Across the River and Into the Trees is one of those lowkey, subtle movies that I would guess a lot of people would have a hard time getting into, myself included on most days, but it must have caught me on a good day because I loved it. Liev Schreiber gets to show a more quiet side that he is often tasked with, as Richard, a US army colonel in Venice after World War II. He says he’s there to go duck hunting, but really he is visiting the site where his son was killed by Nazis during the war. He is also haunted by a battle where his entire company of young men (boys, really) were killed. Though he was only following orders, the event has stayed with him and is always near the forefront of his thoughts, more so now than ever, as Richard has been diagnosed with a terminal disease. In Venice to make peace with himself and say his goodbyes, he unexpectedly meets Renata. Renata is from a long-storied family in the area, with a name that goes back 600 years, but at this point the family only has its name left. Her mother has arranged for Renata to be married to a wealthy man to get some cash flow into the family once again. Based on a later-life book by Ernest Hemingway (I’ve read some of his, but not this one), I may have to look it up and put it on my reading list. My estimation of the film went up as it went along, so definitely stick with it to the end. Schreiber gets to show that he has a range much wider than he usually gets to show. ★★★★

Man, I did not get Family Portrait at all. Thank goodness it is only about 70 minutes long because any longer and I would have been mad for sticking through to the end. It begins in a park, where a large extended family is gathering for the day. They get together yearly to take a family photo for Christmas. As they gather, there’s this ominous drone sound muting out the vocals, so we can’t hear what they are saying as they meet up, and it creates this sort of foreboding feeling. Great setting, so I thought I was in for something good. Nope, that’s the highlight of the movie. It meanders along from there, as the central character gets upset with her family because she wants to get the photo taken so she can move on with her day with her boyfriend, but no one seems to be in a rush to do it. Later, the family learns that a cousin died of a mysterious virus (the film takes place in the early days of COVID) and the mom in the family goes missing, much to the angst of the young woman trying to get this photo taken and done. There’s a weird scene where she jumps in the lake for no reason that I could tell, and the missing mom is never resolved anyway. Not sure what I watched, seemed like it was a reality show where cameras were set up to record mundane conversations. If I wanted to hear people talk about how to make proper coffee, I wouldn’t watch a movie about it, I’d just attend my own only family reunion. ★

Rob Peace is based on a book (The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, by Jeff Hobbs) which is a biography about the eponymous man. The film follows his life from a young boy, where Rob (as an adult, played by Jay Will) is being raised in a rougher neighborhood by his separated parents. His dad (unnamed in the film, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who also wrote and directed) seems like a good guy but he has a past in dealing drugs, and Rob’s mom (Mary J Blige) wants nothing but for her son to escape his trappings. Rob is very bright, next level kind of smarts, and his mom knows this is his ticket out. His future is put at risk when his dad is arrested and convicted of murdering two women in his apartment building, something the man vehemently denies. He is sentenced to life in prison, and implores Rob not to give up on him, to find a way to get him out of prison. It’s a lot of pressure to put on Rob from a young age, who, as he gets older, works 2-3 jobs along with his mother, to enable to send him to a private high school and then on to Yale when good scholarships come his way. In college, it doesn’t get any easier for Rob, and he resorts to selling marijuana in order to fund lawyers for his dad and, later, expensive cancer treatments when his dad gets brain cancer. Rob overcomes, at first, by graduating, but being found out by his advisor shortly before graduation prevents him from getting a letter of recommendation to grad school, so he returns to his high school to teach and inspire. Hoping to turn his neighborhood around, Rob and friends start buying up vacant buildings to restore and flip, but then the housing crisis of 2008 hits, and they are left with nothing. Rob once again turns to dealing, not to enrich himself, but to help his neighbors from losing their homes and investments. It does not end well. Really strong performances all around, and while you’d think a movie like this would be a bit too on-the-nose, it manages to flip the script on the viewer a couple times and keeps you engaged. It made me angry, seeing a man like Robert who could have changed the world, resorted to doing the only thing society allowed him to do. ★★★½

I love a good apocalyptic movie, and it’s right there in the title of Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End, a Spanish language film. But even my love of the genre couldn’t save this one for my tastes. It starts out well enough, with rumors of a new virus causing people to get sick. So soon after COVID, the residents don’t really bat an eye when talk of quarantines starts up, but when the virus mutates and a new variant makes the incubation period change from days to minutes, the situation gets serious fast. Manel is the main character, a single man mourning the death of his wife a year ago in a car accident. When things start to look bad, the government rounds up residents to transport them to evacuation centers. Manel hides, rightfully fearing being around a crowd like that, and stays in his apartment after everyone leaves. He finds a friend in an old lady across the street, who was too weak to make it to the buses, and the two look after each other while Manel goes out daily, breaking into houses in the empty streets looking for food. When a radio signal tells them survivors are gathering in the Canary Islands, Manel wants to go for it. His new partner, fearing she’ll hold him back, commits suicide, freeing Manel to make the dangerous trip. It was good until about this point, which had some light zombie action and some decent thrills, but the movie really started to drag in the second half. Even as a zombie film/show lover, you’ve got to bring something new to the table to keep my interest, and this movie offers little. The final half is same old/same old and even sets up for a sequel, which I will definitely pass on. ★½

Transformers One is a computer animated origin story for those wonderful old transforming robots. Long before Optimus Prime and Megatron were rivals on Earth, they were Orion Pax and D-16, best buddies on Cybertron. The two are miners, digging deep into the planet for the life sustaining mineral Energon. Miners are those robots born without transformation cogs, thus they are not able to transform, making them the lowest tier in the societal rungs on the planet. Orion Pax has been digging through archives for information on the old Primes, the former rulers of the planet before its current ruler, Sentinel Prime, in hopes of finding some way to help their plight and end the long war with the invading Quintessons. In searching for answers, Orion Pax and D-16, along with fellow friends B-127 (future Bumblebee) and Elita-1 discover that Sentinel has been working for the Quintessons this whole time. He gives the mined Energon to them, and it was he who double-crossed the Primes and later devised the plan to remove the cogs from some robots, setting up miners to do his bidding. They all want to put an end to Sentinel’s tyrannical rule, but Orion Pax and D-16 have very differing views about how that should happen, leading to what ultimately lays the groundwork for the future wars between Optimus Prime and Megatron, and those that follow each of them in their pursuits. It’s a very fine movie, with lots of humor and an engaging plot for kids and adult fans alike. If you grew up on the Transformers cartoons of the 80s like myself, you’ll find plenty to like. ★★★½

• TV series recently watched: Bad Monkey (season 1), Cobra Kai (season 5.2)
• Book currently reading: Breaking the Dark by Lisa Jewell

Woman of the Hour is a fantastic true crime film based on serial killer Rodney Alcala, known in the late 70s as the “Dating Game Killer” for having appeared on that show shortly before his capture. The film follows the woman guest on that show, Sheryl Bradshaw (played by Anna Kendrick, who also directed in her debut). An aspiring actress whose career is going nowhere, she takes the gig to be on The Dating Game because she has no other options and is about ready to call it quits and move back home. Of course, no ones knows that one of the eligible bachelors, Bachelor # 3, is Rodney (Daniel Zovatto). Throughout the evening as Sheryl poses questions to the men on the other side of the divide, we see flashbacks to Rodney’s murders, and a flash-forward to the woman who finally escaped him, leading to his arrest. There is high tension throughout, especially as the film slowly builds and goes along, and we see the horrendous acts Rodney is capable of, and what may await Sheryl. You’ll definitely be holding your breath a couple times! Zovatto plays the sociopathic killer expertly well, giving me the heebie jeebies, and I was rooting for his capture so much that when it finally came, I pounded my fist in triumph. The ending postscript that stated Rodney was linked to 8 murders, but that the true number of his victims could be as high as 130, sent chills down my spine. ★★★★½

There are some movies I’ll see based on one actor alone, and that is the case for The Dead Don’t Hurt, starring (and directed by) Viggo Mortensen, who always delivers. This is a good old fashioned western, even if it manages to avoid a lot of the tropes. For example, the co-lead is Vicky Krieps, who plays a strong-willed independent woman, Vivienne, living in a time when that was not expected nor wanted by most men. In fact, early in the film, she leaves a wealthy boyfriend because he wants to treat her like a piece of art to be admired, and she shortly after ends up with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen (Mortensen). The movie actually begins near the end though: Olsen stands over Vivienne’s dying body. She whispers something in his ear before expiring, with Olsen burying her and leaving home with their young son. We then get their tale told in flashbacks, with an interlude here or there to catch up on Olsen in the current day. The bad buy in town is a man named Weston Jeffries, who gets away with murder (literally) because his dad is the wealthiest man around, owning much of the town and all of its business enterprises. When Olsen leaves for a few years to fight in the American Civil War, Vivienne is raped by Jeffries, and the result is a child, the same boy that Olsen claims as his own later on/at the beginning of the film. How the family gets to that point is the journey you’ll take with them, and it is everything I’d want in a good tale. Good guys, bad guys, with various shades of gray in the middle, and outstanding performances by every single person involved, including the many familiar faces (Garret Dillahunt, Danny Huston). I could watch this movie again and again, and probably pick up some new nuance every time. Mortensen isn’t an established director, this being just his second film, but he has a steady hand a great eye for letting scenes develop. ★★★★★

Two great movies, then a bit of a letdown. 1992 isn’t awful, but compared to the above, it’s very average. It stars Tyrese Gibson as Mercer, a man 6 months out of prison for gang activity who is trying to turn his life around. His boys on the street keep trying to bring him back into the fold, but he is wanting to raise his teenage son right and is working maintenance at a catalytic converter manufacturing plant in LA. On the day the jury delivers the “not guilty” verdict on the police officers involved in the Rodney King beating, the shit is about to hit the fan on the streets of LA. Mercer and his son live in the projects, an area that Mercer doesn’t want to spend the chaotic night in, so he asks his buddy, the security guard at work, if he (Mercer) and his son can hang at the plant that night. The guard will relish the company, so agrees. Unfortunately for everyone, a family of thieves (led by Ray Liotta and Scott Eastwood) are planning to rob the platinum used in those catalytic converters that night, using the chaos on the streets as a cover. Nothing that really stands out in this film, but it is decent mindless action for fans of the genre. ★★½

Just like ol’ Viggo above, another actor I’ll seek out is Guy Pearce. His latest is The Convert, a historical film out of New Zealand. He plays Thomas Monroe, a British clergyman in the early 19th century, newly come to New Zealand to spread Christianity to “the savages.” Internally, he sent himself to the most remote place on Earth as penance for some atrocities he once committed as a soldier in The King’s Army. Monroe walks right into a brewing war in New Zealand though. There are two tribes at odds, and the daughter of one chieftain has just been kidnapped by the other. She is about to be executed when Monroe begs for her life, trading his prized horse for her. The chieftain agrees and Rangimai goes to live in the English settlement with Monroe. Just when you think this is going to be another white man savior film (and I thought we were long past that), the real shit hits the fan. The long-simmering hatred between the two clans bubbles over, and a war breaks out. Monroe tries to caution peace, knowing that sooner or later the Brits will come in force and only a united people will be able to keep them at bay, but Rangimai’s chieftain father retorts that peace can only come after war. Unfortunately for him, the rival chief has been trading with the British for years, and has more access to guns and knowledge of their warfare. It’s an “ok” movie, nothing that really breaks new ground, but there’s plenty of bloodshed to satisfy the masses and a story that is engaging enough to keep you wondering how it all ends. The one knock is all of the characters are pretty stereotypical, so don’t expect anything too deep. ★★★

Writer/director Kevin Smith has (almost) always done will with moviegoers, but his films have long struggled with the critics. His latest, The 4:30 Movie, has done much better with the latter, perhaps owing to being a much more personal film (critics tend to eat that up). It’s about a junior in high school named Brian who obsesses over movies and can rattle off info about films with the best of them. For a year, Brian has secretly been in love with sophomore Melody, but hasn’t had the nerve to ask her out. That changes when a film comes out that he knows she would like to see, so he finally finds the courage to call her and ask her to see the 4:30 showing of this new movie. She responds positively, and the date is set. First though, Brian has to contend with his two buddies, one of which hides behind a masculine macho veneer to mask his own feelies of inadequacy. The three friends have a full day planned at the local theater, buying tickets to the matinee show and then sneaking into various R rated movies the rest of the day, including the film that Brian and Melody plan on seeing. Obstacles in their path include overbearing parents and the theater’s owner, who keeps trying to kick the boys out (played hilariously by Ken Jeong). Taking place in 1986, there’s tons of funny throwbacks and easter eggs for those who lived in the 80s, and it is definitely a trip down memory lane. The film (almost) drops the raunchy humor that usually infuses a Kevin Smith film, settling more for a teen flick about friends and love that holds as true now as it did in ’86, though maybe with fewer mullet haircuts. Smith based the film on his own experiences of sneaking in movie theaters and his first romantic encounters as a teen, and you can tell that he wrote from the heart on this one, even if some tidbits are still heavily pulled from his earlier films too (there’s even a Silent Bob-like stand-in in the form of one of Brian’s friends). ★★★½

• TV series recently watched: The Diplomat (season 2), Static Shock (seasons 1-2), Tulsa King (season 2)
• Book currently reading: Downfall by Jean Rabe

Today I’ve got a set of classic films out of the UK, but I’m starting off on rocky footing with 1978’s Jubilee. It’s an anarchist film about what Queen Elizabeth I would see if she looked into a future England. What she sees is pure madness. Social order is gone. Roving bands of women terrorize anyone on the streets. Buckingham Palace has been taken over by a record producer, who is the real controlling power in the nation. And everyone seems insane. There’s a loose plot about a group of friends who hang out breaking shit all day, but the whole thing is a real mess. I made it through about an hour and finally quit. Doesn’t make any sense, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and honestly seems to have been thrown together and improved without a script or plan. Hopefully this is the low point in today’s films! ½

There’s a lot of talk today of nepo babies, but it is far from a new concept. Director Anthony Asquith was the son of the Prime Minister of England, but he did do his best to distance himself from the “family trade” and make his own mark (even if his lineage did open plenty of doors early in his career). After a few well-received silent films and a breakout in Pygmalion, he had a big hit in 1951 with The Browning Version. The film takes place in a boys school in England and follows teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris (played by Michael Redgrave, who won Best Actor at Cannes for the role). Andrew is being forced into retirement, with the school using his failing health an excuse, though we quickly learn it is actually because of his poor popularity. Despised by his wife (who is opening cheating on him, and who he can no longer provide for after the loss of his career), ridiculed by the students, and not well thought-of by the other teachers either, Andrew’s life turned out nothing like he would have thought. At one point in the film he admits he was a bright student with a promising future, but went into teaching to inspire the next generation. He has done anything but, and any hope or inspiration he was displayed is long gone. A totalitarian, he has no sympathy for his students, reprimanding them for any small infraction, and demanding perfection in their work and play. It’s easy to dislike Andrew for his dour attitude towards everyone in his life, both professionally and personally, but the film slowly turns as you realize that, while maybe a product of his own making, it is still a very sad life to live. There is, though, a glimmer of hope near the end of the film, when a student gives Andrew a parting gift that leaves him full of emotion, and the idea that, just maybe, he can be redeemed. You have think that this was a deeply personal film for Asquith to make. With his Prime Minister father and popular socialite mother, and an early film career where he was neck-and-neck with Alfred Hitchcock in the silent film era as two “up and comers,” Asquith’s career obviously never reached the heights that may have been expected of him. I adored this film, and Redgrave’s performance of a man beaten by society and himself is superb. ★★★★★

Asquith followed up the next year with The Importance of Being Earnest, based on an Oscar Wilde play. The play was hugely popular but its initial run was cut short, as Wilde was on trial for being a homosexual. They may have silenced Wilde but they didn’t silence his works, and this story has gone on to become one of his most popular. In the opening we are introduced to Jack Worthington and Algernon Moncrieff, two friends and men-about-town in late 19th century London. Jack has an estate in the country and a ward who lives there, Cecily, who is almost of age to be introduced to society. The city-loving Jack couldn’t abide to stay in the country all the time, so long ago he told Cecily that he has a ne’er-do-well brother in the city named Ernest, who he continually has to bail out. In fact, Algernon thought Jack’s name was Ernest, as that is what he goes by when in the city. Algernon admits that he too has an imaginary “friend,” Bunbury, who he uses as an excuse to avoid dinner dates with his oppressive aunt Lady Bracknell. Here comes the twist: Jack (as Ernest) falls in love with Lady Bracknell’s daughter Gwendolen, who loves Jack principally because his name is Ernest (“a refined and dignified name”). Later, Algernon goes to Jack’s country state and pretends to be Jack’s nefarious brother Ernest, and Cecily falls in love with him, also owing partly to that dashing name Ernest. So now we have 2 Ernest’s, neither of which is a real person, and they are all in a big pickle, with the Lady Bracknell wanting to get to the bottom of it before she lets her daughter or nephew marry. This is one of the dialogue-driving plays the likes of which you don’t see much anymore, and the repartee flies fast and furious, so you’ve got to pay attention, but if you do, you’ll find plenty to laugh at. It’s hilarious (especially the scene when Gwendolyn and Cecily meet, each thinking they are engaged to the same man, Ernest, and start to try to one-up each other over lunch). Lady Bracknell is pure comedic gold. A great film. ★★★½

The Ruling Class is a dark comedy released in 1972 and stars the great Peter O’Toole as Jack Gurney. Jack’s father Ralph, Earl of Gurney, holds an important seat in the House of Lords, but Ralph accidentally suffocates himself one night, leaving Jack as heir to the seat. Unfortunately, Jack, a schizophrenic, thinks he is Jesus Christ, or “JC” as he likes to be called. But don’t worry! The family has a plan. Jack’s uncle Charles plans on getting Jack to marry his (Charles’) mistress Grace, getting her pregnant with the next heir of Gurney, and then getting Jack committed to an asylum so that the seat will move over into Charles’ lineage. Plans go awry when Grace actually falls in love with crazy old Jack, and the waters get murkier when Charles’ wife Clare starts sleeping with the psychiatrist overseeing Jack’s condition, in order to further her own plans and ambitions. This film is very funny, with Jack providing plenty of laughs as “JC.” Whenever someone says “Oh my God” and he pops up. Or going to sleep standing upright on a cross he had built in the parlor. Just use your imagination, and ol’ crazy JC will one-up you. I laughed long and hard, even when the film takes a dark turn in the final third, when Jack is “cured” of thinking he is Jesus Christ, only to now think he is Jack the Ripper. A satire on the people in power, it’s good stuff. ★★★½

Billy Liar is an early film from celebrated director John Schlesinger, and stars Tom Courtenay and a young Julie Christie in her breakout role. The eponymous Billy is Billy Fisher, a young man living with his parents and grandma in a semi-detached house outside London. Billy lies with every breath that he takes, to his parents, his friends, his boss and coworkers (at a funeral home). He lies because he hates the monotony of it all, and feels stuck in this dreary life. To escape, he daydreams about being a celebrated general of the fictional kingdom Ambrosia, where he gives speeches in front of stadiums full of people cheering his every word. The likeness to Hitler or some other autocrat is not lost on the viewer; in a life where Billy feels he has no power, he dreams about having absolute control over everything. Unfortunately for Billy, his lies are about to catch up with him. He has two girls that he is supposed to be engaged to (he “borrowed the ring back” from one, to give to the other), and he is quitting his job because he has “landed a promising new career in London,” which is definitely not true. For much of the film I was pretty indifferent to Billy’s cause, feeling like his problems are the result of his own actions, but I came around to realizing the impotence he feels in his life by the end, which lends sympathy to his decisions. And when he has a chance to really leave in the end, with a friend willing to go with him for support, will Billy finally make the move? The ending raised this film in my esteem, it was not doing it for me at all before then. ★★★

I usually only blog about movies I’ve never seen before, but everyone has seen Monty Python’s Life of Brian a time or two. However, I hadn’t seen it in 25-30 years, since I was in school anyway, so I got to see it with fresh eyes. The story made waves when it was released in 1979, about a man (Brian) born in a manger next door to Jesus. Talk about drawing the short straw. Nothing goes right for Brian throughout his life. From learning that he is the son of a Roman (he tearily asks his mom if she was raped, and she quips, “Well, yeah, at first…”) to being mistaken as the Messiah, leading to his own crucification in the end, Brian lives a life that would never be confused with inspiring. Nothing is off limits for the Pythons, and the troupe makes fun of just about everything, leading to lots of laughs but also lots of censorship when it came out. Catholics trying to get it banned only made people want to see it more, and certainly gave it cult status early in its release. Today it is considered a true classic and its comedy has stood the test of time. ★★★★½

• TV series recently watched: Agatha All Along (series)
• Book currently reading: Downfall by Jean Rabe

Up today are 5 classic films, some old, some not-so-old. It was going to be a set of American films, but the first one I picked ended up being out of Jamaica, so blew that right off the bat. Well worth it though, because it’s a good one! The Harder They Come (1972) stars music legend Jimmy Cliff as down-and-out Ivan, who has recently returned to Kingston. He’d been living in the countryside with his grandmother but she died, so he’s back to his mother’s house, and finding life in the city to be harder than expected. Ivan can’t find work anywhere, and his dreams of being a star singer are dashed because the local record producer reigns over the music scene with an iron fist. Everything Ivan touches goes to shit. All of his goods are stolen upon landing in Kingston. He starts running drugs, but even in a deadly business like that, he is paid peanuts compared to the worth of the goods he is moving. Even at church, the woman he eyes has been hand picked by the preacher as his next partner. When Ivan tries to get his bike fixed, the repairer claims it as his own. Literally, nothing goes right. When he does finally get a song recorded, the record producer realizes it will be a hit, but gives Ivan a take-it-or-leave it offer of $20 for the track. In the end, Ivan gets tangled up in some bad people related to those drug deals, but when the police descend on him, he realizes he has finally found the acclaim he’d been seeking. A great film dealing with the socially downtrodden and the plight of the poor, with a killer soundtrack provided by Cliff and other reggae and rocksteady groups of the day. Extremely popular in Jamaica, it’s fame in the USA helped explode reggae music in the early 70s. ★★★★

I’ve seen a couple films from “comedic legend” W.C. Fields, but have been very underwhelmed, and this coming from a guy who tends to like old-timey humor. Unfortunately 1940’s The Bank Dick continues that trend; it’s just not funny. Fields plays Egbert Sousé (note the accent mark, but without it, the viewer realizes Egbert is definitely a souse, or drunk), a man whose own family can’t stand him. He spends his days drinking and smoking at the local bar (tended by Shemp Howard of all people, made during his hiatus from the Three Stooges!) and generally not doing anything to contribute to society. That is, until he “accidentally” foils a robbery at the bank. The bank manager offers him a security job on the spot, and Egbert the drunk becomes Egbert the guard. Nothing changes about his life though. The finale deals with Egbert trying to waylay the bank examiner while some funds are missing in a scheme of Egbert’s, just as the bank is getting robbed again. There’s a lot of verbal gags (Fields’ bread and butter) but they have not held up. I can’t say I even chuckled more than a time or two. I laugh hard at the classic Charlie Chaplin films, but this movie is as dry as Egbert is wet. ★½

Unfaithfully Yours is a delightful dark comedy (and by dark, I mean pitch black, with pretty frank depictions of murder) from director Preston Sturges and released in 1948. Rex Harrison plays Alfred, a world-renowned symphony conductor with a young wife, Daphne (Linda Darnell). As many men can be with a beautiful younger wife, Alfred is a bit jealous, and this explodes when he returns from conducting overseas. While away, his brother-in-law August (the great Rudy Vallée) promised to “look after her” in Alfred’s absence, which in August’s terms, means hiring a private investigator to follow her around. The P.I. detailed that Daphne went to Alfred’s secretary Anthony’s hotel room one night, wearing only a nightgown, and was there for 38 minutes. That night, while conducting the orchestra, Alfred fantasizes about 3 scenarios regarding his wife. During the first musical number, a mischievous flighty tune, Alfred envisions the perfect crime, where he murders Daphne but sets it up to look like Anthony did it. In the second, a slower more thought-provoking musical number, Alfred writes Daphne a big check to go live her life without him. In the third, a fiery, tempestuous Tchaikovsky piece, Alfred imagines playing Russian roulette with the two lovers, but ultimately comes out on the bottom. Alfred tries to go with door # 1, but finds that in real life, a murder is a whole lot harder to pull off, to great comedic effect. It’s a rip-roaring, hilarious good time throughout. ★★★★½

I really want to like The Unbearable Lightness of Being more. It’s good, but I didn’t get “stellar” vibes from it, despite a great cast including younger versions of Juliette Binoche and Daniel Day-Lewis. Released in 1988 and taking place 20 years earlier in Prague, surgeon Tomas is a huge womanizer. Somehow his trademark opening line of “Take your clothes off,” seems to work with just about every woman. He always returns to Sabina though, an artist who seems to “get him” as he puts it. She has an eye for more than just art, and really seems to see Tomas as more than just a philanderer. Tomas may have to find room for another girl though, because he gets swept off his feet one day by the young and beautiful Tereza. A whirlwind relationship leads to marriage, but putting a ring on his finger won’t settle Tomas’s wandering eye. He continues to see Sabina, which initially upsets Tereza until she gets to know the mistress better, and eventually the two become good friends. However, their world is about to crash down. In the dark of night one evening in 1968, Soviet Russia invades Czechoslovakia. Tomas, being a well known surgeon with a highly valued opinion, has been critical of the communist government to this point, so for safety, he and Tereza flee to Switzerland. If Tereza thinks this will be a fresh start, those hopes are dashed when Tomas starts his tomcat ways again. She leaves him, returning to Prague despite knowing the restrictions she’ll face there. Tomas, despite his womanizing ways, truly does love Tereza, and follows her there, knowing the repercussions he could face. There’s a lot going on here and much of it is really good, but the film is hurt by long, seemingly unneeded erotic scenes between Tereza and Sabina, Sabina and her short-time boyfriend, etc. I don’t see how any of it adds to the plot, and the film could have been better served by cutting down on its long (3 hour) runtime. ★★★

Director Gus Van Sant is best known for Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and my personal favorite, Good Will Hunting, but before all those hits came his first film, 1988’s Mala Noche. I’ve seen a lot of “first films” and they often aren’t great. Usually low budget affairs with no-name actors (and this film has both measuring sticks), a director’s first movie is usually just a stepping stone. This movie, though, is quite good, and I was surprised how engrossed into it I was by the end. The protagonist is a gay convenience store clerk named Walt. Walt is completely enamored by teenage Mexican immigrant Johnny, but Johnny isn’t having it. Walt tries every trick in the book, and admits to the viewer via narration that he is aware that he has all the power as a privileged white man trying to woo an illegal immigrant who has no money and a real fear of being deported if apprehended, but Walt continues to try to beguile, threaten, or cajole Johnny into sleeping with him. Johnny continually rebuffs him, leaving Walt “no other option” but to sleep with Johnny’s friend Roberto instead, theorizing it is “as close as he’s going to get.” Roberto doesn’t really come off as gay (neither is Johnny, but Walt doesn’t care), always wanting to be “on top” and sleep with the lights off, but he’ll take Walt’s money and a place to sleep at night. While Walt and Roberto are in this relationship, Walt is still trying to woo Johnny, until one day Johnny goes missing. Rumors abound that he went on vacation or was arrested and deported, but no one knows. The film leads to an explosive ending. When the movie started I didn’t think I’d get into it, as it gives off creepster vibes with the older Walt preying on teenage immigrants, but Walt convinces himself (and in a way, us too) that he is aware how the situation looks, but insists it is anything but. Walt is really in love with Johnny, or at least in lust, and cannot think about anything else. And Roberto is exploiting Walt as much as Walt is trying to exploit Johnny. Shot on a shoestring budget ($25k) it has the feel of a film from an established director who knows what he wants to show, not from a newcomer. ★★★★

• TV series recently watched: Kite Man (season 1), The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon (season 2), Only Murders in the Building (season 4)
• Book currently reading: Downfall by Jean Rabe

I’ve seen a whole lot films from director James Ivory and his longtime producer and partner Ismail Merchant (here, here, here and here, for starters), so when I heard a documentary was coming out focusing on them, getting some behind-the-scenes on their long-running production company, I couldn’t wait to see it. Merchant Ivory details the long history of the team of people who made the films. Starting in the beginning with the super-low-budget films they made in India, it progresses to their breakout hits in the 80s and 90s with films made in England and based on classic novels (which is how I got into these films myself, having previously read Howards End and A Room With a View). It is jam packed with current and archival interviews from many of the stars involved in these films over the years, including Helena Bonham Carter, Hugh Grant, Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Emma Thompson, and on and on. Also obviously talks about their personal lives as a gay couple, living, for the most part, when that was frowned upon. James talks about how it wasn’t really a secret in their professional circles (two men who lived together for 40 years sort of told you all you needed to know), but to Ismail’s family, James was just his “British friend.” It would not have been accepted in his conservative Muslim family, so they kept it private throughout Ismail’s life (he died in 2005) and James kept it quiet for several years after, until most of Ismail’s family had died too. I think, for most people, there’s not much to see here, but as a fan for many of these films, I absolutely loved it. ★★★★★

I thought Caddo Lake was going to be more of a straight-forward thriller, and that’s what it seems like in the beginning; as soon as I saw M Night Shyamalan’s name attached to it (as producer), I should have known better. The film begins with a drowning at the lake, where Paris (played by The Maze Runner’s Dylan O’Brien) survives but his mother does not. The police chalk it up to a seizure that caused her to run her car off the road into the lake, but Paris isn’t convinced. A couple years, later, he’s still looking for answers. Also at the lake, we meet the other main character, Ellie (Eliza Scanlen). She butts heads constantly with her mom and step-dad but looks out for her step-sister Anna, until one day when Anna goes missing on the lake. Ellie heads out to find her, but becomes disoriented when she starts hearing strange banging noises. When she returns home, she finds that she has gone back in time 3 days. She boats back out to the lake, this time finding Anna, but quickly realizes this Anna was from a month ago, before she lost a baby tooth. There’s some weird things going on in this lake, and just as I started to suspect that Paris and Ellie are from two different time periods, it is confirmed, and the big Shyamalan-style surprise comes when we realize the two of them share more than the ability to jump through time. I was hoping for a better film, but got a made-for-tv style thriller. There’s some decent acting and the “feel” of the movie is solid, but it tries way too hard to tie up all the loose ends into a neat package at the end. ★★½

I had high hopes for Rez Ball as I generally like a feel-good sports flick, but this one doesn’t reach the heights that many do. It is based on a true story about the Chuska Warriors, a high school team from a Native American reservation in New Mexico. They have a new coach, a former alum who had success in the professional WNBA league and is recently retired from playing. She dreams of a bigger job but has been unable to get a job at a premier university due to lack of experience, so is “stuck” at her old high school. The star player on the team missed his junior year after the death of his sister and mom (killed in a crash with a drunk driver) and is now returning to the team for his senior year. With his return, the team has high hopes of contending for the state championship, but he tragically takes his life early in the season. The team is crushed, because while he was sad obviously, his suicide is a shocking surprise to everyone. The team goes on a losing streak, and only starts to turn it around when they embrace their Native American heritage and work together as a team. The movie is as formulaic as they come, you can practically connect the dots and predict each scene before it comes. And for a sports film, it’s awfully boring. Never a good thing. ★½

I didn’t rush out to see Twisters because I figured (rightly so, as it turns out) that it was pretty much just like the original mid-90s film starring Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, and Cary Elwes. Sure, the plot is different (sort of) but the feel is the same, and just as in the first film, the “tornado action” is really the only reason worth watching. In this movie, after a prologue in which storm chaser Kate sees most of her team killed when a tornado turns straight towards them, we pick up on her 5 years later. She’s doing her research on tornados behind a desk now, but is called back to the field by friend Javi, who is still chasing storms. Unlike the first film, when Jo and Bill were the chasers in it for the science and thrill while being up against well-funded Jonas, this time Javi has the rich backer. Instead, the thrill-seekers are centered around opposing team Tyler, a YouTube sensation who seems to only into storms for his social media accounts. Of course, all is not as it seems, especially after Kate learns that Javi’s rich investors are only in it to buy land from people who’ve lost everything in the storms, and Tyler is using his platform to help out those in need. A few subplots that are really only there to fill out the story, but obviously you are watching this film to see the tornado destruction, and there’s plenty of it. Straight out of a Michael Bay film, the tornado disasters keep getting worse as the movie goes along, until the big finale at the end when a massive tornado heads straight for a city. As a piece of art, not so good. As entertainment, it delivers what you are expecting. ★★★

Chicken for Linda! is a short French animated film that is just about the cutest film I’ve seen in a very long time. From the beginning, you see that it is not really a kid’s film (though children, I think, would be just as caught up in it as adults), because in the first scene, a young child (Linda) is sitting in her high chair waiting for her dad’s famous chicken and peppers dinner when, “off camera,” we hear her mom start to panic that dad isn’t answering her questions. Adult viewers know that something is very wrong, and we next catch up to the family several years later. Linda is in elementary school and has some great friends, but doesn’t remember much about her deceased father. Her mom Paulette is a busy single mom who makes microwave dinners every night. Linda is fascinated by her mom’s wedding ring and wants to take it to school to show off, but Paulette refuses. When the ring goes missing, she blames Linda for stealing it, which Linda denies. It turns out the cat ate it, and when the cat “gives it back,” Paulette realizes her mistake and tearfully begs for forgiveness, promising anything to make it up. Linda wants chicken with peppers, and Paulette, who hasn’t made a home-cooked meal in who-knows-how-long, agrees. Unfortunately, a general strike is going on, and a chicken isn’t to be found in any of the local stores. So begins a wild adventure involving stealing chickens, a police chase, smashing furniture, and a wild party by the kids in the street. The movie is utterly charming, beautifully animated in a seemingly simple but deceptively complex way that has the look and feel of an old timey children’s book. And it is FUNNY. I laughed like a child, which is the best kind. ★★★★★

• TV series recently watched: Sunny (season 1), Rivals (series), Star Trek Next Generation (season 3)
• Book currently reading: The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan

In honor of Halloween, I’ve got a series of classic horror and/or sci-fi films, starting with 4 from a British film producer known for his contributions to the genre, Richard Gordon, plus one from his brother Alex. These first 5 are all shorter films, most not much more than an hour and none reaching 90 minutes, and they were all cranked out between 1958-1959. First up is The Haunted Strangler, starring Boris Karloff and directed by Robert Day. Based on a screenplay written specifically for Karloff, it begins in 1860 as a man, Edward Styles, is marched to the gallows. He is being hanged for the murder of 5 women who were partially strangled and stabbed to death. Edward, who lacks control of one arm, is the obviously guilty party, but he dies professing his innocence. Twenty years later, a novelist, James Rankin (Karloff) is looking into the old case and has become convinced that Edward was innocent, and James is hunting the real killer. His prime suspect becomes Tennant, a doctor who frequented the local cabaret/bar where the women were targeted. Tennant also performed the autopsy on Edward after the man’s hanging, and when Rankin exhumes Edward’s body, sure enough they find the murder weapon, a surgeon’s knife used in the autopsy. But the trail of Tennant turns cold, as he was admitted to a local insane asylum, before running off with a nurse, purportedly to Australia. However, there’s more to this story that meets the eye, and the big twist that comes in the final third of the film is fantastic. Great story with some grisly thrills for its day. ★★★★

Fiend Without a Face was released with the above film as a double feature by MGM. As many sci-fi films of this era turned, it looked to nuclear power as an inspiration for bad stuff, at least, when left in the hands of bad people. At a US air force base in Canada, new nuclear power is running a radar installation, but something is amiss. A couple local people are found dead, with their brains and spinal cords sucked out. Major Jeff Cummings is looking into it, and his investigation has a lot of false starts until finally landing on scientist R.E. Walgate. Walgate wrote some books dealing with moving objects with his mind, and turns out he has been siphoning off some of that nuclear power to further his tests, which ultimately went awry. He created invisible beings who draw their own nuclear power, and they hunger for brains for growth and reproduction. It isn’t until the end of the movie when the nuclear juice is turned up enough that we can finally see these gruesome fiends, and they are terrifying (by 1958 standards). Lots of bloody gore abounds once the military turns their guns on the floating brains, which spew blood in fountains when shot. Not a great film, and some rough acting (several times actors get caught looking at the camera) but it is good pulp for fans of the genre. ★★½

Director Robert Day and actor Boris Karloff returned together for Corridors of Blood, dealing with a doctor, Thomas Bolton (Karloff) trying to find a way to perform surgery without causing pain. In a time before anesthesia, patients would have to be strapped down during surgery, and everything from minor procedures to amputations were done while the patient was awake and aware. Bolton is trying to find a solution. When he finally finds the right mix of nitrous oxide and sets up a display on a patient to show off his new tactics, his picked subject dies of a sudden stroke just before the surgery. In a panic, Bolton picks a new patient, but the new guy is a much bigger male. Obviously today we know bigger dudes will need stronger meds, but Bolton is unaware and goes through with it, leading to the guy waking up in the middle of the procedure. This gets Bolton laughed out of the room by the other doctors and his license to practice revoked. He continues his experiments at home, but in the meantime, has become addicted to his own medicines, including opium. No longer in the lab and cut off from getting ingredients, Bolton turns to the black market, and becomes the subject of blackmail by some ne’er-do-wells (led by a young Christopher Lee of all people, Saruman the White!), using him to sign off of fake death certificates to cover up their nefarious dealings. It’s a cool psychological thriller, with grisly (for its day) showings of surgeries and bloody aftermaths. ★★★

First Man Into Space plays on the fears about the effects space flight would have on man. Released in 1959, 2 years before the first manned craft cleared our atmosphere, the film shows the US Navy performing tests with sending a person right up to the edge of space (“100 miles,” obviously a lot further than we now know). One of the heads of the team is Chuck Prescott, whose brother Dan is the pilot. On the first test, Dan is thrilled to be so close to open space, and tells his girlfriend that he dreams of being the first person to cross that threshold. On the second test, instead of turning around when told, Dan punches the throttle and goes “250 miles” up into space. Chuck and those on the ground lose contact with him, but shortly afterwards his parachute is picked up coming back to Earth. Chuck goes to the site and finds space dust covering the spacecraft, but no sign of Dan. However, cattle in the area start turning up dead, and we soon learn that space dust has turned Dan into a disfigured monster. Chuck needs to find a way to stop his brother, or kill him if need be. It’s a silly movie when looked through a modern lens, but it goes to show how little we knew back then. ★★

The Atomic Submarine is another “what if” movie that hasn’t held up under modern scrutiny. It imagines a time when the military and commercial passenger boats and submarines would traverse the Northern Passage as a quick way of getting around. A few boats have recently gone missing though, including a passenger submarine carrying many civilians. The US military sends a state-of-the-art nuclear sub named Tigershark up to investigate. What they find is unexpected, and yet somehow the crew doesn’t bat an eye. It’s an alien UFO, traversing the underwater byways, sinking ships. The men on the Tigershark are able to map out its path, noticing that it always returns to the North Pole to re-energize. Thus, they stake out a place and wait for it. However, even surprise doesn’t give them the upper hand, as missiles have no effect, and when they ram it in a possible suicide mission, all they seem to do is wound it temporarily. They’ll need to resort to drastic measures before the creature can leave the Earth and gather its alien friends to come do more harm. This film is pure cheese with every 50’s cliche in the book, with nonsensical dialogue and even worse acting. Why does everyone on a nuclear sub in the middle of nowhere carry a gun? Is it really “our last best hope” when the movie still has 30 minutes to go? ★

Flesh for Frankenstein (released in 1973 in the USA as Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein) was directed by Warhol collaborator Paul Morrissey and stars Joe Dallesandro and a young 20-something Udo Kier. Kier plays Baron von Frankenstein, who has been looking to create a race of zombies who will obey his every command. He wants to create the perfect man and woman, who will mate to produce offspring who see him as god, but has been having a hard time finding the perfect male “head” from a man with strong sexual energy. In his pursuits, he has been ignoring his wife the Baroness and their 2 kids, whom the Baron sees as weak and unworthy of his legacy. When the Baron finally picks the male target, a man coming out of a brothel, he accidentally picks the wrong guy (an effeminate man who was only visiting with his friend). The guy he really wants for his experiments is Nicholas (Dallesandro), who sleeps with any girl that comes across his path, including the Baron’s sexually frustrated wife. The Baron realizes his mistake too late, leading to a gross correction later. The film is not great, but very entertaining if you can stomach it. It was rated X for sex, nudity, and violence, and there’s lots of disturbing stuff, including the revelation later in the film that the Baron and Baroness are siblings as well as married, and a scene of necrophilia. The director was definitely going for shock value all over the place, and the acting is over-the-top in a B movie kind of way, but there’s some interesting themes involving power and exploitation. Should I hate myself if I liked the film more than I should? ★★★½

Morrissey followed up the next year with Blood for Dracula (“Andy Warhol’s Dracula” in USA) with the same 2 leads. Didn’t get into this one nearly as much, and it comes off as just kind of silly, and maybe the last one was supposed to be silly too, and I didn’t catch it. Very noticeable this time though. Dracula (Kier) is needing fresh virgin blood to stay “alive,” but in Romania, the townsfolk have learned to stay away. His servant proposes going to Italy, where fear of the church may keep more virgins around. They end up at the estate of the di Fiore family (and lo! Celebrated Italian director Vittorio de Sica is spotted as the patriarch of the di Fiore family; there’s also a blink-or-you’ll miss it cameo by director Roman Polanski in a tavern), who has 4 daughters. For the rest of the film, Dracula seduces the young women one by one, but unfortunately for him, his first two victims are the middle daughters, and they’ve been banging the stableboy (Dallesandro). Drinking their blood makes Dracula sick and weaker, and so he continues his search, but the stableboy will be onto him before too long. This film is really a hot mess, and the whole Dracula tale just seems to be a venue in order to show lots of women taking their clothes off for him. Completely forgettable and not worth wasting your time on. ★

As a self professed movie lover, I’m ashamed to admit there was a gaping hole in my viewing history, and it’s time to rectify that. I’ve seen a lot of Martin Scorsese’s films, especially his “newer” stuff from the last 25-30 years, but I’d only seen a handful of his earlier stuff. We’re starting with 1973’s Mean Streets, his breakout, and third film overall. Harvey Keitel plays Charlie, a man in New York trying to get into business with his mafia uncle Giovanni. Charlie has a soft spot for Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), a young man with a crazy streak who owes money to every loan shark in the area. Charlie keeps bailing him out, but that leash is getting long. For a long time in the movie, that’s all we know as a viewer; for the most part, the film is light on plot but heavy on substance, and if the substance wasn’t so damn good, it wouldn’t be a great film, but damn, the movie is still extremely entertaining. We see Charlie and his friends busting heads around town and doing all kinds of shady stuff. When the plot finally gets going, we learn that part of Charlie’s care of Johnny Boy comes from Charlie’s relationship with Johnny’s cousin Teresa, a relationship that Giovanni does not approve of. The overarching theme though deals with Charlie’s faith. He is devoutly Catholic, and thinks he may be able to avoid hell in the afterlife if he can save Johnny. But those loan sharks will eventually get tired of getting put off. Great film that oozes a dark, seedy feel throughout. ★★★★½

Mean Streets got a lot of buzz, but it was Taxi Driver that made Scorsese (and De Niro) a star. De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a man with severe insomnia. Since he’s not sleeping at night, he decides to start driving a taxi, as he’s up anyway, “so might as well get paid for it.” The people he comes across in the middle of the night are a wide range of people, from business people to pimps and prostitutes and everyone in between. From the beginning, Travis shows a disdain for the “scum of the earth” and as the film goes along, grows increasingly disgusted by the dregs of society. First, Travis falls for a woman named Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), but when he takes her to a dirty movie, she gets pissed and storms out, and doesn’t see him again. For a time, Travis stalks her and hatches a plan to assassinate the presidential nominee whose campaign Betsy works for, but when that falls through, Travis sets himself a new goal. He knows of a 12-year-old prostitute (played by a young Jodie Foster) and decides to save her from her pimp. The whole thing is a grisly and at times disturbing journey as Travis descends into madness from sleep deprivation, and De Niro plays it to a T. For you younger kids, this film had lots of notoriety a couple years after release when John Hinckley Jr attempted to assassinate President Reagan, because he (John) was obsessed with Jodie Foster and decided to reenact Travis in the movie to get her attention. ★★★★

Raging Bull, released in 1980, is considered one of the greatest sports movies of all time. Despite a lukewarm reception when it came out, it has risen in esteem in the ensuing decades, so I’ve been excited to see if it lived up to the reputation. Based on the life of boxer Jake LaMotta, it starts in his early career in the early 1940s. Jake (De Niro) is a fantastic middleweight boxer, but he refuses to take money from the mafia, despite the wishes of his brother and trainer Joey LaMotta (Joe Pesci, in his first big role). Without the mafia’s influence, Jake is never given a chance at a title bout, despite some great wins, including against previously undefeated Sugar Ray Robinson in 1943. Despite his success in the ring, Jake’s personal life is a mess. He leaves his first wife for 15-year-old Vikki (marrying her after she becomes pregnant at 16), and then goes on to rule his house with an iron fist. A jealous man with a mean streak, Jake slaps Vikki around whenever he thinks men are paying too much attention to her. As his personal life breaks down, so does his professional, so that the final 20 minutes of the film, the coda as it comes off, shows where Jake’s life has taken him 10-15 years later: an overweight has-been holding on to a legacy that seems hell bent on forgetting him. It’s a violent film, and not just inside the ring (which is, by itself, extremely violent, much harsher looking than the Rocky movies, for example). The story has more narrative than the first 2 films above, maybe because it is based on a real person who lived larger-than-life. To date, Robert De Niro’s only Oscar win for a leading role. ★★★★★

After Hours is a completely different film from those above. No strong alpha male character; in fact, the main character Paul (Griffin Dunne) can’t seem to accomplish anything on his own. Paul works in a mind-numbingly boring job but gets excitement one night when he meets Marcy in a cafe. He is reading a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (not a great book in my opinion) when they meet, and it is fitting, because what follows over 1 long night for Paul is an almost surreal sequence of events, including lots of crazy stuff that could come right out of a Henry Miller novel. On a night that Paul will never forget (if he survives), he will witness suicides and murders, go to a mohawk nightclub, fight with a taxi driver with a vendetta, become the object of a desire of two unhinged women (including a lonely waitress with relationship issues), and is mistaken for both a burglar and as a john picking up a gay prostitute. And all that’s just the tip of the iceberg! But unlike Miller’s book, I loved this film. It is crazy, zany, thrilling, funny, and edited brilliantly so that I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat through most of the film. The breakneck pace unfortunately can’t hold forever, and the film does peter out before the end credits roll, but otherwise it is a near-perfect film. ★★★★½

If the above film seems to draw inspiration from a book I didn’t like, this one is straight-up based on a book I did. The Age of Innocence is a faithful adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Edith Wharton, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder. In the later 19th century New York, society and your place in it is everything. Newland is a respectable young lawyer and is ready to announce his engagement to the demure and respectable May Welland, when her cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, returns to the city. There are whispers that Ellen does not belong in polite society, as she is fleeing a marriage in Europe. It doesn’t matter that she has good reason to do so (her husband slept with anything that moved); divorce is legally allowed but will still get you shunned by your neighbors. Newland is almost immediately swept off his feet by the free-thinking and devil-may-care attitude that Ellen displays, and begins to secretly court her even as his engagement to May is announced. The book plays out with this sort-of torrid affair, where Newland and Ellen go right up to the edge of scandal, but never quite cross over it, whether because of his values or her fear of hurting her cousin May. There’s lots of talk about what is and what is not allowed in society, with Newland continuing to test those limits. The film captures the feel of the book, which is completely opposite of the frenetic pace of the above Scorsese films. Still, I enjoyed the book a lot more, though the film is visually captivating and extremely well acted. ★★★½

Bonus film: Italianamerican, a 1974 doc made after Scorsese’s first big hit in Mean Streets. Just about 45 minutes, it is Martin sitting down and interviewing his parents Charlie and Catherine Scorsese, talking about their experiences growing up in a first- and second-generation Italian neighborhood in New York, the sense of camaraderie, the struggles, all of it. It’s a heart-warming take and reminds you how little you may know about your own parents’ lives before you came along. And it’s funny, with the banter between the 40-year-married couple and their admonishments to their 30-something son (“this better not end up in the film!”). The camera doesn’t stop, even when Catherine has to get up every once in awhile to check on her sauce on the stove in the kitchen (the recipe for which rolls with the credits at the end!). I saw a lot of my own parents in it, the sense of storytelling, growing up with a ton of people in a small house, all of those things that are part of a bygone America. Great little film worth checking out.

• TV series recently watched: Presumed Innocent (season 1), Slow Horses (season 4)
• Book currently reading: The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan

Wolfs is getting middling reviews, with people saying things like, “The only thing going for it is Brad Pitt’s and George Clooney’s camaraderie,” and, I thought, “I love those guys when they are in movies together!” So maybe this film was just made for me, and I did indeed really, really like it. It begins with a scream in the dark. An up-and-coming district attorney named Margaret (Amy Ryan) was fooling around with a younger man in a hotel room when he bounced off the bed and crashed through a glass table, killing him. With her bright political future in peril, Margaret calls an “emergency number” once given to her for just this kind of situation, and a short time later, in walks a “fixer,” (unnamed, played by George Clooney). He’s there to “take care of it” and put things right. Unfortunately, the hotel has hidden cameras everywhere, and the hotel owner, not wanting to get the bad press, has hired its own fixer, so very soon, in walks another man (again, no name, played by Brad Pitt). These two men don’t know each other, and they don’t want to know each other. Both are used to working solo, as the job requires, but now they have to work together (Margaret only trusts “her guy,” the hotel only trusts “its guy”). The only problem for them is the dead guy in the bedroom may not be so dead after all, and not only that, but there’s enough drugs in his backpack that some bigger crime lord is most certainly involved in some way too. So begins a wild night around New York. The film takes place all over that one night, and it is a whole lot of fun. Thrilling action with gun fights and mob bosses, and lots of laughs from the hostile banter between Clooney and Pitt. ★★★★

I think I’m done looking up films from Japanese director Ryüsuke Hamaguchi. After being blown away by his last two pictures, I’ve been pretty underwhelmed by his earlier stuff. Happy Hour, from 2015, is good-to-very-good, but it is super long at over 5 hours, and I felt every moment of it. It follows the lives of four women, life-long friends, and looks at their personal and interconnected lives. Sakurako is in a weird marriage with a domineering but cowardly husband. Jun is currently trying to divorce her husband, but she has no cause (apparently Japanese divorce court is a lot stricter than ours), and he seems hellbent on keeping her as his wife, whether she’s happy or not. Akari is already divorced, and works as a nurse, where she runs the ward with an iron fist, belittling the new nurse who is training there. Fumi seems pretty content with her marriage and life, but her husband has a wandering eye, so you get the feeling that all will not turn out well. Everything I said takes hours to develop, and nothing comes easy in the movie, but some of what does work is the slowly-developing answers that do (finally) come in the end. But man, they take a long time in coming. Two very long sequences in particular really tried my patience: one is early in the film, when the four women attend a communications seminar by hippy-dippy “expert” Ukai, who has a part to play later in the movie too. This seminar goes on for like an hour by itself, as they do group activities that have nothing to do with the rest of the film. The second: a reading by an author later in the movie. Literally a woman reading from her new book, for again, like 40+ minutes, as some (minor) drama happens in the hallway outside. Good God, if you make it to the end, it feels like a war of attrition. I liked it well enough (eventually), but I really don’t have any desire to sit through it again. ★★★½

Blood for Dust got some good reviews and has that guy from Game of Thrones (Kit Harrington, aka Jon Snow), but it really let me down. Taking place in 1992 (I guess so they can’t give the characters cell phones?) it follows a traveling salesman named Cliff (Scoot McNairy, who is very good here) who is struggling to make a living in a dying industry. At the beginning of the film, Cliff and his buddy Ricky (Harrington) witness a boss commit suicide, but the why of it is left until much later in the film. 17 months later, Cliff is struggling as I said, when he is approached by Ricky with a job proposition: running guns and drugs. Cliff is the perfect mule, as he has been making long drives all over the Pacific Northwest for a decade, and “knows every waitress and motel from Montana to the coast.” Cliff, who devoutly attends church on Sundays, doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d be down for this job, but his son is fighting cancer and he has been wracked with guilt with what went down over that earlier suicide, so he takes the dangerous job. The rest of the film plays out like your standard crime thriller, with lots of double-crossing and gun fights. Nothing spectacular, and after so many gotcha- moments, I started rolling my eyes more and more. ★★

We Grown Now (which also takes place in 1992, weird coincidence) follows two young boys (maybe 10 years old?) living in the infamous Cabrini-Green projects in Chicago. The older people living in the buildings talk about how when they first came there, kids would play outside and families would gather and hang out, but by 1992, crime is rampant. Malik and Eric are, for the most part, oblivious to the bad parts of the neighborhood, doing just what kids do: playing, getting into trouble, and picking on their siblings. However, the viewer is not oblivious: we see one of their mom’s discussions on the phone about struggling to come up with money, and when the boys skip school and go to, of all places, the art museum, they come home to find their parents rife with worry, thinking the boys were lying dead somewhere. The two boys don’t understand the worry, but it is drilled into them. The police, rather than patrolling more, decide to antagonize the innocent, by making all residents (even the children) carry ID’s at all times to get into the buildings, and one night, raiding the apartments at 2 in the morning, ostensibly looking for drugs but really just wrecking the place and scaring the kids. Through it all, nothing seems to come between Malik and Eric, until it looks like one of them will move away when a better opportunity comes along for his mom. It’s a raw film about the loss of innocence, and eye-opening to me in particular, seeing what these boys are going through at that age; I wasn’t much older myself in 1992, but had a much different experience obviously. I know plenty of families struggle, but you always want kids to just be kids, and not have to worry about “grown up things” until they have to. Good film from director Minhal Baig, whose other film Hala I enjoyed too, a few years ago. ★★★½

Didi is a good, at times great, coming-of-age film that feels extremely authentic, compared to how some of these films can go. It follows 13-year-old Chris Wang, who lives with his sister, mother, and grandmother in California (their Dad still lives in Taiwan, working there to support the family). Did and his sister are first-generation citizens, fluent in English at school, while Mandarin is still spoken at home, and Chris (called “Didi” by his family and “Wang Wang” by his friends) is very much aware of how different he is compared to his classmates. Still, he is doing what every 13-year-old is doing, which is trying to fit in. Unfortunately for Chris, he doesn’t always make the best choices, and goes out of his way to try to impress the “cool kids” and “pretty girls,” even fabricating stories to get their attention. It’s a balancing act that no one can keep up forever, and hopefully it doesn’t end up losing his real friends in the process. The movie does a fantastic job of putting the viewer in Chris’s shoes, and it is easy to recall that feeling of being left out, and wanting to fit in, of thinking this is your whole world. Obviously looking back with wisened eyes, it’s easy to see you still have your whole life in front of you at 13 and none of what is happening then is really all that important in the grand scheme of things. Chris’s fights with his sister especially had me laughing at memories of some of the stuff I pulled with my brother! Funny and moving film. ★★★½

Got out to see Joker: Folie à Deux tonight, the sequel to the massive hit Joker from a few years ago. Bringing back star Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck/The Joker, this film picks up where the last film ended. Joker has been in Arkham Asylum for 2 years while the state tries to decide if he is competent to stand trial for 5 murders he committed in the first movie, or if he is too bat-shit crazy.

Fleck is pretty nuts, which is obvious to the viewer, especially knowing the trauma he faced as a child, all of which we learned in the last movie. His defense team has been building a case of split personality, but prosecutors want to nail him for the murders and insist that he is aware of all of the crimes he has committed. The jail guards are pretty rough with him too, and it seems Fleck can’t get a moment’s rest anywhere he goes. Outside the jail and courtroom, “the Joker” has gained quite the following, with nuts and crooks celebrating his name and creating a persona of an anti-hero out of him, a man willing to stand up against the establishment. Fleck seems pretty oblivious to all the attention, but he does have eyes for one person: Harley (“Lee,” as he calls her) Quinzel, portrayed by Lady Gaga. Lee is also in Arkham, she says because she burned down her parents’ house after her father abused her for years. Arthur falls in love-at-first-sight with Lee, who has a crazy streak to match his.

The state decides Fleck is able to stand trial, and it commences. As the film shifts to a courtroom drama, Lee roots for Arthur from the seats, quietly calling for him to let his Joker persona free and take command of the proceedings, something that his “fans” in the courtroom and outside demonstrating in front of the building all want as well. Along the way, we get a deeper look into the mental illness that consumes Arthur’s life.

This movie is bombing at the box office and getting middling- to downright-poor reviews in the process. However, I loved it. Sometimes I can chalk bad reviews up to either, 1) real critics don’t always know an entertaining film when they see one, or 2) “average filmgoers” can’t recognize a good film when it comes along. This movie seems to be getting nailed from both sides though! The only thing I can guess is that people aren’t digging that it is a musical, and it is a true musical. I myself love a good musical, so the idea of characters stopping to break out in song once in awhile doesn’t bother me at all. I thought the acting was brilliant (expected from Phoenix, but surprisingly good from Gaga too, the first time I’ve been impressed by her on screen) and the story was intriguing. I was rooting for the antihero Arthur Fleck, who has gone through hell to (hopefully) reach some level of redemption by the end, or at least become comfortable with himself as a human being. ★★★★

Will Ferrell and Andrew Steele have been friends for nearly 30 years, since a young Will and Andrew both started at SNL at the same time, Will an actor and Andrew a writer (who wrote many of the iconic sketches that featured Will). They became good buddies and continued to hang out after each left the show. Then in 2021 during COVID, Andrew sent an email to Will that he, now she, was transitioning to be a woman. To Will, this came out of left field, and the former Andrew, now Harper, obviously worried how one of his best friends was going to take the news, and if they would even still be friends. Will responded that they should do something together, sort of to get it all out in the open, and thus was born the idea of Will & Harper. As Andrew, Harper loved driving cross country and visiting small towns, stopping in roadside bars to meet people and share stories, but she’s never done it as a woman. Will and Harper set out from New York to drive to California, a leisurely 17 day trip with many stops along the way. Will ostensibly is there to provide emotional support in situations where Harper may feel uncomfortable, but along the way, viewers are treated to the duo’s conversations about that sense of wanting to be who you were born to be, of decades of trying to hide who you are from everyone around you, and the friendships that are stronger than you could have hoped for. It’s not all smooth sailing, as there are plenty of places in this country that will not support Harper, but the film is at times funny and poignant, full of emotion and support. Afterwards, I appreciated the loving human being that Will Ferrell is, but more so Harper, for being so vulnerable as to share a lot of private thoughts and hard moments in her life. ★★★★★

Limbo is a cool film out of Australia, starring an unrecognizable Simon Baker (in his buzz cut and a few days’ growth of unkept beard, gone is the suave look he rocked for nearly a decade on The Mentalist). He plays Travis, a detective who has been sent to examine an old murder cold case in the tiny town (or, really, too-small to even be a town) of Limbo, located way out in the outback. Travis, addicted to heroine after doing drugs undercover years ago, doesn’t seem to care much if he finds anything or not, as he’s just doing what he was sent to do, but as he digs into the evidence, he uncovers lots of the buried (and not-so-buried) racial divide that still exists between the white residents and the aboriginal Australians. Charlotte was killed 20 years ago, and rumors at the time pointed to a white man named Leon, who liked to invite black girls to parties to watch them dance. Leon seems to have recently died, but his brother Joseph is still around, and he’s not talking. Neither is Charlotte’s surviving brother Charlie, nor, at first, is Charlie’s younger sister Emma. But Travis’s resilience finally pulls some information out of them, but maybe not enough to get the powers-at-be to reopen the case, if they were ever really interested in doing so. It’s a slow burn and any answers at all are frustratingly slow in coming, but the film oozes atmosphere and modern noir, and Baker’s performance is worth the price of admission. ★★★½

Some films are made just to elicit a reaction, and Green Border is there to make you angry. With the world up in arms about what to do about refugees pouring across borders, it examines the ugliness of one border in particular, that of Poland and Belarus. In 2021, a family from Syria are fleeing ISIS, trying to get to a family member in Sweden. They’ve been promised safe passage from Belarus, so they fly there and are able to make it across the border to Poland. Now in the EU, they think they are safe, but their nightmare is just beginning. Turns out, the dictator ruler of Belarus has been promising safe passage to all immigrants who will listen, and weaponizing them against Poland by swarming the border. Poland doesn’t want to deal with them, so they’ve tasked their border patrol with rounding them up and throwing them (sometimes literally, as they do with a pregnant woman) back across the barbed wire separating the countries. The family gets tossed from one side to the other several times in the first third of the film, and when we catch up with them near the end of the movie, they are looking rough from weeks of living outside, still without a resolution. We also get a viewpoint from one of the border guards, a young man with a pregnant wife of his own. The man doesn’t seem like a bad guy, but as is so often the problem, he’s “just doing his job.” Those he works with, however, do seem pretty terrible. Another section of the film follows the activists, people trying to help the immigrants, but with no real power and severe laws restricting what they can and can’t do, all they can really do is patch up the immigrants when they find them (putting salve on their trench feet from walking the swampy area) and send them on their way. And if you made it through all the atrocities shown throughout the film, you might get sick with the epilogue; in 2023 when Ukraine refugees are looking for a place to flee, Poland welcomes them with open arms. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that these white-skinned safety-seekers look a lot more like their neighbors. A tremendous film, but its depressing message is one you might not stomach to watch twice. ★★★★★

Crossing another Hamaguchi film off the list, this time with 2021’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (released, in fact, the same year as his breakout Drive My Car). This is an anthology film in 3 parts. The first, Magic (or Something Less Assuring) starts with two good friends, Meiko and Tsugumi, driving home after a model shoot. Tsugumi is relating an amazing first date she recently had, but something she says about the guy, the way he talked to her, startles Meiko, and she gets quiet especially when Tsugumi says the guy is still getting over an ex-girlfriend. When Tsugumi gets out of the taxi, Meiko goes straight to the guy, because in a twist of fate, she’s the ex-girlfriend. Meiko needs to decide between hers or her best friend’s happiness. The second part, “Door Wide Open,” is my favorite, about a male student’s vindictive scheme against a professor for flunking him in his class (a grade the student very much deserved). The teacher has recently written a well-received novel with some racy sex scenes, so the student sends his older girlfriend in to try to seduce the teacher and get it on tape, to release to the public and ruin the teacher’s life. Things do not as planned. In fact the ending is nothing like what you’d expect, and is fantastic. The final part, “Once Again,” was the weakest for my tastes. Two women spot each other and think they know each other. One, Natsuko, recognizes a girl from high school with whom she had a romantic relationship, but neither could commit to a lesbian relationship at the time. The other woman, unfortunately for Natsuko, is not the same woman, just a look-alike, but she, Aya, thinks Natsuko also looks familiar, like someone she once admired for her subtle bravery against bullying in school. Overall, a nice film, especially the first two parts. ★★★½

Here definitely lives in the moment, but because of this, there’s really no narrative structure that I could find. It follows a construction worker in Brussels named Stefan who is on the cusp of a 4 week vacation, but unlike most people going on vacation, he doesn’t seem very excited about it. In fact, he doesn’t seem very excited about anything, coming off as depressed, or maybe resigned is a better word. No real energy in life. His car is currently in the shop and he wants to pick it up on Monday to drive to visit his mother, and while walking around town over the weekend, he meets Shuxiu, a Chinese grad student working at her parents’ Chinese food restaurant while studying plants for school. Finally interested in something, maybe for the first time in awhile, Stefan puts off picking up his car to spend time looking through microscopes with Shuxiu. That’s it, that’s the movie in a nutshell. Even beautiful cinematography can’t save this one. It is dull and as lifeless as its characters. The plants and trees flowing in the wind have more life than the characters. ★½

• TV series recently watched: House of the Dragon (season 2), Battlestar Galactica (season 4)
• Book currently reading: The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan