Highest 2 Lowest

Denzel Washington

Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest is a dully mechanical remake of Akira Kurosawa's High and Low. Alan Fox's script changes the locale to New York and makes the 'high' character, Denzel Washington's David King, a music executive, but the core narrative remains the same. In both films, kidnappers target the son of the executive, but wind up snatching the son of his driver (here the always exemplary Jeffrey Wright) instead. Highest 2 Lowest never really recovers from its laborious and trite setup. Pretty much every member of the cast urges King to pay the ransom money, but he hems and haws how the music business has changed and the crime is ruining his last chance to be top dog. No one in his right mind, even if they haven't seen High and Low, thinks that King will not do the right thing.

The film gets better when it slips into action mode in its second half. Lee has always been expert in his use of New York locales and I enjoyed the tunes employed that range from Rogers and Hammerstein to Eddie Palmieri. Washington is always fun to watch and gets to both puncture his own pomposity and remain a kick ass dude. I very much enjoyed his face-offs with Princess Nokia and A$AP Rocky. Nonetheless, this is not a memorable film. Like many a Spike Lee joint, it feels over stuffed and gaseous. The film is at least twenty minutes too long. As with his version of Old Boy, Highest 2 Lowest is an unnecessary redo. High and Low is available to stream for free on Tubi and is highly recommended.

Intermezzo vs. Intermezzo

The winner: Ingrid Bergman and Gösta Ekman

I decided to re-view the 1939 American version of Intermezzo after moderately enjoying the 1936 Swedish version. Both films feature Ingrid Bergman, the later Selznick production was her American film debut. The scenario is standard romantic tripe: an aging violinist falls in love with a comely young pianist. He leaves wife and kids and the new duo make beautiful music together, but this idyll cannot last and the violinist returns to home and hearth. Both films did boffo biz at the box office. I prefer the original, but the American version has its merits.

The American version clocks in at 70 minutes while the original version is some twenty minutes longer. The American version therefore is not as slavish a rendition as Algiers was of Pépé le Moko. 👷 George O'Neil, who adapted the earlier Molander/Ekman script, rightly jettisoned some material, but the remake seems truncated. The Swedish version has more music, though many scenes are verbatim. An early scene in the 1939 film between the violinist Holgar Brandt (Leslie Howard) and his missus (Edna Best) has a few distracting jump cuts that makes one believe a page or two of dialogue was tossed. Similarly the American version excises most of the first twenty minutes of the Swedish version which focuses on the retirement of Brandt's musical partner. 

The American version boasts better production values. The 1939 film substitutes a nice faux Riviera village for the Swiss one of 1936. The cinematography of Gregg Toland gives the American film's close-ups a luxe feel. Ms. Bergman glows with an inner mounting flame in both films, but her English dialogue is a little slushy. The supporting casts of both films are very good, but the 1939 film's making Brandt's son younger displays its tendency towards sentimentalizing the material. That sentimentality extends to the use of the Brandt's family dog who is given a bigger role in the later version with lots of comic reaction shots. The use of the pooch as a totem of fido fidelity is beyond the ken of the filmmakers.

The direction in both films, by Gustaf Molander and Gregory Ratoff respectively, is stolid and unremarkable. The trump card for the Swedish version is its Holgar Brandt. I like Leslie Howard well enough, particularly in The Scarlet Pimpernel. However, his matinee idol charm sometimes strikes me as wan and wooden. That's why he was so well cast as Ashley Wilkes. However, the role of Holger Brandt requires a dark charisma that was beyond Mr. Howard. And after all, the role was made for and by Gösta Ekman. He possessed the grandiose and saturnine qualities required, being the continental equivalent of John Barrymore. Like Barrymore, his greatest triumphs were on the stage where he played roles by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Strindberg, and Shaw. His film appearances were more limited, but include the title role in the greatest silent film of them all, Murnau's Faust. Sadly, both Ekman and Howard (and Gregg Toland) would be dead by 1945.

👷 One day I will tackle Gaslight vs. Gaslight. I'm a George Cukor fan, but Thorold Dickinson is under appreciated.
             

Lettres d'amour

Odette Joyeux and François Périer review the Révolution nationale

Claude Autant-Lara's Lettres d'amour is one of the director's better films, a lightweight romantic confection released to appease the filmgoers of Vichy and occupied France when it was released just before Christmas in 1942. The picture was Mr. Autant-Lara's first collaboration with screenwriter Jean Aurenche who based his script draft on his own novella. Messrs. Autant-Lara and Aurenche, along with co-writer Pierre Bost, would go on to work together on a number of films such as Douce, Devil in the Flesh, and The Red and the Black. Aurenche and Bost would emerge as France's leading screenwriting team, penning such acclaimed films as Forbidden Games and Gervaise. Lettres d'amour also is the second of four films directed by Autant-Lara that starred Odette Joyeux, films which first brought him renown as a director.

That said, I have been nonplussed by Mr. Autant-Lara's work after barely staying awake watching The Red and the Black in French class four decades ago. This was before I knew about the director's odious politics or grokked les politiques des auteurs. In fact, the first blast of the auteurs, in 1954, was François Truffaut's essay decrying the work of Aurenche and Bost. In the privacy of my own home, I observe the cultic rites of the auteurist and burn incense to the memories of Murnau, Renoir, Ford, and Mizoguchi, but it doesn't mean I can't enjoy the occasional film by a metteur en scène. I believe it is important regarding aesthetics not to be too doctrinaire. Autant-Lara's direction in Lettres d'amour does little to heighten any mood of romance or anything else, it merely functions to present his, admittedly first class, actors as they declaim. A good example are the not quite whip pans he employs in the courtroom scenes. Shots that ping pong from speaker to speaker. However, I suspect that the director was not fully responsible for what we see on the screen. Lettres d'amour feels like it was severely truncated in post-production. There are omissions and leaps in the narrative which unnecessarily confuse an already tangled plot.

The picture is set in 1855 during the reign of Napoleon III. The emperor is depicted having a chaste assignation with the film's heroine, Zélie (Odette Joyeux), while visiting the rural town where she works as a postmistress. The film primarily tells the story of the romance of Zélie and a young district attorney named François (François Périer). François has been having an affair with the wife, Hortense (Simone Renant), of the local prefect. A love letter between the two is unearthed during a legal proceeding and Zélie is wrongly branded with the scarlet A. François visits Zélie to thank her for her discretion, but is soon smitten and vice-versa. The road to true love has many obstacles, of course, but the goal is achieved. The film climaxes with a ball which reconciles the film's romantic conflicts, but also that between the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie. Reconciliation occurs as the characters check out that new dance craze, the quadrille. 🎀 I am a sucker for any film that concludes with a dance off.

Odette Joyeux

What ultimately won me over was the romantic byplay, full of thrust and parry, between Ms Joyeux and Mr. Périer. In her previous film for Autant-Lara, Le Mariage de Chiffon, Ms. Joyeux was miscast as a sixteen year old. ✂ Zélie, a young widow, is a much more suitable and knowing vehicle for her talents. Zélie is smart and attractive enough to be a coquette, but is too scrupulous to toy with a lover. Joyeux and Périer have that irresistible it in Lettres d'amour, a spark of romantic attraction that enables the hackneyed script to work. I associate Périer with the middle aged functionary roles I first saw him in (as in Le Samouraï and Z), so it was fun seeing him display some youthful charm and ardor. One of the other virtues of Lettres d'amour are the splendid costumes. Autant-Lara started in the film biz as a costume designer and performed that function on a number of the films he directed, so I'm sure he deserves some of the credit. I've never seen a woman look as graceful in a hoop skirt as Ms. Joyeux does when she is hurrying to her tête-à-tête with Napoleon III. The lion's share of the credit must go to the actual costume designer of Lettres d'amour. A gentleman named Christian Dior.

🎀 Mary Todd Lincoln danced the quadrille with Stephen Douglas at her husband's first Inaugural Ball in 1861.
✂ In three of the four films Joyeux made with Autant-Lara during the Nazi Occupation, she plays a teenager. 

 

Islands

                 Sam Riley               

Jan Ole Gerster's Islands is a slow burn mystery set at a resort in the Canary Islands. Sam Riley plays Tom, a tennis instructor at the resort. Tom is an over aged tennis bum who responds to his utter boredom with his job by going out and getting blitzed every night. His depressive cycle is broken by the arrival of Anne (Stacy Martin) and Dave (Jack Farthing), two fellow Brits with a seven year old would be tennis prodigy in tow named Anton. Anne and Dave, both seemingly bored and entitled, soon monopolize Tom's time. He is wary of the duo, though attracted to Anne (who is vaguely familiar to Tom), but manages to be a good mentor to Anton. However, Dave's disappearance after a night of revelry throws Tom's life into turmoil.

This is a sturdy premise for a film and can go in a number of directions. The hangdog Tom, well sketched by a taciturn Riley, could be a patsy for a femme fatale or the mystery could remain unresolved as in L'Avventura. Gerster opts to go with the shaggy dog story option and, thus, the slow burn fizzles. The answer to the "real" mystery is obvious to the viewer by the midway point, though it remains beyond the dim Tom. Gerster is able to conjure the tenuous nature of relationships at a resort destination, but doesn't give his characters enough dimensions for the viewer to care. Stacy Martin is a cipher instead of a sphinx as Anne, but Farthing is quite good as the sleazy Dave.

Bombshell

Jean Harlow and Lee Tracy

Victor Fleming's Bombshell, released by MGM in 1933, is a lively comedy, part Hollywood satire, part antic screwball. Michael Sragow's excellent biography of Fleming gives a good précis of its genesis. Bombshell was based on a play about an actress beset by the perils of stardom that ends with a tragic suicide. Thankfully, Fleming and producer Hunt Stromberg wanted to shift the material's tone and concoct a vehicle for Jean Harlow who had collaborated with Fleming on Red Dust, a hit the previous year. What emerged was a boisterous comedy with the ratatat dialogue of The Front Page. Jules Furthman wrote a first draft, then frequent Fleming collaborator John Lee Mahin, a protege of Ben Hecht's, took a whack at it. When Lee Tracy replaced John Gilbert (thankfully) in the co-lead role of a wisecracking press agent, Norma Krasna was brought into beef up his part.

Tracy had played the part of Walter Burns in the smash Broadway production of The Front Page and is a perfect fit for the cynical flak monikered Space Hanlon. In general, Bombshell succeeds because it was concocted expressly for its crack cast. Mahin, who was Fleming's closest friend, knew of Clara Bow's romance with Fleming and used that for fodder. However, Bombshell is even more about Harlow and her persona. The opening montage presents Harlow under the guise of Lola Burns as a product of the star making machinery of her studio which makes her a target to be brought down by the tabloids. This was as true for Harlow as it was for Bow. Both women were perpetually linked with scandal once they attained fame. Both starlets also had family members who leeched from them along with the usual Hollywood hangers-on who inflict themselves on film icons to this day; like the Church of Scientology. These weasels bear the brunt of the satire in Bombshell including an underused Una Merkel as Lola's Gal Friday, Ted Healy as her degenerate gambler brother, and Frank Morgan as a pixillated papa. They are all excellent and superbly cast, but the amount of unrepentant drunkards (Morgan, Tracy, and Mahin were all eminent tankard-men) on this flick is startling.

Pat O'Brien, the onscreen Walter Burns of 1931, plays a director named Jim Brogan who is a virtual stand-in for Fleming. Brogan and Lola have a romantic past, just like Fleming and Bow, and are giving each other the eye through the picture. Fleming even has O'Brien and Harlow recreate the bath in a barrel sequence from Red Dust for old time's sake. How post-modern! Lola always has a bevy of potential lovers hounding her during the course of the picture including Brogan, Ivan Lebedeff as a foreign aristocrat of dubious provenance (Hollywood had a lot of those in its early days), and Franchot Tone as a preppy scion. Nobody in Bombshell, however, is who they seem. The biggest four flusher of them all is Space, Lola's true twin and nemesis. Whenever Lola is about to have a tryst or a meeting with a respectable personage, like a reporter from the Women's Home Companion or some biddies from an adoption league, Space sabotages her plans by calling in favors from the police or the press or both. All heck breaks loose in the foyer and Temperance League members brush shoulders with tipplers and other oddballs. Humanity in all its screwball glory is unleashed.

Some have cited Bombshell as the first screwball comedy, but this is not so. There are plenty of other films from this period (like Three-Cornered Moon) and even earlier, like The Coconuts, that equally fit that rubric. Certainly, the anarchic antics of the Marx brothers and other vaudevillians brought a new energy to the American sound film. I think the genre really got its start with Oscar Wilde whose work poked fun and eventually upended the conventions of the drawing room comedy. This cocking a snoot at convention and the screwball's embrace of the common man made it very audience friendly to a beleagured American in the Depression.

Every little character role in Bombshell is perfectly cast and delivered. Of those I haven't mentioned, there are plum bits by Louise Beavers, Isabel Jewell, Leonard Carey, and C. Aubrey Smith. Fleming gives the action flow, it moves but not haphazardly. A flood of innocent merriment is always threatening to burst. It is this feel of fluid spontaneity that help Harlow and Tracy give their best film performances. The picture is also greatly helped by the expert editing of Margaret Booth. She emulates the frisky rhythms Fleming finds in his choral scenes giving the film a burbling and winning perkiness. I find the last reel of the film a bit mechanical, but the self-mocking tone of the dialogue is a continuous delight. Franchot Tone manages to keep a straight face while telling Harlow, "Your heart is like a gardenia open to the sun." Harlow intones "You might get leprosy or something" with just the right amount of emphasis on the last two words. A fun flick.
  

Vie privee

Jodie Foster

Rebecca Zlotowski's Vie privée (Private Life) is a passable mystery from the French director. Jodie Foster, a Francophile since she was a tot, stars as a psychiatrist named Lillian Steiner. Dr. Steiner has a chichi psychoanalytic practice in Paris. She strikes us immediately as buttoned down and cerebral, catnip for an actor like Ms. Foster. Steiner's life unravels after the death of a beloved patient named Paula (Virginie Efira) who has committed suicide by overdosing on medication Steiner prescribed. Naturally, Paula's husband, Simon (Mathieu Amalric) resents Lillian, but his and Paula's daughter Valérie (Luàna Bajrami) convinces Lillian that there is more to her mother's death than meets the eye. Simon and Valérie both seem like slippery suspects. Lillian enlists her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil) for emotional and physical support as they attempt to unravel the past.

The mystery aspect of Vie privée is one of its weaker points. This is especially so because Zlotowski has Lillian's mentor (Frederik Wiseman, what a mensch) spell out the answer to the mystery about halfway through the picture. In essence: "Physician heal thyself." There is never a sense of thanatos in the film, it is a lightweight bourgeoise mystery like Agatha Christie, Only Murders in the Building, and certain Woody Allen films. The comparison to Allen is illustrative because Zlotowski sets the film firmly in the world of the Jewish intelligentsia of Paris. Unfortunately, Ms. Foster seems like a total shiksa.

The other intersection with Woody Allen is the use of a magically realistic plot device to get a strict Freudian to loosen up and live a little. In Allen's film this usually comes in the form of a ditzy but lovable shiksa, a fortune teller, or a deus ex mama. In Vie privée, it is an "Eriksonian Hypnotherapist" who helps Lillian find a portal in her unconscious. The accoutrements of her unconscious are hoary and trite cliches: stairs leading down to doors. As if the unconscious were an episode of Let's Make A Deal. Once Lillian opens a door we view a past life in which she and Paula were lovers. Sigh. The unconscious is never a mirror of existence. At best, it is a view through a glass, darkly.

What redeemed the film for me was Zlotowski's elegant framing, superb use of music, and ease with her talented cast. This is one of the most distinguished French casts I've ever seen and all the players listed above are superb. I also enjoyed the contributions of Vincent Lacoste, Noam Morgensztern, Sophie Guillemin, and Irene Jacob. The highlight of the film for me was the warm and tender rapport between Foster and Auteuil. Watching them share cigarettes in an auto while giving a post-mortem of their marriage showed me yet again what a team player Foster is as an actress. Whether she is paired with Auteuil, Anthony Hopkins or Kristin Stewart, Foster never grandstands, but engages in a true give and take that helps her partners shine. 

The Best of Sam Neill

1947-2026

    

                                               I was christened 'Nigel'. It set me back years.        

1).    Reilly, Ace of Spies                           Martin Campbell, etc               1983

2).    Peaky Blinders                                     Steven Knight                2013-2014  

3).    The Piano                                              Jane Campion                     1993 

4).    Possession                                           Andrzej Zulawski                 1981 

5).    In the Mouth of Madness                   John Carpenter                     1994

6).    Sleeping Dogs                                      Roger Donaldson               1977

7).    My Brilliant Career                            Gillian Armstrong                  1979

8).    Dead Calm                                            Philip Noyce                       1989

9).    Hunt for the Wilderpeople                   Taika Waititi                        2016 

10).  The Hunter                                          Daniel Nettheim                    2011

The versatile Kiwi had a range that extended from subtle charm to cold eyed villainy. His best role displayed his ease with both. He was one of the most self-deprecating major actors of his generation and one of the most generous. He raved about working with directors as disparate as John Carpenter and Taika Waiti. His self-abnegation came in handy when playing second fiddle to some of the leading ladies of his day. Davis, Adjani, Streep, and Hunter won the lion's share of the plaudits, so Neill's willingness to defer to his co-stars in sturdy support went unnoticed. He did work constantly, but seemed to prefer to do that in Australia or New Zealand no matter how many times Hollywood came calling. The fact that Neill never received an Oscar nomination is nothing short of scandalous.

I also appreciated Neill's efforts in The Final Conflict, Plenty, A Cry in the Dark, The Hunt for Red October, Until the End of the World, Jurassic Park, Sirens, Restoration, Children of the Revolution, Merlin, The Tudors, Old School, and Cinema Quarantino.

    

House of Strangers

Richard Conte and Susan Hayward

I was inspired to watch this chestnut after reading not one, but two, rave reviews on one of my favorite film blog sites, the Gallic Shangols. I often disagree with the (mostly) French writers, but I enjoy their lively commentary just the same. While I certainly do not think that House of Strangers is a great film, the scenario is extremely hoary, I do find it interesting enough to recommend. I think it is one of the better cast films of the era. Richard Conte (born in Jersey City), Susan Hayward (born in Brooklyn), Edward G. Robinson (born in Bucharest, but immigrated to New York at the age of ten), Luther Adler (born in New York), and Efrem Zimbalist (born in New York) are all perfectly chosen for this saga of a modern Italian-American banking titan and his family based in the lower east side of Manhattan. Robinson spouts a little too much verbal linguini at times, but he is supposed to be an over blown and operatic character, he blasts arias during family dinners, so the grandiosity is appropriate. It is one of his many little Caesars.

The film starts in 1939 with Conte a free man after seven years in the slammer. We learn that Dad (Robinson) has passed away in 1934 after Conte's brothers (Adler, Zimbalist, and Paul Valentine) had wrested control of the bank the patriarch founded. Conte also feels his brothers are responsible for his incarceration. He visits an old flame (Hayward) who still holds a torch. Then he visits the old family manse, now abandoned, and a flashback to 1932 ensues. We see Conte's brothers resentment at his favored son status and the way they chafe at their padre's domineering leadership at the bank. Conte, a lawyer, is living the life of Riley. He is engaged to one woman (Debra Paget, under utilized) while squiring another (Hayward) around town. However, his world comes tumbling down after his father is prosecuted for predatory lending. Conte takes up his defense, but ends up getting busted for jury tampering after Adler finks on his bro. After a viewing of Robinson's casket, we return to 1939 and, presumably, Conte's revenge.

Edward G. Robinson and Hayward

The scenario for House of Strangers, penned by Philip Yordan and Mankiewicz and based on Jerome Weidman's novel, is overly rhetorical and redundant. Three times we get to hear the same grievance, that Robinson has gained the world but lost his soul, recited in turn by his sons, wife, and Hayward. The details of the financial chicanery in the film are never properly explained. Mankiewicz, never the most dynamic director, is mostly content to construct static verbal tussles in drawing rooms and nightclubs. He does employ two tracking shots, but scenes containing a run on the bank and a boxing match are undynamic and visually dull. I did like his touches in a Greenwich Village checkered table speakeasy that revealed the joint's seam underbelly: a man passed out and a young chick casually brutalized by her much older date. However, such little touches are rare in this film. The film contains some location shooting, then gaining currency in Hollywood, but it is poorly integrated with the footage on the Columbia backlot.

I do think Mankiewicz deserves praise for what is Conte's finest performance. There is a delicacy and exactness to his work here that I haven't encountered anywhere else. Just see what Conte does with his fingers here, whether he is eating popcorn or examining Hayward's powder puff. There is more to this character than the numerous hood roles Conte was saddled with. Speaking of which, Bosley Crowther, in his New York Times review of the film, noted correctly that Robinson's banking career is a fig leaf for organized crime. Even after the Kefauver and McClellan hearings in the 1950s shed light on organized crime, Hollywood film producers were wary of alienating Italian-Americans. As late as 1971 when The Godfather was in production. producer Albert Ruddy did a bit of fence mending by reaching an agreement with the Italian-American Civil Rights League to not use the words mafia and Cosa Nostra in the film. The League had been masterminded as a PR move for the Mob by Joseph Colombo, then boss of one of America's five mafia families.

The Best of 2025

            

 1)    The Shrouds                                         David Cronenberg

 2)    Caught By the Tides                            Jia Zhangke

 3)    Black Bag                                             Steven Soderbergh

 4)    Weapons                                               Zach Cregger

 5)    L'Empire                                               Bruno Dumont

 6)    Miséricordia                                        Alain Guiraudie

 7)    Nouvelle Vague                                    Richard Linklater

 8)    Little Trouble Girls                              Urška Djukić

 9)    Resurrection                                          Bi Gan

10)    Cloud                                                    Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Films I Enjoyed

Vermiglio, Blue Moon,

Frankenstein, The Housemaid,

Song Sung Blue, Peter Hujar's Day,

One Battle After Another, 28 Years Later,

Hedda, Bugonia,

Reflection in a Dead Diamond, Sly Lives!,

Sentimental Value,

The Mastermind, Bring Her Back,

When Fall is Coming, Who By Fire,

The Devil and the Daylong Brothers, The Baltimorons,

L'Accident de piano,

Pavements, Grand Tour,

The History of Sound, Night Call,

Companion, The Gorge, 

Eephus, El Jockey,

Sinners, Materialists, 

My Undesirable Friends Part 1,

Afternoons of Solitude,

Holy Cow, The Ugly Stepsister,

A Minecraft Movie, Dust Bunny,

A House of Dynamite, Dracula, 

Sisu: Road to Revenge, Mickey 17,

Devo, Broken Rage,

Sirāt, Vie Privée, 

K Pop Demon Hunters, The Great Flood,

Final Destination: Bloodlines, Americana,

Hamnet, Chaos: The Manson Murders,

Below the Mendoza Line

Die My Love, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, 

The Decedent, Islands,

Predator: Badlands, Haunters of the Silence,

Caught Stealing, Train Dreams,

Drømmer, Roofman, 

The Monkey, Eddington,

Marty Supreme, Freaky Tales

Nirvanna the band the show the movie,

Highest 2 Lowest, The Toxic Avenger,

Nuremberg, A Working Man,

Father Mother Sister Brother,

Eden, The Smashing Machine,

F1, Knives Out 3,

Vulcanizadora, Warfare,

Becoming Led Zeppelin, Ella McCay,

The Phoenician Scheme,

The President's Wife, Honey Don't,

Zero Day, Nobody 2,

After the Hunt, Happy Gilmore 2,

Marshmallow, 

iHostage, Match,

Fixed, The Parenting

Remains to Be Seen

The Chronology of Water, Sorry, Baby,

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, 

The Secret Agent, The Testament of Ann Lee,

It Was Just an Accident, 

No Other Choice

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.