by ·Comments Off on Mandibules (2020, Quentin Dupieux)

Manu (Grégoire Ludig of Dupieux’s Keep an Eye Out) picks up his friend Jean-Gab (David Marsais) in a stolen car to get paid to deliver a briefcase, but they sidetrack upon discovering a giant fly in the car’s trunk, then take over an old man’s camper as a training ground to teach to the fly to rob banks. After they burn down the camper attempting to cook a meal, blonde India Hair (Staying Vertical) mistakes Manu for her classmate and brings them home. “Rich girl fridge!” “Gimme that ham!” Brain-damaged Adèle Exarchopoulos rats on them, the fly eats a dog, things work out in the end. Fun and short, I will keep watching Dupieux movies forever.

by ·Comments Off on Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback (2006, Palacios & Post)

The Torquays was a successful five-piece band of U.S. soldiers who’d stayed in Germany after their war service, playing nightly shows when two serious German art-school dudes approached them and convinced them to rebrand as The Monks and play a pared-down but forceful new kind of rock music. We spend much time with the band members, leaving no anecdote untold and culminating in a one-off NYC reunion show with celebrities like Jon Spencer in the crowd. Still one of the greatest albums ever made… this two-hour movie has only about 15 minutes of illuminating stories, but it’s nice to spend so much time in a world where the Monks mattered.

by ·Comments Off on Fixed Bayonets! (1951, Samuel Fuller)

Haven’t seen this in a long time – it’s the snowy one about the guys left behind when the larger army moves out, ordered to act as if they’re the entire army to fool the enemy into staying put as long as possible. Our dudes get picked off until paranoid Richard Basehart is the highest rank. The whole drama of whether Basehart will be able to lead effectively if he’s in charge is overblown, because he’s only in charge for the last ten minutes and he leads just fine. For me the real drama was the nighttime conversation between him and Gene Evans. Evans is a gruff, down-to-earth character actor and Basehart a tormented over-enunciating drama-school type, and it’s a relief that they manage to inhabit the same scene without it seeming ridiculous.

by ·Comments Off on The Ceremony (1971, Nagisa Oshima)

Right after watching the season of Search Party with the incest-twink, everyone in this movie is in love with their relatives. Masuo (Kenzô Kawarasaki of Shinoda’s Himiko) is a flailing weakling at the center of a powerful doomed family. In his late 20’s his family picks a bride for him, she runs away and they make him go through the wedding ceremony alone, since all the guests had arrived. His friend and his aunt die, and bestie Terumichi (Atsuo Nakamura of Kwaidan and Kill!) leaves his wife Ritsuko then sails off and kills himself. I like Oshima’s anarchist youth movies better than the late prestige dramas – the voiceover is excessive and slows everything down.

by ·Comments Off on Caravaggio (1986, Derek Jarman)

My first Jarman movie, and it’s a proper narrative bio-pic, full of painting and poetry and light. Clear dialogue from a superb group of actors. I did wonder about the 17th century historical accuracy of a few lines – I try not to think about such things, but fortunately Jarman sent the signal to stop worrying when a character pulled out a solar-powered calculator halfway in.

Jarman’s fifth feature, and from the descriptions of the others, this sounds like one of his more conventional movies. Older Caravaggio and his mute assistant and Tilda would become Jarman regulars.

Caravaggio Nigel Terry, who’d played King Arthur in Excalibur:

Assistant and adopted son Jerusaleme: Spencer Leigh

Lover of the boxer and Caravaggio, in her feature debut, Tilda Swinton:

Roustabout boxer Sean Bean, who may have murdered pregnant Tilda:

Young Caravaggio: Dexter Fletcher would go on to direct fellow bio-pic Rocketman.

Cardinal Michael Gough, who encourages all this:

by ·Comments Off on Saint Maud (2019, Rose Glass)

In the mood for some horror, but this was barely horror, just a character piece about a religious nut set to churchy mope music. Jennifer Ehle has spinal problems, Maud is hired to take care of her. But Maud is judgy and has a dark past and probably isn’t supposed to be there, fired for attacking Ehle halfway through the movie then develops stomach pains, like a weak, voiceover-filled First Reformed. Maud is bad at socializing, has major masochistic tendencies, ends up walking on nails then returning to Ehle’s house and stabbing her with scissors before setting herself on fire. Ehle blameless as usual, Morfydd Clark (Love & Friendship) overcooked along with the rest of the thing.

by ·Comments Off on The Set-Up (1949, Robert Wise)

After Blood on the Moon, why not have a Robert Wise double feature? This Robert Ryan boxing drama (premiering just six weeks after he starred in Caught) is something special, taking place in real-time but without the single-shot gimmick of your Rope or your Russian Ark, or the boredoms of your Timecode.

Handsome Robert Ryan is supposed to have been losing matches for 20 years, his girl Audrey Totter (Any Number Can Play the same year) wants him to quit, meanwhile his manager is “throwing” the fight, telling a gangster that Ryan will take a fall, but without telling Ryan, assuming he’ll lose anyway and the manager can keep all the money. Buncha greasy weirdos in this movie, a good sign. Nice focus on the other loser boxers and the bloodthirsty crowd. The happy ending is Ryan winning his fight against all odds, everyone’s mad at him, his girl didn’t show up, then gangsters smash his hand with a brick and she comes and picks him up. Ryan had debuted in the pictues a decade earlier with Golden Gloves, a movie about corruption in boxing.

L-R: Ryan with toady Red (Percy Helton of Criss Cross the same year), manager George Tobias (Greek barber of The Strawberry Blonde) and boxer James Edwards (Manchurian Candidate, The Steel Helmet):

by ·Comments Off on Blood on the Moon (1948, Robert Wise)

Good-looking movie with a nothing-special ending. Played the commentary for a while – Robert Wise came up as editor, cut Kane and Ambersons, then while working for Val Lewton he started directing, and this was his first A picture. He’s either well-prepared or has a great memory.

Robert Mitchum is set up as an innocent wandering into a feuding town – his camp is wiped out by a cattle herd then he’s given a shitty welcome by a bunch of suspicious fucks led by Tom Tully. Mitchum is just passing through, so they let him drift, but really he’s a hired gun for old buddy Robert Preston (The Music Man himself). But Preston proves to be a villain, and Mitchum falls for Tully’s daughter Barbara Bel Geddes (Vertigo‘s Midge), while her own sister is helping the enemy, whose plot involves getting Tully’s cattle confiscated by the law and buying it back himself. When Walter Brennan’s son is killed, it’s not just a money game anymore, and Mitchum and Bel Geddes (rifleman lovers who met playfully shooting at each other) go out and get bloody revenge.

Wicked Preston and mixed-up kid Phyllis Thaxter:

by ·Comments Off on India Song (1975, Marguerite Duras)

I brought this book to read on the plane, but the book turned out to be a play, and I finished it before we boarded. It’s not much of a book – there’s mostly stillness and offstage sounds and atmosphere – so I thought I’d watch the newly-restored film while it was still fresh in my head. From the start the order of scenes is shuffled, opening with the beggar woman (never seen), the voices and music separate from onscreen action (not in sync with the scene we’re watching, discussing outdoor lights while the camera is indoors).

Delphine and Claude, with Mathieu Carrière (the guy being followed in The Aviator’s Wife) sitting up:

Delphine Seyrig plays the main character, what slight character there is, loved by both Claude Mann (the Bay of Angels star with blond 80’s hair) and, from afar, Michael Lonsdale (who was in two Losey movies the same year). Stillness, slow dancing and gradual lighting changes, the atmosphere finally broken by Lonsdale’s offscreen screams over an hour in.

Duras’s sixth feature as director, with great use of mirrors in the staging. The India Song itself, by composer Carlos D’Alessio, is great too. Nominated for Césars, losing to Black Moon and a Zulawski – a very arthouse year. Played out of competition at Cannes with Tommy, Moses & Aron and those Loseys, the year that Chronicle of the Years of Fire and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser took the top prizes. Super interesting and innovative – on the other hand it put me to sleep more than once – Dave Kehr called it “extremely boring in rather fascinating ways.”