In a Lonely Place (1950)

This script is dynamite. It's actually just brilliant. Bogart and Grahame are fucking fantastic. No... everyone's good. This is an extraordinary film. It's absolutely excellent from start to finish. It's clearly a kind of riff on Greek tragedy, and one can easily see why this movie is such an important inspiration for the Safdie Brothers. I streamed it on Criterion on a channel of films that have been inspirational for the Safdies. Totally tracks.

But man this thing is good. The script is just so nuanced and well done. In a Lonely Place toys with its audience, effectively turning us into Gloria Grahame, so that we worry along with her. It's a great, great movie.

Show Me Love (1998)

Come through, Swedish lesbian coming-of-age romantic comedy! This is the gay high school movie I needed in gay high school! And it came out when I was just out of high school. This one even has a happy ending. Highly recommended.

In the U.S. Fucking Åmål was called Show Me Love when it was released in 1999. The original title is not about fucking anyone but is an expletive referring to the terrible town in which the young people in this film live. They hate it there and they're constantly saying "fucking Åmål". When my friends and I first heard it in the film we laughed our heads off. I chose this film as my selection one week for the unseen movie club just based on the fact that I knew it was a gay film I hadn't seen. It was a great choice. It's a really delightful movie.

You can find a copy of it here at the Cave of Forgotten Films website.

El Norte (1983)

Gregory Nava's El Norte is really sad and pulls absolutely no punches. Young farmworkers laboring under slavery conditions in Guatemala travel to the United States in hope of a better life.

To be honest, El Norte is rough. It's stunning that this movie is talking about anti-Latino racism in 1984. And this movie is smart about race and about labor in California. El Norte is an impressive feature.

I Married a Witch (1942)

I Married a Witch is a delightfully fun film by René Clair that he made in Hollywood with Fredric March, Veronica Lake, and Cecil Kellaway in the main roles. It's wickedly, laugh-out-loud funny with a whimsical score, and a great script. I had a great time. I also think this would make an amazing musical. Someone should write this!

The Deadly Affair (1967)

Decided to watch another British spy movie scored by Quincy Jones, since I liked A Dandy in Aspic so much and the Criterion Channel had a whole selection of movies scored by Jones. The Deadly Affair was directed by Sidney Lumet from a novel by John le Carré and starred James Mason, Maximilian Schell (great as always), and Simone Signoret.

The Deadly Affair got a bit of a slow start, but it ended up being quite good. I won't spoil the mystery by talking about it, but this is definitely a film worth watching. The main takeaway here is that Simone Signoret – and we already knew this, so I guess it was no surprise – is a genius. She gives an incredible performance. She's sensitive and hard at the same time, vulnerable and vicious, brokenhearted and steel. It's really a perfect portrayal. She has four scenes, and she's just terrific.

Also, for some reason there is an extended sequence at the theatre, where we watch the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of none other than Edward II directed by Sir Peter Hall. We are, of course, treated to the sequence in which the young king is sodomized by a red-hot poker. I rolled my eyes. The show, for the record, looks awful. The set is really hideous. Why this is in the film is beyond me, but it is there all the same.

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

I try to like films like this, but they are not for me. I thought this was really stupid. And I didn't laugh at any of the jokes. This kind of humor is just not my style. I am not sure if this means I am opposed to Blake Edwards or opposed to Peter Sellars or opposed just to the pink panther movies. Also, while we're here: this film had nothing at all to do with the pink panther. It was all about some psychopath attempting to murder Inspector Clouseau. The panther didn't even appear as a plot point or oblique reference.

Me and You (2012)

Io e Te, this final Bernardo Bertolucci movie, is quite sweet. It maybe could be a play, actually, since it takes place mostly in a confined space, but it has some truly lovely, sensitive touches to it. I quite liked this.

Splash (1984)

Splash was apparently a big hit in 1984.

Um... ok. This film is a live-action cartoon. No one in it behaves like a real person.

It does have three or four pretty great jokes – I really was cackling when Darryl Hannah tells Tom Hanks what her real name is in her own mermaid language – but mostly I thought this thing was pretty terrible.

After a while, even where the next joke would be became obvious.

Also this shit is insanely sexist. I guess I could be more specific about that, but, like, a mermaid falls in love with a young commitment phobe for reasons – well, she falls in love with him because the writers say she does. But this woman has basically no subjectivity of her own. Her only function is to love this dorky man, to appear naked several times, and to be the butt of various jokes.

Donkey Skin (1970)

Peau d'Ane (Donkey Skin) is insanely whimsical. The art direction and costume design alone are enough of a reason to watch this Jacques Demy take on a Grimms Fairy Tale. The costumes are iconic and wonderful, and that may be all that anyone needs to know about this weird film.

The Wayward Cloud (2005)

The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲) – the title is a sort of riff on "The Wayward Wind", a song you've probably heard Patsy Cline sing – is, perhaps, the weirdest Tsai Ming-liang movie I've seen. Lee Kang-sheng plays a porn actor who starts the film having sex with a woman and a watermelon. There is a water shortage in Taiwan, and so watermelons are everywhere – they're cheaper than water – and people are drinking watermelon juice instead of water. This also has very strange musical numbers; the ones in The Wayward Cloud are less integrated into the narrative than the ones in The Hole. These musical numbers are more interesting, though, and are very imaginatively staged. At one point, Lee wears a penis hat and dances around in a very large bathroom with dozens of girls. In another, he cross-dresses and sings amid many watermelon umbrellas. I don't know. I found this movie very strange, and the ending is very troubling.

The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)

This script is legitimately terrible, and The Muppets Take Manhattan isn't funny at all. Joan Rivers and Gregory Hines each have funny bits in it, but mostly this is just absurdly bad.

Just as an example of how terrible this thing is, at the end of the movie – which one might expect to be a moment when the muppets, in fact, take Manhattan – the muppets are performing their college show on a Broadway stage but then we move inside the show, in which a real minister is apparently marrying the pig and the frog. This is in the Broadway show they're doing, but also lots and lots of muppets are there, including the entire cast of Sesame Street. The pair are married and then... the movie's over. The plot of the movie is completely given over to the wedding ceremony, and whether or not the show the muppets were doing for their Broadway audience was a success or not, we shall never know. I am imagining, however, that their show was a success, because for some reason people in the muppet movies seem to enjoy the muppets' musical performances – except, that is, when the plot dictates otherwise...

Black Narcissus

Powell and Pressburger have treated the usual 1940s subject matter – which ought to have had a moral lesson and ended in Christian triumph – into a psychological thriller. The film has amazing lighting, beautiful technicolor, and some wonderful performances, particularly by Flora Robson and Deborah Kerr. The third act really is thrillingly exciting, an astounding thing for me to be saying about a movie about nuns, if you think about it.  

Black Narcissus seems like it's going to do something akin to The Inn of the Sixth Happiness or Come to the Stable but the film takes a deliciously, sickly weird turn, and that makes it very enjoyable.

And while we're talking about very weird turns this movie takes, normally Sabu would be the chief sexual force in a film like this, but instead it is David Farrar who appears as a sexual object throughout the movie. He shows up with a shirt half opened about mid-way through the picture, and then he shows up completely shirtless for an extended period of time. He's even shirtless on the poster! This is a very steamy Powell/Pressburger movie.

Good Morning (1959)

I think the most stunning thing about Ozu's Good Morning is that not only does it have Ozu's usual Chekhovian nuance of sweetness, sadness, finely observed character study, and humor, but Good Morning also has very broad farce! A fart joke is a running bit in this film, and the plot follows two small boys who stop speaking to their parents because they won't buy a television for the house. It's quite hilarious! Much funnier than most Ozu films but sacrificing none of his usual detail.

Good Morning is a perfect film. In fact, all of Ozu's films are perfect. Is Ozu Yasujirō the best film director to ever live? I am convinced that he is.

Columbus (2017)

Columbus is gorgeous, simple, really moving. In a way it is a talky piece about a man dealing with his father and a very young woman dealing with her mother, but Kogonada has shot the architecture of Columbus (Indiana not Ohio) so lovingly, that the film becomes much more than it seems to be, and Columbus is about how we love the spaces around us, how we get comfortable, and how we help the people we're with.

Kogonada loves Ozu (as he should, he's the best director ever to make movies), and it shows in the way he photographs spaces and silence between people.

This is a quiet, lovely film with some beautiful photography and great performances (Haley Lu Richardson is really wonderful). I was very moved.

Kogonada's next film is called After Yang. It is supposed to be released in 2020, and it stars Haley Lu Richardson (good choice) and Colin Farrell (!). I don't know when we get to see this, but I'm ready.

Two from Alain Resnais

I recently watched two very different films by Alain Resnais (who made the very, very serious films La Guerre Est Fine, Hiroshima Mon Amour, and Last Year at Marienbad in the late 1950s and early '60s). The 1980 film and the 1998 film were downright quirky, and they've cemented for me just how experimental and interesting a filmmaker Resnais actually is.

Last week the unseen movie club chose Same Old Song (On Connait la Chanson) as our film. It is odd and charming and actually sort of wonderful. This movie involves a bunch of characters who lipsync to older pop songs as a part of their dialogue, which (as it happens) is mostly about depression and love and loss. The characters look for love and fight with their spouses and then burst into song, but it isn't their voices we hear at all but those of Josephine Baker and Charles Aznavour and other older singers. It's pretty strange and totally fun.

On Connait la Chanson was released in 1998 in France (1999 in the U.S.), two years after Woody Allen made Everyone Says I Love You, in which the characters actually sing the older torch songs – and in Paris, no less. On Connait la Chanson is not a romanticized version of love, though, and doesn't have the Woody Allen fantasy veneer over it. Resnais's film is a film about depression, and it's interesting and weird.

And then a couple days ago I saw that Mon Oncle d'Amérique was on the Criterion Channel, so I decided to watch that film too. This film stars Nicole Garcia, Gerard Depardieu, and Roger-Pierre, and it is a very strange movie. It follows these three characters and then also a scientist who is telling us about human behavior and social psychology. It's an odd choice. There are a lot of mice who learn particular behaviors... and then there are humans in mouse costumes re-enacting their behaviors. It's super interesting and very strange.

Mon Oncle d'Amérique is, however, marred by an unfortunate casting situation: I suppose it is awful to say, but I found Roger-Pierre's character unlikable mostly because I didn't believe him to be attractive enough to inspire the absolute drama he inspires in this movie as Nicole Garcia and Nelly Borgeaud fight over him.

Overall, though, I found this movie troubling. I don't think I emotionally identified with any of the characters, but the movie is so strange that it really did get under my skin.

You Were Never Lovelier (1942)

I think this title is right and Rita Hayworth was never lovelier. The gowns in this movie. It's impossible not to love her in this film. The most important thing that this poster is getting right is that we are going to You Were Never Lovelier to see Rita Hayworth (and her figure!). Astaire is great – his usual charming self, but Hayworth is stunning.

I watched this as a palate cleanser after the not-so-great H.C. Potter-directed, Astaire-starring Second Chorus from 1940. You Were Never Lovelier was obviously made to bank on the success of the Astaire–Hayworth musical comedy You'll Never Get Rich from 1941, and the studio was right to make another Astaire–Hayworth movie as soon as possible. This one is tons of fun, has great dance numbers, and has Rita Hayworth at her most absolutely gorgeous. This is a delightful film.

Second Chorus (1940)

Burgess Meredith and Fred Astaire play swindling trumpet players in Second Chorus, as they try to get Artie Shaw to hire them while they both attempt to romance Paulette Goddard. The trouble is that they fuck up so much and care so little about helping Goddard and so much about themselves and about competing with one another, that I found this film awkward in the extreme and not very much fun as a consequence.

There are lots of fun '40s Fred Astaire musicals. This ain't one of 'em.

A Dandy in Aspic (1968)

A Dandy in Aspic is a thinking man's spy film with Laurence Harvey from 1968. This is Anthony Mann's final film, and I enjoyed it immensely. I'm almost always up for a crime film like this, and as I watched Laurence Harvey play a British double agent, I was surprised that he was never asked to play James Bond. It's odd, isn't it? He'd have been the perfect Bond. At any rate, he's great in this, and Mia Farrow is fabulous.

To be honest, I had never even heard of A Dandy in Aspic until the Criterion Channel told me I should probably watch it. I am very grateful to them. This film is great.

The Slipper and the Rose (1976)

I didn't know this musical existed - or rather, I knew The Slipper and the Rose: the Story of Cinderella existed, but I hadn't realized it was a Sherman Brothers musical from the 1970s!

This film, however, is fairly terrible. The songs are fine, and it has some great performances; Michael Hordern as the king is particularly funny and clever, and Edith Evans is always a pleasure to watch. But the singing is not so great, and although I was really sold on this film at the 60-minute mark or so, the film is about 160 minutes – easily 40 minutes longer than it ought to be. There is an entire third act that is unnecessary and has no songs to justify its existence. I blame Bryan Forbes, who made some excellent films in the 1960s (Séance on a Wet Afternoon, The Whisperers, King Rat) but who can't make this musical sing.

There is one highlight in the film – the song "Protocoligorically Correct", which is performed by Hordern and a chorus of advisors. It's hilariously staged with brilliant comic timing and absurdly wonderful lyrics.

This film is scored by Angela Morley, who was a trans composer working in film in the 1970s.

Raging Sun, Raging Sky (2009)

Julián Hernández's film Raging Sun, Raging Sky (Rabioso Sol, Rabioso Cielo) had come to my attention as a gay Mexican movie, and a couple months ago I added it to my Cinema Q list. And then a week or two ago I saw that it was on the Criterion Channel but was going to leave at the end of April. It's three hours and ten minutes long, but I decided to watch it anyway.

All of the synopses of this film online are incorrect. In this film, three young men are looking for love and sex in Mexico City. The film opens on a woman who is hearing a lot of voices. She rides the bus, she hears voices; she seems to be looking for someone. She finds our young hero. The two of them spend the night together. Then in the morning, before she leaves, she blesses him and tells him his beloved will come find him. For the next ninety minutes or so of the film we watch men have anonymous, mostly unenjoyable sex in black and white. The men, including our hero, look for something that will make them happy, connect, disconnect, reconnect. It's the gay world of Mexico City – cruising in restrooms, in porno houses, in apartments, alleyways, bars, on the streets. There's a lot of this.

Our hero finds his beloved, and the man trying to come between them finds himself upset and sad. And then... we are in the mythical world of the Maya, in, perhaps, the Popul Vuh. And our four main figures have become figures of Mayan mythology, fighting for good or evil, love or selfishness. As I say, Raging Sun, Raging Sky is a three-hour film, and the last act of the film takes place in the desert, in a mythological world where the woman from act one plays a character called the heart of the sky.

I adored this movie. It's visually stunning – at times even breathtaking – and it is always compelling. It's sexy and beautiful and just wonderful. I loved it absolutely, and I can't believe I've never seen a Julián Hernández film before now. I need to check out his earlier work.

The Truth Beneath (2016)

Lee Kyoung-mi's The Truth Beneath (비밀은 없다) is a mystery film that doesn't really work and doesn't have much to it except the ancient Greek tragic structure it's playing with (Park Chan-wook was one of the screenwriters). I liked it ok, but it's scripted strangely and the direction doesn't usually work. More than anything I left this film very confused still about what the solution to the mystery was. What actually happened still wasn't clear at the film's end.

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006)

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (黑眼圈) is a great Tsai Ming-liang movie, easily my favorite film of his. It's so tender and so compassionate, and it unfurls carefully and intelligently. I was particularly taken with the Malaysian actor Norman Atun, whom Tsai apparently discovered on the street before putting him in the movie. I loved this film. It's super weird, and super smart, and centrally – like all of Tsai's films – about loneliness and class inequality.

The poster makes I Don't Want to Sleep Alone look gayer than it is. It is gay, of course, but the man on the right (Atun) is helping the man on the left (Tsai's muse Lee Kang-sheng) – who has been very badly beaten – to urinate. It's not the sexiest of scenarios.

A Star Is Born (1976)

So... the plot of A Star Is Born is, of course, tired, and as old as, well, 1937 (and 2018), but this 1976 version is valuable for a couple of reasons.

I watched this film as part of a series on the Criterion Channel called "Style Icons of the 1970s", and I totally understand why it was shown under this rubric. Streisand is a fashion goddess in this film. She wears so many great things and truly looks amazing.

The other important factor here is Kris Kristofferson. My mom never thought he was attractive and always scoffed when anyone brought him up, and so I honestly never paid him much mind (thanks mom!) but he is dreamy in this movie. He's, like, impossibly handsome. If you ever wondered how a young starlet might fall in love with a messy drunk, here's your explanation.

This 1976 A Star Is Born makes much less sense than the '37 and '54 versions, however, and the ending – in which Barbra goes into a disco performance as a way to mourn – truly is outside of all logic.

Romancing the Stone (1984)

Romancing the Stone is a ton of fun. It's funny, it's full of great action, absurd sequences, and wonderful characterization. I had a blast.

Shaft

In many ways, Shaft is great. Everyone in it is very very cool, and the screenplay is really delightful. I love a crime film, as you know, and Shaft is a great character.

But Shaft's plot doesn't really have much to it, all told, and director Gordon Parks doesn't build tension very well, so it is never really clear when we're supposed to be afraid, when we can relax, when we ought to pay closer attention. Even the action scenes, while great on paper, don't really pop the way they ought to.

The score, by Isaac Hayes, is superb, of course. And Shaft has a gay sidekick in a bar down the street who actually says he's gay in the film. It's kind of an amazing moment. He's talking about a woman who wants to sleep with him and he says, "I told her I'm gay and she said she'd change me. It's not enough that I'm beautiful, now she wants me to play character parts!"

Circus of Books (2020)

Circus of Books is a completely charming portrait of two middle-aged straight folks who run a gay bookstore called Circus of Books (a Los Angeles institution for 30 years) and distribute gay porn. I loved it. (It's on Netflix right now.)

Another Country (1984)

This is... not Maurice. I think the main issue here is that this is only a story about schoolboys and the stupid English prep school system. It is a critique of this system and of British masculinity and hypocrisy and homophobia, and that's all good and well, but unfortunately Another Country doesn't really aim higher than that. It's good, and it's fun to see Cary Elwes (so cute) and Rupert Everett and Colin Firth, but this film just doesn't ever really lift off. The problem is that Another Country has this frame of Rupert Everett's character in the USSR in the 1980s, and we know that he was a spy and turned against the UK. I would've been super interested in the spy story, but the movie is only interested in Britain and its hypocrisies. This is a play, too (although the film is not stagey at all), and I wonder if it worked better on stage.

Toute une Nuit (1982)

I think Toute une Nuit is my first Chantal Akerman movie. I was really into it. It's just a bunch of very short little stories about love and rejection and connection. We follow a whole bunch of different characters – some longer, some for only a few moments – and we get a portrait of a very vivid night, so much passion and so much confusion behind closed doors. One of the pairs of lovers is even two men. It was a nice touch, and I liked this movie. There isn't a lot onto which one can really latch, though, and my companions were both bored. Oh well.