable star-driven action-comedy. It’s the kind of middle-of-the-road, made-for-date-night fare that people keep bemoaning we’re losing thanks to Marvel’s box office dominance, even though Hollywood actually seems to keep making them (for another example from just last year, see The Lost City), and they get fairly widely slated every time one actually comes out.

Okay, the vast majority of the film’s funniest ideas and moments were in the trailer (heck, the way the first promo was edited to make the film look like a rom-com, only to about-turn into an action movie, is probably the best gag associated with the entire project), but the film itself has held back a couple of laugh-worthy moments, and even a few plot twists. No wheels are reinvented, but it’s fine as bit of non-demanding, Friday-night, never-going-to-watch-it-again, easy viewing.

Shotgun Wedding is the 5th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023.

The Banshees of Inisherin

(2022)

The new film from the writer-director of Three Billboards reunites the star pairing from his first movie, In Bruges, for an altogether different — but equally as hilarious — tale of two Irishmen. Here, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play lifelong friends on a small island off the coast of Ireland in the 1920s; that is until one day Gleeson decides he just doesn’t like Farrell anymore. Cue a serious of escalating encounters as Gleeson tries to get his former mate to just leave him be.

After the quite heavy, discourse-provoking narrative of Three Billboards, Banshees feels somewhat like McDonagh heading for smaller-scale, less contentious waters. Not that I think he’s running in fear — he doesn’t seem like one to avoid confrontation or provocation around his art — but I think that Banshees feels more of a piece with Bruges, in that it’s focused on just a handful of characters and their fairly everyday lives. That said, things do get a bit… outrageous; and the Irish civil war is ticking away on the mainland, suggesting at least one thematic interpretation of the friends’ fallout. That’s not to mention the subplots involving Farrell’s sister outgrowing her place on the island, or the woes of the local village idiot (played superbly by Barry Keoghan) and his abusive father, who happens to be the island’s policeman.

All of which might begin to sound a bit serious. But then, juggling life-and-death issues and hilarity is almost McDonagh’s trademark. Indeed, the film’s biggest laugh is related to the story of a woman’s death; meanwhile, its saddest moment involves not the abuse or self-mutilation of any of the human characters, but rather the fate of a beloved animal (that might read as a spoiler, but I consider it fair warning for animal lovers). In viewing, it’s consistently very funny, but creeps up on you with Stuff To Think About, too. I enjoyed it a lot; maybe not as much has In Bruges or Glass Onion (no relatable comparison there other than I watched them both this month), but enough that my score rounds up.

The Banshees of Inisherin is the 6th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023.

Archive 5, Vol.3

Posted on February 3, 2022 by badblokebob

I have a backlog of 437 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2021 viewing. This is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today, everything from silent comedies to afterlife comedies to toy-licence-based adventure comedies (a burgeoning genre we’re sure to see more of in years to come). Plus a revisionist Arthurian legend for good measure.

This week’s Archive 5 are…

Guinevere (1994)

The Kid (1921/1972)

Defending Your Life (1991)

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Guinevere

(1994)

Jud Taylor | 91 mins | digital (SD) | 4:3 | USA & Lithuania / English

This Lifetime TV movie is like an American Renaissance faire cosplay version of Arthurian legend. Its attempt at a feminist take on the famed stories is interesting, but deserves better writing, filmmaking, and accents.

Most of Guinevere’s flaws come from its low-rent made-for-US-TV-in-the-’90s roots (the mediocre direction; the tacky music score), but that’s also its biggest asset, because when and for whom it was made means it was shot on film, which gives it a certain gloss (even when downgraded to SD) that taped or digital productions simply lack.

Story-wise, the love triangle stuff from legend is there, but given a YA spin — it’s practically Arthurian Twilight. Are you Team Arthur or Team Jacob? The feminist bent is not subtle either, which, given changes in attitudes over the past few decades, makes you wonder if it’s ripe for a re-adaptation (it’s based on a trilogy of novels with magnificently florid titles like Child of the Northern Spring and Queen of the Summer Stars).

You see, despite everything, I didn’t hate it. Maybe I should — it’s not good, by any means — but I liked what it was trying to do, even while it didn’t do it well (at all). It’s a concept someone should definitely take another run at.

Guinevere was #209 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

The Kid

(1921/1972)

Charlie Chaplin | 50 mins | DVD | 4:3 | USA / silent | U

Charlie Chaplin’s first feature-length work as star and director sees his Tramp character caring for an abandoned child (Jackie Coogan). I say “feature length”, but when you combine a re-edit Chaplin performed in 1972 with PAL speedup, it runs just 50 minutes. I’ve gotta say, I appreciated that. I’ve felt some of Chaplin’s other films have gone on a bit, whereas this didn’t outstay its welcome. That said, I did feel the Dreamland sequence near the end was filler. That aside, it’s quite a nice film. Coogan is particularly effective — he has just the right look for the role, and was obviously very good at imitation and/or taking direction.

Regarding the length, the original 1921 release was 68 minutes, but for a 1972 reissue Chaplin cut some footage, appears to have sped up the frame rate of the rest, and added a score and some sound effects too. It’s only this cut that gets released on disc nowadays (often with the excised footage included as deleted scenes). The original cut clearly still exists, and yet everyone just seems to overlook it — it’s only if you bother to read up on the film that you discover what most people are watching and reviewing as “a 1921 film” is actually a 50-years-later director’s cut. Imagine if we all just ignored, say, Blade Runner’s original version and just treated The Final Cut as— oh, wait. Never mind.

The Kid was #60 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Defending Your Life

(1991)

Writer-director Albert Brooks stars as a loner advertising exec who dies and finds himself in a bureaucratic afterlife where he has to prove that he overcame his fears. While he awaits his trial, he finally meets the love of his (after)life, Julia (Meryl Streep).

For a film that’s literally about life and death, Defending Your Life is rather gentle. Like, it’s rarely laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s often slightly amusing. And it’s unhurried, too: its 111 minutes aren’t tedious by any means, but it doesn’t rush anywhere. A fun side effect of this is how casual its world-building is. This is a very specific vision of the afterlife, an entire world with its own rules, and while that’s all explained, it’s not laid out in minute detail like a how-to guide. I feel like this is something movies used to happily do but has been eroded by the need for everything to be over-explained and -analysed.

I liked Defending Your Life a good deal (I’ve picked up a couple more of Brooks’s films on Blu-ray off the back of it), and part of that is certainly its laidback style. Nonetheless, perhaps if it were snappier — quicker witted and paced — it might be a better-remembered film, comparable to something roughly contemporaneous like Groundhog Day.

Defending Your Life was #113 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

The LEGO Movie 2:
The Second Part

(2019)

After the surprise success of The LEGO Movie, naturally a sequel had to follow. Unfortunately, it’s altogether less surprising, because it’s that old fashioned sequel thing: a less-good do-over of the first movie.

The Second Part feels less focused than its predecessor. It still has a positive message (about not needing to grow up, and about playing together, or something), but it takes a while to get to it, rather than baking it into the entire experience. Maybe that’s intellectualising things a bit — this is a family-friendly adventure-comedy starring toys, after all. But still, the overall journey doesn’t feel as exciting or fun. There are fun little bits on the way, but, moment to moment, it lacks the spark of the first one.

For a specific example, take the breakout hit of the first film, the irritating song Everything Is Awesome. That angle has been doubled down on, with multiple attempts at emulating the “irritating but kinda loveable” song formula; but while these numbers are annoying while they last, they don’t have the irrepressible catchiness of the first film’s signature achievement — a mixed blessing, to be sure (at least they won’t be stuck in your head afterwards). The end credits are accompanied by a song that jokes about the credits being the best part… but, in this case, the credits kinda are the best part.

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part was #33 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Sherlock Jr.

(1924)

Apparently there are ever-raging arguments within the silent film fan community about who was the best comedian of the era. Charlie Chaplin’s got the most widespread recognition, but Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd have their advocates, of course, and I guess there are probably people shouting in favour of smaller names too. I didn’t think I’d ever pick a ‘side’ in these debates — I’m certainly not about to go seeking them out and wading in — and, fundamentally, I do hold with the notion that the greats are all great and so why not appreciate them all? — but, from what I’ve seen thus far, I’m finding Keaton’s work more consistently enjoyable than Chaplin’s. Sherlock Jr. is my favourite of his that I’ve seen so far.

Keaton plays a film projectionist who’s studying to be a detective on the side. When he’s framed for the theft of a watch, his apparent guilt doesn’t give him much chance to put his skills to the test. But when he falls asleep during a movie, he steps inside it and becomes the world’s greatest detective. And when I say “steps inside”, I mean it in the most literal sense possible: the projectionist walks through the screen and into the movie, and is suddenly subject to its whims — for example, he’s confounded whenever it cuts to a new location. The sequence is both thoroughly entertaining and technically faultless — and I say that viewing it nearly 100 years after it was made, after all the advances in technique and effects we’ve had in that time. Reportedly, the film’s cameraman, Byron Houck, went as far as using surveying equipment to ensure the camera was positioned correctly so the transitions were seamless. The effort paid off.

The same is true in several other incredible sequences, like a billiards game filled with trick shots, which Keaton rehearsed for four months with a pool expert and then took five days to film. Or a motorbike chase with more I-can’t-believe-he-just-did-that death-defying stunts than one of Tom Cruise’s impossible missions. The technical skill is faultless and, even if you’re not wowed by how they pulled it off, the sequences are immensely entertaining in their own right. Maybe it’s just personal taste, but this is why I have a preference for Keaton: his skits are more ingenious, better paced, and backed up with impressive stunt work. When you mix those daredevil antics with genuine movie magic, as he does here, you get a majestic, unforgettable farce.

Sherlock Jr. was #102 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2019. It was viewed as part of What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 2019. It placed 3rd on my list of The Best Films I Saw in 2019.

2022 | Weeks 1–3

Posted on January 26, 2022 by badblokebob

Here we go — finally, and somewhat later than anticipated (it’s been a slow start to the year, viewing-wise) — the new review format for 2022!

…which you’ll have already seen in Archive 5, of course; and is fundamentally similar to what I was doing before in roundups and what-have-you; and which I’ve already ‘broken’, because my review of Flight of the Navigator came out so long that I posted it alone.

But still, the intention is this is now my regular review format, popping up every week or two (or three) to review everything in a more timely fashion than I have for many, many years. We’ll see how it goes — I feel like I need to relearn how to write short pieces, because longer reviews feel like they should get their own posts, and that’s happened to pieces intended for every one of these roundups so far this year.

Anyway — to kick things off for 2022, a film with a broadly appropriate title. Because, despite (deliberately misleading) hints to the contrary, I’m carrying on. Get it? Carrying on watching. And “spying” is a synonym of “watching”, right? (Look, there aren’t any Carry On films with more apposite titles, okay?)

These weeks’ films are…

Carry On Spying (1964)

Penny Serenade (1941)

The Navigator (1924)

In the Line of Fire (1993)

Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper (2004)

Free Guy (2021)

Carry On Spying

(1964)

Believe it or not, I’ve never actually seen a Carry On film before. Maybe that’s not so surprising these days. They were once such a part of British culture that they produced 30 of the things, but I think they were seen as “a bit old fashioned” even before I was born, and by 2022’s standards… oof. But, lest you get the wrong end of the stick (oo-er, etc), this isn’t me intending to finally dive into all of them. Rather, as well as its timely title, I chose to watch Carry On Spying primarily because it’s a James Bond spoof — the first, I believe, seeing as it was released in July 1964, when the Bond series only encompassed Dr. No and From Russia with Love (Goldfinger would follow a couple of months later).

With Bond not yet even properly into its initial phenomenon phase (the first two films were hits, but it was the next two that skyrocketed its popularity), you might think Spying came too soon, and would be disadvantaged by being produced before the famous Bond formula was fully in place. Instead, it sets its spoofing sights a little wider, including an extended riff on The Third Man. I couldn’t tell you everything it’s drawing on, but its third-act villain’s lair — all sleek metal corridors and little road-train thingies and jump-suited identikit henchpeople — appears to be a take-off of You Only Live Twice, some three years before that film even came out. So I can only presume Spying’s point of reference there is something else, which I can’t quite remember; some other spy fiction that was already doing stuff the Bond franchise would still be pulling off years later. That doesn’t reflect too positively on YOLT, when you think of it, although Bond’s cultural dominance and longevity has come to ensure it’s the one that’s remembered for pioneering all this stuff.

I don’t know how many Carry On films were genre spoofs, but the series’ reputation is more for smut and innuendo. There’s pleasantly little of that here — some, for sure, mostly based around Barbara Windsor (of course) as a trainee agent; but while it’s all fundamentally juvenile, it’s not as ceaselessly ribald as I was expecting. Satisfyingly, it remains primarily focused on its chosen genre. In that respect, I’ve definitely seen worse spoofs.

Carry On Spying is the 1st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Penny Serenade

(1941)

This is the third and final film to pair up stars Irene Dunne and Cary Grant as a married couple (I’ve watched all their collaborations within the past couple of years, but not posted reviews of the first two yet. I thought it was within the last year, but turns out I watched my first in May 2020. These strange days have really messed with my sense of the passage of time!) But where their first two films were screwball romcoms, this is undoubtedly a melodrama, following a couple as they meet, marry, and attempt to start a family.

Dunne and Grant both make a fair fist of the serious stuff — Grant, in particular, gives an uncommonly sensitive performance at times — although they can’t resist slipping back into a spot of almost-slapstick given half a chance, with various individual sequences playing more like one of their comedies. Those scenes stand at odds with the film’s overall narrative and tone, which goes for full-on weepy. Indeed, if anything, I thought it was overdone, in particular an ending that throws in sudden tragedy followed so quickly by a pat happy ending that it feels almost distasteful.

The film’s hook is that it begins with Dunne planning to leave, before she discovers a book of records that, as she plays them, take her back through their relationship. Different songs provoking specific memories is a neat narrative device on paper, but doesn’t really come across on screen. Aside from the first track, and maybe a later burst of Happy Birthday (although that could be almost any birthday, surely), the songs don’t seem to have any special relevance to the memories they supposedly call forth. It doesn’t help that, to modern ears, they all sound kinda samey. Plus, that the songs lead everything to unfurl in chronological order, with every major beat of their life story accounted for, is certainly convenient.

If you can look past such artifice, and just want to revel in an old-fashioned bit of heart-tugging, Penny Serenade is fit to make you shed a tear. Personally, I’d rather the headline duo had given us another bout of screwball tomfoolery.

Penny Serenade is the 3rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

The Navigator

(1924)

This is my fourth Buster Keaton feature now (I’ve only previously reviewed The General, but Sherlock Jr made it into my 2019 top 3), and he’s established himself as my favourite of the major silent comedians (I rarely enjoy Chaplin’s films as much as I feel I should; and, in fairness to Harold Lloyd, I’ve only seen one of his so far, which I liked a lot). The Navigator was the biggest hit of his career, though is probably my least favourite of his I’ve seen so far — though I don’t want to damn it with false criticism, because it’s still a brisk and entertaining comedy.

Keaton stars as a spoiled rich kid whose marriage proposal is rejected. He’d already booked the honeymoon tickets, so sets off by himself; but, due to several points of confusion, he ends up adrift at sea on a decommissioned ship, empty but for one other passenger: his would-be fiancée (Kathryn McGuire). It’s up to this pair of brats to get along and survive while they hope for rescue. (Rescue does not come quickly. Considering McGuire’s father is a successful shipping magnate who’s aware of what’s happened, you’d think he’d send a vessel after them; but then, he might have his own problems, owing to a bunch of foreign spies who… look, it’s best not to overthink the logistics and plausibility of the plot.)

Although Keaton gets the lion’s share of the gags, as well he might, for a stretch in the middle he and McGuire form an effective double act. The two rich kids being hilariously useless at household basics, like making coffee or opening a tin of food, is well observed; a flash-forward to their automated solutions is also fun. While Keaton still gets to show off by himself — particularly in an elaborate underwater diving sequence, naturally saved for the final act — McGuire makes the most of the material she’s given.

The only outright demerit to the film is that the finale hasn’t aged particularly well: the ship finally drifts near land, but it’s an island with a village-full of black natives, at which McGuire immediately exclaims “cannibals!” That she’s sort of proven right when they start attacking the ship is… well, maybe not even worse, but at least just as bad. Still, by 1920s standards, maybe we can take comfort in the fact that it’s only casual racism…

More than that, the reason I say it’s my least favourite Keaton so far is simply that it doesn’t have as many comedic highs as his very best work. Nonetheless, his genius regularly shines through in moments and even whole sequences, and there are a couple of individual gags that are all-timers.

The Navigator is the 4th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

In the Line of Fire

(1993)

Clint Eastwood is a Secret Service agent who failed to stop the JFK assassination, now taunted by John Malkovich’s mysterious wannabe-assassin and his threats to kill the current President. It’s a fundamentally strong idea for a thriller, and works especially well by having the villain constantly phoning the hero for little chats. Malkovich’s always makes for a first-rate antagonist, and his slightly loony personality clashes well with Eastwood’s stoic, dry-witted, old-fashioned tough guy. There are a couple of chase scenes and shoot-outs here and there, but, rather than any elaborate physical action, it’s the verbal sparring that represents the film’s highlights.

On the downside, the pace is a little on the slow side (perhaps matched to the “too old for this shit” age of Eastwood’s hero — in real life, he’d be a whole decade past the mandatory retirement age) and there are one too many clichés as important plot points (don’t get too attached to the partner who’s always talking about his wife and kids). Plus, there’s a wholly unnecessary romance between 62-year-old Clint and 39-year-old Rene Russo — the film doesn’t need it, even if there wasn’t that age gap. It leads to an (almost) sex scene that’s worthy of the Naked Gun films, which is amusing but tonally misplaced.

They used to make this kind of political thriller on the regular back in the ’90s, one of those bread-and-butter genres for grownups that have fallen by the wayside in favour of hyper-budgeted kids’-movie spectacle that men of allegedly adult age flock to nowadays. In the Line of Fire may not truly stand out among its brethren of the era, but I do wish they still made ’em like this.

In the Line of Fire is the 6th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Barbie as
The Princess and the Pauper

(2004)

One of the many film lists I have my eye on completing is Letterboxd 100: Animation, which lists the highest-rated animated feature films on the site (with a few caveats). There are over 40 titles left that I’ve not seen, and I could’ve chosen to watch almost any of them… but I chose the Barbie one. Well, not the Barbie one, because there are actually two Barbie titles on the list. And that’s not some temporary fluke: they’ve been on there for quite a while now. This merited investigation.

As you’ve no doubt gathered from the title, this particular Barbie film is a reimagining of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. A fairytale-esque story, about a princess, done as a musical? Yep, this is very much a wannabe Disney, but without the production values of that major studio: the computer animation here looks more like a PS2 cutscene. But hiding beneath the cheap animation is a halfway decent musical fairytale. Take the second musical number, How Can I Refuse, for example: it’s every inch in the mould of a “Disney villain’s song”, but is better than some genuine examples, and comes complete with a dance routine by the antagonist and his two henchman. This film has ambition, I’ll give it that.

Other songs vary in quality. When the eponymous duo first meet, there’s an unintentionally hilarious number in which they sing about how similar they are, the indentured servant and the pampered royal. If you say so, girls. A later track is a typical “you be you” song, but sung to a pet cat who behaves like a dog. That’s a level of barminess I can get on board with.

I would never have dreamed of watching this if it weren’t on the Letterboxd animation list. Now, I wouldn’t exactly say I’m glad I watched it, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would — even if sometimes that was due to laughing at it rather than with it.

Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper is the 7th film in my 100 Films Challenge 2022.

Free Guy

(2021)

Ryan Reynolds plays his role again as Guy, a bank worker in city riddled with crime and superheroics. But, it turns out, Guy isn’t real — he’s an NPC in a computer game, programmed to do the same thing over and over and basically be ignored by the real-world players. Until, that is, he spots the woman of his dreams (Jodie Comer) and his programming breaks as Guy becomes self-aware.

The basic concept sounds like a fun, fresh, and timely idea, right? Video games have never been more popular, AI is ever-improving, and there’s room for both gags and action in the core idea — that’s the winning Marvel formula, right there. Unfortunately, the execution is as if someone found a way to make a new movie by collaging others. Free Guy is just The LEGO Movie + The Truman Show + Wreck-It Ralph + Ready Player One + the PG-13 version of Deadpool 2 — not put in a blender, but cut up and stuck back together side-by-side, with snippets of Groundhog Day, Fortnite, and multiple Disney-owned properties scattered in for good measure.

That last aspect, the Disney references, has been singled out for particular derision on social media. The film was initially produced by 20th Century Fox, but ended up a Disney title after the buyout, which allows a bunch of stuff they own to pop up in the movie. I know we’re supposed to find this infinitely depressing — a sad reminder that Disney are on course to own all culture, and that’s a bad thing — and it is bad, of course… but the bit with Captain America’s shield still made me laugh. Sorry, not sorry. Yeah, you can be miserable about this stuff, because obviously the total homogenisation of all American media under The Walt Disney Company is not worth that a couple of meta gags; but the homogenisation of all American media under The Walt Disney Company is happening anyway, so we may as well enjoy the gags we get along the way.

Whether you have that kind of attitude or not will probably dictate how much you enjoy Free Guy. Its originality is surface deep, at best, and at every second it will call to mind some other film that already did the same thing. But, allowing for that, it’s still a fairly entertaining couple of hours of action-comedy.

Free Guy is the 8th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

The 100-Week Roundup XXVII

Posted on March 11, 2021 by badblokebob

The 100-Week Roundup covers films I still haven’t reviewed 100 weeks after watching them. Sometimes these are short ‘proper’ reviews; sometimes they’re only quick thoughts, or even just the notes I made while viewing.

This week’s selection includes the first reviews to be rounded up from April 2019…

The Howling (1981)

The Gold Rush (1925)

A Good Year (2006)

The Howling
(1981)

2019 #50
Joe Dante | 87 mins | TV | 1.85:1 | USA / English | 18 / R

“After a near-fatal encounter with a serial killer, television newswoman Karen White becomes emotionally disturbed and loses her memory. On doctor’s orders she’s sent to the Colony, a secluded retreat where the creepy residents may not be what they seem…” — adapted from IMDb

Released the same year as John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London, I think it’s fair to say The Howling has been overshadowed by its UK-set counterpart, which has left a more enduring mark on the werewolf subgenre. But it would be a shame to ignore director Joe Dante’s effort entirely, because it’s a strong movie with its own pleasures — where American Werewolf is mostly quite comical, The Howling is more of a straight-faced horror movie.

Indeed, at the start it feels more like a ’70s thriller than a campy horror — a Network-esque newsroom drama crossed with a seedy serial killer flick, in which the handheld neon-lit photography of nighttime ‘mean streets’ reminded me of something like The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. When the plot heads out into the countryside, the sub-Hammer antics feel a bit low-rent by comparison; but once the proper werewolf action kicks off, it picks up again. Special makeup maestro Rick Baker may have abandoned this project for American Werewolf, but the special effects feature sterling work nonetheless, including a couple of superb transformations. Hurrah for practical effects.

There’s room for improvement here — it needs a more cohesive, thorough, better paced screenplay (after an effective opening, it takes time to get going again, but then the climax is a bit rushed) — but the bits that work are so good that The Howling still ends up as a great werewolf movie.

The Gold Rush
(1925)

2019 #52
Charles Chaplin | 95 mins | DVD | 4:3 | USA / silent | U

Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush exists in two versions: the 1925 original, and a 1942 re-release for which Chaplin cut whole scenes, trimmed others, and reinserted some outtakes and alternate shots, plus adding a synced soundtrack that included voiceover narration by him. The re-release is the ‘official’ version according to Chaplin’s estate (on the 2-disc DVD I own, the ’42 version is by itself on disc 1, with the ’25 version among the special features on disc 2), but from what I read it seems most people regard the ’25 original as the superior version, so that’s the one I chose to watch.

As with the other Chaplins I’ve seen, it’s an episodic series of skits with a linking theme — this time, his Little Tramp character is prospecting for gold in the Klondike. It’s an interesting mix of the expected slapstick humour with something that’s more… not serious, exactly (although a subplot about a wanted criminal who murders a couple of lawmen is a bit incongruous), but there are sequences that aim at distinctly different emotions, like pathos (not unfamiliar when it comes to the Little Tramp), or overt thrills, including a cliff-edge climax.

Then there’s the ostensibly happy ending, in which our hero gets the girl. That’d be the girl who stood him up, who doesn’t really care for him, who got railroaded into posing with him and kissing him… but gets with him right after she learnt he’s now a multimillionaire. Are we sure that’s a happy ending?

The Gold Rush was viewed as part of What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 2019.

A Good Year
(2006)

2019 #54
Ridley Scott | 113 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | UK & USA / English & French | 12 / PG-13

Ridley Scott, the acclaimed director perhaps destined to be best remembered for sci-fi classics like Alien and Blade Runner, and actor Russell Crowe, who made his name with hard-man roles in films like Romper Stomper and L.A. Confidential, have collaborated multiple times. Together they’ve created action-filled historical epics like Gladiator and Robin Hood, and contemporary thrillers like American Gangster and Body of Lies. But in amongst all that they made… this, an oddity on both man’s filmography: a gentle romantic dramedy about a London banker who inherits a vineyard in Provence and learns to love a simpler life.

Ridley Scott directing a sunny romcom sounds like a daft idea, doesn’t it? Well, turns out it’s not only daft, it’s quite bad. Apparently Scott conceived the story, and everything (apart from scenes in London) was shot within eight minutes of his home in Provence. In some hands that might lead to a very personal story, but I don’t think that’s the case here. I once read someone argue that the entertainment an artist enjoys consuming isn’t necessarily the same as what they’re good at creating, and this seems like a case in point. The storyline and atmosphere may’ve been inspired by Scott’s love for the region he’s made his home, but it doesn’t match his skills as a filmmaker very well at all.

It’s as inappropriately directed as you’d expect, with moments of almost slapstick comedy that feel decades out of date, and other parts that are shot and scored more like a thriller than a breezy comedy-drama. In front of the camera, Russell Crowe does his best to be Hugh Grant, and he could be worse, but it does make you appreciate how good Hugh Grant was at being Hugh Grant. His love interest is Marion Cotillard, playing a character whose name sounds like “Fanny Chanel” — one character responds to being told that with “ooh la la”, which might be the most succinct “British person’s view of the French” dialogue exchange ever written.

Much as Crowe’s continued exposure to the region and its people slowly charms him, so did I gradually warm to the film. When Scott isn’t trying too hard it has a certain laidback good humour, with the bonus of beautiful scenery and beautiful women, so that it becomes not unpleasant to watch. If that sounds like damning with faint praise… well, it is. A Good Year is not a good film, but it is, ultimately, a mostly pleasant one.

Waxworks (1924)

Posted on November 9, 2020 by badblokebob

aka Das Wachsfigurenkabinett

Often billed as the first portmanteau horror movie, Waxworks only fits the bill in the loosest sense: its “three stories” are actually two stories and a dream sequence, the first (and longest) of which is, if anything, a swashbuckling farce.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The film begins with a young writer (William Dieterle, who would later become a Hollywood director, responsible for 1938 Best Picture winner The Life of Emile Zola, amongst others) who is hired to pen backstories for the four statues in a carnival wax museum. Yes, four — the filmmakers ran out of money before they could film the fourth tale. As he begins writing, into each story he injects both himself and the museum’s curator’s daughter (Olga Belajeff) as his love interest.

The first tale is set in Arabian Nights-style Bagdad (IMDb says this part inspired Douglas Fairbanks to make The Thief of Bagdad, but a quick look at their release dates shows Fairbanks’ film came out months before Waxworks), and concerns a lecherous Caliph (Emil Jannings) who sets his sights on wooing a baker’s wife. It’s quite a sexualised segment all round: the baker kneads dough so erotically it sends his wife (and himself) all aquiver (I doubt it’ll do the same for many viewers, but it clearly works for them); later, the disguised Caliph sneaks into the baker’s home and spies the wife lying in bed with her back to him, and his gaze (and, by extension, ours) clearly lingers on her bottom (clothed, lest you think the film is uncommonly explicit). I guess the characters were too busy perving to apply logic to their decision-making: when the baker is too wary to slip a ring off the sleeping Caliph’s finger, he decides to chop his whole arm off instead. Totally reasonable. Meanwhile, why is the all-powerful Caliph worried about being found out by a lowly baker? Indeed, why’s he so worried that his guards will know he sneaks out at night? He’s the boss! On the bright side, there’s some beautiful and striking Expressionist set design; an exciting chase scene, set to dramatic percussive music in the new score by Bernd Schultheis, Olav Lervik, and Jan Kohl; and the wife’s save at the climax is a cunning twist. But, overall, it’s a bit of a daft farce.

The second story stars Conrad Veidt as a Rasputin-esque Ivan the Terrible, who revels in killing prisoners in the Kremlin’s dungeons with an ultra-specifically-timed poison. If that wasn’t clue enough, this segment is thematically much darker. A bride’s father invites Ivan to attend the wedding, then the Czar insists they switch roles to travel there and the dad is killed by mistaken assassins. Then his arrow-pierced corpse is unceremoniously dumped on the front steps of his home while the wedding banquet continues inside; and when daughter sneaks away to grieve over his body, Ivan has some guards snatch her; and when the angry groom tries to attack Ivan, he’s ordered off to the torture chamber. Puts people who complain about rain on their wedding day into perspective, doesn’t it? Veidt is great as the deranged Ivan, although he’s so mentally unstable that it borders on comical. The finale doesn’t make much sense (he lets the girl go… then doesn’t?), but the denouement delivers a neat and fitting fate to Czar Terrible.

The third and final story begins with just five minutes of screen time left, so you know it’s not going to be wholly-realised tale. (Incidentally, the original German version of the film is lost, leaving us with only the English version, which is about 25 minutes shorter. What’s in those minutes? If anyone knows, they’re not saying online (to the best of my knowledge). Perhaps there was more linking material in the museum? Perhaps the third ‘story’ really was a whole story? Perhaps the first two were once even longer, though it’s hard to imagine how much more there could be to do in either of them — maybe the cuts were for the best…) Anyway, the third segment is the aforementioned dream sequence, in which the waxwork of Jack the Ripper comes to life and pursues the writer and his love (they met earlier that day but already seem pretty committed) through a series of highly impressionist sets, their disjointed oddity exacerbated by differently-aligned multiple exposures. It’s Expressionism to the max, and it’s suitably effective as a chiller. But, of course, it’s all a dream… and that’s suddenly the end!

Like so many of the portmanteau films that have followed in its wake, Waxworks struggles to be the sum of its parts. It’s ultimately a bit underwhelming, with the first two stories being slower than necessary (and this is the cut version!) before giving way to a rushed finale. Make no mistake, there’s some very nice stuff in here, but it comes in bits and pieces. It’s a welcome watch for fans of silent cinema or early horror (with caveats about its “horror” content duly noted), and there are enough good parts to recommend it, but I wouldn’t argue it’s a classic in any enduring sense (beyond its obvious influence as a stepping stone to future portmanteau films).

Waxworks is streaming on AMPLIFY! until 22nd November, and is released on Blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema Series today.

Also, new on AMPLIFY! today are…

what sounds like a German riff on Whiplash, but with violins, in The Audition

a documentary about the drawbacks of algorithms, Coded Bias

the UK premiere of Viggo Mortensen’s directorial debut, Falling

Catalan coming-of-age drama The Innocence

and unusual found footage documentary My Mexican Bretzel.

(If you don’t know, “bretzel” is the German word for “pretzel”.)

Disclosure: I’m working for AMPLIFY! as part of FilmBath. However, all opinions are my own, and I benefit in no way (financial or otherwise) from you following the links in this post or making purchases.

Safety Last! (1923)

Posted on September 14, 2020 by badblokebob

I’ve seen films by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, so it’s overdue that I acquaint myself with the so-called “Third Genius” of silent comedy, Harold Lloyd. I would say that, of those three, Lloyd is considered a distant third place today: Chaplin is a name that transcends cinema to be known in the general consciousness; Keaton has accrued fame down the years for his still-impressive stunts; but Lloyd, I feel, has faded from consciousness a bit. If everyone’s heard of Chaplin, and a lot of people have heard of Keaton, I feel like only those in the know even consider Lloyd. But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, some would assert that, in their day, Lloyd was the most successful of them all — per Wikipedia, he made $15.7 million to Chaplin’s $10.5 million. (Nothing is ever as straightforward as all that, of course. Here’s a good article at Silentology all about the history of popularity of the silent comedians, which ultimately makes it quite clear that (a) Chaplin was the biggest; (b) Lloyd and Keaton were the runners-up; and (c) the pack of other comedians was far behind that trio.)

The dwindling of his reputation seems to be at least partly his own fault: according to revered film historian Kevin Brownlow (paraphrased in this article), “Lloyd was so nervous about how audiences would react to his later movies that he withheld the films from distribution, so that only some very early pictures (made before his talent blossomed around 1920) were widely available for viewing. An effort to reintroduce his work after his death in the early ’70s was also botched, adding narrations and showy music scores to movies that don’t need extra gimmicks.” Nowadays, silents are re-released with more respect to their original presentations, but, for whatever reason, I think Lloyd still awaits the reappraisal that the other two have enjoyed and/or never even needed. Indeed, if we look at their current availability on disc in the UK, Chaplin has several extensive Blu-ray sets to his name; Masters of Cinema have made a fine fist of getting Keaton onto Blu-ray, with four box sets so far; and Lloyd… has a total of two films. And one of those (this one) is only out today. (I’ve focused on the UK because that’s where I am, but it’s not a whole lot better in his native US, where a total of four of his films are on Blu-ray.)

My opinion on the three is still forming — as I said, this is the first Lloyd film I’ve seen, so it wouldn’t be fair to base an entire comparison off it. But I have now seen the majority of Chaplin’s most-acclaimed features, and a couple of Keaton’s too, so a view is beginning to coalesce. And that is that, either I’m always in the wrong mood when I watch a Chaplin film, or I just completely prefer Keaton, and now Lloyd too. Aside from The Great Dictator, I’ve found every Chaplin I’ve seen to be a bit of a slog. That’s not to say I dislike them — I can see admirable stuff aplenty, and greatly enjoyed some of the exceptionally amusing sequences — but they always feel very long to me. That’s not a sensation I’ve yet experienced during a Keaton film, nor with Safety Last. But who knows, maybe Safety Last is Harold Lloyd’s Great Dictator in terms of how my opinion pans out. Only time, and more films, can tell.

But, for now, Safety Last is why we’re here. It’s the story of a small-town boy (Lloyd) who travels to the city to find employment, planning to have his girl (Mildred Davis) follow him out just as soon as he makes his fortune. His letters home inform her of his increasing success, but in reality he works a lowly job at a department store, rushed off his feet to serve the baying mass of consumers. The ensuing century has conferred on that a degree of timelessness: working hard to appease others but getting nowhere yourself. It’s not the American Dream, but, for many low-level workers, it’s the American Reality. Replace working on the fabric counter of a department store with filling packages at an Amazon warehouse and, really, how much has changed?

This is the milieu the film plays in for the first 50-or-so minutes, more or less. There are digressions outside the workplace, the best being a fateful morning commute that sees Lloyd accidentally bundled into a van heading further and further in the wrong direction, leading to an array of tricks and stunts to head back to work on time. Keaton may be the more famed daredevil, but here Lloyd appears every bit his equal.

Climbing a building? Sounds like an impossible mission...

And never more so than in the film’s final act. A series of events leads us to the point where Lloyd has to climb the sky-scraping outside of the department store building in order to earn the big payday he’s been needing. What follows is a 20-minute climb; a phenomenal extended sequence that is both funny and tense. It was shot on location, on fake buildings built atop real buildings — not as dangerous as fully doing it for real, but not exactly health-and-safety conscious (if Lloyd had fallen, he would’ve dropped only a storey or so onto a mattress; but if he bounced off that…) It has the same kind of thrill that Tom Cruise employs today when he climbs skyscrapers or dangles off the side of planes, only with more humour. You might think that would undercut the tension, but, if anything, it exacerbates it. You can push things closer to the edge when being funny, and, boy, does Lloyd get close to the edge…

The first two-thirds of the film are a very solid 4-out-of-5 farce, but the final act mixes laughs with thrills in a perfectly executed, constantly escalating sequence that is a 6-out-of-5-level climax.

The Criterion Collection edition of Safety Last! is released in the UK today.

The Man Who Laughs (1928)

Posted on August 17, 2020 by badblokebob

Just over 90 years ago, in the final years of the silent era, The Man Who Laughs was a “super-production” — an expensive and major release, designed to follow in the footsteps of successes like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, with an acclaimed imported director (Paul Leni, Waxworks) and star (Conrad Veidt, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari), a shared leading lady from Phantom (Mary Philbin), and adapted from another novel by the author of Hunchback (Victor Hugo). It did, I believe, live up to its pedigree and expectations. But today it’s primarily remembered for one thing: being the visual inspiration behind a certain comic book supervillain…

Perhaps because of the connections to the aforementioned films, and because it inspired such a violent character, and because of the publicity stills that inspired that look, and because its production studio (Universal) would shortly become renowned for their iconic interpretations of the cornerstones of horror (Dracula, Frankenstein, et al), The Man Who Laughs has often been cited as a horror movie. It isn’t. Well, some of the first 15 minutes do play a bit like one — execution by iron maiden; mutilation and abandonment of a child; dangling corpses of hanged men — but then it jumps forward in time and becomes a romantic melodrama, with a bit of antiestablishment satire and a swashbuckling climax thrown in for good measure.

The story begins in 1690, with King James II punishing a rebellious lord by handing his son, Gwynplaine, to comprachicos (invented by Hugo for the novel; it means “child-buyers”) who mutilate the boy’s mouth into a permanent grin. And then he executes the lord in an iron maiden for good measure. When all the comprachicos are later exiled, they abandon the boy. Wandering through the snow, the kid finds a woman frozen to death, but her baby still alive in her arms. (Like I said, the first 15 minutes are pretty bleak.) He rescues the baby, who it’ll turn out is blind, and soon the pair are taken in by a wandering performer, Ursus (Cesare Gravina). Jump forward a couple of decades and Gwynplaine (Veidt) is now a popular attraction himself thanks to his laughing face, and the baby has grown into a beautiful young woman, Dea (Philbin), and the pair are in love. Let’s not think too much about the background to that relationship, eh? Gwynplaine feels unworthy of Dea’s love because he’s so hideous, but she doesn’t care because she’s literally blind.

Meanwhile, Gwynplaine’s fame and unique facial features lead to it being discovered that he’s really a noble, kicking off a bunch of courtly intrigue — I could explain it, but then we’d just be getting into the plot of the entire movie. Suffice to say, it involves a scheming courtier, Barkilphedro (Brandon Hurst), who was partly responsible for Gwynplaine’s dad’s death; a horny duchess, Josiana (Olga Baclanova), who we first meet while a peasant messenger spies on her having a bath (nothing explicit is actually seen — it cuts away just in time — but it was still too risqué for British censors, who cut away even sooner); and Queen Anne (Josphine Cromwell), best known today as “the one Olivia Colman played in The Favourite (there’s considerably less swearing, gout, lesbianism, and bunny rabbits in this version).

With the “beauty and the beast” angle to the film’s central romance, the film does withstand comparison to other variations of that story — like, um, Beauty and the Beast, but also, again, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The difference here is in how people react to the ‘beast’. Only he himself seems to find him monstrous. The public find him inescapably hilarious, which isn’t nice for him to live with, but has made him popular and beloved rather than reviled. The love of his life is besotted with him unconditionally. Josiana comes to see his show and for some reason finds him instantly attractive (in fairness, I think she’s attracted to any man with a pulse).

A more apt comparison is to a film made over 50 years later, David Lynch’s The Elephant Man — a parallel I spotted for myself, but also is mentioned in two essays in the booklet accompanying Eureka’s new Blu-ray release, so I’m certainly not alone in feeling this. Both concern a man who is physically disfigured and has fallen in with fairground sideshow folk, who despises himself but comes to find love and compassion from others. They even both climax with a grandstanding speech where the man in question declares his worth to the world, with the famous “I am a human being!” bit from The Elephant Man seeming like an echo of a scene here where Gwynplaine, forced to join the House of Lords by order of the Queen, eventually rejects her command, declaring his independence with the assertion that “God made me a man!” As Travis Crawford writes in the aforementioned booklet, “while sinister clowns would ultimately become an unlikely horror cliche, Gwynplaine’s gruesome disfigurement makes him a figure of pity, not menace… more Pierrot than Pennywise.” The Man Who Laughs is less concerned with examining and affirming the fundamental humanity underneath ‘freaks’ than Lynch’s film (this is a classical melodrama, after all), but it’s certainly an aspect of the story that, despite how he looks, Gwynplaine is still a human being; that, despite his fixed grin, he’s full of all the emotions of any human being.

Before I go, a quick word on the film’s soundtrack. “But it’s a silent movie.” Yes, but as you surely know, silent movies aren’t meant to be watched actually silent. The Blu-ray release (both the new UK one and an earlier US one from Flicker Alley) comes with two audio options: a new 2018 score by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra, and the original 1928 Movietone sync track, which is not just general music backing but also includes some music clearly framed as diegetic, plus occasional sound effects, and even dialogue (in the form of background crowd noise, mostly). Now, the film was originally released as silent, then withdrawn and re-released with this accompanying soundtrack, so I guess the option of a new score isn’t wholly unmerited. Nonetheless, it still seems slightly off to me that you’d supplant an authentic original track with a modern creation. As if to underline this point, the booklet reveals that the new score is actually little more than a final-year project by a group of students! It’s lovely for them that they were able to present their work at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and it was well received, and that it’s now included as an option on the film’s official releases… but presenting it as the primary audio option? No thanks. I suggest you choose the 1928 soundtrack.

It’s probably unlikely that The Man Who Laughs can escape its status as a trivia footnote for the Joker at this point (heck, Flicker Alley’s release even plays up the connection on its cover, taking the film’s most Joker-esque photo and decorating it in the character’s colours of purple and green). Certainly, no one should watch it for that reason alone — the inspiration for the Joker begins and ends with the grinning-man imagery; there’s nothing in the film itself that contributes to the character. There’s also little here to support its reputation as an influential early horror movie — those seeking horror thrills shouldn’t watch for that reason either. But for all the things The Man Who Laughs is not, what it is is a well-made and performed drama; one that deserves to stand and be appreciated on its own merits, not those that others have mistakenly conferred on it.

The Man Who Laughs is released on Blu-ray in the UK today.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Posted on May 9, 2018 by badblokebob

aka Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari

The poster child for German Expressionist cinema, as well as featuring “cinema’s first true mad doctor” and “cinema’s first unreliable narrator” (at least according to David Cairns on the Masters of Cinema Blu-ray — I haven’t verified those statements for myself), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari certainly has a lot to unpack for a film that’s barely an hour-and-a-quarter long. Or does it? Because one has to wonder if there’s an element of style over substance here.

“A mystery story told in the Poe manner,” according to the original Variety review, the titular Dr Caligari (Werner Krauss) is the host of a fairground attraction, and his eponymous cabinet contains Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a somnambulist who Caligari controls — at the fair, to answer questions from the audience; and at night, to do his evil bidding, including murder. Caligari’s activities come to the attention of young Franzis (Friedrich Feher), who attempts to uncover the truth about the doctor and expose him.

But the most famous thing about Caligari by far is not the storyline or the characters, but the visual style. Painted backdrops evoke a landscape straight out of a nightmare: jagged lines and stark monochromatic shapes (this isn’t just a film that happens to be filmed without colour, it feels black and white), they give the impression of the winding streets of a town and its locales without actually being one. The implied structures tower over the characters, leaning in above, creating an oppressive and unnerving atmosphere, while their total lack of reality evoke theatre more than the literalism we’re now used to from film. The make-up and performances are the same: heightened; dreamlike — or nightmarish.

Which may be entirely appropriate given the film’s framing narrative, which (spoilers!) introduce an ending that’s a little bit “and it was all a dream”. Or was it? Well, that depends how you interpret what happens. The bookends were apparently added to help sell the film to the public, framing its fantastical narrative in something more grounded. The screenwriters weren’t happy — as Lotte H. Eisner writes (in the MoC booklet), “the result of these modifications was to falsify the action and ultimately to reduce it to the ravings of a madman. The film’s [screenwriters], Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz, had had the very different intention of unmasking the absurdity of asocial authority, represented by Dr. Caligari.” Well, the tacked-on ending doesn’t necessarily negate such an interpretation, you just need to fill in the blanks to get there yourself.

For example, there’s what Cairns calls his “Mulholland Drive theory”: that what we witness is all true, until the point that Franzis sees the asylum director is Caligari; from there until the reveal that Franzis is an asylum patient is a fantasy. Evidence in favour of this: everything goes implausibly swimmingly for our hero in that section, from easily recruiting the asylum staff to finding (as Cairns puts it) “Caligari’s second cabinet, in which he keeps his entire backstory.” It’s a fun reading, even though it’s clearly a case of projecting an interpretation onto the film that wasn’t intended by the makers.

One that fits better, perhaps, is that Franzis’ flashbacks aren’t merely “the ravings of a madman”, but he’s telling the truth, and that somehow between the end of his flashbacks (which see Caligari locked up in his own asylum) and where we join the framing narrative (with Franzis locked in the asylum and Caligari in charge), the evil doctor has reasserted his authority and captured his accuser. Of course, that requires a leap — how does Caligari regain control? Why don’t we see it happen? Well, we don’t see it happen because that wasn’t what the makers intended.

And so we come back to “it was all a dream”. Maybe that’s the best explanation — the writers may’ve hated it, but in some respects it saves them from themselves: Cairns’ visual essay highlights a bunch of plot holes, inconsistencies, and confusions, not to mention issues of character motivations and actions (“in a way it makes no sense to speak of character motivation in a mad man’s fantasy”), all of which you can hand-wave away if “it was all a dream”. This is why I wondered if it was style over substance. The sets, the make-up, the performances — all fantastically atmospheric. The story, the characters, their actions — not such great shakes.

But maybe that’s okay. After all, why not? Director Robert Wiene and his crew did a fantastic job of bringing a surreal nightmare to life, and nightmares seldom feature plausible storylines.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was viewed as part of my Blindspot 2017 project, which you can read more about here.