We promised to watch more Yul Brynner, so: Villa Rides (1968). I’m not sure it really counts, because he has hair, as well as a mustache.
It stars Robert Mitchum as an arms dealer who flies a biplane into Mexico with guns for a Mexican army general (Herbert Lom) for the fight against Villa. His plane broke its landing gear, so he has to trek to the nearest village to get it repaired. The soldiers come and hang everyone they consider “opposition”, including gentle noble Fernando Rey.
Meanwhile, Brynner as Villa, along with his henchmen, Charles Bronson are waiting to attack until the soldiers have made martyrs for the revolution. Mitchum is attracted to Rey’s beautiful daughter. But before he can get too far, Villa “marries” her to show that he does not consider her to be disgraced - also, to get her into bed, and possibly to trump Mitchum.
So, we get some romance and several battles against the army. At one point, they capture a band of soldiers and pen them up. Bronson has them let out a few at a time. They will be allowed to go free if they can make it over a wall before he shoots them. They don’t make it over the wall. So Bronson played a cold-hearted killer.
In the end, Villa is overthrown by trusting his president. Will Mitchum give up his neutrality and profit-seeking to help his revolutionary friend?
So, though we love us some Robert Mitchum, and came for the Brynner, and got some extra Charles Bronson, we didn’t think much of this. There was a weird mix of comedy and violence, and the romance was sort of tossed aside for the male bonding stuff. Not terrible, though.
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Moon Maid
Three-Cornered Moon/Maid of Salem (1933) is a neat Claudette Colbert double-bill, one comedy, one drama.
Moon posits a wealthy family of nutcases in during the Depression. Mother is ditsy Mary Boland. The brothers are William Bakewell, Wallace Ford, and Tom Brown - an actor with only one line in a play, a law clerk who wants to just chuck it all, and a college student with a complicated love life. Claudette Colbert is their sister, billed as the sanest of the mad bunch. Her weakness is mainly her fiancé, Hardie Albright, an unpublished novelist, genius, and artist, who sponges off of her.
When they are together, he talks of suicide, and she joins in, but when she realizes he might be serious, she rushes him to her doctor, Richard Arlen. Arlen calls his bluff and hands him some pills, suggesting he take an overdose.
Everything is going fine, until the bank calls up. Boland isn’t very clear, but it’s something about a margin, and no money in the bank. They are wiped out, and now must go to work. This part is pretty goofy, because, in the midst of the Great Depression, a family of layabouts and dilettantes all easily find work (although not easy work). Colbert lies her way into a shoe factory, and can barely keep up with the work - and doesn’t want to date the boss to keep from getting fired.
But the main source of plot motion (if not family income) is that Richard Arlen moves into the mansion, paying rent. There’s some cute business about the family desperate to get the rent so they can run to the deli for some meat. In fact there’s a lot of slapstick with the brothers running around - I liked it, but YMMV.
Anyway, it’s pretty obvious that Arlen is looking to shake Colbert free from her freeloading boyfriend. And it all works out, as you might guess. This isn’t the sharpest pre-Code comedy, and even Colbert has trouble grounding her kooky character. But we enjoyed it.
Maid is basically The Crucible with a lot less wit and insight. It does have an interesting cast: Fred MacMurray, Gale Sondergaard, Louise Dresser, Bonita Granville, along with Colbert. We fell asleep for this. Again, YMMV.
Moon posits a wealthy family of nutcases in during the Depression. Mother is ditsy Mary Boland. The brothers are William Bakewell, Wallace Ford, and Tom Brown - an actor with only one line in a play, a law clerk who wants to just chuck it all, and a college student with a complicated love life. Claudette Colbert is their sister, billed as the sanest of the mad bunch. Her weakness is mainly her fiancé, Hardie Albright, an unpublished novelist, genius, and artist, who sponges off of her.
When they are together, he talks of suicide, and she joins in, but when she realizes he might be serious, she rushes him to her doctor, Richard Arlen. Arlen calls his bluff and hands him some pills, suggesting he take an overdose.
Everything is going fine, until the bank calls up. Boland isn’t very clear, but it’s something about a margin, and no money in the bank. They are wiped out, and now must go to work. This part is pretty goofy, because, in the midst of the Great Depression, a family of layabouts and dilettantes all easily find work (although not easy work). Colbert lies her way into a shoe factory, and can barely keep up with the work - and doesn’t want to date the boss to keep from getting fired.
But the main source of plot motion (if not family income) is that Richard Arlen moves into the mansion, paying rent. There’s some cute business about the family desperate to get the rent so they can run to the deli for some meat. In fact there’s a lot of slapstick with the brothers running around - I liked it, but YMMV.
Anyway, it’s pretty obvious that Arlen is looking to shake Colbert free from her freeloading boyfriend. And it all works out, as you might guess. This isn’t the sharpest pre-Code comedy, and even Colbert has trouble grounding her kooky character. But we enjoyed it.
Maid is basically The Crucible with a lot less wit and insight. It does have an interesting cast: Fred MacMurray, Gale Sondergaard, Louise Dresser, Bonita Granville, along with Colbert. We fell asleep for this. Again, YMMV.
Wednesday, August 8, 2018
Sigh
So, now we've seen Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977). It's the only Argento movie we've seen, and I think we may be happy to keep it that way.
It starts with Jessica Harper, an American dancer, going to a school in Germany. She arrives in the middle of a storm, just in time to see another girl run out of the school and into the night. Harper bangs on the door, but nobody will let her in. As she drives off in the taxi to find a hotel, she sees the girl running through the forest.
The girl winds up at a friend's apartment in a very de Stijl building. She takes a bath, but an unseen figure grabs her, ties a noose around her neck and throws her out a window into the courtyard. Her friend, who has been running through the building trying to get help, looks up to the skylight covering the foyer, just in time to see the body on the noose come hurtling through it, killing her with glass and metal.
This first big kill ends with the black and white checkerboard floor sprayed with red blood - the kind of abstract, super-saturated shot that he is known for. We will see a lot more fashionable violence in this movie. Also, a lot more violent violence. A slow throat-slitting and a graphic disembowelment, for example (at least as far as I could tell, peaking through my fingers). I’m pretty sure we won’t be watching any more of Argento’s “Mother” trilogy.
It’s too bad, because there is a lot of striking (but not horrifying) visuals here. The atmosphere of languid decadence and menace in the dance studio is interesting. Harper collapses in the studio and is moved more or less against her will from an apartment (the one the murders took place in) to the school proper. She is also fed a controlled diet with a glass of drugged wine. Will she shake off these malign influences.
Sure. And it’s pretty great. Just a little too much gross violence for us.
Also, the electronic score by Euro-program band Goblin is just OK - did not make us fans.
It starts with Jessica Harper, an American dancer, going to a school in Germany. She arrives in the middle of a storm, just in time to see another girl run out of the school and into the night. Harper bangs on the door, but nobody will let her in. As she drives off in the taxi to find a hotel, she sees the girl running through the forest.
The girl winds up at a friend's apartment in a very de Stijl building. She takes a bath, but an unseen figure grabs her, ties a noose around her neck and throws her out a window into the courtyard. Her friend, who has been running through the building trying to get help, looks up to the skylight covering the foyer, just in time to see the body on the noose come hurtling through it, killing her with glass and metal.
This first big kill ends with the black and white checkerboard floor sprayed with red blood - the kind of abstract, super-saturated shot that he is known for. We will see a lot more fashionable violence in this movie. Also, a lot more violent violence. A slow throat-slitting and a graphic disembowelment, for example (at least as far as I could tell, peaking through my fingers). I’m pretty sure we won’t be watching any more of Argento’s “Mother” trilogy.
It’s too bad, because there is a lot of striking (but not horrifying) visuals here. The atmosphere of languid decadence and menace in the dance studio is interesting. Harper collapses in the studio and is moved more or less against her will from an apartment (the one the murders took place in) to the school proper. She is also fed a controlled diet with a glass of drugged wine. Will she shake off these malign influences.
Sure. And it’s pretty great. Just a little too much gross violence for us.
Also, the electronic score by Euro-program band Goblin is just OK - did not make us fans.
Sunday, August 5, 2018
Turning the Page
We are proceeding with the next chapter: Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013). It sort of feels like filler.
It starts 30 years ago, with Elise from the first movie visiting Patrick Wilson's character as a young boy. He has been having supernatural problems. Elise settles these, and makes him forget.
In the present day, Elise is dead. We saw Wilson killing her at the end of the first movie. He is definitely under suspicion, but he thinks he's innocent. As things start getting weird again, the family moves back in with his mother, Barbara Hershey. This puts him back at the scene of his childhood trauma.
They also get back in touch with Specs and Tucker, still mourning Elise's death. They go through her files, and find the tapes she made of Wilson's case. They enhance and find the image of adult Wilson standing behind himself as a boy.
The boogie man in this chapter turns out to be "The Bride in Black", a serial killer from back in the day who wore a black wedding dress. Spirit flashbacks reveal him to be an abused kid with psychosexual mommy problems - I am not sure this is at all interesting.
Slightly more interesting is when Wilson becomes completely possessed by the spirit of the bride, and his son, who was lost in a coma in the last movie, must go into the Further (spirit world) to extract him.
This is a busy movie, with a lot of genuine tension and scares. It also didn't hold together especially well for me. It was great to see Elise again, both in her early days and as a spirit. But on the whole, this didn't especially hold together for me. Let's see what the next chapter holds.
It starts 30 years ago, with Elise from the first movie visiting Patrick Wilson's character as a young boy. He has been having supernatural problems. Elise settles these, and makes him forget.
In the present day, Elise is dead. We saw Wilson killing her at the end of the first movie. He is definitely under suspicion, but he thinks he's innocent. As things start getting weird again, the family moves back in with his mother, Barbara Hershey. This puts him back at the scene of his childhood trauma.
They also get back in touch with Specs and Tucker, still mourning Elise's death. They go through her files, and find the tapes she made of Wilson's case. They enhance and find the image of adult Wilson standing behind himself as a boy.
The boogie man in this chapter turns out to be "The Bride in Black", a serial killer from back in the day who wore a black wedding dress. Spirit flashbacks reveal him to be an abused kid with psychosexual mommy problems - I am not sure this is at all interesting.
Slightly more interesting is when Wilson becomes completely possessed by the spirit of the bride, and his son, who was lost in a coma in the last movie, must go into the Further (spirit world) to extract him.
This is a busy movie, with a lot of genuine tension and scares. It also didn't hold together especially well for me. It was great to see Elise again, both in her early days and as a spirit. But on the whole, this didn't especially hold together for me. Let's see what the next chapter holds.
Saturday, August 4, 2018
Nothing Can Go Wrong...Go Wrong...
I first saw Westworld (1973) at the drive-in, first run (?) with Soylent Green. But Ms. Spenser hadn’t seen it, and what with all the buzz around the new tv series, I queued it up.
Like many 70s movies, it starts with a layer of meta - a commercial for Delos, a compound with 4 adult theme parks: Westworld, Roman world, Medieval world and TBD world. Then we see our cast on the plane (man, do normal planes from the 70s look like luxury today). James Brolin is the cool dude who has been there before, Richard Benjamin is the nervous newbie. The idea is that each park recreates a period in history, where all the NPCs (non-paying customers?) are robots. Therefore, you can do whatever you like - particularly kill or fuck these robots. The “fuck” part is only implied at first - lots of nudge-nudge when discussing the decadence of Romanworld. But first comes the killing.
At a cowboy bar, Yule Brenner comes in and starts trying to pick a fight with Benjamin. Benjamin doesn’t want to fight, but with Brolin’s encouragement, finally blows Brenner away. Then he gets to go upstairs with pretty sex-bot Linda Scott at Majel Barrett’s whorehouse.
In between the guest action, we see the high-tech control center where robots are repaired and re-programmed. We overhear the techs talking high-tech, and also making dentist appointments. But if you listen closely, you’ll hear hints of coming problems.
It all comes to a head when robot Yule Brenner returns for another gunfight. But this time he shoots James Brolin dead. (SPOILER.) It’s quite a moment in what has been more or less a comedy. Cool, savvy Brolin is dead, and nervous, nerdy Benjamin is being pursued by the implacable Gunfighter, Yule Brenner.
I guess you’d have to call the whole movie a black(ish) comedy. It’s based on the Delos spokesperson who says, like the setup to the joke, “Nothing can go wrong.” Brolin and Benjamin do well in their roles, but what really stands out is Yule Brenner. He is so creepy as the strong, silent Gunfighter. Now we’re ready to watch as many of his other movies as possible.
Like many 70s movies, it starts with a layer of meta - a commercial for Delos, a compound with 4 adult theme parks: Westworld, Roman world, Medieval world and TBD world. Then we see our cast on the plane (man, do normal planes from the 70s look like luxury today). James Brolin is the cool dude who has been there before, Richard Benjamin is the nervous newbie. The idea is that each park recreates a period in history, where all the NPCs (non-paying customers?) are robots. Therefore, you can do whatever you like - particularly kill or fuck these robots. The “fuck” part is only implied at first - lots of nudge-nudge when discussing the decadence of Romanworld. But first comes the killing.
At a cowboy bar, Yule Brenner comes in and starts trying to pick a fight with Benjamin. Benjamin doesn’t want to fight, but with Brolin’s encouragement, finally blows Brenner away. Then he gets to go upstairs with pretty sex-bot Linda Scott at Majel Barrett’s whorehouse.
In between the guest action, we see the high-tech control center where robots are repaired and re-programmed. We overhear the techs talking high-tech, and also making dentist appointments. But if you listen closely, you’ll hear hints of coming problems.
It all comes to a head when robot Yule Brenner returns for another gunfight. But this time he shoots James Brolin dead. (SPOILER.) It’s quite a moment in what has been more or less a comedy. Cool, savvy Brolin is dead, and nervous, nerdy Benjamin is being pursued by the implacable Gunfighter, Yule Brenner.
I guess you’d have to call the whole movie a black(ish) comedy. It’s based on the Delos spokesperson who says, like the setup to the joke, “Nothing can go wrong.” Brolin and Benjamin do well in their roles, but what really stands out is Yule Brenner. He is so creepy as the strong, silent Gunfighter. Now we’re ready to watch as many of his other movies as possible.
Thursday, August 2, 2018
Amazing and Tormented
The Amazing Mr. X (1948) is amazing. There is, however, no real Mr. X.
It stars Linda Bari, a wealthy widow living in a mansion by the sea. She is just about ready to move on from her husband, and possibly accept the attentions of her neighbor, Richard Carlson. She walks across the beach, the same beach her wonderful impetuous husband used to run down to with her. There, in the crashing waves, she hears her calling her name. Then she runs into Turhan Bey.
Bey is a spiritualist who knows who she is, who her husband was, and all the little irritating habits her neighbor has. Then he vanishes, but not before he gives her his card, identifying him only as Alexis, spiritualist.
She begins to feel haunted by apparitions (just like in The Awakening!). Her sister, Cathy O'Donnell, tries to explain it away. Finally. she goes to visit Bey in his haunted mansion, where the doors open spookily - which he laughs off as an effect to impress the rubes. He offers to help, but you have to wonder: Is he real or phony?
SPOILER - he is phony. Bari's maid is his confederate, and it's all a ruse. But then, at a seance, Bari's husband really does appear, playing Chopin on the piano like he always has. I won't spoiler the rest, but it's a doozy.
But for us, the most amazing thing is the parallels between this movie and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Bert I. Gordon classic, Tormented. First, there's Richard Carlson, the neighbor, playing the milquetoast "second husband" role. He was the famous "Tom Stewart killed me!" in Tormented. Who was a pianist, just like Bari's husband. Of course, both movies are ghost stories, and both feature lots of crashing waves. What a treat, after seeing Winky, to get to see Tom Stewart!
For non-MST3K fans, the big draw for this will be the mysterious and exotic Turhan Bey. It's easy to see how Bari's sister would fall in love with him, even after he's exposed as a fraud. Bari is good as well, very classy. Altogether, a superior B-movie.
It stars Linda Bari, a wealthy widow living in a mansion by the sea. She is just about ready to move on from her husband, and possibly accept the attentions of her neighbor, Richard Carlson. She walks across the beach, the same beach her wonderful impetuous husband used to run down to with her. There, in the crashing waves, she hears her calling her name. Then she runs into Turhan Bey.
Bey is a spiritualist who knows who she is, who her husband was, and all the little irritating habits her neighbor has. Then he vanishes, but not before he gives her his card, identifying him only as Alexis, spiritualist.
She begins to feel haunted by apparitions (just like in The Awakening!). Her sister, Cathy O'Donnell, tries to explain it away. Finally. she goes to visit Bey in his haunted mansion, where the doors open spookily - which he laughs off as an effect to impress the rubes. He offers to help, but you have to wonder: Is he real or phony?
SPOILER - he is phony. Bari's maid is his confederate, and it's all a ruse. But then, at a seance, Bari's husband really does appear, playing Chopin on the piano like he always has. I won't spoiler the rest, but it's a doozy.
But for us, the most amazing thing is the parallels between this movie and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Bert I. Gordon classic, Tormented. First, there's Richard Carlson, the neighbor, playing the milquetoast "second husband" role. He was the famous "Tom Stewart killed me!" in Tormented. Who was a pianist, just like Bari's husband. Of course, both movies are ghost stories, and both feature lots of crashing waves. What a treat, after seeing Winky, to get to see Tom Stewart!
For non-MST3K fans, the big draw for this will be the mysterious and exotic Turhan Bey. It's easy to see how Bari's sister would fall in love with him, even after he's exposed as a fraud. Bari is good as well, very classy. Altogether, a superior B-movie.
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Southern Reach
Even before I read Jeff VanderMeer's novel, I was excited about the upcoming movie: Annihilation (2018). After I read it, I was even more excited. I was puzzled when I saw it though, until I saw a quote from the Alex Garland, who wrote and directed: He called it a "dream of the book". He read the book, then adapted it without re-reading (or looking at the second and third books of the "Southern Reach" trilogy). So, although it doesn't share many events with the book, it captures the feeling very well.
It starts with Natalie Portman in quarantine, being debriefed by by Benedict Wong. She doesn't seem to have much to say. They talk about her husband and - flashback. Her husband, Oscar Isaac, is a soldier. He went on a mission and didn't come back for a year. Portman, a cancer biologist, has just given up on ever seeing him again, when he appears in the house. He can't say where he's been or how he's gotten back - he doesn't seem to know. Then he gets very sick, the government comes and sticks him in a secret facility.
A psychologist, Jennifer Jason Leigh, gives her a few clues - there's an area of the United States, Area X, behind a force field of some sort, called the Shimmer. No one and nothing that goes into the area comes back. Except Isaac. Now, Leigh is going in, and Portman volunteers to join.
The team includes Tessa Thompson, a black physics genius, Tuva Novotny, another scientist, and Gina Rodriguez, a medic (I really thought it was Michelle Rodriguez - similar look and badass personality, but no relation, I guess). They hike into the Shimmer, and wake up in tents, with evidence that they had been there for days. They start to hike toward the shore, to find the Lighthouse.
They travel through tropical jungle, running into horrible creatures, beautiful flowers, and rampant moss and mold. Worse, they find humans transformed into these new lifeforms. And they also start gong mad, and start dying. Tessa has the best death - she knows she will live on in some way and doesn't want to end up eternally screaming in fear. So she lets the Shimmer transform her into a human shaped flowering bush.
When they get to the Lighthouse, they find a sphincter-like hole in the base and a tunnel beneath. In the book, it was a little different. They found a hole near their base camp, that the biologist thought of as a tower - one that went down instead of up. Also, there was a fire-and-brimstone sermon written in moss that went on and on, the deeper you went. I was sorry they left that out.
Some other differences: In the book, no one had names, just roles: The biologist, the psychologist, etc. The psychologist had loaded them up with post-hypnotic suggestions, so the disorientation wasn't entirely due to the Shimmer (which wasn't called that in the book - it was just Area X or the Southern Reach). Also, in the movie, Tessa Thompson has some bafflegab explanation for the phenomenon, but the book left it as just a mystery.
Also, in the book, the biologist is a bit autistic, even before she enters Area X. She didn't much care for people, felt distant even from her husband, but could get lost for hours just watching a tidal pool, a tadpole pond, or the puddle in a drained swimming pool. Portman's character is much more of a normal, engaged, social person.
But the movie did manage to get some of the blankness, the anomie, the void at the heart of life inside and outside the Shimmer. Garland does a little more explaining (hint: it's about identity) but still lets some of the mystery stand.
It seems that the studio thought he left entirely too much mystery in, that the movie was too intellectual and nobody would understand it. As a result, it was barely released, and Netflix paid to stream it. Kind of a shame, but at least we got to see it.
Another difference from the book - the book was very clearly set on the coast of the Florida panhandle. It is never mentioned, but I could tell VanderMeer was describing the area around St. Marks. I had visited the lighthouse there when I lived in Tallahassee. It seems they tried to film there, but the vegetation was so thick, the camera couldn't really register anything. So the final look isn't quite Gulf Coast.
It starts with Natalie Portman in quarantine, being debriefed by by Benedict Wong. She doesn't seem to have much to say. They talk about her husband and - flashback. Her husband, Oscar Isaac, is a soldier. He went on a mission and didn't come back for a year. Portman, a cancer biologist, has just given up on ever seeing him again, when he appears in the house. He can't say where he's been or how he's gotten back - he doesn't seem to know. Then he gets very sick, the government comes and sticks him in a secret facility.
A psychologist, Jennifer Jason Leigh, gives her a few clues - there's an area of the United States, Area X, behind a force field of some sort, called the Shimmer. No one and nothing that goes into the area comes back. Except Isaac. Now, Leigh is going in, and Portman volunteers to join.
The team includes Tessa Thompson, a black physics genius, Tuva Novotny, another scientist, and Gina Rodriguez, a medic (I really thought it was Michelle Rodriguez - similar look and badass personality, but no relation, I guess). They hike into the Shimmer, and wake up in tents, with evidence that they had been there for days. They start to hike toward the shore, to find the Lighthouse.
They travel through tropical jungle, running into horrible creatures, beautiful flowers, and rampant moss and mold. Worse, they find humans transformed into these new lifeforms. And they also start gong mad, and start dying. Tessa has the best death - she knows she will live on in some way and doesn't want to end up eternally screaming in fear. So she lets the Shimmer transform her into a human shaped flowering bush.
When they get to the Lighthouse, they find a sphincter-like hole in the base and a tunnel beneath. In the book, it was a little different. They found a hole near their base camp, that the biologist thought of as a tower - one that went down instead of up. Also, there was a fire-and-brimstone sermon written in moss that went on and on, the deeper you went. I was sorry they left that out.
Some other differences: In the book, no one had names, just roles: The biologist, the psychologist, etc. The psychologist had loaded them up with post-hypnotic suggestions, so the disorientation wasn't entirely due to the Shimmer (which wasn't called that in the book - it was just Area X or the Southern Reach). Also, in the movie, Tessa Thompson has some bafflegab explanation for the phenomenon, but the book left it as just a mystery.
Also, in the book, the biologist is a bit autistic, even before she enters Area X. She didn't much care for people, felt distant even from her husband, but could get lost for hours just watching a tidal pool, a tadpole pond, or the puddle in a drained swimming pool. Portman's character is much more of a normal, engaged, social person.
But the movie did manage to get some of the blankness, the anomie, the void at the heart of life inside and outside the Shimmer. Garland does a little more explaining (hint: it's about identity) but still lets some of the mystery stand.
It seems that the studio thought he left entirely too much mystery in, that the movie was too intellectual and nobody would understand it. As a result, it was barely released, and Netflix paid to stream it. Kind of a shame, but at least we got to see it.
Another difference from the book - the book was very clearly set on the coast of the Florida panhandle. It is never mentioned, but I could tell VanderMeer was describing the area around St. Marks. I had visited the lighthouse there when I lived in Tallahassee. It seems they tried to film there, but the vegetation was so thick, the camera couldn't really register anything. So the final look isn't quite Gulf Coast.
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