Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy

Laura del Sol and Antonio Gades

During the 1980s, Carlos Saura collaborated with dancer and choreographer Antonio Gades on three flamenco oriented films: Blood Wedding (1981), Carmen (1983), and El Amor Brujo (1986). The three films are now available in a new and spiffy blu ray set released by the Criterion Collection's Eclipse series. As with all Eclipse releases, the extras are nonexistent, but the films themselves are choice: dynamic detonations of movement cut exquisitely to stirring music. All the films celebrate Spanish culture, but also mock up the mythos underlying representations of Spain. The scenarios of the three ballets filmed are all based on material that stresses themes of reckless passion, infidelity, and murder. The dancers, singers, and musicians in these films perform as if conjuring the joys and torments of their ancestors. Saura escapes any high culture bugaboo and gives us the thrill of live performance.

Saura had been invited to witness a rehearsal of Gades and his troupe performing a dance adaptation of Lorca's Blood Wedding. This provided the impetus for a film that stays strictly within a rehearsal studio for its 71 minute entirety. The film is the most like a documentary of the three and the focus remains fixed on the artistic process. We never see a final performance of the piece. Indeed the first half of the film documents the dancers and players filing in, applying makeup, and warming up. Gades discloses a personal anecdote and we get a little insight into the performers by the talismans and gnomes they unpack from the fishing tackle boxes that carry their makeup. Despite the documentary facade, Blood Wedding is shot and cut more like Stop Making Sense or Shine A Light then Gimme Shelter. The three or four camera angles used in the rehearsal space maximize the kinetic impact of the dancers and the editing syncs it perfectly to the thunderous guitar and vocal accompaniment.

Carmen

Pretty much the same performers and their talents will leave viewers similarly agog in the followup, Carmen. The film is also primarily made up of rehearsals, but Carmen has more color, a bigger scope, and the semblance of a plot. Gades has to find a new dancer for his Carmen and, of course, he does so in the person of a young hoofer conveniently named Carmen played by Laura del Sol. Does life imitate art? Well, reality and artifice are so intertwined in the film that it is hard to say what came first. Gades and his fellow performers are not actors, so when he asks guitar great Paco de Lucia for romantic advice, the dramatic interchange comes off a little awkward. However, all my objections were swept by the bravura birthday celebration in which the cast performs a delightful burlesque of Prosper Mérimée's novel. 

El Amor Brujo makes the move to total artifice which Saura also employs in his subsequent musical films: Tango, Flamenco, Fados, Flamenco, Flamenco, and J: Beyond Flamenco. El Amor Brujo is based on Manuel de Falla's ballet and is centered amidst the Roma and Andalusian roots of flamenco. A stylized sound stage represent an expressively colored Granada slum in a lurid love saga with spectral emanations. There is no rehearsal footage this time. We finally get to see a show en toto. As before, there is a wedding, infidelity and a murder in a film that is an apt culmination to the series. This Eclipse set would make an ideal gift to dance and film lovers alike. 

El Amor Brujo

Eagles of the Republic

Fares Fares and Lyna Khoudri

Tarik Saleh's Eagles of the Republic is a twisty and compelling drama about an Egyptian film star who unwittingly becomes involved in dangerous political intrigue. George Fahmy (Fares Fares) is that top-flight movie star with the usual problems of the rich and famous. His films are universally adored in Egypt, but his personal life is a mess. He is separated from his wife, has an uneasy relationship with his teenaged son, and has little in common with his young mistress, Donya (Lyna Khoudri). Government officials give him an offer he can't refuse, the starring role in a hagiographical film about the current (mythical) Egyptian president. Fahmy is a Christian and is uneasy about both Islamic fundamentalism and his country's leaders, but, once his family is threatened, finds he has no choice. The filming is overseen by the stone faced Dr. Mansour (Amr Waked), a government agent who makes plain the fact that Fahmy and all those around him are being surveilled. 

To further complicate the plot, Fahmy embarks on an affair with Suzanne (Zineb Triki), the wife of the Minister of Defense. Fahmy becomes increasingly entangled in a web of many intrigues. An actress friend named Rula (Cherien Dabis) asks him for help after she has been blacklisted by the regime, presuming that he has pull with the powers that be. Fahmy does what he thinks is best, but tragic consequences, most unforeseen, result. Some have labeled Eagles of the Republic a satire, but I feel the body count is too high to describe it as such. I think it is more mordantly ironic than funny, akin to The Threepenny Opera. I also feel that the film has more depth of characterization than satire usually does. The supporting characters, some of whom I haven't mentioned in my summary, are all indelibly drawn and expertly played.

Best of all is Fares Fares. Eagles of the Republic, the third film of Mr. Saleh's Cairo trilogy which includes The Nile Hilton Incident and Boy From Heaven (all starring Mr. Fares), displays the full range of his talent. By the two thirds mark, Fahmy's mask of charm has been discarded for a visage of true terror. The film culminates in a replay of the Sadat assassination: the past as the future's prologue. It helps to know Egypt's recent history, but the picture ranks as one of my favorites released in the US in 2026. Mr Saleh is not much of a visual stylist, but my previous comparison to Sidney Lumet stands. Like Lumet, Saleh is a social realist of the first rank, able to embellish his characters with heart and intelligence. Eagles of the Republic is his most outstanding picture to date. 

Supergirl

Milly Alcock and Matthias Schoenaerts

Indifferently received by critics and audiences alike, I was not very psyched to watch Craig Gillespie's Supergirl, but I ended up being slightly glad I did. The super hero cosmos does very little for me. Even when I was a lad, way back in the 1960s, comic books never floated my boat. Superman is the absolute worst, an übermensch without Nietzchean aggro is not the kind of protagonist I am interested in. However, the super hero genre has yielded a few good films, as even the most despised genres sometimes do. I appreciated the comic and juvenile tone of Ana Nogueira's script for Supergirl. It is reminiscent of the Guardians of the Galaxy films in its use of PG-13 humor. The opening title includes Supergirl's dog, Krypto, urinating. Indeed, urination is a constant motif in the film as the characters mark their territory.

I would be cautious in letting tots see this film, but not because of the pee. The plot hinges on PTSD triggering violence and a search for revenge. Director Gillespie does not emphasize the violent deaths like a Peckinpah, Supergirl couldn't nab an R rating that way, but the film has some dark corners. We first meet Supergirl (Milly Alcock) trying to drink away her demons. In the inevitable flashback, we see the cause of her trauma and the beginning of her unhappy exile on Earth. She really gets PO'ed when a dastardly brigand named Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts) poisons her pooch. Krem has the antidote, so Supergirl must find him and extract her pound of flesh. Joining her in this quest is a younger lass named Ruthye (Eve Ridley). Ruthye's entire family has been massacred by Krem and she is obsessed with revenge. Supergirl is initially leery of Ruthye, but they soon develop a camaraderie. This was the primary charm of the film for me. Gillespie helps create a heathy rapport between his two young actresses that reminded me of the friendship and mentorship between Xena and Gabrielle; without the sapphic tease.   

Supergirl's CGI is on the cheesy side, but it is appropriate to the project. The hair and makeup are outstanding. I love the way Jason Momoa's bounty hunter looked like a cross between Gene Simmons and Randall "Tex" Cobb. Momoa is well cast and seems to have found his groove as a performer. Mr. Schoenaerts offers an amusing comic riff on dumb villainy. He seems well aware that his character has one dimension and is a mere bowling pin made to be knocked down by the hero, like Wile E. Coyote. Only David Corenswet is unsatisfactory. He is too stiff even for the Man of Steel. That cannot be said for Mr. Gillespie's direction. Supergirl is his most likable film since Lars and the Real Girl. It's final reel contains too much Biff, Bam, and Pow for me even, but such are the requirements of the genre.           

The Verdict (1946)

                   Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre                

Don Siegel's The Verdict, released in 1946, is a slightly above average mystery film. It is a B picture filmed entirely on the Warners' lot and set in 1890's London. The fog machines work overtime in this one. Sydney Greenstreet is the lead and plays a police inspector whose faulty investigation results in an innocent man going to the gallows in the film's opening section. Because of this, he loses his job, but a subsequent murder gives him an apparent chance at redemption. Peter Lorre is along for the ride as a dissipated painter who is Greenstreet's best bud, Lorre functions as comic relief and gets the lion's share of the film's best lines. When his landlady, frightened by the recent string of murders, tells him that she is going to bed with a police whistle, he replies, "How would you blow a whistle if somebody cuts your throat?"

The Verdict's script is a series of hoary cliches, but the film boasts solid performances. George Coulouris is enjoyably effective as Greenstreet's successor and bête noir. Joan Lorring, Rosalind Ivan, and Arthur Shields are all sterling in support. This was Siegel's first directoral effort after making his mark in the Warner's editing department with such eye catching credits as Casablanca and Gentleman Jim. His work on The Verdict displays some flourishes that belie a director eager to make his mark. His use of the crane and whip-pans (during a trial sequence) are striking, but are somewhat removed from the no nonsense style he would develop as a mature director. The Verdict is better than most routine programmers, but is more an amusing diversion than the indelible films Siegel would eventually direct.

A night with Lou Reed

Lou Reed

A night with Lou Reed is a terrific concert video taken from a show at The Bottom Line in New York City in February of 1983. The newly sober and married Reed is on his best behavior, clearly chuffed to be playing live with the most accomplished band of musicians he ever toured with. That band--Robert Quine on guitar, Fernando Saunders on bass, Fred Maher on drums--had recorded The Blue Mask with Reed, his best release in many a moon. The follow up to that album, also recorded with the same band, Legendary Hearts was due to be released in March. Before an intimate audience of yuppies and Andy Warhol, the quartet provides a robust show of new material and oldies, quite a few dating from the days of the Velvet Underground.   

The video is competently directed by Clark Santee, but is missing four numbers from the concert. Still, the world probably doesn't need another live version of Heroin. I slightly prefer the versions of the songs on this video to the versions on the Live in Italy album which was recorded by the same band later that year. Both Saunders and Quine were exemplary improvisers and Reed provided them more leeway than was usual in his touring band. It is particularly unusual for a bass player in a rock band to be given the chance to provide numerous solos and flourishes as Saunders did for Reed, but Saunders was an accomplished jazz player who had already accompanied such guitar luminaries as Jeff Beck and John McLaughlin. Reed's joy at Saunders' solo on New Age here reflects the enormous pleasure he got from Saunders' playing. Saunders ended up contributing to Reed's albums and tours into the 21st century, remarkable given the track record of testy Lou.

Fernando Saunders, Lou Reed and Robert Quine

Such was not the fate of Robert Quine. A lifelong Velvets fanatic, he and Reed parted ways in 1984, never to collaborate again. Quine was not overly fond of touring and retreated to session work. Reportedly, Quine played on Legendary Hearts' followup, New Sensations, but his contributions were erased by Reed after the two wrangled over the writing credits for I Love You, Suzanne. Besides his work with Reed, Quine's sizzling guitar work is best sampled on the two Richard Hell and the Voidoids albums and the explosive passages he lent to Matthew Sweet's albums in the 1990s. While not as ecstasy inducing as 1969: The Velvet Underground Live, A night with Lou Reed is an impressive document of a short lived band in cozy surroundings. Lou doesn't have to hector vocally as much as he does on the Live in Italy. This video was released on VHS and Betamax in 1984 and there is a laser disc from the 1990s floating about which can be had on eBay. Luckily, A night with Lou Reed can be seen and more importantly heard for free currently on Tubi. It will please any and all rock and role fans.
                             

Out of It

Gretchen Corbett and Barry Gordon

Paul Williams' Out of It is an amateurish teen film set in Long Island in 1965 or so. The teens take turns dating each other and hanging out at the beach. The boys are tormented by their football coach (Frank Campanella) during summer practice and that is about it in terms of plot. Nobody seems to have a summer job. The kids are enjoying upper middle class leisure and the film, to its credit, acknowledges this. Williams' dialogue is more nuanced than his direction. Even the villains of the film have moments in which we see glimpses of humanity. Ultimately, this is a better teen flick than the beach blanket flicks or a pretentious youth picture like Last Summer. The main reason is that its four main actors are all solid performers who have their moments here and would go on to greater acclaim. 

The main character of Out of It is Paul (Barry Gordon), a restless and horny teen riding out the summer between Junior and Senior year. He is a existentialism reading nerd ultimately more interested in getting some girl action than understanding Camus. He dates Barbara (Gretchen Corbett) briefly, but doesn't seem to mind when she pairs off with one of his buddies. This is because he is fixated on Christine (Lada Edmund Jr.), a stunning blonde who functions here much as Suzanne Somers would in American Graffiti. Christine is going steady with Russ (Jon Voight), a lunk-headed football star and Paul's nemesis. The role of Russ is not dissimilar to that of Joe Buck. Out of It which, judging from Ms. Corbett's paisley bikini, was shot in 1967, sat on the shelf for a while until it was released in 1969 to ride the coattails of Voigt's starring role in Midnight Cowboy. Voigt was promoted as the star of Out of It along with Gordon, but Voigt's role in the film is really a supporting one.

Barry Gordon and Jon Voigt

Russ, at one point, taunts Paul about his Jewish heritage. I found this interesting, especially since Out of It seems to be a cut rate version of The Graduate, a film which somehow managed to turn Dustin Hoffman into a goy. Director Williams gives Paul some ridiculous Walter Mitty type fantasy sequences that fall flat, but he also gives Paul moments of emotional growth that redeem a shaky picture. Paul asks Christine out for a date and is surprised when she accepts and eventually comes on to him. He is able to provide her the conversation and feeling of relatedness that she doesn't find with the dim Russ. Paul learns that to have a real relationship there has to be a common bond that transcends sexual attraction. This leads him back to Barbara.

The wimpy baroque rock soundtrack is credited to the New York Rock Ensemble and one of its members, Mark Snow. Snow would soon leave the group and become a successful composer for television and film. Out of It is greatly helped by the cinematography of John G. Alvidsen who went on to direct Rocky and The Karate Kid. His efforts are the most professional aspect of a film that suffers from poor pacing and clunky sound. Barry Gordon would have a successful and long career in television and movies. He ended up being the longest serving President of the Screen Actors Guild, but is best known as the voice of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Donatello. Lada Edmund Jr. was one of the original go-go dancers on the Hullabaloo television show and eventually realized that she was not cut out for acting. She became one of the most successful stunt women in Hollywood. 

Out of It marked the film debut of Gretchen Corbett, always a Kino Biff favorite. She is most famous for her continuing role as James Garner's on-again, off-again love interest and attorney on The Rockford Files. She was either bussing Garner or bailing him out. An Oregon native, Corbett first had success with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and on the Broadway stage. Her glowing notices led her to be signed by Universal Pictures as one of its last contract players. She eventually returned to Oregon and has been heavily involved in Portland theater for the last thirty years or so. She still makes appearances in films and television, usually for productions that are filmed in the Pacific Northwest like Pig, Portlandia, and Shrill. I think she is the cat's pajamas and the bee's knees.

James Garner and Gretchen Corbett in The Rockford Files

Normal

Bob Odenkirk and f(r)iends

Ben Wheatley's Normal combines small town atmosphere, propellant bursts of action, and dark comedy. Bob Odenkirk stars as Ulysses, the newly hired interim sheriff of Normal, Minnesota. That an outsider could take on such a job for a mere two months strains credulity, but Normal strives for a canvas of bent reality rather than realism itself. Soon into the film, Ulysses and the audience begin to feel that something sinister is lurking beneath the prairie home exterior of the little burg. An inept bank robbery reveals that the institution was housing yakuza money and that the whole town is on the take. Ulysses and the two hapless robbers (Reena Jolly and Brendan Fletcher) must fight off the entire populace. The town is armed to the teeth and Ulysses takes advantage of the firepower in an extremely violent last act.

Normal was written by Derek Kolstad, the writer chiefly responsible for the John Wick series of films. Mr. Kolstad has written a clever script, thankfully more compact than the operatic Wick films. The action scenes contain more of a Rube Goldberg/ Wile E. Coyote element than in the Wick films and are expertly wrought by Wheatley who has previously displayed his action chops in Free Fire and Meg 2. Kolstad gives Ulysses a voice over narration in the form of phone messages to his estranged wife, Penny (geddit). Odenkirk handles the voice overs with aplomb, but this points to the derivative nature of Kolstad's work. Not derivative of Homer though Kolstad is brainy enough to make shout outs to Dorothy Parker, Breaking Bad, and Old Boy. No, Normal is a Coen brothers tribute, grafting the Homeric allusions of O Brother, where art thou? to the high plains noir of Fargo. There are worse formulas, I suppose, but seasoned cinema goers will have seen it all before.

That said, Kolstad deserves credit for creating varied and striking roles for a compact, B movie format and Wheatley has elicited good performances from Mr. Odenkirk, Ms. Jolly, Mr. Fletcher, Henry Winkler, Lena Headey, Jess McLeod, and Billy MacLellan. Manitoba stands in well for Minnesota and the picture gets points for killing off a beloved character actor halfway through the proceedings. Mr Wheatley's psychedelic dynamism meshes well with Kolstad's askew view of his characters, but with limited results. Novel seems more like a project for hire for Wheatley whose best and most personal works remain the films he has directed in his native England: Sightseers, A Field in England, and In the Earth.               

In the Fog

Vladimir Svirskiy at center

Sergei Loznitsa's In the Fog, from 2012, is a harrowing series of vignettes showing Belarusian partisans fighting Germans and Belarusian black shirts during what the Russians term the Great Patriotic War. The film's title points to the ambivalence with which the film regards wartime allegiances. The plot hinges on issues of betrayal and retribution. Sushenya (Vladimir Svirskiy) is a railway worker suspected of collaborating with the Nazis, implicating three comrades who are hung for sabotage. Late one night, an old friend named Burov (Vladislav Abasin) comes calling. Sushenya knows that the partisans have decided to execute him. He is accepting of his fate and walks away from hearth and home with Burov and another partisan.

In the Fog opens with a bravura sequence detailing the hanging. It is a near wordless dolly through the watching soldiers and horrified populace. It firmly establishes that the Nazi's have let slip the three-headed dog of war, terror, and torture. The remainder of the film follows Sushenya and his two executioners as they head into the woods. As often amidst the fog of war, things go awry. The slow burn of the plot is heightened by three flashbacks which illuminates the back story of the principals. The film is based on Vasil Bykaǔ's 1989 novel. A Belarusian author, Bykaŭ specialized in World War 2 fiction. His novella The Ordeal was the basis for Larisa Shepitko's film masterpiece The Ascent. 

In the Fog is terse to the point of absurdity. Danger is always imminent, so talk is cheap. Loznitsa ratchets up the feeling of paranoia by eschewing a musical score. Thus, our attention to the ambient sounds of the film is heightened whether we are listening to the trees rustle, an animal cry or a far off rifle shot. Even if I find the ending fatalistically predictable, In the Fog stands alongside such memorable films about Russian resistance fighters as The Ascent and Elem Klimov's Come and See. 

Confidence Girl

Andrew L. Stone's Confidence Girl is an above average B crime film about a team of bunco artists. This 1952 flick is a tight and compact 81 minutes with nary a rhetorical flourish or flashy camera movement. Stone, ably assisted by his editor wife Virginia, was able to churn out B features that he also wrote and produced for nearly forty years. His hallmark was documentary like verisimilitude utilizing actual locations. If you want to see what the May Department store on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles looked like in 1952 then Confidence Girl is the place to start. The police procedural aspect of Confidence Girl reminded me of Dragnet which had premiered on radio in 1949. In fact, Stone's pictures closely resemble the just the facts directorial style of Jack Webb. A cheap, but direct style with which to create cinema. Tellingly, Confidence Girl begins with a speech from the real life LA chief of police, warning the audience to be wary of scammers, flim-flam artists, and swindlers.

Happily, the audience soon is ensconced in the machinations of the film's miscreants. Roger Kingsley (Tom Conway) and Mary Webb (Hillary Brooke), along with a couple of confederates, are lifelong fraudsters, adept at all sorts of chicanery. We witness them pilfer an expensive mink coat from May's and fleece a pawn broker. Kingsley keeps the couple one step ahead of the law by posting as a private detective. He feeds the police just enough info to earn their trust, but not enough for him and Mary to end up in the clink. His access to the police comes in handy when Mary embarks on a career as a medium, packing them in at a nightclub. The reveal as to how Mary appears clairvoyant is the cleverest bit in the script. Eventually, Roger and Mary's scam is intertwined with a murder case. Do the nefarious duo reform in the final reel in order to prevent a tragedy? You betcha, but the flick is enjoyable in its predictability. 

Tom Conway was best known as being the older brother of George Saunders. Conway had similar talents as his brother and a similarly limited range. Thus, he is well cast here as a cad. Conway had a pretty good career, all things considered, with memorable roles in a number of classic Val Lewton films and appearing as the Falcon in a successful serial. Hillary Brooks did not have as stellar a career, but, like Conway, was an effective performer within a narrow range. She is better displaying the hard bitten aspects of her character than her vulnerable side. She is best when mesmerizing an audience as a medium. Somebody connected with Confidence Girl must have remembered her superb turn in a similar role in Fritz Lang's Ministry of Fear. John Gallaudet and Jack Kruschen, well remembered by the surviving remnants of my generation who were glued to the boob tube, offer wonderful support as a pair of clueless, yet dogged flatfoots. The MVP of the picture is cinematographer William H. Clothier. His elegant compositions give depth to the minimal production values on display while adhering to the demands of Stone's realism. Clothier would graduate to A films and work with practically every American Western director before retiring in 1973. His most eye-popping work, in which he was required of much more than on Confidence Girl, includes Track of the Cat, The Comancheros, Merrill's Marauders, and Donovan's Reef. 

Desperate Journey

                        
Raoul Walsh's Desperate Journey is a World War 2 flick that is more exciting and entertaining than it has any right to be. The film was hastily concocted and is part Allied war propaganda, part Errol Flynn vehicle, and part celebration of raucous male camaraderie à la Walsh. Arthur T. Horman was credited as the author of the screenplay, but many hands were involved in the makeshift script that bumped Gentleman Jim from production so Warners Brothers could show they were supporting the war effort. Second billed Ronald Reagan received his call for active duty as production commenced, so his rushed scenes added to the chaos surrounding the picture. 

Desperate Journey was shot in early 1942 before the tide of the war turned in favor of the Allies. Thus, there were precious few American victories to celebrate. Warners solved this problem by setting the film before America's entrance. The plot hinges upon a dangerous mission undertaken by an RAF bomber which is crewed by a bizarrely international lot. The Brits on board are all sacrificial lambs. Alan Hale Sr. is one of them and serves as the film's comic relief, spitting seeds on friends and foes alike. Flynn is an Australian co-pilot, Arthur Kennedy plays a Canadian navigator, and Reagan is a Yankee bombardier. I'm sure British audiences found this odd, but Hollywood was stressing the international effort needed to defeat the Axis foes, as in the next year's Sahara. 

Desperate Journey opens with a near silent prologue in which a Resistance fighter blows up a train crossroads. He is shot, but not before releasing a carrier pigeon which flies to England and gets the plot rolling. Walsh dollies in on the bird just as it takes flight. An apropos gambit in a film concerned with flight, movement, and pursuit. We then move from the pigeon's den to the cooped up pilots awaiting their mission. Stellar cinematographer Bert Glennon shoots the picture as if it were a noir, the Europe of the film consumed by darkness. Rudi Fehr's superb editing gives the illusion of verisimilitude to this set bound action film, mixing studio and newsreel footage. Flynn and crew's plane crashes after finishing their mission. Thereafter, they must cross Germany with monocled Nazi Raymond Massey the chief hellhound on their trail. Most of the actors playing Germans, including Massey, actually speak German in the picture, a rarity among Hollywood war pictures. 

Ronald Reagan, Errol Flynn, and Arthur Kennedy

Desperate Journey would be a rather dour picture without the bantering bonhomie of the players, a Walsh specialty. The three leads above play along well with the real surprise being the flippant charm of Mr. Reagan. This is his best performance along with his apposite turn in Don Siegel's The Killers. Flynn was a little jealous of the attention the younger star was receiving and tried to wrest a key comic turn from his co-star, but the producer was adamant and Reagan got to spew amusing gibberish at the expense of Mr. Massey. In that same scene, Reagan looks longingly at Massey's lunch, a shot echoed by the one of Tom Hanks gazing at a roast beef sandwich in Saving Private Ryan. Nancy Coleman is the sole skirt in the picture, a requisite noble Resistance supporter. She is fine, but only gets a kiss on the hand from Flynn for her efforts. 

Max Steiner's score suffers from his typical bombast. I cringed at the use of God Save the King, Deutschlandied, and The British Grenadiers Song. I did appreciate Steiner's use of harps in the picture's first major death scene. Massey is under used. He is merely on hand to sneer at the scion of the "decadent democracies." The film boasts stellar production values. I wondered if the flyers were hiding in the castle from Robin Hood at one point. The depiction of military weaponry and communications are fairly accurate amidst much japery. Desperate Journey is no masterpiece, unlike Gentleman Jim, but it has surprising craft and personality for a piece of wartime proselytism.

Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Pavel Talankin

Pavel Talankin and David Borenstein's Mr. Nobody Against Putin is a remarkably brave and revealing documentary. Mr. Talankin worked as an event coordinator and videographer at a large school in the Russian town of Karabash. Karabash is a burg of 10,000 nestled in the Ural Mountains and dominated by an enormous copper smelting plant. Talankin recognizes the limitations of his hometown, but displays an undying affection for its humble landmarks and inhabitants. His aged mother also works at his school as a much put upon librarian. The film chronicles two years in the life of Pavel and his students beginning with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Not only do we witness the inhabitants of Karabash reacting to the conflict, but we see how the Russian government shapes the propaganda fed into the minds of its students. Not only must teachers recite state approved scripts extolling the war, but Talankin has to record this being done and then relay the recordings to the central authorities. He feels that he has become a cog in Putin's war machine and becomes increasingly uneasy. As the war progresses, the school becomes increasingly militaristic, a proving ground for future cannon fodder. Talankin was lucky enough to receive assistance from a Western producer and fled Russia in 2024 along with his film. One cannot forget those left behind, including his mother, who are caught in the maw of a rough and heinous beast. 

Yet, Talankin does not demean those who support the war. He lets them speak for themselves. In particular, a party toady on the faculty who is rewarded by Moscow for his loyalty. When Talankin asks the man who his heroes are, the man cites the most violent and vile of Stalin's henchmen. Talankin's own mother takes an extremely fatalistic view of the situation. Men fight wars she says resignedly and who can refute her. Mr. Nobody Against Putin is as an expert portrait of a totalitarian nation at war and the manifold complexities of its populace. It is a must see. Just this March, the Russian Ministry of Justice named Talankin a foreign agent. This designation of Talankin as a traitor is a capital crime that carries with it a sentence of death.                        

It Was Just An Accident

Vahid Mobasseri

I think it is difficult for me to be objective about the films of Jafar Panahi because of the high esteem I have for him as a beacon of light and sanity in today's world. Regardless, I recommend his latest, It Was Just An Accident, with some very minor reservations. Most of Panahi's ten or so superb pictures have been shot surreptitiously and It Was Just An Accident was no exception. Panahi has run afoul of Iran's ruling mullahs numerous times and is currently appealing a one year sentence for engaging in propaganda activities against the state. He has experienced torture and this informs his latest picture. The film's protagonist, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), is an auto mechanic who is gifted by fate to have the opportunity to turn the tables on a hated tormentor from his past named named Eghbai.

Eghbai is the first character we meet in the film, tersely driving through the night with his pregnant wife. Panahi shoots this with a fixed two shot, capturing the subtle interplay between the couple. We are pleasantly surprised when the couple's young daughter pops into the screen from the back seat. Unfortunately, this brief idyll is interrupted by their auto colliding with a wild dog. After subsequently encountering jarring potholes, their vehicle becomes no longer operable. Eghbai, who wears a prosthetic leg, encounters Vahid and prevails upon him to help him find a garage and shelter. Vahid tails Eghbai who we eventually learn was a notorious torturer known to his victims variously as Peg-Leg and Mr. Gimp. When his guard is down, Eghbai is knocked unconscious by Vahid who drives to the desert where he plans to bury Eghbai alive. However, Eghbai plants seeds of doubt in Vahid's mind and he resolves to find other victims to confirm that he has the right man.

This first section, an impressive display of pure cinema with little dialogue, shows how an economy of means necessitated by filming in secret can work to a film's advantage. There are no crane shops or circle dollies to distract us from Vahid's eyes. We are getting to know the man and his dilemma that will inform the rest of the film. As the film develops it becomes more polyphonic in scope for good and bad. The past victims of Peg-Leg join Vahid in his van as they debate whether he is the actual perpetrator and what price justice demands. As the bare-headed modern photographer named Shiva, Mariam Afshari fleshes out an under written role. Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr provides needed comic relief as the volatile Hamid. However, a bride and groom are just along for the ride, stock characters of no import or impact. The debates between the passenger about the fitting fate for Eghbai sound like Panahi on his soapbox rather than conversations. The film regards the quagmire of revenge and I support his hope for a stop to the endless cycles of violence in the Mid-East. However, Panahi puts this message across too baldly.

Mariam Afshari

Along its way, It Was Just An Accident becomes something of a dark road comedy. There is a plot twist designed to highlight the basic humanity of the characters. Snore. Panahi invokes Waiting for Godot, but his film is more like Little Miss Sunshine. The flick becomes cutesy at times, but, ultimately, the overall effect is jarring; purposely so I believe. The film is discordant, a tough tone to maintain in an entertainment. It does fit in tackling a weighty theme which questions wherein lies the seat of evil. It Was Just An Accident is a picture that will linger uneasily in one's mind and I mean that to be a compliment.

Sunlight

Shenoah Allen and Nina Conti

Nina Conti's Sunlight is the best sleeper comedy I've seen since Hundreds of Beavers. Produced for peanuts and filmed along the back roads of New Mexico, the film is an affable road movie and comedy oddity. The closest parallel is Albert Brooks' Lost in America, in which a couple also drive a Winnebago across the American West, but Sunlight is raunchier than the earlier film and more desperate. Conti is British and works primarily in the UK as a ventriloquist. Now I usually find ventriloquism as funny as a crutch, but Conti overcame my prejudice. Her routines, usually involving audience interaction, can be found on YouTube. She wrote the film with Shenoah Allen, her frequent collaborator, who co-stars.

Conti has her couple meet cute with Jane (Ms. Conti) thwarting a suicide attempt by Roy (Mr. Allen). Both are in dire straits emotionally and financially. The film's motivation for their road trip is a watch, worth $20K, buried with Roy's hated father. Roy agrees to split the proceeds with the equally strapped Jane if she will accompany him and assist him on his perverse pilgrimage. The twist is that Jane remains in a monkey costume for nearly the entire film. The reason why is partially explained by her back story, but the real reason is that this is Ms. Conti's schtick. The monkey functions, as all ventriloquists dummy's do, as a raging id, venting the comedian self-rage through a device that does not betray vulnerability. This could grow tiresome, but Ms. Conti had the sense to limit her rants and provide the distancing effect of an absurd accent. There are enough hijinks to lift this slight feature until the inevitable romantic clinch and trip to the clink.

The film is not merely a two hander. Both Bill Wise (as Jane's sleazy stepdad) and Melissa Chambers (as Roy's mom) create indelible characters that help flesh out the leads' back story. Both provide wonderful screwball moments without being too cartoonish in their characterizations. Sunlight is modest in its scope, but exact in its portrait of a very human comedy. It is currently streaming on Tubi.