Mad Mad World

I've seen The Mad Miss Manton (1938) a few times, although I often fall asleep (no shade, it happens). It stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, later to appear together in another screwball, The Lady Eve.

It starts in New York, at 3 AM. Stanwyck as Miss Manton pulls up to her apartment in a taxi, and the doorman has her little doggies ready for a walk. As they are passing by a subway under construction, Stanwyck sees an acquaintance rush out of a building and drive off without acknowledging her. She goes into the building, which has a "For Rent" sign up. It is unlocked. She finds a diamond broach and a corpse. She rushes out, dropping the cloak and broach.

When the police arrive, wouldn't you know it? No corpse, no cloak, no broach. The police lieutenant is played by Sam Levene, a very New York cynical type. He knows Stanwyck as famous practical joker, who has toyed wiyh the police before, and dismisses her.

Worse, the papers get ahold of the story, and print an article about woment with more money than sense wasting the city's time and budget. So she marches into the paper and slaps the editor with a million-dollar suit for defamation. The editor is Henry Fonda, and first she slaps his face. Of course, he slaps her back. I think he fell in love with her right there.

Stanwyck runs with a crew of seven or eight socialites, who love pulling pranks for charity. This group is a little amorphous: one is sensible, one is man hungry, one is food hungry, and one calls everything communist. They decide that they need to solve this murder, especially because the murderer may come after Stanwyck. In fact, when Fonda shows up at her apartment, they assume he is the killer and jump him. They have him tied up before they recognize him, and when they do, they leave him like that. It won't be the first time this group ties him up.

The rest of the movie is this group of madcaps investigating, followed by Fonda and Levine. Fonda likes to tell Stanwyck things like, "You're a nasty piece of work, but don't worry. I'll beat it out of you." Levene mostly demands bicarb from his assistant, and tell him "Quit crawling up on me" when he follows too close. He's one of our favorite character actors, playing an inspector in the Thin Man series, for instance. 

The mystery is pretty twisty - I think I finally gt it all on this rewatch. I can never remember whether the subway is involved or a red herring. But it's also pretty much beside the point. Stanwyck is of course wonderful. I'm not a big fan of Fonda, and here he's pretty obnoxious. But that only makes it more fun when Stanwyck humiliates him. Come to think of it, that's what I lie about The Lady Eve. 

Road (Space) House

We knew we'd watch it sooner or later, so we put on the new Road House (2024).

This one stars Jake Gyllenhaal as the new Rick Dalton. We meet him at an underground fight scene where the champion forfeits the fight as soon as he finds out who he is. We don't know why, but Jake is totally jacked, so we go with it. In the parking lot, Jessica Williams approaches him about a job as bouncer for her house. He turns her down, but later decides not to kill himself. So he has nothing better to do...

He takes a bus down to the Florida Keys, Glass Key in particular, for you Hammett fans. At a little strip mall, he meets a young black woman who runs a bookstore with her father, dedicated to the lore of the Keys. It's next door to the Double Deuces Diner for you fans of the original Road House. Williams' place is just down the road. 

It's pretty nice for a dive bar - a long A-frame, very tropical. Williams explains that things have gotten a little rowdy, and they just need someone for a few weeks to calm things down. The current bouncer is a nice beachboy type, who just needs a some mentoring. Some bikers come in and start making trouble, so Gyllenhaal goes to earn his pay. He gets them out in the parking lot, makes sure there's a hospital nearby, and checks to see if they all have insurance and good dental plans. Then creams them all.

And drives them to the hospital. He even warns them when there's a bump coming so they can brace their broken bones. The doctor who checks them in is Daniela Melchior, and she isn't too impressed by the mayhem he caused. But you don't have to have seen the original to know where they will end up. 

There's a few more fights, and a bad guys eaten by a gator, before we find out that the bad guys are trying to put Williams out of business. They decide to bring the real muscle, a man who brings chaos where ever he goes: former UFC Scotsman Conor McGregor. We're introduced to him wandering through a Mexican marketplace buck naked, demolishing everything in his path. He grabs some clothes and heads to Florida.

Even though Gyllenhaal is pretty buff, this guy is built like a brick leprechaun. The last act is going to be these two going up against each other. 

This is pretty fun, if you like fighty movies. Directed by big action director Doug Liman, it does what it's supposed to do. I feel like it doesn't have the same cheesy goodness that the original had, but I suppose we'll see how we feel about that in a few years. Gyllenhaal looks great, and has an interesting way of staring off into the distance with one side of his mouth quirked up. Thinking about the futility of violence and fragility of life, I guess. He looks a bit like Ryan Gosling, or acts like him or something. 

In conclusion, the bands playing the Road House weren't bad, some R&B, gospel, reggae, and a few zydeco numbers by Rockin' Dopsie. But they're no Jeff Healey.

Nothing Succeeds

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967) is a musical made at the end of the Golden Years of musicals. As such, we never bothered to watch it until now. Worth the wait.

It stars Robert Morse, a kind of funny looking guy. sort of reminded me of Dudley Moore, or Michael J. Pollard, or maybe Keith Moon. He's a window washer on a Manhattan skyscraper, but one day he buys a book, "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying". So one day, he steps in through a window, and strips off his jumpsuit to reveal a business suit. He immediately bumps into the president of the company, Rudy Vallee, who angrily tells him to go to Personnel if he wants a job.

He does, but when he gets there, he meets a secretary, played by Michelle Lee. She is smitten with him, while he is standoffish, and her secretary friends are not impressed. Anyway, Morse goes on the sweet talk the Personnel exec into giving him a job in the mailroom.

And so his rise begins. By a combination of sucking up to the boss, pretending to work all night, and blackmail, he rises through the ranks. He gets Vallee's girlfriend Hedy LaRue (Maureen Arthur) as secretary, and has her deliver his memos for maximum affect. And of course, he finally allows himself to be won over by Lee.

This is all very amusing, in a slightly dated way. But it's also a musical, based on a Broadway show. The music is by Frank Loesser, with Nelson Riddle doing the incidental music. The choreography is based on Bob Fosse. So we get some angular walking, synchronized secretarial pooling, and so on. 

It's a lot of fun. The songs aren't too memorable (to me) except for "I Believe in You", which Lee sings to Morse, then Morse sings to himself. The setting is very Mad Men by way of Mad magazine. I enjoyed seeing this look at corporate culture in a world teetering on the brink of the counterculture revolution. 

So how about Bye Bye Birdie? Haven't seen that one either.

Legionnaires' Disease

I picked up Black Legion (1937) because it was a Humphrey Bogart movie I hadn't seen yet. 

Bogart works in a machine shop, which seems like a pleasant place. The guys josh around a lot - everyone ribs Jack Foran for being hung over, and Polish kid Henry Brandon for studying all the time. But it's all in fun. When the foreman gets a promotion, Bogart is pretty sure he's up for the new position. He even starts making plans with his wife and kid for a new car and maybe a vacation. But the job goes to Brandon.

Now, instead of listening to radio serials with his son, he listens to radio ranters going on about immigrants stealing our jobs. He gets surly and sloppy at work, and a co-worker invites him to meet some friends. It turns out to be - the Black Legion!

These guys have a nifty black uniform with black hoods and carry pistols (both required, for a reasonable price). They beat up and whip undesirables, and Bogart goes along with it. In fact, they beat up Brandon and his nice old Polish dad, Egon Brecher. Then they burn down his home and throw them on a freight train out of town. So now Bogart is foreman.

Bogart's friend Foran, boards next door to Bogart's family. His landlord's daughter, Ann Sheridan, is Bogart's wife's friend, and thinks that Foran should settle down and marry her. Foran may run around with floozy Helen Flint and drink too much, but he has husband potential. But the landlord is Irish, and gets promoted at work, so the Black Legion goes after him. Now Bogart's wife begins to suspect, and leaves him, taking their son with him.

Bogart gets drunk and starts hanging out with Flint, but drunkenly tells Foran about the Legion. So now he is marked for death.

Bogart is caught, and left to take the rap. He is defiant, willing to go to prison or face the chair for the Legion. But when he sees his wife and son in court, he breaks. He spills everything about the Legion, and points out the members who are there in court, leading to their arrest. The judge gives a rather long speech about America and Democracy. 

Note that this was made in 1937, before America joined the war against Hitler. It is plainly a work of propaganda, and kind of clumsy at that. It's hard to believe that a nice guy like Bogart could be such a dope. When he goes to the first meeting, he evens laughs at the secret knock. But then he kind of gets excited about getting a uniform. I did buy that he got excited when holding a pistol. 

But having a great cast really made up for the slightly clumsy script. And maybe, I didn't mind because I agree with the sentiment: bigotry and violence are bad. But I don't think director Archie Mayo did Bogart any favors with this one. 

Take Out Chinese

Ms. Spenser has been getting a bum deal on the movie selection lately, so she requested Khartoum (1966). How could an epic North African adventure fail?

It starts in the Sudan, late 1800s. An Egyptian force lead by an Englishman is defeated by a local army lead by a mystical Islamic figure, the Mahdi (Laurence Olivier!). In London, there is pressure to show force to support the Egyptians, but Prime Minister Gladstone (Ralph Richardson) doesn't want to get bogged down. They decide to send Charles "Chinese" Gordon (Charlton Heston), alone except for an aide, as a private citizen. Gordon made his name leading a Chinese army in support of the Emperor, and had previously fought to rid the Sudan of slavery. But he was also headstrong, with a strange mystical bent, leading him to frequently disobey orders. 

So he heads out to Cairo and up the Nile. Officially, he is to organize an evacuation of the English and Egyptian citizens of Khartoum. But when he gets there, he starts organizing the defense of the city. The populace welcome him as their savior. He meets with the Mahdi, who treats him with respect, but warns him that he plans to burn the city and murder all within.

He begins a crash course to fortify the city for a siege, but his only hope is the British Army. But will they arrive in time? Or at all?

There was a lot to like about this movie, especially the location shooting in Cairo and on the Nile. Of course, there were a lot of sets, like all of Khartoum, and they were only so-so. The action scenes were amazing. Famed stuntman Yakima Canutt was credited as second-unit director, and you bet there were a lot of horse stunts, most probably unethical. But there weren't really that many action scenes. Mostly tense waiting or political wrangling. A lot was made of Gordon's mysticism, but aside from a few prayers from him, you don't get much. He even promises the Mahdi a miracle, and fails to deliver. 

Plus, of course, there's Gordon's super-power: Imperialism. Everywhere he goes, the simple Africans (only a very few of whom are black) fall all over him. Well, he did outlaw slavery, so a few ex-slaves had good reason. 

Olivier as Mahdi was OK, if you don't mind an Englishman playing Sudanese Muslim. Very portentous and masterful. But he was in the background most of the time. 

I'd say this one is up for a remake, maybe from a Sudanese perspective.

Day of Reckoning

Now we've seen Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023). I guess I need to go back and check out the podcasts that I've been avoiding for spoilers.

It starts on a Russian sub, under the ice, with some new tech that makes it undetectable. It can only be operated with a two-part key with a cruciform cross section. You'll hear "cruciform key" a lot. Unfortunately, the tech, later known as "the Entity", goes rogue and makes the subs torpedoes turn around and destroy it. we last see one part of the key hanging around he neck of a drowned Russian seaman. 

So Tome Cruise is sent into the desert to pick up part of the key from Rebecca Ferguson, playing Ilsa Frost. The Elder of the High Table is not involved, sorry. They are attacked, etc, they get out. We cut to a US superspy top-level meeting, including Cary Elwes as top bigwig. A perfectly normal guy stands near the back while they run down the premise. The Entity is an all-seeing, all-controlling AI. If you can control it with the cruciform key, you could... dare we say it? Rule the world!

Of course, normal guy is Tom Cruise in a mask. He bombs the place with sleep gas and has a private convo with his boss. It ends up with him going after the key. He gathers his team (Ving Raimes and Simon Pegg) and hit up the Abu Dhabi airport, where someone has one part of the key. 

But it turns out that freelance pickpocket Hayley Atwell has nabbed the key. Also, Shae Wigham and his team from the IMF show up to take down rogue agent Cruise. Pretty soon Cruise and team realize that the Ent is manipulating surveillance, sending everyone running in circles. It is also hiding one man, Esai Morales. He shows up on no ones cameras, and Cruise can barely spot him in real life.

Anyway, Atwell loses Cruise and takes off to Rome without him. She gets arrested on arrival, but Cruise shows up to get her out. This leads to a silly car chase where they are stuck in a Fiat 500 that Atwell has to drive, and it's reminds me of Knight and Day (which I thought I'd blogged, but can't find), with a lot of spluttering from Cruise and shrieks from Atwell. It also reminded me of Fast X (driving down the Spanish Steps) and that other Mission:Impossible where they went to Rome. Anyway, they are being chased by a cool assassin, Pom Klementieff, in a police behemoth. 

They get out (of course) and head to Venice, where someone is going to buy the half-key from Atwell, now working with Cruise. The buy will be held at a high-class party, run by arms dealer Vanessa Kirby, who seems to be fronting for Morales, who is fronting for the Ent. Also, Ferguson is there. This became my favorite scene. There's a moment when they are all together, and Morales reminds them that the Ent sees all, knows all. It can predict their every move, every thought. And either Ferguson or Atwell will die that night, and Morales will get the key. 

This is when the drugs hit. The camera starts circling, the lightshow represents the Entity on the screens and Cruise starts trying to figure things out. He tries to tell people that the Entity must be afraid, or it wouldn't have set up the meeting, He tries to covince Kirby that the Entity is bluffing. He knows he's being psyched out at every turn.

And that's what I like about this movie - the philosophical problem of how you outwit a being who can model your every thought. manipulate all information, force you to carry out its plans unknowingly. Of course, Cruise does this by punching people, but also by turning enemies into allies. In the final set piece, where Cruise famously rides a motorcycle off a mountain and parachutes onto the Orient Express (!), a bridge blows up (like in The General!). And Klementieff saves his life, because the Ent predicted she would betray him. 

Like in Across the Multiverse, and some other epics, this movie ends with a cliffhanger (not literal) with Cruise going off alone to find the Ent. Which is too bad, because I loved all the supporting cast - including a lot of women. Both Atwell and Klementieff get out of Marvel jail and get great roles. I also loved Shea Wigham. who we previously knew as the Atwell's FBI boss in Agent Carter. He's definitely a "that guy" that we now know by name. Morales gets a good villain role, who mentored Cruise before he went straight and joined the IMF. He survives the movie, so we'll see him soon, whenever the next (last?) M:I comes out.

I should not that Ms. Spenser wasn't as keen on this as I was. But she didn't hate it as much as some of the dreck I show her, so could be worse. 

I'm a Barbie Girl

We finally got to watch Barbie (2023). Now we can listen to all those podcasts I've been saving.

It starts in Barbieland, where all the Barbies live in Dream Houses. Margot Robbie is just a regular (Stereotypical) Barbie. Of course, everyone - the President, Supreme Court, doctors, scientists. CEOs - all Barbies of one sort or another. The Kens all hang out on the beach - in fact, their job is Beach. Robbie's Ken is Ryan Gosling. He's jealous of the other Ken's and only wants Robbie's attention. But of course, she is busy with girl's night sleepovers, and doesn't really have time for boyfriends.

Then one day, she has thoughts of death. Soon, her breath turned sour, ceelulite started to appear on her thighs, and she no longer walked as if she were wearing high-heels when she was barefoot. She needed the help of Weird Barbie. 

Weird Barbie, Kate McKinnon, is a Barbie with hacked hair and crayoned face, who lives in a weird house with some discontinued or otherwise unacceptable Barbies. She tells Robbie that the problem is the child who is playing with her in the real world. She will have to go there to solve the problem.

So she heads out to the real word in her pink convertible, singing along to the Indigo Girls. Gosling pops up in the backseat, stowing away. They end up in Venice Beach on roller skates, blending right in. While Robbie heads to school to find her real-world owner, Gosling went to hang out in the library.

It turns out that the girl who was playing with Robbie is Arianna Greenblatt (65), a mean, gothy adolescent who doesn't even like Barbie. Her youthful malevolence manages to crush Robbie's irrepressible spirit. But we've seen her with her mother, America Ferrera, a depressed working woman who sketches Barbie variations, like Persistent Thoughts of Death Barbie. She works as a receptionist (/designer?) at Mattel.

The Mattel board, led by Will Ferell, has found out about the Barbie escape, and are freaking out. Fortunately, Robbie shows up at the headquarters and Ferrera shows her into the boardroom. She just wants things to go back the way they were. She doesn't like the real world - the men aren't respectful, and the woman can't get a break. Heck, the Mattel board are all men. So the board plans to put her in a package and send her for remanufacturing. But Ferrara breaks her out, they grab Greenblatt and head for Barbieland.

When they get back, they find out that Ken has returned first. He read up on Patriarchy and decides to impose it on Barbieland. And then, Ferell and the board show up.

This may sound a little scattered and unfocused, becuse it is. There's a lot going on. Barbie's awakening and Ferrera's quest for meaning sort of fit together, but the Ken plot seems sort of shoehorned in - and it's about 20-30% ot the movie. He has the song that got the Oscar, plus another country-folk number (I like that one better. although it's pretty rough). Plus, he's Ryan Gosling. He has most of the jokes, and he has the biggest problem: He has no purpose, except Barbie. 

There's a scene I loved where, after the Patriarchy is overthrown, he re-unites with Robbie. He is delirious with relief, babbling about what he went through, how he didn't even care about patriarchy when he found out it wasn't mostly about horses. I've been there, babbling to my crush about everything I've thought and dreamed while we were apart for a weekend, not even realizing that she didn't really care. He confesses his love for Robbie, but she doesn't love him. That's refreshing. 

Barbie's arc is a little more hard to pin down. You can see elements of the hero's journey (from Barbieland to Real World and back), but I have trouble finding the center of the story. Maybe it's because Barbie isn't a real character, she's just dreams and playtime. But I also wonder if this was Greta Gerwig's story from the start, or did someone offer her a Barbie movie, and she just threw stuff at it until it was 2 hours long.

I guess I'm not really the audience for this movie, anyway.

Freelancing the Stone

You know the I love stupid action adventure movies. Ms. Spenser less so, but still, she voted to watch Freelance (2023) out of a bundle of movies I picked up from the library.

It stars John Cena, who gives us his life story in a voice over/montage. As a kid, he valued justice, so he went to law school. That didn't do it for him, so he joined the Army and went Special Forces. This he liked. He was good at it, and one day, got sent on a secret op to kill the dictator of a Latin American country (Juan Pablo Raba). Before they can land, their helicopter is hit by a rocket. Cena survives, with some back problems.

So he becomes a lawyer again, falls in love, has a kid, gets a house in the suburbs, and generally dies inside. So when an old buddy (Christian Slater) who has started a private security company calls, he doesn't need much persuasion. 

The job he has is a short-term bodyguard assignment. An influencer/journalist, Alison Brie, is going to interview a reclusive, shadowy dictator - yep, it's Raba. But it should be easy money...

He doesn't get on very well with Brie on the way to Fredonia (or whatever it was called), thinking her a lightweight, because her biggest gig was "Celebrity Hot Tubs". But they made it there, met the Raba, and headed off to his Palace. On the way, they are ambushed - by Raba's own military. But of course, Cena gets them out.

They run for the jungle, with Cena protecting Brie and trying to shake Raba (after all, they are shooting at him). But he keeps turning up, and takes them to a village where he is beloved, and they all have a little fiesta.

This is where it really hit me: This is a Romancing the Stone knock-off - possibly second-hand, via The Lost City. This time, it's from the guy's point of view. Also, there's no romance, because he's married and faithful.

But it was still a lot of fun. I like this sort of movie (as I've said), especially if they're funny. This was funny enough, exciting enough, and ended with the bad guys (South African mercenaries) defeated. Raba even turns out to be a good guy who didn't shoot down Cena's chopper. And Slater appears at the last minute so that good old USA saves the day. 

Shadows and Madness

We've been watching the new Hiroyuki Sanada Shogun, and it got us in the mood for some samurai stuff. So I picked up. Kurosawa's later masterpiece, Kagemusha (1980). This is a rewatch, but I don't think we've seen it since it came out.

The first scene is simple: Three men sitting on the floor in front of a wall. In the center is lord Takeda Shingen, played by Tetsuya Nakadai. He sits on a thick mat, elevating him inches above the others. On his left is his brother, played by Tsutomo Yamazaki. He tells his brother about the third man, a condemned thief, also played by Nakadai-san. Because of his resemblence to the lord, he could be useful as a stand-in, or shadow-warrior, kagemusha. The thief is unrepentant, and rails at Shingen as a murderous. warlord. Shingem laughs this off, and directs that he be trained to be his stand-in, if needed.

Years later, Shingen is laying siege to a castle. He hears that someone in the castle plays a flute beautifully every night, and decides to go listen. A shot rings out, and his army retreats. It turns out Shingen has been hit, but they are keeping this secret. Just before he dies on the way back to his fief, he demands that his death (if it comes) should be kept secret for three years to give his clan time to regroup, and that they should never move against the enemy, but stay at home. And so he does die.

To keep the secret, they find the thief and get him to take the lord's place, without telling him that his double has died. But, being a thief, he creeps about the palace and finds a huge treasure jar. He breaks in, and finds that it contains the corpse of Shingen. 

Shingen's son, played by Kenichi Hagiwara, wants to take his rightful place as lord, and he wants to bring the fight to his enemies. The kagmusha presides over a council meeting where most don't realize that he is an imposter. Hagiwara tries to subtly expose the kagemusha by asking him to make a decision. Nakadai-san has learned enough about the lord to successfully impersonate him, stating that like the mountain, which is his symbol, they will not move.

But of course, he is finally found out - he couldn't ride the master's wild horse, and he doesn't have the right scars. So he is cast out, and the son takes over rule, and begins attacking their enemies.

Here, Nakadai-san begs to be allowed to serve the clan, and watches in horror as they are beaten in battle against musketeers. Maddened, he attacks as well, and is killed.

I remembered this movie mainly for the masses of soldiers, flying banners from poles on their backs, running across battlefields. The banners are there, all colors and motion. These scenes are amazing, but aren't the only thing in the movie. There are also detailed scenes of the enemies trying to figure out if Shingen was alive or not, including a detailed investigation into how he was shot (maybe?) in the dark. 

But most of all, I was fascinated by Nakadia-san's close-ups. Especially as he descneds into madness at the end, his face resembles the classic stage make-up of a King Lear or Don Quixote (I read this book in high school).

Of course, Nakadai-san played Lear in Kurosawa-san's next movie, Ran. He's been our favorite Japanese actor (next to Mifune-san) since forever, so we loved this. 

I was surprised at the roughness or simplicity of some scenes. Like the first scene, which is just three actors in a single locked off shot. Of course, one actor played two characters, so there are technical requirements, but I expected more elegance from a filmmaker of Kurosawa's caliber. I think it was partly budget - the studio was not behind him at all, and Lucas and Coppola had to help out. But I think some of it was Kurosawa's constant invention, reaching for something he didn't always attain, and not being satisfied with doing the same thing over and over.

Rhubarb and Rhubarb

I am going to preface this post on Rhubarb (1951) with a little personal info. When I was a child, I missed a lot of school, due to what was diagnosed as mononucleosis. I missed most of fifth grade, then most of seventh grade (since you don't get mono twice, I must have had some other disease, but never mind). It wasn't painful - I got some headaches, and was prone to colds, but I got to stay home in bed most of the time. I didn't get to play with friends, but I'm a bit solitary anyway. I got some tutoring and kept up with class from home (although I never learned long division). I read Tom Swift books, played with a litter of kittens, and watched a lot of daytime TV. I saw John Lennon on Dick Cavett! I also watched a lot of old movies on Dialing for Dollars. Now, I only remember a few: Bringing Up Father, Cheaper by the Dozen, and Rhubarb.

It starts with millionaire Gene Lockhart hanging around a golf course with two of his flunkies, Ray Milland and William Frawley. It seems there was a stray cat who liked to run up on the green and steal golfballs before the player can putt. Lockhart loves this - the courage, the fight in this cat. When the players set their dogs on the cat, they come running out again, scared. So Lockhart demands that Milland, who is his PR man, catch the cat for him. After several ruined nets and traps baited with golfballs, he succeeds.

To Lockhart's delight, the cat tears up his office, then settles down and learns to love him. Lockhart owns a failing Bronx baseball team, so most of Lockhart's cronies are retired ballplayers. One of them refers to the trouble the cat is causing as a rhubarb - "You know, a dust-up, a donnybrook". So that became the cat's name.

They are inseperable for years, with Rhubarb resting on a cashmere comforter beside him. And then Lockhart dies and leaves all his millions - including the team - to the cat. And Milland will run the business for him. While Lockhart's daughter argues with the lawyer, Frawley muses, "I dunno, some ballplayers might not like being owned by a cat. They're superstitious like that. I mean, they're human, too, in a way..." 

Turns out he's right, the players don't like it. Of course, they've been on a losing streak, so maybe things can't be worse. But Lockhart always said his team could win if they had the same will and fight that Rhubarb has, so Milland convinces them the cat is good luck. And it works.

Now, there's a bunch of stuff with Milland's girlfriend, Jan Sterling. She's allergic to the cat, and their marriage keeps getting postponed due to business. Then there's some gamblers and a catnapping, and a trial at the end. All in all, this movie is sort of cute, not really great. There aren't a lot of big laughs - it was based on an H. Allen Smith novel. The cat was mostly played by Orangey (seen in many other movies, including Comedy of Terrors), who is a big cat star, but you could see how much editing they had to do to make it seem like the cat was acting.

But, as a kid, I loved this movie, mostly because it was about a cat. And on this, my second watch, some 50 years later, I still loved it. It's silly, and just a little funny, and even less romantic. There isn't enough of the actual ballplayers either. But it did have Ray Milland and a bunch of great character actors. And Orangey.

Last Testimony

I wasn't that hot on seeing The Last Duel (2021), but the lure of a costume drama and the direction of Ridley Scott, combined with it showing up at the library, swayed me. Anyway, Adam Driver is in it.

The movie is set 14th century France, and is based on testimony from a real case. It has three parts, where the three principals tell their side of the same story. It starts with Matt Damon, a French knight. He is brave but rash, and jumps into a battle against orders. He is joined by Adam Driver, another knight, and the rest of their group. They save each others lives, win the battle, but lose the war. This seems like a thing for Damon. 

At home, he sees lovely Jodie Comer, and weds her. Since her father was deemed a traitor to the king, Damon got him to put up a large dowery, including a particularly nice holding. But the king decided to give this spot to Driver. Then, their lord, Ben Affleck, decides that Damon won't get to take over his father's post. Rather it will go to Driver as well.

Oh well, at least he's got Comer, who he clumsily shtups as regularly and quickly as possible. But alas, he does not get her pregnant.

Damon goes off to campaign in Scotland, gets his ass handed to him. After he comes back, he makes up with Driver, and goes off to Paris to get paid. When he comes back, his wife tells him Driver raped her. 

He tries to go through the courts, but his last chance is to fight Driver in single, judicial combat.

Which brings us to Driver's story. It's pretty similar, except he sees Damon as a bit more of a buffoon. He also spends a lot of time whoring with their lord, which is a good way to stay in his good graces. For the rape scene, he indeed schemes to get her alone, breaks into her house, chases her to the bedroom, does her over her loud objections, and leaves with threats if she talks. I'm not sure why he thought that this absolves him of rape...

Comer's testimony is pretty similar. It shows the rape in exactly (?) the same way. So, case closed? 

No, the hitch seemed to be that Comer became pregnant after the rape. (Of course, Damon also "took back what is his" when he found out, so either man could be father.) The biology of the day postulated that a woman couldn't conceive unless they had an orgasm during sex. So, after years of not conceiving with her husband, she gets pregnant after a rape - she must have enjoyed it! This isn't really spelled out, but seems to be the upshot. Driver claims she was asking for it, and people think he has a point. 

And so the duel. This is a nice Ridleyian fight scene, with lances, swords, knives and fists. In the end, Damon kills Driver (SPOILER).

And the epilogue shows Damon and Comer with their little blonde child. Blonde like Damon, not dark, like Driver. I guess.

There's a lot more to this story - Comer learns to manage the estate while Damon is out warrioring, and is darn good at it. Her mother-in-law is a big jerk, both to her and her son, for some reason. There are a couple of good battle scenes. But all in all, I was not impressed. 

There was a nice sense of "the past is another country", with honor, politics, and women's roles being different from what we understand now. But the rape at the center was hard to deal with. I was expecting a Rashoman-type situation, with very different viewpoints. But Driver's own account, that he did a lot of whoring with the lord, then raped his friend's wife, pretty much tallies with the other accounts. I don't get it.

I probably don't get a lot. For example, I assumed that seeing the blonde child meant it was Damon's. But Ms. Spenser reminded me that a lot of children are blonde when young. Heck, I was. So who knows.

All in all, we found this movie a bit unpleasant. Maybe someone should just spell it out for me. 

In conclusion, how about Scott's 1977 film, The Duellists?

Get to the (Stone) Chopper

Finally got to see Prey (2022), the best Predator movie yet. 

The opening title gives the time as 1718, Northwest Plains (looked kind of foresty to me, but never mind). A young Comanche woman (OK, Comanches were more southwestern, but that's not important), Amber Midthunder wants to be a hunter, although this is not really allowed. When she should be gathering medicinal plants, she is practicing tracking and throwing her stone tomahawk. Later, she joins a party hunting a mountain lion. It woumds a member of the party, and she uses her medicinal skills to help. But she notices some huge tracks that aren't mountain lion, bear, or anything else she knows.

Split from the party, she is attacked by the lion. She has a chance, but gets distracted by something she can't quite see. Guess what?

Fortunately, her brother, Dakota Beavers, kills lion earning himself the position of War Chief. But Midthunder is worried about those huge tracks. She takes her dog off to track it down. She falls into quicksand (quick mud, I guess), and narrowly escapes, using her axe with a rope tied to the handle as a hook. This leashed ace makes a cool native weapon. (Not really practical, as a stone edge is quite fragile, but still cool). 

She runs into a grizzly, but that's not her worst problem. The predator shows up (mostly invisible) and fights the bear, letting her escape. But another enemy appears: European trappers, who capture her and her dog. Boy, are they going to be surprised.

I've mentioned a few unlikely or inaccurate events or settings, but again, they don't really matter. Overall, this feels like an authentic story of am almost pre-contact tribe, fighting a monster (from outer space rather than supernatural in this case). The dynamics of the tribe and their surroundings feel real, and so do the hunting and fighting tactics (even with the leashed axe). They hunt as a team, and work together evemn when they disagree. We even have Beavers counting coup on the predator - "counting coup" is to touch an enemy without killing it, or being killed, disgracing him. In this case, it distracted the him from Midthunder. 

It was also a real Predator movie, full of lore - the semi-invisibility, non-aggression to noncombatants, parrot guns, three laser dots, etc. Even the mud bath that Midthunder takes. Her final fight with the monster is great, showing her skill and cunning. Truly a grea warrior.

My only complaint is that they didn't refer to the stone axe as a chopper. 

Damnit Barry!

You know, I didn't think The Flash (2023) was so bad. There, I said it. 

It starts with Ezra Miller as Barry Allen at a coffeeshop, trying to get his usual breakfast PBJ. He preseents as on the spectrum, upset that the usual barista hasn't made it for him already. And of course, he's late for work - classic gag, fastest man alive is always late. Then Batman (Ben Affleck) calls, with an emergency, and all of the other (better) superheroes are busy. A hospital is collapsing, and a maternity ward is falling, with eight babies, a nurse and a therapy dog in peril. This is one of the things I like about this movie - they way they comically heighten the stakes by adding the dog. And Barry's having a blood sugar crash, so he has to raid a snack machine before saving everyone.

We get a flashback of the Allen trauma, where his mother (Meribel Verdu) is kiled while his father (Ron Livingston) is out shopping. Overcome by grief, he accidentally discovers that his powers lets him go back in time. So he makes it so that his father doesn't need to go shopping - and winds up on a new timeline.

In this timeline, Barry Allen is a normal young slacker with no superpowers. Also, there's no Superman or any other superheroes, and Zod is coming to subjugate Earth. So the two Allens try to replicate the circumstances that gave Flash his powers, and it works. Except the old Flash now doesn't have his powers.

It turns out that there is one super(ish)hero: Batman. They head to Wayne Manor and find Michael Keaton, fat, drunk, and unhelpful - except to explain that meddling with time doesn't work out well. But he does let them have his Batplane.

They head to Siberia, where they believe there is a Kryptonian, and find, not Superman, but Kara-El, Supergirl (Sasha Calle). So now they have a chance. But it doesn't work out. So - back to time travel. Guess how that works out.

I guess I can see why people weren't really into this. Of course, there's Miller's history of mental and legal problems (Although Rebekah Jones of Florida feels like these have been exaggrated and/or due to transphobia.) And this movie features Miller playing two Barry Allens, one traumatized and one just a dude. Plus, it's the same old story, time travel and multiverse stuff. 

But for one, it's kind of funny. The hospital rescue is Deadpool-level silly. New-timeline Barry is a normal kid with normal roommates, like Gary, who's just crashing on their couch. There's even a joke where they are sneaking into a secret facility and one of the Allens knocks over some equipment, loudly. And when he gets his powers, the younger Allen never lets the more experienced one finish his sentences, leading to contretemps. 

OK, it's not great. But I enjoyed it - more than say, Shazam II. And in the end, Barry puts everything back the way it was. Except Batman (spoiler) is now George Clooney! No!

Distressed

I remember being pretty excited about Damsel (2024): sword-and-sorcery fantasy about a badass woman starring Millie Bobby Brown. What could go wrong?

Brown is princess of an impoverished kingdom. Her father is letting his subjects go with an armload of firewood, all that's left. But he gets an offer for Brown's hand from a rich kingdom, and he accepts, whether she likes it or not. 

When they arrive at the foreign kingdom, she actually likes it pretty well. The castle is lovely, the prince seems nice enough, the queen is kind of hostile, but mother-in-laws, what are you going to do? On the day of the wedding, they go into the hills for an ancient ritual in a cave. And at the end, the princess throws Brown into a pit. 

It was all a ruse, and she is being sacrificed to a dragon. 

She spends quite a bit of time doing a cave crawl, surviving, finding dead ends, seeing her father come to the rescue and get killed, etc. She is pretty resourceful, but hardly badass. I'm sure she gets better at all this later on in the movie, but I'll never know, because I gave up around here, maybe an hour in. 

This movie had decent production values, and a good cast: Ray Winstone was Brown's father, Angela Bassett her step-mother, the evil queen was Robin Wright, and the dragon was voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo. And I like this kind of fantasy movie. But it felt so slow. At least 20 minutes to get Brown into peril, and who knows how long to get her fighting back. The tagline is something like, "This damself doesn't need saving", but there is an actual rescue party that comes for her, and gets killed. For most of what I saw, she did need saving. 

Also, the idea of a princess that can save herself is not as groundbreaking as these guys seem to think. I think even Disney princesses have been saving themselves for a while now. 

I saw someone comment that Netflix is making Brown a star in the same way the old studio system did. That's great, I love her. But between this and the Enola Holmes movies, I'm not sure they are doing her many favors with the roles they are offering. Oh well, at least she's getting paid. 

Mahvelous!

Here we go with a movie nobody was supposed to like - but I did: The Marvels (2023).

It starts with pink Kree Zaweh Ashton and her crew finding a quantum bangle on an airless planet - but wonders where the other is. She uses the power of the bangle to open portals so that she can rob worlds of their resources. The Kree home world has been destroyed by civil war, so it needs air, water, pretty much everything.

Meanwhile, Ms. Marvel, Iman Vellani, is in her room drawing comics of her and her hero, Captain Marvel. We didn't watch this series, only an episode or two, but we know that she has to other bangle as a source of her power. Also, Monica Rambeau, Teyonah Parris, is investigating strange portal-related activity in space, using SHIELD's space station as a platform. Carol Danvers, Bire Larson, is off in space, doing Capt. Marvel stuff.

Then they all change places: Carol Danvers winds up in Ms. Marvel's bedroom, Ms. Marvel in orbit in Rambeau's space suit, and Rambeau in the Captain's ship. This is kind of a cute Freaky Friday plot. It turns out that Ashton is meddling with space-time (lot of that going around) causing these three women to become entangled, so they switch every time they use their powers at the same time. 

They even do some training to use this to their advantage in a montage during a sleepover on Larson's ship. Larson plays this Captain Marvel as super-serious and dedicated, but also a little more girly - or maybe that's just her coming through. Parris' Rambeau is very pissed off with Carol Danvers. Danvers left Earth when Rambeau was a girl and just never came back. This is resolved in the movie by her just getting over it. Of course, Vellani just plays the fangirl, coming up with team names, etc.

We get some silly stuff, like a planet where every communicsates in song. Captain Marvel is married to the Prince there (Park Seo-joon), but only for diplomatic reasons. Also, Nick Fury's Cthulu-cat, Goose, shows up all over the place, swallowing and horking up all kionds of stuff - a plot point in the climax. Samuel L. Jackson's Fury plays it light and cool as always. We also didn't see the his Secret Invasion series, but I don't think it was necessay. 

Overall I liked this. It was sort of fun and silly, not so much jokey like Gaurdians, just a little light - even with the universe falling apart (again!?!). Director Nia DaCosta makes the body swapping disorienting at first, then nice and clear. She handles the tones shifts as well, I think.

Actually, I think a lot of people liked this movie, although as a mid- or lower-tier Marvel. That's sort of how I felt - but I like Marvel movies, and grade their mid-tier above the upper tiers of a lot of genres (cf. Eternals). I guess the oversll reception puts sequels at risk, which is too bad, because the previews in the credits looked pretty cool. 

Cries and Vespers

Vesper (2022) is the kind of thing we want to watch more of. Small-scale movies with big ideas.

It stars Raffiella Chapman as Vesper, a young girl livng in a post-apocalyptic world. The apocalypse was ecological collapse, combatted with genetic engineering, which didn't help. We meet her slogging through a muddy field, gleaned turnips that the harvesters missed. As the intro tells us, the upper classes moved to Citadels, where they sell seeds to the rest of the world. But the seeds are one-time only - their seeds are infertile.

Chapman goes around with a cubic drone, about the size of a small microwave. It hovers and has a crude face (two circles and a line for eyes and a mouth). It is run by her father, who is paralyzed in bed, in their little Depression era farmhouse (seems this catastrophe hit around 1930). The house runs on biotech, including a bacteria-based generator for electricity. When it goes out (sabotage?), her father's life support starts going out, so she has to visit her uncle.

Her uncle, Eddie Marsan, is a right bastarrd. He runs a colony that exchanges the blood of his many bastards, wives, etc, to the Citadel for seeds. He also has some gruesome subhuman bioconstructs working for him. While she visits him, he tries to convince her to join his tribe, which she gets out of. But she does steal a few seeds on her way out.

On her way home, she discovers a lovely young woman, Rosy McEwan. She realizes that Rosy comes from the nearest Citadel, because she's not covered in shit. She also has no survival skills, so Chapman takes her home. McEwan wants to find the crashed flyer that carried her and her father, or call the Citadel, but it's getting dark and the only way to contact the Citadel is through her uncle.

First little spoiler: McEwan is a construct, built by the "father", a bioengineer. She tells Chapman that she cared for him, soothed him, and he cared for her. This monologue goes on for a while - we get it, you're a sexbot. But her artificial genes hold a secret that might save, maybe not the world, but some parts of it.

This is not a movie about big tech, although there are flyers and drones, and there's even a shot of a Citadel. But it's more about hardscrabble rural life with weird biotech - the bacteria generator is like a big balky steam heat boiler. There are bags of culture everywhere and most of the food is gruel with some tasty mealworms. Then McEwan shows up, dressed in white, privileged and naive - I haven't seen Poor Things, but I got a similar vibe (maybe it's just that both characters have strong eyebrows). 

I was a little let down by the ending, but Ms. Spenser set me straight on a few things I had missed or misinterpreted, so never mind I guess. I prefer a little more tech in my sci-fi, but Vesper was a biotech genius, hoping to get into a Citadel to help the world. I would like to see that movie, too.

Ghosted

Let me start with what we didn't watch: They Crawl Beneath (2022). I figured Ms. Spenser needed a good creature feature, so we tried this out. It's about a lame-o Bakersfield cop who hangs out with his asshoile alcoholic uncle - played by Michael Pare! - over Thanksgiving, while stressing about his hot ex (but not trying to be less of an asshole to her). While they are working underneath an old Mustang, there's an earthquake, which kills Pare and traps the cop and tears his leg up. And if that's not bad enough, huge nematodes (yep) are coming out of the ground, infinging people's liberties. We watched way too much of this, almost an hour, before we just gave up.

So we decided to watch Disney's Haunted Mansion (2023) - we haven't seen the original Eddie Murphy. This was a surprisingly good choice.

LaKeith Stanfeild is an astrophysicist, developing a camera to photograph dark matter. He meets and falls in love with a New Orleans ghost tour guide. After she dies in a car crash, he becomes bitter and depressed. He in now running her tours, hating it all, and refusing to discuss ghosts.

Meanwhile, widowed Rosario Dawson, and her cute, bowtie wearing son, move into a haunted mansion, planning to fix it up as a B&B. But it's too haunted for them and they run away (smart move, but...)

Soon, unorthodox priest Owen Wilson shows up a Stanfield's place. He wants to try to photograph the ghosts in the mansion with Stanfield's camera. He's reluctant until Wilson offers him money. He shows up and Dawson warns him not to step inside. He does anyway, and doesn't find any ghosts. But he is haunted when he get's home. You see, once you set foot in the mansion, the ghosts follow you everywhere. That's why Dawson is back at the mansion.

So Wilson decides to gather a Dream Team of ghostologists, including psychic Tiffany Haddish and historian Danny Devito. Of course, he doesn't tell them about what happens when you cross the threshold...

This wasn't a laugh riot or anyrthing, but it was fun and cute. The scares are mild and the special effects mostly low-tech - which was nice for such a big movie. There are a lot of nods to the Disney ride, some of which I got, most probably not. The ghosts were not quite the characters I would have expected, except for Jamie Lee Curtis, a New Orleans spiritualist trapped in her crystal ball. Even Jared Leto as Hatbox Ghost didn't make that big an impact.

But the actors playing the main characters were all charismatic and seemed to be having a lot of fun. Wilson and Devito, in particular, seemed to be just running with it. Now I'm curious about the 2003 Eddie Murphy version.

Society Girls

Ms. Spenser let me pick the movie, and I picked Polite Society (2023). Might be my last pick for a while.

It stars Priya Kansara and Ritu Arya as the Khan sisters, living in London with their parents of Pakistani origin. Arya, the older sister, wants to be an artist, but has lost confidence. But the real star is Kansara, a high school girl who wants to be a stunt woman. She has her sister filming her attempts at a spin kick, with little success. 

Kansara has two friends at school, and a bully. The first big action scene is a fight between the bully, the physically imposing Shona Babayemi. It's full of martial arts posturing and wire work. And she is defeated. Also, her guidance counselor doesn't think she should intern with famous stunt woman Eunice Huthart (who she emails daily, getting no reply). Her parents agree, she should become a doctor, or at least a receptionist.

Their mom is a bit of a social climber, and gets an invite to Nimra Bucha's fancy Eid party. At this party, Arya meets son of the house, Arkshay Khanna, a handsome eligible doctor, who is obviously being shopped for a wife. Soon, they are dating. Arya gives up art, and seems to be in love. Kansara is not having it, and with her friends, schemes to sabotage the relationship.

The hijinks are mostly fun, but a little low-key. They are pretty much high-school attempts at James Bond super-espionage. But it's been awhile since the last action scene. 

In fact, there are only two or three of those heightened action scenes in the whole movie. There is a dance scene, but it's quite short. I've heard this movie described as Bend It Like Beckham mixed with Scott Pilgrim, directed by Sammo Hung. It's more Bend It with a pinch of Scott Pilgrim. 

Of course, Bend It was a great movie, and maybe this is too. Kansara is a very appealing star, and so are her friends (and bully). Bucha has real presence as the sleek, sophisticated, evil mother-in-law to be. Reminded me a lot of Shohreh Aghdashloo, with less warmth. 

But we were set up to expect a lot more action, or at least hijinks. Ms. Spenser's analysis is that it didn't know what it wanted to be. When they got a little more crazy, it was more fun - except the ending, which was pretty crazy, and felt unearned. I'd say more, but it wouldn't be polite.

The Writers Done It

On the library shelf, Invitation to a Murder (2023) looked like just the thing. An Agatha Christie pastiche period piece, but not a Branagh spectacle - a small movie with no actors we recognized. We jumped right on it.

It starts in a 1930s London bookshop, because they know the audience will love a cozy, book-filled shop. Mischa Barton is chatting with a friend over the latest "Inspector Poirot" (he wasn't a detective). We learn here that she is the amateur detective type. When she gets home, she finds a mysterious invitation from Lord Findley, a reclusive billionaire (there were no billionaires in existence in the 30s - from these clues, we know that the writers weren't reying that hard). All will be explained if you come to his mansion on a remote island. Travel arrangements have been made.

On the train to the island, she meets the other guests, introduced by chatty Seamus Dever (who I labelled not-Cillian Murphy). There was a young doctor, Giles Mathy, canoodling with exotic Bianca A. Santos. A mysterious Asian, Grace Lynn Kung, and gruff American journalist, Chris Browning (who I labelled not-Christopher Walken). This confuses Barton, because she had a theory that there would be only five invitees, based on a clue in the seal on the invite. How right she turns out to be. Before we get off the train, I knew - they all done it! I was wrong.

They are met at the launch to the island by a valet, Alex Hyde-White. In fact, there are only three on staff, including butler James Urbaniak and maid Amy Sloan. Lord Findley has been detained by weather, but should be flying in shortly (he does not). The staff seem rather cold and not very good at their jobs. Now, I'm thinking the butler done it. Well, we'll see.

After a little faffing around, Dever is found dead, stabbed in the neck with a preposterous push dagger. He is carried inside, and when they steel themselves to search him, his body disappears. 

Barton sort of takes over the investigation, to the disgust of tough guy Browning. But she soons wins him over as he wants to investigate this situation too. They find many odd and interesting clues, both on the estate and in the backstories of the guests. I'll skip ahead a bit and let you know that Dever shows up alive and the Hyde-White gets killed. So the butler didn't do it, I guess.

The next morning, they decide to call the police. That was an option? And you didn't do it when the first murder was committed. Okay that murder didn't take. But they didn't know that.

I won't spoil the ending, except to say that the way it is discovered is ridiculous (closed circuit TV - in the 1930s!). The whole plot is preposterous, which actually isn't disqualifying. The same could be said for most of Christie's mysteries. But really.

I will say that the movie looked very nice, mostly set in a lovely wood paneled mansion. Ms. Spenser noticed the costumes, and noticed how well they fit the sets. For instance, Santos wore blue, and was always photographed in front of a blue background, like a blue leather chair. Her swain, Mathy, wore a dweeby brown cardigan (indicative of his personality). and tended to be photographed in front of earth tones. Nice touch.

Barton (who I labelled not-Amy Poehler) was a bit of a stock character, the nosy but gifted amateur detective, but I'm afraid was just a bit too annoying for us. Browning was better as the gruff, unmannered war correspondent, who hates Findley as an evil capitalist. Alex Hyde-White (not to be confused with Hyde-Pierce or Park) made a bit of an impression. Ms. Spenser recognized him as the son of Wilfrid Hyde-White, a classic British stuffy upper-class type - he played Col. Pickering in My Fair Lady. 

So it looked good, and had a nice cozy feel, but in the end was just too silly. The reason we get stuff out of the library is that they are supposed to have standards. But in the end, it was the writers who are to blame. 

Farewell to Marlowe

I picked up Farewell, My Lovely (1975) after seeing Murder, My Sweet. They are both based on the Raymond Chandler story Farewell, My Lovely - They changed the name for the Dick Powell version because they didn't want it to sound like a fluffy romance. This version stars Robert Mitchum and no one would suspect him off being in a fluffy romance.

It starts with Moose Malloy, this time played Jack O'Halloran, a big ex-pug, but no Mike Mazurki. Once again, he takes Marlowe to the place he last saw Velma, 8 years ago. Velma is still as cute as lace pants, but in this version, the place is now a colored joint, which allows for a bit of cynical racism. This is more faithful to the book, although toned donw qite a bit for 1970s audiences. By the way, I re-read the book to compare to these movies.

Here are some differences: In the book, there's a cute girl reporter who helps out. In Murder, she becomes the femme fatale's daughter, which works better, I think. The character is eliminated in Farewell, possibly because Mitchum is too old for that stuff. He's replaced by a newsie, as sort of a sidekick for Marlowe. 

In this version, Amthor is a butch madame, played by Kate Murtagh (the waitress on the cover of Supertramp's Breakfast in America). I don't know if this is an improvement. I like the oddball idea of an evil Spiritual Advisor. Actually, in the book, he turns out to be sort of irrelevant, just mixed up accidentally, Anyway, Mitchum still gets doped, and Murtagh attempts to frame him. But Sylvester Stallone (!) shoots her for knocking around one of the girls he's sweet on, Ranbeaux Smith (!).

Farewell also includes the gambling boat scene, with Anthony Zerbe as the gambling boss. This was in the book, but left out of Murder, because the studio bosses didn't want any trouble from the mobsters ran actual gambling boats. I guess that racket was washed up in the 70s.

The femme fatale in this version was played by Charlotte Rampling. She's certainly as cute as lace pants, but I see her as too refined to be the best Helen Grayle. 

Mitchum makes a tired, tough Marlowe, not as snappy as Powell. Both are great with the patter, both worthy of the title gumshoe. Murder used the framing story of a blinded Powell telling the whole story in an interrogation, which wasn't in the book or in Farewell. In Farewell, Mitchum is kept going my Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak, getting a hit in 56 straight games. 

I think I noticed a few times that the later movie copied from the earlier (Jessie Florian's excessive decolletage), but in most cases, it went back to the original book. That book is full of cute expressions, like "crazy as two waltzing mice". "liquor dies painless with me. Doesn't know what hit it", and "cute as lace pants”.

Pump Up the Vol. 3

Now that Netflix isn't shipping DVDs (and we try to limit streaming subscriptions), we're kind of at the mercy of what shows up at the library. And now we've seen Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

It starts on the ramshackle Quardians HQ. Rocket (Bradley Cooper) is ruminating, and Quill (Chris Pratt) is dead drunk, mourning over the loss of love Gamora (Zoe Saldana). She isn't actually dead - there's a version of her from 2-3 years ago running around, but she doesn't even know Quill. Then, from nowhere, a golden indestructible human comes smashing in, just tearing everything up. It's Will Poulter, as Adam Warlock!

There's a big fight, and it's clear that this Warlock guy is super-powerful, and also an idiot. They dispactch him, but not before he does a lot of damage - almost killing Rocket. Then it turns out that Rocket has a kill switch - med packs don't work on him to protect his embedded IP.

That's when we get a flashback to Rocket's origin. He was a little raccoon chosen by the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) to be experimented on. He grows up in a cage with other cybernetic creatures, his friends. Of them all, he's the one who is not just intelligent, but creative. But when he tries to bust everyone out, his friends are killed, and only he survives. 

So while he is dreaming and dying, the Guardians go after the High Evolutionary to get the kill switch off code. It turns out that huge swaths of galactic society were creasted and nurtured by him. For instance, the Sovereign, the golden race of snooty bureaucrats we met at the start of Vol. 2. They were the ones who created Adam Warlock. which sort of explains why he is a moron.

The Hi-Ev's latest plan is Counter-Earth, a planet modeled after Earth (traditionally, in the Earth's orbit on the opposite side of the sun), but populated with evolved animals. The problem is, he never figured out how to make the animals creative, so he needs Rocket. And he decides to destroy the planet, with all the inhabitants, including Drax, Nebula, and Mantis. Don't worry, they save themselves. The rest of the population, not so much. 

People will tell you they cried over this movie, and I know how they feel. The theme of animal experimentation and torture is a sad one. But it was a little upsetting when, in the midst of a genocide, Rocket radios the rest of the team and says, the important thing is that we're all all right. I guess.

There's a lot of other fun stuff, like a Russian cosmonaut dog who has become sentient and telekinetic. Also, Kraglin (Sean Gunn) can't really use Yondu's whistle arrow, and takes it out on Cosmo, who he calls a bad dog. And Howard the Duck shows up in a card game, and even has a line. Did anyone see Pip the Dwarf? I didn't but you never know.

I must say, I was very excited to see my favorite superhero, Adam Warlock. I wasn't too sure about seeing him as a dumdum. In the comics as I remember, he was powerful and noble, yet naive. Then I think of how often he got manipulated and fooled, and then lashed out, well, maybe this is a good take. Anyway, I like Poulter's version, so fine. 

About the soundtrack: The first two volumes had music based on the 70s and 80s awesome mixtapes his mother gave Quill. Remember the Zune mentioned at the end of Vol. 2? So this volume has a much wider range of music.

White and Black

We were pretty excited about Outlaw Johnny Black (2023) - a comedy/Western starring and directed by Michael Jai White. We loved Black Dynamite, so obviously we were going to see this. We weren't exactly disappointed...

White is Johnny Black, a wanted man. It starts with him waiting outside a bank. He has info that the bank will be robbed by his nemesis, the man who shot his pa, Chris Browning. But before they show up, he is arrested and thrown in jail, and has to watch the bad guys get away. 

When he was just a boy, his father was a sharpshooter showman by day, revival preacher by night. When one of his tricks impresses Browning's gang, Browning gets jealous and tries to duel him. Then he just guns White's father down. So White vows revenge, and, now a man, has missed again.

On his way to the next town, he finds a preacher, aiming to marry the woman he has been corresponding with. White proposes that he take the preacher's place, in exchange for not shooting him. When he gets to town, White recites a few passages from the preacher's letters, and is accepted as the real thing - by the demure and beautiful Erica Ash as well as the townspeople. Then he meets her sister, the wild and beautiful Anika Noni Rose.

Meanwhile, the preacher has run off and gotten captured by Indians, and married off to the ugly (possibly M2F Two Spirit) daughter of the chief.

Now the first part of the movie plays like a regular Western comedy - say, Support Your Local Sheriff or Cat Ballou, or even Buck and the Preacher. The comedy is more or less grounded, and there are even long stretches of just plain Western. But there are also wackier sections, like the "marry the ugly Indian", which has a sort of Benny Hill vibe. Then there's the surreal/meta stuff, like the Indian chief shedding a single tear. Like Iron Eye Cody, this chief is not played by a Native American, either. There's a guy who looks like Uncle Ben, and a few other more out-there touches.

There's also a lot of quotes from great Westerns, like a slap/quick draw, from Trinity is Still My Name. And the chief's daughter punches a horse, like in Blazing Saddles.

Since the movie is over two hours long, I think the problem was that White just loved all this stuff and didn't want to leave a thing out. He seemed to be having a great time just riding along on a horse, and probably loved being in a Western. He got a lot of talent to join him, including Randy Couture and Barry Bostwick. 

So we weren't as blown away as we were by Black Dynamite, but we had fun - just maybe not as much as the cast did. I think I would have preferred more Blazing Saddles stuff, or failing that, less of it. He could have made a sincere, silly but grounded movie. It would have had a more reasonable runtime, too. But he might never get another chance, so why not put it all in?

Sweets to the Sweet

Picked up Murder, My Sweet (1944) from the library - had seen it before, but didn't remember it well. It was a doozy.

It starts with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe, with bandages over his eyes being interrogated about some murders. He tells the cops they know most of it, but they want him to tell them the whole thing. So he starts at the beginning. 

Moose Malloy, played by Mike Mazurki, wants Powell to help him find his girl Velma. He's been "away" and she doesn't work at the bar she used to sing at anymore. He takes Powell there, kind of against his will. Moose ("on account of I'm large") has a way of convincing you. He describes Velma as "cute as lace pants", one of my favorite quotes, and pretty racy too. 

Anyway, they don't find Velma, and Moose vanishes, promising to get back to Marlowe.

As Powell works on the case, another one shows up. Pretty, fae Douglas Walton wanted Powell's help in getting some stolen jewels back by paying a ransom. But he winds up dead. The cops don't like it, but don't want to charge Powell - yet.

Now we get to the heart of the matter. Young Anne Shirley takes Powell to meet a new her father, Miles Mander, at his mansion. He is a rich old man with a passion for jade, and a young wife, Claire Trevor. The jewels were taken from her, and he wants them back. When it turns out that Powell doesn't have them (not as crooked as they think), he turns Powell over to Trevor. She is a piece of work, with a range of extracurricular activities.

One is Jules Amthor (what a great name!). played by Otto Kruger. He is a (failed?) artist and spiritual guru, but of the Will and Self variety,  not the Peace and Light type. He uses his powers to manipulate Moose into attacking Powell, then drugs him and stuffs him in a clinic, keeping him under for three days - but Powell shakes it off.

This is all great stuff. a femme fatale, a cultist, murders, doping, and most of all, Moose Malloy. He finally finds Velma, but it doesn't end happily. This is one of the best noirs ever (is it a noir? Well, best hard boiled detective movies). The dialog is snappy, villains are villainout, femmes are fatale (except Shirley, she's sweet). Who would have thought that Powell, one of "Broadway's most promising juveniles" had it in him. 

Fast Times

We finally watched Fast X (2023) mainly so we could listen to the How Did This Get Made podcast. I'd say it was worthwhile.

In this outing, the team gets a call - they need to hijack a computer chip in Rome. Dom (Diesel) and Letty (Rodriguez) stay at home with Dom's now 9-year old son, Little B. Meanwhile, Charlize Theron has her secret lair broken into. Jason Momoa is holding hostage a loved one for each of her henchmen, so she barely gets away. She runs to Dom and tells him that Momoa is out for revenge. He was the son of the Brazilian guy who's bank vault got dragged around Rio.

Also, Dom finds out from Brie Larson that there is no Rome mission, it was a trap. Indeed, when the team gets on the truck that's supposed to have the chip, they find a one-ton bomb instead. Momoa watches from a bell tower as the round ball rolls through the streets of Rome like a pinball. When Dom appears in his muscle car, he manages to get it to go off in the Tiber, not the Vatican, so only dozens are killed and not the Pope. Still, he does become a wanted man.

Let's see, Letty gets sent to prison. The house is attacked, and Little B hides beside the toilet - this is not a good plan. Don't they have an escape room or anything? Anyway, uncle John Cena shows up to take him to safety. Remember, he was the big bad a few movies ago. Now he's a goofball uncle.

Ok, after that - whew. a lot of stuff happens. Almost everyone who's ever been in an F&F movie is back, or their heirs. There's a lot going on, but in the end -SPOILER- there's a cliffhanger. There's one or two movies to left in the saga.

The new director, Louis Leterrier, wanted to make this a more grounded version of the series. He didn't send anyone to space, but other than that, I don't know if he succeeded. What I think did succeed was Momoa - he pays a flamboyantly fruity villain, with sort of a Capt. Jack Sparrow look. The scene that sums it all up is Momoa sitting in his backyard with two corpses - people he's killed recently, I guess. He is painting their nails while chatting with them about his plans. He finishes up and tells them to help themselves to margaritas, and someone will be along to bury them in while. He's having so much fun. It'll be interesting when he becomes part of Dom's family in the last movie.

Did I mention that Theron is locked up with Lettie, and breaks her out? They are strapped to operating tables (I forget why), and Theron reachs a long finger down to the touch screen, hacks it blind, releases them and sends knockout gas to the guard room. Why do they even have that button?!?

Anyway, the movie is fun, but the How Did This Get Made podcast is a blast. The guests are Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg. Everyone loved the movie, and hw insane it was. Hard agree.

Bananas

We've been going through our Three Stooges collection, and were wondering about the origin of the Niagra Falls routine ("Slowly I turned..."). A little research turned up two possible sources - Joey Faye and Harry Steppe. Steppe is credited by Phil Silvers with introducing the term "top banana" to vaudeville. This lead us to discover that Silvers made a movie called Top Banana (1954) (which actually includes Joey Faye in the cast). Even better, we discovered that it is available on Amazon Prime.

It's about a TV show starring Phil Silvers. We meet the writers grousing about working all night on the show, while trying out jokes on each other (mostly flops). Then Silvers comes in, full of pep, wanting to hear some jokes, quick one-liners. The sponsor is coming to the show that night, and he wants to be ready. He also calls his girl, Judy Lynn, complimenting her with lines the writers come up with when he snaps his fingers (mostly flops). He even gets his show's singer, Danny Scholl, to serenade her over the phone. 

Then they all rush off to a department store so Silvers can do a book signing. He also meets Lynn, who is a model at the store - which allows for some fashion and cheesecake. Here, Scholl meets Lynn, and they hit it off, making a date, because she doesn't think of Silvers as her guy. 

Also, Rose Marie shows up, kind of poking her nose into Silvers business. It looks like she was intended as his consolation prize, but the part kind of got cut.

When the sponsor appears, he wants to cancel the show. But maybe if someone on the show got married... So Silvers demands that Scholl elope with his girl. Silvers has lost his glasses, so he doesn't realize that he is forcing Scholl to steal his girl - and he's too pushy and hyper to listen to Scholl's objection. 

This all leads to an elopement scene in front of a cardboard flat of an apartment house. I'm going to drop the plot now, and just get meta. You see, this movie is basically the filmed version of Silvers' Broadway play Top Banana, making it a movie filmed from a play about a TV show. (It was also filmed in 3D, but not released that way, so skip that part.) Some parts are more or less realistic, like the writers' room. Some are theater but real, like rehearsals for the show. Some are totally theater, like the elopement, and some are fantasies, daydreams about the days of vaudeville. This jumping of frames is fascinating to me, and maybe not something they could have achieved on stage. 

It is also very much about comedy, particularly the vaudeville variety. Silvers alsways wants the jokes to be shorter, snappier, one liners. He comments to his barber, "That was good! A one-liner and you one-upped me. Don't do it again." He complains that a writer takes two pages to get him into a barbershop. One of his cronies shows him how to do it - "Here we are, in the barbershop." These cronies (including Joey Faye) are all over the movie. In the elopement scene, there's a little guy with no expression who sort of sticks to you - you can't let go of him. This leads to some amazing physical comedy - truly roll on the floor. But all the discussion of comedy, the use of the insider term Top banana, adds a meta-comedic element to it all as well.

Unfortunately, it was also chopped to hell. There seems to be a 100-minute, but the DVD and streaming versions are ~80 (see film blog It Came from the Bottom Shelf). Rose Marie's songs and most of her role were cut. You can feel a lot of the missing material in the clumsy cutting. There are also sound problems, making a lot of the fast patter hard to hear. Oh well. 

Django Returns

This was a nice little treat: Dead for a Dollar (2022), a late Walter Hill western. I think the most recent movie he directed that we saw was Undisputed. 

It starts with Christoph Waltz visiting Willem Dafoe in a New Mexico open-air prison. Dafoe was put there by bounty hunter Waltz, and Waltz wants to warn him not to come after him when he gets out. Dafoe says he just wants to go to Mexico, play some cards, meet some senoritas. Don't worry.

Next, Waltz gets a job looking for a kidnapped wife (Rachel Brosnahan). A buffalo soldier (black calvalryman) has taken a rich man's wife off to Mexico. Waltz will get the assistance of another buffalo soldier (Warren Burke). As Waltz and Burke ride off into Mexico, Burke reveals that the abduction was more of a runaway situation, that he knows the abductor, and that he even knows where they ran to.

Meanwhile, Dafoe has gotten out of jail, and as promised, headed to Mexico for women and cards. These story lines are pretty much unconnected, but both do meet up with Mexican warlord Benjamin Bratt. Our fugitive bride and her soldier think they can buy his protection with part of the ransom (that sadly isn't coming). Waltz and his soldier have a tense but non-violent meeting with Bratt. And Dafoe plays cards with one of Bratt's associates, beats him, and makes an enemy.

When Waltz catches up with Brosnahan, he "frees" her and takes her soldier captive, having him held in a local jail. Brosnahan tells him her story: her husband is an evil man. He let her have a little freedom to teach reading to illiterate soldiers, like the man she ran away with. She admits he was not the first man she had more than a tutorial relation with.

As more or less the McGuffin of this plot, Brosnahan is not quite what I expected. She is rather cold and despairing. She keeps her "abductor" at arms length, although it's clear he's taken with her - and of course, he's not the first. She never makes a move to escape from Waltz, understanding that he has all the power. So she's not a maiden in distress, or a bad ass. She's trapped and she knows it.

And then her husband shows up. Will Waltz back him up, or her? Will Burke support his soldier friend, or go for the bounty? And where does Dafoe come in?

The image of Waltz as a bounty hunter with a black assistant is an obvious callback to Django Unchained, which is fine. We all want more of that. He has a couple of good lines. For ex: when he shoots an outlaw holding Brosnahan hostage, she says, "You shot him inches away from my head! Are you that confident in your shooting?" He replies: "No."

Dafoe is wonderful in this, with his craggy face, deep voice and easy confidence. It's just that he doesn't get enough to do here. 

All in all, a fun little bagatelle from Walter Hill. I don't think it's top drawer stuff - but very few of his movies are (Streets of Fire, Warriors?). It was pretty much a classic western, with the obligatory scenes of people riding through vast vista. Some shootouts, some card games, and a little bit of moral philosophy. The racial component is played very lightly - the rich man says his wife ran off with a common soldier, and Burke makes him specifiy, "common black soldier". I don't think that's the historically accurate term. 

Scarabs are Dung Beetles, Right?

I guess Blue Beetle (2023) didn't exactly take the world by storm, and wasn't hated and despised by all. This makes sense. It's a decent, fun, family superhero movie with fw pretensions. Too bad it needed to be a blockbuster.

Jaime Reyes (Xolo Mariduena) is the first of his family to graduate college. His family picks him up at the Panera City airport and lets him know the bad news. They are going to lose the family house in Lost Keys. The Kord family oligarchs are developing the property. So Mariduena's sister, Bellissa Escobedo, gets him a job at a Kord resort. But he overhears Kord CEO Susan Sarandon arguing with her niece and daughter of the founder, and steps in when it looks like it will get physical. So he is fired, but the niece, Bruna Marquezine, tells him to check with her at Kord HQ, and she'll try to get him a job. 

The next day finds her stealing the McGuffin, and passing it off to him so he can get it out of the building. And of course he opens it, and it's the Scarab, a biomechanical whatsit that attaches to your back and gives you scary superpowers. And there you go, that's the setup. The rest of the movie will be Sarandon and henchmen trying to get it back and Mariduena and Marquezine trying to keep it from them. 

In addition, there's some stuff in the title sequence about the original Blue Beetle that we didn't pay attention to. But it turns out that the original was Ted Kord, Marquezine's father, who disappeared but left behind a trove of high-tech weapons. Well, sort of high-tech. Several characters talk about the almost-forgotten BB as being like Flash or Green Lantern, but crappier. One comments on an invention, it's like something Batman would build if he had ADHD. 

If I had to analyze, the problem with this movie is that the symbiont suit (wait, is this movie just Dollar Store Venom?) doesn't get enough attention. But that's also the great thing about the movie - instead, it concentrates on the family. They are a typical Mexican-American family, partly documented, partly not. The mom and dad are loving, sister is sarcastic and cute, grandma is secretly a bad-ass revolutionary ("Abajo los imperialistos!") and the uncle... George Lopez plays the uncle, a conspiracy theorist and hacker. Lots of fun. 

The Hispanicity of the movie is a fun angle, but feels natural (to me, Mr. Whitebread). It's not revolutionary, it's just part of American life. I suppose some people like that, some don't. We did. This wasn't a great movie, but a fun one. Better than Shazam II anyway. 

Cuddly Monster

I watched Nimona (2023) as a sort of throw-away. Ms. Spenser was busy, I was at loose ends, this looked cute enough, animated, streaming on Netflix, why not?

It starts with some history: The origin story of this magical but high-tech city-state. Way back when, the kingdom was threatened by a fire-breathing monster. the heroine Gloreth defeated it. Her champions have been defending against monsters ever since. Note: The movie says "Gloreth" too much. 

In present day, a commoner, voiced by Riz Ahmed, is being elevated to knighthood, the first commoner to be so honored. His boyfriend, the nobly born and super cute Eugene Lee Yang, is there to support him, while the douchey knight bros like Beck Bennett jeer. As the queen hands him his sword, a ray zaps out of the handle, killing her. Yang cuts off his arm to end the attack, and Ahmed must go underground (and build a prosthetic arm).

A demonic little girl, the titular Nimona (Chloe Grace Moretz) decides that Ahmed is a great villain, and decides to be his sidekick. Her powers include shapeshifting, destructivity and super cuteness. She likes plans that go, "We break a lot of stuff, something, something, we win." Ahmed tries to be the voice of reason, but actually, the break stuff method seems to work better.

So, theme-wise, we have the classic evil/but not kid, the friendly monster, Lilo's pal Stitch. I have to love this trope, even while recognizing how overused it is. When we find out the trauma behind her spunk, the life of fear and hatred as a monster, well, I can't say it was a shock. Can you believe it? The message is to try to accept those who are different. 

The gay romance between Ahmed and Yang, on the other hand, is just accepted. Nobody blinks an eye at it. At worst, Yang is kidded for being in love with a dirty commoner. So you can't say they were beating us over the head with that one.

And the animation style was good - a simple, geometrical style for the character designs, some high-tech cityscapes for the backgrounds, all pink for the shapes Nimona changes into. Sometimes, the #D animation for, say, body armor contrasted with the flat simplified faces, but this was rare, and not even that bad. 

So, I enjoyed this. I wasn't knocked out, but it was - I guess. cute or charming. It's not really my thing, but I could watch more. 

Dark and Stormy Night

A Haunting in Venice (2023) is Kenneth Branagh's latest, and possibly last, Hercule Poirot mystery. I think it is the first one that gets it right. 

It is set, obviously, in Venice. Poirot (Branagh) is retired. He has a bodyguard to protect him from the people who want him to solve their cases. But he lets through an old friend, Tina Fey, the mystery author whose best sellers are loosely based on Poirot. She wants him to join her for a Halloween party and seance. The medium, she feels, is either authentic or good enough to fool even Poirot.

The party, thrown for the city's orphans, is held in a decrepit palazzo, owned by Kelly Reilly, a retired opera singer. Her daughter died several years ago by suicide, haunted by the ghosts of the children who died in the palazzo in an earlier plague. It is her she seeks to contact via the seance.

When the medium arrives, she is played by Michelle Yeoh. She feels the presence of much misery, and in the seance, contacts the beyond through a magic typewriter. Of course, Poirot quickly debunks this, but Yeoh tells him she can truly contact the dead, and he should lighten up. She gives him her mask and cloak, and he is promptly attacked. He survives, but doesn't have any time to figure it out, because Yeoh shortly falls from a great height and is impaled in a staute.

There is a good deal more going on - a man broken by the war and his precocious son. The housekeeper. Yeoh's Romani assistants. And so on. There are more murders. And even Poirot starts to see things he can't explain.

The first Poirot, Murder on the Orient Express, was campy, almost satirical. The next, Death on the Nile, seemed to me to be a bit meandering, centerless. This one seemed tight, unified around the gloomy atmosphere of an ancient palazzo in a storm. The presence of ghosts seemed palpable, and there were even a few apparitions - it may even be that the mystery is solved by the ghost herself. 

Of course, Poirot solves everything, and sees that justice is done. In the end, he is so refreshed by this that he un-retires. I wonder if Branagh will reitre him here or not.

Slingshot

 I have always said that the heart of the Singapore Sling is the Benedictine and the cherry brandy. But what if you don't have any Benedictine (honestly, I use B&B, but close enough)? Or what if you have Benedictine, but it's across the room and you're too lazy to go get it? But you do have something else close at hand?

You make a Singapore Sling variation. I happened to have the Licor 43 out, so I used it in place of the Benedictine. 

1/2 oz. Licor 43

1/2 oz. cherry infusion

1 oz. triple sec

1 oz. lime juice

2 oz. gin

It was pretty good actually. Recognizably different, but also recognizable as a Singapore sling variant. A family resemblance, say. 

Then I tried it with Galliano, instead of the Benedictine/Licor 43,  because I wanted to see what would happen. It was fine - a little further off the mark due to the licorice, but still tasty. 

Maybe it's just me, but I think it's easy to make delicious cocktails. There's a wide range of liquors, liqueurs, juices, etc. that go together well. No need to get precious, just try it and enjoy!

El Conde Pasa

Hey, I forgot to blog one: I saw El Conde (2023) at my sister's. It's a black and white Chilean horror comedy where Augusto Pinochet turns out to be a vampire.

It starts with a plummy English voice giving the back story: A French soldier with blood sucking tendencies sees his queen Marie Antoinette guillotined. He vows to protect the aristocracy in any way her can. Over time, he has to get out of France, so he moves to Chile, joins the Army, and becomes the military dictator that we know as Pinochet, but his friends call el Conde, the Count. 

After a time, he fakes his death and retires to a distant deserted mining town. He takes his mistress, who he refuses to turn, and his butler, who he does turn. He lays low for a while, but now his grown children here of girls going missing, drained of blood, and they come to visit.

He tells them he has decided to die, and his offspring start to quarrel over the his ill-gotten treasures. They bring in an outside auditor to help them find these assets. They don't know (or do they) that she is a nun, with a mission to take down the monster. Or is that her mission? Because the count has no trouble seducing and turning her to vampirism. 

The heart of the film seems to be the nun's interviews with the grown children, asking for details of their father's and their crimes, financial and otherwise. As far as I know, these accounts are historically accurate, and appalling. The perpetrators either insist that it was just business as usual, or wiping out communists. I wonder how this played in Chile. Were the funny parts "too soon"? Were the serious parts shocking, or old news? 

Well. the black and white photography of the misty coast, the ruined mansion and so forth was lovely enough, and the nun was very cute, especially when, as a vampire, she learned that she could fly.

And I'll spoil the ending. The plummy narrator turns out to be Pinochet's mother, the vampire... Margaret Thatcher.

White Noise, White Light

Here are a couple of new movies that we watched as a weekend double bill. The first was White Noise (2022). Ms. Spenser and I have read a few Don DeLillo novels, including White Noise. I've seen it called un-filmable, but I think it is one of his more accessible books. Noah Baumbach wrote and directed this attempt.

It stars Adam Driver as a small-time celebrity college professor, the founder of the Hitler studies program. His dirty secret is that he speaks no German - his private lesson show him as more than a beginner. His wife is Greta Gerwig, a beautiful bouncy mother of a brood that includes a teen boy and girl from one of Driver's previous marriages, a daughter from one of hers, and a toddler who is theirs.

The first act shows them in their happy life together - and how thoughts of death torment both of them. But Driver also needs to help out his co-worker Don Cheadle, head of the Elvis studies group. When he is lecturing on Evis, Driver comes in and starts delivering a contrapuntal lecture on Hitler: how each reacted to his mother's death, their love of animals, and so forth. This scene includes Driver swooping around in his academic robes like a great crow - very theatrical. 

Meanwhile, outside town, a truckload of gas hits a train full of industrial something, leading to a fire, a feathery plume of smoke, then a black cloud, and finally an airborne toxic event. Driver and Gerwig try to avoid scaring the kids, or themselves, until it's time to panic and evacuate. They make it to the camp they are assigned to, manned by volunteers from SimulVac, who are using the real evacuation as a trial run for a simulation. And it's working well.

But Driver is exposed to the toxic event, and now fears death more than ever. When they get home, Gerwig is acting distant and distracted as well. Her daughter figures out that she's taking some kind of pills. I'll skip over how that all works out, but it is the most comic and absurdist section of the movie. Except, I guess, for the credits, which shows everyone at the supermarket, shopping in choreographed synchronicity.

After this piece of stylized silliness, I knew we had to watch Asteroid City (2023), Wes Anderson's latest. It's set as a series of framing devices: A 1950s TV show made of a play, about a playwright writing (and producing? or is that just in his imagination?) a play about Asteroid City.

Asteroid City is a small New Mexico town, with a diner, a gas station, an unfinished overpass and a meteor impact crater. The main character (maybe?) is Jason Schwartman, a war photographer, who's stationwagon breaks down leaving him and his three young daughters and teen son in Asteroid City. His father-in-law, Tom Hanks, is disgusted by Schwartzmann, largely because he hasn't told his children that their mother died several weeks ago. 

But his son, Jake Ryan, is the reason for the trip. He is a Stargazer honoree for his invention. (I can't remember if it's a rocket belt, disintegrator or something else...). His nickname is Brainiac. The other honorees include Grace Edwards, daugher of filmstar Scarlett Johansson. Schwartzman and Johansson will form a bond, as will Ryan and Edwards, and sundry other visitors to town. 

This all plays out in front of an obvious painted backdrop, in desert pastels, washed out in imitation of old color photography. Anderson managed to make many scenes look like live action versions of 50s illustrations, like Norman Rockwell. Just so that you remember that this is a play being written by a playwright in a play being shown on television in the 50s. Every now and then, we drop back to the frame play, so that you don't get too comfortable. And of course, there is an alien who lands to steal the asteroid.

So both of these movies are extremely stylized, high concept, and rather drily funny. I think Driver should do more straight-ahead comedy, because he's good at it (although he sometimes seemed to be channeling Jeff Goldblum.) Both movies have quarantines, which I guess is just zeitgeist. Both are interested in the children, more than a lot of movies with families. Baumbach and Wes Anderson seem to run in the same circles, so I guess it makes sense we'd see some similarities.

We really enjoyed both of these, and they worked really well as a double bill. 

Out with the Old, In with ...

Happy New Year of the Dragon all. I feel recovered enough from the holidays that I am ready to sum up 2023. Or maybe I don't, because I just want to say that it sucked. 

Partly recency bias, because Ms. Spenser caught COVID on Christmas, and is still suffering - mildly, because vaccinated and all,  but still. Also, when we returned from the vacation, we realized how old and unwell our dog actually was. And so we had to call the vet and let her go. So, maybe I'm in a grumpy mood.

As for our movie watching, losing Netflix kind of messed everything up. My habit, my ritual was disrupted. I no longer have a specific, curated set of DVDs for each weekend. I need to fish around on whatever streaming service we are subscribing to this week, pick something up at the library, look through my home discs, etc. It shouldn't be that different, but it is, somehow. We'll see if I get used to it, and if I change this blog's tagline.

It looks like I watched fewer movies from 2023 in 2023 - 13 or 14, depending on whether you count Meg 2, which I slept through. Lots of stupid action movies. The best of the batch was probably John Wick 4, or maybe Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Anything that wasn't a sequel? How about The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster? Perhaps not the greatest movie, but it was original, and showed a lot of heart. See also Slash/Back, the Inuit girls hunting monsters movie. 

Best movie we watched this year? Best movie ever: Bringing Up Baby. We actually watched it this year - borrowed it from Netflix and didn't send it back, mwahaha! Just as good as ever. 

Some notable movies from 2022 saw in 2023 we: Nope and Three Thousand Years of Longing. Both were by directors we love, but showed an advance in the use of the cinematic medium. Nope used realistic images of the wide-open fields and skies of California to instill uneasy dread. Three Thousand Years had a maximalist, baroque vision of beauty attached to a somewhat cold and intellectual story. 

Oddball movie of the year: Dave Made a Maze. Low budget fun. And recyclable!

Best movie first seen in 2023: I'm going to say Spies, the Fritz Lang silent. Just for the incredible visuals.

Trends: we watched a few more rom-coms than usual (usual is 0) in 2023. Most were only so-so, but I did like Down with Love, both for the way it referred back to the classics, and for the fine execution.

I feel like I watched a lot of movies that I should have already seen, but none were big revelations. Some I enjoyed, but I never felt like I'd been missing out.

As usual, I watched too many stupid action pictures (not Ms. Spenser, though. She has standards). Most were forgettable, but I did enjoy Dungeons and Dragons. 

Not much new on the cocktail front I've been making some Singapore Sling variations. We got a Ninja blender, so I even made a few frozen Slings. Around this time of year, I tend to drink a lot of sparkling wine, and usually mix it into French 75s, etc. This time, I just enjoyed it straight.

And what to expect in 2024? I hope I'll get my viewing habits stabilized. I hope I watch some good movies but I'll be happy with a lot of stupid action movies that aren't as bad as, say, Red Notice. I blame streaming. 

Oh, and I haven't blogged it, but I've been watching a few Carry On movies (I have bootleg copies of the entire run). They are both worse (jokes, sexism) and better (some sweet romantic touches) than I expected. I'll probably watch more as the year goes on.

OK, I'll close out dregs of 2023 by wishing all a happy, healthy 2024 - and good viewing!