The Year's Film-watching in Review

2020 - The Wolf of Snow Hollow
2019 - Knives Out
2019 - The Vast of Night *
2019 - Get Duked!
2018 - A Quiet Place
2017 - One Cut of the Dead *
2016 - The Mermaid *
2016 - The Autopsy of Jane Doe
2015 - Spy *
2014 - A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night *
2010 - Rubber
2003 - Save the Green Planet!
1997 - The Mirror
1987 - Housekeeping *
1985 - Return to Oz
1984 - Amadeus
1984 - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
1980 - American Gigolo
1979 - The Fearless Hyena
1978 - Long Weekend
1976 - Logan's Run
1975 - Death Race 2000
1975 - Rollerball
1973 - Westworld
1973 - The Last Detail *
1972 - Sleuth
1971 - Red Sun
1970 - Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
1967 - The Young Girls of Rochefort
1966 - The Plague of the Zombies
1966 - The Reptile
1964 - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg *
1964 - Father Goose
1963 - The Birds
1962 - That Touch of Mink
1961 - Lola
1959 - Anatomy of a Murder *
1959 - Day of the Outlaw *
1959 - Ride Lonesome
1959 - Operation Petticoat
1958 - Man of the West
1958 - Teacher's Pet
1957 - 3:10 to Yuma
1957 - 20 Million Miles to Earth
1955 - Bad Day at Black Rock *
1954 - On the Waterfront *
1954 - The Caine Mutiny
1953 - The Naked Spur
1953 - Calamity Jane
1949 - The Walking Hills
1949 - I Was a Male War Bride
1948 - Blood on the Moon
1947 - The Lady from Shanghai
1947 - Lured
1947 - The Bishop's Wife
1946 - Lady in the Lake
1944 - Phantom Lady
1943 - Holy Matrimony
1943 - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp *
1942 - The Talk of the Town
1941 - The Strawberry Blonde *
1941 - Here Comes Mr. Jordan *
1941 - The Devil and Miss Jones *
1940 - The Invisible Man Returns
1940 - Remember the Night *
1939 - Destry Rides Again
1939 - Only Angels Have Wings
1939 - The Bronze Buckaroo
1938 - The Cowboy and the Lady *
1938 - The Adventures of Robin Hood
1937 - The Squeaker
1936 - San Francisco *
1935 - If You Could Only Cook
1935 - The Whole Town's Talking
1935 - Captain Blood
1934 - The Count of Monte Cristo
1934 - The Scarlet Pimpernel
1934 - Dames *
1933 - Gold Diggers of 1933 *
1933 - Footlight Parade *
1932 - Trouble in Paradise
1931 - Blonde Crazy *
1930 - Murder!

What a year!  I'm sure when we look back on 2020, all we'll remember is the films we watched, right?  Well, anyway, we watched a lot.  It's almost as if we were locked inside with nothing better to do.  A lot of these were prompted by various collections on the Criterion Channel (favorite collection: Western Noirs - we burned through those fast, and all of them were good, but I couldn't star them all).  It's interesting to see the decades we're drawn to (not surprised to see the 30s and 40s so heavily represented - a little surprised to see that there's only one 90s, and that one because I saw yesterday that there was no 90s film), and the types of films that predominate in the decades (Busby Berkeley/Screwball comedies/rollicking adventures in the 30s, Noirs in the 40s, Westerns in the 50s). Stars that I truly began to appreciate this year: Jimmy Cagney, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland.  Stars new to me, but I was very happy to discover: Jean Arthur, Gig Young, Merle Oberon, Robert Ryan.  Best overall year: 1941 (runner-up, 1934).  I've asterisked my favorites, although they tend to skew to films we've seen more recently.  I find that, for all the enjoyment I get out of classic movies, they do seem to have a certain staginess, perhaps because that was the style at the time or perhaps just because there's so much distance between that time and now, and that tends to mean they don't affect me as deeply as more recent films can.  There are exceptions: San Francisco was pretty shocking, at least in its second half.  Also some films were divisive: I had a lot of problems with Amadeus, but the last third or so of it was transcendent.  Also, the modern films tend to skew towards the successful because we're surrounded with reviews and I only bother to seek out films that are supposed to be great (although The Autopsy of Jane Doe is probably the stinker of this year). I will admit that there are a few of these that I just stare at the title and try to remember any details about (The Squeaker, anyone?).  If I had to pick a top five, it would probably be those that stick in my head for various reasons.  A Girl Walks Home at Night just managed to create an amazing world, and was genuinely unique.  From what I can gather Ana Lily Amanpour is struggling to reach those heights again.  Housekeeping made me read the book, which probably hasn't happened since Star Wars.  The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was a three hour movie that managed to be immersive make me care about a character who should be a caricature.  Blonde Crazy was Jimmy Cagney at his best (Joan Blondell likewise) and managed to be funny, gripping and romantic in an unexpected package.  And just to round it off, Spy was genuinely funny when it had no right to be.  Bring on 2021!

Film review: The Mirror (1997)

 So, when I made a list of all the films we've watched in 2020, I noticed that we hadn't watched any from the 90s.  (Also the 20's and earlier, but never mind that.)  So I trawled the Criterion Channel's 1990's films, and this seemed appealing.  Well, let's say it was interesting.  It's shot entirely in a small part of Tehran, and entirely out on the street (or in buses), and shot as if by somebody surveilling someone (which is sort of the conceit, as you shall see).  And the traffic in Tehran (in the 90s, and I assume today) is terrifying.  I did get a little nostalgic for the boxy style of cars in the 90s (particularly Japanese and German, which seemed to predominate), but I was also astounded at the cavalier attitude to a tiny little girl crossing busy roads.  Here's the essential plot: an adorable little girl (really, she's tiny, but she makes up for it by always shouting instead of talking), who has a cast on her left arm, is seen waiting outside her school with a friend.  

The friend gets picked up and she's left alone, her mother apparently very late to pick her up.  Eventually she asks an old lady what she should do, and the man talking to her tells her he'll take her to her bus stop on his scooter.  Cue a terrifying scooter ride where she sits sidesaddle behind him (so he can't do anything if she should fall off) as they zip off through traffic.  She gets off and runs to get on a bus and there are (fairly) absorbing scenes of her eavesdropping on conversations and interactions on the bus (and we discover that buses are sex-segregated, because she keeps getting re-directed to the back entrance of the bus).  But gradually the bus empties until it reaches the end of the line and it's not where she expected.  Part of her problem is that she doesn't know where she lives, even though she can describe in great detail various landmarks around where she wants to go.  A kindly bus driver tells her that she wants the other end of the line and he introduces her to another bus driver who will take her back.  But while she's waiting on the bus, the young man whose job it is to herd people on the bus (presumably part of an Iranian scheme for full employment) turfs her off and sends her to the back entrance... then the bus goes off without her... but then the young man comes back to get her and gets her back on the bus, and the bus driver asks her where the hell she went, and she glares at the young man, and then... you hear a voice say "Don't look at the camera, Mina"... and suddenly the whole film changes.  Or does it?  At any rate, she pulls off her fake cast, storms off the bus, and demands to be given her real clothes.  All the while she refuses to say why she's so angry, and we get to see the film crew on board the bus debating (a) what made her flip out, and (b) what they're going to do about it.  She can't be talked round, but she still has her mic on, so they decide to follow her, and that's when we get the surveillance-style footage (which can get dizzying, what with the teeming traffic) as she tries to get back to her "real" home.  There are some clever bits when she finally offloads the mic (on a store owner near where she lives who (supposedly) recommended her to the film crew (in reality, apparently, she was picked from thousands who auditioned) and we get to see her but hear him, thereby adding to the disorienting unreality of the whole proceedings.  So, what did we learn?  Not sure, but apparently the two main features of Iranian cinema at the time were charming neo-realism and meta-commentaries on the filmmaking process, and this manages to be both.  I'm glad I've seen it, not least because you get a real impression of everyday life in Tehran, but I wouldn't exactly want to watch it again.

Film review: 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)

Ray Harryhausen is a legend (so much so that he got an homage in Monsters Inc.), and I will gladly watch any movie that features his stop-motion work, but man this film made it hard.  (Good news - you can watch some of the best bits here without having to suffer the human actors).  Essentially it's a classic 50s monster movie, but there are some oddities about it.  For one thing, it's set in Italy.  Is this just so the beastie can destroy the Coliseum?  

Or was it because the actors wanted to practice their Chico Marxist cod-Italian accents?  Another is that technically the backstory to this movie is way more interesting than the story.  It begins with fishermen doing their fishing off the coast of Sicily, with young Texas-obsessed Pepe (which doesn't sound very Italian to me, but what do I know) who will be responsible for much carnage, when a giant (quite impressively rendered) rocket ship crash lands in the sea near them.  

The brave Verrico insists that they go and see if there are any people alive in there.  They find two alive (one at death's door with a weird kind of skin condition) and one dead, and rescue the live two before the ship sinks.  Cut to the US, where they are lamenting the loss of their secret mission to Venus when it is reported where it ended up and that there are survivors.  As the survivors are being looked at on the beach, young Pepe notices a large glass-and-metal sealed tube and runs off with it into a cave where he opens it, gets out what is obviously some kind of giant frog-spawn-like egg out of it, wraps that in his jacket and runs off.  Meanwhile an adult is running off in the same direction to get a doctor for the sick astronauts.  The town doctor is off delivering babies but there is an old professor from Rome and his American granddaughter who have been traveling around in a caravan (which, we are led to believe, is an object of wonder to the simple Sicilians).  Turns out she's the trainee doctor, so gets dragged off by the adult, while he is the animal expert and sucker to whom Pepe has been selling dubious specimens to finance his Texas tat habit.  He reckons the egg is worth 200 lire and gets it out of the old geezer with comparatively little fuss.  Anyway, you can probably guess how things go from there.  The egg hatches 

and grows at a fantastic rate, into the monster that we came to this movie to see.  Meanwhile the granddaughter bickers with, then falls for the captain of the spaceship, who has brought back this sample of Venusian life to study how it manages to avoid falling victim to the disease that has disfigured his comrade and killed the rest of his crew (how he emerged unscathed is unexplained).  Apparently they witnessed many examples of these creatures on Venus, and they live on sulfur (imagine what their farts smell like) but none grew like this one.  Obviously it's like when Superman comes to Earth and is suddenly a superhero.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  Anyway, carnage ensues.  Somehow it manages to drag, even while being only an hour and 20 minutes.  Save yourself time and just look up all the animated bits on YouTube.  But be warned - apparently Harryhausen had no fondness for elephants, because they're always battling with his monsters and losing.

Old car, new car

So, this happened:

Let me backtrack.  It was yesterday, about 2:30, and Frederick and I were heading out for a walk in Seven Lakes.  I picked Seven Lakes, because the day before he and I had almost got stranded in Holly Recreation area, because having got down a snowy slope on the way in, we failed at least three times to get back up it.  What made it worse was a hunter in a pickup truck watched us drive 3/4 of the way up the slope and fail and slip back down again, and then happily drove past us without any offer of help.  Well, having backed up another slope to give ourselves a run-up I figured he'd make it out easily (being in a pickup) so charged after him.  And this time we were going to make it easily, except he got slower and slower (and was taking up the middle of the road) and stopped, blocking us, and stopping us making it.  But the next time we made it with him still struggling, and I felt not a twinge of regret.  Anyway, the point being, I picked Seven Lakes because it was flat and more likely to be ploughed.  So, of course, we skidded off the road and hit a tree.  We were going very slowly but totally lost control and I can remember having enough time to wonder if we were going to miss the tree or hit it and oh shit we're going to hit it, and is this the time to regret that the air bag warning light has been on for weeks... and then BAM.  A slightly simple kid on a bike whom we'd just passed on the ride, cycled up and said he thought it was a shot going off.  He was obviously starved for company because he wittered on as I just wanted to talk to AAA and see if Frederick was all right (he seemed fine - he was dazed but a bit giggly), but he kept commenting on all the people who just drove by without stopping.  To be fair, some stopped, and I was happy not to have to keep saying we were fine, but it was worth commenting on.  Anyway, I took Frederick on a quick walk while we were waiting for Jami to come and pick him up (luckily Thomas was not out DoorDashing in her car) and meanwhile tried to contact AAA.  The phone said it would be about an hour to get through to a person (apparently I wasn't the only one having problems on icy roads) and would I like to try texting?  I would, and did, but when I got to the part about "did I want it towed home" and I said "no" it decided that I needed to talk to someone after all, and said it would be about 18 minutes.  So I handed Frederick over to Jami and cleared out everything I could remember to look for and then was stuck waiting around in a state park, with nowhere warm.  Thankfully it wasn't that cold (high 30s) and I was dressed for walking in the snow, but still.  After AN HOUR, I got sick of waiting and figured that they could tow it without me, and Thomas came and picked me up.  They never did call back, so I tried calling later from home and they said they were sorry about that and would pick up the car and tow it to AutoLab in Fenton.  Satisfied, I retired early to bed (feeling the after-effects of adrenaline) ready to call AutoLab the next morning and see about selling the dear old 2007 Saab 9-3 for scrap. [Update: it brought in a whopping $150, which is way less than I paid for the roof rack that we used about twice.] Well, cut to next day and AutoLab tell me nothing came in, but she'd check and call back.  She did, and told me that a tow company said it was going to tow it, but when it got to the scene it canceled saying that it was a state law that they can't touch a car without a police accident report.  Well, this was news to me.  So, new plan: go back to the car (and park Jami's car out of sight), call the cops, get an accident report and then try AAA again.  Strangely, this went off without a hitch (as you can see in the second two pictures above, which are from today) no pun intended, as the cop didn't ask any time-specific questions so I wasn't required to pretend it just happened.  I asked the tow truck driver if this was a new state law, because when my Prius hit a deer, I don't recall calling the cops.  He said no, but some people aren't particular about it, but somebody he worked with once got clapped in handcuffs when cops happened upon him towing before an accident report.  (This tow driver also said "Some people see snow and ice in winter, but I just see green!")  So, right now, my car is sitting at Austin's Collision, which was even closer, and, I hope, will buy the car for scrap.  The lady there didn't know, because the boss was taking his wife "to have her cataracts done" but would call back later today (he didn't - try him again tomorrow), and they had a deal with Auto Parts which definitely buys cars for scrap (but to which the tow truck driver refused to take the car, I guess because you're supposed to go through the insurance company (so they can raise your rates) and first pretend that you intend to fix it.  ANYWAY, old car successfully taken care of, time to get a NEW car.  This was much simpler, as Jami has it down to a fine art, what with her having to get two new cars in just over a month in Fall of 2019.  And to our delight, we found that Toyota had a $9,000 2014 Prius (albeit with 144,000 miles on it, which is about what both my last Prius and the Saab had when I got them).  Just a couple of hours sitting around waiting for finances and insurance to come through, listening to the Smiths and and the Cure and New Order piping through Dealership sound-system and reflecting that the cool music of my teens is now the music middle-aged people buy cars to, and hearing that Jamie (the short young woman in charge of selling me the car) had a younger son who was born on July 19th too, and the other (I thought of her as "older") lady in charge of getting me to sign a million forms was also born on that day, and was in fact exactly a year younger than me... and here it is, in all its "Sea Foam Pearl" (or some such nonsense) glory:

So, all's well that ends well, except for the $300 per month payments for the foreseeable future.  Also I feel like I've been worked over like a punch bag (and Frederick seems a little tender) and my hand has swelled up like me foot did that one time a hornet stung it in the attic at Bindon:

I will miss the 6-disc changer in the old Saab, but everything else was breaking down one by one. In the past year or so the heated seat (what I loved most about it, at least in December through March) had broken down, the air conditioning went out in July, the rear wiper stopped working, the fuel gauge (that I'd replaced for for $300 (the actual thing was cheap, but you have to take out the entire engine to replace it) when I bought the car) worked less and less at least half the indicators (and half the headlights) had burned out, and the brakes were making worrying grinding noises. And it juddered at any speed above 60. And joy of joys, this Prius, unlike my last ALSO has WORKING seat warmers!

Film review: Ride Lonesome (1959)

A taught little number - a B-Western (the title, as is common with such films, sounds great but has nothing really to do with the content), but still filmed in glorious CinemaScope in amazing scenery, and featuring, beside ultra-laconic Randolph Scott, an early role for James Coburn, as a rather simple side-character, 

and a small role for Lee Van Cleef, practicing his villainy for later spaghetti western roles.  Also the implausibly Barbie-proportioned Karen Steele (better known for the "Mudd's Women" episode of Star Trek) as a young widow along for the ride.  Like all good B-movies, the film begins at a run, with Randolph Scott's Ben Brigade creeping up through some very picturesque giant rocks towards a young cowboy who is sitting calmly by his horse and campfire, drinking coffee, and apparently expecting him.  When they meet, the young man ("Billy John") reveals that he's got tired of being pursued by Brigade so they're going to "have it out" now.  Brigade draws, but a bullet bounces off the ground nearby and Billy John reveals that his boys are hiding in the rocks around.  But this doesn't phase Brigade, who fully intends to bring Billy John in to Santa Cruz to hang for shooting a man in the back. 

Billy John relents and tells the boys to go off and tell his brother (Lee Van Cleef) what's happened, so that he can bring more men to rescue him.  Brigade (a man of few words) handcuffs Billy John, sets him on his horse, and off they go.  First stop is a staging post, but something's not right.  Turns out the man who should be manning it has gone off to round up some livestock, and two men that Brigade knows to be outlaws, Sam Boone and Whit (Coburn).  Turns out they showed up after the man set out, and, as his wife, Mrs. Lane (Steele) demonstrates, when she comes out with a rifle, they're not especially welcome.  

But just then, the stage appears on the horizon.  However, when it arrives, it crashes, because the driver is dead with a spear through his chest (pretty gnarly for 1959). The injuns show up and the chief wants to barter a horse for Mrs. Lane, whom he's been watching.  Brigade says to play along, and that at no point must she act offended or scared because that'll spook the chief.  She agrees, but when she sees the horse (which has a saddle on it) she wails and turns and runs.  Of course it's her husband's horse.  Anyway, the injuns head off, so the little party all sets out to outrun them towards Santa Cruz.  

At that point it's our little group bickering (Boone wants to be the one to turn in Billy John because he read on a poster that the reward includes amnesty and he's tired of running and has a farm picked out to settle down on (in partnership with Whit), and tells Brigade that he'll kill Brigade if he insists on being the one to turn Billy John in), but sticking together for fear of first the injuns, and second, Billy John's brother and his gang.  But as Boone quickly works out, Brigade doesn't actually seems scared of the brother, and indeed seems to be dawdling in apparent hope that the brother will catch up?  What's the deal?  Well, it turns out that Brigade isn't really interested in Billy John - he and the brother have beef.  How many of our gang will survive?  Are Boone and Whit actually good guys (Boone foils Billy John's escape attempt when he holds a rifle on Brigade, thus saving Brigade instead of having his main rival handily removed from the picture)?  Or is Boone going to force himself on Mrs. Lane?  Will anyone make it to Santa Cruz?  Will Boone get his farm?  Well, it won't take you long to find out, because this is a lean hour-and-a-quarter long.  It would have made a good episode of one of the thousands of TV Western series (Boone (Pernell Roberts) was actually in Bonanza), if it weren't for the high production values, amazing scenery, and Randolph Scott.  It would also have made a fine inclusion in the Western Noir series we enjoyed on the Criterion Channel - except that the ending... well, let's just say it's both what you want and what you find a little disappointing.

Thomas home for Xmas

On the 13th Thomas decided he would deign to come home for Xmas break and I duly went up to fetch him.  Here's the law quad at Ann Arbor onto which he now looks out from his smaller-but-higher-up room (than last year).  He seemed a bit flustered and lightly-equipped, but as he's allowed to leave his stuff in his room over the break (disappointing his parents, who thought he'd live at home for the next semester, thereby saving us a big chunk o' change), I didn't question him.  And, of course, when we got home he realized he didn't have any underpants, socks or indeed most clothes.  But I wasn't driving another two hours, so we let him borrow the car.  Apparently this whetted his appetite for driving, because since then most of his waking hours (which, unusually, have often overlapped with daylight hours) have been spent doing "DoorDash" - a con whereby saps (or people with saps for parents) wear out their cars and consume their own gasoline driving round delivering food to people who are too scared or too lazy to go get it themselves.  Basically you're a pizza man, only mostly for McDonalds, as far as I can tell (and as far as Jami reports about the smell of her car now).  But Thomas seems to think that this is how he'll get rich, and is rather disappointed that the spanking new bike he got for Xmas (to replace the spanking OLD bike that got stolen, because one of the side-effects of his new room being smaller and upstairs was that he kept his bike outside instead of in his room) isn't a car.

Both Jami and Thomas have reached the halfway point of their Law School careers, and Jami has all this surplus creative energy from writing giant law papers (that get nauseatingly gushing responses from her professors) and has decided to turn it to cooking a different meal every night.  Now, perhaps this doesn't sound too amazing, as we used to do something similar, but remember that we all have different, largely incompatible (Thomas is vegetarian but virulently PRO-gluten and dairy) diets, so merely coming up with a recipe requires higher math.  And we actually sit down and eat them together, which, again, has been facilitated by Thomas's DoorDash addiction, because he needs to eat in the early evening before hitting the big bucks of the evening meal rush.  Plus, we have the Amazing Lettucizer (or whatever its official name is) which was up on Thomas's balcony all summer, but has now been kitted out with super lights and sits in our dining room, both providing us with actual sustenance and winter-blues-fighting light.

Yummy!

This brings us up to Xmas, which was a bit light for Thomas (according to him) as he had already got his bike, but the pile of presents still looked obscene to me.

Of course, the main reason Thomas returns, is Martha, but he is taking all appropriate Covid precautions, what with her being an OAP and all:

Film review: Father Goose (1964)

 Another one in the Criterion Cary Grant Comedy Collection.  I vaguely remember this being on telly (probably around Xmas) when I was a lad, and so it seemed like a good Xmas film for us.  And it was!  And it was actually better than I thought.  The setting is Pacific Islands during World War II, and we first see Cary Grant (as Walter Eckland) putt-putting up to a dock in his boat while bad news about Japanese victories plays on the radio until he changes it to music.  The message is that here is a man who wants to stay well out of things.  He's only at the dock to steal some petrol from the British Navy, and would get away with it if he weren't recognized by Trevor Howard, who knows him from way back.  (Grant is playing an American, as he reluctantly reveals later, he was a professor of History who grew disillusioned by his inattentive pupils - I hear ya, buddy.) Howard (Commander Frank Houghton) has a job that needs doing that he knows Walter would never dream of doing: going to live on a deserted island to act as a spotter of Japanese aircraft.  But he also has the power to confiscate Walter's (newly acquired for a song, because the previous owner had to leave in a hurry) boat, so he persuades Walter to agree.  Houghton's fussy assistant Lieutenant Stebbings rightly doubts Walter's sincerity, but Houghton is no fool: he accompanies Walter's boat to the island, unloads plenty of supplies for Walter (including crates of whiskey - the carrot alongside the confiscation-threat stick) and (just as Stebbings is worrying that Walter will disappear as soon as they leave) he steers his ship into the side of Walter's boat, knocking a huge hole in it, so that Walter has to tow it ashore using his dinghy.  

What's worse, when he gets there he discovers that the whiskey is hidden, and Houghton will only tell him of the location of one bottle at a time for each CONFIRMED sighting.  

All is going well (for Houghton, if not particularly for Walter), when another of Houghton's spotters reports that his island is surrounded by the Japanese and he requests evacuation.  The trouble is that the only person anywhere near is Walter, and of course his only vessel is the dinghy.  But Houghton persuades him to try, (a) by telling him the location of all the remaining whiskey, and (b) by assuring hm that the man who rescues him will fix his boat and replace him as his island's spotter.  So off he goes in his tiny boat.  When he gets to the island, though, all he finds is a freshly-dug grave and an empty signal hut.  And, of course, that's where the movie really starts, because it's Leslie Caron's Mademoiselle Catherine Freneau who dug the grave, and she comes with 7 girls - 4 English, 2 French and 1 (particularly complaining) Australian, of various ages.  In a plot that is very reminiscent of Operation Petticoat, they were stranded there when their pilot had to rescue someone else.  And as the Japanese are getting closer, Walter has to carry them back to his island in his tiny and about to be very overloaded boat.  Of course they get there, but only after a close call with two ships that may or may not be Japanese.  And then Walter and Catherine star to butt heads over whether he has to share his hut (he loses quickly and decamps to his bigger, still waterlogged boat) and whether she has a right to hide his whiskey.  Basically at this point you realize that Cary Grant is playing a Walter Matthau part.  Which is interesting in-and-of itself - he's scruffy and unshaven, two things that you would never usually associate with the super-suave Grant.  I've not really registered Leslie Caron before, although we own An American in Paris, for which Gene Kelly plucked her from a Paris ballet company.  She's unusual-looking - rather elfin - but she makes a good match for Grant.  Their romance isn't over-done, either.  They do have a cute "teaching her to fish with her hands" scene, 

but she's no Doris Day - she's a no-nonsense schoolteacher, and he's decidedly gruff.  And there are scenes of real tension when the Japanese get close (at one point landing on the beach to find turtles for turtle soup, while two of the girls are roaming around unaware of the peril), and eventually invade, and the island has to be abandoned.  So in that sense the film was rather refreshing in avoiding lapsing into treacle.  But on the flipside, when Walter and Catherine do finally fall for each other, it happens so fast that literally the next scene is them calling Houghton to get a priest to marry them.  The scene I remember from when I must have seen at least parts of this as a kid is when Catherine thinks she's been bitten by a water snake, and Walter is advised by an expert that Houghton finds that the snakes indigenous to that region are lethal, and the only thing to do is ply Catherine with "analgesic" until the poison takes her.  Of course, after she makes a drunken fool of herself 

(and gets him to reveal that he was a teacher too, having just accused her of being a schoolmarm), the girl who was with her discovers that the "snake" was just a root that looks like one.

Verdict: a pleasant diversion, with some genuinely exciting moments and great chemistry between Grant and Caron and Grant and the girls.  Oh, and it's nice to see Trevor Howard, too.

Film review: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

 Ready to have your swash re-buckled?  Well, most of the gang from Captain Blood return for this glorious technicolor definitive version of Robin Hood.  Director Michael Curtiz, Flynn, de Havilland, Basil Rathbone (as Guy of Gisbourne) and throw in Claude Rains (who also appears in Curtiz's most famous film, Casablanca), Eugene Pallette (of the inimitable croaky voice) and Una O'Connor (of the nobody-would-want-to-imitate screechy voice, as seen in Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man (ooh, another Claude Rains connection), but dialing it down a little to play Marian's lady-in-waiting, Bess).  I think of this as ridiculously anachronistic, but having seen Robin Hood butchered by Kevin Costner, I appreciate it more.  And I would guess that de Havilland (who, if anything, is even more bewitching in this one - it's the eyes, I tell you)'s outfits are period-appropriate just because they look more demure than you'd expect in a Hollywood epic where she's the love interest.  Granted, Eugene Pallette's Friar Tuck has an American accent that he doesn't even attempt to hide, but other than that, all the leads are English (even if the countryside doesn't look very English).  And Flynn is wonderfully athletic and dashing, Rathbone is also dashing, and a little bit tragic, but a very worthy sword-fighting opponent, and Rains manages to be gloriously camp at the same time as oily and evil, and all despite a ridiculous bright-red wig.  This version includes: the log-bridge fight with Little John; getting Friar Tuck to carry him across the river; the archery contest that is a trap to lure Robin out with the promise of a prize from Maid Marian (as seen in the Disney animated version); and interrupting Prince John's coronation with King Richard along in disguise.  Top entertainment, but definitely don't watch this if you're a sensitive vegetarian.  Or suspicious of the claim that Richard the Lionhearted was actually a good and well-loved monarch.

 

Film review: Captain Blood (1935)

Amazing to think that Olivia de Havilland only just died this July but is in this 1935 movie.  And very alluring she is too.  

But of course, the main draw is Errol Flynn, bursting on to the screen in his debut (which he only got because Robert Donat's asthma was acting up, apparently).  

As is often the case, I find, movies that have the reputation of being action-packed epics of the past, turn out to be rather slow and talky.  This one takes what seems like forever before Flynn and his crew are pirates.  It starts out, improbably enough, in Bridgewater.  I know Bridgewater - it's a hole (or it was when I was growing up not far away), but it's near Taunton, where the famous "hanging judge" Jeffries was based, and he makes an appearance here.  Flynn plays Doctor Peter Blood, who, after a career of being a mercenary across Europe, has hung up his sword to be a man of peace. He is awoken by a rebel to ask him to come and tend to a wounded man.  His treatment is interrupted (to his amazement and outrage) by the King's men, and after he gives the captain what for, he is dragged off to be hanged alongside them.  He continues his speechifying when the group is brought before Judge Jeffries (which, I see, is spelled "Jeffreys" in IMDB) and would have been hung (hanged?) had it not been for the greed of the king (James II) who is informed that he can make money by selling off convicts as slaves to the West Indies.  When they get there, the "lucky" ones are bought by Colonel Bishop for his plantation, while the unlucky ones are bought cheap for quickly-fatal work in the mines.  Several of the gang are judged plantation-worthy, but Blood is, of course, mouthy and would be consigned to the mines, but the mine-owner is outbid by Bishop's niece, Arabella (de Havilland, naturally) who is intrigued by this character.  

He surprises her by not being grateful, because he objects to the idea of being bought.  Anyway, he toils away for a bit until the gouty governor of the island grows tired of his ineffectual doctors and Arabella suggests Blood as a replacement.  He works wonders and is quickly indispensable.  However, he realizes he can exploit the two fired doctors' desperation to his advantage, and asks them to give him the money to buy and equip a boat so that they get their business back again.  Finally (after what seems like a very long stretch of the movie without even so much a sniff of piracy), the night of the escape is here!  But, alas, the odious Bishop suspects something and has the young man who is a trained navigator tied up and flogged.  Then, when he catches Blood tending to his wounds, he has him bound, and is about to flog him when... Spanish pirates attack the port!  This provides the opportunity for the escape, and in so doing our heroes take over the Pirate ship and sink all the Spaniards' landing boats on the way back to their ship.  Colonel Bishop, not knowing who has taken over the ship, is overjoyed and comes out to congratulate them.  This should be a fatal mistake, but while his crew want to hang Bishop, the (already decked out in pirate gear that he's found somewhere) new Captain Blood just has him thrown overboard.  They then agree on some Principles, including sharing all booty, what bonus you get for various limbs lost (an occupational hazard, as is well known) and also that there must be no women kept as prisoners on pain of being marooned.  

Thus begins the plundering of the Caribbean!  But, somewhat surprisingly, an awful lot of piracy is yada-yada'd through - we see a little montage of the taking of ships and are informed that Blood and his men are immediately successful.  Meanwhile, Arabella sets off for England and sails within sight of the pirates.  Blood considers attacking her ship, but his men are ready for some shore leave and the ship sails on unmolested.  While on shore at a port that is tolerant of big-spending brigands, we run into the other big name star in the movie - Basil Rathbone playing rakish French pirate Levasseur.  He and Blood forge an alliance, with the stipulation that Frenchy and his crew obey the Principles. They then agree to meet at some other place having done a bit of plundering first.  And, wouldn't you know it, Levasseur captures the ship carrying Arabella (and an emissary of the new King William, Lord Willoughby).  Levasseur has a weakness for les femmes, and wants to keep Arabella for himself (while waiting for her ransom), but Blood reminds him of the rules and, as Levasseur is not allowed to keep female prisoners, and pays the ransom himself.  

But Levasseur won't give her up, and they duel, 

with the inevitable result that Rathbone ends up dead in the surf (mirroring his watery exit in Prisoner of Zenda).  (Blood had never liked the alliance anyway, so this just accelerated its end.)  So, now we have Arabella and Blood reunited, only this time he owns her.  Unsurprisingly, she objects to this state of affairs and claims to hate him (although Willoughby isn't fooled).  Stung, Blood promises to deliver Arabella and Willoughby to Port Royal, despite knowing that Colonel Bishop should have a fleet of ships waiting there for them.  This understandably makes his crew nervous, but they obey him nonetheless, and in fact find French ships attacking the town.  Willoughby reveals that he has been sent by William (and, that in fact William is king, and not the hated James - Blood and crew have been out of the loop somewhat) to recruit Blood in the fight against the French.  Cue an excellent extended naval battle, which is what we wanted from the film all along.  Great effects, and a boarding scene unrivaled in any film I've seen.  But what will happen to Blood afterwards?  And where was the British fleet?  Well you'll have to watch it and see, won't you?

Film review: Lady in the Lake (1946)

 

This is an interesting failure.  As you might gather, it's a film of the Chandler Marlowe novel, but the twist is that, apart from an opening and closing scene where Robert Montgomery's Marlowe addresses the viewer directly, everything is literally seen through his eyes.  This means you only ever see him in mirrors from that moment on, and you see his hands reach out on either side of the camera, and you see the screen go blurry when (as happens often) he is slugged on the head, and you even see him staring at a sexy blonde secretary and ignoring the person talking to him.  Oh, and a pair of lips loom in to the camera when he gets a kiss (from Audrey Totter, who plays the principal female role, and who is the best thing about the movie).  Sadly, this approach does not work (as you might gather from the fact that no other film does it).  Basically it's as if you're playing a video game, only you're not controlling it.  The main problem is that it makes for a boring watch, because there are LONG scenes where people are just talking at you.  You can't have the camera roam around people or have interesting camera angles - everything is dictated by the height of Marlowe's eyes at that particular juncture.  Another problem is that Marlowe is obnoxious.  I mean, I know the character of Marlowe is a misogynistic drunkard at the best of times, but this one is smug with it, and has an annoying voice that makes him sound, well, a bit thick.  As I have found with other Chandler/Marlowe stories, the plot is pretty much incomprehensible (I believe that even Chandler professed not to be able to follow the plot of The Big Sleep) - the chief pleasures are supposed to be the snappy repartee.  That's why it's an almost fatal blow to have Marlowe not be good at it.  I'll give it a shot, though.  Marlowe has decided to make money by writing stories for pulp magazines based on his real experiences.  One "A. Fromsett" calls him in to the office to discuss his story, and it turns out to be the aforementioned Audrey Trotter.  Why is she the best thing in the film?  I'll let the gifs do the talking:

Anyway, she's the assistant to the big boss, whose wife has gone missing, and she has worked out from Marlowe's story that his an honest sap and wants to hire him to detect where the wife is.  She invites him back to her place where a wire is lying out conspicuously supposedly from the wife from Mexico saying she's running off to marry Chris Lavery.  But Adrienne (that's what the "A" stands for) knows that Lavery isn't in Mexico and tells Marlowe to find him in "Bay City" (not the one in Michigan, a fictional part of LA, it seems).  Marlowe finds him, and finds him to be a Southerner, and gets knocked out for his troubles, and wakes up in the Bay City jail, because he was found in a wrecked car reeking of alcohol.  He gets a lecture from Captain Kane and his surly assistant Lt. DeGarmot, but goes on his way.  Anyway, there's a lot of back and forth, during which time he surmises that Adrienne wants the wife out of the picture so that she can move in on her millionaire boss.  She admits as much, but sends him off to the boss's ski lodge where his housekeeper has been arrested for allegedly murdering his wife.  Then there's another woman (who seems a little unhinged), 

a subplot involving DeGarmot (who tries the old "cover him in alcohol" trick on Marlowe again, but Marlowe manages to substitute an actual drunk and crawl away, Chris Lavery is found shot in the shower...  There's a lot of plot.  And through it all we're supposed to believe that Adrienne is falling for Marlowe despite his loutish behavior and leering comments.  

Oh, and it turns out to be an Xmas movie, thus accidentally continuing our theme of the last film.  A funny little oddity.