The Wet Parade

Dorothy Jordan, Robert Young, and Walter Huston

Victor Fleming's The Wet Parade is a mediocre melodrama based on a then recent novel by Upton Sinclair. This 1932 MGM production cannot escape the limitations of its source material, a dashed off anti-alcohol screed that was one of over a hundred books Sinclair produced. Sinclair was the son of an alcoholic salesman and he obviously had an axe to grind. The novel and film both picture two families, one southern and one northern, who are brought to ruin by demon rum. First we meet the southern Chilcote family in 1916, presided over by pixilated paterfamilias Lewis Stone. Stone has a son, Rog (Neil Hamilton), who is following his besotted example and a disapproving daughter named Maggie May (Dorothy Jordan). Stone makes a half-hearted attempt to stay sober, but ends up dead face down in a pig pen; about as low as one can go in an MGM production.

Rog moves on to New York City where he moves into a tatty SRO hotel managed by Kip Tarleton (Robert Young). Kip is saddled with a drunken Dad played by Walter Huston. Huston's orotund and grandiose performance as a drunkard still stuck in the Gay 90s is the main reason to see the picture. Maggie May shows up in town, primarily to pair off with fellow teetotaler Kip. Kip's father's decline continues unabated by prohibition. In fact, the film makes plain how pernicious the effects of bathtub gin and the like were in those days. When Huston's hootch is destroyed by his wife (Clara Blandick), he becomes enraged and beats her to death. That's right, Auntie Em is clubbed to death. Huston is sentenced to life in prison and disappears from the picture. Kip sells his hotel and becomes a prohibition agent for the Treasury Department. His partner is Jimmy Durante, whose schtick seems out of place here but whose presence belies what an over stuffed production this is. The picture really climaxes with Blandick's murder at the 75 minute mark, but there are still 43 minutes to go. 

Rog is soon going to hell on a sled with the help of a party girl played by a peroxided Myrna Loy. Rog drinks too much cheap rotgut and is blinded, putting him on the road to redemption. In the novel, Kip is rubbed out by gangster, but, in the film, it is Durante's character who makes the ultimate sacrifice. The film is a tad bit more equivocal about Prohibition than Sinclair was. While alcohol is shown to be pernicious in the film, the unexpected effects of Prohibition are made so plain that even Kip is doubting its efficacy by film's end. MGM uses medleys of patriotic songs to paper over the political divide. 1932 was an election year with Franklin Delano Roosevelt upending Herbert Hoover in November. Though the Crash had been the central issue, Prohibition also had its impact. The Democrats ran as the Wet party.

The best scene in The Wet Parade has Walter Huston delivering a stemwinder stump speech for Woodrow Wilson in 1916. The film cross cuts to a contemporaneous Republican response 

which is a carbon copy presented for ironic effect. Huston gives one of the best performances of a drunk I've ever seen. Neil Hamilton is less convincing in his sodden moments, but is good at projecting his character's diffidence. Robert Young's sincerity jibes with his character in one of his finest performances. Dorothy Jordan barely registers, but that is probably because her character is a complete pill. Ms. Jordan appeared in over twenty films between 1929 and 1933 then retreated from the screen after marrying Merian C. Cooper. After a long hiatus, Jordan appeared in three of Cooper's productions for John Ford: The Sun Shines Bright, The Searchers, and The Wings of Eagles.

The Wet Parade suffers from the deficiencies of its source novel. The handling of class and race issues is particularly clumsy. Even Victor Fleming's biographer derides the project as "a barely viewable film made out of an unreadable book." 🎁 However, I think Fleming redeems the irredeemable somewhat with his boisterous handling of crown scenes: the salons, saloons, speakeasies, and political pow-wows of the film. Sometimes MGM's luxe production values pay off: I loved briefly spying a recreation of the St Regis Hotel's Old King Cole Bar. On the whole, though, The Wet Parade is recommended only to the hardiest of old time film buffs.

🎁 Michael Sragow, Victor Fleming, page 176.

Outcome

Keanu Reeves and Jonah Hill

Jonah Hill's Outcome is a toothless Hollywood satire destined for obscurity. Keanu Reeves stars as Reef Hawk, a top flight Tinseltown star returning to his career after a five year hiatus brought on by various addictions. As part of his rehabilitation, Hawk is making amends to figures from his past who he has let down, ranging from his mother (a game Susan Lucci) to his first manager (Martin Scorsese). However, his comeback is threatened when Hawk is blackmailed by someone who has got a hold of a compromising video from his past. 

Mr. Hill, who wrote the screenplay along with Ezra Woods, also appears as Hawk's lawyer. Unfortunately, Jonah Hill the director indulges Jonah Hill the actor in a number of scenery chewing scenes that reek of self-indulgence. There is some smart repartee in the film. I did enjoy Ivy Wolk's wry asides and David Spade is well cast as a weasel. However, Hill has little visual imagination and most of the cast, especially Cameron Diaz and Matt Bomer, are stranded in rote roles. Outcome is not funny enough to be an effective farce and not insightful enough for any dramatic payoff. The fact that Hawk can't remember the incident that he is being blackmailed about makes one wonder what the big deal is. If it was established early on that Hawk was enjoying sexual congress with a dog on the video or something of that nature, then his panic would be understandable. As it is, it is hard for the audience to maintain sympathy for a handsome and rich character who is not really under siege. Once the nature of the video is revealed, the somewhat less than shocking nature of it renders much of what has gone on before as superfluous. A description that would fit the entirety of Outcome to a tee.                                    

Little Trouble Girls

Jara Sofija Ostan

Urška Djukić's Little Trouble Girls is one of the most promising feature debuts of 2025. This compact Slovenian film tells the story of shy and sheltered Lucija and her sexual and psychological awakening during a summer choir retreat at a convent. A short scene of Lucija riding in a car with her mother displays her repressed background, as her mother expresses her disapproval of girls Lucija age, sixteen, wearing lipstick. Once at the convent retreat, Lucija falls under the spell of the choir's queen bee, the more mature and sophisticated Ana Maria (Mina Svajger). Ana Maria, who would qualify in the US as a mean girl, leads Lucija astray with sapphic come-ons and by urging Lucija to join her in ogling the construction workers toiling at the convent.

Lucija is, at first, intrigued by Ana Maria, but, ultimately, becomes justifiably repulsed by her manipulations. She makes the mistake of tattling on Ana Maria to her choir master (a suitably spineless Saša Tabaković). The conductor treats her not with understanding, but disdain. He reacts by humiliating Lucija in front of the choir, criticizing her, admittedly pinched and hesitant, singing. Lucija becomes persona non grata within her peer group. Director Djukić manages to elicit marvelously unaffected performances from her young cast. She crowds the frame in the interior sequences to suggest the dual nature of adolescent intimacy: both alluring and suffocating. She gives the film a palpable feel of sensuality, foregrounding the throb and heave of bodies. When Lucija masturbates in a bathroom stall, Djukić provides a close-up of her thorax, writhing with forbidden pleasure. When Lucija spies on a particularly hunky worker, Djurkić provides a point of view shot from her perspective of the man's muscular arm, shimmeringly beautifully in the sun. The outdoor sequences in the film, workers toiling at the construction site or bathing in a stream revel in the plein air beauty of natural light.

Jara Sofija Ostan and Mina Svajger: intimacy that is both alluring and suffocating

The role of music in the film also is a clue to the ambivalence with which Djurkić regards beauty, both sacred and profane. Nearly all of the choir's songs are paeans to the Almighty. They are beautiful, yet practiced and rote. True aural beauty is experienced only once in the film by Lucija when she happens upon a sextet of nuns singing in glory to God. The open hearted beauty of their singing reflects the nuns' inner devotion, something the members of the choir cannot approach. This sequence also sets up the extraordinary last shot of the film in which Lucija feeds upon grapes as Sonic Youth perform the gleefully blasphemous song that provides the film's title. Earlier, Ana Maria tells Lucija that they must eat sour grapes as expiation for their sins, but, by film's end, she has been revealed as a false prophet. Lucija, now outside of the web of her sinister peers, can enjoy the fruit and her solitude for their own sake. She may not adhere to the strictures of a holy order, but she has learned that the world is awash in sin. This is something Sonic Youth, no strangers to Catholic guilt, convey also. The key line in the song Little Trouble Girls is "...I'm really bad." Once an individual has accepted that man is born in sin, that knowledge is liberating whether one is seeking expiation or not.
               

Ruslan and Ludmila

                Natalya Petrova                 

Aleksandr Ptushko's Ruslan and Ludmila, from 1972, is an epic Russian fantasy film. It is an adaptation of Alexander Pushkin's fairy tale in verse which catapulted him to fame in 1820. The film is fairly faithful to the original poem, excising only a minor subplot and a number of ironic asides. Ptushko, who started as an animator, has been compared to everyone from Walt Disney to Mario Bava, but I think the best analogy is Ray Harryhausen. Like Harryhausen, Ptushko is a wizard in regards to design and practical effects, but is rather stodgy in the handling of his players. At times, Ruslan and Ludmila is as static as an opera production. This was Ptushko's final picture after a near half century career of fantastical films.

The film opens in a  castle in Kiev where Prince Vladimir is announcing the betrothal of his daughter Princess Ludmila (Natalya Petrova) to her beloved, the military hero Ruslan (Valeri Kozinets). However, an evil wizard, who we later learn is named Chernomor (Vladimir Fyodorov), snatches Ludmila away on her wedding night and imprisons her in his psychedelic lair. The decor of which is totally flip city, including a garden (above) which resembles a frosted H.R. Puffnstuf terrarium with stalagmites. Ruslan and three other less suitable suitors are tasked with rescuing Ludmila. Despite a tiger, evil henchmen, a wicked sorceress, the decapitated head of a giant and treachery, Ruslan accomplishes the heroic task while finding time to repel a Pecheneg army from the gates of Kiev. This hero's journey ends with Ruslan and Ludmila pledging their troth. 

Valeri Kozinets and Natalya Petrova

Ruslan and Ludmila lumbers along at a slow pace during the course of its 150 minutes. Viewers over ten may experience a soporific effect at times, but the film's longueurs have a benefit or two. The film's dialogue is largely dubbed and this, along with its slow pace, brings out the musicality of Pushkin's verse. There are also moments when individuals and choruses burst into song. Tikhon Khrennikov's stirring score helps bind together this pokey film without alluding to Glinka's opera. The accumulated aural effects helps turn the flick into a hymn to Russian nationalism, much like Alexander Nevsky and many other Soviet films. That Kiev is the citadel of Russian pride in the film has an extra resonance amidst Putin's invasion of the Ukraine. Since the founding of the first Slavic state Kievan Rus', around 900 CE or so, Kiev has been viewed as a part of the Motherland in the mind's eyes of Russian nationalists. This is further amplified by the status of Pushkin as the preeminent Russian author in his homeland. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, and others may have gotten more ballyhoo in the West, but Pushkin is, rightly, revered in Russia as the father of modern Russian literature. All subsequent Russian authors are in his debt, as Dostoyevsky acknowledged in his famous 1880 speech about Pushkin.

There is an important aspect of Ruslan and Ludmila that may escape non-Russophiles. The evil wizard Chernomor's power lies in his beard. All Ruslan has to do is chop it off and the wizard is helpless. Now, as with Samson, one can look at Chernomor's bristles as a symbol of virility and potency, but there is a specific Slavic slant to this symbol. Peter the Great, the first Tsar to look to the West as a model of progress, instituted a controversial beard tax during his reign because he thought beards symbolized Russian backwardness. This was one of many examples of the tug of war in the Russian psyche between Western progressivism and traditional Russian nationalism. Pushkin was particularly sensitive to this tension. One of his best poems, The Bronze Horseman, culminates with a statue of Peter the Great chasing the narrator like a hell hound on his trail. Ruslan and Ludmila succeeds primarily as spectacle, but it contains a multitude of signifiers that shed light on the Russian character. The Deaf Crocodile disc looks spiffy.

Vladimir Fyodorov

                                       

High Time

Blake Edwards' High Time is a simple minded Bing Crosby vehicle that Edwards transforms into a pop tone poem of color and music. The story of the film is oft repeated dreck: a successful middle-aged businessman enrolls in college to see what he missed by not getting his sheepskin. This is a tale that has been told many a time in the cinema, the Rodney Dangerfield starrer Back to School has virtually the same plot. Garson Kanin is credited with the story and the Waldman brothers (The Party, The Return of the Pink Panther) the screenplay. The project was first pitched as a Gary Cooper vehicle, but then tailored for Der Bingle. He plays Harvey Howard, owner of a chain of "smokehouse" restaurants. We first see him being let off at college by his disapproving twenty something children. However, Harvey instantly bonds with his dorm mates, played by Fabian, Richard Beymer, and Patrick Adiarte.

The trio along with the always welcome Tuesday Weld are twisting away to Harvey's le jazz hot records when they meet. Edwards shoots the interiors theatrically. Transition sequences are titled cartoons with student extras performing like stagehands. The bright colors.and geometric patterns are repeated as a motif. Static scenes of singing and dialogue are alternated with spasms of choreographed action that verges on dance. Bing, Fabian, and the gang warbling "It Come Upon a Midnight Clear" in front of a white Christmas tree is juxtaposed with an antic snowball fight. The morning routine of the dorm mates is fast cranked like a silent comedy. Edwards treats the thin plot as a revue, a series of skits to be enlivened and united by color, movement, and music. There is no effort to move Bing into the age of rock and roll. He and the kids are listening to Henry Mancini's version of big band jazz not Elvis and Bo Diddley. There is no attempt at realism in this mild fantasy, which ends with Crosby "flying" over his graduation, and that is why Mancini's vivid score does more than any element of this piece of pop ephemera to hold it together.

Tuesday Weld and Bing Crosby

The cartoon like approach that Edwards employs, similar to Frank Tashlin, is not only appropriate to the featherweight nature of High Time, but also to the demands of making a Technicolor picture in Cinemascope. As in a lot of 'scope pictures, characterization takes second place to spectacle: in this case, sporting events, bonfires, hay rides, separate dormitories, and phone booth stuffing (look it up, kids). Bing is the same as ever, contentedly coasting along. Beymer is more spritely than usual: an Edwards effect. Weld's part is a boy crazy cliche, she even flirts with Bing, but she is always peaches and cream to me. Fabian is hopeless, but I think he was a better actor than Rick Nelson. As a crooner, he was pretty lousy, maybe the worst pin-up singer ever except for the terminally flat Bobby Sherman. Fabian sings a few bars of "Foggy Dew", a tip of the hat to the burgeoning folk movement I guess, but the number is thankfully truncated. Fabian is especially unconvincing as a basketball point guard, but I watched his ineptitude wistfully. Soon, he and the other payola assisted teen idols, like Frankie Avalon and James Darren, who were manufactured to be the new Elvis after the King was drafted, were to be swept away by the rising tide of Beatlemania.

Nicole Maurey plays Bing's romantic interest, a divorced French professor. Maurey had a wide ranging career (from Diary of a Country Priest to The Day of the Triffids) and had teamed with Crosby for Little Boy Lost, but the sexual chemistry between the two is zilch in High Time. The relationship and the hit tune Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen concocted to celebrate it ("The Second Time Around") seems tailor made to burnish Crosby's image after he had recently remarried. Though he had been a romantic idol in the 1930s, by 1960 the torch had been passed to Fabian and his ilk and Crosby was better off playing a priest. There are other aspects of the film that have dated badly. At one point, Crosby has to attend a faux antebellum ball, in drag, to satisfy a requirement of his fraternity initiation. The ball seems a remnant of the pernicious romanticism of the noble lost cause view of the Confederacy. Crosby is game, but this farcical transvestism would seem better suited to a clown like Danny Kaye or Jerry Lewis.

Nicole Maurey, Bing, and Tuesday

However, when viewed within the context of Blake Edwards' career, the transvestism in High Time can be seen as a consistent leitmotif that was explored most fully in Victor/Victoria. Likewise the choreographed physical schtick that is the highlight of High Time led to the hijinks of the Pink Panther films, The Great Race, and The Party. The contributions of editor Robert Simpson and choreographer Miriam Nelson helps ensure that High Time is a motion picture that really moves. Fans of vintage television will enjoy seeing the contributions of Gavin Macleod and Yvonne Craig. 

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Andy Lau

Tsui Hark's Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (henceforth Detective Dee 1) is a relatively diverting martial-arts spectacle from 2010. A major figure in Hong Kong cinema since the 1980s, Mr. Hark has amassed over fifty directorial credits and even more as a producer. Most of what I've seen of his work is gaseous and over blown with little characterization or thematic impact. Detective Dee 1 is greatly helped by the efforts of the director of its action sequences, Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, who started as a stunt man in 1969 and who gives Detective Dee the palpable thump it needs. The efforts of action sequence directors in martial arts films is akin to that of the choreographers, like Jack Cole, who staged the song and dance numbers in Hollywood musicals; often without credit.

The scenario for Detective Dee 1 is a jumbled tale of intrigue set during a fancifully depicted Tang dynasty. An advisor to the Empress (Carina Lau) spontaneously combusts and, soon, other characters suffer the same fate. Detective Dee (Andy Lau), who has been languishing in jail after a trumped up treason charge, is given the task of finding the culprits behind these mysterious deaths. Amidst a background warring clans, Dee learns the truism of every half-assed mystery: no one is to be trusted. So, the plot is hooey, but the numerous action sequences are propulsive. A film like Detective Dee 1 is designed to appeal to the eight year old in all of us. How else can you explain a flick in which a character is named Donkey Wang with Scabies? Judged purely as a popcorn picture, Detective Dee 1 is better crafted and more exhilarating than, say, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.             

Mata-Hari

            

George Fitzmaurice's Mata Hari, from 1931, is one of the more turgid of MGM's vehicles for Greta Garbo. Garbo stars as the titular spy, but no effort was made to be historically accurate; which is a pity because it is quite a story. Four (listed) screenwriters concocted a hoary yarn with unmemorable dialogue. The espionage angle of the film is its weakest aspect, pure codswallop. What's left is your typical Garbo triangle with an older lover (Lionel Barrymore) and a younger one (Roman Novarro). Barrymore is pretty good as a wheezing donkey of male impotence. Novarro, born in Durango, is supposed to be playing a Russian flyer, but wisely doesn't attempt an accent. Though ridiculous in his role, he is good at shining his puppy love eyes at la Garbo. Garbo is great, natch, but I was disconcerted by her pronouncing the country, "Rush-ee-ah." Lewis Stone and Karen Morley are also good, but under utilized.

Classic Hollywood was often an echo chamber and Mata-Hari is a good example of this. It seems a response to Paramount's success with the exoticism of the Dietrich and Sternberg, nicking the cabaret sections from Morocco and the fatalistic spy shenanigans of Dishonored.

Mata-Hari, like Dishonored, ends with its heroine facing a firing squad. However, Fitzmaurice's static visual style is like flat beer compared to the bubbly champagne of Josef von Sternberg's play of light and shadow. This despite the striking work of cinematographer William Daniels whose credits include The Shop Around the Corner and many Garbo features. I did enjoy the wigged out costumes and Orientalist set designs, but their appeal is mainly to a camp sensibility. Garbo provokes more mystery when she turns her face into a mask, as during the finale of Queen Christina, than when she does a bump and grind around a pagan idol in a sheer outfit. Less is sometimes more. 

Nearly all copies of this film, including the Warners Archive disc I viewed, contain a truncated version of the film released after the institution of the Production code. A complete version has been found in Brussels with about three more minutes, mostly of Garbo shimmying lasciviously and seducing Novarro in a see-through negligee. Sounds great, but I don't think these sequences would ultimately redeem Mata-Hari. 

A mugshot of the real Mata-Hari

Hamnet

Chloe Zhao, Paul Mescal, and Jessie Buckley

My reactions to Chloé Zhao's Hamnet find me in a sea of relativity. It is a fine literary adaptation, but fine can be a limiting adjective. It is a better film than Train Dreams, at least the characters in Hamnet have dirt under their fingernails, but Denis Johnson is a superior writer and storyteller compared to Maggie O'Farrell. Ms. O'Farrell collaborated with Ms. Zhao on the screenplay and it hews closely to the novel. The only thing that I especially missed was the opening chapter in which a ship docks in London and a rat escapes to gift Britain with the plague, but I can certainly understand why it was dropped. The film is well cast, it is refreshing to see a Anne Hathaway (here called Agnes, as in her father's will) who is actually older than her mate. Mescal is good with his readings, but I would have preferred more of a hint of rascality in his portrayal of the Bard of Avon. O'Farrell's book centers on Agnes, as does the film, and Jessie Buckley is up to the challenge. She is always capable and intelligent in her choices. What has earned her awards this time is that awards are given not to the best performance, but to the most performance. Buckley gets to howl at the moon in pain and grief twice in Hamnet, but I am a little dubious of the notion of trauma being alchemized into great art. 

Countering the calumnies visited upon her by Frank Harris and others, O'Farrell and Zhao turn Agnes into an Earth Mother Courage roaming the forest searching for wild herbs and roots with her pet hawk. Zhao is able to derive a chthonic pull from Agnes' journeys into the forest primeval. On the whole, though, this is Zhao's least distinctive film. Most of the flaws of this film stem from the book which suffers from the misperception that the Elizabethans were just like us. The concerns of Hamnet owe more to 2020. The technological and moral latitude of the Elizabethan age was a world apart from ours. If you want to get an idea of what is missing in Hamnet's portrait of this world, I'd two Elizabethan novels by Anthony Burgess: Nothing Like the Sun (in which Shakespeare is the protagonist) and A Dead Man in Deptford (in which Christopher Marlowe is the protagonist).

All the Moons

Haizea Carneros

One of only a hundred or so movies in the Basque language, Igor Legarreta's All the Moons is a vampire flick that spans seventy years of Spanish history from 1876 to 1936. It eschews many of the tropes of cheesier vampire flicks, like fangs and stakes through the heart. Though there is a little body horror, the film hews closer to magical realism than outright gore. The young Haizea Carneros plays Amaia, a prepubescent girl who we first meet living in a Church orphanage. Soon, as a result of a stray cannon ball produced by the Third Carlist War, Amaia is buried under rubble and looks like a goner. Amaia is saved or, rather, changed into an immortal by a middle aged female vampire (Itziar Ituño) desperate for a daughter. She acts as a surrogate mother and schools Amaia on the diet and nocturnal proclivities of her fellow vampires. Madre and daughter are soon separated by the requisite angry townsfolk with torches. 

Amai lives alone in the forests of Northern Spain for a time, slowly ameliorating the physical limits of her vampiric state. However, she reconnects with humanity in the form of a kindly dairy farmer named Candido (Josean Bengoetxea). Amaia steps on a wolf trap set by Candido to protect his flock, but ends up living with him until his inevitable demise. Amaia is introduced to his fellow villagers by Candido and initially embraced, but the two have to head for the hills after Amaia upchucks the Host during Mass. Anyway, at film's end, Amaia confronts her cave dwelling Madre who is all too willing to sacrifice all for her gal.

The Spain of this film is one where all relationships have been upended by civil unrest.There is not an intact family in the flick. All the Moons has gorgeous photography, but Leggarreta gives the film a palpable tang. From having Amaia peel off her dead skin to ending the film with her first period, Leggarreta foregrounds the physicality of this fable. This prevents the film from seeming too genteel or picturesque. All three leads are superb, particularly Ms. Carneros who is in every scene of the film. It is a testament to Mr. Leggarreta's skill with his players the he could get such a memorable performance from one so young. All the Moons was released in Spain in 2020, but was never released theatrically in the US. I viewed the Shudder disc and it is a handsome product. A good but not great film, All the Moons is available on many streaming platforms. 

              

Quick Takes, April 2026

Masaki Suda

One of the better thrillers released in the US in 2025, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cloud is the story of Ryôsuke (Masaki Suda), a small-time chiseler who resells dubious goods on the internet. Karma strikes back at Ryôsuke in the form of disgruntled buyers who unite online and then proceed to stalk him. The aura of paranoia and distrust is conveyed through the queasily sick grey/blue palette employed. As in classic noir, no one is to be trusted. When Ryôsuke finds an ally at the end of a classic finale, it is with the shared knowledge that they both are damned.

Jalmari Helander's Sisu: Road to Revenge is a worthy sequel to the 2022 film. This film is a pared down action and chase film, more akin to a graphic novel than to the mythos of the the first film. Jorma Tommila is back as the resilient protagonist. Stephen Lang, as Tommila's Soviet nemesis, lends his grizzled visage to the proceedings and is a snug fit. Like the original, this film is almost totally devoid of dialogue.

Given its subject matter, Paul McCartney and Wings' musical adventures in the decade following the break-up of The Beatles, Morgan Neville's Man on the Run is a relatively brisk and entertaining documentary. Neville wisely doesn't get bogged down into a rundown of the minutiae of Macca and company's various albums. No sane person wants the whole story on Wild Life or Red Rose Speedway or London Town. Instead, we see more of McCartney and the various iterations of his band onstage or frolicking backstage and in the studio. Despite inane lyrics and some of the worst haircuts of the 20th century, the doc does provide a good portrait of the pleasant, if dippy cute Beatle. Even though this is an authorized biodoc, I was happy that discordant notes were allowed, particularly Nick Lowe's putdown of Marry Had a Little Lamb; McCartney's second worst single.

I was a fan of the series, but the new film, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is a slight disappointment. Tom Harper's direction is spirited enough, but show runner and screenwriter Steven Knight seems bereft of new ideas. Cillian Murphy is always great as the stone-faced Tommy Shelby, but too many interesting characters are now dead and the new ones are not as memorable. Only Barry Keoghan as Tommy's Gypsy son strikes any sparks with Murphy. Rebecca Ferguson is disastrously cast as a palm reading Romani, but Knight's female characters have almost always been under drawn. The mystical aspects of this installment are beyond Mr. Knight. The film attempts to retell the pagan ritual of the new king dispatching and displacing an old one, but the tale is not as grounded as in previous installments. Start with the old episodes instead.

Danny Huston's Mr. North, from 1988, is an adaptation of Thornton Wilder's last novel, Theophilus North. North seemingly has the gift of healing and entrances Newport society of the 1920s. Huston captures Wilder's magically realistic tone, but also his vapidity. The result verges on Merchant/Ivory light, pleasant, but in no way memorable. Huston is most at sea in his direction of a comic chase sequence. However, he assembled a crack cast: Anthony Edwards, Robert Mitchum, Harry Dean Stanton, Angelica Huston, Virginia Madsen, David Warner, and Katharine Houghton. Acting laurels go to Mary Stuart Masterson. The booby prize goes to Tammy Grimes. The film includes rare appearances by Christopher Durang, Cleveland Amory, and Marietta Tree.

Pierre Morel's The Gunman, from 2015, is a feeble action film with Sean Penn as a contract killer. The picture is very loosely based on Jean-Patrick Manchette's The Prone Gunman, an icy and compact noir. Three listed screenwriters, including Mr. Penn, have added international settings and a romantic triangle. The bloat reduces this to a flashy vanity project. A good cast is largely wasted: Ray Winstone, Jasmine Trinca, Javier Bardem, Mark Rylance, and Idris Elba.

Cédric Jimenez's The Man with the Iron Heart is the umpteenth and worst rendition of the 1942 assassination of SS Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. Based on Laurent Binet's superb novel HHhH, the film offers a cursory and jumbled version of fascinating historical events. Key incidents, like the Night of the Long Knives, are presented without context or proper explanation. A fine cast is stranded in a waxworks. The story is fascinating, but interested parties are advised to read Binet's book or view such previous cinematic versions as Hangmen Also Die! or Anthropoid. The most compelling aspect of The Man with the Iron Heart is Stephen Graham's performance as Heinrich Himmler.

Cloud

The Housemaid

Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried

Paul Feig's The Housemaid, adapted by Rebecca Sonnenshine from the best seller by Freida McFadden, is a superior thriller, easily Feig's best film since A Simple Favor. As in that film, Feig is able to draw out the class and feminist themes in the material without distracting his audience from the technical pleasures of the yarn. The two leads, Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried playing, respectively, maid and employer, have rarely been better. The film has a strong ensemble with Brandon Sklenar, Elizabeth Perkins, Michele Morrone, and Indiana Elle all offering good turns. Feig delivers a well judged and taut thriller that is one of the least flabby Hollywood flicks of 2025.

The Housemaid was a hit, but I think it is the type of trashy seeming commercial product that is underrated by critics and the Academy. Part of this also is due to the fact that this is a "women's picture", the kind of picture that has always tended to get dismissed critically as such even when they were directed by John Stahl and Douglas Sirk. However, The Housemaid has as much to say about the way we live now as One Battle After Another does. One thread I'll pull is the film's invocation of Barry Lyndon, seemingly a distinctly different flick. However, the thematic concerns between the films are quite similar: namely the marshaling of domination via political, class, and sexual means. Like Jack Torrance in The Shining, the male monster of the id in The Housemaid is reduced to a frothing beast trapped in the labyrinth of his own design. 

Time of Roses

                 Ritva Vepsä                   

Risto Jarva's Time of Roses, from 1969, is a curious Sci/Fi mystery from the Finnish director. The film had a New York release in 1970, but has gone largely unseen in the US since. The folks at Deaf Crocodile have rectified this situation by releasing a spiffy looking disc. The film is set in the far off future of 2012 and concerns a documentary filmmaker named Raimo played by Arto Tuominen. Raimo is obsessed with a long deceased model named Saara (Ritva Vepsä) whose life was embroiled by scandal. Raimo is further intrigued when he encounters Saara's doppelgänger, an uninhibited nuclear engineer named Kisse, also played by Ms. Vepsä. Raimo cajoles Kisse into participating in a film about Saara, but, as viewers of Vertigo already know, the past cannot be recaptured and, thus, the film ends tragically.

Time of Roses is as uneven a film as I've seen in some time. The best parts match the sublimity of Alphaville, the cheesy bits reminded me of Logan's Run. The decor and look of the film point not to the future, but to the pop ethos of 1969; plastic furniture and all. The score is third rate, ranging from tepid cocktail jazz to a faux raga for the (fully clothed) orgy sequence. However, some of the intimations of future shock are prescient: including "mood pills", a form of the internet, cryogenics, and totalitarian surveillance. Indeed, there are genuinely moving scenes amidst the mod clutter: especially the deflating last shot and a sequence where a blind companion of Saara's touches the face of her doppelgänger.

Jarva was a politically committed filmmaker who made both documentary and fictional films. He died prematurely in 1977 at the age of 43, after the premiere of his last film The Year of the Hare, in an auto accident. Time of Roses has more than a fair share of political allegory. Kisse's comrades at the nuke plant are planning a wildcat strike and even hijack the state TV station to announce it. This despite the regime's claim that "class boundaries have been abolished." Raimo represents the detached and feckless bourgeoisie who are more interested in slugging down Scotch and practicing free love that in pursuing social justice. 

Dante's Inferno

             

Henry Lachman's Dante's Inferno is a structurally saggy vehicle for Spencer Tracy, his last film for Fox, that has some mitigating moments. This 1935 flick benefits from casting Tracy as a heel, a carnival barker who becomes an entertainment titan.Tracy was much more interesting as a rounder and a bounder, as in Up the River, than as the models of masculine virtue he was cast as at MGM. We first meet Tracy's character, Jim Carter, working as a coal stover on a cruise ship. Fired for malingering, Carter takes a debasing job, in blackface, at a carnival. That doesn't last long, but the kindly Henry B. Walthall, playing Pops the owner of the titular attraction, takes a shine to Carter and hires him as a barker. Carter excels at the job and soon has the suckers streaming to the sideshow. The fact that Pops has a comely daughter named Betty, played by Claire Trevor, helps induce Carter to stay on in the job.

Betty and Jim soon marry and, a dissolve later, have spawned a nauseatingly cute male moppet. The domestic scenes are the biggest drag in the picture, static episodes extolling domesticity and morality while Carter pursues wealth through amoral means at work. Ms. Trevor is wasted in a vanilla role and if you are a fan of her work, you know she is much better with a little sulphur. The surreal carnival scenes work much better. The sets are gaudily magnificent and Lachman employs tilted angels for surreal notes. The uses of grotesque backdrops recalls 1934's The Scarlet Empress. Cinematographer Rudolph Maté (Vampyr) employs filters, gauze, and vaseline to delirious effect.

The scope of this production is breathtaking. Not only do we get to witness the destruction of the carnival set, but there is a fire aboard an ocean liner that takes the character of Carter full circle. Before the conflagration, there is even a sizzling dance number featuring a young Rita Hayworth, then billed as Rita Cansino. However, the most memorable sequence of this over stuffed turkey is a fifteen minute wordless sequence which is meant to illustrate Walthall's sonorous reading of Dante's text. Owing much to Gustave Doré's engravings of Dante, the sequence is a supreme example of Hollywood bad taste, but at least has a sense of bold vitality. This sequence, like best parts of Dante's Inferno, harkens back to the vivacity of the late silent era in contrast to the placidity of Production Code Hollywood. 

Henry B. Walthall and Spencer Tracy

Suzhou River

Jia Hongsheng

Lou Ye's Suzhou River, from 2000, is a disjunctive noir set in Shanghai. The film is purposefully hard to follow for a number of reasons. Foremost is that Mr. Lou shifts the film's point of view, from the first person POV of a videographer (Zhang Ming Fan) to a third person POV of a motorcycle messenger (Jia Hongsheng), about a quarter of the way through this 83 minute picture. The lives of these two characters intersect. Furthermore, Lou employs a hand held camera in a way that further obfuscates who is who and what is what. There is a time leap in the plot and, to cap things off, the two lead female characters are played by the same actress: the sublime Zhou Xun. 

However, the plot, which I will not reveal, is consistent with the often labyrinthian nature of mysteries and noir. The hand-held technique jibes with the gritty portrait of Shanghai's decayed industrial riverside. The performances are exemplary, particularly the doomed Mr. Jia who succumbed to inner demons in 2010. Suzhou River is a film that fully explores the fatalism inherent in the noir genre. A masterpiece that repays repeated viewings.  

One Man's Way

Don Murray

Denis Sanders' One Man's Way, from 1963, was not quite as terrible as I thought it would be. That said, it is still pretty terrible. The film is a biopic of Norman Vincent Peale, a (then) famous Protestant minister and author of the best selling The Power of Positive Thinking. As a hagiography, the film is slightly better entertainment than the equally ass kissing JFK flick of that year, PT 109. What value the film has comes not from the anodyne script or Sanders' pedestrian direction, but from some interesting performances. Don Murray stars as Peale and his committed performance is the main reason to see this flick. Murray provides a engaged portrayal of spiritual struggle and is very strong at delivering Peale's sermons. The film also contains memorable bits from Diana Hyland (in her film debut), William Windom, Virginia Christine, Carol Ohmart, Veronica Cartwright, Butch Patrick, Tom Skerritt, and Bing Russell.

Of course, this portrayal of Peale's life is pure bunkum. What I objected to the most was the portrayal of Peale as force for ecumenical unity and toleration. We see him playing nice with a Jewish gentleman, urging him to visit his rabbi. In fact, Peale was a narrow minded right-winger who courted controversy with his political views. He came out against the presidential candidacy of Adlai Stevenson in 1952 because of Stevenson's divorce. Stevenson responded "I find Saint Paul appealing and Saint Peale appalling." During the 1960 election, Peale spearheaded a movement to oppose the election of John Kennedy because his allegiance to the Pope allegedly outweighed his allegiance to his nation. Peale was widely criticized for his stand and never really regained his public standing. Even reactionary Papist William F. Buckley Jr. repudiated him. Though a national figure in the 1950s, Peale is largely forgotten today. One Man's Way did little to burnish his reputation. It opened a month after JFK's assassination and was a box office bomb. 

Pompei: Below the Clouds

               

Gianfranco Rosi's Pompei: Below the Clouds is an elegant portrait of Naples. Unlike Rosi's previous documentaries such as Fire at Sea, Rosi shot this documentary in black and white. The high contrast beauty of the photography lends itself to the theme of timelessness in the film. A modern city under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, the environs of Naples boast some of the world's most storied ruins and Roman antiquities and Rosi conveys the manifold glimpses of eternity the city contains. The film has no narration, but follows a disparate group of people as they work, relax, and learn. We visit a 911 call center and a study hall monitored by an aged tutor. We see a team of preservationists tunneling below the surface of the earth to witness ancient sites where antiquities have been looted by thieves. We witness a team of Japanese archaeologists excavating a site. We see a team of Syrian sailors offload a shipment of Ukrainian grain from a gigantic hold in their ship; another of the film's many excavations. 

Rosi takes us to an abandoned cinema where films, that range from Rodolfi's The Last Days of Pompeii to Rossellini's Voyage to Italy, are projected that allude to the famous eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE and its aftermath. The gorgeousness of the imagery in ...Below the Clouds left me so stupefied that it almost upended my critical facilities, but Rosi also manages to show that Naples is a gritty modern day seaport with its attendant problems. This bifurcation enables the film to take its place alongside such trenchant excavations of Naples as Curzio Malaparte's The Skin and Peter Robb's Street Fight in Naples: A City's Unseen History. 

Dust Bunny

Mads Mikkelsen

Bryan Fuller's Dust Bunny, his feature film debut, was released in the US on December 5th on four hundred screens and was pretty much out of theaters by Christmas. Lionsgate must have felt it was too quirky for a big market success, but Lionsgate's marketing strategies for all their 2025 were extremely misguided. Furthermore, Dust Bunny is an R rated film that will appeal best to perverse ten year olds. Maybe it will be a cult film one day, on the level of Buckeroo Banzai or Labyrinth, but it is too weird to be a blockbuster. Fuller, the show runner of Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, and American Gods, already has betrayed the hallmarks of an auteur in his television work. The mordant humor and surreal touches of his television work are much in evidence in Dust Bunny.

The film is a fable with the moral that we all carry a monster within. The titular monster emerges each night from under the bed of Aurora, an eight year old in New York City played by Sophie Sloan in deadpan Wednesday Addams mode. After losing successive sets of parents to the dust bunny, Aurora hires a unnamed hitman (Mads Mikkelsen) who lives in her apartment building to eliminate her problem. The hit man has problems of his own, Aurora has witnessed him killing a dragon (of sorts) in Chinatown, and is disinclined to believe her. Between action sequences, Aurora and the stone faced assassin work out their problems and gain mutual trust. Young Ms. Sloan is fine, it is almost always a good idea to direct young performers towards the deadpan, but Mr. Mikkelsen carries the film. A major film star of this century, Mikkelsen carries on the heroic tradition of stoic machismo embodied by Wayne, Eastwood, and Max von Sydow. 

Dust Bunny is visually vigorous for a film primarily set in a New York apartment. Every effort has been made, by CGI and practical effects, to highlight the fairytale nature of the project. The apartment building is baroquely appointed with rooms decorated in bold colors. The view of New York from Aurora's room is a tribute to the old fashioned art of matte painting. The unreality of the film allows us follow the childlike logic of a fable. We know, as we did when we were little tots, that such tales involve peril, but that the protagonist will emerge triumphant in the end. I also enjoyed Isabella Summers' score and, particularly, the use of Sister Jane Mead's recording of The Lord's Prayer. This 1973 hit, it reached number four, I had blissfully forgotten, but Fuller uses it to full comic effect in a scene in which Aurora steals a brimming collection plate  from a church in order to pay the hitman. Whether Dust Bunny is a one-off or a start to a film directing career, I salute Fuller's audacity. The picture is slight, but lovingly crafted. Dust Bunny also features Sigourney Weaver, David Dastmalchian, and Sheila Atim.

Die My Love

 

Jennifer Lawrence on all fours in Die My Love

Lynne Ramsay's Die My Love is my favorite bad movie of the year. The film is an adaptation of the brilliant Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz's slim first novel Malate amor. This tale of a new wife and mother coming undone was originally set in rural France, but Ms. Ramsay and her two talented co-writers have transposed the drama to North America with Alberta standing in for Montana. Not that the picture seems particularly American even with US icons like Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte in the cast. No matter, the tale of a traumatized woman mentally unraveling suits Ms. Ramsay's astringent feminism, but also shows her limitations.

Grace (Jennifer Lawrence), the protagonist, never adjusts to domesticity with her new spouse (Robert Pattinson) and baby. Montana is her husband's territory and the couple move into the abandoned home of a relative of his, who we will eventually learn has committed suicide. The house is fairly isolated, so the attending alienation only exacerbates Grace's post partum depression. The picture suffers from portentousness, however. A mysterious motorcycle rider ( a wasted LaKeith Stanfield) and wild black horse too patly portend Grace's desire for freedom from domestic bonds. Soon, she is barking at the dog, acting horny, scurrying around on all fours, and discarding her clothes at the drop of a hat. I thought the picture should have been called Diary of a Mad and Feral Katniss.

Ramsay pounds us over the head with this theme, but fails to visually express the atavism of her material. We never feel the unconscious pull that guides Grace to the forest for her eventual annihilation. The overly placid adaptation of Train Dreams suffers from this same fault, but, at least, Ramsay can never be accused of being an overly placid director. I suspect she is more suited to urban material. Ramsay plays up the sick house horror of the home, but it flattens the supporting characters into Gothic schtick reminiscent of, and this is not meant as a compliment, Sam Shepherd's Curse of the Starving Class. Pattinson suffers the most from this. A fine actor, he is so misdirected that he comes off as a cartoon: just a pretty boy in a trucker hat. As with her performance in Mother!, Ms. Lawrence almost redeems an arty misfire. She gives a committed performance that gives us the unhinged madness the rest of the picture lacks. She has displayed her lack of inhibition as a performer before, but never with such ferocity.

L'Accident de piano

Adèle Exarchopoulos
           

Quentin Dupieux's L'Accident de piano is a typical pratfall filled misanthropic farce from the eccentric Gallic talent. Adèle Exarchopoulos stars as Magalie who we eventually learn is a social media star whose online sobriquet is Megajugs. The first act consists of an injured Magalie, assisted by her PA Patrick (an excellent Jérôme Commandeur), settling into a chalet near the Alps. Dupieux has endeavored to make Ms. Exarchopoulos as unattractive as possible, a Herculean undertaking, and succeeds with padding, a frugly wig, and braces. Apparently a stunt involving a piano has gone awry, but this first section of the film is intentionally obscure and off-putting. We do learn that Megajugs is a narcissistic diva who enjoys bullying the apparently long suffering Patrick. Their solitude is broken by some hooligan fans and a phone call by a blackmailer who knows the details about the piano accident.

Simone, the blackmailer played by a tightly wound (like her braids) Sandrine Kiberlain, is a reporter who seeks not cash, but the legal tender of the age: an interview. Megajugs accedes to this and the resulting confrontation takes up most of the middle section of the film. Simone probes Megajugs' background and, through flashbacks, we view her path to fame. A viewing of an episode of Jackass inspires the 14 year old Megajugs to become the distaff Johnny Knoxville, a goal she embraces whole heartedly thanks to a "congenital insensitivity to pain." Megajugs posts videos of her masochistic exploits in which she always assumes the Wile E. Coyote role. Sandrine assumes the voice of reason in the interview. She wants to know why. Something, in the tradition of French dualism, that Megajugs is loath to do. She represents the credo of the unconscious artist reacting against interpretation. Megajugs and by extension Dupieux feels that it is pointless to analyze her nihilistic behavior.

I feel that, even though the character of Megajugs is artistically aligned with the juvenile provocateur Dupieux, that the film, which ends with Megajugs indulging in a quiet frenzy of Dionysian destruction, is ultimately an auto-critique on the limits of nihilism. Megajugs is still her 14 year old self, an aging adolescent who is hopelessly self absorbed. L'Accident de piano also stands as a visual meditation on the psychic link between comedy and violence. The flick reminds me of the old Mel Brooks joke: "Tragedy is me getting a paper cut. Comedy is you falling into a hole and breaking your leg." I'm surprised Dupieux didn't utilize a falling anvil. Regardless, Ms. Exarchopoulos makes a magnificent monster. 

El Jockey

Ursula Corbero and Nahuel Perez Biscayart          

Luis Ortega's El Jockey, released in the US as Kill the Jockey, is amiable light entertainment. Ortega is only 45, but the Argentinian writer and director has built up an impressive filmography over the last two decades. El Jockey wears its influences lightly: dashes of color and queer sensibility (Almodovar), deadpan surrealism (Kaurismäki), and comic zaniness (Jerry Lewis). Nahuel Pérez Biscayart is the lead, a hapless jockey named Remo who is under the thumb of a small time crime boss. He has a pregnant girlfriend, a fellow jockey named Abril (Úrsula Corberó), a tip of the gaucho to Victoria I suppose. Remo has a bad crash at the track and ends up at the hospital suffering from some whacky form of amnesia. He escapes the hospital, for no apparent reason, wearing a stolen mink coat and little else. While he wanders amongst the homeless and dispossessed of Buenos Aires, Abril finds consolation in the arms of another jockey, the sassy Ana (Mariana di Girolamo).

The dramatic contrivances that take up the last act are paper thin, but Ortega's visual imagination never flags. El Jockey boasts 2025's best sight gags. The colors in this flick really pop thanks to Ortega and cinematographer Timo Salminen, a longtime collaborator of Aki Kaurismäki. Both leads are superb, Biscayart does a great deadpan and Corberó smolders impressively. The dance numbers are a hoot and are a great showcase for the players. The music is outstanding, both the Argentine pop songs, old and new, and the score by Sune Wagner, of the Danish band The Raveonettes. El Jockey is not the type of movie that will change the course of film history, but it provides more entertainment than some of those that do. Currently streaming on MUBI.

Dracula

Radu Jude and f(r)iend

Sometimes an artist becomes so successful that they are written blank checks to pursue whatever folly fancies them. Griffith followed The Birth of a Nation with Intolerance, both a riposte to his critics and an expansion of an already overly epic vision. Spielberg followed the one two punch of Jaw and Close Encounters... with 1941, a film that reeks of Hollywood excess. Those who have seen Apocalypse Now Redux will know how close Coppola came to creating an unwatchable fiasco. In the publishing world, it seems that Stephen King and JK Rowling reached a point in their careers in which their popularity prevented helpful input from their editors. Radu Jude seemed to be reaching this point on his last film and has crossed the Rubicon of self-indulgence with Dracula. 

It is not that there aren't any interesting ideas in the film, Dracula is teeming with ideas. There are riffs on past representations of Dracula on film and in literature. There is much rumination on the traumas of Romanian history, Jude's primary preoccupation thus far. There are endless digressions in the post modern style.There is purposefully cheesy AI generated CGI. There is an unreliable narrator. There is a burlesque of vampiric cosplay. There is much lowbrow humor and more phalluses on display than in a locker room. Some of the ideas are good and some fall flat. I laughed more times than when I watched Spaceballs, but Mel Brooks knew enough to keep his farces succinct. Dracula runs almost three hours and never coheres. It is divided into fifteen parts and I would have jettisoned or severely pruned half of them.

If I found Dracula to be Jude's worst film, I still somewhat enjoyed it, but, then, I prefer 1941 to Close Encounters. Like 1941, Dracula has the virtue of an antic and lunatic vision despite its indulgent excess. Life seems to be imitating art in that a theme park called Dracula Land is opening in Romania in 2027. One thing that buoys me is that the player who gives the best performance in Dracula, Eszter Tompa, stars in Jude's upcoming film, Kontinental '25, which opens in the US on March 27th. 

Apart From You

            Mitsuko Yoshikawa and Sumiko Mizukubo                

Mikio Naruse's Apart from You is the best of the silent melodramas he directed in the early 1930s. The plot of this 1933 flick concerns aging geisha Kikue (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) and her disapproving teenage son Yoshio (Akio Isono). The sullen Yoshio is skipping school and slipping into juvenile delinquency. The possibility of redemption is embodied in Terugiku (Sumiko Yoshikawa), a younger colleague of Kikue who has known, and pined for, Yoshio since childhood. Terugiku tries to steer Yoshio to the straight and narrow, but is hampered by a toxic home life. Does Yoshio return to school? Does Terugiku succumb to the lecherous advances of an older man or does true love prevail in the end? I'll never tell, but Apart from You's ambivalent ending moved me.

The film is superior to other Naruse film of this period partly because there is no child on hand to be run over in the next to last reels, as in Flunky, Work Hard! and No Blood Relation. Apart from such melodramatic contrivances, Apart from You benefits from some directorial restraint. Naruse was fond of dollying in and out from his players to add punctuation. In some of his features from this period, he employs this technique so much that I felt seasick, but Naruse employs it only once in Apart from You. That said, Naruse shares with his colleague Ozu a dazzling grasp of technique at this point in film history. He also shares with Ozu a way with his players. The two lead females of Apart from You are particularly sublime. Like all master directors, the details of Naruse's work fall more into place the more you see of his work. Apart from You shares many of the same players and themes in his other films of this period. As Neil Young said, in reply to a heckler who said all his songs sounded the same, "It's all one song."