Wife (1953)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Wife (1953) – M. Naruse

If this were the first film by Mikio Naruse that you watched, it might floor you.  But as someone who has now seen 20 of his films, I think it isn’t quite in a class with his best films.  Yes, it draws you into its world and its ordinary characters experiencing ordinary human drama. It might be interesting for you to see Japan in the 1950s, where characters still talk about having lost their husbands or brothers in the war. Some women still wear kimonos but others have taken to Western dress. There’s a certain desperation about economic circumstances that pervades this film (the central couple runs a boarding house) and many of Naruse’s works (in almost every one of his films characters talk about money). This is heightened because women are the leads and focus of his oeuvre.  His best films often star Hideko Takamine (or sometimes Setsuko Hara, who was Ozu’s muse) but this one features Mieko Takamine (no relation) who took the part when Hideko declined.  She plays the titular wife and Ken Uehara (another Naruse regular) plays her husband.  Their 10-year-old childless marriage is coming apart.  Both are unsatisfied with the other and with their lives.  Eventually the husband starts an affair with his widowed secretary which continues even after she moves away to Osaka (from Tokyo), when they travel to visit each other.  The film shows us what happens when the wife finds out.  Naruse’s point-of-view seems to be that everyone has their reasons and no one is completely right or wrong.  Yet, society has (or had) strong views about this situation and how it should play out. Naruse’s films have a strong vein of pessimism and there’s a melancholy feel that can’t be avoided when you see how society’s shackles block characters from pursuing their dreams. People end up in dead ends and inertia keeps them there.  It’s no different in Wife but the bluntness of the ending might catch you by surprise (if this were your first Naruse film).  For mature audiences.

Groundhog Day (1993)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Groundhog Day (1993) – H. Ramis

I suspect it has been 30 years since I saw Groundhog Day, which does cast a different light on its take home message (that we need to live each day as if it is the only one we get – or possibly to use each day productively so they add up to a more meaningful life).  Have I achieved this? (Does anyone ever feel they have?). The plot famously involves arrogant weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) getting stuck in a time-loop where he has to re-live the same day over and over and over again; that day is Groundhog Day (2 February – also my wife’s birthday) with its portentous omen about the future being wintry or nice depending on whether the rodent sees his shadow. The film takes place in Punxsutawney, PA (NE of Pittsburgh), a small town, presented as they were in the early ‘90s.  As directed by Harold Ramis (who takes a brief cameo), it is pretty mundane, even cheesily cringeworthy. Phil is above it all, but his new producer Rita (Andie MacDowall) is on a different wavelength, open to finding positivity in everything.  Cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott) is around to provide Phil-deflating comments.  So, what would you do if each day was just a repeat of the previous day with every moment fully predictable? The screenplay (by Ramis and Danny Rubin) intelligently conjectures what the average person might do: freak out, then take advantage of the lack of consequences for one’s actions, then fall into despair, then try to use time more wisely (to learn skills and stuff).  Phil decides to pursue Rita who he comes to know in depth (even if, for her, it is still just one day), with expected results, given she thinks he is an arrogant jerk. But eventually, he grows as a person, becoming his better self.  This helps him with Rita.  Amon (aged 13) felt the film was corny.  I liked the “high concept” but it feels dated, sentimental, with little edge (and not really too many laughs).  That said, it is probably a good thing to take a moment to reflect on a more existential way of being. In this way, the film “works”.

The Red House (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Red House (1947) – D. Daves

The Red House is loosely categorized as “film noir” (a very broad category, as we know) but it begins rather cheerfully with some high school kids (real ages: 19 to 24) flirting on the school bus (albeit with a voiceover noting that kids take longer to finish school because of farm chores that take them away from their studies).  Nath Storm (Lon McCallister) is one of those kids who takes up a job working for odd Pete Morgan (Edward G. Robinson) and his sister (Judith Anderson) at the insistence of their adopted daughter Meg (Allene Roberts), even though Nath is going steady with Tibby Rinton (Julie London), a “bad girl” who also flirts with older Teller (Rory Calhoun).  So far, a bit ordinary, unusual family structure aside.  But when Nath tells Pete about his plans to take a shortcut through the nearby woods to get home in the evening, Pete over-reacts (there are rumours that his wooden leg is a result of an incident in the woods).  Of course, Nath goes anyway and something whacks him on the back of the head.  This only makes him want to investigate further, especially after hearing about a haunted red house somewhere in the middle of the woods.  He and Meg and Tibby search for it to no avail.  Later Meg sneaks in there on her own and gets shot at.  All the while, Pete may be losing his grip on reality, Tibby hooks up with Teller, and Nath is falling for Meg (who is keen).  Director Delmer Daves builds up suspense around the red house and its secret, somehow making it seem almost Freudian, with the not-so-hidden sexual motivations of the teens and the creepy obsession of Pete for Meg hanging heavy over the proceedings. The teens want to find the red house but Pete won’t let them!  The tension builds and eventually we learn all, which fortunately doesn’t feel anti-climactic but more like an inevitable culmination as the pieces fall into place.  Uneven but weird enough to recommend.  

WarGames (1983)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

WarGames (1983) – J. Badham

No doubt this film is making the rounds of the streaming services now to remind us that Artificial Intelligence is hardly new (although the accessibility of Gen AI programs surely is bringing on the next industrial revolution).  I suppose I must have seen this in the cinema back then (since this was the time in high school when we didn’t have a VCR) but I hadn’t thought much about it since then.  Matthew Broderick is the computer whiz with the complete set-up in his bedroom (including 12 bps modem) which, when he isn’t playing Galaga down at the local arcade, he uses to hack into his high school’s computer to change his failing grades.  (Did our high school even have a computer in 1983?  That was contactable via phone lines?) Reality constraints aside, it is probably true that NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) would have had some honking big IBM machine hooked up to nuclear missile launchers, as in the film. But would said computer play anything more complicated than chess? In this film, it is ready to play global thermonuclear war with Broderick, featuring the USA vs. the Soviet Union. (The Day After was shown on TV this same year, featuring the consequences of such a war).  Director John Badham avoids dwelling on any consequences and seems to be channeling E.T.-era Spielberg here, as the film slowly morphs from small-town family/school life (with Ally Sheedy as sidekick/girlfriend material) to a sort of PG action-adventure when Broderick is arrested by the FBI (oops, spoiler) and needs to track down the computer scientist who created the AI computer (called Joshua) in the first place (on an island off the coast of the Pacific NW). It all comes down to retraining the computer using a series of games of tic-tac-toe. If only averting the end of the world were so easy.  Less than 20 years later, filmmakers were already positive that sentient machines would be treating humans as batteries instead (solving two problems at once).

Bring Her Back (2025)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Bring Her Back (2025) – D. Philippou & M. Philippou

I liked the first feature by Australian brothers Danny and Michael Philippou (Talk to Me, 2022) enough to check out this, their second, although I knew there was a risk that it might have more blood and gore than I would like.  I was right, but I gritted my teeth and occasionally looked away. The plot finds 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and 12-year-old Piper (Sora Wong, who is blind) orphaned when their dad is found dead in the shower. Social Services find them a foster mother, Laura (Sally Hawkins), who is more than a little intense. Very quickly she has Andy offside, showing a preference for Piper; another foster child Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) acts bizarrely and is often kept locked in his room. Andy becomes our identification figure as he (and we) puzzle out what Laura is up to; we see a bit more than he can, so we know she is up to no good.  A disturbing VHS tape seems to be a sort of blueprint for Laura’s actions, as she may be invoking a ritual of sorts.  Since this is a horror film, the supernatural is at hand. The directors ratchet up the tension and things spiral out of control. I might have preferred more spooky, less gross, but there is no denying Hawkins’ acting chops here. And as with their first film, the Philippou brothers know that horror lies in our vulnerabilities (emotional as well as physical) and they don’t let the audience off the hook.

 

Cover Up (1949)

 ☆ ☆ ½

Cover Up (1949) – A. E. Green

The vault of films noir runs very deep and you never know what gems are left to be found (after all the prime viewing has been done).  I thought a film starring Dennis O’Keefe (T-Men, 1947; Raw Deal, 1948) and William Bendix (Lifeboat, 1944; The Blue Dahlia, 1946) had got to be good but alas t’was not so.  What looked like noir on the surface, judging by the time, the stars, and the plot (insurance investigator discovers that apparent suicide is actually a murder being covered up by seemingly a whole town), turns out to be quite jaunty and even light-hearted rather than the dark existential fare I sought.  In retrospect, director Albert E. Green might have been better known for musicals.  Perhaps O’Keefe was looking for something to change his image into more of a romantic leading man type. He seems to have demanded that the Christmas setting be kept (another ingredient tipping this toward sentimentality) when a producer threatened to jettison it.  Only Bendix maintains his edge, as the sheriff who may or may not be in on the conspiracy (and could even be the killer) – he’s got the sly sense of humor that he flashes in his best films while also not afraid to be rough-edged or a bit of a lunk. Barbara Britton is fine as the love interest/daughter of the town banker. But viewers looking for “menace meets small town norms” in their noir had best start with Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943).

 

Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (1979)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (1979) – G. Kromanov

I happened to be on Letterboxd and was checking out what some of the people I follow were watching and film critic Glenn Kenny had this one on his recently watched list (and he gave it five stars with a three word review: “more mind expansion”).  This piqued my interest but I could only find it at the internet archive.  It’s an Estonian film from 1979, so it has that 70s vibe (real phones with cords, European fashion/habits).  You might say it is a film noir (in colour) or perhaps it is one of those murder mysteries that takes place in a hotel where all of the guests are suspects.  This hotel is high in the mountains and the plot includes an avalanche that cuts off power and the roads and keeps everyone there, including the police inspector who got a mysterious call-out only to find that there was no crime to solve.  (An anonymous note soon advises him that a murder is about to be committed).  There is the usual allotment of suspects: a businessman and his flirtatious wife, a canoodling young couple, a paranoid man with TB, a physicist with an obsession about aliens, and then there’s the hotel proprietor and a Saint Bernard (rescued from the Dead Mountaineer who lent his name to the hotel).  Against the odds, the film held my interest when one of the young folks is found dead and the detective (Uldis Pucitis) begins to question the suspects.  Odd events start to pile up (including the arrival of a half-dead “foreigner” who seems to have a link to some of the guests) -- and then, somehow, everything gets very weird: as in, who thunk this (!) in 1979 (!).  Stay for the finale – it’s worth it!