Jolson Sings Again (1949)

You know, I actually thought that we were going to get through Jolson Sings Again without having to see Larry Parks in blackface playing Al Jolson in blackface. Nope. Jolson Sings Again takes a really weird turn and for act three takes us into the making of the film The Jolson Story, which, like this movie, starred Larry Parks lipsynching to Al Jolson. It's a strange meta-movie third act. Jolson Sings Again is the sequel to that 1946 film, and we watch the effect of the film's smash success on the real Jolson... played by Larry Parks. It's kind of cool but also strange. Parks is excellent, as he was in the original film, and actually Jolson sounds wonderful. He's in great voice. I even liked the script for the first two acts of the film. But Jolson Sings Again stumbles in its final sequences, especially when we just watch Jolson watching clips of The Jolson Story for at least ten minutes – maybe more!

Messiah of Evil (1973)

Messiah of Evil is weird for many, many reasons. It's a zombie horror film made by the screenwriters of... American Graffiti?? It also stars openly gay actor Michael Greer in a very strangely butch performance. (The whole movie is, of course, quite campy, since it is a horror movie, so Greer fits right in.) But the real star of this film is the amazing art on the walls in the main setting of this film – which is an artist's studio. The art on these walls is stunning and constantly takes over in many of the film's shots. It's the best performance in the movie.

Kings Row (1942)

The story of the making of Kings Row is, I think, more interesting than the film itself. Let's just start by saying that this movie is a fairly awful melodrama, mostly because Robert Cummings and Ronald Reagan are legitimately terrible in this, especially Robert Cummings, who gives an absurdly milquetoast performance. But it's worse than that. Excellent performers like Judith Anderson and Claude Rains are also fairly bad in this. 

What is interesting about the movie is that it is based on a famous mid-century potboiler novel that, apparently (though one wouldn't know it from the film) was about incest and homosexuality and all sorts of illicit eroticism and terrible sadism. Who knew? Very little of that comes across in this movie, which is only cursorily interested in Freudian psychiatry. In any case, it's shot beautifully and designed beautifully, but the acting is truly awful, and the screenplay is a hodgepodge of stuff that doesn't really work. I, for one, am getting ahold of this novel so I can see what all the fuss was about in 1940. Oh I meant to talk about the score, which is amazing and in which you can clearly hear Star Wars! John Williams obviously borrowed at least one theme from Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Give it a listen and see if you hear it.

Women of the Night (1948)

Mizoguchi's Women of the Night (夜の女たち) is a cautionary moral tale, but it is also a story of postwar Japan and the way that the state abandoned wives, mothers, and children of soldiers and forced them to fend for themselves. Mizoguchi's film is in bad shape – even on the Criterion channel where I watched it – but it's still finely realized and emotionally affecting.

Last Summer (1969)

Fucking Frank and Eleanor Perry and their horror films that aren't horror films at all. Have you ever noticed that they film every story they have to tell into a horror film, even when the movie is something like David and Lisa or Diary of a Mad Housewife? (Obviously Mommie Dearest is the most glaring example.) Well, Last Summer is one of these, and it's, frankly, a terrifying portrait of rich white youth. 

Barbara Hershey and Richard Thomas are really excellent in this, if reprehensible, and Catherine Burns is phenomenal. The plot of the movie, though, is quite disturbing, and Perry's gaze doesn't help. He seems most interested, after all, not in the people who have been harmed by the three reprehensible young people at the film's center but in the so-called best of the three, the one who might have had the chance to be a human. This is an odd place to land one's gaze, to my mind, but it is definitely where the Perrys' film finds itself. 

Oh! There is this very strange little gay scene in which Barbara Hershey and Bruce Davison are spying on two people kissing on the beach and they look like a man and a woman but then one of them rolls over and it turns out to be two men. Davison's character wants to leave, but Hershey's character declares that she wants to stay and watch. It is, I suppose, a hint of things to come, as the movie moves further and further into territory where Hershey's character wants to watch worse things.

P.S. Now that I've seen The Battle of Neretva, The Happy Ending, and Last Summer I've seen all the films that were nominated for Oscars in 1970. (There actually aren't very many years before 1995 when I have seen all of them.) It's sometimes really hard to find these old movies to finish out the list. I found The Happy Ending and The Battle of Neretva on YouTube. For Last Summer I had to acquire a bootleg copy.

The Half of It

The Half of It is a really adorable romantic comedy slash best friend story, and I just loved it from start to finish. Well... maybe not all the way to the finish. Writer–director Alice Wu (have you seen Saving Face? If you haven't, you should watch that tonight) doesn't quite nail the ending here. It just doesn't soar in the way that it should. Or... well maybe I'm changing my mind even as I write this. The ending is not about Ellie Chu and the girl she loves (or thinks she loves); the ending of the movie is about Ellie's relationship with her best friend Paul. And that part of the ending is satisfying. It was always about Ellie and Paul. I guess the poster makes that clearer. A different kind of love story indeed. Ok. I'm kind of won over now. 

In many ways this is a typical teen comedy. It uses many of the same tropes as the other movies in its subgenre. But The Half of It just does all of those tropes so much better.

Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944)

I have been continuing my obsession with WWII pilot movies, but Thirty Seconds over Tokyo kind of sucked. It's soooo long, and it's way more about Van Heflin and his wife than it is about the bombing. The truth is that the title is right, and I should have believed it. All we get is thirty seconds over Tokyo. No joke. The 1942 Tokyo bombing takes up very little space in this film, but wow! The bombing is so so so so so cool. Like in the middle of it I was screaming This is so cool!!! The effects in this movie are incredible. But then the movie goes back to being super boring... with an hour left in it.

The Deep (1977)

While it is obviously true that the poster for The Deep rips off the poster for Jaws, and even though The Deep is based on a novel by Peter Benchley, the same novelist who wrote Jaws, and although The Deep stars Robert Shaw, who played the shark hunter Quint in Jaws, and while certainly that means that this 1977 film was attempting to capitalize on the 1975 masterpiece's success, The Deep really has nothing to do with the terror of the deep or the terror of the ocean as such, and it certainly isn't a monster movie like Jaws is.  

The Deep is just an action–adventure film. There are violent criminal villains, to be sure, but The Deep doesn't have any of the existential philosophy or stare-into-the-abyss poignancy of a more serious-minded film. And I don't say that as an insult in the least. This movie is an action movie, and it does its generic work fairly well. Nick Nolte is sexy and fun, and Jacqueline Bissett is more sexy and more fun. There's a terrifying moray eel, a great shark scene, and at least one really good fight sequence. I had a good time. 

It is also worth discussing the two rapes in this film. There are two sequences in The Deep that are filmed like rapes, and I think one of them is worth analyzing. Neither of them is a rape per se, but they both use the filmic language of rape (I analyze this language in my book The Violate Man, which, maybe will be published at some point, who knows – that's another story).

In the first of these sequences, Louis Gossett Jr., the film's villain kidnaps Nolte and Bissett and takes them to some little cabin. They search them for a little piece of glass that contains morphine or something (this is sort of immaterial), but it's a small piece of glass and so they're looking everywhere for this glass. They don't strip-search Nolte but they threaten to strip Bissett, and she is clearly terrified. When Gossett orders his henchmen to strip her, she defiantly says she will do it herself. We watch the sequence with a closeup on her face, a medium shot of her back as her brassiere comes off, and a shot of Nolte as he watches helplessly. In fact, the Nolte shot is a copy of a shot from Deliverance (1972), in which Jon Voight helplessly watches a violent man rape his friend. There is no rape here, but the camera doesn't show Bissett's breasts. In other words, the camera does not take the viewing position of the villain. We are not complicit with him in his activities. So what we see instead is the film's villain forcing Bissett to strip for him. He sees her breasts but we do not, and she is terrified. It's an emotional sequence, and then he tells her to put her clothes back on.

The problem with all of this is that we have already seen Jacqueline Bissett's breasts. They are, in fact, a showcase of the film's very long, silent, underwater opening sequence. We see them clearly through the tight white t-shirt she wears as she swims in the deep. (There was even a poster that featured them! I refuse to link it here, but you're free to Google it.) It's a stunningly sexy moment of near-nudity with which to open the movie, and it was one of the film's notable features upon its release. Producer Peter Guber has said that "that white t-shirt made me a rich man". What I think is interesting here is the way that the film actively frames the baring of breasts as an act of rape – and The Deep's citation of Deliverance makes that intention quite clear – in the context of a black man forcing this white woman to bare her breasts, while in the same film, the same actress bares her breasts for the audience, and this is understood as sexy, as titillation, and most importantly as non-violent. Now, of course, within the context of the movie itself, Bissett's character doesn't know she's being watched in the first sequence and is being treated violently in the second sequence, so all of this is understandable. But in the context of the film's performance it works differently. The narrative functions to make the audience's witnessing of her bare breasts into an innocuous, pleasurable act, and then the narrative functions to avoid identification with the black man who forces Bissett to perform the exact same action. One of these is shown to us as a racialized act of rape; the other one – the one in which we take part – we don't even notice.

The Happy Ending (1969)

In The Happy Ending the acting is the showcase. Jean Simmons is excellent and so is Shirley Booth, who gives an understated, wonderful performance. Teresa Wright, who made such a career playing plucky, eager young women in the 1940s is great here as Jean Simmons' awful mother. Just all around the performances are excellent. Bobby Darin even has a great part!

Otherwise this feels in many ways like yet another movie about a sad, possibly suicidal, woman in an awful marriage in the 1960s who hasn't yet realized that it is marriage itself that is the problem. This the kind of part that Anne Bancroft really specialized in with movies like The Pumpkin Eater and The Slender Thread.

Like Someone in Love (2012)

Like Someone in Love (ライク・サムワン・イン・ラブ) is just perfection. It's the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's last film, and it's made entirely in Japan. This is haunting, hypnotic, quietly tragic filmmaking. My colleague said it's like Ozu crossed with Hitchcock, and I think he's absolutely right. This was just so wonderful. I loved it.

Up in Arms (1944)

There is a whole bevy of Danny Kaye musicals on Amazon Prime right now, for reasons I couldn't possibly fathom. And since I declared my love for Kaye last week, I thought I'd try another one. Up in Arms is easily the weirdest wartime musical I've ever seen. It's the most bizarre of military musicals - at one point the entire company of the Goldwyn Girls are in bathing suits lounging on the deck of a military ship. I scoffed, of course, and then a sailor said I wish we had had this in the last war and another replied We don't have it in this war. What? 

The thing is, Danny Kaye is just so funny. His antics are absurd. Like truly idiotic and stupid, but I find myself laughing out loud. It's all just so silly! Up in Arms has a lot of gay humor in it too (Or is it anti-gay? Who can tell?). And Kaye is just so downright feminine all the time! The homoeroticism - and there is a ton of it - seems part and parcel to his kind of humor. At one point he even lipsyncs to a recording. It's a great drag show.

Brazil (1985)

There is something about the quirkiness of Terry Gilliam's films that is not for me. I think to me it feels as though his movies really have no stakes. Like, they depict these terrible dystopias, but everyone is inured to how weird they are, so none of it really feels bad. No one is really in pain here. (That's not actually true, of course, but Gilliam doesn't dwell on the people in pain in his dystopias. His films are always about main characters who don't feel the pain staring in mute and unresponsive surprise at those who do feel it.) This film does boast a cool cast, including Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Ian Richardson, and especially Katherine Helmond, who is really really great. But it didn't matter. Brazil just isn't for me.

La Gomera (2019)

The Whistlers is a good crime film. I liked it a lot. It's not extraordinary, really, but it is good, and I love crime movies, so I was into this. There are some good performances (especially Julieta Szönyi and Rodica Lazar), and it is sexy and strange. But I kept thinking that the tension really could have been ratcheted up with a director more sure of himself than Corneliu Porumboiu.

Incidentally, the title is La Gomera, which is one of the Canary Islands – administered by the Kingdom of Spain; The Whistlers refers to the whistling language on the island thast is so central to the plot of this film.

The Battle of Neretva (1969)

I have been trying to watch The Battle of Neretva (Bitka Na Neretvi) forever. I finally found it on YouTube this afternoon and watched it tonight. This is a war film about Yugoslav communists fighting the Germans, the Italians, and German allies in Yugoslavia during WWII while trying to get hundreds of wounded and sick people to safety. The film stars an international cast headlined by Sergei Bondarchuk, Franco Nero, Yul Brynner, Hardy Krüger, and Orson Welles and it is an epic. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this movie. The only thing I can think of that compares to it is Saving Private Ryan, which was made in the late 1990s. The battle sequences in The Battle of Neretva are insane. Just insane. I cannot believe this was made in 1969. This movie absolutely blew my mind. Half the film I just sat with my jaw dropped. It's a superb achievement.

La Madriguera (1969)

Honeycomb – as La Madriguera was called in English – is a Buñuelian satire of absurdity that skewers bourgeois marriage and role-playing. There are sequences that feel like the Genet of Les Bonnes and Saura's film is also quite obviously indebted to Buñuel and to surrealism more generally. It's a weird movie about the dissolution of a marriage, and I can't say I really enjoyed it, although it's always great to see Geraldine Chaplin, and Per Oscarsson is very good too. But... I think Saura's later film Mama Cumplé 100 Años is much funnier.

Mask-the-Cher-movie not Mask-the-Jim-Carrey-movie

Mask is sentimental and sweet. In kind of a boring way. And the more I think about it, the less I like this movie. The trouble with Mask is that it literally has no surprises in store for viewers. 

Actually, there is one moment were I was really surprised by a turn Mask took. This really nice guy who we've known the whole film turns against his best friend and is really mean to him. It's an odd sequence because the movie never revisits this terrible moment. The kid never apologizes for it, and the film doesn't seem to find this behavior to be a problem. 

The ending of Mask is sort of odd, too. Bogdanovich, who has made a very sentimental movie, chooses not to go for a big sentimental finale. It's an understated choice, and it definitely makes for a better movie. But it's too little too late. I thought this was cheesy.

Mishima: a Life in Four Chapters

Mishima: a Life in Four Chapters is possibly the best film about a theatre person I've ever seen. Paul Schrader incorporates theatrical sequences from three of Mishima's own novels into the film narrative here, which is told in flashback as well as in 1970 when Mishima died. This is gorgeously made, and I loved it.

Of Time and the City (2008)

I never watch things like this – in fact I almost never watch documentary films – but I was in a very strange mood and so I went with this. Of Time and the City is an idiosyncrantic and personal meditation on growing up in Liverpool, England, Catholicism, homosexuality, poverty, urbanization, and geography. I quite liked it, even though this is not my usual fare.

Beanpole (2020)

I loved Beanpole (Дылда). Kantemir Balagov's movie is sooo Russian. It is a lonely film about two young women dealing with tragedy and the debts they owe one another. It's also about lesbian desire and both a resistance to and pull toward motherhood. In many ways it is also about the Soviet Union and dealing with the aftermath of the war. It is filled with brilliant performances and a preoccupation with the color green, and it is directed with deep sympathy and feeling. It's really not to be missed.

Je Tu Il Elle (1974)

Ok. Well Je Tu Il Elle is unlike anything I've ever seen. I liked it a lot, actually. And it is amazing to see Niels Arestrup at such a young age!! This is the second Chantal Akerman movie I've seen in as many months. Both of them were strange and I was into both, as well.

I watched this on the Criterion Channel, which is showing a whole bunch of Akerman movies. This one was her first and it's famous for a real-time lesbian sex scene, which was (obviously) why I watched it.

RIII (1955)

Laurence Olivier's Richard III is insanely, absurdly bad. The acting is awful, the scenery is terrible, the women all literally wear the same dress. Seriously. It's nuts. The wigs are absurd: you can see his awful wig in the poster. And Olivier rolls his rs incessantly throughout. 

John Gielgud has a really great couple of scenes before he is killed, and Mary Kerridge also comes off pretty well, but nearly everyone else was surely embarrassed by this. Oof. This RIII is apparently rather a classic, too, somehow! I really don't know how. It's a bad film. I think what makes it so bad is that Shakespeare's script just wasn't written for 20th century audiences, and so there are new characters every twenty minutes with whom we are supposed to bond immediately, and characters are killed off without the film seeming even to care. A 20th century writer would give us time with these characters. Films like Cromwell and Anne of the Thousand Days and A Man for All Seasons and Mary, Queen of Scots. But this one... Ugh. oh my god and the ghost sequence at the end. This thing is absurd.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

Journey to the Center of the Earth is a fairly typical late-1950s science fiction story, although this one has a pretense at being a literary adaptation, that is... if you want to call Jules Verne literature. Haha.

But this film has lots to recommend it. It's funny and sweet, and it has plenty of adventure in it. Pat Boone spends over half of the movie shirtless, and he's pretty and sings beautifully. At one point he's sweating profusely and he cuts off most of his clothes with a knife and it's really more than a kid's movie should allow. If I had seen this as a kid I might have turned gay immediately. Arlene Dahl is also fairly wonderful in this. And there's a really adorable duck called Gertrude. In short, I had quite a lot of fun with Journey to the Center of the Earth.

I got Disney+ so that I could watch Hamilton and Frozen (again – for a research project). But I still haven't watched either Hamilton or Frozen and instead I watched this bit of silliness. I stand by my choice.

Mala Noche (1985)

Mala Noche (Bad Night) is a movie about yearning and unsatisfied desire. It's frustrating for this reason but also very interesting. It's intriguing to note how much earlier than Gregg Araki Mala Noche is, although clearly Araki and Van Sant are very similar. This movie is, in many ways, much better than an Araki movie, but it is definitely not as sexy as an Araki movie. Either way, this was gayportant and I'm glad I watched it.

Wonder Man (1945)

Wonder Man is very stupid and very funny.

And I'm... kinda into Danny Kaye??

He is honestly sexy in this. He's a weirdo, for sure, and his sense of humor actually feels off, but this is a blast and I laughed out loud many times.

Vera-Ellen, who is billed here after Virginia Mayo, for reasons I cannot fathom in the least, is superb in this idiotic movie. Her dancing and singing are both aces, and she does that tap thing where she is able to tap faster than a drum solo with one foot. It's spectacular. She shares a pretty great and totally weird orientalist number with Kaye, but then stars in her own number without him – "So in Love" – and it is the best sequence in the whole film.

5 Bloods

I liked the Spike Lee flourishes in this movie, as I do with all of Lee's movies. But the plot of Da 5 Bloods is a kind of Deliverance picture that questions masculinity... up to a point. The whole thing is just too plot heavy, and it completely unravels by the end of act two. It's also long, and at the end of act two I was stunned to realize we had another 40 minutes to go.

Delroy Lindo is excellent in this movie, but to my mind the action-film aspect (by which I mean an overabundance of plot) takes over Da 5 Bloods by its last act, and this not only seemed to cancel out the work that was done in the first two acts, it negated the emotional payoff of its own ending. A firefight is an exciting way to end a movie, sure, but it makes the movie about that.

Da 5 Bloods' politics are interesting, to be sure, but it is a puzzling – and slightly questionable – move to set a movie about reparations in Vietnam. When a bunch of Vietnamese guys show up at the end of the movie to claim all of the gold (as any reasonable person who has ever seen a movie might expect to happen), Da 5 Bloods introduces the question of precisely who deserves reparations. For this script, unfortunately (at least to my mind), the answer to that question is whoever has the bigger guns.

Da 5 Bloods is on Netflix.

Flying Tigers (1942)

I am just really into WWII pilot movies right now. This one takes place in China with the volunteer force the Flying Tigers, who flew over China before the U.S. entered the war. This movie would be a stinker if its flight sequences weren't totally fucking cool. The script is fairly bad, and John Wayne is horribly, terribly wooden in this. It's odd – he's obviously a great movie star, but he lacks any charm in Flying Tigers for reasons I don't really understand. John Carroll, on the other hand, is every bit the movie star and actually gives a sensitive, intriguing performance. Gordon Jones is great in this too, and the special effects, the photography, the sound, really everything about the flight sequences and the explosions is excellent. This film premiered on Oct 2, 1942, after it ends with a sequence in Dec 1941, and it was clearly a rush job on the pre-production side, so I guess I can't be too mad at the half-written script.

......One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942)

I'm not sure why I'm so interested in WWII movies right now, but I am, especially ones about flying and ones made during the war. This one is great.

......One of Our Aircraft Is Missing was written and directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger. It's absolutely great! The script is excellent, and Ronald Neame's photography is absolute genius. There are so many shots that are jaw dropping. It's really a superb bit of work. The special effects in this movie are great, too, and then there is the acting. The men aren't much to write home about, but Joyce Redman and Googie Withers both give stellar performances. This is a really good one.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)

Roy Rowland's musical fantasy children's film is a delight. Much of that is due to the brilliant cast, headed by Tommy Rettig, Peter Lind Hayes, and Hans Conried. The entirety of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. is imaginative and fascinating, not to mention funny. And the design is genius – Mary Healy's gowns are by Jean Louis and Rudolph Sternad has made Dr. Seuss-inspired sets that also put one in mind of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and both U.S. and German concentration camps.

Thematically the film is about fascism, freedom, and following one's own path rather than those of our elders (or the police!). The film also has a fascinating approach to children and parents, telling kids that adults aren't all they're cracked up to be. The main character, little Bart, sings about how parents aren't to be trusted and never listen to children. Most importantly, this is a kids film that is for kids – not just for adults to "remind them of what it was like to be a kid" or some such business.

And then there is the amazing sequence when the 499 boys show up to play the piano and they are lined up and their suitcases are stacked and their sporting equipment is taken from them. It's designed to look like Auschwitz, and it is an incredible choice.

And the score! The score is fabulous. Not only is the song scoring excellent, but the music throughout is really wonderful.

The film is strangely, queer too. There is an amazing sequence in the dungeon basement that is filled with musicians who don't want to play the piano – kids who play the trombone or violin or piccolo. Except they're not kids at all: they're all fit dancers (including George Chakiris) who are covered in green paint. And they don't play normal instruments but strange, 20-foot trumpets and weird bells and string instruments and enormous xylophones. It's totally bizarre and strangely pleasurable. It's a truly standout number in an excellently weird children's film.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. was apparently a flop in 1953. That is insane. It's so good.

I watched this on the Criterion Channel and it was an excellent Saturday matinee.

David Copperfield (1935)

The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, & Observation of David Copperfield the Younger has a great cast, especially Freddie Bartholomew as young David. Edna May Oliver is her perfect self, as well.

But... well... this movie is a respectful series of events more than it is a meaningful adaptation of anything interesting. It has that standard saccharine 1930s Hollywood sensibility about it. I didn't hate it, of course, but this movie isn't serious about its Dickens except for a few sequences early on. Instead it's jokey and rather silly.

Also... that wife of David's. Woof. I had forgotten how awful she is. It really makes one question one's love for Copperfield in the first place. Like, bro, what are you doing chasing after this ninny?

I watched this because I thought I read that there would be a new Copperfield adaptation out in theatres this year. I am not sure if that is still true or not. I might have made it up.

Violent (2014)

Andrew Huculiak's Violent is pretty lovely. It's beautifully made and the music – the film is made by a musician – is really excellent. I liked this a lot, although I really dislike the title, which makes the entire film seem like something other than what it is. One keeps waiting for some act of viciousness or something, but that doesn't happen because that, thankfully, isn't what the film is about. Instead, Violent is a film about connection and loss and love. It's about recognizing the people who love you and taking pleasure in their love. It is also about death and saying goodbye. It is a lovely movie.