Night Nurse: William A. Wellman

William A. Wellman's Night Nurse is one of those rare Pre-code films where you find yourself thinking, "Okay, yeah, I can understand why the Hays Office might have a problem with that one." Get this: here is a film about attempted child murder, a nurse played by Barbara Stanwyck who takes every opportunity to strip down to her lacy unmentionables, and a gangster bootlegger who has the main antagonist brutally murdered who ends up being not just a hero but the protagonist's love interest. Oh, the morality! Seriously though, Wellman and Stanwyck made a number of very dry, very tepid dramas around this time. And if not for Wellman's languid pacing the film might have passed as a thriller. But there's enough period flavor in the dialogue, enough novelty in seeing Clark Gable as an unrepentant bastard, and enough surprising moments of lasciviousness and nastiness that make it worth watching.

7/10

Illicit: Archie Mayo

Well, this film hit with the impact of a wet fart. Archie Mayo's Illicit starts with a wonderful presence considering its era: a pair of lovers get married despite the wife's protest, they realize matrimony isn't for them, they break up. Yes, yes, they get back together in the end, but the idea of a film that openly scoffed at the necessity of marriage in serious relationships was quite daring in 1931. But the film is punishingly boring and bland. After they get married, all pretense of transgressiveness gets thrown out the window for cheap melodrama. What a disappointment. What a waste of Barbara Stanwyck. But as I've noticed as I've increasingly explored her early career: she really starred in some terrible movies.

5/10

High School: Frederick Wiseman

After waiting for years to finally see it, I finally got around to seeing Frederick Wiseman's High School. I remember my high school history teacher Mr. Johnson showing clips of this film to us in class since the actual high school was only a few dozen miles away in Philadelphia. The footage he showed shocked me then and it shocks me now. It's fascinating to watch how authoritarian schools in the Vietnam era were: the adult hall monitors marching through the halls looking for people to scream at; the visiting gynecologist giving sex ed who brag about sticking his fingers in women "for a living"; the home economics teacher body shaming young girls showing off their custom made clothes; the tyrannical "guidance counselor" more concerned with maintaining authority than in actually helping the students. And, of course, the coup de grace: the reading at a school assembly of a letter from a graduated student killed overseas in the military thanking the school for making him the man he was. Chilling, necessary stuff. Also, I love how the camera naturally wanders and zooms in on random stuff. It's like the camera is replicating a wandering eye grown tired and bored.

8/10

The Purchase Price: William A. Wellman

William A. Wellman's The Purchase Price is the kind of film that depends mostly on the charisma of its two leads. It isn't particularly smart, isn't particularly, clever, isn't particularly original. Barbara Stanwyck plays a lounge singer on the run from a criminal boyfriend. To escape, she accepts an offer to become a mail-order bride to an isolated farmer in North Dakota. The new husband, George Brent, has an amiable sternness about him that leads to a charming dumbfoundedness in times of stress. The two leads fall in love, though slowly. The film is essentially about a spoiled city girl discovering the joys of rural matrimony and proper gender roles. But the film is decently shot and acted well enough that we don't always roll our eyes when we see Stanwyck happily washing dishes.

6/10

Blame!: Hiroyuki Seshita

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/blame-review/.

7/10

Other Men's Women: William A. Wellman

To quote Mary Astor, William A. Wellman's Other Men's Women is "a piece of cheese." The plot is pure melodrama pap about a doomed love triangle between two male friends and one of their wives that inevitably ends with one of them making a dramatic, suicidal sacrifice that frees the other two up to be together. But the film's not without its visual poetry. There's a great part at the beginning where one of the lovers, a railroad engineer, jumps out of his trains as it goes by a diner so he can grab a bite. Right as he finishes the meal, he runs back out, catches the caboose, climbs back aboard, and runs on the cabin roofs to the engine. There's a great scene where James Cagney--here playing a minor supporting role--meets with him on the roof of the train and they act out a boxing match, ducking beneath a bridge as it goes by without so much as looking at it. It's great cinema. I wish the rest of the film could have lived up to these bits.

5/10

Best Foot Forward: Edward Buzzell

I know Edward Buzzell's Best Foot Forward was supposed to be a vehicle for Lucille Ball. And to be fair, she was delightful: cynical, witty, and very, very, tall. But for the life of me, I couldn't take my eyes off Nancy Walker as Nancy. She stole the entire movie. Her character was deliberately written to be dumpy, unattractive, pushy, and obnoxious. And because of that, she's somehow boomeranged around to become a kind of proto-feminist character who doesn't give one damn about what she looks like and simply wants to go to dances to have fun. She even has a fantastic duet with Harry James on the trumpet. The dance numbers are the usual white-people-stand-in-lines-and-move-together-at-the-same-time business so common of middle of the road Hollywood musicals of the 1940s, particularly during wartime when collectivization was at its cultural height. But the music itself is fantastic, thanks in large part to the aforementioned Harry James. Best Foot Forward is a minor film, but thanks to Nancy Walker, it's not an unmemorable one.

6/10

Side A Side B: Sudhish Kamath

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/side-a-side-b/.

5/10

Dreams: Akira Kurosawa

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/dreams-of-kurosawa/.

7/10

96 Souls: Stanley Jacobs

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/96-souls-is-preposterous-and-boring/.

2/10

Tag: Sion Sono

What an odd, weird, wonderful little movie. I'm not sure I completely understood it, or even if I potentially could understand it with multiple watches. But Sion Sono's Tag moved me in ways few films do. It's a magnificent exploration of what it means to decide one's own fate, of even what it means to be human! And it does it all with gratuitous gore and panty shots. Who else but Sono, right? The man has turned perversion and gore into a high camp art. At this point, most of the gore effects are CGI, as compared to his earlier work like Suicide Club (2001), a film whose opening scene Sono seems determined to outdo here. But what I love is the raw emotion and poetry of the images. There's a scene of four schoolgirls running to a lake together as the camera--which I assume was attached to a drone--zooms into the sky as Godspeed You! Black Emperor-esque guitars swell in the background. It was perfect. And for once, the CGI gore didn't bother me; in hindsight it takes on a Brechtian significance. It's funny...Sono is one of the only directors alive whose films I adore even if I don't like or understand them. For that, he's indisputably one of the world's best living directors.

8/10

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation: John R. Leonetti

I like John R. Leonetti's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation for many of the same reasons that I liked Paul W. S. Anderson's first film: it's unabashedly goofy, over-the-top, and fun. A lot of the lines are campy gold mines: "IT...IS...GLORIOUS!"; "Too bad YOU...will DIE!" Plus, I liked the fight with Smoke; his costume was actually quite nice in a tokusatsu sorta way. So I can't say I wasn't entertained during the film. Leonetti doesn't have the same eye for production design or shot composition that Anderson does, though, and the reliance on dreadful CGI effects is much worse. And I didn't like how they just killed off Johnny Cage and Jade. (Why didn't they bring Johnny back if the gods revived Raiden?) It's not as good as the original, but it's not the horrific piece of garbage so many people say it is.

4/10

Mortal Kombat: Paul W. S. Anderson

Paul W. S. Anderson's Mortal Kombat is a dumb, stupid movie. But it is an entertaining one. Part of its is the visual design: the sets are deliciously pulpy and I'm quite fond of the Goro make-up and effects. I think a lot of what makes the film work is that it doesn't make the mistake of giving too many storylines too much screentime. Essentially, the entire film revolves around Liu Kang (Robin Shou) and his journey: Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby) and Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson) have their own motivations and backstories, but they're essentially window-dressing for Kang's journey. And you know what? It works. I will say that Johnny Cage does more for the movie than Sonya Blade: he at least provides comedic relief. And for the most part, his comedic relief is charming. I still wish that Steven Spielberg would have been able to cameo as Johnny Cage's director during his first scene as originally planned, though...

5/10

Canoa: A Shameful Memory: Felipe Cazals

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/criterion-discovery-canoa-a-shameful-memory/.

6/10

Whisky Galore: Gillies MacKinnon

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/103268/movie-review-whisky-galore/.

5/10

Gymkata: Robert Clouse

You know what's ultimately the worst part about Robert Clouse's Gymkata? There's very little actual gymkata in it! There's a whole mess of poorly choreographed, poorly filmed, and poorly acted fight scenes, most of them little more than white people in ridiculous brownface madly flailing weapons about. But there's only a couple of scenes where the main character, an acrobat/spy, actually uses gymnastics to fight the forces of evil! It doesn't help that the main character has all the charisma and acting talent of soggy newspapers. This might sound like an odd nitpick, but the editing is atrocious. The story goes so fast in the first fifteen minutes that it felt like I had watched two whole movies! Tempo, people, tempo!

2/10

Casting JonBenet: Kitty Green

Much like Keith Maitland's Tower (2016), Kitty Green's Casting JonBenet reminds us that some of the most innovative movie-making in the world these days is taking place in the realm of documentaries. Casting JonBenet tries to reconstruct the infamous murder of JonBenét Ramsey in one of the most unique ways imaginable: by interviewing actors and actresses auditioning to play the real-life characters in the case for the film. We learn their prejudices and bizarre theories. Sometimes we learn more about the individuals than the case itself, such as one law enforcement officer who reveals he's a bondage instructor and a woman auditioning for JonBenét's mom who recounts her experiences with child abuse. It's a fascinating kaleidoscope that gives no answers. But that's the point, really. Plus, the last 10 minutes are some of the most visually poetic in all of recent cinema.

8/10

45 Years: Andrew Haigh

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/criterion-discovery-45-years/.

7/10

Don't Think Twice: Mike Birbiglia

To many outsiders, the everyday behavior of the main characters of Mike Birbiglia's Don't Think Twice might seem bizarre and downright annoying: grown men and women spontaneously breaking out into weird voices and impressions, making glib jokes about inappropriate subjects. But that's because these are improv actors. As someone who dipped his toe in improv acting, these people build a sense of self-defense in their willingness to go for broke--it counter-intuitively allows them to hide from their problems. But Don't Think Twice is about what happens when those problems finally come a'knockin' and can't be ignored. A beautiful, heartfelt film, it's a wonderful story about growing up when you're already grown up, about accepting the fact that most people don't make it to the top, about accepting that other people will succeed and that's okay. The best scene has to be the one where Keegan-Michael Key and Gillian Jacobs realize that they're breaking up while doing an onstage skit about being stuck in a well. Superb.

8/10

The Return of Doctor X: Vincent Sherman

Apparently, Vincent Sherman's The Return of Doctor X was one of the few films that Humphrey Bogart was embarrassed to appear in. Can you blame him? The film is a boring, tonally inconsistent mess that can't decide if it wants to be a light-hearted drama, a dark thriller, or a horror film. Bogart himself spends the entire film sporting a Bride of Frankenstein-inspired haircut while delivering a performance that makes him seem like he's suffering from constipation and diarrhea at the same time. He's not even in it for very long. The few science fiction scenes borrow so heavily from the iconography of the Frankenstein movies--particularly the one where the scientist resurrects a dead rabbit with the aid of chemicals and electric equipment--I'm amazed that Universal Studios didn't sue. Wait...actually, I just discovered that this film premiered only 5 days after the original Frankenstein. That's one of the most incredible examples of cinematic convergent evolution ever. And wow...I guess it was the Bride of Frankenstein who ripped off Bogart's hairdo!

Thanks to my buddy Chris for pointing out that I'm a complete idiot and Frankenstein came out almost a decade before this film. I must have been really tired when I wrote this review. But that hardly matters--the movie still sucks.

4/10

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Rouben Mamoulian

Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) is a delicious horror treat from the pre-code era. Mamoulian breathes beautiful life into Robert Louis Stevenson's novella: the cinematography is beautiful and the camerawork inventive (particularly for the early 1930s); the early costume and makeup effects for Mr. Hyde are delightful; Frederic March's performance is fantastic. The one scene where he torments and psychologically tortures a bar singer before presumably raping her is some of the best film acting I've seen from the era. Editor William Shea sometimes utilizes an odd method of editing where he'll begin a diagonal wipe, linger for a moment as the two sides of the frame isolate a detail or a character, and then continue after a few seconds. The technique doesn't quite work as well as I think they hoped it would, but it's a fascinating bit of experimentation that alone makes the film worth a watch.

8/10

Blonde Crazy: Roy Del Ruth

As a film, Roy Del Ruth's Blonde Crazy runs almost entirely off the charisma of its two stars--James Cagney and Joan Blondell. The film begins with a lot of promise: two swindlers in love take on the world, getting involved in preposterous schemes. But in the last third it collapses into a tedious love triangle that ultimately betrays the fun, naughty, and deliciously irresponsible first two acts for a dour climax where Cagney gets arrested after a brief car chase and shoot-out with the cops. I wish it had maintained the loose breeziness of the first two acts, allowing us to indulge in their con jobs with the same lusty sense of Depression-era wish fulfillment as the most bombastic of Busby Berkeley numbers. But Cagney and Blondell still make the film worth seeing. Their rapport is delightful, especially two wonderful running gags. The first is Blondell repeatedly smacking Cagney in the face. The second is Cagney's odd way of yelping his more playful lines, beginning them in a high or low register before snapping them to the other side like a human slide-whistle.

6/10

Chuck: Philippe Falardeau

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/101014/tribeca-review-chuck/.

7/10

When God Sleeps: Till Schauder

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/102535/tribeca-review-when-god-sleeps/.

6/10