Watching (and rewatching) an inordinate number of films since Covid-19 proved the pin to burst the latest economic bubble. First, the most recent releases:
- Knives Out ~ Starts out as an intriguing whodunnit chock-a-block with twists, false leads, side plots and a rogue’s gallery of characters with plenty of motive to commit murder. Halfway through, the one who committed the act is revealed, while the remainder of the caper is consumed with who framed the innocent party. Ends on a not-so-subtle note of So long, Anglo-Saxon America, your world will be expropriated by those migrant hordes from south of the border that “do the jobs Americans won’t do”, as the propaganda of political correctness dictates. Grade: C-.
- Richard Jewell ~ Clint Eastwood is Hollywood’s nightmare come true: a bonafide conservative in the leftist liberal shetl, whose legacy is secure, and with enough “f**k y**” money to make movies the studio heads despise. Jewell’s tragedy involves all the bete noires Eastwood and paleoconservatives oppose: opportunistic press-titute out to make her name by smearing an innocent man; Fourth Estate greedy to sell more newspapers & gain audience; spineless academic at institution of higher indoctrination taking petty revenge on a good ol’ boy who outwitted him at his own game; corrupt federal agents in reactive mode desperate to pin blame on anyone to cover up their own incompetence; and enough flashes of the Stars and Bars to make snowflakes and lefties collapse into seizures of pavlovian revulsion… Eastwood incriminates them all in a stirring film that proves the nonagenarian director has still got it. Michigan native Paul Walter Hauser nails the accent. Grade: B+.
- 1917 ~ Filmed in the breakneck continuous-shot mode with new actors possessing — as yet — no star drawing power (save Colin Firth early on in a grim-faced cameo as the commanding officer), this film mightily impressed, as did the recent Midway remake, with the respect it showed towards the hapless doughboys and nameless troops compelled to do the fighting and dying in the elites’ global chess game. Grade: A+.
- The Good Liar ~ Charmed as always by the craftsmanship and presence of British stars Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen, but enough of “The Holocaust” brand trademark. Enough already. Grade: D.
- Motherless Brooklyn ~ Schizzy actor supreme Edward Norton wrote, directed and stars in this moody, disturbing tale of political corruption, murder and justice denied set in 1950’s Manhattan. It’s the kind of film I tell myself I can’t stay with ’til the end, but I do anyway. Something about it ~ the introspective soundtrack, a new chapter in the warped character study Norton perfected in Primal Fear and The Score ~ kept me watching. Grade: B+.
- The Corrupted and The Gentlemen ~ Two smart, edgey British thrillers, leavened with a tsunami of Cockney slang, the first starring the chameleonic Timothy Spall of whom I’ve been a committed fan since he gave us the Falstaffian character of “Beano” Baggett in Still Crazy; the second from the gifted director Guy Ritchie, who returns to the rich vein he struck in 1998’s Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels (coincidentally released the same year as Still Crazy). Grade: A-.
Now to the ones in my permanent collection that I never tire of watching again…and again…and again.
- Bram Stoker’s Dracula ~ I respectfully recycle the complete title that director Francis Ford Coppola used to distinguish his (imho) definitive retelling of the vampire classic, which has been so abused and retrod as to practically inter the 19th century novel that spawned them all, like so many satanic siblings. Coppola makes movies the way his fellow Italian colleague Federico Fellini did: treating the big screen as a painter’s canvas to lay on deep rich vibrant colors, match them to dialogue, plot and motion, to create visual and aural masterpieces that stick with you in an afterglow of sensory overload. Gary Oldman should have won an Oscar for his conception of evil incarnate, but the academy in its blinkered hidebound tunnel vision doesn’t give awards for horror films. The achingly beautiful soundtrack composed by Wojciech Kilar makes this a work of art. Addition of the great Anthony Hopkins just cements the eternal appeal of this film for me. Grade: A+++.
- Some Like It Hot ~ For years Billy Wilder has been in a neck-and-neck sweepstakes with John Huston for my Favorite Movie Director lifetime achievement award (still too close to call). This mapcap comedy of errors, farce, what-you-want-to-call-it, brings a smile to my face every time I see it, marveling at the eternally evergreen synergy created by Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe and auteur Wilder, to say nothing of the pitch-perfect supporting cast of Joe E Brown, George Raft, Pat O’Brien, Joan Shawlee and others. How did Billy Wilder (usually with longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond) do what he did so flawlessly and consistently for so long again and again and again and again? Beats me, but nobody leaves ’til I get the recipe. Grade: A+++++++++++.
- The Shining ~ Obviously horrors both manmade and supernatural are on my mind these days. Those and the effects of claustrophobia on the human psyche. Kubrick was an artist among that select group known instantly by one word (Bird, Trane, Rembrandt) whose impact on his chosen medium is felt even by those unfamiliar with his work. He set a standard of perfectionism that never sterilized his films but made them richer and more haunting. An over-the-top Jack Nicholson and a bug-eyed Shelley Duvall (who begins as a mousy mentally abused housewife but later discovers hidden reserves of steel) make this a perennial favorite. Ensnared by Wendy Carlos’s moody, horrific soundtrack, the movie bedevils the imagination long after lights-out. Grade: A+.
- The Bridge On The River Quai ~ [WARNING=spoilers] I read the novel by Pierre Boulle as a teen and the movie remains a lifelong favorite worthy of annual viewings. Besides the addictive action and allure of war movies, Bridge is full of ironies: Alec Guinness as the senior British officer whose devotion to duty and the Geneva Convention compels him to build a “better bridge than the Japanese” (even if it aids the enemy), only to be the one who destroys it in a moment of clarity that alone probably guaranteed him the Best Actor award for 1957; William Holden as the insouciant malingering yank who miraculously succeeds in escaping, only to return and make the supreme sacrifice for a military he despises; Jack Hawkins as the icewater-in-his-veins leader of the commando unit sent in to blow up the bridge, who by all rights should have been left for dead but ends being the only survivor of the mission. And a smart salute to the brilliant Sir David Lean, who made epic films no director has ever surpassed, yet could also craft a small set piece of perfection like Brief Encounter that would fit inside a tea cosy. Grade: A+++.