Now Watching: The Maltese Falcon (1941)

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The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Directed and written by John Huston
Based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre

San Francisco private detective Sam Spade takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette, with the stakes rising after his partner is murdered.

Rating: 9/10

An absolute classic. I love this film. I’ve seen it many times. I’m hoping to do a Top Five Bogart in Film Noir list this month, so I’m watching as many of those as I can. This is often considered the very first film noir, and it is one of the very best. I don’t really have the bandwidth right now to do a full review, but since I watched it, I wanted to at least mention it.

It was the first film directed by John Huston and the first film Sydney Greenstreet ever played in. It made Bogart a star and set the template for untold detective stories to come. It is a terrific film and I higly recommend it.

Now Watching: City on Fire (1987)

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City on Fire (1987)
Directed by Ringo Lam
Starring: Chow Yun-fat, Danny Lee, Sun Yueh, Carrie Ng , and Roy Cheung

Synopsis: An undercover cop infiltrates a gang of thieves who plan to rob a jewelry store.

Rating: 7/10

City on Fire is now mostly known as one of the inspirations for Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. There are certainly similarities there, but Tarantino more than makes his film his own. Chow Yun-fat plays the undercover cop who doesn’t really want to be there. He’s ready to quit, but his uncle (who is also a cop) pushes him to complete the assignment. He kind-of, sort-of befriends one of the robbers, which makes the whole thing more complicated, especially when it goes bad.

There are some terrific set pieces and some very goofy romantic angles. I’m not super soaked in Hong Kong action movies. I’ve seen several, but not enough that I can claim any sort of authority on them. It always throws me off how weird the romances are in these things. Our guy here comes home, more or less harasses his lady by following her into the bathroom, then jumping into the shower with her, pushing into her space, and then giving her a ring. Then he postpones the wedding, then he doesn’t show up…etc. It’s probably a cultural thing, but so many of these films play the romances off with the weirdest bits of humor.

But Chow Yun-fat is amazing.

Now Watching: One Battle After Another (2025)

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One Battle After Another (2025)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Chase Infiniti

When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue one of their own’s daughter.

Rating: 8/10

I’ve been hearing raves about this film, and I really wanted to see it in a theater, so when I got off work a little early today, I went to a matinee. The show started at 3, and I arrived about 7 minutes till. I bought my ticket and my snacks (Junior Mints and a Dr. Pepper – a rarity for me, as my wife always makes me get popcorn).

The guy behind the counter told me the theater number, but I didn’t pay him much mind, as they have posters up in front of each entrance. I wandered down the hall one way, then the other, and finally found my theater.

It was completely empty. Surprisingly, they didn’t have any commercials or trailers playing on the screen. It was completely dark. I figured since I was the only one there and I had just bought my ticket, they weren’t bothering with the usual pre-movie nonsense.

Time passed, and soon it was five minutes past three. Then ten. Still no movie. And it was hot. I was literally starting to sweat. I got up and went back to the guy who sold me the ticket. I politely explained the movie wasn’t running and asked if he could turn down the air. He said he’d tell his manager, and I went back and sat down.

Another five minutes rolled by, and now I’m getting annoyed. The movie is a long one, and I don’t want to be here all night.

Then the guy comes in. He sheepishly says he’s figured out the problem. I’m in the wrong theater. Those posters in front of the entrance are digital displays, and they’ve got them all wrong. It is now fifteen minutes past the hour, and I’m afraid I’ve missed the start of the movie. I curse, then rush to the correct theater. Luckily, they are still showing previews, and I’m good to go.

Paul Thomas Anderson is a director I really like, but I find his films difficult at first watch. They are usually long and dense, and their points of view are off-kilter, which can make them difficult to grasp.

I usually have to sit with them for a while and then maybe watch again before I decide to really love them.

And so it was with One Battle After Another. I liked it a lot, but I’m not ready to love it. I need to think about it for a bit.

Leonardo DiCaprio is very good as a former revolutionary who seems to have really gotten into it for a girl and who isn’t all that bright. Years after a big dustup between his group and a racist Army dude (played to perfection by Sean Penn) pass, and he’s now a slack-jawed stoner trying to raise a teenage girl. The Sean Penn character comes back into the picture, and things get wild.

Really wild. The name is apt because this is a film that very rarely lets up. The performances are all top-notch, and there is plenty of black humor, crazy absurdities, and more. I really did like it, but like I said, I need to sit with it a bit.

As the title of this post implies, I’m back with the idea of writing little mini-reviews of all the movies I watch. Let’s see how long I keep up with it this time.

Now Watching: Drug War (2012)

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Drug War (2012)
Directed by Johnnie To
Starring: Louis Koo, Honglei Sun, and Huang Yi

Synopsis: A drug cartel boss who is arrested in a raid is coerced into betraying his former accomplices as part of an undercover operation.

Rating: 8/10

This is the type of film that will keep bringing me back to Johnnie To. The plot is convoluted and a little crazy, but also endlessly interesting with cops, informants, and bad guys switching allegiances and sides like a roulette table. The action is fierce, chaotic, and meticulously staged.

There is a scene late in the film where a cop handcuffs himself to a guy’s leg. Then the cop gets killed, so the bad guy has to run around dragging the cop’s corpse along with him. If that doesn’t make you want to watch this film, I don’t know what will.

Now Watching: Breaking News (2004)

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Breaking News (2004)
Directed by Johnnie To
Starring: Richie Jen, Kelly Chen, and Nick Cheung
Synopsis: After a disastrous failure to stop a robber gang, the police attempt to redeem themselves through a series of publicity stunts and shootouts.
Rating: 7/10

I’m quite behind on these. They are easy to write and I always mean to write them right after I watch, but then something comes up and I forget. I watched this one five days ago. I’ll try to play catch-up this weekend.

Johnnie is a Hong Kong director whose name gets tossed around quite a bit in my circles, but I’d never seen one of his films until now. The Criterion Channel is running a whole bunch of them, and I chose this one pretty much at random. It was good enough to make me watch another one the very next day and then a third a couple of days later.

It begins with an incredible 7-minute-long one-take shot. It follows a man into a building (the camera cranes to a top floor and into a building, then back out again), followed by a shootout with the cops. This goes poorly for the cops, and they decide they need to put on a “show” for the media. Basically, they start using their own PR department to create videos to send to the news to indicate how awesome they are.

The action scenes (and there are quite a lot of them) are all staged really well. The media stuff feels very dated and has not aged particularly well. But as I said, there is enough to love here that I immediately watched another film from To.

Now Watching: Wallace & Gromit:Vengence Most Fowl (2024)

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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)
Directed by Merlin Crossingham & Nick Park
Starring: Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith, and Diane Morgan

Synopsis: Top dog Gromit springs into action to save his master when Wallace’s high-tech invention goes rogue and he is framed for a series of suspicious crimes.

Rating: 8/10

We’re big fans of Wallace & Gromit here at The Midnight Cafe. They have this wonderful blend of nostalgic conservatism and modern progress. The claymation is all handmade, which makes it both not quite exactly perfect and absolutely beautiful.

The setting of all these films and short films is intentionally opaque, with much of it feeling like the 1960s but with plenty of modern technology. Wallace seems like an old-fashioned, traditional conservative, while Gromit, his dog, is much more modern. I’m making it sound like these are political films, and they are decidedly not. It’s more like an updating of a British Norman Rockwell, but with anthropomorphic animals, Rube Goldberg machines, and lots of cheese. Anyway, if you’ve never seen a Wallace & Gromit film, I highly recommend them.

This one finds Wallace inventing a robot gnome that can do your household chores. When one of them gets switched to “Evil” mode by a malevolent penguin, things get a little bit crazy.

It is wonderfully funny, boisterous, and filled with loads of action. I have a hard time ranking any of these films because I just lovely them so wholeheartedly.

Now Watching: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

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The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Directed by Wes Anderson
Starring: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Bill Murray, and Danny Glover
Synopsis: The eccentric members of a dysfunctional family reluctantly gather under the same roof for various reasons.

Rating: 10/10

I remember watching this movie in the theater, having no idea what to expect. I can’t remember if I’d seen Rushmore more this or not, but if I had, I hadn’t really connected it to Wes Anderson. He’s one of the most famous auteurs these days, but this was just his third film, and he wasn’t so well known outside of cinephile circles.

I was completely knocked out by it. I loved every minute of it. The film is so assured in its style, its rhythms, and its own sense of existence. I never wanted to leave the theatre.

Anderson is now beloved for his signature visual style, but this is the first film that truly perfected it (Rushmore got close, but isn’t quite there). Every inch of the screen is filled with interesting things to look at, and their placement is well thought out and conceived. The music is exquisite and I’d argue this is the best script he’s ever written (it was co-written by Owen Wilson).

The entire cast is brilliant. Every single actor does some of his/her finest work. I’ve seen it half a dozen times since that initial theatrical viewing and it remains a personal favorite.

Now Watching: No Way Out (1987)

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No Way Out (1987)
Directed by: Roger Donaldson
Starring: Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young, Will Patton

Synopsis: Navy Lt. Tom Farrell meets a young woman, Susan Atwell, and they share a passionate fling. Farrell then finds out that his superior, Defense Secretary David Brice, is also romantically involved with Atwell. When the young woman turns up dead, Farrell is put in charge of the murder investigation. He begins to uncover shocking clues about the case, but when details of his encounter with Susan surface, he becomes a suspect as well.

Rating: 8/10

My little experiment to get more readers was a total bust. Turns out I’m terrible at posting regularly. I just don’t have it in me to be that guy, and the little extra I did post saw no improvement in my numbers.

Maybe they would if I pushed a little harder and did it for a little longer. I don’t know. I don’t really care. I’ll spend some more time thinking about what comes next. It seems logical to do more reviewing on Letterboxed or writing for Cinema Sentries, as that would definitely get me more eyeballs. But I love this little site, and it is hard to let that go. So, I’m gonna write when I want to write, post when I want to post. If people read it, great, and if not, well, that’s their loss.

Based on the novel The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing (which was also the basis of a pretty terrific little film noir of the same name made in 1948), No Way Out turns it into a political thriller with some neo-noir/erotic thriller tendencies.

Kevin Costner and Sean Young’s scenes together are steamy and playful, and you think the film is going to go one way, and then it goes another. Once she is out of the picture, it turns from its noir background to more of a straightforward thriller. There are a surprising number of scenes of just Costner walking angrily about the Pentagon, trying to keep everyone from knowing that the man they are looking for is actually him. And it totally works.

Hackman’s character has a lot more nuance than these things usually allow, making Will Patton’s lackey to Hackman’s Secretary of Defense character the true villain.

There are a couple of good chase scenes, and a lot of ridiculous techno nonsense (a large part of the plot revolves around them taking a nearly destroyed Polaroid photo negative and using computers to slowly render it into a readable image). The actors are all good, and I found it quite thrilling.

Now Watching: The Wild Geese (1978)

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The Wild Geese (1978)
Directed by: Andrew V. McLaglen
Starring: Richard Burton, Roger Moore, and Richard Harris

Synopsis: A British multinational company seeks to overthrow a vicious dictator in central Africa. It hires a band of (largely aged) mercenaries in London and sends them in to save the virtuous but imprisoned opposition leader, who is also critically ill and due for execution. Just when the team has performed a perfect rescue, the multinational does a deal with the vicious dictator, leaving the mercenary band to escape under their own steam and exact revenge.

Rating: 1/10

Well, as yesterday goes to show, I’m really not cut out for this idea of posting several things per day. I just don’t have that much to say. Or maybe sometimes I’m just too tired. Or lazy. I’ll keep trying this week, but thus far, my numbers aren’t improving either. But I’m really not ready to give this site up, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

For now, I’m gonna keep writing when the spirit moves me.

I even forgot to mention that this month’s theme is War Movies in June.

The Wild Geese is a men assembled to do a mission movie in the vein of something like Where Eagles Dare or The Dirty Dozen. It has a great cast, but fails to be even a little bit interesting. It doesn’t help that the white mercenaries’ in Africa plot is steeped in colonialism and racism.

The film does acknowledge this somewhat with a brief scene in which the super-duper racist white guy has a five-minute chat with the sainted black politician (who is vaulted as this amazing human but is only given a handful of lines to speak) and changes his racist ways.

But honestly, you expect that sort of thing in this sort of film. What you don’t expect is action scenes that are poorly staged, poorly directed, and rather dull.

Now Watching: Captain Blood (1935)

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As I just mentioned, I’m gonna try to do a better job of posting around here. Again, I’ll have more to say about that in a day or two, but as part of that plan, I’m starting a new series I’m calling Now Watching.

Quite a lot of folks do that on social media. They will mention what they are currently watching, or reading, or listening to, and maybe say just a few words about it. So, I thought I’d turn that into a full-on blog post.

The idea won’t be to do full reviews, but to just mention what I’m currently watching (and maybe listening to or reading) and to say a few words about it. Later on, I might do full reviews of some of these things, but maybe not.

Tonight I watched:

Captain Blood (1935)
Directed by Michael Curtis
Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, Lionel Atwill, and Basil Rathbone

Synopsis: After treating a Monmouth rebel against King James II in 1680s England, a young Irish doctor is exiled as a slave to Jamaica, where he captures a Spanish galleon and becomes the most feared pirate of the Caribbean.

Rating: 7/10

Thoughts: Me and the wife wanted something fun to watch tonight, and she suggested a pirate movie (she was aiming for the Muppet pirate movie, but we landed on this).

It takes an awfully long time to get to the piracy. Captain Blood starts out as an ordinary citizen, minding his own business. But when he applies his physician’s trade to a rebel fighter, he’s arrested and sold into slavery. Yada, yada, yada, an hour later, he finally becomes a pirate. There is a romance subplot with Olivia De Havilland and Basil Rathbone shows up for a couple of scenes as a rival pirate.

All of that is okay, not great, but watchable. It is the last half hour where things pick up, and the final battle is pretty terrific.