The Sum of Us (1994)

The Sum of Us is a sweet Australian gay romantic comedy that was obviously based on a play (by David Stevens, who also wrote the screenplay). The two main characters, a dad and his son, speak directly to the camera and tell us about their feelings and their lives. This is cute, though, and it was sort of a 1990s romantic comedy thing. It feels like a product of its period.

I don't understand the title The Sum of Us, and the film doesn't really explain it despite the constant direct address employed throughout; perhaps it's clear in the original play. 

I watched this movie because I fell in love with Jack Thompson in the Australian New Wave film Sunday Too Far Away, and I thought what else has this man been in, and then I came across a gay romantic comedy with Russell Crowe starring him and wondered what on earth I had been missing all this time.

Russell Crowe is dreamy obviously, and he is so sad and sweet for the whole film that you can't help but be in love with him. But The Sum of Us just isn't that great.The acting frequently feels a bit stilted, and the direction is off most of the time, not really understanding how to set the right mood between sad scenes, jokes, and romance. It's almost as if the directors (Geoff Burton and Kevin Dowling) are just trying to tell the story or something silly like that without thinking about what the beats are and how we're supposed to be responding to the story. As such, the movie never hits its stride and when The Sum of Us ended I thought, oh wait, really? That was the final beat? Shrug.

I think you can stream The Sum of Us, but I got Netflix to send me the DVD. This was another one in the very long wait section.

Reap the Wild Wind (1942)

The weirdest thing about this weird film is that it really wishes it were Gone with the Wind. And that may seem a very odd thing to say about a movie that boasts an underwater battle with a giant squid as well as numerous storms at sea, a ventriloquized lapdog, and a besuited monkey, but here we are. First it's an action film, then it's a very silly romantic comedy, then it's an action film again – obviously written for Errol Flynn – then it becomes a courtroom drama for twenty minutes?? And then the giant squid shows up? This thing is insane. To make weird matters even weirder, John Wayne is not the hero. 

Of course, it is called Reap the Wild Wind, so the film itself knows very well it wants to be Gone with the Wind, and Cecil B. DeMille knows it too. The whole thing is just too stupid for all that. This is not, despite what the poster says, Cecil B. DeMille's greatest. Not even close.

Louise Beavers (who is always lovable) is doing her best Hattie McDaniel. Also Ray Milland is fine, but I kind of hate Paulette Goddard. She is no Vivien Leigh and that is for sure. Susan Hayward and Robert Preston both play smaller parts in this film. Both acquit themselves without embarrassment.

But I think the central trouble with Reap the Wild Wind is that DeMille's characters aren't people. They are so burdened with meaning and symbolism, that even a good actor like Ray Milland is playing a kind of symbol for the South and John Wayne a symbol for "untamed men of the sea" or somesuch business. And Goddard gets to symbolize Florida itself. The whole thing is so overwrought there's just no room for the humanity that might have appeared with these characters under circumstances other than a movie by Cecil B. DeMille.

As far as I can tell, Reap the Wild Wind isn't streaming anywhere. The DVD is hard to come by, and it sat in the very long wait section of my Netflix queue for a long time. But that's how I finally watched it.

House (1977)

Insanity. House (ハウス) is understandably a classic. It's like this film is from another planet altogether – or the mind of a child making up a story.

Siodmak Double Feature

Robert Siodmak is a king. As you probably know, The Killers is my absolute favorite film noir, and Criterion has been showing some other Siodmak films this month, including Criss Cross, which is only ok, and Phantom Lady, which is absolutely excellent. It's chilling and troubling, and it's masterfully shot. The photography is just breathtakingly good. This is a very, very good film – sexy and psychologically thrilling, while also being a good mystery – it's a total pleasure to watch.

Criss Cross is just a serviceable noir. Siodmak paired up with Burt Lancaster again after The Killers. Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo both bring the smolder, but this film just isn't plotted that interestingly. It's structured in such a way that I had forgotten all that I needed to remember by the time we jumped back forward in time. I understand why Daniel Fuchs wrote the screenplay the way he did, but it distinctly lessened the kind of tension any crime film like this is trying to build. Also, Dan Duryea is a smarmy looking actor, sure, but he's not really menacing.

I watched these movies on the Criterion channel. They had three Siodmak films and I had only seen The Killers, so I was really delighted to see that they were showing these others.

Pride and Prejudice (1940)

This version of Pride and Prejudice is completely charming, and I feel surprised to find myself saying so, because I've always thought both Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson to be very stuffy. 

They're both delightful here. This whole thing is sweet and very funny, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Edna May Oliver's appearance in act two as Olivier's aunt is, of course, perfect. And the costume design is truly exquisite. In fact, those two words don't really do enough. The costume design is revelatory. Really. Even if Garson, Olivier, and Oliver weren't all wonderful, the costume design would seriously be enough of a reason to watch this film.

Girlfriends (1978)

I loved Girlfriends. It's a delightful Mazursky-esque comedy that seems to prefigure the Noah Baumbach–Greta Gerwig collaborations of the 2000s. Bob Balaban and Christopher Guest both have key roles, but this is just a hilarious feminist film about singlehood and marriage and having a career and being an adult. This should be a classic. Its obscurity is undeserved.

...and two weeks later Criterion announced it was releasing this on DVD!

Sun Don't Shine (2012)

Riveting from its first shot, Sun Don't Shine is consistently surprising, creepy, frustrating, and very, very Florida. I really liked it. Shane Carruth was a producer on this, and I'm sure that helped a good deal, but Amy Seimetz's direction is impeccable here. The movie explains itself slowly, unfolding through its characters' strange behavior, and it stays intriguing throughout.

I watched Sun Don't Shine on the Criterion Channel.

Enola Holmes (2020)

I found Enola Holmes really charming. Poor Sam Claflin (who is a brilliant actor) drew the short end of the stick here with a cartoony villain role, but everyone else acquits themselves well.

Enola is available now on Netflix.

Buck Privates (1941)

Buck Privates is a really cute musical comedy, and Abbot and Costello are quite funny. I don't really understand the appeal of the Andrews Sisters, personally, but they're a huge part of this film, and they're fun enough. The real trouble with Buck Privates is that it's totally invested in getting more people to apply to be in the Army. The Army is, apparently a place where boys become men, where you can date women, and where you prove your masculinity. So I liked Buck Privates, but its politics are bullshit and sort of typical of the immediate pre-WWII period.

The Glenn Miller Story (1954)

The Glenn Miller Story is intensely, insanely boring. It is so boring it's actually perverse. This film was somehow wildly popular in its own day. I have no explanation for that other than to say I do not understand the 1950s at all.

Weathering with You (2019)

I liked Shinkai Makoto's Weathering with You (天気の子) so much more than I thought I would. In many ways this is a cliché love story about two teenagers. It's also a fantasy about weather and love and other things. But... it gets under your skin after a while. And it's so gorgeously animated, and the characters are so lovely, that I couldn't help but fall in love with all of its clichés. The climate change part of the story is also really, really interesting, and the whole thing just works. I wasn't expecting to like this so very much, but it flooded its way into my heart.

Man of La Mancha (1972)

This is abysmally bad. 

 See, the only good thing about Man of La Mancha, which is, frankly, a terrible and terribly confusing musical, is the song "The Impossible Dream". (It has a one or two other ok songs.) 

But when you cast Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren – both big stars without good singing voices – you might find yourself with a well-acted film, but well acted in service of what? 

Man of La Mancha is just kinda stupid, so you have these excellent actors speaking insipid dialogue. And then you cast James Coco as Sancho Panza??? Coco is a broadly funny clown. He would work onstage in the role but not with these two leads. This movie is just awful.

King Kong (1976)

Meh. The art direction is cool. I loved the score. Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange are great. Honestly, all of the parts are good here, but the whole of this version of Kong is not that interesting. Kong himself just doesn't have the appeal that he needs.

Un Jour Pina a Demandé... (1983)

Chantal Akerman, whose shots can sometimes feel like the go on too long, whose gaze can occasionally feel unbearable, who lets the camera linger until it feels as though we don't really have permission to keep looking, films Pina Bausch's Tanzteater Wuppertal at work. Bausch's choreography is repetitive and can be painful or difficult. It's a perfect marriage of choreographer and filmmaker. Akerman's work makes here makes it seem as though all of life is choreographed by Pina Bausch. The backstage footage of the dancers simply doing small things like smoking or fixing their hair even seems like Bausch choreography. I loved this.

Harlem Nights (1989)

Harlem Nights is badly directed (by Eddie Murphy) but hilariously written (by Eddie Murphy). The jokes are really funny, and all very much in Murphy's vein of humor. I laughed out loud a lot, but this is not a good movie at all. Mostly because it's just so uneven. The tone is really off. Even though it's an absolutely hilarious movie, entire sections seem filmed to be serious. And while the costume design is exquisite, the production design truly makes no sense. Richard Pryor also seems miscast. Della Reese is incredible – as are most of the cast – but Pryor isn't really holding his own here. He was probably already quite ill when he made this, and so watching him is rather sad, and he seems not to understand that he's in a comedy. It's an odd movie that I quite enjoyed all the same.

King of Jazz (1930)

This old film is interesting for a million reasons. It's a color film from 1930 using the old two-color system. It's also a gigantic musical revue with incredible set and costume design. There are some superb numbers, as well, including delightful bits by Bing Crosby. The highlights, though, are Al Norman, who does his rubberlegs routine as part of the Happy Feet number, and Marion Stadler, who does a genius acrobatic-dance number in Ragamuffin Romeo.

One of the hilarious things about King of Jazz is that its centerpiece is "Rhapsody in Blue", but the two-color system doesn't include blue. The film doesn't suffer, though. Whatever shade of green is used is blue enough to round out the effect.

Barbarella

Totally fun, sexy, imaginative, campy. In short, almost utterly delightful. Barbarella is like a Terry Gilliam movie but enjoyable.

Ernie Pyle's Story of G.I. Joe (1945)

I dunno. William A. Wellman's Story of G.I. Joe sort of felt generic to me, perhaps because it isn't really a narrative and is more interested in Pyle's own stories. In other words, this is a film much more interested in the men who fight and their experiences of daily agony and exhaustion than it really is in telling any kind of story. Now, I wouldn't normally mind that, but Wellman's film tries to make this into a story anyway. It succeeds somewhat, and I loved all of the main characters. Robert Mitchum is excellent throughout, and is actually the lead actor of this movie despite Burgess Meredith's top billing. 

Meredith, incidentally, is referred to throughout as old, and he sports an almost completely bald head and gray hair while telling everyone he is 43. I'm only 39, but I can tell you right now that I have no intention of looking that old in my early 40s. 

In any case, this has some good moments, but it's not that interesting. I did love the dog.

The Violent Men (1955)

The Violent Men is very violent, especially for 1955. Its message, however, purports to be... non-violence? It doesn't sell the latter very well. This is great while it is about revenge and violence, but it takes some melodramatic turns and is way more focused on a subplot between Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson than it needs to be. Glenn Ford is perfect. (Isn't he always?) And Max Steiner's score is gorgeous! But the film doesn't quite work. The photography, too, is very cool, but Cinemascope always looks very weird on a home television, and it looks weird here too. I do wish there was a way to transfer cinemascope for home viewing that worked.

35 Shots of Rum (2008)

This is such an intriguing film about a father–daughter relationship and the people in their circle. The daughter (played by Mati Diop) takes care of her father and is dependent on him in many ways. Well, they're co-dependent. She doesn't know how to leave her dad and go off and live her own life. It's a struggle. This is a beautifully made film that I enjoyed immensely. It's contemplative and sad and mournful and I really loved every minute of it.

Australian New Wave IV

Gallipoli is almost perfect. I have so many good things to say. In addition to being a wonderful love letter to Australia – like all films in the Australian New Wave – its also a brilliant anti-war film. It does its anti-war work by not showing the war, barely even showing the fighting. This film is an obvious inspiration for both Heartbreak Ridge and 1917 – also both excellent war movies. But Weir's film is also not merciless. Most of the movie is pleasurable, even fun, and the war is made to look silly, in many ways, as, I suppose, so many people treated the war. It's so very silly... until it isn't. The third act of this movie is outright bloody genius. There was a moment, very late in the film, when I screamed at how good Weir's choices were. I literally was just cheering on the way Weir represented the violence of war. (I'm not a normal person.) And the film's end is heartbreaking, devastating. I actually just curled up and sobbed when it was over. I loved this movie.