Pillion

                Harry Melling                      

Harry Lighton's Pillion is a good comedy of manners about a BDSM affair between a shy parking enforcement officer and a macho biker. Harry Melling plays Colin, a nebbish who still lives at home with his parents and sings with his Pa in a barbershop quartet. Across a crowded pub, he spies Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) and is instantly smitten. After they have an intimate encounter in a dark alley, the two embark on a relationship based on terms dictated by Ray. Colin is so happy to have landed the hunky Ray that he is quite willing to play slave to Ray's master, fulfilling Ray's shopping request, cooking his meals, and even licking Ray's boots upon request. Ray remakes Colin's image, shearing his curly locks, adorning him with a lock and chain, and gifting him biker togs. As in all relationships, there comes a moment when the initial rush of excitement wears off and things get real. Colin craves an emotional intimacy that Ray cannot provide. He is too emotionally closed to be able to open up to Colin. The film ends with Colin moving on to a new relationship, taking what he has learned from his unsentimental education from Ray.

Pillion is a slight film that works because it is expertly cast. Skarsgård is so lordly handsome and tersely stoic as an actor that he easily inhabits the role of the dominant Ray. Melling has the more difficult role. The film is centered on his character's perspective and Melling is often required to display his character's changing moods through his eyes and posture. He has shown already that he is expert at portraying humiliation in a number of his roles, especially his bravura turn in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. He makes Colin a very abject bottom, all to eager to embrace degradation in order to hold onto his man. Pillion confirms that Melling has emerged as the finest actor of all the Harry Potter tots.

Song Sung Blue

Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman

If you told me in the mid 1970s, when I posed as a cynical teenager, that I would one day enjoy a film about a Neil Diamond impersonator I would have been incredulous, but I found Craig Brewer's Song Sung Blue to be a well made delight. In 1975, I regarded Neil Diamond as cheesy and unhip, yet, by then, he had already composed his most lasting songs. My Neil Diamond epiphany, when I realized he could concoct a solid pop song, occurred around 1985 when I saw The Wygals cover Solitary Man in  concert. I had liked it when I first heard it when I was six in 1966 on the AM car radio, but I pushed my memory of it deep down into my subconscious. Hearing it out of its original context made me regard it anew and, lo, it was a well constructed folk-rock song. Overall, I would regard most of Neil Diamond's oeuvre as gauche and lousy. The dividing line is the Jonathan Livingston Seagull soundtrack which hit number two on the American album charts in 1973. The album is a turkey, the book and film are worse, and the rest of Diamond's career descends into complete dross. His work ethic and live shows made him the demi icon he is today. My consumer advice is to invest in compilations of his Bang and Uni years and avoid the rest like the plague. 

Diamond's niche was to merge Brill Building pop with the burgeoning singer-songwriter (aka Dylan and his acolytes) ethos; much like Carole King. Unfortunately, Diamond's taste hewed too closely to the three main pillars of American popular culture since Stephen Foster put a banjo on his knee: kitsch, schlock, and schmaltz. Certainly, some of Mr. Diamond's songs combine all three of these Yiddish adjectives. He is very much in the tradition of Jewish songwriters like Irving Berlin whose work did not look back to the old country, but embraced American culture wholeheartedly. Like Berlin, Diamond even wrote a Christmas standard, Holly Holy. Song Sung Blue captures the broad appeal of slightly cheesy tunes that people like to sing along to in a bar after a few pops. Diamond's music is a uniter of people in the film whether it be at casinos, Pearl Jam concerts, karaoke, AA meetings or Thai restaurants. Craig Brewer, in his more personal works, has tended to focus on outsiders or down and outers who unite together to create art that brings joy and pecuniary renumeration. This is as true of Song Sung Blue as it is of Hustle and Flow or Dolemite is My Name.

Brewer based his screenplay on a real life Wisconsin based couple who performed in a Neil Diamond tribute act known as Thunder and Lightning during the 1990s. Brewer had seen a documentary about the duo and has turned it into a stirring underdog tale. Now to do a tale of this sort, you need to provide a believable set-up of real life problems that the protagonists must overcome. Otherwise, you veer into predictability and schmaltz: this is the difference between the original Rocky and its sequels. The story of Thunder (Kate Hudson) and Lightning (Hugh Jackman) provides enough hardship for five films, earning its sappy moments. That said, I wasn't totally convinced that Mr. Jackman was a gritty Viet Nam vet with trauma and addiction issues. The dude is just too damn healthy looking. However, Mr. Jackman is the premier song and dance man of his generation, so he is nonpareil in the performance sequences. Ms. Hudson has received unprecedented kudos for her performance, deservedly. 

The opening sequence of Song Sung Blue, a concert of impersonators at the Wisconsin State Fair, which provides the meet cute for the protagonists, establishes the milieu of the film as on the fringes of showbiz. Life is a carnival for these folks, but there is no brass ring in store. The portrait of Thunder and Lightning's efforts to remain above water economically makes this one of the few relatively realistic films on American working class life starring a pair of Hollywood millionaires. As in Dolomite, Mr. Brewer elicits strong supporting performances that give the film background texture. I especially enjoyed the efforts of Ella Anderson, Fisher Stevens, King Princess, Michael Imperioli, and John Beckwith. I also really appreciated the editing of Song Sung Blue. Billy Fox's work gives the picture a propulsive narrative momentum. 

Best Performances of 2025

 

Best Actress

Zhao Tao                           --          Caught By the Tides

Anya Taylor-Joy               --          The Gorge

Cate Blanchett                  --          Black Bag

Sally Hawkins                  --          Bring Her Back

Diane Kruger                    --         The Shrouds

Best Actor

Ethan Hawke                    --          Blue Moon

Josh O'Connor          --  The Mastermind, The History of Sound, Knives Out 3,

Takeshi Kitano                 --          Broken Rage

Leonardo DiCaprio          --          One Battle After Another

Jackson Yee                     --           Resurrection

Best Supporting Actress

Marisa Abela                    --           Black Bag

Amy Madigan                  --           Weapons

Eszter Tompa                   --            Dracula

Chase Infiniti                   --            One Battle After Another

Tatiana Maslany              --            The Monkey

Best Supporting Actor   

Jacques Develay              --            Miséricordia

Delroy Lindo                   --            Sinners

Keith Carradine               --            The Devil and the Daylong Brothers

Benicio del Toro              --            One Battle After Another

Bobby Cannavale            --            Blue Moon

In the Hand of Dante

Oscar Isaac as Dante

Julian Schnabel's In the Hand of Dante has been derided as the biggest cinematic fiasco since Megalopolis, but, as with the Coppola flick, I found it to be intriguingly uneven. Schnabel adapted the film, along with Louise Kugelberg, from Nick Tosches' 2002 novel. The novel itself is an extremely haphazard affair, alternating from sublimity to self-indulgence. Both novel and film tell parallel stories. In one, a fictionalized Nick Tosches becomes entangled with gangsters wrangling over some original Dante manuscripts. The other, weaker half of the film gives a cursory sketch of Dante's life and spiritual quest. Oscar Isaac plays both Tosches and Dante. Some other members of the cast double up with different roles in each segment, but Schnabel does not go whole hog Wizard of Oz on us. The Dante episodes are shot in beautiful color and within the Academy aspect ratio. The modern segment is shot in widescreen black and white. Schnabel and cinematographer Roman Vasyanov present us with a series of gorgeous images, but there is little in the way of narrative coherence.

Most of this is due to the defects of Mr. Tosches' novel. In the Hand of Dante marks the point in his oeuvre where the self inflation of the author's ego starts to obscure his real gifts. I esteem Mr. Tosches as much as any modern American writer, but for an author to parallel his own life with that of Dante struck me then, and now, as artistic hubris. Furthermore, Mr Tosches' portrait of himself is comical in its self-regard. The Tosches' character in the book and film is ridiculously expert in the most varied circumstances imaginable. He's an erudite scholar (Ok, I buy that one), an irresistible lover, a stone cold killer with a gun, and a debonair man about the world. He can bust chops with wise guys or parse ancient wisdom with Italian scholars. The plot of the novel is perfunctory, but allows room for Tosches' lively and learned digressions on a host of topics. Some of the best moments in the film feature Isaac's beautiful narration of Tosches' prose. I have been a devoted reader of Tosches since he started out in music journalism. If you want to sample the best of this peerless writer, I'd recommend Country, Hellfire, Dino..., and his first novel, Cut Numbers. In the Hand of Dante ranks with Under Tiberius at the bottom of Tosches' barrel.  

Oscar Isaac as Nick Tosches

Schnabel was and is, of course, a painter, and the screen pulsates with visual beauty. I dug the gorgeous shots of the sky, but there are a number of moments when the film's audacity tumbles into ludicrous folly. The most egregious example is the vision of Gal Gadot (playing Dante's wife and Tosches' gal) as Botticelli's Venus on the half shell. It registers as inane rather than breathtaking. Luckily, Schnabel has assembled an interesting cast that helps to animate this grandiose folly. Oscar Isaac ably captures the saturnine intensity of Tosches. He is a much better fit to the role than Johnny Depp who was originally attached to the project. When Isaac as Tosches cranks up Jumping Jack Flash, ingests pills, and slurps bourbon, he is able to conjure the Dionysian fury that lurked inside of the writer. Schnabel is enough of a New Yorker to excel at casting his wise guys and goodfellas. Al Pacino has a cameo that contains his best acting of this century. John Malkovich is always an asset, especially when, as in this film, he is not taking the proceedings too seriously. Best of all is the very affecting Louis Cancelmi.

Gerard Butler

The big surprise for me of the film was how good Gerard Butler was as a Mafia hit man. Butler's brash machismo meshes perfectly with his role. He and Isaac have some good comic riffs as two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately, Schnabel neglects to shape the performances of the less talented members of his cast. Jason Momoa attempts to play a hit man with an undecipherable accent. Martin Scorsese is embarrassingly bad with a ridiculous beard affixed on him as if out of the old Steve Martin, Theodoric of York skits. Just because he is a visionary filmmaker doesn't mean Scorsese can play a visionary seer. Even worse is Gal Gadot. I spent half of the film saying to myself, "gosh, I don't remember Ana de Armas ever being this lousy" before I caught on. In the Hand of Dante is, overall, a mess, but, at least, might introduce people to a singular writer. The film also features Franco Nero, Benjamin Clementine, and Sabrina Impacciatore. In the Hand of Dante is available to stream on Netflix. 

Cuadecuc, vampir

Christopher Lee gives us a reading

Pere Portabella's Cuadecuc, vampir (Worm's Tail Vampire) is an arresting oddity. Ostensibly a behind the scenes documentary of schlockmeister Jess Franco's 1970 release Count Dracula, the film stands as a deconstructed iteration of that film and Bram Stoker's source novel. Count Dracula is a color film, but Cuadecuc, vampir uses footage from it reprinted into high contrast black and white. This Portabella mixes with behind the scenes footage of the cast and crew of Count Dracula, also in black and white. Cuadecuc, vampir has an interestingly discordant score by Carlos Santos, the sound of pneumatic drills at one point highlight that the film is a construction, but the film is devoid of dialogue. The exception to this is a short scene in which Count Dracula's lead Christopher Lee reads the description of Dracula's destruction from the novel; a fitting finale.

Because it is silent and in black and white, Cuadecuc, vampir calls to mind such old horror pictures as Nosferatu and Vampyr. It is certainly as disjunctive and dream like as those two classics. Belying its avant-garde leanings, Portabella is closer to Stan Brakhage as a director than to Jess Franco, Cuadecuc, vampir hews closely to Stoker's narrative. The only significant omission is Klaus Kinski's rendition of Renfield. That said, the lack of dialogue from Count Dracula is a definite plus. Cuadecuc, vampir unspools like a dimly grasped nightmare in a scant 69 minutes.     

Cuadecuc, vampir received a festival release in 1971, but languished in obscurity for years. I saw the film on the Severin Films Count Dracula disc that was released a decade ago. For the record, Count Dracula itself is barely watchable. Lee, Kinski, and Herbert Lom do yeoman's work, but most of the other performances are execrable. Franco ping-pongs zooms at us to irritating effect. Like all of Franco's films, Count Dracula appears hastily and clumsily made. The Severin disc includes enough special features to please any vampire lover including a recording of Mr. Lee reading the complete Stoker novel. Cuadecuc, vampir is also available to stream on Hoopla.     

Les distractions

Claude Brasseur and Jean-Paul Belmondo

Jacques Dupont's Les distractions, released in the States as Trapped By Fear, is a slightly above average noir that is more interesting for its acting than its direction. Jean-Paul Belmondo stars in this 1960 flick as Paul Frapier, a feckless reporter who seems more interested in chasing the ladies than in chasing down stories. Claude Brasseur plays Laurent, a former army buddy of Paul who once saved his life in Algeria. We first glimpse Laurent racing a stolen car through Paris pursued by the police. An accident ensues and a cop dies, so Laurent is forced to flee. A chance meeting with Paul leads to Paul helping shelter Laurent and attempt to smuggle him to Spain. However, Laurent is forced to go on the run. He is even reduced to eating pig slop at one point. This is contrasted with Paul making time with pretty much every female in the cast. The police reunite the pair in the requisite tragic ending.

The part of Paul is made to order for Belmondo who is magnetic and adept in the role. The character is just rebellious enough to fit him to a tee: "Fuck the police," Paul exclaims at one point. Brasseur is equally effective, regarding his fate with mournful eyes. Alexandra Stewart is well cast, for once, as a fashion model. Belmondo is able to loosen up the usually stiff actress. Their scenes together have genuine chemistry. Sylvia Koscina and Eva Damien also make the most of their roles as Paul's more casual acquaintances. Dupont's background was in documentary work and his direction here is fairly unfussy. A sequence which shifts from a trained monkey to a caged bird, highlighting Laurent's sense of entrapment, is one of the film's few visual flourishes. The film works best when Dupont has a good location to prowl around, like the Spanish bar in an antique shop that Belmondo takes Stewart to.

Richard Cornu's score is sadly insipid, detracting from the gritty tone of the film. Dupont's handling of the film's denouement is likewise wan. Jean Bassan's source novel provides a crackerjack finale reminiscent of High Sierra, but in Dupont's hands the sequence fizzles rather than pops. Still, anyone seeking to see Belmondo in his prime could do worse than Les distractions.

      

The Naked Island

Nobuko Otowa

Kaneto Shindo's The Naked Island, released in 1960, is a mesmerizing masterpiece. Largely shorn of dialogue, the picture focuses on a farming family of four eking out a living on a small denuded Japanese island. The family mostly raises yams and potatoes on a terraced hill. Because of the lack of rain and foliage on their isle, the unnamed couple have to row to the mainland several times each spring and summer day to fetch water. They then have to tote the buckets of water up a torturously steep hill to douse their plants. The first third of the film establishes the daily rhythm and challenges of the couple's meagre existence. The kids pitch in except when the eldest gets to travel to school and slack off. The perseverance of the family is stirring in a Sisyphean way: their life is a hard and repetitive struggle, but, at least like Camus' Sisyphus, they are able to derive a smidgin of joy as they toil.

The first third of the film ends with a resounding slap of reality that reminds us that, though the film is set in the modern era, the couple lives just as their forebears have for centuries; with much the same values and attitudes. The remainder of the film documents a trying year in the life of the family. Changes of seasons bring new and different chores along with rituals and celebrations. It is these bonding rituals that help the family heal after tragedy strikes. Because of its lack of dialogue, characterization, and plot, a film like The Naked Island needs to be technically assured to be even tolerable. The film is technically superb in every detail. Kiyomi Kuroda's cinematography presents a natural landscape that is both sumptuous and daunting. Shindo mostly shoots his two main players from a low angle, emphasizing the toll taken by their everyday struggles. Opening and closing aerial reorients the viewer. We realize that the totality of the family's world is but a dot in a vast world.

Nobuko Otowa and Taiji Tonoyama, who play the couple, carry the film on their shoulders. It is obvious that they are really doing their own stunts and this gives their performances a stunning verisimilitude. You see and feel their struggle. As Sheila O'Malley has sagely noted, acting is doing and The Naked Island is a prime example of committed performances in which gesture merges with behavior. Apparently the hardships experienced by Ms. Otowa did not embitter her towards Mr. Shindo for she became his third and final wife in 1978. I also must shower superlatives on the score by the great Hikaru Hayashi who composed over thirty operas and over a hundred film scores. It is evocative without ever bogging down into sentimentality, much like The Naked Island as a whole.

The first film I ever saw directed by Kaneto Shindo was his 1964 horror masterpiece Onibaba which I viewed at the Roxie theater in San Francisco. This was in 1987 or so and, happily, the Roxie is still in business today. Kaneto Shindo lived till he was 100 and directed 48 films, most of which remain unseen in the USA. Of his other films, I've only seen 1968's Kuroneko, a good, if not outstanding, period horror film, but The Naked Island will spur me to seek out more of his oeuvre. 

                                   

It Rains in My Village

Eva Ras

Aleksandar Petrović's It Rains in My Village is a strangely compelling adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Demons (aka The Possessed) set in the now defunct nation of Yugoslavia. You don't need to be familiar with the (very long) novel to appreciate the Serbian director's 1968 effort since the film is very loose in its adaptation of what is my favorite book. Suffice to say, Petrovicć's thematic intentions align with that of the Russian master in that It Rains in My Village is a critique of revolutionary socialism. Tito and his regime were perceived as relatively benign in the West in 1968 due to Yugoslavia non-alignment with the Soviet bloc, but Petrović's film stands as a middle fingered salute to Tito and his minions. As in Demons, a nihilistic adherence to Party doctrine brings death and chaos to a rural village.

The backwardness of the village is immediately established in It Rains in My Village. A band arrives on bicycles to play at a wedding, but a female member of the band is sent packing in order to kowtow to local custom. The village is dirty and primitive. Most of the men seem under employed. Roaming pigs, ostensibly herded by the film's main character Trisa (Ivan Palüch), are the main traffic. There is a mute and crazed girl named Goca who functions as an unpaid sex worker for local laborers. Trisa hangs at the one lane bowling alley and pub where he is often the butt of Joska's (Mija Aleksić) teasings. Joska goads Trisa into marrying Goca with predictably tragic results.

At this point, the real villain arrives in the form of Reza (Annie Girardot), a sophisticated teacher with an urban background. She is also a painter and soon enlists the clueless Trisa as her model and boy toy. However, the audience knows she is a no goodnik when she disparages "religious mania" and addresses Trisa as "comrade". When a dashing pilot crash lands nearby, Trisa is soon displaced from Reza's boudoir. When Trisa is implicated in Goca's murder, Reza and Joska fan the fires of public opinion and the hive mind of a lynch mob takes over. Trisa is subjected to fiendish torture and death. The finale juxtaposes Trisa's traditional funeral with, in a nice satiric touch, a tractor ballet celebrating Tito's 100% support at the polls. The dead eyed stare of Reza at the village priest during the service rams home the message: big sister is watching.

Annie Girardot

Apart from divvying up the character of Nikolai Stavrogin between Trisa and Reza, the main difference between Demons and It Rains in My Village is the use of folk songs by Petrović. The wedding band, often joined by Joska, punctuates the action with songs that comment sardonically on what has transpired. A little levity goes a long way during this bleak, but brief (80 jam packed minutes) affair. Mija Aleksić was the most beloved Serbia entertainer of his generation, he eventually got his own postage stamp, and his musical digressions show why. He brings a very human face to a very evil character. The other leads are equally sublime. Palüch brings a solid presence to the simple minded shepherd. I remember Ms. Girardot for the deglamorized and put upon heroines she played in the 1970s and 80s, when Deneuve and Adjani got the glamour puss roles, so it was nice to see her so young and alluring. She gives her character just the right trace of a sneer. The role of Goca could have been a bad joke about female promiscuity, but the presence of Ms. Ras redeems the role. She makes her character a believable innocent. Because of her work with Dušan Makavejev, I've always found Ms. Ras to be the Serbian Shelley Duvall and that is, for me, high praise.

It Rains in My Village is the kind of near masterpiece that reassures me I have more to see before I shuffle off to Buffalo. Certainly I will be tracking down more films by Mr. Petrović. He didn't shy away from adapting classic novels as one of his later films was an adaptation of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, my favorite novel of the 20th century. The fact that he succeeded with the equally unfilmable Demons gives me hope.

 

My Joy

                         Viktor Nemets and Olga Shuvalova                     

Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy, released in 2010, is an inscrutable portrait of Russia as a paranoid wasteland. From its first shot, that of a cement mixer being used to help conceal a corpse, the mood of the film is that of unrelenting despair. The film could be dismissed as a Russophobic screed, but it is so teeming with vital storytelling that I was enthralled from start to finish. The film is ostensibly a road film, initially following Georgy (Viktor Nemets), a young trucker as he attempts to make a delivery in Western Russia. The film, however, is extremely discursive. It hurtles through time and space illustrating a host of fragmentary tales. When Georgy is joined temporarily by an old drifter, we view the reminiscences of his attempt to return home after World War 2 and come to learn why he is living a peripatetic life. After the drifter goes off on his own, Georgy is waylaid by three hooligans who assault him. The attack leaves Georgy mute and mad and he spends the rest of the film wandering aimlessly through a pitiless landscape.

The characters who populate My Joy are a murderer's row of ruffians, criminals, teenage prostitutes (an especially scary Olga Shuvalova), and sinister representatives of the government. Every government official in the film, from Soviet intelligence officers during the Great Patriotic war era to road traffic patrolmen in present day Russia, are portrayed as corrupt figures eager to prey on whoever falls into their clutches. Repeated requests to see one's papers become the film's harbingers of doom. If My Joy has a flaw, it is that its narrative is so scattered that it is hard to follow. Despite this caveat, I found the film to be an unflinching triumph.

Los Golfos

                          

Carlos Saura's Los Golfos (aka The Delinquents) is a corrosive and impressively assured first feature. Produced by Pere Portabella, the film debuted at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Its portrait of disaffected youth living in the seamy underbelly of Madrid did not meet the approval of Franco's censors. After extensive cuts, a truncated version had a cursory release in Spain in 1962. The uncut print has only recently been reassembled and is available on a handsome looking disc put out by Radiance Films.

The film centers on a group of six young urban miscreants who participate in petty crime to survive, sometimes with the help of their moll, Visi. The hooligans rob blind ladies, pilfer fruit, assault cab drivers, loot garages, and more. No mentors or father figures exist to steer the youth towards virtue, an unspoken legacy of the Spanish Civil War. Much of the film functions as a documentary about the more sordid side of Madrid. However, Saura never flattens the characterizations into a neorealist lump. Each of the six youths is given a vibrant and distinct personality. One of the youths, Juan, shows promise as a matador, so the others pledge to steal enough money in order to jump start his career. They succeed, though at a terrible cost, and the film concludes not with Juan's triumph, but with the most depressing and despairing bull fight ever captured on film; as opposed to all those jolly ones.

Saura combines bracing neorealism with the nihilistic despair of Buñuel's Los Olvidados. The images of slum life, like women gleaning what they can from the town dump, are worthy of that master. Saura's juxtapositions are continually inventive and provocative. Fado and flamenco are contrasted with a Latin dance band out of the 1930s or a hip jazz club where the necking clubgoers are digging Gerry Mulligan. Regardless of their diversions, this is a portrait of a lost generation.

Marty Supreme

Timothée Chalamet

Despite enjoying the director's previous work, I found Josh Safdie's Marty Supreme to be overblown, gaseous, and empty. It doesn't matter to me that the ping pong prodigy played by Timothée Chalamet is unlikeable, but I found the character to be fatally uninteresting. Chalamet has proven he can play a Jewish hustler with his impersonation of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, but Marty lacks the charisma and chutzpah of a Dylan or a Sidney Falco or Sammy Glick. I think that Safdie and his co-writer Ronald Bronstein wanted to capture the Jewish magical realism found in works like Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, but the results are neither magical nor realistic. Safdie shoots the material with lots of close-ups, trying to give this period film immediacy. In this he partially succeeds, but at the cost of giving his film a realistic framework. The use of circa 1980 pop songs indicates he wanted to conjure something more timeless and mythic, but the character of Marty is not interesting or heroic enough to support the stuff of legend.

Safdie continues to be interesting in his handling of his players. I especially enjoyed the efforts of Odessa A'zion, Abel Ferrara, Penn Jillette, and Pico Iyer. However, a number of talented performers are stuck in cliched roles or ones that barely register, such as Fran Drescher, Kevin O'Leary, and Sandra Bernhard. Gwyneth Paltrow is promisingly cast as a Grace Kelly type figure, but has little to do except act bemused by Marty. I did enjoy the Tennessee Williams take-off, but too much of Marty Supreme, like the Moses the dog subplot, is overly convoluted and arbitrary. Marty's actions are rarely consistent with his character. While Marty Supreme has some interesting moments sprinkled throughout its two and a half hours, overall I found it to be a disappointment. 

Backrooms

Whatever their artistic merits, the commercial success of Kane Parsons' Backrooms and Curry Barker's Obsession is a truly heartening sign of life for the American film industry. Before the summer onslaught of sequels, retreads, and video game adaptations, it was very pleasing to film buff Biff that two original films from newcomers are runaway box office successes. After viewing Backrooms, I was particularly chuffed that such an abstract and avant leaning film has been embraced by the US public, particularly by those 35 and under. It is A24's biggest hit to date, already outgrossing Marty Supreme. Backrooms has a plot, but its chief attribute, which commences once Chiwetel Ejiofor discovers a portal to a parallel world in the basement of his furniture store, is Parsons' camera prowling the negative space of a world redolent of corporate offices and strip malls. This conveys a sense of dread that lingers despite the narrative seeming like a distended Twilight Zone episode. 

Ejofor plays Clark, a frustrated architect living in a mythical city in 1990 who manages a pathetic furniture store for his daily bread. He has recently undergone a painful divorce and attends therapy session with his doc, Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve). After Clark discovers the portal, he enlists two collegiate videographers to document what he has discovered. Unsurprisingly, the duo become the film's sacrificial lambs for a monster lurks in the maze of this mysterious kingdom. Mary Kline becomes concerned about Clark and stumbles upon the portal. Flashbacks of her childhood, when she was a prisoner in the house of her mad mother, illuminate her struggle to metaphorically and literally walk through windows. A single survivor is left at film's end. A high tech firm has been monitoring the parallel world and is able to make an extraction. A company pooh-bah (deftly played by Mark Duplass) debriefs the survivor, functioning much like Simon Oakland's character in Psycho. As in Psycho, the explanation given mystifies rather than clarifies.

The visual landscape of Backrooms is a picture of suburban desolation and anomie. Indeed, the suburban strip malls of America in 2026 are even more empty after the rise of internet retailers. As the musical group Priests put it:

                           I was jogging to a strip mall

                           I felt nothing at all

                          Nothing I can recall

                          Besides Dollar Tree, Sears and Thai Bistro

Even before we enter the film's Interzone, the portrait of 1990 America is depressing. The colors of the costumes and decor are subdued and ugly. The film is a symphony in taupe and off white. Even when a color like blue is used it is a subdued blue rather than a vivid one. This fits the emotional tenor of the film. Clark and Mary both live a lonely existence, each haunted by the demons of the past. Ejiofor and Reinsve limn their characters' stress and isolation superbly. I was somewhat distracted by Reinsve's Norwegian accent, but that is a very minor complaint.  

Master Parsons and screenwriter Will Soodik have extrapolated Backrooms from Parsons' YouTube series of the same name. However, the idea for this project did not just emerge full blown like an Athena from the cheesypastaverse. There are antecedents. Mark Z. Danielewski's 2000 horror novel House of Leaves has a similar premise. While Parsons' characters travel horizontally into an alternative multiverse, Danielewski's descend vertically into darkness. With its labyrinthine tracking shots, Backrooms reminded me of Michael Snow's Wavelength and Kubrick's The Shining. Indeed, the labyrinth is the one of the central motifs in Kubrick's oeuvre. Regardless, I feel Backrooms can stand on its own. I don't think it is a great film, but it is a startling debut. 

Downstairs

Virginia Bruce, Paul Lukas, and John Gilbert form a triangle in Downstairs

Monta Bell's Downstairs is a fitfully entertaining 1932 drama released by MGM. Leading man John Gilbert has penned the screenplay in the silent era and then dusted it off in the hopes of reviving his flagging career. Gilbert plays the part of an unscrupulous chauffeur newly hired by a German Baron (Reginald Owen). Gilbert arrives on the wedding day of two members of the Baron's staff, Paul Lukas' butler and Virginia Bruce's parlor maid, and promptly establishes himself as a total cad by hitting on the bride. Bruce initially is able to resist Gilbert's advances, but comes to realize that he floats her boat more than the upright Lukas. Gilbert's chauffeur is such a total rotter that while he is making time with Bruce (soon to be the fourth Mrs. Gilbert), he is also coming onto the households' aged cook. The cook's appeal to him lies not in her feminine charms, but in the bankroll secreted in her stockings. Amidst these shifting and shifty alliances, the Baroness (Olga Baclanova) has a lover on the side. A situation the chauffeur exploits for blackmail.

Downstairs is an weird film that wizzes by at 77 minutes utilizing odd juxtapositions and iris dissolves. It is handsomely appointed with cinematography by Harold Rosson and art direction by the ubiquitous Cedric Gibbons. However, Monta Bell's direction never finds a consistent tone. The film veers from comedy to near tragedy without ever finding its footing. What makes the film palatable is its superior cast. Owen and Baclanova are one of the most hilariously mismatched couples in the history of cinema. Bruce and Gilbert generate a scent of eros. Bodil Rosing, best known as the maid in Sunrise, is affecting as the cook. Best of all is Paul Lukas who makes the stock role of the cuckolded husband believable. Downstairs also features Hedda Hopper as a former employer/lover of Gilbert's, Otto Hoffman, Lucian Littlefield,  and an uncredited Karen Morley in the final scene.

On a personal note, I can attest that the notion that the chauffeur was the great god Pan of the 1920s and 30s was not pure fancy. My wife and I were gifted a box of linens by my mother. They had lain in a closet in my parents' house since the death of my mother's aunt a decade earlier. When I opened the box I spied a selection of monogrammed hand towels. They bore an initial I did not recognize. Apparently, my great aunt had had a first husband who was not mentioned in my presence. When I queried mom about it: "Oh, yes", she replied, "she ran off with her chauffeur."

Beyond the Clouds

Peter Weller and Chiara Caselli

Michelangelo Antonioni's Beyond the Clouds, released in late 1995, is a film about interlocking sexual entanglements set in four different European locales. The picture was based on a book of short stories Antonioni published in 1983 entitled That Bowling Alley on the Tiber. In 1985, Antonioni suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed till the end of his days. He was only able to make Beyond the Clouds with the assistance of Wim Wenders, though their relationship was somewhat contentious. Wenders added binding episodes and narration featuring John Malkovich as a traveling director musing on love and life. Antonioni was able to jettison some of the scenes featuring Malkovich, but not all of them. Similarly, sequences featuring Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau were shot by Wenders, but only a single scene remains. The scene offers a self-reflexive take on artistry invoking Cézanne. The question raised is whether an artist repeats himself. Wenders, the auteur, admits that it is inevitable.

The other element that smacks more of Wenders than Antonioni is the soundtrack, the presence of U2 being the tell. It didn't work for me, especially the instrumental Van Morrison numbers used as love motifs. They are too sentimental for an Antonioni picture, even an autumnal one, and I count myself a Van Morrison fan. Wenders was able to prevail upon Antonioni to trim some of the sex scenes, particularly one of Peter Weller going down on Chiara Caselli. Even so, some observers, like Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice, found the amount of young female flesh on display to be gratuitous. It does seem like every female actress under forty gets totally nekkid in this flick. I am a little more tolerant of this than Mr. Atkinson. Seniors should be indulged their erotic reveries since some of them can only dream rather than do.

Vincent Perez and Irène Jacob

What is best about Beyond the Clouds and most distinctively Antonionian is its mise-en-scène. The film is otherworldly gorgeous. Lovers tease each other as they walk down ancient streets and foggy corridors pitched on the edge of oblivion. The eternal recurrence of romance, its ebb and flow, is evoked through water imagery. Parting and its sweet ache are memorably evoked. What is most uneven about the film is the acting. It is as if the players hit their marks and then could do what they want. Malkovich is fine and Irène Jacob is sublime. Jean Reno is wasted as are Mastroianni and Moreau. Peter Weller and Chiara Caselli show great charm. Kim Rossi Stuart and Inés Sastre are as charmless and at sea as Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin in Zabriskie Point. Sophie Marceau looks great, but her performance is deplorable. I broke out laughing when her character claimed to have stabbed her father twelve times. I was not convinced. Similarly, Fanny Ardant muffs her drunk scene. Lovers of Mr. Antonioni's work should see Beyond the Clouds, others may be baffled.

Resurrection

         

Bi Gan's Resurrection demonstrates that the mechanism of cinema still has a pulse. I find that my previous remarks on Bi Gan still hold, but that Resurrection represents a wholehearted dive into the unconscious realms of surrealism. Some have accused the film of oneiric onanism, but I find the film contains pointed insights into both film and Chinese history. Titles trumpet the film's theme at the onset. The world is split into two, Yin and Yang, those who eschew dreams to live eternally and those rebels who live to dream; monikered here "the Deliriants". The film's one constant is the Deliriant figure embodied by Chinese boy bander Jackson Yee in a remarkable performance. The Deliriant's travails are shown in five discrete episodes. Each episode represents both a period in the history of cinema and modern China. The cinematic style used in each episode mimics that of the period. Thus, the opening section, set in the 1920s, is silent and filmed like the magic lantern visions of Méliès. The following episode, set during China's conflict with Japan, is shot using the conventions of expressionistic noir. And so on.

In each episode, the Deliriant lives on the fringes of society, a criminal, mongrel or monster. Throughout, there is a consistent aura of paranoia. The Deliriant is always ensnared or trapped by some aspect of society. In this respect, Resurrection stands as a veiled rebuke to Chinese authoritarianism. Bi Gan eschews the lengthy tracking shots of Long Day's Journey into Night enhancing the sense of the Deliriant's entrapment. That is until the last segment set on the eve of Y2K. In this section, the Deliriant is a young gang banger whose girl is under the control of a mobster. The camera follows the young lovers as they seek escape through the labyrinthian streets of the city. Only when they commandeer a barge and head out to sea, a recurring symbol of freedom in the film, do they seem at liberty.

Resurrection is chock full of film allusions. Now this can be a boon or a curse. The Bride has a host of references, not only Mary Shelley, but Bonnie and Clyde and Bartleby the Scrivener. Unfortunately, these allusion add little to the film. They merely serve to prop up a flimsy dramatic framework. Squeal, with its allusions to Barry Lyndon, is an example of a picture in which the film references add to its complexity and resonance. I feel much the same about Resurrection. The shout outs to Day of Wrath, The Lady From Shanghai, and Kiss Me Deadly add to the mood of mistrust and treachery. The China portrayed in Resurrection is the hall of mirrors of the modern totalitarian surveillance state.

Those seeking an overarching narrative in Resurrection are grasping at straws. The film is a set of variations on a theme. It is a movie designed to excite the mind's eye, as the continued use of the motif of the iris attests to. The episodes, as Tom Verlaine once put it, alternately dissolve and reveal. Actually Verlaine called it Dissolve/Reveal, a more cinematic version of the psychedelic pivot where the fire of everyday existence melts into the pool of the collective unconscious. The circularity of Resurrection's form, beginning and ending in a movie theater reflects the film's presentation of eternal recurrence. Same as it ever was through modern Chinese history. Deliriants of all stripes will find much to assay and treasure in this film.

Ghost Nursing

Shirley Yim consults a seer in Ghost Nursing

Wilson Tong's Ghost Nursing is the best exploitation film I've seen in some time. The folks at Vinegar Syndrome have issued a splendid looking Blu-ray of this 1982 supernatural horror flick. Shirley Yim stars as Jackie, a working gal who we witness fleeing Hong Kong and some large gambling debts for Thailand in the first reel. There she shares a crash pad with a cousin who cajoles her into selling her wares at a local dive. After being brutalized by a wealthy client, Jackie visits a local seer to gain insight into how she can change her run of bad luck. The seer gifts her a misshapen "child" to nourish who will, in turn, protect Jackie. Things start out promisingly for Jackie, she wins the attention of a hunky and kind suitor, but she does not completely fulfill her part of the bargain and harsh consequences result. 

Ghost Nursing resembles a graphic novel or comic book, as we used to call them, in the best possible way. Visually lurid with bold primary colors, the Vinegar Syndrome disc does justice to the palette of the film. The camera set-ups are outstanding, especially for a film made for such a low budget. The exploitive bits of the film are somewhat undercut by the seamy treatment Jackie experiences. The film editing jumps rapidly through scenes, particularly during the film's gonzo final third. This disguises the brilliantly schlocky practical effects and causes the viewer to get swept up in Ghost Nursing's WTF rush.

Hell's Highway

Tom Brown and Richard Dix

Rowland Brown's Hell's Highway is a vital and nervy B feature from Radio Pictures. This David O. Selznick production beat I Was a Fugitive on the Chain Gang to the punch in the prison exposé sweepstakes of 1932 by opening two months before the more remembered Warner Brothers feature. Hell's Highway stars Richard Dix as an inveterate bank robber facing a lifetime behind bars. He languishes in a shambolic prison camp presided over by a cruel commandant (perpetual baddie C. Henry Gordon). The conditions are medieval in their cruelty as the shackled prisoners break rocks in the hot sun in a penal system built on graft and greed. All the prisoners' wear targets on their backs in a picture that is extremely grungy and deglamorized for a Hollywood flick. Dix's character yearns to break free, but when his kid brother (Tom Brown) joins him in stir, his perspective changes. If you've seen one prison picture you might think you've seen them all, however Hell's Highway wizzes by in 65 minutes of feverish intensity that includes two prison breaks, murder, adultery, intimations of homosexuality, institutional racism, blackmail, torture, and arson.

The film's editing is swift and ironic. A prisoner's drawings spring to animated life. Popular tunes, mostly sung by the black prisoners, serve as aural transitions for this procession of carnage. Sultry blues concerning adultery (Frankie and Johnny) and dope (Willie the Weeper) create an aura of doom. Brown captures the gloomy delirium of the prisoners' plight in sweaty close-ups. The only note of hope in the picture is embodied by Whiteside (Stanley Fields, omnipresent in 1930s Hollywood), a reformer heralding the change coming with the New Deal. William K. Everson has noted how Gordon's character prefigures Hume Cronyn's fascistic prison warden in Brute Force. Similarly, Charles Middleton's mystic convict presages John Steinbeck's defrocked preacher, Jim Casy, in 1939's The Grapes of Wrath. The picture originally had Dix die after being pursued by hound dogs in a swamp, but reshoots directed by John Cromwell give us a slightly less tragic ending. Brown is credited with over twenty screenplays, but his credits as a director are few owing to his alcoholism, communism, and irascibility. Alexander Korda famously fired him on the set of The Scarlet Pimpernel. Nevertheless, on Hell's Highway he creates memorable vignettes with over twenty memorable supporting performers. Dix, who I find oafish in most of his other pictures, is at his brawny best under Brown's direction. 

The Adventures of Hajji Baba

                     

Don Weis' The Adventures of Hajji Baba is a wide screen Technicolor hoot. When I compare it to such tired, socially responsible crap from 1954 as The Country Girl, I further appreciate Weis' buoyancy and colorful flair. The film is exotic schlock, a formula producer Walter Wanger had followed for 1942's Arabian Nights. The Adventures of Hajji Baba, likewise, did boffo biz. Why? The film has a shopworn plot, little characterization, but boasts more flesh on the screen than any other American film of the 1950s. Fifteen minutes had to be shorn from the American cut before it could be shown in the UK. After Weis establishes the film's milieu in one shot, color coordinated slave girls behind bars, he shows Hajji Baba (John Derek) plying one of his trades, which include Don Juan, barber, masseuse, and swordsman, by giving Claude Akins an oily rubdown. I hope Derek got hazard pay. Weis is able to instantly conjure the camaraderie of a community, notwithstanding the fact that he has a cast of very unlikely Arabs, such as the blue eyed Derek.

Establishing a milieu: the first shot of The Adventure of Hajji Baba

Hajji is tasked with protecting a willful princess (Elaine Stewart, as stiff as knotty pine) during a bewildering number of fracases. They both get tied up and tortured numerous times. Hajji makes time with every featured femme in the flick. Despite this and the countless harems we see, the women in this picture all have spunk and agency. In fact, one of the gals Hajji locks lips with is the leader of a rebellious Amazon gang played by flame haired Amanda Blake; soon to be Miss Kitty on television's Gunsmoke. This flick conveys the cheap thrills of pulp and peplum within an eye popping comic book framework. John Derek, villainized as Bo Derek's Svengali, is not bad. I prefer him to Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter. Weis started out promisingly with such trifles as The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, I Love Melvin, and this picture. By the 1960s, he was hopelessly out of step: Billie and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini are among the worst pictures of any era. Weis' bread and butter became television work: glimpses of a jaunty survivor can be found in episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Remington Steele.

 

Another factor that helps make The Adventures of Hajji Baba spritely entertainment is its vigorous score by Dimitri Tiomkin. Tiomkin was coming off the huge success of his score for High Noon and its attendant single, Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin. Some thought Frankie Laine's hit version of the ballad saved that film commercially. Consequentially, a single was derived from the main theme of ...Hajji Baba featuring Nat King Cole on vocals with Nelson Riddle arranging. It was never more than a B side, but Cole's mellifluous voice pops up every five minutes of the film burbling "...Hajji Baba." It is bananas, but fits snugly within a film that is already cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Tiomkin's orchestral score is exciting and exotic without depending on Orientalist tropes.

 

L'Amour et les Forets

Virginie Efira and Melvil Poupaud

Valérie Donzelli's L'Amour et les Forêts (Love and the Forests) is a not quite good film with many elements that I enjoyed. The flick was released in the US in 2024 under the anodyne title Just the Two of Us. Ms. Donzelli and Audrey Diwan adapted the script from Éric Reinhardt's novel. The film chronicles an abusive marriage from the point of view of the mistreated wife, Blanche (Virginie Efira). The story is told in flashback as Blanche recounts the arc of her marriage to Grégoire (Melvil Poupaud) to her divorce lawyer. Blanche and Grégoire enjoy a whirlwind romance though Blanche's twin sister, Rose (Ms. Efira doing double duty), is not sold on the lug. After the happy couple settle down and produce two children, Grégoire reveals his needy and controlling nature. Starved for true affection, Blanche takes a lover which sends hubby over the edge. Grégoire morphs into a furniture smashing monster who spies on his wife and drives her to a suicide attempt. A stay in a mental hospital helps bring Blanche to her senses and she leaves the facility determined to leave her husband. More (mild) terror awaits, of course. 

I liked some of Ms. Donzelli's directorial strategies. We first see Blanche against a fragmented background and scraps of memories, usually concerning happy times with her lover, intersperse her reverie. This seems an apt way to covey that Blanche is trying to piece together the shards of her broken life. However, some techniques don't work. I usually like it when a director color codes a film, but the choice to use red for eros and blue for fear seems too facile to me. The film lacks humor or irony. The only touch that gave me a mordant chuckle was that Blanche and Grégoire secret shared love word is verite. I think the initial rendezvous between Blanche and her lover is bungled. He breaks the ice with her by teaching her archery, surely a prime opportunity to register the thwack of cupid's dart. However, the scene is neither elegant nor erotic. Certainly, as this former archery counselor can attest, no one on the set knew how to properly notch and release an arrow.

For a psychological thriller, L'Amour et les Forêts lacks psychological insight. We learn nothing of Grégoire's background or family. He is a relative cipher and that makes the film a little too formulaic. Now this flaw may stem from the source novel, but it flattens the film's texture. I also felt the Tartuffe reference was too on the nose in trumpeting the theme: two faces have I. Nevertheless, the level of acting in the film is outstanding. Ms. Efira, a major star in Europe but under appreciated stateside, is particularly adept at projecting her character's plight through her soulful eyes. I thought Mr. Poupaud's performance was good at expressing his character's surface charm and desperation, but it lacked volcanic energy during the numerous frenzied rages. The supporting players are uniformly superb, especially Dominique Reymond as Blanche's lawyer, Marie Rivière, and Virginie Ledoyen.

Book Review: Hitchcock & Herrmann by Steven C. Smith

Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann mug for a publicity shot

Steven C. Smith's Hitchcock and Herrmann is a well written and researched survey of the collaboration between the two maestros that lasted from 1955 (The Trouble with Harry) to 1964 (Marnie). The relationship foundered when Hitchcock rejected Hermann's proposed score for Torn Curtain, but it is amazing that the collaboration between these two needy and anxious geniuses lasted as long as it did. Mr. Smith's reliance on first person interviews, not all his own, prevents the book from suffering from the phantasms of some of the volumes about Hitchcock. Smith's main bailiwick is music, he is the author of esteemed biographies of both Herrmann and Max Steiner, so the tome should have been titled Herrmann and Hitchcock. However it is titled, the book is welcome because there is an oceanic amount of scholarship on Hitchcock, but only a trickle about Herrmann. Instead of rehashing his biography about Herrmann, Smith enlists a bevy of music lovers, ranging from conductor/composer William Stromberg to New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, to analyze and assess Hermann's scores. The book is learned, but not in an ostentatious way. You do not need a background in music theory to appreciate the book.

That said, I wish it had a discography. Herrmann produced an amazing array of music and guidance is needed. Besides the scores for his Hitchcock films, I recommend the scores to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Devil and Daniel Webster (which shows off his debt to Charles Ives), Jane Eyre, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Day the Earth Stood Still, On Dangerous Ground, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Cape Fear, Jason and the Argonauts, The Bride Wore Black, Sisters, Taxi Driver, and, my personal favorite, Fahrenheit 451. Some of these are hard to track down, but all are worth listening to on their own. Smith touches on the full breadth of Herrmann's career, from music for radio and television shows to classical cantatas, so I am sure there is much more to explore.

Remarkably Bright Creatures

Sally Field and Lewis Pullman

Olivia Newman's adaptation of Remarkably Bright Creatures is pleasant fare. Any adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt's bestselling novel would suffer from the contrivances and cutesy anthropomorphism of that magically realistic work, but Newman's restraint and the efforts of a well chosen and talented cast made for palatable viewing even for this hardened cynic. Set in the present day Pacific Northwest, the film and novel tells of two damaged loners who bond over an aging octopus in a small aquarium. The octopus (voiced mellifluously by Alfred Molina) is named Marcellus and provides occasional narration, somewhat dismissive of his human captors, that gives the film a welcome sardonic note. Tova (Sally Field) is an elderly widow in a small coastal town work who works nights at the aquarium where Marcellus becomes her sounding board. After Tova injures her ankle, she tutors her replacement, Cameron (Lewis Pullman), a drifter at loose ends after the dissolution of his band. Both Tova and Cameron have trauma lingering from their past which, with the help of each other and Marcellus, they work through.

If you detect a bit of snideness to this description, that would be accurate. The reveals of the mysteries of Tova and Cameron's past trauma are extremely pat and predictable. However, the scenery is pleasant, the CGI sterling, and Newman's brisk pacing never lets us focus too closely on the many improbabilities of the plot. Remarkably Bright Creatures' supporting cast makes the film a good hang. In what could have been token roles, romantic foils for the two leads, Sofia Black-D'Elia and Colm Meaney both display great charm and skill. It is certainly nice to see Mr. Meaney, who has played a host of villains and boors in a long career,  shine in an appealing role. The fact that his character is a Deadhead portrayed for once without cliché is an added bonus even to someone like me who has never cottoned to Jerry Garcia and company. Tova's female friends, who are self-dubbed the "Knit-Wits" and include Joan Chen and Beth Grant. are an amusing flibbertigibbet Greek chorus. Their standout is Kathy Baker, at the end of a career that has not matched her talent, who gets to tell Tova to snap out of her funk in the film's best monologue.  

The presence of Sally Field often elicits a diabetic reaction from critics and sophisticated audiences. First, the legacies of Gidget and The Flying Nun had to be overcome. Even when she won two Oscars, Field's plain Jane sincerity ("You like me, you like me") brought more ridicule than respect. In the long run though, I believe she has given as many great screen performances as Meryl Streep. It is a testament to Ms. Fields' talent and Ms. Newman's touch that Tova never seems ridiculous even when addressing an octopus. Ms. Newman also brings out heretofore unexploited aspects of Lewis Pullman's capabilities. His warmth and ingratiating awkwardness here bode well for his future.