Month: April 2022

Posted on 2022-04-12 | No Comments |

Brick (2005)

In this neo-noir set at a California high school, loner Joseph Gordon-Levitt battles against school’s drug ring to investigate the details of his ex-girlfriend’s disappearance. It contains many of the expected noir features: jazzy soundtrack, femme fatales, lost blondes, slow moving fans, and the detective being knocked out multiple times. it also includes quite a convoluted plot with bread crumbs being thrown left and right that don’t always lead straight to the conclusion. I probably would have liked this a lot more if I hadn’t watched The Kid Detective fairly recently. That film handled shifts in tone infinitely better and the teenagers seemed more realistic which gave me greater entertainment value.

Posted on 2022-04-12 | No Comments |

Here Comes the Navy (1934)

James Cagney and his best friend Frank McHugh join the Navy to annoy Chief Petty Officer Pat O’Brien. Also annoying O’Brien is Cagney’s romance with his sister Gloria Stuart. The film is the first of nine that Cagney and O’Brien acted in together and the scenes between the three men can be amusing at times. The film itself is unfortunately a mostly dull affair. Made with the cooperation of the U.S. Navy, it feels like the type of propaganda film that would be made ten years later. I’m a sucker for films with zeppelins and blimps, but sadly the scenes including one here don’t come until near the end of a drawn out eight-seven minutes.

Oscar Nomination: Best Picture

Posted on 2022-04-12 | No Comments |

The Grandmaster (2013)

Kung fu grandmaster Ip Man reflects on his life after his fortieth birthday and the connection he had to Gong Er, the daughter and holder of the secrets of another grandmaster. Apparently there were a number of changes made from the original Chinese cut of the film to what was released for American audiences, including about 22 less minutes of runtime. The latter version is the one I watched and the editing made for a confusing product with a very choppy flow. It’s a beautiful looking film with some gorgeous fight choreography, but I’m not sure I got much from the film beyond that.

Oscar Nominations: Best Achievement in Cinematography; Best Achievement in Costume Design

Posted on 2022-04-12 | No Comments |

The Temptress (1926)

At a masquerade hosted by her lover, Greta Garbo has a brief dalliance with her husband’s friend Antonio Moreno who is visiting Paris from Argentina. After her lover’s suicide, she and her husband follow Moreno on his return to Argentina. All the men in the film fall in love with Garbo and somehow she is to blame for the actions they take because of this. There’s even a duel fought on her behalf, not with guns or knives but with whips. The ending sadly continues this theme. There are some great pre-Code scenes with the frenetic masquerade ball and everyone at a dinner table playing footsies with one another, plus Garbo is gorgeous throughout, but it’s hard to get on board with the morality the film is trying to sell.

Posted on 2022-04-11 | No Comments |

Universal Horror (1998)

Included on the Dracula DVD set was this documentary about the history of classic monster films made at Universal Studios during the 1930s and 40s. It’s fairly comprehensive in its scope from covering details on each of the films, interviewing a number of people connected to the films (fans who saw them in theaters, actors from the films, and family members of those involved with the productions), and providing historical context by comparing the plots to films at other studios and also the effects of the world wars. I was rather impressed that what seemed like a throwaway bonus feature was so informative.

Posted on 2022-04-11 | No Comments |

Dark of the Sun (1968)

A band of mercenaries, led by Rod Taylor and his friend Jim Brown, are hired by Congolese President Calvin Lockhart to ostensibly rescue Europeans from an isolated mining town, but in actuality to recover $50 million worth of diamonds from the town’s vault. It may or may not be an accurate portrayal of political struggles in the heart of Africa post-colonialization, but it certainly is a violent one, including scenes of children being murdered, rape, and an iconic chainsaw battle. There is only the slightest pretense that the mission isn’t completely about war profiteering nor much concern about the growing body count toward its completion.

Posted on 2022-04-11 | No Comments |

The Mysterious Lady (1928)

Military captain Conrad Nagel falls in love with Russian spy Greta Garbo and must secretly travel to Serbia in order to exonerate himself from a treason charge. It’s a very bare bones espionage film, but Garbo is quite alluring as a spy. She’s great at being both seductive and stoic so that it’s not obvious whether she’s also in love or just doing her duty.

Posted on 2022-04-11 | No Comments |

In Darkness (2011)

During World War II, a Catholic sewer worker and thief, despite his best misgivings, hid a group of Jewish people in the sewers of Lwów, Poland. Adapted from one of two books about the incident, the film suffers from coming after many better films on the Holocaust. The majority of the film is set in the sewer, which means much of the film is very dark and there are umpteen closeups of rats scurrying about. The runtime is already fairly long, but there isn’t a lot of time spent building the characters of the Jewish group before they go into hiding, which makes each person hard to discern in the dark. For better or worse, the film doesn’t shy from portraying the characters humanly. There is quite a bit of sex for a film about genocide and many scenes involve various characters yelling at each other.

Oscar Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film of the Year

Posted on 2022-04-10 | No Comments |

House of Frankenstein (1944)

I had begun watching Son of Dracula, but other than its creepy Southern gothic atmosphere, it didn’t have much going for it, so I decided to try this one out instead. Boris Karloff and his hunchbacked assistant J. Carroll Naish escape from prison and enact revenge on the men who put him there with the help of various classic monsters. The film makes the most of its 70 minute runtime to create an anthology of sorts, introducing each monster and tying them into the main storyline. The only thing that’s even needed to carry the movie is Karloff absolutely perfect as an evil scientist.

Posted on 2022-04-10 | No Comments |

Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980)

The life of cult leader Jim Jones, founder of the Peoples Temple and orchestrater of the Jonestown mass murder-suicide, is expertly portrayed here by Powers Boothe. Jones somehow started off as a champion of civil rights, pushing for integration in his Indianapolis church and housing equality in San Francisco, only to lead those same people he championed to their certain deaths in Guyana. The miniseries is pretty comprehensive in its view, even including actual dialogue from the Jamestown death tape. There are great performances throughout the cast from a James Earl Jones cameo to Brad Dourif as a drug addict turned follower, but it’s really the charisma of Boothe portraying Jones’s downward spiral toward megalomania and paranoia that stands out.