El

Delia Garcés and Arturo de Córdova

Luis Buñuel's Él (Him), from 1953, is probably the most personal of his masterpieces from his Mexican period. Buñuel and Luis Alcorize's script was derived from Mercedes Pinto's 1926 novel Pensamientos. That novel was a roman à clef about Pinto's relationship with her jealous husband who descended into paranoia when he could not control her. The first part of the film focuses on Francisco (Arturo de Córdova), a middle aged business magnate and his wooing of the much younger Gloria (Delia Garcés). Francisco spies Gloria in church during a Maundy Thursday service and with one look at her ankles, the torch is lit. Buñuel indulges full bore in his foot fetishism in this one. Even though Gloria is seeing the dependable Raul (Luis Beristáin), an employee of Francisco's, she is swept away by Francisco's profession of love and he soon manipulates her into a hasty marriage.

The second part of the film is a flashback that is from Gloria's perspective, as she recounts the horror of her married life to Raul some time in the future. Francisco's jealousy erupts almost immediately after they pledge their troth, ruining their wedding night and honeymoon. He moves her into his palatial family estate, an art nouveau palace with surrealistic flourishes, brilliantly designed by frequent Buñuel collaborator Edward Fitzgerald. This house soon becomes the prison it resembles on the outside, a gilded cage for Gloria. Francisco's behavior descends into the pathological and goads Buñuel and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa into some of their most disturbing imagery: a pin through a keyhole with the intention of blinding a imagined peeper, Francisco collecting tools in order to sew up Gloria's vagina; a harbinger of That Obscure Object of Desire. It is no surprise that Él tanked with critics and audiences in the repressed 1950s. There is a bell tower scene that prefigures Vertigo, Hitchcock was an avowed admirer of Buñuel, in which Francisco threatens to throw Gloria to her doom and castigates the people below as "worms".

Gloria tries to find an ally who will help her in her plight, but no one will listen to her. Francisco's servants, his business associates, the local curate, all buy into Francisco's projected image as magnanimous yet traditional bourgeois grandee. Even Gloria's mother is fooled. When Gloria goes to her mother for counsel, she responds by, in essence, telling Gloria that boys will be boys. The final third of the film goes back to Francisco's perspective as he becomes more paranoid and delusional. He stalks Gloria after she wisely leaves him and endeavors to get out of Dodge. Francisco mistakes a couple for Gloria and Raul and follows  them into the church we encountered earlier in the film, bringing us full circle. Francisco imagines that the parishioners are mocking him. Buñuel cuts between reality and Francisco's delusions in purposefully crude cuts, the line being thin between reality and delusion. The coda, a sop to the conventions of melodrama, shows Gloria wed to Raul. They are parenting Francisco Jr. Francisco has retreated from society and is now a brother in a monastery. His mustache, an emblem of his machismo, is gone. The final shot is of Francisco walking a crooked path, as he did on the stairs of his mansion. His madness still lingers.

The fact that it is Buñuel in a cassock in this last shot is indicative of his identification with the divided nature of Francisco. To the world Buñuel was an icon of Surrealism and Leftist humanism, or, as Dali dismissed him, an atheist and a Communist. At home though, he was a traditional Spanish patriarch, stern and unyielding. He demanded unconditional fealty from his wife and children. Disobedience was not to be tolerated. Now, the fact that Él can be read as an auto-critique makes me think that Buñuel was not the domestic tyrant that some have made him out to be. Still, boys will be boys. He does deemphasize the theme of divorce and the difficulty of obtaining one in a Catholic country compared to the original novel. The subject is briefly mentioned, but then ignored. Buñuel was so in thrall to his own Romantic agonies to ever be fully sympathetic to feminism. 

Él may have the best lead performances in any Buñuel film. The line on him is that he let his professional performers be while micro-managing his amateur ones. If this is true, and I've read and seen nothing to contradict this, then he was very fortunate in the casting of Delia Garcés and Arturo de Córdova. Garcés was an Argentine actress who took a hiatus from her homeland with her husband during the Perón era. We can glean what Francisco sees in her, she is a dish, but Garcés gives Gloria a backbone even when Francisco tries to spatchcock her. Cordova was the greatest leading man of the Mexican cinema, appearing in over a hundred Mexican features and quite a few American ones (like For Whom The Bell Tolls). One of the delights of Él is watching Córdova and Buñuel gleefully deconstruct Córdova's image as a romantic leading man.

The Gallant Hours

James Cagney and Ward Costello

Robert Montgomery's The Gallant Hours is a peculiar mix of docudrama and hagiography. The picture illustrates Admiral Bull Halsey's leadership during World War 2's Guadalcanal campaign. The film is bookended by scenes of Halsey's retirement from service. The limited scope of this feature is a kindness to Halsey whose personal life and naval career were far more checkered than this flick lets on. Halsey in the film is a salt of the earth mensch, his door always open to the plaints of a troubled junior officer or swabie. James Cagney, in a role that is tailor made for him, holds together this rather static flick. There is an attempt to parallel Halsey's strategizing with that of his opponent, the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. This film does a reasonably good job of humanizing the enemy for an American film from 1960.  However, Yamamoto's death, which serves as the ambivalent climax of this film, occurred five months after the end of the Guadalcanal campaign. There are a few other inaccuracies because when you do a hagiography there has to be a little hogwash.

The documentary aspect of the script, by Frank D. Gilroy and Air Force veteran Beirne Lay Jr., uses extensive narration to outline, poorly, the strategy of the campaign. What works better is an effort to humanize the characters by offering details about individual's make-up and ultimate fate. The narration, alternated by Montgomery and Art Gilmore, is compelling when offering us such tidbits as Yamamoto's passion for poker and that one character ends up Governor of South Dakota and another a paraplegic. Would that Montgomery's visual approach had been half as interesting. Instead, the approach is torpid and seems chintzy. This was a film produced by Montgomery and Cagney, so there seems to have been more attention to cutting corners than usual. Most of the camera set-ups are primitive and there are no battle scenes in this war movie. It is an actor's movie of the war.

Now that may not have been such a bad idea with one of the greatest actors of the century in the lead. Cagney underplays, the mythos of the role preceding him, and captures an exemplary senior officer who displays more charm than the real Halsey did. Cagney's deft touch is best seen in the moment he hears of Yamamoto's death. While his comrades are celebrating, Halsey seems aggrieved. Earlier in the film, Halsey had narrowly escaped a similar fate as that of his opponent. We can see what Halsey is thinking in Cagney's eyes: there, but for the grace of God, go I. I also enjoyed the scenes of Cagney interacting with faces that would become increasing familiar in the future: Dennis Weaver, Richard Jaeckel, and William Schallert. I don't really like The Gallant Hours as a film, but admire Montgomery for providing moments of dignity for those who gave all. A large portion of the cast of this film served in the war. Some, like Montgomery and Ward Costello, were genuine heroes.

The Rip

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon

Joe Carnahan's The Rip is a good meat and potatoes crime film that stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and is now streaming on Netflix. The duo are members of a Tactical Narcotics Team investigating crooked cops ripping off narcotics dealers in Miami. The portrayal of law enforcement officials on the border line of criminality couldn't be more timely. No character in the film seems completely trustworthy and there are two outright rat finks among them. Carnahan's films are pretty much always studies in machismo and The Rip is no exception. Even the distaff members of Ben and Matt's crew, Teyana Taylor and Catalina Sandino Moreno, engage in the chop busting banter so typical of males in packs. 

Carnahan's screenplay is well constructed and smart, but there is an inevitable sense of déjà vu to the proceedings. If you've seen one corrupt cop movie, you've seen a facsimile of The Rip. Still, the performances are solid and Juan Miguel Azpiroz's cinematography bathes the action sequences in delirious colors, making this, by far, Carnahan's most visually exciting film. The finale of the film has Affleck and Damon having a beer together on a beach as the sun rises over Miami. If this is their last film together, then this would be a fittingly romantic capstone to an onscreen bromance that has spanned the decades.

A Confucian Confusion

Shiang-Cyi Chen and Shu-Chun Ni

Edward Yang's A Confucian Confusion is an engrossing polyphonic portrait of Taipei released in 1994.  If I had to categorize this winning film, I would call it a workplace based romantic comedy, since a number of the characters work at a public relations agency, but that would be pigeonholing a work that defies easy categorization. What strikes me about the film, which juggles the lives of over a dozen characters over the course of of two days, is the overall mood of romantic dissatisfaction that permeates throughout. All of the couples we witness are well past the honeymoon period of their relationship. This is more a movie about conscious uncoupling than one about romance sparking. When a relationship is consummated in the film, regret is inevitable and almost instantaneous. Yet, the film, though rueful, is never depressing, but is ultimately buoyant in its handling of its characters' travails.

A Confucian Confusion fragmented narrative mirrors the disconnected lives of its characters. The film is edited into shards of plot, Confucian parables, painted legends, and advertising slogans. The mise-en-scene entraps the characters at luxurious offices and TGIFridays giving the picture a lost in the supermarket feel of anomie. The surfaces are bright, reflecting the lives of the pretty young things enjoying the luxuries of Taiwan's economic miracle. The characters are miserable despite the appointed decor, the to die for couture, and the bling. They careen around after work doing cartwheels, puking into potted plants, and bickering in cabs. Dual poles within a narrow society are displayed. Postmodern amorality is contrasted with delusional traditionalism, ascetic artists with gleefully vulgar ones. The film is on a par with such masterpieces as A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi. It has been paired in an attractive package by the ever dependable Criterion Collection with Yang's 1996 effort Mahjong.

Mahjong is less successful, but most movies are. The international actors seem ill at ease. Once again we are faced with Confucian parables and perfidious western influence. TGIFridays is reprised and The Hard Rock Cafe is the featured location. Amoral criminality reigns supreme. The film's most successful procurer, Diana Dupuis' Ginger, struck me as a double for Ghislaine Maxwell in this farsighted and somber film whose main theme is sexual grooming. This Criterion two pack would grace any film lover's video library.

Springfield Rifle

Philip Carey, Gary Cooper, and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams

André De Toth's Springfield Rifle is a very good and under sung Western released in 1952.  It was a part of wave of films that featured weapons in their title, a trend heralded by the success of Winchester '73 in 1950. Titles included Colt .45, Carbine Williams, Kentucky Rifle, and many more on American television. The film, which had multiple writers attached to it, seems a little like a stitched together Frankenstein's monster. It is set during the Civil War and has Gary Cooper attached to a fort in Colorado where he and his cohorts must thwart Confederate rustlers who are stealing Yankee horses. The titular rifles are one of the stuck on bits. They are mentioned briefly at the beginning and arrive at the nick of time as a deus ex machina to save Coop and the Yanks. Springfield rifles had been made at the armory in Massachusetts since the Mexican War era, but a new innovation occurred during the 1860s. The Civil War marked the shift from muzzle loading rifles to the easier to use breech loading models which gave the more industrial North an edge. 

Another negative aspect of this filmic kluge is the romance angle. Phyllis Thaxter travels all the way from West Chester, PA. to Coop's fort to beg him to turn his sword into a plowshare. The scenes are pointless, a repeat of Coop's equally tedious scenes with Grace Kelly in High Noon which had opened three months before Springfield Rifle. Hollywood always has been a place with many echo chambers. What is original about the film is that it is an espionage flick with Western trappings. There is a spy at Coop's fort who must be unmasked. Coop, we learn, must go under cover, even undergoing a trumped up court martial. Once he is cast out of the Yankee fort with the yellow stripe of cowardice on his back, he ingratiates himself with the rustlers and is able to unmask the traitor. Critics and audiences at the time bridled against the film as needlessly convoluted for a Western. However, this is what I like about the film. Cooper's character has only a limited number of people he can trust, the number of whom diminishes as the movie unspools. The air of the film is rife with paranoia. Most of the characters, Yank or Reb, seem nice enough, though we know there is a two faced traitor in their midst. Characters often hide their true motivations and De Toth treats them all equivocally. This is not a film of good guys and bad guys. Even the villain has his reasons.

I view Springfield Rifle as largely a Cold War allegory concocted in the shadow of the arrest and trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs were arrested in the summer of 1950 and their trial began in March of 1951. They were executed in 1953. Springfield Rifle trumpets its theme: that counterespionage is necessary to the preservation of our Republic. A message that must have seemed pertinent in the age of the Red Menace. This theme seems most obviously to be the work of screenwriter Charles Marquis Warren. As the late Philip French has pointed out 🌵, Warren was on the Hollywood right wing and wrote and directed another 1952 Western, Hellgate, that can be seen as a pro-McCarthy statement. Despite the rigidity of Springfield Rifle's theme, Warren and De Toth sketch ambivalent characters with multiple dimensions. Cooper's character can bond with the Rebs as well as he can with his compatriots. It helps that such capable and familiar, to my generation, actors such as Martin Milner, Alan Hale Jr., and Fess Parker are on hand. De Toth handles his cast with aplomb. Even Lon Chaney Jr., a clumsy performer if you ask me, is effective as a craven killer. De Toth handles his exteriors as well as his actors with Mt. Whitney and its surrounding standing in for the Rockies. The snow draped hills provide an apt setting for treachery, as they do in De Toth's Day of the Outlaw.

Phylllis Thaxter's profile and Paul Kelly

                                                                  Spoiler Alert

Cooper is an axiomatic personality: if you've seen him once, you pretty much know what you are going to get. The performance that most impressed me was Paul Kelly's as the traitor. He provides a smooth and unruffled facade, but also hints at the inner turmoil of a man who is not what he seems. I'd enjoyed Kelly in a number of films, like The President Vanishes, The Roaring Twenties, Flying Tigers, Crossfire, and Side Street, but wonder why he had a career that seems partially submerged. He began onstage, but was featured in film as early as 1919 when he wooed Mary Miles Minter in Anne of Green Gables. In 1927 he beat to a pulp actor Ray Raymond, a brawl precipitated by Kelly's affair with actress Dorothy Mackaye. Raymond never regained consciousness and Kelly was convicted of manslaughter. Kelly was sentenced to serve ten years, but was sprung after 25 months. He eventually married Mackaye and they were wed until her death in 1940 from injuries resulting from a automobile accident.

🌵 Philip French, Westerns, Pgs. 81-82.

Reflection in a Dead Diamond

              

Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani are a French filmmaking couple based in Brussels specializing in homages to the exploitation films of the 1960s and 70s. Their latest, Reflection in a Dead Diamond, is a delirious tribute to the spy films that were released in the 1960s in the wake of James Bond. Fabio Testi, still walking this earth, stars as John Diman, a retired agent who spends his retirement at a hotel on the Riviera drinking vermouth and ogling young girls. We are caught up in the reveries of Diman as he reminisces about his past. In these flashbacks, the young Diman is played by Yannick Renier and has been tasked to protect a shady businessman from assassination. His nemesis is a female assassin named Serpentik who bears more than a passing resemblance to Irma Vep. The always welcome Maria de Medeiros appears in the present day section as a vamp who toys with Testi. Is she Serpentik or the author of the spy novel franchise that morphed into a film series? Reflection in a Dead Diamond provides no pat answers, it exists to provoke and tease the mind's eye.

No film I've seen this past year has placed less emphasis on narrative or characterization. However, I was buoyed by the sheer energy and visual imagination of the film. This film may be just a genre pastiche, but its surreal flourishes are smartly integrated with the film's structure. This film most closely resembles not the Bond films, but their more mod camp followers such as Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik and Joseph Losey's Modesty Blaise. The mod look of Reflection in a Dead Diamond is much more than campy eye candy, however. The op art designs of the carpet and walls of the hotel reflect the disorientation of the protagonist and act as portals for the film's travels through time and space. The directors employ all sorts of visual styles including animation. At one point, as a character is being beheaded, the scene is intercut with two of the goriest and greatest paintings of Caravaggio: Judith Beheading Holofernes and David with the Head of Goliath. Except for the obvious, I am not sure what this ultimately means, but, as with Reflection in a Dead Diamond in general, I admire its audacity.

The Baltimorons

Liz Larsen and Michael Strassner             

Jay Duplas' The Baltimorons is a refreshingly relaxed and lowkey romantic comedy set in Baltimore during the Yuletide season. The script was co-written by Duplas and lead actor Michael Strassner who plays a struggling comedian named Cliff. The character of Cliff has the exact same back story as Strassner himself: a native Baltimorean expelled from his improv group for bad behavior who, despondent, attempts suicide. That attempt, handled in an off the cuff comic fashion, opens the film. We then see Cliff trumpeting six months of sobriety to his fiancé Brittany (a game Olivia Luccardi) as they drive to her parents' house for Christmas Eve dinner. However, Cliff slips on the icy steps and dislodges a tooth, necessitating a trip to an on-call dentist named Didi (Liz Larsen) We soon learn that Didi, who is of a certain age, is recently divorced and is on-call because her ex, who left him for a young cookie, is hosting the holiday dinner. Didi has been invited, but is not inclined to go. After Cliff gets his car towed, fate intervenes and the oddly matched couple spend a night on the town in Charm City. Sparks, of course, fly. 

I am also a native of Baltimore and perhaps inclined to give this nice movie the benefit of the doubt. Certainly Baltimore has never looked as charming onscreen. The Wire is the polar opposite of The Baltimorons in its representation of the city. However, the film is as accurate in its way in its depiction of the city as the series was. It is easy enough to have a character in a Ravens' shirt, but mentions of local faves such as Natty Boh (National Bohemian beer) and Berger's Cookies (sinful) made me know I was safely in the hands of a true Baltimoron. The romantic ambiance of this film climaxes in a jaunt through the Hampden neighborhood (pictured above), an enclave renowned throughout the city for its elaborate Christmas decorations. Baltimoreans travel to Hampden during the holiday season to experience the vibe and the film accurately captures the festive block party feel there. For preserving this on film, I will always treasure The Baltimorons. 

The film does suffer from the formulaic predictability of the genre. We know when Cliff reenters the ring of improv comedy that he will emerge triumphant. We foresee him making his grand romantic gesture, holding a gift box that contains something only his beloved will truly understand. This is part in parcel with the wish fulfillment of such tales, otherwise the Hallmark Channel would not exist. I preferred the oddball vibe that develops between Cliff and Didi. Ms. Larsen and Mr. Strassner deliver two of the best performances of 2025. Their rapport reminded me of the character driven auteur films of the 1970s: Harold and Maude, California Split, Minnie and Moskowitz, etc. At its best, The Baltimorons belongs with those films. 

The Ugly Stepsister

Ane Dahl Torp and Lea Myren              

Emilie Blichfeldt's The Ugly Stepsister is a twist on the tale of Cinderella that combines feminism, body horror, and black humor. This Norwegian film, Blichfeldt's feature debut, is set in the early Victorian era and shifts the central focus of the tale to the plight of Cinderella's stepsister, here named Elvira (Lea Myren). After watching her new stepdad choke to death on his wedding cake, Elvira becomes the focus of her very evil mother's plan to find a new meal ticket. Since Elvira is "ugly", her mother ( a droll Ane Dahl Torp) enlists a series of quacks to improve her looks. Elvira gets her teeth fixed, her nose adjusted, her eyelashes augmented, and, my personal favorite, ingests a tapeworm in order to lose weight. Sex, in the film is purely a form of commerce in which erotic favors are exchanged for financial security. The ultimate prize is, of course, the hand in matrimony of the prince, but we know how this fairy tale ends.

Because it hews closely to the original fable, The Ugly Stepsister suffers a little from predictability. However, only a churl could resist the film's gorgeous production design and costumes. There are no weak performances and a large number of quite amusing ones. Blichfeldt cribs a little too much from Poor Things and there are also nods to the films of Busby Berkeley and Walerian Borowczyk. The Ugly Stepsister is not a film for tikes, but Blichfeldt's fidelity to the original tale's undercurrent of savagery makes this a much more provocative adaption than the anodyne animated Disney version.

The Great Flood

Kim Da-mi

Kim Byung-woo's The Great Flood is a serviceable Korean Sci-Fi disaster film that has turned out to be the most viewed film on Netflix during the Christmas season. A mother (Kim Da-mi) and her six year old son are trapped in a Seoul apartment building as an apocalyptic flood is unleashed. An agent of the UN (Park Hae-soo) tries to facilitate their exit, the mom is part of a secret government program designed to create artificial humanoid life forms, but there is doubt that he can be trusted. About halfway through the picture, The Great Flood morphs from a disaster film into a sci-fi one in which the characters are stuck in a loop of eternal recurrence, like Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow. The rationale for this is Sci-Fi gobbledegook, but this well acted film evokes moments of human loss and bravery that lift it slightly above ordinary fare. 

 

Biff's Favorite Pop Music Releases of 2025

                               

 1).    Tyler Childers            ---         Snipe Hunter

 2).    Little Simz                 ---         Lotus

 3).    Buck 65                     ---         Keep Moving 

 4).    Lily Allen                  ---         West End Girl

 5).    Ezra Furman             ---          Goodbye Small Head

 6).    Hailey Whitters         ---         Corn Queen

 7).    Viagra Boys              ---         Viagr Aboys

 8).    Chuck D                    ---         Radio Apocalypse

 9).    Horsegirl                   ---         Phonetics On and On and On

10).   Clipping                    ---         Dead Channel Sky

I also enjoyed albums by Marshall Allen, Iron Mike Eagle, Bootsy Collins, Tune-Yards, De La Soul, Sabrina Carpenter, US Girls, Skrillex, James McMurtry, Jeffrey Lewis, Kae Tempest, Wet Leg, Neil Young, Lucy Dawes, Big Thief, Dijon, CMAT, Wednesday, Craig Finn, Brother Ali, and the Mekons.