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. 
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
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. 
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.
When German soldier John Gilbert is sent away to Africa as punishment for killing Greta Garbo’s husband in a duel, his best friend Lars Hanson marries his love while he’s away. While it’s a bit disappointing to see Garbo blamed for the actions of all the men, the theme of friendship through the film is sweet, especially to the point where the characters regularly meet on an island they’ve dubbed the Isle of Friendship. For a silent era film, I was impressed by a number of the perspective choices through the film. There’s a hokey alternate ending that was included on the DVD that I’m really glad was not used in the actual release.
It is hard to not immediately compare this to The Hand of God as they are both Italian films featuring a teenager as he comes of age surrounded by a cast of eccentric characters. It’s obvious this influenced that other film. While I’m still rather done with films centered on white, teenaged boys, especially when they all seem to feature adults sexually taking advantage of children, this one exceeds the others as it allows the focus to move away from the boys and let the other characters have time to shine. Set in a Northern Italian seaside village during the 1930s Mussolini era, it offers a real sense of time and place while also having just enough surreal, dreaminess to invoke a feeling of nostalgic memory.
Oscar Win: Best Foreign Language Film
Oscar Nominations: Best Director; Best Writing, Original Screenplay
As a dog lover, it’s difficult to enjoy Story of a Dog. The film follows a group of dogs as they go through Basic Training so they can serve with their trainers during World War II. The dogs are forced into unnatural situations, such as remaining calm during gun fire, just to fight in man’s war. 
Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein died this month, so I thought it was a good time to watch the short film that serves as her testimony, One Survivor Remembers. As the only survivor of her family, she was sent to various work camps along the German border, finally forced into a months long death march which killed all of her remaining friends, only to finally be liberated by the man she would eventually marry. Unlike some other Holocaust films that can verge on tragedy porn, this one maintains a steadfast focus on Gerda’s gracious telling of her story.
Oscar Win: Best Documentary, Short Subjects (One Survivor Remembers)
Oscar Nominations: Best Short Subject, One-reel (Story of a Dog)
When this remake of West Side Story was announced, I wondered what purpose it could possibly serve. The 1961 version has received high acclaim since it was made and seems better situated to exemplify the preceding decade. After watching this film, my misgivings weren’t allayed. In this take on Romeo and Juliet, Rachel Zegler, whose brother David Alvarez is a leader among the Sharks, spontaneously falls in love with Ansel Elgort, a former member of rival gang the Jets. While the film doesn’t establish their ages, the actors look as if there is about a fifteen year difference. It also doesn’t help that Elgort is rather weak in the role, particularly when he’s singing with the much talented Zegler. Overall there are some bad (constantly overpowering the view of the actors with light sources), neutral (changing the tomboy character to a trans man and the Jewish doc to Rita Moreno), and some great changes (little bits of added backstory and casting Latinx actors who intersperse more Spanish into their dialogue) but as a whole don’t give enough difference in vision to explain why anyone wanted to make this version happen. 
Oscar Win: Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year; Best Achievement in Production Design; Best Sound; Best Achievement in Costume Design; Best Achievement in Cinematography; Best Achievement in Directing
Cattle rustling is rampant in Texas and Errol Flynn has the evidence that Paul Kelly is responsible. He has to survive the general lawlessness of San Antonio and the attraction to visiting singer Alexis Smith in order to arrest his prey. The stakes don’t feel particularly high in this film, but there is plenty of gun-play especially in a full-throttle, no holds barred, barroom brawl. The costumes are prettier and less rugged than a John Wayne western, but that helps to highlight the athleticism and charm of Flynn. 
Oscar Nominations: Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color; Best Music, Original Song
While I recently watched both 49 Up and 56 Up, this is my review for the majority of the series. For 56 years, director Michael Apted revisited a group of Britons every seven years to establish the changes that individuals undergo in life. While Apted only worked with the director of the first installment, that one began with the idea that you could see the adult person simply by looking at that person at the age of seven. I have no idea how really true that is (I personally think there are some hints in comparing the progress as they age), but it is truly a gift that this group allowed the world a glimpse into their lives and the wisdom they have to share in being compelled to reflect on the turns their lives take every seven years. It’s very personal to try to compare myself at various ages, particularly when watching the episodes most close to my current age, and feeling how universal some milestones are.