Over the last decade or so there have been some really great crime thrillers to come out of the Scandinavian countries, both in print and on the screen. Unfortunately, Annika Bengtzon was not one of them. At least according to my review. I don’t actually remember watching the series at this point.
Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky directed seven films in his all-too-short career. I’ve now seen all seven and everyone is brilliant, several are masterpieces (I still haven’t seen the Steamroller and the Violin the short film he made in school). His films are known for their beauty, spirituality, and long takes. Nostalghia has all that in spades. It also has a pretty confusing plot, but don’t let that bother you, for this is, as Martin Scorsese will tell you, cinema.
The story is about a Russian man who visits Italy in order to research an 18th Century Russian composer who also visited Italy and committed suicide upon his return to his homeland. That much I understood. The rest of it was pretty much lost on me. Reading the synopsis on Wikipedia just now I honestly had no idea that what they say happens in the plot actually occurred. Not that this mattered in any way, it certainly didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the film.
The film uses dream sequences and memories to create a fantastic tableau of images. Tarkovsky is famous for holding an image on the screen for a long time allowing us to truly digest everything we’re seeing on the screen. Here he uses subtle changes in lighting to shift our focus. There is one scene set in a bedroom. We see a man lying on a bed in the middle of the room, it is raining outside, and there is a bathroom in the corner. The camera holds the shot. Our focus shifts from the window to the bed. The man seems to disappear. Rain now seems to be puddling on the floor. A dog appears at the bathroom door. For several minutes we stare at this bedroom. Nothing happens, and yet we are mesmerized. Or at least I am.
Tarkovsky does this over and over. He is like a great painter and film is his canvas.
He uses rain, puddles, and water to great effect. Water drips from ceilings. Characters wander in cave-like structures filled with water. Reflections abound. The setting here often looks a great deal like The Zone in my favorite of Tarkovsky’s films, Stalker. It is very earthy. Organic.
I’ll need another viewing or two (or three) to get a real grasp on the story and what Tarvkosky is trying to say, but with this initial viewing, I was just mesmerized by the pictures he painted.
I watch a lot of movies over my weekends. I watch movies during the week, but with work and family, and other obligations, I don’t always get to watch one every night. But on the weekends, I squeeze in as many as I can.
I don’t really have the time or energy to write full reviews so I thought it would be fun to do a weekend wrap-up.
A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)
After watching Hellraiser (2022) Friday night I had a little more time before sleep came crashing down so I threw on this little French horror flick from Jess Franco. It is surprisingly good, even if it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. A young woman comes home when she learns her father has died. There she finds an assortment of oddballs and freaks who either want to seduce her or kill her or both. I hope to have a real review of this for my Foreign Film February segment later this week.
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)
On my way to the convenience store Saturday morning for my usual 32 ounces of Dr. Pepper, I heard Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” playing on the radio. Realizing it was from the soundtrack to this Sam Peckinpah film and that I happened to own a copy of it on DVD, and that I had never seen it caused me to rush home and pop it in.
It’s terrific. There are actually a variety of cuts of this film out there, and I’m not entirely sure which one I saw. This is one of those revisionist westerns that were popular in the 1970s. Pat and Billy are old friends, but Pat Garrett (a wonderful James Coburn) can see how the county is changing and has decided to be on the right side of the law, whereas Billy (a fascinating Kris Kristofferson) can’t do anything but be an outlaw. Neither of them wants the inevitable confrontation to come, and the film prolongs it for as long as it can in the most interesting ways. Dylan not only did the wonderful soundtrack but he has a small part too. It is a lot of fun watching him on the screen.
Fist of Fury (1972)
The Criterion Collection put out an excellent little boxed set of Bruce Lee Blu-rays sometime ago and I bought a copy last year. But I’ve been putting off watching them for one reason or another. So I decided to watch this one this weekend. I was disappointed in it. The story is forgettable. A gang of Japanese dudes keeps harassing Bruce Lee’s club. Naturally, Bruce Lee has to kick their asses. The action sequences are mostly great, but there is a lot of dull padding to get through between each fight scene.
Cujo (1983)
When I was a young teen we didn’t have cable television. Or maybe we just didn’t have the pay channels like HBO and Cinemax. Whatever, my mom’s friend Beverly had everything and she was willing to tape anything I wanted on VHS and give it to me. Each week I scoured the TV Guide looking for interesting movies for her to tape for me. One time she taped Cufo for me. I only remember this because I let my friend Justin borrow the tape and he raved about the film. I can’t remember now if he never gave me the tape back or if I just never got around to watching it, but it went unseen by me until this weekend.
I actually bought a special edition DVD of the m movie last year based on that memory. I don’t know why I decided to put it in this weekend but I did and I’m glad for it.
Like a lot of Stephen King books this film takes its time getting started. It gives us a feel for its setting. It spends time with its characters, letting us get to know them. Unlike a lot of Stephen King books this film never makes me care for any of that. I just kept waiting for the rabid dog to trap the lady and her kid in that junky old Pinto. Once the dog does trap the lady the film gets pretty terrific, but it takes it a long time to get there.
Mr. Wong, Detective (1938)
Boris Karlof plays Mr. Wong, a Chinese detective that was clearly invented to cash in on the Charlie Chan craze at the time. There is absolutely no other reason for him to be Chinese in this film, which makes it doubly unfortunate from a modern perspective. The story is rather dull.
Dark Alibi (1946)
Another white guy playing a Chinese detective. This time it is Sidney Toler playing Charlie Chan, a role he would play more than 20 times to great success. This one is actually quite good. The mystery is standard stuff but Toler is fun as the brilliant detective who throws around a lot of silly bits of wisdom and constantly puts down his son and chauffeur.
A Study in Scarlet (1933)
I guess I couldn’t get enough detective movies this weekend. This is an extremely loose adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story. So loose in fact that it has nothing at all to do with the book other than the title. Apparently, the producers could only afford to secure the rights to the story’s title and the use of the characters, but not the actual story. Reginald Owen is so forgettable as Holmes I kept forgetting which actor was playing the character while watching. I only put it on because Anna May Wong is second-billed, but she appears in it for less than ten minutes. Completely and utterly forgettable.
Uxbal (Javier Bardem) is a decent man living a bad life. He’s a low-level criminal living in a shabby apartment in Barcelona. He manages a group of street vendors who sell knock-off Gucci bags and other fake products. He’s also in charge of some Chinese illegals who make those goods. He’s exploiting humans for profit, but he also seems to care, at least a little. When he realizes the Chinese immigrants are cold, sleeping together in a rundown basement he procures them some heaters (the cheapest he can buy, a decision that will haunt him later in the film). He seems to love his young children deeply. He tries to be kind to his ex-wife who sometimes works as a prostitute, and is bipolar, but his tolerance has limits.
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu keeps things close to the streets. This isn’t your tourist brochure of Barcelona. The city is dirty, corrupt, full of violence, and a struggle just to survive. Uxbal is a decent man, and Bardem’s portrayal of him is sympathetic, but he also makes a living off the backs of the downtrodden. The film gives him cancer, and a short time to live which makes him even more sympathetic. The plot is really about him trying to put his life in order.
It is also mostly a bore. It drags on for over two hours and the movie never gives us enough reason to stick with it for that long. I’ve enjoyed some of Iñárritu’s films, but this one is a misfire. Barden gives a great performance, his face is so full of hurt and resignation, but otherwise, I found it a bit of a slog.
Akira Kurosawa is one of my favorite film directors of all time. I’ve not seen all of his films, in fact, I’ve only seen about half of them (17 of 32 if you are counting) but out of all I’ve seen, there hasn’t been a bad one. All of them have been good, and many have been truly great. Scandal is my least favorite of the films that I’ve seen. It isn’t a bad film by any means, but when compared to his masterpieces it just doesn’t hold up.
Toshiro Mifune plays Ichirō Aoye an artist who, as the film begins is out in the countryside painting some mountains. A woman, Miyako Saijo (Shirley Yamaguchi), comes walking up the path carrying her luggage. She says she missed her bus and is staying at a nearby hotel. Ichirō says he is staying at the same hotel and he’ll give her a lift. They climb on his motorcycle and zoom away. Later that day, after they have both showered, he visits her in her room. They are both wearing robes and they hang their towels over her balcony rail. They have a friendly chat and at one point she draws close to him as he points out a nice walking trail she might take. It is at that moment a tabloid newspaper photographer snatches a picture.
The photo is sold to a tabloid rag which puts the photo on the front page and insinuates a secret romance between the two characters. Miyako is a famous singer and the story becomes quite a scandal. While Ichirō and Miyako discuss what to do they meet Hiruta (Takashi Shimura) a shambling, down-on-his-luck lawyer who says he’d like to represent them in a lawsuit against the magazine. Miyako declines but Ichirō is taken in by the man’s earnestness. When he meets Hiruta’s daughter, who is bedridden with TB but retains a cheerful attitude, he agrees to let Hiruta represent him.
Hirutu is a good man, but drowning in debt and is unable to afford good care for his daughter. When a lawyer for the magazine offers him a bribe to throw the case, he reluctantly agrees. The story unfolds in a way that aligns pretty directly with Kurosawa’s usual gentle humanism.
It is a decent story and it is told well. But compared to Kurosawa’s other works it falls short. There is nothing particularly surprising or interesting about how it unfolds, and the direction, while adequate, isn’t particularly special. I kept thinking about High and Low, Kurosawa’s fantastic crime drama from 1963. Much of that story takes place inside the house of the main character. It centers on one room. Kurusawa’s placement of the camera in that film, and the way it moves make that room feel claustrophobic or expansive depending on the mood he’s trying to create. It is a masterclass in direction. I kept hoping for something similar in Scandal, especially in the courtroom scenes, but the setups are all basic. The sort of placement you’d find in any courtroom drama airing on broadcast television. Again, it isn’t bad, it just doesn’t feel like a Kurosawa film.
In the end, it is still worth watching, especially if you are a fan, but this is definitely a lesser Kurosawa.
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy will be publishing a book about his 50 favorite songs: Lithub
Martin Scorsese is Due for Another Classic: Movieweb
Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros Continue Tenure at The Capitol Theatre with “Greatest Story Ever Told”: Jambands
The 10 Best Bob Dylan Outtakes: Paste
Bob Dylan musical set in Duluth to become movie starring Olivia Colman, Woody Harrelson, Chloe Bailey: Marin Independend
Van Morrison Adds 2023 Tour Dates: Ticket Presale Code & On-Sale Info: Zumic
I don’t know why I thought this would be good. I don’t really love the original, and while I did enjoy the sequel this franchise is just not something I’m all that interested in exploring. Yet, I have to admit I was intrigued by this reboot from Hulu. I don’t know why exactly, except that the idea of redoing the original in a more modern, even elevated way, sounded interesting. Last week I watched Prey, Hulu’s entry into the Predator franchise, and rather loved it so I decided to give this Hellraiser a try.
It is not good. As it is a reboot of the original the story follows fairly familiar tracks, but there is enough difference to keep it, well, not interesting, but at least it doesn’t feel like a retread. It follows Riley (a pretty great Odessa A’zion) a recovering addict who is struggling to pull it together. Needing rent money she agrees to follow her boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) on a little robbery gig. Naturally, the thing they steal is the funky puzzle box. Then all, ahem, hell breaks loose.
I’m not sure familiar with all the lore associated with these films so I don’t know where this one breaks from tradition or adds to it. Here when you figure out the puzzle the swishes out a blade and cuts you. This unleashes the Cenobites upon you and changes the box into configuration 2. If you are holding the box when it has moved into configuration 6 then the Cenobites grant you a wish, or something.
The story is pretty dumb. The elevated aspect of the horror is that Riley is an addict and that makes it more harrowing, or something. The best part of the original is that it felt like a low-budget horror made with love and a renegade spirit. The Cenobites were strange and sexual – they are like S&M freaks turned up to 11. The gore was practical and very fleshy. Here the budget is bigger but it feels plastic. The Cenobite costumes are smooth and not at all terrifying. There is a lot of blood and gore, but it is mostly made from bad CGI and lacks the visceral feeling of the original.
What’s left feels more like the 8th sequel of a tired franchise made sometime in the late 1990s, not a modern reboot with something new to say.
From 1954 to 1960 actor Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher (usually with writer Burt Kennedy) made six westerns together which are collectively called the Ranown Cycle. I watched all of them a few years ago. For some reason yesterday morning, I had an image from one of the films – that of a tall, bare tree standing all alone in the center of a grove – and it made me desperate to watch that film again.
I wasn’t quite sure which film it was from, but I made a guess that it was The Tall T (1957) since the tree in question looked like a giant letter T. Turns out I was wrong, but by the time I had figured that out I was already well into rewatching the movie and I didn’t mind finishing it. Then I actually did a little research and determined it was Ride Lonesome (1959) that had that tree and I watched it too.
Boetticher’s direction is a bit like Randolph’s acting – not flashy or particularly nuanced, but good and solid. The films are tricky. They at first seem simple, perhaps too simple, just basic westerns without much to them, but they grow on you. The more I think about them the more I love them.
In The Tall T Scott plays a lonesome rancher who, having lost his horse in a bet while trying to buy a bull steer has to catch a ride with a private coach to the next waystation. The coach is carrying two newlyweds. At the station, he finds not his friend, but three outlaws. They mistake his private coach for the public one which they had planned to rob. Since they have already killed the station’s manager and his young son, they must take the rancher and newlyweds hostage.
The groom tells the outlaws that his wife’s father is wealthy and he will surely put up a big ransom to get her back alive. The film considers this act cowardly. Real men, I suppose, don’t use their wives’ fortunes to get the out of a jam. They would fight their way out. Randolph Scott will do exactly that by the film’s end. The groom will prove his cowardice in other ways and his wife will learn he only married her for her money.
Boetticher keeps things tight. With a run time of just over 70 minutes, there isn’t an ounce of fat on the bone. What’s really interesting about the film, and many of the Ranown Cycle of films is that the villain here has nuance. The leader of the outlaws (Richard Boone) isn’t a bad man. Or at least he isn’t straight-up evil like so many western villains are. He’s just a guy who wound up on the wrong side of the law. By the film’s end, he seems to like Scott’s character more than the guys he’s riding with (including Henry Silva in one of his earliest roles.)
In Ride Lonesome (1959) Scott plays Ben Brigade another lonesome cowboy, and it is fantastic. Here he is a bounty hunter instead of a rancher. As the film begins he’s grabbed Billy John (James Best) a man wanted for murder. Billy John is none too worried though because his brother Frank (Lee Van Cleef) will most certainly rescue him and kill Ben in the process. At yet another waystation Ben finds not the manager but more rifles pointed at his face. The outlaws this time around are Sam (Pernell Roberts) and Whit (James Coburn). They aren’t looking for money or to set Billy John free. Rather they want to turn Billy John in themselves because the bounty includes clemency for any crimes they committed in the past. The men are ready to settle down and want to start with a clean slate.
The three men will work together to get Billy John to town, but Ben says he wants the cash bounty and the other guys say they’ll kill him before they let him screw them out of their amnesty. But as we’ll find out Ben has other things in mind for this journey. The film takes its time letting us know what that other things are, but when it gets there it is a good one.
Karen Steele plays the wife of the waystation manager and she’s as tough as she is beautiful. The film subverts your expectations as a romance doesn’t blossom between her and Ben. Sam does hit on her, and there are more than a few longing gazes that the camera gives her, but unlike so many westerns no one tries to have his way with her.
Boetticher lets the film take its time getting anywhere. He allows the story to come naturally, without rushing it, and it is all the better for it. The first time I watched it, about three years ago, I didn’t love it. I don’t remember why. It probably had something to do with watching all the Ranown Westerns within a few days. I may have grown a bit tired of them by the time I got to this one. But on this viewing I absolutely loved it. Scott is so good in it and the story is really something special.
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