Pellet Reviews
short reviews from my Letterboxd page
Every few months, I catch you up with my review feed over on Letterboxd. Most of the films I see are not well-suited for the full critical treatment. These sometimes get a short blurb on my Letterboxd page. Let’s take a look at what I’ve been watching since the last Pellet Reviews post on January 19th.
The Long, Long Trailer (1954) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Filmed in the middle of I Love Lucy, this Desi/Lucy comedy film has the simplest of premises: the newlywed couple buy the titular mobile home and attempt to make it their home on the go. It’s all so basic and predictable, but (as I hope you know) these two can raise the hilarity of any situation far above where it has any right being. This movie should not be this enjoyable…but it is! I have seldom laughed aloud so much during a film!
The Passenger (1975) ⭐️⭐️
I’ve been watching the work of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. This is his last movie and likely the end of my journey. Here, David Locke (Jack Nicholson) assumes a dead stranger’s identity and tries to outrun the life he has assumed. It’s famously slow and atmospheric, not focused on plot. Instead, it muses about what identity is and how we all sometimes desire to set ours down and start fresh. Recurring motifs include bars and cages, dust, and large, empty European landscapes. I see it…but it’s not too interesting to me. For one, I don’t find much of the imagery beautiful—as every review gushes—but, like the blind man from Locke’s story, dirty and unappealing. I connected with this current of the inescapable ugliness of the world much more than the more central themes of identity. In many ways, it comes down to my distaste for 1970s cinema. I just don’t like it.
The Great Divide (1929) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’m giving this three stars despite the cringe Taming of the Shrew plot, because Myrna Loy is great in it. (I have watched a lot of old Myrna Loy movies lately.) She comes alive on screen like no one else when she’s allowed to be happy and energetic. Around this time, she was playing so many stately and mysterious women…and it didn’t suit her at all. When she’s confined, she gets wooden. But here, she is young and free and the most vivid thing on the screen. Too bad the story does her dirty.
Actual line of dialogue, from the romantic lead to the woman he has literally kidnapped: “I may not know what’s good for me, but I know what’s good for you!” Of course, once the woman has been tamed, the white kids get a happy ending, while Mexican Myrna moves from lively innocent to lying traitor. Ah…1929…
They Will Kill You (2026) ⭐️⭐️
For a moment, you think it’s The Inferno by way of Tarantino…but nope! It’s something much stranger and sillier. A completely unapologetic grindhouse horror knockoff, They Will Kill You puts Zazie Beetz in the role of the avenging angel à la Kill Bill in an exclusive apartment building whose nine floors are the circles of Hell. Run by a large cult of wealthy Satanists, the aptly-named Virgil throws everything it can at Beetz, and she responds by hacking up bodies with anything at hand—most memorably, a fire axe that is literally on fire. The film careens wildly wherever the director’s whims take it, serving up hokey gross-out violence and a truly bizarre final act, breezing past some halfhearted class commentary on the way. I have no idea what it is…but it was amusing to watch it swerve wildly from Rosemary’s Baby to…well, a demonic pig head worn by Patricia Arquette (who has clearly decided that an Oscar freed her from rational career choices into a wilderness of crazy accents). Hoo-boy.
Du Barry Was a Lady (1943) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
This is a tough one to rate. I’ve seen people complain that the first hour is too “stagebound,” but it’s rapturous! The second bit is just stupid. In a fancy nightclub, Lucille Ball and Gene Kelly are the headlining acts of some wonderfully imaginative musical numbers. Red Skelton is the hatcheck boy with a dream. Sadly, it becomes exactly and literally that: a dumb period dream.
But the costumes in the club! The choreography! The song and dance performances! It’s all wonderful until the dream sequence.
Way too much Skelton. Never enough Kelly! (Never.)
Rogue of the Rio Grande (1930) ⭐️⭐️
Tonight on What Ethnicity Is Myrna Playing?: Mexican!
I can’t help but like this little film. It’s kind of charming, and El Malo is a fun character.
The Naughty Flirt (1930) ⭐️⭐️1/2
A brief trifle with a good lead turn by Alice White. It’s all fully unbelievable, but White captures a certain profligate rich kid from the era well…with an assist from Ms. Myrna Loy.
Puddin’ Head (1941) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Yes, there’s nothing subtle or sophisticated about Puddin’ Head, but there’s a lot that is unabashedly fun! With songs by Jule Styne and a range of stock characters, the plot staggers from one place to another before ending much too abruptly. But every step is a pleasure, though you may feel the need to add the word “guilty” before that. However, I say, why feel guilty for enjoying something? If people proudly trumpet their love of The Big Lebowski and Tommy Boy, then I guess this is my equivalent. I rated it modestly, trying to be clear-eyed about its quality, but the only thing really wrong here is the rushed ending and the coming together of the wrong couple.
Richard Jewell (2019) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A sober but well-constructed piece of American history. While the true story has everything needed for great cinema, the screenplay shapes and depicts such a horrible and uncertain time in the life of Richard Jewell and his mother with seeming ease. The acting, however, is the true hero. Paul Walter Hauser was born to play Jewell, and he does it with aplomb. Olivia Wilde is also notable as an unscrupulous reporter. And Nina Arianda is always a highlight of anything she’s in.
It took me a long time to tackle this film, knowing that it would ignite righteous outrage and sadness. I’m glad I finally got around to it, though.
The Quiet Man (1952) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Surprisingly charming! I have extra respect for it because in the flashback to Thornton’s past, the camera use and directing style are markedly different (and quite effective). It shows that Ford made the “quiet” choices throughout the rest of the film with full intentionality and consideration. God bless Barry Fitzgerald!
How, in a film set in Innisfree, did no one mention Yeats??
The Black Watch (1929) ⭐️
John Ford’s first talkie (he had been making films for a dozen years already). You’d never know he would go on to win four Best Director Oscars. His technique for testing out sound seems to have been, “Speak. More. Slowly.” I wager this film is where William Shatner learned to deliver dialogue.
A 24-year-old Myrna Loy looks beautiful as the leader of the Islamic army (obviously, a sexily dressed woman would have a horde of Muslim followers in 1914…), but why does she speak King James English? “Mine eyes have marked thee for my service.” Gag. Sorry, Myrna. But you still were the best thing in the film. The. Very. Slow. Film. (Loy ethnicity: Afghan!)
That Lady in Ermine (1948) ⭐️⭐️1/2
When you hire Otto Preminger to finish an Ernst Lubitsch movie…you should be glad it wasn’t so much worse. Mind you, it could have been so much better!
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
An almost perfect movie and one of my all-time favorites! It’s one of those film musicals that basically ignore the stage version (keeping three of its nineteen songs), but it is the rare exception that improves on the original thereby. (See also Nine and The Sound of Music.)
This screenplay is every bit as brilliant as, say, Casablanca’s. Every line is truly funny. The plot is thin, of course, but it’s the banter that counts in this one.
Marilyn Monroe may be at her best, but Jane Russell is superb. And she looks, sounds, and makes facial expressions so much like Tina Fey! I want a remake with Tina and Jane Krakowski!
Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955) ⭐️
So bad! Wow. But for a few funny moments (mainly the woman bringing out the costumes in bracelet boxes), I’ll give it a whole star. Steer clear!
Renegades (1930) 1/2 star
Everyone involved here is clearly feeling out the talkie and not knowing quite what to do with it. (Loy Ethnicity: French.)
Shadows (1958) ⭐️1/2
The difference between ‘important’ and ‘good’ is hard to ignore here.
Faces (1968) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
While watching Faces, I never expected to give it such a high rating. Its men are revolting. Its endless babbling is nerve-wracking. Its sudden tonal 180s seem unmotivated and cruel. Who are these people? Does anyone actually live and act like this?
On one hand, I accept that art is an elevation. It presents the divergent in order to shed light on the conventional. On the other, I have to believe that there are people out there for whom this is a recognizable world. And certainly that there were many more of those people in 1968. (But, so help me, if another male character comes home after a night of adultery to find that his wife has done the same thing, and has the gall to be angry, hurt, and abusive because of it—!)
What pulls the film together is the title. Not only does the camerawork spend the majority of its time fixed on faces (and what faces! faces in transit between emotions, faces struck by disgusted confusion, faces that no one else is watching), but it explores the false faces that are the bedrock of this type of life (and a very present fact in our own). The faces slip, take another tack, hide again, get battered…and those are the moments when something true peeps out from all the prattle and posing. Until the faces are no longer intact enough to be worn again. It’s a shattering that is a freeing—but is experienced as a nullification. And when all the faces are smashed, the action winds to a halt. And it is not this film’s concern what happens then. At that point, director John Cassavetes points the camera in our direction, to see us see ourselves in the silence at the end.
The Devil to Pay! (1930) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
How can you resist these pre-Code early-thirties romcoms? Beautiful men, beautiful women, beautiful cars, beautiful clothes…a blonde Myrna Loy and a wire fox terrier! Who wouldn’t live in this world if given the chance? The opening auction scene is ultimately superfluous, but it’s ripe with cheeky bonhomie and clever innuendo. All that, and over in 72 minutes!
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Between the two extant versions of this movie, I chose the shorter cut because it was the most recent version done by Cassavetes, but I might have liked the original, longer cut better. Not that I didn't like it. I hated Mr. Sophistication and the acts at the club, but I was meant to. However, I don't think I would ever be able to look past that aesthetic crudity. I love Ben Gazzara now, after this and Opening Night.
The Ambassador’s Daughter (1956) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
An okay Roman Holiday ripoff, but not Myrna Loy’s finest hour.
Humain, Trop Humain (1974) ⭐️⭐️
Documentaries are not my scene. I’m doing this just for you, Louis Malle. I suppose if I had to either go to a car show, work in a factory, or watch this film…the film would certainly win. But all I kept thinking was about the gruesome, debilitating injuries that could be traced back to these tired, bored auto workers. Also, why no one in France can grow real facial hair. Also, I was promised 72 minutes…how is this not over yet??
The Animal Kingdom (1932) ⭐️
Yuck. Myrna Loy’s character just does a 180 with no explanation, and Ann Harding is lacking in any charisma. The butler is the best part. But Leslie Howard is one of the era’s typically disgusting men, destroying everyone’s life with his whims and double standards. (Myrna gets to play her actual Caucasian ethnicity for once!)
Downfall (2004) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
It was great how the film created this sense of a fractured Hitler. We don’t see transitions involving him. We see him at point A and then at point B and right away at point C. It dramatizes the character (as written and performed) in a cinematic way.
Opening Night (1977) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is the theatre person’s serial killer movie—and the victim is the play. It’s painful to watch the damage and (wrong kind of) drama, but it’s a very good film! People will tell you it has any number of meanings (and it is certainly rich), but the main theme for me was that the heart and soul of theatre is play. Lose ludo at your peril.
I have waited a long time to watch my first Cassavetes film, knowing they are all heavy and make you work. Gena Rowlands is all her legend claims, and her rapport with John is inherently interesting. Ben Gazzara is great and oddly sexy. His wife makes the most of her little screen time, and I would perhaps argue that she is the key character to keep your eye on. As the only semi-outsider—and a different order of woman from Sarah and Myrtle—she is the bull**** filter.
I had no idea that Joan Blondell was in this! Praise the casting director who made her Sarah Goode. She’s just as much a blondell as ever!
You won’t find too many praiseworthy characters herein, but you will find a very distinct kind of truth. As Gena said of her husband’s films, “You can tell that they’re fiction but that they never lie to you.” (Forgive me if I screwed up that quote.)
One more great theatre film.
Baby Driver (2017) ⭐️1/2
Second watch to appease friends who love it. I still can’t do it. Empty. It’s just empty. And I can’t stand any of these characters. This is where my Foxx hatred started. (It’s still going strong.)
Wife vs. Secretary (1936) ⭐️⭐️
Lots of lost opportunities, too little humor, and a waste of Loy through most of the film. Baby James Stewart is already in full James Stewart mode, and Clark Gable is rather good, but Jean Harlow’s not exactly an actress, is she?
…And the Pursuit of Happiness (1986) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Timely! An inspiring and worrying documentary. So little has changed in forty years, except escalation. "It's not a war yet," Malle says of the Mexican border. God helps us.
Wild Rose (2018) ⭐️⭐️1/2
I just hate watching a series of self-sabotages. Jessie Buckley can sing, though!
God’s Country (1985) ⭐️⭐️
Another Louis Malle doc. Not my era nor my state, but there’s a lot of very familiar dairy town culture presented here. Perhaps this is why I find it so uninteresting and prosaic.
Miss Pacific Fleet (1935) ⭐️⭐️
How to say this…the movie is a little drowsy-droopy.
Traveling Saleslady (1935) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A wonderful, fizzy romance that makes great use of Joan Blondell and introduces the shocking innovation of flavored toothpaste!
Can-Can (1960) ⭐️⭐️1/2
Shirley MacLaine gets to wear some wonderful clothes, but I can’t get behind the story. Why do women in these movies always choose the wrong guy? Because they’re written by men?
Love Me Tonight (1932) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
I can’t help loving Maurice Chevalier’s oversexed, innuendo-spouting screen persona. He’s irresistible, even when mismatched with the operatic Jeanette MacDonald. This musical (one of four they made together) is not only riotous pre-Code chicanery but also unbelievably sophisticated in its cinematic techniques!
In 1932, none of this was normal. Zoom lenses. Speeding up and slowing down the footage. The now-classic musical trope of the city awakening in rhythmic trade-related sounds that build into music. The use of outrageous shadows. A singing statuary. Placing the camera high or low to create mood and status. The heroine outriding a train on horseback as the romantic savior. There’s even the famous Pillow Talk spilt-screen bed scene! All of that was very ahead of its time. This is, after all, only five years after The Jazz Singer.
The movie is full of idiosyncratic characters and actors. Myrna Loy and Charles Ruggles are great, and the hilarious Duke played by C. Aubrey Smith, who mistakes his own enervating lassitude for virile impetuosity, is a great treat. Throw in the three aunts/witches/fates and, of course, our two leads, and it’s a veritable zoo of comedic character work.
With a clever script and catchy Rodgers and Hart songs, this may have gotten a full five stars from me if the censored scenes from the 1949 rerelease weren’t destroyed, leaving only a bowdlerized cut.
Wait Until Dark (1957) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
A wonderfully effective thriller! Audrey Hepburn is great, and Alan Arkin introduces the world to the unhinged psychopath that has become standard in American cinema. (It’s amusing to reflect that Quentin Tarantino played the role in the 1998 Broadway revival…) Of course, I kept thinking about how they would have done it in the stage version. It couldn’t have been as chaotic and spasmodic there. Everything would need to be very choreographed. My one problem with the film is, where did all the broken glass from the lightbulbs go? That would have been very effective as a help to the blind heroine in knowing where people were and as a nasty surprise whenever someone fell down. There was potential there that I am sure would be leveraged better today. But this film stands up in 2026!
Garbo Talks (1984) ⭐️⭐️
Hmmm. This could be a good movie, but there are so many flaws. The directing/editing in the middle is odd and jumpy. So much starts and never is picked back up (the photographer, the agent, the Harvey Fierstein character, the wife, the ex-husband, the nurses’ contract…).
But the script is ultimately the problem. As long as Anne Bancroft is well, she’s great fun to watch and follow, but once she is diagnosed, she’s not even in the movie much. Ron Silver can’t quite carry this film alone. And the ending—! There were so many potential set-ups (the wife meets Garbo in first class? the actress plays Garbo for the mother because her sight and hearing are so bad? Fierstein does Garbo?) that would have been 1. more believable, 2. easier to shoot, 3. more inherently dramatic/comedic, 4. a better integration of the whole plot, 5. more satisfying due to all those things.
It started strong and then ran out of speed before drifting across the wrong finish line.
Casablanca (1942) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
On the big screen! Beautiful restoration! This time around, I could follow all the mini-plots of Rick’s customers. Great film. I think the wartime message helped get some of the very suggestive content past the censors. And, I now agree with whomever said it—the film is about Rick and Renault.
Taking wagers on how long until Hollywood remakes it…and a sequel.
Identification of a Woman (1982) ⭐️
I didn’t need to see quite that much of the woman to identify her.
Oliver! (1968) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I might not give it five stars this time around, but I’m letting it ride. I have finally read the book, and I am surprised at how close this is. I remembered it being much more divergent. Yes, the destitute paupers are oh-so-jolly, but I’ll forgive it in the name of dance numbers. The book is much darker, but the film gets there by the end. It cuts out the whole plot with Rose and Harry and Monks, and Noah Claypole never resurfaces. But as a tightening of the plot, it works. To be honest, I could handle the quick, matter-of-fact scene with the locket better than the elaborate backstory revealed in the book. The major difference is Fagin, who is a much more sympathetic character in the film. But that makes sense, as the book links his avarice and hate to his Jewishness…which clearly had to be tweaked. But they retain his ethnicity and make his two big songs in the Jewish style. I like this kinder Fagin. Nancy is inherently an interesting character: the battered woman devoted like a dog to her abuser. It’s more understandable in the musical/film if only because there’s so much less said about it. Except for the boy representing Oliver, the ensemble is good and well-cast. And yet this is the Oliver of the book. He really is an annoying cherub child whose unknown noble blood makes him a saintly cipher.
The Great Escape (1963) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Further research reveals that this true story is not quite as accurate as the opening statement claims…but I wouldn’t mind, as long as that statement were cut or the wording softened. It’s as accurate as I expect a film to be.
It is crystal clear that Steve McQueen thinks he is the star, and that the movie is built around that delusion. Without ever actually making his character the star in any way. I guess I’m glad he was so easily mollified. But to give him top billing and make the DVD cover a close-up of his face—come on, now. His character might as well be in a completely different movie, and I’m not convinced he isn’t.
What great fun and revelation to see Richard Attenborough—whom I will always know as Dr. Hammond from Jurassic Park—playing such a gruff badass. And the cast is an endless stream of stars from the period. Impressive casting. But Steve McQueen is the star…sure…. We’ll write you a made-up sequence simply so you can “show off” your motorcycle skills. Does it matter that you crashed when attempting the only stunt and were replaced by a stuntman? I mean…it does to me.
I was pleasantly surprised by this film, all said. It was better than I expected—and less heroic. Yet, it keeps up its pretense of heroism even in the final crushing minutes. And that music! This is not The Andy Griffith Show! But the old story is buoyed by a laundry list of setbacks, failures, and character flaws. Which keeps it interesting.
My advice, however, is to at least watch Stalag 17 alongside this film and judge for yourself.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985) ⭐️⭐️
Worth it just to see Helen Hunt’s costumes again!
La Grazia (2025) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Another slow collision with beauty from what is clearly now Sorrentino’s Post-Pornography Period. This feels so much like a final film. With complete elegance, he strolls through the final six months of an Italian president’s term. Themes center on “keeping things/people alive” and “letting them die”. Appropriate, given that the title means “Grace”. A large number of variations on this theme abound: euthanasia, guilt, grudges, suspicion, the joy of living, friendship, horses, pardons, murders (of self-defense? of mercy?), and even the illusion that we fully believe the things we propound and do and decide and say. Every day, we decide to commit to dozens of little beliefs—about ourselves, others, the is, and the should—in our search to reattain the bearable lightness of being and get as close as we can to the truth. In the end, it is not whether our knowledge will stand the ultimate tests of truth, but how that is decided and how much we committed to the decision. “Grace,” says Toni Sorvillo (in his best performance yet?), “is the beauty of doubt.” There is no doubt about the beauty of La Grazia.
Doctor Faustus (1967) 1/2 star
I spent the first half saying, “Who directed this trash?” Then I looked it up: Richard Burton. Aha! That explains it.
In ‘67, Liz and Dick were at the heights of their beauty, but his ego was a few steps ahead. And his acting! I love them both, but he’s killing Marlowe seventeen ways to Sunday and chewing all the terrible scenery to shreds. As for her, who knew you could take a five-minute mute role and shove it into half the movie? Would you like to see Elizabeth Taylor painted yellow? Silver? Green? Orange makeup? White? It’s all inside, folks!
The guy playing Mephistopheles put in the only good performance. The plot was shredded and nonsensical. The design hideous. The Vaseline lenses gratuitous. The endless stretching out of scenes and repeating of lines—! Top notch movie suckery. Only an occasional glimpse at Marlowe’s beautiful language.
“Is this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” Still one of the most perfect lines of verse ever written. But don’t suffer through this tacky vanity project to hear it.
1776 (1972) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Wonderful script, not great music.
The Merry Widow (1933) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Incredible! Definitely the greatest of the Lubitsch Chevalier-MacDonald musicals. The wit! The romance! The eroticism! No film full of nudity and sex scenes could ever be sexier than this 1933 costume caper. As with horror, suggestion is more effective than explicit display. I’ve always found them a strange coupling: him all sexy smirks and quasi-singing next to her frilly gowns and operatic soprano. But it works. It works best of all the soufflés they baked up together with Lubitsch. Why isn’t this in the Criterion Eclipse box set?
Guest Wife (1945) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I love screwball! I love Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert! I’m so happy they did more than just Midnight together. This is one of the stronger forties comedies I’ve seen. I love how they take stock situations and allow the pace and the actors to carry the humor. And while screwball comedy always has strong female perspectives, this one rests almost entirely on Colbert’s shoulders, whose character is almost constantly in the position of power. A true feminist film and a great joy.
The Mastermind (2025) ⭐️
I do not understand what people like about this type of film, but they’re very big right now. Why did I watch this? Why did they make it? An “anti-heist film.” Okay. But it can’t have a completely negative identity. It has to be something on its own, not just a deconstruction of something else. Man, what a waste. You get indie superstars like John Magaro and Gaby Hoffman, and you ask them to do this? Which is, to do nothing? Not just “not for me,” but “why is this good?”
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) ⭐️
Truly bad, Meister Herzog. If you had just filmed it in German, perhaps the German actors would have been able to say their lines with anything approaching naturalness. Terrible performances! Adjani? Really? She’s never good. But to make Ganz look so inept. Shame! And the others, playing Van Helsing and Renfield—horrible. Narratively and theologically confused. Awful pacing choices. And such a pervasive eightiesness. Just truly bad.
Parthenope (2024) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“You are beautiful and unforgettable, but your eyes are dull.”
Paolo Sorrentino is a dirty old man, and so I expected this film—about a beautiful woman in a sad world—to be another exploitation, like Loro and The New Pope. Instead, it is a ravishing and sad beauty itself that (as always) seeks to discover the soul of Naples.
The Parthenope of myth was a siren whose failure to seduce Odysseus led to her drowning, after which her body washed ashore at the city that would be named for her: Naples. Without that a priori knowledge, the film yields less vibration of meaning.
Parthenope the film is shot through with what I can only read as contrition. This master filmmaker, who rode the height of his fame into debauched excess, reclaims his artistry here, with a heavy sense of repentance for that abuse of power. His style is still one of excess—every scene could be a perfume ad—but he allows his heroine to keep her clothes on. Or, rather, he refuses to use her body (the sumptuousness and objectification of which is the film’s mode) as currency. It is extremely telling that the one scene to employ nudity is a strange detour (this is the material out of which Sorrentino always crafts narrative) in which a young couple is forced to consummate their arranged match in front of spectators. The unveiled greed and lust in the audience’s faces is contrasted with the reserve and fear of their living spectacle. Only Parthenope can access the deep violence and loss of this act of forced exhibitionism.
Which is not to say that the rest of the film is not about sex. Sex is redolent in every frame—in keeping with the theme of the use and destruction of beauty—but it is never again displayed with the director’s recent explicit maximalism. At the movie’s end, a major character says that “seeing is the last thing we learn, after everything else [youth, desire, an ability to laugh at life’s inequities] is gone.” He then proceeds to reframe beauty as rooted in relationship and context. Clearly, the director is passing on something he has just begun to learn.
This film is a return to Sorrentino’s slick Italian style-as-substance aesthetic. Every needle drop, every camera setup, is perfectly tuned. The beauty of the people, the places, the clothes, the bon mots is sharp and unrelenting. There is hardly a separation here between the beauty and sadness of the film’s thesis. Beauty is a tempting siren whose failure and death is the bedrock of Neapolitan society.
I could not help—under the influence of Sorrentino and his astonishing lead actress—but be seduced by the beauty of the film, the work, and the world we live in, even if that beauty can never exist without tragedy and sorrow and a reassessment of its very concept.
Viva Sorrentino!
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’ve always expected this film to be insufferable camp…but it’s good! Bette Davis is excellent! That is a character I recognize too well. And all the possible escape routes suggested…the neighbors, Edwin, Elvira…you never know which one may come through in the end. Speaking of the end, it’s built on sand a bit, but I loved the rest of the film.
Viva Knievel! (1977) ⭐️⭐️
This is exactly what I expected from a 1977 film starring Evel Knievel as himself-as-action-hero. Is it brilliant cinema? Of course not! But it’s surprisingly okay for what it is. And I don’t hold that against it. It was much more enjoyable than many a serious arthouse film today. I, of course, watched it for Gene Kelly. But the real revelation was Marjoe Gortner. His name was so ridiculous that we looked him up. Get this: he was a sensation as a four-year-old faith healer and “the youngest ordained minister in the world.” Where’s his movie about that? I would absolutely watch it!
Send Me No Flowers (1964) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I was feeling sick, so I put this old favorite on, and it did the trick! This is my favorite of the Day-Hudson-Randall movies, and it was once again great fun. The economy of the script is beautiful! And amid all the absurd antics, it’s never really unbelievable. It could have been a dozen other stories, but the writers kept throwing in more complications that make it a protean joy.
A collection of Lotte Reiniger cut-paper animations:
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ — Quite wonderful! I can see this being made today and winning the Golden Bear…if it passed all the -ism tests.
Aladdin and the Magic Lamp (1954) ⭐️⭐️⭐️ — Sort of a deleted scene from Prince Achmed.
The Magic Horse (1953) — Largely Act One of Prince Achmed with a few differences, mostly at the end.
The Death Feigning Chinaman (1928) ⭐️ — Not coherent. Not interesting.
The Adventures of Dr. Doolittle (1928) ⭐️⭐️ — Bad verse!
The Secret of the Marquise (1922) ⭐️1/2 — It’s a commercial…
The Lost Son (1974) ⭐️⭐️1/2 — A retellinf og “The Prodigal Son” with lots of potential. The backgrounds and scenery look great, but Reiniger’s animation is much stiffer and cruder. A pity.
The Star of Bethlehem (1956) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ — Reiniger’s work has really become smooth and sophisticated. The movement and designs here are clear and convincing. The biblical story allows her to keep with her favorite subjects, which would then have been called “oriental.” The color backgrounds are simple and lovely. And the angels look amazing!!
I like this elaboration on the journey, where each magus begins his trip alone, but through spiritual and physical adversity, they are brought together. Reiniger loves making demons, and it actually worked well to dramatize the eternal stakes through their use.
Sadly, I cannot deal with this choir. The instrumental music is good, but every time the choir comes in, it’s just too much of too much. It almost takes it up into the thin air of camp, and that ruins it for me.