Two from 1968

The Shoes of the Fisherman is a beautifully shot and beautifully scored terrible movie. This film has an excellent cast and it's based on what was, in the mid-1960s, a famous novel, but Michael Anderson's film adaptation is a plodding, self-important, strange mess. It doesn't know where to focus – continually and bafflingly pulling us back to a plot between a newsman and his doctor wife and their marital problems – and even when it's focused on the important plot, the decisions of the new pontiff, it takes too long to do everything and is far too precious with the narrative's events.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a Sherman Brothers movie-musical, also from 1968, that is insane and widely beloved. The title refers to the name of a car that a crackpot inventor (played by Dick Van Dyke) has rigged up, and the two children who star in the film think the sounds car makes sound light "chitty chitty bang bang", so they make up a song with these words as a title and refrain. It's an asinine song that I have been singing for days since I saw the movie.

The plot of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is also completely bizarre, and the songs really don't go together at all. There's one about a candy whistle our crackpot has invented, and there's a diegetic song set in a circus performer's show in which our inventor is forced into performing but in which he performs astoundingly well. And then there is the flying car, which takes our characters off to a land in which all the children are imprisoned. This is entertaining stuff, and if the film makes no sense at all, it's very fun, and Dick Van Dyke is wonderful. Sally Ann Howes is no fair substitute for Julie Andrews, but her voice is gorgeous, and she performs admirably.

I watched both The Shoes of the Fisherman and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on DVD. It's just a fluke that they were both from 1968.

Remo Williams: the Adventure Goes Nowhere

Remo Williams: the Adventure Begins was, apparently, supposed to have a sequel or two – The Adventure Continues, perhaps. Well, there's a clear reason why this adventure did not continue. Remo Williams is dumb. Now, dumb is of course, fine, but this film spends the majority of its time on the elite assassin Remo Williams training for doing the things he's going to do instead of doing them. I swear to you that this training takes up some 75 minutes of the 120-minute film, maybe even more. It's so boring. This is the kind of thing most filmmakers would make into a montage sequence. There's just no reason to watch this adult man train to be a fighter for this long – especially since the martial art he's allegedly learning is totally fictional.

There is another very large problem. The person training Remo is a wise old Korean sensei named Chiun who is played by Joel Grey. It's 1985. Joel Grey as Asian martial artist? Really? Worse yet, this film was nominated for an Academy Award in one category: Makeup. The yellowface makeup in this movie was deemed so extraordinary that it deserved an Oscar nomination.

Remo Williams: the Adventure Begins was directed by Guy Hamilton, who directed a few excellent James Bond films in the '60s and '70s (Goldfinger and Live and Let Die), and one can see how this film is of a piece with that stuff, but this one falls flat. I usually like 1980s sci-fi stuff, although this turned out to be more of an adventure film than science fiction, but Remo Williams was junk.

The Pirate (1948)

I was not into The Pirate. I like the movie's South American–Caribbean setting, of course, and I love pirate movies, but this is no pirate movie. The main character here is a young girl named Manuela (a name everyone in the film annoyingly pronounces as man-you-ELL-a) who has created a set of romantic fantasies about a pirate. This is Judy Garland, who apparently missed much of the filming because of illness. The stuff Garland appears in is pretty great, but the real star – although not top-billed – is Gene Kelly. The trouble is that Kelly's numbers are just... not that good. Cole Porter's score is dumb, and most of the songs are not good.

I did turn a corner with the film near the halfway mark when Vincente Minelli moved into his full fantasy sequence mode. Kelly does a great pirate dance in a fantasy number wearing tiny black shorts and an open shirt. He looks incredible, and the sequence is very fun. Because it's one of those Minelli's fantasy numbers for which he will become so well known, the whole thing just works so much better than the dumb plot that the musical is so tied to. It's almost as if musicals really aren't integrated.

The movie's final number and reprise, "Be a Clown", are also great. In the first version Kelly and the Nicholas Brothers do some great spins and leaps and turns. The Nicholas Brothers are not really restrained, and Kelly really keeps up with them! It's a fun, acrobatic number. The second version is Kelly and Garland as hobo clowns doing a series of bits and yukking it up as the finale. It's a delightful number and the dancing and comedy are great.

On the whole, though, this is rather a flawed mess, and one wishes "Be a Clown" fit nicely in some other show.

The Garden (1990)

The Garden is a psychedelic dream-trip of a film that uses the mythology of the life of Jesus Christ to talk about homophobia and to mourn for the loss of life caused by the HIV/AIDS crisis and the criminally lethargic response from the US and UK governments to the health crisis. I'm not into Christian imagery, so much of this felt heavy handed to me, but this has some very good moments, and every time the central couple appeared onscreen, I felt great. To be honest, though, they're not in it very much...

One image that will really stick with me from The Garden, though, is a small boy on a table spinning a globe, appearing to teach a group of very old male students, none of whom is listening. The old men–students are all banging these wooden rods on the table in unison, making stupid noises. It's a great image of role-reversal: old male hysteria masquerading as reasonable adult behavior. This is, of course, exactly what does happen in the world, although our newsmedia and governments pretend that their hysteria is normal and that other people are the crazies.

I watched The Garden as part of a series of queer films on the Criterion Channel.

Libeled Lady (1936)

Since Thursday night's movie was from 1936, I figured I'd continue the trend and watch Jack Conway's Libeled Lady with Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy, William Powell, and Myrna Loy. It's delightful: a perfect romantic comedy that is very funny and also very sweet. The script is pretty typical stuff story-wise, but the dialogue sparkles and the delivery is aces. William Powell and Jean Harlow, especially, are absolutely hilarious. Powell had me cracking up from the moment he appeared in the film.

I watched Libeled Lady on the Criterion Channel, where it's part of a series of 14 films starring Jean Harlow (including Suzy).

Of the 574 (or 571, depending on how you count) films nominated for Best Picture since the first Oscar ceremony, I have seen all but five. Libeled Lady was one of these five. It's one of the only two movies that was nominated for Best Picture but no other awards (the other is Grand Hotel). Oddly enough, the two other films that I am able to see are also from 1936 – Romeo and Juliet and Three Smart Girls. I seem to be on a 1936 kick, so perhaps I'll finally get these watched. (The final two are 1928's The Patriot and 1934's The White Parade; they're either lost or damaged.)

Lloyd's of London (1936)

With the apostrophe in the title or without, Lloyd's of London is a film about the daring, dangerous, exciting world of nineteenth-century insurance.

This is an epic, sprawling movie by Henry King, and although its plot goes in a million places, King really does nothing to communicate to the audience just how exciting this is supposed to be, so much of the film's excitement falls flat. There are some excellent spy scenes, a two-day boat ride from France to England during the Napoleonic Wars, some delightful adulterous comings and goings, and the film even begins with a fun bit in which two kids spy on a bunch of fraudulent would-be pirates.

But I'm not kidding when I say this film is about insurance, and Lloyd's of London is more interested in communicating to its audiences the virtues of the insurance trade in England – apparently keeping the British navy afloat (I'm skeptical) while making sure that trading vessels were able to come to England to provide food for people who would have starved otherwise (oh?). All of this, apparently, was made possible not by the ships themselves but by wealthy insurers at Lloyd's, risking all they have for the good of England... and only occasionally becoming obscenely wealthy. Lloyd's invents a childhood friendship between Lord Horatio Nelson (Laurence Olivier's character in That Hamilton Woman) and this insurance man at Lloyd's of London, a deep bond that is pure fantasy but that the film uses to illustrate how deeply intertwined the British navy is with British financiers and British merchants (although the film would like us to believe that none of these people was a colonialist).

Lloyd's of London is notable also for starring a 22-year-old Tyrone Power in his first starring role. (He is the star, even if, as you can see from the poster, he is billed fourth). This movie proved to Twentieth Century Fox that Power could carry a picture, and that he was good enough to be the amazing star he would turn out to be. The top-billed talent here is Freddie Bartholomew, who plays Power's character as a child. The movie opens with him, and he is as charming and delightful as he is in all of his movies.

I watched this sprawling epic on YouTube, where you can clearly see that the film's title is Lloyd's of London and not Lloyds of London.

Once upon a Time in Yugoslavia

This documentary – which is about Marshal Josip Broz Tito, his love of film, and film production in Yugoslavia – didn't really work for me. It felt disjointed, and I wasn't really sure what the film was about most of the time. I wanted it to be about the Yugoslav film industry and the state-sponsored production of propaganda films and other films. There is rather a long sequence where the film discusses the production of Battle of Neretva, and I perked up during this section. I love that film, and I had wondered for years how something so epic and grand was financed. But then Cinema Komunisto (god, I hate that title) becomes a film about the fall of Yugoslavia itself and the loss of the dream of the unified nation that is now Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. It's almost as if there is too much to mourn, and so Mila Turajlić chooses to mourn all of it. She isn't wrong, of course, but it makes for an unfocused movie.

The Sting II (1983)

There is nothing really wrong with The Sting II except that it isn't The Sting. The central con is amusing, there is some fun stuff in it, the costumes are great, and Teri Garr is (as always) a delight.

But The Sting II isn't The Sting, and it suffers by comparison. (Why they even bothered with the idea of pretending this was a sequel instead of just crafting it as a standalone caper, I don't really get.) Jackie Gleason is older. He's hilarious, and I love him, but he's no Paul Newman. And Mac Davis... well, Mac Davis is a country star. He's handsome, to be sure, but these guys just don't have the suavity and charm of the Redford and Newman team. This isn't bad, and it definitely doesn't deserve its abysmal reputation. It just lacks a kind of coolness that the original Sting pulls off effortlessly.

Two from Isabel Sandoval in the Philippines

I don't really understand why Apparition (2012) is called Apparition. The film is not about hauntings or spirits or apparitions of any kind – even though the poster totally makes this look like a horror film. Sandoval's movie is about a group of nuns living outside of Manila in a convent in, like, the middle of a forest during 1971 and 1972, when progressive factions were attempting to displace the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and he eventually declared martial law.

The acting in Aparisyon is wonderful. Raquel Villavicencio, in particular, gives an intense, beautiful performance. I fell in love with her in this. And Mylene Dizon and Fides Cuyugan-Asensio are also excellent.

The movie's plot is interesting, but Sandoval is a bit too precious of a filmmaker, to my mind. She doesn't build the psychological tension that is needed for this film to work well. Her preciousness translates to a focus on minutiae that feels too closed off, too isolated and messes up the pace of her films. She takes things just a little too slowly, because the moments in the film are so precious. This makes her films feel slightly off, like they could have been told in a more economic or direct way. There are way too many lingering shots.

But I like Sandoval a lot, and I'm planning to watch her film Señorita before the end of the month. I saw Aparisyon on the Criterion Channel, where it'll be playing until September 30.

* * *

Update. Señorita (2011) doesn't have a poster, so I'm just going to write about it here. Señorita is a political thriller that I really wish had been filmed a bit more like a film noir. As it is, it follows most of Sandoval's normal filmmaking habits, but watching this film – her first – did illuminate a few things. It's far too precious, like Aparisyon and Lingua Franca, but in Señorita it is clear that Sandoval is emulating the slow sequences from Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love, and Wong is a good model to have. Sandoval's Wong-inspired sequences, though, don't have the poetic intensity of the master's. They seem, instead, simply to be there. As if the poetry will arrive if we take our time.

There were things to like about Señorita, and about halfway through, I thought we had been moving at a really good pace – except that I had thought we had started act three and we had not. this clips along at the beginning, but it slows down considerably, and the film's second half is plodding and precious.

War Wore a Yellow Ribbon

This bullshit. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is a jingoistic, nonsensical film that is beautifully shot but terribly scripted and annoyingly directed. It's a film that pretends to be about wanting peace and making peace, about an old man, about to retire, who has seen that war is not the answer. This sexagenarian is played by John Wayne who, at the time, was barely 41 years old. (Listening him croak about how he's given forty years of his life to the cavalry is very silly.) But worse, it's a young man's movie. It's not a film about regret or wisdom or any such thing. Old men should stop wars, he tells his friend Pony That Walks, but the film doesn't believe that at all, and neither does the main character. 

This movie gives us numerous scenes of the carnage wreaked by the Arapaho and the Cheyenne but very little action. There is almost no fighting in this movie – a couple of great chase sequences – but battle sequences are nowhere to be found. In this way, the film is able to create the Indian alliance as a vicious and terrible enemy (complete with the orphaned children they've left crying and alone), but avoid any question of the violence and greed of the U.S. Even worse, the film seems to love, not the United States, but the Confederate States... it's a film from 1949, but the movie tips its hat to Robert E. Lee, and when one soldier dies the unmistakable sound of "Dixie" blends into the score.

Honestly, though, the worst thing about this movie is that it is mostly unclear what is going on for a majority of its running time. It's almost impossible to figure out why anyone does anything they do, and then in the film's third act, before the big (non-battle) finale, which involves hundreds of horses that appear out of thin air, there is an extended – I'm talking 15-minute – comic sequence involving pratfalls, comic punches, and drunk soldiers that's straight out of vaudeville. One might ask how a sequence like this fits in what is primarily a warmongering melodrama, but of course melodramas all need comic relief, and what this film takes seriously are its dumb sentiments like "bravery" and "trusting your gut" and the love of the military, so the fraternal silliness in act three is really just this same silly masculine posturing in a different key. (Ford movies frequently have dumb comic sequences like this – think of the extended comic bit with Arthur Kennedy and Jimmy Stewart in the middle of Cheyenne Autumn.)

Anyway, fuck this movie. I hated it.

Little Dorrit (1987)

Christine Edzard's Little Dorrit adapts the Charles Dickens novel into a six-hour film. Until just recently this was the longest film ever to be nominated for an Oscar. Alec Guinness was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. Now, the very idea of him as a supporting actor is relative here. He is, indeed, barely in the first three hours of the movie, but he is truly the star of the final three hours. It's a six-hour film, and there's no doubt he has more screentime in this than all of the Best Actor nominees had in their films, but oh well.

Edzard's approach to the screenplay is very cool. The novel follows three families. Edzard leaves one (mostly) out, and gives us one family's story in the first half of the film, and then rewinds to give us the other family's story in the second half. We see the same story the second time from Amy Dorrit's point of view. It's a smart way to figure the novel onto screen.

But the film is unnecessarily long, I think, and it misses much of Dickens' social satire and societal critique, focusing instead on family dynamics and interpersonal relations. Edzard's film is a much more general critique of capital, wealth, and greed. But there's no edge to it, really, and the film actually extols the basic (Thatcherite) values of hard work and austerity, though it is definitely a critique of the class system and how the wealthy behave.

I enjoyed myself for these six hours, though, honestly, and it's rather a stunning achievement – even though I thought the movie could have been a lot better than it was. But it's a great story, the acting is excellent, and Amy Dorrit is such a wonderfully compelling character.

I rented this on Amazon (it's two separate rentals). It's one of the last three films I need to see to finish off the 1989 Academy Awards season.

Gold Diggers of 1935

Now obviously Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1935 is a musical, but when Dick Powell's first song arrived at the twenty-five minute mark, I was genuinely surprised. Powell has a couple of very good songs in this musical, and "The Lullaby of Broadway" (not his song) is really excellent. This movie is standard nonsensical 1930s fare, but it's funny, and the songs are good. If I'm honest, I found the Berkeley dance numbers a little lacking in this movie, but Alice Brady is an utter delight and is able to showcase her considerable comic abilities here.

I watched this on HBOmax. It's leaving the channel at the end of the month.

Also, I keep wondering if Busby Berkeley's name is pronounced the same as Berkeley Square in London or if it's the same as the University of California at Berkeley. I really don't know the answer to this.

Richard Williams' Opus

The Thief and the Cobbler is an extraordinary orientalist fantasy by Richard Williams. The story behind this movie makes the movie even more interesting than it already is. Williams worked on the film for two decades. Some of its ideas and characters were stolen by Aladdin. Then The Thief and the Cobbler was shelved. The film was eventually released by Miramax in the early 1990s... with a new soundtrack. The version below was cobbled together by a Williams fan who tried to get back to Williams' original vision for the movie.

Let's Make Love (1960)

Let's Make Love is a sexy comedy starring Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand, whose English dialogue was learned phonetically – I had to put on the subtitles in order to get it.

This feels like pretty typical 1960s musical fare. Almost all of the songs are diegetic because we're in some kind of off-Broadway revue. The funniest bits in this film might be the sections in which Milton Berle teaches Montand to be funny, Bing Crosby teaches him to sing, and Gene Kelly appears to teach him to dance. 

Much of this film is charming, and some of it is actually quite funny. For me the weirdest part of Let's Make Love is British singer Frankie Vaughan, who is very handsome but who seems to me constantly flat in every one of his songs. I can definitely see why he didn't catch on with USAmerican audiences.

I watched this on DVD, but I'm pretty sure it's also on VOD.

Raya and the Last Dragon

This starts off really terrible. Lots of sentiment and deep meaning and faux feelings that don't really mean anything since we've only just met everyone.

It gets a lot better as it goes on, and the film introduces characters other than the very earnest and boring protagonist. The side characters are delightful, and the adventures they all go on make Raya and the Last Dragon well worth watching. The worldbuilding is great, and the fight scenes are all really, really fun.

The trouble with this film is twofold. In the first place, the "message" of the film, which is hammered home about ten thousand times. You have to trust other people, guys. This is the only way politics can work. We get it. It's not a terrible message, of course but must we hear about it so many times? It's like I was back watching The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and being told I needed to have faith. Yep. Thanks. The other big problem with Raya is Raya herself. The last dragon is cool as hell, and silly and fun. Raya is not. Raya has a huge chip on her shoulder. She's angry and bitter and continually trying to make other people miserable. One of the lessons she needs to learn in the film is that she needs to lighten up and loosen up, of course, but it makes the beginning of this film hard to watch. Who would want to be friends with this young lady?

Female Trouble (1974)

Female Trouble is ok, but I got bored after awhile. It is, in many ways a retread of Pink Flamingos but without the quick pace of the earlier film. And Female Trouble has waaaay too much dialogue. Divine spends most of the film screaming. Mink Stole, however, is excellent in this. She had me cracking up with her Hare Krishna stuff.

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

Bye Bye Birdie is truly painful. This started out sort of cute, but it became completely insipid. The only character of any interest is the Chita Rivera character (played by Janet Leigh in a faux Latina performance). Leigh is billed first here, which is odd because she has two duets and no songs of her own. Jesse Pearson, who played Birdie on tour, plays him here, and his appeal is... inexplicable. He's strangely wooden and unattractive, and one cannot understand why any young girls or grown women would be passing out because of how sexy he is. Ann-Margret can sing, of course, and Dick Van Dyke is his usual silly self, but no one else really can even sing. Oh! and Maureen Stapleton is cast as Dick Van Dyke's mother. They were the same age! It's outrageous.

It Should Happen to You

This is a clever, unassuming script with many funny scenarios. It's filled with the kind of comic bits for which Doris Day would become known. Jack Lemmon makes his first appearance here in his usual impish way, although slightly toned down. But the real deal here is Judy Holliday. She's just a brilliant comedienne. There's no way around it. If people thought Born Yesterday was a fluke, this movie and The Solid Gold Cadillac certainly prove that she's a superb actress with perfect comic instincts and timing. She's just amazing here and completely lovable.

The Mark of Zorro (1940)

I love Tyrone Power so much. The Mark of Zorro is delightful from start to finish, and Power is as fun as ever. There's some excellent swashbuckling, too. An excellent film.

I watched The Mark of Zorro on the Criterion Channel.

Suzy (1936)

Suzy is a little clunky, but it's hard to mind. Everyone in it is fun, and Cary Grant and Franchot Tone are both doing the things that made them perfect leading men. Jean Harlow is particularly enchanting, though. I do love a war-pilot movie, although all the footage from this one was apparently cut from Hawks' Hell's Angels. Still, I have no complaints, really.

I watched this on the Criterion Channel as part of a series of films starring Jean Harlow.

Les Contes de la Nuit (2011)

Gorgeous. Just breathtaking. Michel Ocelot took a break from making movies about little Kirikou and treated us to this gem of a film, in which all of the stories are told with the characters in silhouette. It's a gorgeous choice that allows for stunning backdrops. It's also an anthology, and this works like the Thousand and One Nights or the Decameron. It's absolutely wonderful stuff.

Privilege

Privilege, Yvonne Rainer's meditation on white feminism, menopause, sexual violence, and racism is... a lot of stuff. It's at its best when it's making its documentary aspects weird, and there are some excellent visual moments, but overall this feels quite jumbled, and I was bored for lots of its running time.

Privilege isn't a documentary, but it's doing something like the work of Isaac Julien, although I think this is much more meta and complex... and less successful overall.