Déjà vu (2006)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Déjà vu (2006) – T. Scott

A Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Tony Scott film.  Is there anything more to say than that?  Maybe. I usually avoid these noisy expensive blockbusters, finding them all spectacle and little plot or character development.  Of course, if you get a star with a known personality, such as Denzel Washington, they can add their usual traits and style to the proceedings, as happens here.  But what really drew me to the film (which I had never heard of before) was that it was grouped together with other films about time and memory by the Criterion Channel (sadly available only in the US), including such amazing films as Vertigo, Twelve Monkeys, Memento, and Mullholand Dr. So, I took the risk and, yes, like those other films, it turned out to be rather mind-bending (although as most reviewers suggested at the time, also preposterous).  This film, shot in 2005, also focuses on terrorism (a bomb is planted on a ferry carrying US servicepeople and civilians) and takes place in an immediately post-Katrina New Orleans.  Thinking about how the US felt this close to 9-11 and this terrible disaster adds another odd resonance to the film – but is it terrorism-porn?).  Washington plays an ATF agent called in to investigate the bombing and help track down the culprit.  This far in, the film is a by-the-numbers disaster film with fast cutting and death/destruction.  But then FBI agent Val Kilmer invites Washington to join an elite team with access to a very high-tech surveillance system that allows them to view actions in the past from any conceivable angle in any location (within a set radius that can be extended by using a portable headset) – the kicker is that they can only observe things 4 days in the past, because the system takes a long time to render the data from all available camera sources.  Washington asks the right questions (how do they get the audio?) but receives no answers.  This is very high concept stuff and to the extent that you can hold onto the thread, you’ll enjoy the movie.  It is part action thriller and part (creepy) romance, not to mention sci-fi.  But just don’t try to apply logic to the ending because it just might not make sense (although it might bust your brain to figure that out).   

 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

 

☆ ☆ ☆

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) – N. A. Oplev

A bit too sadistic for my liking but I guess there is no denying that the film succeeds in creating well-rounded characters, particularly that of Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), whose backstory may be fleshed out further in subsequent films, I gather. The plot is a rather conventional whodunnit, with journalist Mikael Blomkvist hired by Henrik Vanger (of the wealthy Vanger Corporation) to solve the 40-year old murder of his niece.  There’s a family full of suspects to investigate, all living nearby on a secluded island off the coast of Sweden. But what makes things different this time is the use of technology (primarily by hacker Lisbeth) to track down and analyse clues.  One wonders how a supercomputer (or future A. I. program) would perform at this same task.  I guess it wouldn’t end up risking its own life in a confrontation with the villain of the piece.  As could be expected, the mise-en-scene here is all wintry grey which sets the mood but feels cliché at this point (or perhaps all of those Scandinavian Noir tv series came after this?).  David Fincher remade this film for Hollywood but I’m not sure whether it is worth taking a look (at some distant point in the future) or even whether I should check out the subsequent two installments.  From the books by Stieg Larsson.

  

Karami-Ai (The Inheritance) (1962)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Karami-Ai (The Inheritance) (1962) – M. Kobayashi

Kobayashi’s darkly comic and noirish tale of the quest of a dying executive (Sô Yamamura) to find his three illegitimate children and determine whether to include them in his will pulls no punches in its examination of human greed.  Perhaps his capricious act, which deliberately disadvantages his younger wife (Misako Watanabe; with whom his relationship is cold and distant), inspires her to plot with her ex-lover (Minoru Chiaki; also in her husband’s firm) to steal more of the inheritance (a sizeable sum). But this doesn’t explain why the dying man’s lawyer (Seiji Miyaguchi) and his assistant (Tatsuya Nakadai) also plot to gain some (or all) of the money, after being charged with finding one of the children (all of whom turn out to be less than virtuous themselves). Seemingly, he isn’t a very nice man. Only the executive’s loyal secretary (Keiko Kishi, first billed) stays pure-of-intention even as her boss takes advantage of her and treats her selfishly. With numerous surprising plot twists and a shifting set of alliances, the finale still comes mostly as a shock, even though director Masaki Kobayashi’s decision to frame the bulk of the story as a flashback gives something away (the surprise is in how she did it rather than that she did it).  Gorgeous in its black and white cinematography and nicely directed in that slightly ostentatious early 60s manner, this fills the gap between the director’s masterpieces: The Human Condition trilogy and Hara-Kiri.   

 

Longlegs (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Longlegs (2024) – O. Perkins

Director Osgood Perkins (son of Psycho’s Anthony Perkins) knew exactly what he needed to steal to make this serial killer horror film a success. But it isn’t quite stealing if it adds up to something new, is it? Let’s just call it another entry in the evergreen genre that includes The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Se7en (1995), and dozens of lesser entries. But Longlegs also takes some cues from horror films that include subliminal images, such as the Exorcist (1974) with which it also shares a demonic theme; keep an eye out. (Can it simultaneously be in the serial killer genre and the Satanic Panic genre?).  Maika Monroe plays the Clarice Starling role as a young FBI agent who discovers that tracking a serial killer unexpectedly reveals things about her own past (she’s also psychic, which adds an extra spooky dimension to proceedings).  Teamed with Blair Underwood’s Agent Carter, she draws clues together from the letters (in code) that Longlegs leaves behind (a la Zodiac, 2007) and the not-quite-coincidental details that link the cases (all of which involve a father killing his entire family, including a daughter born on the 14^th day of the month, and then himself). Eventually this leads to the killer who turns out to be a T.Rex-loving Nicolas Cage, unrecognisable in Buffalo Bill drag.  He’s weird, even weirder than usual.  The plot then moves slowly and inexorably to its conclusion.  Is it crammed too full with disparate elements? Maybe. Things mostly make sense if you are willing to accept a certain supernatural logic. Ultimately, it’s a solid entry to the genre but perhaps one step down(stairs). Worth seeing.

 

Foxy Brown (1974)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Foxy Brown (1974) – J. Hill

Earlier this year, I read Quentin Tarantino’s book about his favourite movies when growing up (Cinema Speculation, 2022) and while Foxy Brown wasn’t explicitly mentioned, parts of the book read like an ode to blaxploitation.  It isn’t coincidental that he later chose to revive Pam Grier’s flagging career by casting her as the lead in Jackie Brown (1997), one of his best movies (thanks to Grier and the late Robert Forster).  Surprisingly, blaxploitation is one of my blind spots, so I decided to check out this classic – and for all its obvious datedness, it holds up.  Grier plays Foxy whose brother (Antonio Fargas) is a drug dealer but whose boyfriend (Terry Carter) is an undercover narcotics agent. After the latter is gunned down, she plots her revenge by going undercover in the “modelling agency” run by drug ring kingpins Miss Katherine (Kathryn Loder) and (chief baddie) Steve Elias (Peter Brown). When her cover is blown and she’s shot up with heroin and subjected to unwanted attention by henchmen out at the ranch, she escapes and enlists the local neighborhood action committee (also focused on wiping out the scourge of drug dealers) to help her get her revenge.  Expect sex and violence and a superbad Pam Grier.

 

Ghost Stories (2017)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Ghost Stories (2017) – J. Dyson & A. Nyman

I’m always searching for a supernatural chiller that lives up to my expectations, but, alas, Ghost Stories did not. Co-director (with Jeremy Dyson) Andy Nyman stars as Prof. Philip Goodman, a psychic debunker who is provided with a series of three cases that an earlier debunker could not prove false. The three stories are then re-enacted as Goodman interviews each participant (providing a framing device much like those used in the horror anthologies from Amicus Productions in the ‘60s and ‘70s).  Although the re-enactments do offer some spooky moments – they tend to fizzle out, leaving viewers wondering why they were so likely to be truly supernatural.  Worse, Goodman ends up inserted into some of the stories and then the framing device concludes with what is meant to be a clever twist.  I’ll keep searching.

 

Angel on my Shoulder (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Angel on my Shoulder (1946) – A. Mayo

Paul Muni mugs a lot as the gangster sent to hell but then returned to the land of mortals by Mephistopheles (Claude Rains) who wants to ruin the career of do-gooder (and gubernatorial candidate) Judge Parker by inserting rough-edged Eddie Kagle into his body.  Of course, it’s a comedy, as Muni gets to perform a bull-in-the-china-shop routine as others act shocked at the noble judge’s transformation.  Rains is sly and arch as the Devil (with a few tossed off one-liners) but his schemes do not play out as planned when Kagle accidentally improves the judge’s popularity. Naturally, with the help of love interest Barbara (Anne Baxter), Eddie begins to see the error of his ways and turn from bad to good.  That’s how it goes in movies like this (especially with the Hays Code in effect).  As directed by Archie Mayo, it's a trifle, never laugh-out-loud funny, but pleasant enough – and who doesn’t love a movie that takes a trip down to Hell (fire and brimstone included)?

 

The Last Adventure (1967)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

 The Last Adventure (1967) – R. Enrico

Wim Wenders listed this on Letterboxd as one of his top ten movies of all time.  I had never heard of it so thought I should rectify the situation.  Pairing Lino Ventura and Alain Delon in 1967 certainly raised my hopes of a J-P Melville inspired film but instead this is a breezy (but sometimes jarringly brutal) bromance about a pilot and a mechanic/adventurer who together with a sculpture artist who works with found junk (Joanna Shimkus) seek sunken treasure in the Congo.  Although of normal length, the film seems to fall into three separate parts, each of which might be a film unto themselves.  First, we see how Shimkus becomes the third wheel to Ventura and Delon’s relationship, focused on their attempts to develop and test a fast engine for a plane or racecar.  Second, we’re off to the Congo (after a brief racist interlude not unlike the one in Antonioni’s Eclipse) where the trio meets Serge Reggiani and hunt for the treasure while being hunted by various mercenaries.  Third, we’re back to France with the denouement taking place at Fort Boyard (called “Fortress Island” here and that is exactly what it seems – incredibly scenic and well shot), for a more typical action movie ending. As directed by Robert Enrico (who filmed the wonderful An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, 1961, from Ambrose Bierce, used in the Twilight Zone), the widescreen affair almost seems like a silent film at times – many montages and I guess no words needed to follow the action.  Combined with the “road movie” plot, I guess it is no surprise what Wenders saw in this.  But despite the best efforts of all concerned, the result still feels rather languid to me.

Nightmare (1956)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Nightmare (1956) – M. Shane

Film noir – but weirder.  From a short story by Cornell Woolrich (whose work has been mined for many noirs: Phantom Lady, Black Angel, Night has a Thousand Eyes, Rear Window, more), this feels more like horror than noir at times.  Kevin McCarthy plays New Orleans jazz clarinetist Stan Grayson who has a terrible nightmare where he kills a man in a weird octagonal mirrored room.  He awakes the next day and finds some evidence that the dream may be real (a button, a key, blood and bruises on himself).  He asks his brother-in-law, homicide detective Rene Bressard, for some help but Bressard doesn’t believe that the dream could have any bearing on reality. That is, until Grayson guides them to a mysterious house in the bayou during a sudden rainstorm, a house that he claims to have never been to in his life.  Although pretty low budget, the film feels edgy and unusual – you never know for certain whether something supernatural is happening and you feel for Grayson.  The bit players keep things moving but it is really up to McCarthy and Robinson to carry the film – and they do.  Of course, it is all tied up nicely by the end but along the way, you just don’t know.  And it is still pretty weird, after all.

 

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Late Night with the Devil (2023) – C. Cairnes & C. Cairnes

Australian directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes weave together a heap of cultural and cinematic references to create an enjoyable nostalgic horror film that manages to hold together (unlike so many).  Opening in documentary mode, the first eight minutes set up what is then presented as “found footage” of a late night talk show’s Halloween episode from 1977, revealing the backstory of the host (Jack Delroy, a Johnny Carson rival, played by David Dastmalchian) and the main guest (Lilly D’Abo, only survivor of a Satanic cult raided by the FBI leading to their mass suicide, played by teenage Ingrid Torelli).  The footage contains both the show as aired (in colour) and the offscreen events/dialogue during ad breaks (in B&W).  The episode is designed to attract viewer share for the show (“Night Owls”) during the ratings sweeps week by controversially presenting a live demonic possession.  Other guests on the show include a medium who can communicate with the dead and a skeptic clearly modelled on the Amazing Randi.  There is a delectably long lead up to the ultimately gruesome and horrific events that tantalizes viewers with potentially supernatural (or perhaps easily debunked) events that seem to link back to the host and his personal life, particularly his wife’s recent death from cancer.  With spot on period detail (apparently aided by artificial intelligence, upsetting the Arts community), the film hits the entertainment spot but is really just the cinematic equivalent of comfort/junk food.

 

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) – R. W. Neill

Although this is the fourth sequel to Universal’s Frankenstein (1931), it is really just the first sequel to The Wolf Man (1941).  So, it makes sense that Lon Chaney, Jr., has returned as Larry Talbot, except of course that he was killed at the end of the first film by a crack on the head with a silver cane wielded by his father Claude Rains.  No worries, as the writer (Curt Siodmak) has invented some additional werewolf lore that reveals that Talbot can’t actually die (despite spending years asleep in his coffin, until awakened by graverobbers).  Now that Talbot is alive again, and killing people every full moon, he wants nothing more than to really die.  As such, with the assistance of Maleva, the gypsy woman from the first film (again played by Maria Ouspenskaya), they seek out Dr. Frankenstein (who they believe knows the secrets of life and death) in his castle in Vasaria.  Alas, the scientist is already dead but Talbot stumbles upon the Monster (now played by Bela Lugosi) frozen in ice.  When freed, he accompanies Talbot to the castle where, with the help of Talbot’s doctor (Patric Knowles) and Frankenstein’s daughter (Ilona Massey) – stay with me -- they find Frankenstein’s secret diaries.  Following instructions within, they aim to drain the life energies from Talbot and the Monster (by reversing the polarity when attached to those wires, of course).  But things turn pear shaped and soon and as expected the Monster and the Wolf Man are fighting hand-to-hand until the angry villagers blow up the dam and the mighty river washes the castle away with the monsters within – until they are resurrected in House of Frankenstein (1944) where things get even more campy.  The current film plays out with a mostly straight face, highlighted by the spooky mise-en-scene, cinematography, and music of the classic monsters series we loved so well.  

The October Man (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The October Man (1947) – R. W. Baker

In this dark British noir, John Mills (not far from his excellent turn as Pip in David Lean’s Great Expectations) plays Jim Ackland, an industrial chemist recovering from a terrible road accident in which a young girl he was babysitting was killed.  A year later, released from the sanatorium, he is wracked with grief (and often suicidal) but trying hard to make a go of it in a new job while living at a boarding house/hotel in suburban London. He keeps his distance from the other tenants but is friendly with his next door neighbour Kay Walsh who turns up murdered.  Suspicion lands on Mills after other tenants (falsely) claim he spent many nights in Walsh’s apartment – his head injury and time in the sanatorium are held against him by the police (stigma of mental illness).  With his new girlfriend Joan Greenwood, he struggles to clear his name while also experience doubt and depression.  A good deal of time is spent on character development (a good thing, if sombre) before we are whisked into a more traditional suspense-thriller plot once the real facts of the case are revealed. 

 

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) – F. E. Feist

Solid noir that sees San Francisco Police Detective Lee J. Cobb making a fatal error when he catches his rich girlfriend (Jane Wyatt) shoot her (second) husband (who was sneaking into their house pretending to be a burglar but with the intention to kill her) – instead of taking her in, he covers up the crime.  Enter John Dall, playing Cobb’s younger brother, who has just been promoted to detective himself and is eager to solve the crime to which he has been assigned. So, he intrepidly uncovers all the clues that Cobb accidentally left behind when disposing of the body (at the airport) and therefore gradually closes in on his brother who tries his best to throw him off the trail, even if he doesn’t want to hurt Dall’s career.  It’s complicated but pretty standard fare.  But it does end in a nicely shot final stand-off at Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

Cry Terror! (1958)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Cry Terror! (1958) – A. L. Stone

As the movie begins, we learn that a bomb has been planted on a plane with the plotters demanding a fortune to stop it from detonating. Evidence quickly points to TV repairman James Mason. However, it turns out that he was tricked into making the bomb that Rod Steiger, Angie Dickinson, and Jack Klugman have subsequently smuggled onto the plane. In order to keep Mason from talking, the trio of bad guys kidnap him, his wife (Inger Stevens) and young daughter.  Neville Brand plays a particularly loathsome heavy who stands guard over them. Stevens is sent to collect the pay-off from the airline company with Steiger threatening to kill her daughter if she tips off the police.  Of course, the police are hard at work trying to solve the case at the same time.  Filmed on location in New York (including a climactic scene in the subway tunnels), this is a fast moving, often raw and adult, thriller with good performances throughout.  Perhaps it is all much ado about nothing but the film, as directed by Andrew L. Stone, excels at ratcheting up the tension.  

 

Shinkansen Daibakuha (1975)

Shinkansen Daibakuha (1975) – J. Satô

All of the disaster movie clichés are on full display in this 150-minute “bomb on a train” Seventies drama from Japan.  The plot was famously adapted for Speed (1994) starring Keanu Reeves, but here the train can’t slow down below 80 km/hr or the dynamite will explode.  It has been planted by Ken Takakura, a small factory owner who has been driven to bankruptcy and divorce by a larger corporation. He’s joined by a group of others who are disadvantaged by Japan’s economic and social changes (a kid who can’t find work, a former terrorist/activist) – there are a number of flashbacks that explain how the group came together. Takakura is from the hard cool school where acting involves not doing much, just looking tough, often while smoking a cigarette, reflecting. Apparently, all or most of this backstory was cut-out for an international version of the film that just focused on the train action which cuts between the engineer/driver (Sonny Chiba), frantic passengers (including a lady about to give birth and lots of people late for appointments), the shinkansen control centre (all 70s tech with flashing lights and ancient monitors), and the police headquarters (where the leadership team investigates leads to try to identify the bombers).  Takakura wants a cool US $5 million in a silver suitcase but there are several failed attempts to get it to him and then even when the money is paid off, there is additional trouble getting the bomb’s whereabouts and the instructions for how to dismantle it from Takakura to the people on the train.  Whatever can go wrong, does go wrong.  Yet with all the frantic plotting to keep the suspense going, this still feels like an epic TV episode (with an awesome jazz funk soundtrack) and that’s not unlike comfort food, albeit from Japan.

 

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (2022)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (2022) – M. Cousins

Film critic Mark Cousins (creator of The Story of Film TV series, 2011) typically narrates the documentaries (that he writes and directs) in his lilting Belfast accent, relaying his unique insights and film analysis over clips from the relevant films.  But here, tackling the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Cousins instead has professional mimic Alistair McGowan narrate the film as if the voiceover were delivered by the Master of Suspense himself.  This is peculiar, even off-putting (when Hitch talks about mobile phones and screentime), but works as a conceit that allows Cousins to suggest certain motivations on the part of Hitch, motivations that allow Cousins to impose some thematic unity across diverse films.  The themes (organised into chapters) include Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfillment, and Height.  These sorts of analyses (of the kind you often find on youtube) are fun – and its great to see all of the parallels across Hitchcock’s films – but as a whole the themes don’t add up to anything deeper, even if they are imagined to come from the horse’s mouth (not always believably). Hitchcock’s films do lend themselves to analysis, a seemingly endless wellspring, so it’s great to see Cousins manage to provide a novel take on this well-trodden ground.

 

The House of the Seven Gables (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The House of the Seven Gables (1940) – J. May

Shades of the gothic horrors that Vincent Price would do with Roger Corman decades later.  It is always great to see Price (and also George Sanders) but this should have been pushed a bit harder over the top into the kind of horror Universal was already known for.  Although I read the novel so long ago, wikipedia tells me that Nathaniel Hawthorne's plot is much corrupted here.

 

The Conspirators (1944)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Conspirators (1944) – J. Negulesco

Sure, it echoes Casablanca, with a number of shared cast members and similar plotline, but even if it's empty at the centre, it makes all the right moves and therefore I found it an easy and enjoyable entertainment.

 

The Teachers’ Lounge (2023)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Teachers’ Lounge (2023) – I. Çatak

One of those films that aims to put viewers in the middle of a moral quandary and then tightens the screws by ensuring that all possible viewpoints have some credibility. Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) is a Polish teacher who is new to a German school, teaching sixth grade.  When a rash of thefts takes place, the school leadership takes a heavy-handed approach to discovering the culprit which involves pressuring class leaders to dob in their classmates and even frisking students. Carla clearly disapproves but when she is the target of a theft herself things quickly spiral out-of-control and she finds herself spurned by both students and teachers. Benesch is solid in the lead role as the slightly paranoid and unsure teacher (who is otherwise caring and conscientious toward her students).  Director Ilker Çatak manages the tension exceptionally well (and seems to want to say something about the difficulties of managing a multicultural classroom/society), but the film falters at the final gate, leaving many loose ends untied.  Perhaps that sort of open ending plays well for the art house crowd but letting the plot unspool for another twenty or so minutes may have provided a bit more satisfaction (as it is, the ending teeters on the edge of plausibility, at least for me). Nevertheless, for most of its runtime, The Teacher’s Lounge was extremely gripping.  

 

Marshland (2014)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Marshland (2014) – A. Rodríguez

Spanish take on the serial killer genre with two cops, one young and idealistic and one older and cynical, hunting a killer of young girls in the rural south of the country. The time is 1980 and Franco has been dead for five years but his loyalists remain in this area. The younger cop has been relocated from Madrid for writing an outspoken pro-democracy letter to the newspaper. The older cop is rumored to have been part of Franco’s secret police. Together they must track down the killer of two teen sisters who may have been the subject of pornographic photographs. So, the content is dark and the film moves slowly, taking its time to linger on the landscape (wasteland or marshland). The clues add up, as do the victims (some from the past).  Those in positions of power may be implicated.  As the plot takes several twists and turns, we learn more about the two detectives and perhaps they come to understand or accept each other. But by the time we get to the end of the picture, a few plot holes still exist (or perhaps I missed some important details or did not quite grasp the cultural context). And, not unlike some classics of the neo-noir genre (e.g., Chinatown), even as the mystery appears solved, justice remains somewhere in the distance.

 

The Crimson Rivers (2000)

 ☆ ☆ ½

The Crimson Rivers (2000) – M. Kassovitz

A star-studded French serial killer thriller offered a lot of promise and started off strong and gritty, albeit with some clichéd characters for this genre.  Jean Reno plays the jaded police commissioner who does not play by the rules, brought in to investigate a gruesome murder in the French Alps.  In a separate plot strand, Vincent Cassel plays another investigator who ignores the rules and can be a bit of a hot-head, investigating the desecration of a girl’s tomb, presumably by some Nazi skinheads.  Naturally, the two investigations come together in a focus on a prestigious but secluded University in the mountains.  Members of the Faculty are picked off one-by-one, with the serial killer using one death to point out clues to the next.  Reno suspects alumnus Nadia Farès who has a chip on her shoulder against the university (but still works there, helping to divert avalanches from descending on the school).  She is also his presumed love interest.  With its strong cast – and direction by actor Matthieu Kassovitz (who was so great in the political spy series, The Bureau) – things hold together well, until suddenly they don’t.  Reputedly, Vincent Cassel complained that he could never understand the plot and this permanently damaged his relationship with Kassovitz.  Reno returned for a sequel and a couple of decades later a French TV series appeared.  However, I’m with Cassel – this does not add up.  

Three Strangers (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Three Strangers (1946) – J. Negulesco

With a John Huston/Howard Koch script that was initially going to be repurposed as a sequel to The Maltese Falcon (1941) (until Warner Brothers discovered that they did not own the rights to the characters), Three Strangers still emerged as the 8^th (out of 9) collaboration between Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet (who were so memorable in the earlier film). Having Bogie or Mary Astor appear would have elevated the proceedings but the result is nevertheless perfectly passable as noir-tinged drama. Geraldine Fitzgerald lures Lorre and Greenstreet to her London apartment where she convinces them to help her make a wish in front of her statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin, an opportunity that only happens at midnight on Chinese New Year and only if three strangers present agree upon the same wish.  They agree to wish that Lorre’s sweepstakes ticket is a winner and subsequently that they will bet any winnings together on the big horse race happening immediately after the lottery.  From there, they go back to their separate lives which turn out to be very compromised by poor choices (Fitzgerald plays an adulteress seeking to get back with her estranged husband; Lorre plays a drunk mixed up in a robbery gone wrong and charged with murder; Greenstreet plays a lawyer who has misused money from a trust he was overseeing).  All of them could benefit from winning but only Fitzgerald truly believes in Kwan Yin’s powers; she is also the most unsavory of the trio. The film (as directed by Jean Negulesco) flips back and forth between the three stories, ultimately bringing the three strangers back together at the end, to seal their fate. Of the three, Lorre provides the most sympathetic portrayal and the strongest acting, but the film is also aided and abetted by a number of (other) familiar character actors. That said, it lacks enough panache (or enough depth in each of the three stories) to really capitalize on all of the talent on hand.

 

Oppenheimer (2023)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Oppenheimer (2023) – C. Nolan

I had a very ambivalent response to Oppenheimer, both the man as presented (by Cillian Murphy) and the movie as a whole.  I suspect director Christopher Nolan intended the former response but perhaps not the latter. There is a lot to chew on here but the complicated flashback/flashforward structure (sometimes but not always signaled by a change from colour to B&W) doesn’t make things easier. Early in the film, it is difficult to grasp the numerous characters and the cursory but seemingly deep discussion of physics. This doesn’t necessarily become easier as the film unfolds and we meet Oppie’s allies (General Matt Damon) and antagonists (Edward Teller played by Benny Safdie).  Let’s break down my issues with the film.  First, like it or not, this is a bio-pic and Nolan doesn’t limit himself to the pivotal years of the Manhattan Project but includes formative events before and after the development of the A-bomb.  Fair enough. However, when the film shifts gears to mostly focus on Oppenheimer’s fight to keep his security clearance during the time of the McCarthy red scare along with the influence of Robert Downey Jr’s Lewis Strauss on that hearing (and Oppenheimer’s subsequent influence on Strauss’s hearing to become Commerce Secretary), the film begins to feel overlong and it loses some of its focus.  I recognize that these later scenes do allow Nolan to interrogate whether Oppenheimer felt regret for being so actively involved in an invention that was used to kill 100s of 1000s of innocent Japanese citizens, but as a vehicle for that opportunity to make this point, it feels rather indirect.  Which brings me to the main source of my ambivalence. I understand that Nolan needed to tell this story authentically and in context, so it isn’t surprising that he presents Oppenheimer as experiencing a felt moral imperative to build the bomb before Germany (or the Soviets?) did the same – but the lengthy applause after the atomic test at Los Alamos seems to go on just a bit too long.  Did Nolan do this on purpose to highlight the convergence of American patriotism and scientific satisfaction?  Watching the film with my Japanese spouse may have intensified my discomfort at this cheering for a weapon of mass destruction.  Later when Oppenheimer is announcing the “successful” dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Nolan does introduce some hints that this can’t be seen as positively as it is being recounted – Oppenheimer seems frantic, the American flag-waving audience seems to suddenly contain people who may be crying rather than laughing -- but it is all rather difficult to discern.  Is this a manifestation of Oppenheimer’s guilty conscience? To its credit, the film raises all the old defenses for dropping the bomb (it ended the war sooner and saved lives) and then raises the counter-arguments later (the Japanese were ready to surrender already, many more lives were lost in horrible ways).  Of course, this is a work of entertainment rather than something more serious and Nolan and his team manage to keep things moving at a very rapid pace for much of the film’s 170-minute run-time.  Brief visual interludes/special effects help to punctuate events and give the film visual variety. The recreation of the time and place feels apt, something one can expect from a big-budget Hollywood film.  But despite the presence of Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s love interests, the film fails the famous Bechdel test (as they do not talk to each other nor exist independently as characters beyond their relationships with Oppenheimer – plus Pugh spends most of her screentime nude). Whether all of the various plot threads are needed or not is something one could spend hours debating – and I guess that is one thing the film does have going for it: it provides the opportunity for discussion and debate about one of the most distressing contributions of science to modern life that has had lasting implications for geopolitics and life today and over the past 80 years.

 

EO (2022)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

EO (2022) – J. Skolimowski

This one ends up in the category of movies I wanted to like more. After all, it is an homage to Bresson’s great Au Hasard, Balthasar (1966) which was itself a great concept (Jesus-like donkey witnesses the weaknesses of humankind).  But as others have noted, whereas Bresson pays more attention to his human characters, director Jerzy Skolimowski (Deep End, 1970) gives us the donkey’s eye-view (sometimes psychedelically so).  Structured episodically, the film follows the donkey from setting to setting, from circus to stable to slaughterhouse, providing numerous opportunities to witness humankind’s cruelty to animals, treated as entertainment, beasts of burden, or food.  As such, the film is rather single-minded, unless the rare scraps of dialogue from the human characters (including, briefly Isabelle Huppert) can be mined for deeper themes (humans are also cruel to humans here). Naturally, EO suffers through all this – but viewers don’t have to, because Skolimowski and his team (Cinematographer Michal Dymek and Composer Pawel Mykietyn deserve special mention) make the film an enjoyable ride, full of a variety of audio and visual delights. If you let it wash over you, it is sure to be an impactful experience, but for those hoping to piece together a plot (beyond just the overall schematic), perhaps less so.

 

Hagazussa (2017)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Hagazussa (2017) – L. Feigelfeld

I checked this out because it was recommended by the Folk Horror Revival facebook group (and a few other websites).  And, yes, it certainly is folk horror.  Where the film succeeds is in the creation of atmosphere, often strange, occasionally eerie, sometimes breathtaking (those mountain views).  The setting is the Austrian Alps in the 15^th century. The film has four chapters with the first (Shadows) showing our protagonist Albrun (Aleksandra Cwen) as a young girl (Celina Peter) with her dying mother (Claudia Martini).  The mother has been accused of being a witch by the other villagers.  It is hard to know how her daughter feels about this or what she believes. Fast forward a couple of decades and Albrun is living in the same isolated cabin alone but for a newborn baby (with uncertain paternity). The chapters unfold slowly (Horn, then Blood, then Fire) and this viewer was on edge, believing occult happenings were just around the corner. But instead, first-time director Lukas Feigelfeld treats us to Albrun’s gradual break with reality. A village woman makes friends with Albrun but then betrays her.  Albrun begins to hear her dead mother’s voice from the woods.  She eats what must be a magic mushroom and feels the effects (cue Stan Brakhage). Things get worse from there and we sometimes take Albrun’s distorted perspective but also see things from an omniscient vantage point, showing her to be disturbed, spooked rather than spooky. Awful and weird things do happen but the film’s slow pace and “debunking” attitude tend to undercut any real folk horror thrills.