Some people are just meant to be in each other's lives... Comrades, Almost a Love Story is being coy with its title, but it also obviously invites small tragedies to keep the two leads apart. Leon Lai a naive country bumpkin just moved to Hong Kong to make his fortune before getting married to his sweetheart. Maggie Cheung is much more streetsmart new arrival who takes advantage of him. But the relationship grows, first into a friendship, then one with benefits. But is there more there? As they fulfill their ambitions, unspoken feelings get in the way, but director Peter Chan isn't telling a traditional romcom here, so while the hand of destiny plays a part, truthful psychology governs the characters' reactions. Shout-out to a couple of character actors supporting the action: Eric Tsang, who I've loved since Infernal Affairs, and famed cinematographer Christopher Doyle here in the amusing role of the English teacher. Comrades IS a love story, just not a traditional one, and it explores, in fact, more than one love story, loves forged by different blacksmiths, whether friendship, adversity, or familiarity. Even Irene Tsu's starstruck love for William Holden in the film counts.
In Farewell China, Clara Law paints an ugly portrait of the United States (or at least, of New York)' but also gives no other alternative to her characters, as everyone back home in Mainland China counsels them never to return. After losing touch with his wife gone study in America (Maggie Cheung), a husband (Tony Leung Ka-fai) smuggles himself to the Big Apple to track her down. The picture painted by the people whose lives hers intersected seems disjointed and impossible to reconcile (it is proper, I think, to compare this with the Chinese-American indie film Chan Is Missing), but it will when they finally find each other. Though I can't really co-sign the twist that makes it possible, it doesn't come out of nowhere. But while the search goes on, the husband finds himself in a world of poverty, sin and decadence, helped on his quest by a 15-year-old prostitute, just to give you an idea of how debased Law's America appears to be. And if there's racism - and there is - it's often directed inward. A self-loathing that goes beyond rejecting one's home country, but one's cultural identity, which Law may be equating with the Cultural Revolution. Vivid images, strong acting, but a big downer. Prepare yourself.
From its first shot, The First Omen is already evoking the original film's aesthetic, whether it's white skies over 70s America or the golden sun of Rome. But by focusing on the girl whose birth was engineered to then give birth to the Antichrist, the film also has a modern layer, absolutely scripted in the wake of the American Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. It's the dangers of the anti-choice movement taken to its most horrific metaphorical extremes, with religion forcing women to give birth to their rapists' babies, even at the cost of their own lives. Not hard to decode this one. Nell Tiger Free is supremely watchable as the young nun trying to uncover the mystery at an orphanage and protect the girl who seems to be tagged as Damien's mother. Now of course, it's a prequel to a horror classic, so some things seem destined to happen. There's some very nice ambiguity about whether the supernatural is happening or not, which is undermined by that fact. It also helps the savvy audience member figure out what's happening before it's actually revealed and makes various call-backs and tributes perhaps expected (except they do play things completely differently, and don't limit themselves to The Omen). And yet, they still pull an ending that, while never contradicting the previous films, also opens the door to future chapters in the series. I quite liked it, perhaps as much as the original.
Three Chinese women find each other in Stanley Kwan's Full Moon in New York, each from a different corner of Asia - Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China - and strike up a necessary friendship in the face of cultural isolation. And each has a different experience. The most moving is Siqin Gaowa's, playing the bride of a Chinese-American, and completely cut off from her roots and family, suffering loneliness in an otherwise happy marriage. Sylvia Chang is an actress from a well-to-do family, consistently judged for her Chinese-ness, despite near-total integration. And then there's Maggie Cheung, playing a character who is held back from living the American life she wants to lead because her roots pull at her, notionally between the other two. This isn't as lush as some of Kwan's better known films (Center Stage, Rouge), a smaller film that perhaps blew its budget on the trip over - certainly, there's some some subpar dubbing when the English language is used that make it feel even cheaper - but it's an immensely well observed drama. "And we're gonna leave it there."
I'm not familiar with the The Woman in Black's source material - a ghost story penned by Susan Hill - but the 1989 adaptation is pretty chilling, a haunting that drives one into madness. Set in the Edwardian era, a young lawyer is sent to take care of a dead woman's estate, and is visited by spectres of a bygone tragedy. The location for this is incredible - I can't believe it's real. More incredible still, perhaps, is how that little dog follows the directions of our man so well, being a loaner and all, but whenever a pet is part of a horror narrative, I feel like there's always extra suspense. There's one surprising scare, but otherwise, this is far more about sustaining a creepy paranoid mood, and it succeeds at that. I at first thought I'd seen Robert Wise's name flit across the screen and thought myself in good hands. The director was actually Herbert Wise, who directed I, Claudius, so I wasn't in bad ones after all.
Mabel Cheung's An Autumn's Tale is, at its heart, a romantic comedy, but one that has a tragic streak. Cherie Chung plays Jennifer, a girl from Hong Kong who's come to New York nominally to study, but really to be closer to her boyfriend, except he's moved on. The distant cousin who takes care of her needs isn't exactly the community hero described to her, but rather a ne'er-do-well who gambles, fights and parties, and her apartment is in a slum. It's all short in New York, but you're sometimes hard pressed to recognize it. This is the immigrant's New York, and Cheung's camera finds new places to show. Chow Yun-fat is great as the initially obtrusive cousin who starts to have feelings for Jennifer, but has made a career of being the kind of guy women don't see as having marriage potential. Will he make a change in time (and convincingly enough) to wind up with the girl? Or will he self-destruct long before that point? There's a lot going on, emotionally, and I especially love the last 15 minutes or so.
It may be Christopher Nolan's first (and cheapest) film, but Following has many of the hallmarks of what would become part of his style. It's told achronologically (though a little clumsily at times), with several time frames competing to reveal just what's really going on (with one more twist than one expects). It's got an intriguing premise and explores morality, with an habitual follower of random strangers getting more than he bargained for when one of his "victims" decides to confront him and use his voyeurism to rope him into his own voyeuristic burglaries. The key speech about taking something away to show the victim what they've lost so they can better appreciate it is interesting, but it's fuzzy as to whether it really comes full circle. So Following doesn't QUITE work on its own terms, but Nolan is already playing with heady concepts and packaging them for a mainstream audience. Worth a look beyond your native curiosity.
A French documentary about the record-holding Japanese female volley-ball team for most consecutive matches won (the number will surprise you, so I'll keep mum here), The Witches of the Orient finds the surviving members of the 1964 Olympic team in good spirits and willing to tell their story. It's a sports documentary, so you know, I can only care about it so far, and perhaps the subject matter is relatively slim to begin with given how many musical montages the film makers utilize to pad things out. At the same time, these might be where the film takes off, giving us a sense of the repetitive, gruelling training, or the back and forth of an important match, etc. Director Julien Faraut got his hands on a volley-ball anime (as well as more ancient Japanese animation) and uses it to cover moments the camera wasn't privy to in the 1950s, though there's an amazing amount of clear color footage from training sessions that had me thinking they had restaged it all with actors. Ultimately, I did care about the Olympic final (a real nailbiter), so the doc did its job.
I generally love Ozu's work, but some of his films hit me more strongly than others. Put 1950's The Munekata Sisters in that column. 5 years after the War, we meet two sisters who each culturally teeter on opposite sides of it. The eldest, Setsuko, wears kimonos and visits temples, and though she is a business woman, is demure and deferential, a traditional wife to a husband who doesn't seen to care much about her. Mariko, on the other hand, is the most modern character Ozu has probably ever breathed life into. Interested in up-to-date fashions and spending her time with a guy who sells CHAIRS, she surprises with a lack of manners and a wild spirit that taps into the movie scripts she imagines herself and other navigating. She's the lively future of Japan, which Ozu rarely celebrates to this extent, usually adopting a resigned stance to change while mourning pre-war Japan. But while Mariko is the one to watch, it's Setsuko who will squeeze your heart with her restrained emotions - a beautiful performance from Kinuyo Tanaka. The father who is dying of cancer (or to stubborn to succumb to it) is a decoder key, ill because of excess, which for Japan was the war, yet forging ahead and loving both his girls equally. And the two women ARE more alike than even they realize, in their overwhelming imaginations and in their authenticity and stubborn will to be nothing but themselves. An underrated Ozu, as far as I'm concerned.
It's so hard to be a whistle blower that whistle blowers should stick together. And if that was the lesson of 1999's The Insider - based on the true events of 1995 surrounding the tobacco industry's criminal behavior - imagine how bad it is NOW. This is the kind of movie that would have Mark Ruffalo as the crusading journalist today, but Al Pacino will do, as a 60 Minutes producer at odds with CBS itself when corporate masters start protecting one another. The truth just isn't profitable enough. But as the the title suggests, this is really more about the whistle blower himself, played by Russell Crowe who was kind of in everything in this era, and how doing the right thing basically destroys his life. Though the movie sides with the "right thing", it's also a terrible warning against doing so. Michael Mann is at the helm and he tends to shoot everything as if it were a rain-soaked action film, which in this case counterbalances the potential dryness of the subject matter admirably. Dealing with an industry that's extremely litigious, you can sense a certain timidity in some quarters (like, why so many non-American actors?), but Mann doesn't let you feel it. It's possibly too long for its own good, but now 25 years removed from its release, I really enjoyed how it was placed very specifically in its time, with the 60 Minutes people talking about real news items, including the Oka Crisis over in Quebec, which dominated Canadian headlines if not American ones.
At first and like many, I freely admit I had trouble following the plot of Masahiro Shinoda's Samurai Spy. Its opaque plot. Its dense exposition scenes. I thought I was just not culturally equipped to tell the various factions (or Japanese names) apart. That's until I read another person's comment that this was essentially Chambara Noir and it came into focus for me. Samurai Spy has a lot more in common with The Maltese Falcon than, say, Seven Samurai. Like that film, there are too many twists, turns, suspects and reveals to truly make sense of things (certainly on a first watch), but one remains interested in the intriguing characters and the crisp black and white cinematography. Understanding what genre it's playing with helps make sense of that ending where our hero - a neutral samurai walking the gray line between two warlike factions (and asking, why war?) - has a "J'accuse!" moment as if he were a 1930s gumshoe. And this is also a Cold War narrative set in Japan's Edo period, which also tends to Noir.
Dev Patel writes his own ticket and the result is Monkey Man, a gritty, grimy action flick that's part Greengrass' Jason Bourne, part John Wick, and part Golden Harvest. Patel's nameless lead is out for revenge after the corrupt forces that be did something terrible to his village and family - impressionistically alluded to until we're ready to know - but he's kind of savagely hapless in the way he goes about it. The first half of the movie is all close-up details, furious shaky cam, POV moments where the camera is between a fist and a face, which is almost too much. Once he's had his training and found a clearer purpose, the camera takes a step back, stays on him, gives us longer shots. It's all quite purposeful and shouldn't be held against it the way we might other action movies. The action isn't badly conceived and therefore created in post with fast cuts, it's part of the character's psychology, and besides, incredibly immediate and visceral. A simple revenge story made better by its Indian setting, its mindfulness, and a charismatic star who no one else would cast in an action movie so he did it himself. And you know what? He pulls it off.
While the cameo-happy Austin Powers in Goldmember has some laughs. and Beyoncé is pretty cool as a blaxploitation star pulled right out of the mid-70s by Dr. Evil's time machine, its fatal flaw is its villains. Interestingly, they do things here with Dr. Evil that the Bond franchise will do with Blofeld in the Daniel Craig era (which is kind of insane), but generally, his value has been in decline since the second film as he gets dumber and dumber, does rap numbers, etc. He's at least better than Goldmember, an out-of-focus parody of Goldfinger and other 60s Bond villains, with a bit of gross-out humor (speaking of which, thanks for sidelining Fast Bastard in this one, guys) and not many jokes to his name. I just don't think Mike Myers really had a third character in him, here. At least he's not playing his own dad (Michael Caine does a great job as an elder International Man of Mystery). They should have upgraded Scott Evil sooner, probably. And while spoofing more modern films like Mission: Impossible worked for me, overall, the franchise has run out of steam.
Thanks to a cameo by Rebecca Romijn (as herself), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me is the only film in the trilogy to have a Number One as well as a Number Two. Of course, number twos are one of the problems with this otherwise fairly strong sequel. Yes, I'm talking about Fat Bastard, a totally repugnant character that's only there to indulge in scatological comedy for the lowest common denominator, pushing the franchise further into boring bodily fluids jokes. There are a lot of repeated gags from the first film, but at least, new material as well. Losing Elizabeth Hurley the way we do undermines the first film a bit, but since nothing is to be taken seriously in these things, we can at least enjoy Heather Graham in the similar role. We get straight up time travel, so the 60s put in an even greater appearance than in the first film. Rob Lowe does an amazing Robert Wagner impression as the younger Number Two. Mini-Me is an iconic feature of the series. The moonbase evokes Doctor Who's The Moonbase, which aired in 1967, when the characters were frozen, so it perhaps IS a fair inspiration. But boy, do I hate Fat Bastard (and generally, this whole subgenre of fat suit comedy). Too many variations on the same themes, perhaps, but Austin Powers still has his mojo at this point.
Though there are a couple of dodgy moments, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery still holds up, and of course part of it is that some of that dodginess is part of the retro-60s spoofing (for example, Will Ferrell in Peter Sellers brown face). But for a sex pest, Austin Powers is quite keen on consent, so it works. That film film left an undeniable stamp on pop culture, and I remember many conversations peppered with quotables from it. Vivid characters with memorable shticks. And as a fan of the superspy genre this was spoofing, I enjoy the references. In the mid-60s, the genre was ubiquitous, but by 1997, even Bond was on the wane, so Austin and Dr. Evil really are men out of their time and seem ridiculous beyond just Mike Myers' caricatures. The humor often leans into the Airplane/Naked Gun variety, but it also has the period feel of those 60s camp comedies no one really talks about anymore. Elizabeth Hurley would have been perfect as a Bond girl, but this is perhaps a better role. The music is fun (I'd forgotten about the BBC song). The sets look like they were designed by Ken Adam. It's hard not to get swept up in the ridiculousness.
The Blood on Satan’s Claw is full of interesting, even beautiful, shots, taking the edge off some of the low production values (the wigs especially) and has an intriguing premise to boot - the Devil (or some fiend) is trying to manifest itself in the 17th-Century countryside by harvesting body parts from his coven and other villagers. Wendy Padbury has a pretty big role in this, but it's a 70s horror movie so she meets a fate that's distressing even to non-Doctor Who fans. But generally, the incidents feel a little strung together as if the film was plotted from a collection of folk tales and witchcraft reports, especially the scenes that involve the county witchfinder, whose motivations seem almost sinister until they're not. For horror fans who love the devil worshipper subgenre, there's a lot to like. Never been my favorite horror type, so I'm going to give it a passing grade, but no more.
Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends is a hard-bitten Noir in which Dana Andrews plays a police detective just-demoted for brutality charges when he accidentally kills an innocent man. I think he could have gotten out of it, but he panics, makes some bad decisions, and finds himself part of a team investigating his own wrongful killing. A great paranoid thriller ensues, with a reverse femme fatale in Gene Tierney, the girl who may inspire him to do the right thing (or at least makes having done the wrong thing untenable), and one of my favorite patron-restauranteur screen relationships ever, courtesy of Ruth Donnelly. There are shades of Hitchcock in this one, but also Marlowe, with many moving parts, not the least of which is the massive pull of both guilt and fear of getting caught. And who doesn't love a Spirit-like opening title that's part of the filmed action? Where the Sidewalk Ends is where Noirjoyment begins.
Released under the lurid title Try and Get Me!, The Sound of Fury springs out of an infamous real event when a lynch mob attacked a police station in 1930s California. The film seems to take place in 1950, but the characters are definitely working (or not working, as it were) in Depression-era America. Frank Lovejoy is a family man down on his luck, roped almost against his will into pulling off small jobs by brazen crook Lloyd Bridges (who gives a fun, spicy performance here). Hey, I would turn to crime too if I had that nasty little boy at home. And then someone dies and everything goes to hell. First, they make one of the criminals sympathetic - if you were on a jury, you'd recommend leniency for sure - and then they switch gears and take us back to a subplot about a journalist fanning the flames of public outrage over a supposed "crime wave". We know fear sells papers. The movie attacks the media and its responsibility in maintaining democracy - an issue that's very much with us today - though it does get rather preachy when it tries to make bigger blanket statements. At its best, it presents interesting character psychologies, but ultimately, it's all in service of its polemic, which is weaker.
Noir is the New Black! At some point, all prison movies tend to be the same, but 1950 is probably not that point. Caged is a melodramatic appeal for prison reform, with a crusading warden unable to make a difference in the life of doe-eyed Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker), incarcerated on a bum rap and within a year, turned into a hardened recidivist. So you've got your criminal sisterhood, your wise lifers, your corrupt screws, cruel punishments, and just the normal shock of losing rights and freedoms... From our position up-time, we've seen it all before, but Caged remains a potent drama steeped in realism and filled with memorable characters that help make the harsh moments all the more shocking. Hope Emerson makes a great villain, the prison matron on the take who devises old-school punishments for her charges and is especially hard on our heroine. Both of them got Oscar noms for this and I'd say they were worthy of them.
Director Adam Wingard promised that Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire was a monster movie from the perspective of the monsters rather than the humans (who are rarely the most interesting thing in these films, especially the American ones), but there's still an awful lot of people involved. Whether they are sidelined or not (and that's debatable), and generally relegated to types (you're either an exposition machine or comic relief; at least Rebecca Hall is a strong emotional actress who can give her scenes some weight), Kong gets a lot to do on the trail of other titanic apes. In Hollow Earth, where much of this takes place, we lose the sense of scale and it just feels like a Planet of the Apes film, which isn't a bad thing to be. But guys, I can't stand the character we're calling Baby Kong. I might even hate him more than Minilla (so the best use for him is to be swung like a weapon). Wingard has also figured out that big dumb giant monster movies should be big and dumb and fun, and in that respect, Gokuzilla x Robot-Arm Kong delivers. Lots of destruction, lots of monster fights, Dan Stevens as a crazy surfer veterinarian to the Titans, giant wrestling moves, and at least one old favorite showing up. I'm calling it, the next one takes us to space (and I'm not just going on the Planet X Easter Egg).
What is perhaps most surprising about Sunset Boulevard - not just a Billy Wilder classic, but point blank a cinema classic - is how much of real Hollywood is in it. Gloria Swanson was, like Nora Desmond, a silent film star at Paramount (and one of their hottest tickets). She didn't go mad (though she was "aged" out of the business when talkies took over and hadn't been in a feature in more than 15 years). but others like her did have well-reported struggled with mental health (like Clara Bow). C.B. DeMille appears in person as himself. We see producers, scriptwriters, readers, technicians. And it seems like Wilder is making a couple of indictments. One is the very idea of sending actresses (never seemed to happen to the chaps) out to pasture after they hit 35. Nora (and Swanson!) is only 50 years old and treated like a hag ("I thought she died"), and yet, Swanson here proves she can do it all - tragedy, comedy, horror, subtlety as well as theatricality. But Nora is also used to undermine nostalgia for the silent era. She's one of those people who say "they don't make them like that anymore" with a measure of bitterness, and Sunset Boulevard is filled with the words she so hates, with narration on top of witty dialogue. Wilder is a talky writer-director and he affirms himself. Or does he? He still celebrates the silent era here, and his hero is a hack writer who gets killed for his trouble (in a kind of reverse of Video Kill the Radio Star). And so the film has that push and pull between the visual and the writer's mediums - the film maker's internal struggle. And of course, it's well made, has some great classic lines AND visuals. It certainly wasn't my first viewing.
Fritz Lang captures the frayed nerves of the British under the blitz in Ministry of Fear, a paranoid thriller in which you can never trust anyone or anything, including the perceptions of the main character. Ray Milland has just been released from an asylum, you see, so when villagers at a town fete start acting strangely, leading him on a merry chase to London to find out why "they" are after him, you're not sure what to believe. What, if anything, does a war-time charity have to do with it? Milland is plunged into a nightmarish world of seances, Nazi spies, shady coppers, and bombing raids. Great use of light and shadow - I especially love how the final showdown is staged - and knowing this came out in 1944 makes it feel more immediate and urgent a story. The "loose lips sinks ships"-type posters are more than just period detail. A great Noir that owes something to Kafka as much as anyone. (Too bad it ends on a dumb joke.)
Douglas Sirk's Lured starts on a couple of incredible scenes that, through visual economy, introduce this tale of serial murder in London. Sirk gives a master class here. Of course, what follows isn't so economical and efficient... Lucille Ball (as a film noir scream queen!) agrees to work with Scotland Yard as an undercover policewoman after the disappearance of her friend Lucy(!), one of eight young women who answered classified ads and vanished. The mystery isn't that deep, but might throw you a few curve balls along the way. Lots of red herrings explored in detail, which gives Lured an episodic feeling. We might imagine Lucille Ball's character looking for the killer, week to week, and defeating other madmen and crooks along the way as she answered ads and tied loose ends. Charles Coburn and the other coppers are good fatherly figures too, even if the London accents are all over the place in this. Your only stop for a Lucille Ball/Boris Karloff collaboration!
One of two BBC productions of Alice in Wonderland starring a future Doctor Who companion, Alice (1965) does feature bits and pieces from the book, but is really about Charles Dodgson AKA Lewis Carroll and his relationship to Alice Liddell, who inspired the stories. And it's a real take-down too. Dodgson is portrayed as a pathetic, puritanical, stuttering, needy man grooming a young girl - which I'm sure it historically accurate, but wow, is it depressing. It doesn't help that Alice herself is flighty, spoiled, vain and occasionally cruel. The moments from the book itself, imagined by the characters at various moments, are rather tedious as they leave what's interesting (the researched biopic we otherwise get) behind, but what's "interesting" is off-putting and threatens to tip into its characters' tediousness. Doesn't exactly make you want to read or re-read the Wonderland stories.
I had read and enjoyed Jaroslav Kalfař's Spaceman of Bohemia some five years ago and was very intrigued when a film version was announced. Then it came out as simply "Spaceman", starring Adam Sandler, and I feared the worst. But what we get here is sad, depressed, restrained, dramatic Sandler, and despite the title made generic, it's somehow still about the first Czech cosmonaut, nothing has been Americanized (except in the sense that the Czech Republic has joined the Western world post-Soviet era, which was always part of the novel), and though it cuts off the last bit of the story, it hedges very close to the source material. Naturally, those who haven't read the book will be befuddled by the depressing tone and perhaps think it inspired by the COVID lockdowns. But this is a loneliness that transcends the pandemic. It's about being alone even when you're with other people because you - YOU! - have failed to open yourself up to them. The film may well recontextualize this for the COVID-era, as the novel was more about the Republic coming to terms with its isolation behind the Iron Curtain, something that doesn't really come across as strongly in the movie. Things that work in a book and all that. We're still left with a melancholy oddity that evokes Cast Away as much as Interstellar, with the volley ball replaced with an alien spider therapist. As a fan of the novel and of strangeness in general, I was reasonably satisfied.
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Movie comment on Tian mi mi
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Some people are just meant to be in each other's lives... Comrades, Almost a Love Story is being coy with its title, but it also obviously invites small tragedies to keep the two leads apart. Leon Lai a naive country bumpkin just moved to Hong Kong to make his fortune before getting married to his sweetheart. Maggie Cheung is much more streetsmart new arrival who takes advantage of him. But the relationship grows, first into a friendship, then one with benefits. But is there more there? As they fulfill their ambitions, unspoken feelings get in the way, but director Peter Chan isn't telling a traditional romcom here, so while the hand of destiny plays a part, truthful psychology governs the characters' reactions. Shout-out to a couple of character actors supporting the action: Eric Tsang, who I've loved since Infernal Affairs, and famed cinematographer Christopher Doyle here in the amusing role of the English teacher. Comrades IS a love story, just not a traditional one, and it explores, in fact, more than one love story, loves forged by different blacksmiths, whether friendship, adversity, or familiarity. Even Irene Tsu's starstruck love for William Holden in the film counts.Movie comment on Ai zai bie xiang de ji jie
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In Farewell China, Clara Law paints an ugly portrait of the United States (or at least, of New York)' but also gives no other alternative to her characters, as everyone back home in Mainland China counsels them never to return. After losing touch with his wife gone study in America (Maggie Cheung), a husband (Tony Leung Ka-fai) smuggles himself to the Big Apple to track her down. The picture painted by the people whose lives hers intersected seems disjointed and impossible to reconcile (it is proper, I think, to compare this with the Chinese-American indie film Chan Is Missing), but it will when they finally find each other. Though I can't really co-sign the twist that makes it possible, it doesn't come out of nowhere. But while the search goes on, the husband finds himself in a world of poverty, sin and decadence, helped on his quest by a 15-year-old prostitute, just to give you an idea of how debased Law's America appears to be. And if there's racism - and there is - it's often directed inward. A self-loathing that goes beyond rejecting one's home country, but one's cultural identity, which Law may be equating with the Cultural Revolution. Vivid images, strong acting, but a big downer. Prepare yourself.Movie comment on The First Omen
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From its first shot, The First Omen is already evoking the original film's aesthetic, whether it's white skies over 70s America or the golden sun of Rome. But by focusing on the girl whose birth was engineered to then give birth to the Antichrist, the film also has a modern layer, absolutely scripted in the wake of the American Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. It's the dangers of the anti-choice movement taken to its most horrific metaphorical extremes, with religion forcing women to give birth to their rapists' babies, even at the cost of their own lives. Not hard to decode this one. Nell Tiger Free is supremely watchable as the young nun trying to uncover the mystery at an orphanage and protect the girl who seems to be tagged as Damien's mother. Now of course, it's a prequel to a horror classic, so some things seem destined to happen. There's some very nice ambiguity about whether the supernatural is happening or not, which is undermined by that fact. It also helps the savvy audience member figure out what's happening before it's actually revealed and makes various call-backs and tributes perhaps expected (except they do play things completely differently, and don't limit themselves to The Omen). And yet, they still pull an ending that, while never contradicting the previous films, also opens the door to future chapters in the series. I quite liked it, perhaps as much as the original.Movie comment on Ren zai Niu Yue
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Three Chinese women find each other in Stanley Kwan's Full Moon in New York, each from a different corner of Asia - Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China - and strike up a necessary friendship in the face of cultural isolation. And each has a different experience. The most moving is Siqin Gaowa's, playing the bride of a Chinese-American, and completely cut off from her roots and family, suffering loneliness in an otherwise happy marriage. Sylvia Chang is an actress from a well-to-do family, consistently judged for her Chinese-ness, despite near-total integration. And then there's Maggie Cheung, playing a character who is held back from living the American life she wants to lead because her roots pull at her, notionally between the other two. This isn't as lush as some of Kwan's better known films (Center Stage, Rouge), a smaller film that perhaps blew its budget on the trip over - certainly, there's some some subpar dubbing when the English language is used that make it feel even cheaper - but it's an immensely well observed drama. "And we're gonna leave it there."Movie comment on The Woman in Black
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I'm not familiar with the The Woman in Black's source material - a ghost story penned by Susan Hill - but the 1989 adaptation is pretty chilling, a haunting that drives one into madness. Set in the Edwardian era, a young lawyer is sent to take care of a dead woman's estate, and is visited by spectres of a bygone tragedy. The location for this is incredible - I can't believe it's real. More incredible still, perhaps, is how that little dog follows the directions of our man so well, being a loaner and all, but whenever a pet is part of a horror narrative, I feel like there's always extra suspense. There's one surprising scare, but otherwise, this is far more about sustaining a creepy paranoid mood, and it succeeds at that. I at first thought I'd seen Robert Wise's name flit across the screen and thought myself in good hands. The director was actually Herbert Wise, who directed I, Claudius, so I wasn't in bad ones after all.Movie comment on Chou tin dik tong wah
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Mabel Cheung's An Autumn's Tale is, at its heart, a romantic comedy, but one that has a tragic streak. Cherie Chung plays Jennifer, a girl from Hong Kong who's come to New York nominally to study, but really to be closer to her boyfriend, except he's moved on. The distant cousin who takes care of her needs isn't exactly the community hero described to her, but rather a ne'er-do-well who gambles, fights and parties, and her apartment is in a slum. It's all short in New York, but you're sometimes hard pressed to recognize it. This is the immigrant's New York, and Cheung's camera finds new places to show. Chow Yun-fat is great as the initially obtrusive cousin who starts to have feelings for Jennifer, but has made a career of being the kind of guy women don't see as having marriage potential. Will he make a change in time (and convincingly enough) to wind up with the girl? Or will he self-destruct long before that point? There's a lot going on, emotionally, and I especially love the last 15 minutes or so.Movie comment on Following
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It may be Christopher Nolan's first (and cheapest) film, but Following has many of the hallmarks of what would become part of his style. It's told achronologically (though a little clumsily at times), with several time frames competing to reveal just what's really going on (with one more twist than one expects). It's got an intriguing premise and explores morality, with an habitual follower of random strangers getting more than he bargained for when one of his "victims" decides to confront him and use his voyeurism to rope him into his own voyeuristic burglaries. The key speech about taking something away to show the victim what they've lost so they can better appreciate it is interesting, but it's fuzzy as to whether it really comes full circle. So Following doesn't QUITE work on its own terms, but Nolan is already playing with heady concepts and packaging them for a mainstream audience. Worth a look beyond your native curiosity.Movie comment on Les sorcières de l'Orient
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A French documentary about the record-holding Japanese female volley-ball team for most consecutive matches won (the number will surprise you, so I'll keep mum here), The Witches of the Orient finds the surviving members of the 1964 Olympic team in good spirits and willing to tell their story. It's a sports documentary, so you know, I can only care about it so far, and perhaps the subject matter is relatively slim to begin with given how many musical montages the film makers utilize to pad things out. At the same time, these might be where the film takes off, giving us a sense of the repetitive, gruelling training, or the back and forth of an important match, etc. Director Julien Faraut got his hands on a volley-ball anime (as well as more ancient Japanese animation) and uses it to cover moments the camera wasn't privy to in the 1950s, though there's an amazing amount of clear color footage from training sessions that had me thinking they had restaged it all with actors. Ultimately, I did care about the Olympic final (a real nailbiter), so the doc did its job.Movie comment on Munekata kyôdai
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I generally love Ozu's work, but some of his films hit me more strongly than others. Put 1950's The Munekata Sisters in that column. 5 years after the War, we meet two sisters who each culturally teeter on opposite sides of it. The eldest, Setsuko, wears kimonos and visits temples, and though she is a business woman, is demure and deferential, a traditional wife to a husband who doesn't seen to care much about her. Mariko, on the other hand, is the most modern character Ozu has probably ever breathed life into. Interested in up-to-date fashions and spending her time with a guy who sells CHAIRS, she surprises with a lack of manners and a wild spirit that taps into the movie scripts she imagines herself and other navigating. She's the lively future of Japan, which Ozu rarely celebrates to this extent, usually adopting a resigned stance to change while mourning pre-war Japan. But while Mariko is the one to watch, it's Setsuko who will squeeze your heart with her restrained emotions - a beautiful performance from Kinuyo Tanaka. The father who is dying of cancer (or to stubborn to succumb to it) is a decoder key, ill because of excess, which for Japan was the war, yet forging ahead and loving both his girls equally. And the two women ARE more alike than even they realize, in their overwhelming imaginations and in their authenticity and stubborn will to be nothing but themselves. An underrated Ozu, as far as I'm concerned.Movie comment on The Insider
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It's so hard to be a whistle blower that whistle blowers should stick together. And if that was the lesson of 1999's The Insider - based on the true events of 1995 surrounding the tobacco industry's criminal behavior - imagine how bad it is NOW. This is the kind of movie that would have Mark Ruffalo as the crusading journalist today, but Al Pacino will do, as a 60 Minutes producer at odds with CBS itself when corporate masters start protecting one another. The truth just isn't profitable enough. But as the the title suggests, this is really more about the whistle blower himself, played by Russell Crowe who was kind of in everything in this era, and how doing the right thing basically destroys his life. Though the movie sides with the "right thing", it's also a terrible warning against doing so. Michael Mann is at the helm and he tends to shoot everything as if it were a rain-soaked action film, which in this case counterbalances the potential dryness of the subject matter admirably. Dealing with an industry that's extremely litigious, you can sense a certain timidity in some quarters (like, why so many non-American actors?), but Mann doesn't let you feel it. It's possibly too long for its own good, but now 25 years removed from its release, I really enjoyed how it was placed very specifically in its time, with the 60 Minutes people talking about real news items, including the Oka Crisis over in Quebec, which dominated Canadian headlines if not American ones.Movie comment on Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke
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At first and like many, I freely admit I had trouble following the plot of Masahiro Shinoda's Samurai Spy. Its opaque plot. Its dense exposition scenes. I thought I was just not culturally equipped to tell the various factions (or Japanese names) apart. That's until I read another person's comment that this was essentially Chambara Noir and it came into focus for me. Samurai Spy has a lot more in common with The Maltese Falcon than, say, Seven Samurai. Like that film, there are too many twists, turns, suspects and reveals to truly make sense of things (certainly on a first watch), but one remains interested in the intriguing characters and the crisp black and white cinematography. Understanding what genre it's playing with helps make sense of that ending where our hero - a neutral samurai walking the gray line between two warlike factions (and asking, why war?) - has a "J'accuse!" moment as if he were a 1930s gumshoe. And this is also a Cold War narrative set in Japan's Edo period, which also tends to Noir.Movie comment on Monkey Man
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Dev Patel writes his own ticket and the result is Monkey Man, a gritty, grimy action flick that's part Greengrass' Jason Bourne, part John Wick, and part Golden Harvest. Patel's nameless lead is out for revenge after the corrupt forces that be did something terrible to his village and family - impressionistically alluded to until we're ready to know - but he's kind of savagely hapless in the way he goes about it. The first half of the movie is all close-up details, furious shaky cam, POV moments where the camera is between a fist and a face, which is almost too much. Once he's had his training and found a clearer purpose, the camera takes a step back, stays on him, gives us longer shots. It's all quite purposeful and shouldn't be held against it the way we might other action movies. The action isn't badly conceived and therefore created in post with fast cuts, it's part of the character's psychology, and besides, incredibly immediate and visceral. A simple revenge story made better by its Indian setting, its mindfulness, and a charismatic star who no one else would cast in an action movie so he did it himself. And you know what? He pulls it off.Movie comment on Austin Powers in Goldmember
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While the cameo-happy Austin Powers in Goldmember has some laughs. and Beyoncé is pretty cool as a blaxploitation star pulled right out of the mid-70s by Dr. Evil's time machine, its fatal flaw is its villains. Interestingly, they do things here with Dr. Evil that the Bond franchise will do with Blofeld in the Daniel Craig era (which is kind of insane), but generally, his value has been in decline since the second film as he gets dumber and dumber, does rap numbers, etc. He's at least better than Goldmember, an out-of-focus parody of Goldfinger and other 60s Bond villains, with a bit of gross-out humor (speaking of which, thanks for sidelining Fast Bastard in this one, guys) and not many jokes to his name. I just don't think Mike Myers really had a third character in him, here. At least he's not playing his own dad (Michael Caine does a great job as an elder International Man of Mystery). They should have upgraded Scott Evil sooner, probably. And while spoofing more modern films like Mission: Impossible worked for me, overall, the franchise has run out of steam.Movie comment on Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
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Thanks to a cameo by Rebecca Romijn (as herself), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me is the only film in the trilogy to have a Number One as well as a Number Two. Of course, number twos are one of the problems with this otherwise fairly strong sequel. Yes, I'm talking about Fat Bastard, a totally repugnant character that's only there to indulge in scatological comedy for the lowest common denominator, pushing the franchise further into boring bodily fluids jokes. There are a lot of repeated gags from the first film, but at least, new material as well. Losing Elizabeth Hurley the way we do undermines the first film a bit, but since nothing is to be taken seriously in these things, we can at least enjoy Heather Graham in the similar role. We get straight up time travel, so the 60s put in an even greater appearance than in the first film. Rob Lowe does an amazing Robert Wagner impression as the younger Number Two. Mini-Me is an iconic feature of the series. The moonbase evokes Doctor Who's The Moonbase, which aired in 1967, when the characters were frozen, so it perhaps IS a fair inspiration. But boy, do I hate Fat Bastard (and generally, this whole subgenre of fat suit comedy). Too many variations on the same themes, perhaps, but Austin Powers still has his mojo at this point.Movie comment on Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
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Though there are a couple of dodgy moments, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery still holds up, and of course part of it is that some of that dodginess is part of the retro-60s spoofing (for example, Will Ferrell in Peter Sellers brown face). But for a sex pest, Austin Powers is quite keen on consent, so it works. That film film left an undeniable stamp on pop culture, and I remember many conversations peppered with quotables from it. Vivid characters with memorable shticks. And as a fan of the superspy genre this was spoofing, I enjoy the references. In the mid-60s, the genre was ubiquitous, but by 1997, even Bond was on the wane, so Austin and Dr. Evil really are men out of their time and seem ridiculous beyond just Mike Myers' caricatures. The humor often leans into the Airplane/Naked Gun variety, but it also has the period feel of those 60s camp comedies no one really talks about anymore. Elizabeth Hurley would have been perfect as a Bond girl, but this is perhaps a better role. The music is fun (I'd forgotten about the BBC song). The sets look like they were designed by Ken Adam. It's hard not to get swept up in the ridiculousness.Movie comment on The Blood on Satan's Claw
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The Blood on Satan’s Claw is full of interesting, even beautiful, shots, taking the edge off some of the low production values (the wigs especially) and has an intriguing premise to boot - the Devil (or some fiend) is trying to manifest itself in the 17th-Century countryside by harvesting body parts from his coven and other villagers. Wendy Padbury has a pretty big role in this, but it's a 70s horror movie so she meets a fate that's distressing even to non-Doctor Who fans. But generally, the incidents feel a little strung together as if the film was plotted from a collection of folk tales and witchcraft reports, especially the scenes that involve the county witchfinder, whose motivations seem almost sinister until they're not. For horror fans who love the devil worshipper subgenre, there's a lot to like. Never been my favorite horror type, so I'm going to give it a passing grade, but no more.Movie comment on Where the Sidewalk Ends
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Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends is a hard-bitten Noir in which Dana Andrews plays a police detective just-demoted for brutality charges when he accidentally kills an innocent man. I think he could have gotten out of it, but he panics, makes some bad decisions, and finds himself part of a team investigating his own wrongful killing. A great paranoid thriller ensues, with a reverse femme fatale in Gene Tierney, the girl who may inspire him to do the right thing (or at least makes having done the wrong thing untenable), and one of my favorite patron-restauranteur screen relationships ever, courtesy of Ruth Donnelly. There are shades of Hitchcock in this one, but also Marlowe, with many moving parts, not the least of which is the massive pull of both guilt and fear of getting caught. And who doesn't love a Spirit-like opening title that's part of the filmed action? Where the Sidewalk Ends is where Noirjoyment begins.Movie comment on The Sound of Fury
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Released under the lurid title Try and Get Me!, The Sound of Fury springs out of an infamous real event when a lynch mob attacked a police station in 1930s California. The film seems to take place in 1950, but the characters are definitely working (or not working, as it were) in Depression-era America. Frank Lovejoy is a family man down on his luck, roped almost against his will into pulling off small jobs by brazen crook Lloyd Bridges (who gives a fun, spicy performance here). Hey, I would turn to crime too if I had that nasty little boy at home. And then someone dies and everything goes to hell. First, they make one of the criminals sympathetic - if you were on a jury, you'd recommend leniency for sure - and then they switch gears and take us back to a subplot about a journalist fanning the flames of public outrage over a supposed "crime wave". We know fear sells papers. The movie attacks the media and its responsibility in maintaining democracy - an issue that's very much with us today - though it does get rather preachy when it tries to make bigger blanket statements. At its best, it presents interesting character psychologies, but ultimately, it's all in service of its polemic, which is weaker.Movie comment on Caged
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Noir is the New Black! At some point, all prison movies tend to be the same, but 1950 is probably not that point. Caged is a melodramatic appeal for prison reform, with a crusading warden unable to make a difference in the life of doe-eyed Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker), incarcerated on a bum rap and within a year, turned into a hardened recidivist. So you've got your criminal sisterhood, your wise lifers, your corrupt screws, cruel punishments, and just the normal shock of losing rights and freedoms... From our position up-time, we've seen it all before, but Caged remains a potent drama steeped in realism and filled with memorable characters that help make the harsh moments all the more shocking. Hope Emerson makes a great villain, the prison matron on the take who devises old-school punishments for her charges and is especially hard on our heroine. Both of them got Oscar noms for this and I'd say they were worthy of them.Movie comment on Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
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Director Adam Wingard promised that Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire was a monster movie from the perspective of the monsters rather than the humans (who are rarely the most interesting thing in these films, especially the American ones), but there's still an awful lot of people involved. Whether they are sidelined or not (and that's debatable), and generally relegated to types (you're either an exposition machine or comic relief; at least Rebecca Hall is a strong emotional actress who can give her scenes some weight), Kong gets a lot to do on the trail of other titanic apes. In Hollow Earth, where much of this takes place, we lose the sense of scale and it just feels like a Planet of the Apes film, which isn't a bad thing to be. But guys, I can't stand the character we're calling Baby Kong. I might even hate him more than Minilla (so the best use for him is to be swung like a weapon). Wingard has also figured out that big dumb giant monster movies should be big and dumb and fun, and in that respect, Gokuzilla x Robot-Arm Kong delivers. Lots of destruction, lots of monster fights, Dan Stevens as a crazy surfer veterinarian to the Titans, giant wrestling moves, and at least one old favorite showing up. I'm calling it, the next one takes us to space (and I'm not just going on the Planet X Easter Egg).Movie comment on Sunset Blvd.
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What is perhaps most surprising about Sunset Boulevard - not just a Billy Wilder classic, but point blank a cinema classic - is how much of real Hollywood is in it. Gloria Swanson was, like Nora Desmond, a silent film star at Paramount (and one of their hottest tickets). She didn't go mad (though she was "aged" out of the business when talkies took over and hadn't been in a feature in more than 15 years). but others like her did have well-reported struggled with mental health (like Clara Bow). C.B. DeMille appears in person as himself. We see producers, scriptwriters, readers, technicians. And it seems like Wilder is making a couple of indictments. One is the very idea of sending actresses (never seemed to happen to the chaps) out to pasture after they hit 35. Nora (and Swanson!) is only 50 years old and treated like a hag ("I thought she died"), and yet, Swanson here proves she can do it all - tragedy, comedy, horror, subtlety as well as theatricality. But Nora is also used to undermine nostalgia for the silent era. She's one of those people who say "they don't make them like that anymore" with a measure of bitterness, and Sunset Boulevard is filled with the words she so hates, with narration on top of witty dialogue. Wilder is a talky writer-director and he affirms himself. Or does he? He still celebrates the silent era here, and his hero is a hack writer who gets killed for his trouble (in a kind of reverse of Video Kill the Radio Star). And so the film has that push and pull between the visual and the writer's mediums - the film maker's internal struggle. And of course, it's well made, has some great classic lines AND visuals. It certainly wasn't my first viewing.Movie comment on Ministry of Fear
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Fritz Lang captures the frayed nerves of the British under the blitz in Ministry of Fear, a paranoid thriller in which you can never trust anyone or anything, including the perceptions of the main character. Ray Milland has just been released from an asylum, you see, so when villagers at a town fete start acting strangely, leading him on a merry chase to London to find out why "they" are after him, you're not sure what to believe. What, if anything, does a war-time charity have to do with it? Milland is plunged into a nightmarish world of seances, Nazi spies, shady coppers, and bombing raids. Great use of light and shadow - I especially love how the final showdown is staged - and knowing this came out in 1944 makes it feel more immediate and urgent a story. The "loose lips sinks ships"-type posters are more than just period detail. A great Noir that owes something to Kafka as much as anyone. (Too bad it ends on a dumb joke.)Movie comment on Lured
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Douglas Sirk's Lured starts on a couple of incredible scenes that, through visual economy, introduce this tale of serial murder in London. Sirk gives a master class here. Of course, what follows isn't so economical and efficient... Lucille Ball (as a film noir scream queen!) agrees to work with Scotland Yard as an undercover policewoman after the disappearance of her friend Lucy(!), one of eight young women who answered classified ads and vanished. The mystery isn't that deep, but might throw you a few curve balls along the way. Lots of red herrings explored in detail, which gives Lured an episodic feeling. We might imagine Lucille Ball's character looking for the killer, week to week, and defeating other madmen and crooks along the way as she answered ads and tied loose ends. Charles Coburn and the other coppers are good fatherly figures too, even if the London accents are all over the place in this. Your only stop for a Lucille Ball/Boris Karloff collaboration!Movie comment on The Wednesday Play: Alice
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One of two BBC productions of Alice in Wonderland starring a future Doctor Who companion, Alice (1965) does feature bits and pieces from the book, but is really about Charles Dodgson AKA Lewis Carroll and his relationship to Alice Liddell, who inspired the stories. And it's a real take-down too. Dodgson is portrayed as a pathetic, puritanical, stuttering, needy man grooming a young girl - which I'm sure it historically accurate, but wow, is it depressing. It doesn't help that Alice herself is flighty, spoiled, vain and occasionally cruel. The moments from the book itself, imagined by the characters at various moments, are rather tedious as they leave what's interesting (the researched biopic we otherwise get) behind, but what's "interesting" is off-putting and threatens to tip into its characters' tediousness. Doesn't exactly make you want to read or re-read the Wonderland stories.Movie comment on Spaceman
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I had read and enjoyed Jaroslav Kalfař's Spaceman of Bohemia some five years ago and was very intrigued when a film version was announced. Then it came out as simply "Spaceman", starring Adam Sandler, and I feared the worst. But what we get here is sad, depressed, restrained, dramatic Sandler, and despite the title made generic, it's somehow still about the first Czech cosmonaut, nothing has been Americanized (except in the sense that the Czech Republic has joined the Western world post-Soviet era, which was always part of the novel), and though it cuts off the last bit of the story, it hedges very close to the source material. Naturally, those who haven't read the book will be befuddled by the depressing tone and perhaps think it inspired by the COVID lockdowns. But this is a loneliness that transcends the pandemic. It's about being alone even when you're with other people because you - YOU! - have failed to open yourself up to them. The film may well recontextualize this for the COVID-era, as the novel was more about the Republic coming to terms with its isolation behind the Iron Curtain, something that doesn't really come across as strongly in the movie. Things that work in a book and all that. We're still left with a melancholy oddity that evokes Cast Away as much as Interstellar, with the volley ball replaced with an alien spider therapist. As a fan of the novel and of strangeness in general, I was reasonably satisfied.Showing items 1 – 25 of 5620