I’m finally through with watching all those Shaw Brothers kung fu flicks, and I’m now ready to start my Noirvember watching properly.
First up was this nice set of three films from Kino Lorber. These aren’t the greatest movies ever made, they’re not even the greatest film noirs ever made. Actually, they’re not all even that good. But I love that these obscure and not amazing films keep getting Blu-ray releases.
You can read my review over at Cinema Sentries.
Another great collection of martial arts movies from Shout! Factory. Admittedly these are much better if you watch them spread out over a longer period than the few days that I watched them in. I gotta admit I grew a little tired of these films after a while. But I still had a lot of fun watching them. You can read my review of this set over at Cinema Sentries.
Like every sane person who enjoys a movie or two from time to time, I am a huge fan of Disney’s animation department. For 100 years the Mickey Mouse company has been making animated films of various stripes. Not all of them have been masterpieces, but some of them are, and most are very good. In celebration of its centennial, Disney is exclusively releasing through Wal-Mart, this collection of 100 animated films from its storied existence.
The films range from their earliest feature-length movie, Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (1937), to Pixar’s most recent one Elemental (2023), plus a few surprises like Pooh’s Heffalump Movie (2005).
Now, that’s the good news. The bad is that while it is packaged in a nice-looking cardboard box, the disks are apparently plain Jane Blu-rays without any real extras. And it retails at $1,500.
That’s a huge amount of money. Way more than I’ll spend. I’m very curious as to who this set is for as it seems like people who are big enough fans that they would be willing to lay down that much for these movies probably already own most of them on Blu-ray. But whatever, it is still a cool set and it is now my Pick of the Week.
Also out this week that looks interesting:
The Sonny Chiba Collection, Vol. 2: Sonny Chiba was one of the great martial arts movie actors. This set includes seven films and lots of extras.
Terms of Endearment: James L. Brooks’ wonderful comedy/drama follows the lives of a mother and daughter team (Shirley Maclaine and Debra Winger) who live very different lives.
Blue Steele: Jamie Lee Curtis stars in this Kathryn Bigelow-directed film as a rookie cop who is chased by a psychopath.
Justified: City Primeval: I love Elmore Leonard and I really enjoyed the FX series, Justified, based on his Raylan Givens stories. Strangely, I’ve never actually seen every episode of the series. I’ve tried a couple of times and I always get hung up somewhere in season three. And it isn’t even a bad season, but for whatever reason I always get distracted around there.
This new limited series takes place several years after the original one ended and finds Raylan in Detroit. Maybe someday I’ll finish Justified so I can get to this one.
Spirited Away: Live on Stage: Spirited Away is one of my favorite Studio Ghibli films. I have no idea how that animated film will translate to a live-action stage performance, but I’m interested in giving it a try.
The Last Picture Show: Peter Bogdanovich’s brilliant look at the lives of several high schoolers in 1950s Texas is getting the 4K Criterion treatment.
I follow a lot of film critics and culture writers on various social media platforms. Most of them like to periodically complain about the state of the movies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has created a seismic change in movies, and more specifically the way movies are shown in theaters. Or rather how many movies are no longer shown in theaters.
The MCU has made billions upon billions of dollars. Their method of interconnecting their films into one giant universe (and making piles of cash in the process) has made every other studio chase those billions. In doing so they are no longer satisfied with smaller movies, where they can only make millions of dollars instead of billions, virtually erasing mid-budget films in the process.
These film critics complain and complain about how adult-oriented dramas, mysteries, and romances simply don’t exist at the movies anymore. They wax nostalgic about times in the past, two or three decades ago, when they could go to the movies and watch something that wasn’t based upon a comic book or a part of a larger franchise.
Yet, when those types of films do get made and do get shown in the theaters, these same critics tend to pan them and encourage others not to go see them.
Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot films are a good example of this. Based upon the novels of Agatha Christie, Branaugh has directed and starred in three films in which he plays the famous Belgian detective. I won’t claim that they are great films by any stretch, but they aren’t big-budget superhero films either. They are well-told mysteries with terrific casts and are made for adults. In a word they are exactly the sort of films that these types of critics complain don’t get made anymore. Yet when the movies come out, those same critics do nothing but grouse about them.
And that’s enough grousing from me. The latest Poirot film is probably the best one. As the title implies there is a supernatural element to it, and while it isn’t a straight horror it certainly contains elements of horror and that means I get to talk about it tonight. It also means that my daughter is having a sleepover and me and the wife had a much-needed date night and this is as close to horror as she’d let me get.
Hercule Poirot has retired into seclusion in Venice, Italy. There has been too much death and misery in his life and he simply cannot stand to tackle another mystery.
When his friend, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a novelist who writes thinly veiled Poirot mysteries, invites him to a seance he at first declines but her friendship wins him over.
The seance takes place on Halloween night in an old, decaying palazzo. It is being held by Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly) who hopes to speak to her daughter who mysteriously killed herself in the palazzo one year prior. Also at the seance are an assortment of interesting people all of whom have a connection to Rowena and her daughter and, it will be found out, had a reason to murder her.
Poirot quickly exposes the psychic (Michelle Yeoh) as a fraud and is ready to leave, but when the psychic is murdered and someone tries to drown him in an apple bobbing bowl, he locks everyone inside the palazzo and finds himself once again back on a case.
This one is based on a much less famous book (Hallowe’en Party) than the other two films (Murder on the Orient Express & Death on the Nile). Apparently, it’s quite loosely based as well, which allows it to surprise you with its story rather than retell one that is quite familiar to casual fans.
The palazzo is reminiscent of all those gothic castles in those old haunted house movies that I love so much. It allows for plenty of creepy, atmospheric shots down long corridors, and shadowy rooms. The film has a lot of fun toying with whether or not the supernatural aspects are real or not, making it great fun to watch.
Kenneth Branagh clearly enjoys himself playing the famous detective and he’s become quite good at it. He’ll never replace David Suchet (who played Poirot in the long-running British television series) but he’s still quite entertaining. I love that he’s able to make these lavish adaptations with large, wonderful, casts. I hope he gets to make a dozen more.
As I am going through all of my old posts, giving them a slight edit, and then making them public, we are coming to the brief period in which I was recapping a few television shows
A recap is like it sounds – a brief synopsis of what happened within an episode of a series with bits of trivia thrown in and some of my thoughts.
I enjoyed doing it, but it was very time-consuming and I always felt the pressure of getting something up the moment it aired, and so I gave it up.
Too soon as it turns out. When I was writing those recaps, back in 2006, that whole industry was in its infancy. Back in the print magazine and newspaper days, they might write a review of an entire season of a show, or more than likely they’d give a sneak peak of an upcoming season or a new show. But there wasn’t enough space to do regular episode recaps.
Print is free on the Internet and eventually, sites figured out that people enjoyed watching an episode and then going online to read about what they just watched. Lost may have been the show that made that idea really popular. That show was so full of Easter Eggs and little details that might be important that fans were endlessly discussing each episode.
Any number of critics and writers got their careers by doing recaps. I sometimes wonder if I had stuck with where I might be and what I might be doing.
But I didn’t and here we are. And now you get to read my little attempt at doing recaps. I’m interested in seeing how they hold up. Certainly, they are little time capsules of TV from many years ago.
Buster Keaton was one of the great stars of the silent screen. I’ve only seen a couple of his films and so I’m excited that more and more of his movies are getting nice Blu-ray releases. The Cohen Media Group has been releasing them pretty regularly and now Vol. 5 is my Pick of the Week. You can read more about this release and what else is coming out by reading my column over at Cinema Sentries.
Because I’ve had to watch and review so many Shaw Brothers kung fu movies I’ve not had a lot of time for my Noirvember viewings. I did get a chance to watch Force of Evil, an absolute classic of the genre, and review it for Cinema Sentries. It is a great movie, and my review is good too.
I’ve reviewed several Shaw Brother’s films on Cinema Sentries and posted them here before. They made a slew of terrific kung fu flicks in the 1970s through the ’80s. This year Shout! Studio has released three (thus far) big boxed sets of their films. I have the first two and I just finished my review of the first one. You can read that here.
I gotta admit I’m getting a little tired of watching them. On an individual basis they are all mostly great, but after a while they all just feel the same. For the second set, I’m taking extensive notes just so I can remember which film is which.
Harry Fabin (Richard Widmark) is a man constantly on the run – from gangsters, and bookkeepers, loansharks and anyone else he owes money to or has otherwise schemed. He’s always got something cooking, some way to make a fast buck, get rich, and live a life of luxury. The ironic thing is if he actually put the energy he uses on these schemes and put them to legitimate work, he’d have a comfortable life.
Night and the City begins with Harry on the run. He’s making the slip past some unknown assailants across the streets of London. He winds up at Mary Bristol’s (Gene Tierney) flat. She loves him, but she’s tired of his constant hustling. Taking none of his crap, she simply asks him how much he wants this time.
Harry has a part-time gig working for Phil Nosseross (Francis L. Sullivan) smooth-talking out-of-town businessmen into coming to Nosseross’ club, The Silver Fox. One night out looking for chumps he wanders into a wrestling match where he becomes entranced by Gregorious the Great (Stanislaus Zbyszko). He isn’t in the ring but rather is complaining loudly about how fake everything is. Turns out he’s one of the great Greco-Roman wrestlers and these days everything is more WWE than real.
Harry hatches a plan to use Gregorious to become the wrestling magnate of London. Trouble is the current magnate is also Gregorious’ son Kristo (Herbert Lom). The father is angry with the son for getting involved in what he thinks of as entertainment and not real wrestling.
Harry needs money to get everything set up and he borrows it from Mrs. Nosseross (Googie Withers) who wants to divorce Mr. Nosseross but can’t until she’s got herself set up somewhere else. So she lends money to Harry so he can get more money from Mr. Nosseross (he won’t lend Harry money until he has some money himself to put down) which she will use to start a new nightclub.
The plot gets more convoluted from there. But I was never confused. Directed by the great Jules Dassin things run smoothly and clearly. There are some great exterior scenes overlooking most of the popular London spots, but much of the action takes place underground, it dirty bars, back alleys, and run-down gyms.
There’s a terrific wrestling sequence towards the end between Gregorious and another man. It isn’t staged with any flair, it is just two men trying to beat the other one into submission, but it is brutally effective.
I wish Gene Tierney had more to do that look upset at Harry, but she does get a wonderful scene towards the end that makes it all worth while.
Night in the City is a great movie, and a fantastic example of what film noir can be.
themidnightcafe.org 