The Golden Child: Michael Ritchie

Apparently Michael Ritchie's The Golden Child originated as a more serious "Raymond Chandler" detective drama that happened to feature supernatural elements. It was only after Eddie Murphy was cast in the lead role that the film was reworked into a comedy. And let me tell you: it shows. You can almost see where the filmmakers sutured in moments where they just told Murphy to either ad-lib or do Axel Foley shtick. Here is a movie that tries to run solely on two things: over-the-top "Far East" pseudo-Tibetan mysticism and Murphy's personal charisma. Much like Ivan Reitman's earlier film Ghostbusters (1984), it tries to combine comedy with big-budget special effects sequences. Only whereas the former film had several comedians at their prime in front of and behind the camera, The Golden Child has only one. And, tragically, they never really let him say or do anything that inherently funny. I'm not sure if the original serious version would have worked, but I imagine it would have at least been better than this.

4/10

The Rains Came: Clarence Brown

Clarence Brown's The Rains Came is one of the oddest classical Hollywood pictures I've seen. The reason is that it contains one of the most shockingly progressive and non-stereotypical depictions of India that I have seen in ANY Western film. While the film does feature actors in brown-face (this was the 1930s, after all) there are practically no grating, offensive Indian accents or moments where we are supposed to laugh and marvel at how backwards their culture is. All of the Indian characters are earnestly dead-set in trying to improve their country. Of course, this is still an India under the purview of British colonialism, but the native Indians are portrayed as being more concerned with modernizing their nation than any of the Europeans/Americans are. Yet despite all of this, The Rains Came staggers under one crucial flaw: it uses the death and suffering of countless Indians via earthquake and flood as a framing device for the melodramatic relationships of the Western characters. In truth, I wouldn't be too bothered by this (relatively speaking, I mean) if the film had been properly paced. But the first half drags mercilessly and the characters' emotions never reach the same scale as the carnage they encounter.

6/10

The Second Mother: Anna Muylaert

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-the-second-mother/62662.

8/10

Broken Lullaby: Ernst Lubitsch

To read this review, go to: http://www.theblackmaria.org/2015/08/27/b-roll-ernst-lubitschs-broken-lullaby-1932/.

6/10

Chloe and Theo: Ezna Sands

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-chloe-and-theo/62624.

3/10

Some Kind of Hate: Adam Egypt Mortimer

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-some-kind-of-hate/62500.

2/10

Gor: Fritz Kiersch

Fritz Kiersch's Gor (1988) is nothing more than a mostly harmless piece of campy fantasy schlock—a story about a nerdy professor who gets teleported to a world of high adventure and becomes a hero. Trying to mimic the narrative compactness of Star Wars, it introduces a slew of strange yet cliched characters in record time, gives them a goal, and sets them loose. Yet the story never truly comes together. Instead Gor feels like the cliff notes version of a television show. There are too many absurdities to the story to count: the hero's mastery of armed combat in about a day; gratuitous pit-fighting scenes between scantily-clad women; a scene where the heroes IMMEDIATELY pick a fight with the guards in the main villain's hidden city and subsequently get captured...just because. The effects are cheesy (much of the story revolves around a "Heart Stone," a giant piece of plastic with a pulsating neon light in the middle), the fight choreography never gets any more complicated that the actors smashing their bodies into each other, and it jumps the gun sequel-baiting by introducing the next movie's villain in the final few minutes.

5/10

The Devil's Backbone: Guillermo del Toro

The Devil's Backbone captivates first and foremost as a chilling ghost story, but ultimately as a crystallization of director Guillermo del Toro's personal themes that would reach their apotheosis in his later film Pam's Labyrinth (2006): a concern with children living in a war-torn world; villains who are more monster than human; and a deliberately skewed dichotomy between the worlds of fantasy and reality. Del Toro's storytelling acumen proves ferocious as he juggles multiple storylines without dropped or confusing any of them. There's a scene two-thirds in involving an explosion that completely redefines the direction of the story. A lesser filmmaker would have balked at it. But del Toro doesn't flinch. In doing so, a good ghost story becomes a great one.

8/10

π: Darren Aronofsky

Darren Aronofsky's π proves that thrillers can still be thrilling while being intellectual and thought provoking. Here is a film centered around numerology, Kabbalah, and mental illness that hits harder than most action movies. Visually, Aronofsky seems to have raided David Lynch's closet where he kept all of his materials from Eraserhead (1977); the name of the game here is stark, disorienting black-and-white cinematography. I particularly enjoyed his technique of cutting to white for a few seconds during moments of extreme distress, a tactic he may have picked up from Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue (1993). But the film also demonstrates the nascence of Aronofsky's lightning fast quick-cut editing style that would be perfected in Requiem for a Dream (2000). Feverish, frenetic, and frightening, π demonstrates that with the right amount of talent and hard work cinematic brains beats cinematic brawn.

9/10

The Cool World: Shirley Clarke

Full disclosure: I'm not giving Shirley Clarke's The Cool World a "N/A" rating because I don't think it deserves one. Truth be told, I think that the film easily deserves an 8/10, perhaps even a 9/10. But I can't make that call because the only copy of the film that I could find was in terrible quality: the picture was grainy and the audio was so poor that if French subtitles hadn't been hard-coded onto it I wouldn't have been able to understand what they were saying most of the time. AND STILL I ended up loving The Cool World. It features a bold visual kineticism that predicts Martin Scorsese at his most frantic and a whole decade of grainy 70s New York City thrillers. The Cool World isn't just a screech of fury against the institutionalized racism that traps generations of minorities in systemic poverty and dooms many of their children to lives of crime and violence, it's a time capsule of a tragically overlooked urban ecosystem. If there is any justice in the world the film will get a full restoration IMMEDIATELY. Only then will I be able to give it a proper rating.

Straight Outta Compton: F. Gary Gray

The most fascinating parts of F. Gary Gray's Straight Outta Compton--a rags-to-riches biographical film about the rise and fall of gangsta rap pioneers N.W.A--have nothing to do with the aforementioned rags nor the aforementioned riches. Instead, Straight Outta Compton shines as a cultural time capsule of the nascent gangsta rap movement and the cultural stresses that informed it. Documentary footage of the Rodney King beatings, the L.A. Riots, and recreations of violent LAPD-operated drug busts in poor neighborhoods contextualize the group's outrageous music, proving that such classic hits as "Fuck tha Police" were symptoms, not causes, of a minority community facing abhorrent systematic racism and limited economic opportunities. I was equally astounded by the astute casting of rap legends. Plenty has already been said about the chameleonic casting of young men who look exactly like the members of N.W.A., but I'd like to point out that when Marcc Rose appeared as Tupac Shakur, my breath left my body. More informed critics than myself can comment on whether or not the film did justice to N.W.A.'s story. But as a film, particularly in light of the recent upsurge of protests against police violence, Straight Outta Compton succeeds.

8/10

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation: Christopher McQuarrie

Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, in addition to having one of the most grammatically tortured titles in Hollywood history, is an enjoyable throwback to old school spy films in both the best and worst ways. Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) leads his merry band of secret agents and computer hackers on a globe-trotting expedition to capture the head of a network of international terrorists. Along the way there are spectacular stunts--the opening scene involving Cruise literally strapping himself to the side of an airplane taking off was my favorite--and warm re-visitations of beloved spy film tropes. Some of these, such as the backstage-at-the-opera battle, are delightful. Others, such as the enigmatic master villain whose vague realpolitik motivations are never truly explained, are frustrating. Ultimately little sets the film apart from its contemporaries other than an engrained enthusiasm and a sense of fun permeating even its most serious moments. Rising neither to the self-consciously absurd ludicrousness of the Fast and the Furious franchise nor (thankfully) the dreary realism of the Bourne series, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation maintains a pleasant, if predictable, middle ground.

7/10

The 'Burbs: Joe Dante

In my opinion, the real appeal of Joe Dante's The 'Burbs isn't its loving send-up of Middle America suburbia, its creepy atmosphere, and wonderful set design. Instead, it's the chance to hang out with interesting, eccentric characters like Bruce Dern's Lt. Mark Rumsfield, a truculent war vet with a mechanical flag-pole in his front yard and a closet full of state-of-the-art military gear. It's the chance to spend time with Corey Feldman's Ricky Butler, an 80s metal-head eager to turn a potentially violent confrontation with the sinister Klopek family into a block-party. Some of the characters are rather grating, especially Rick Ducommun's Art Weingartner, a well-meaning but obnoxious jerk. But overall characters themselves are the film's primary draw. The twist ending, though inevitable, is played off rather poorly. Why would the Klopeks do something as stupid as hijack an ambulance in a crowded neighborhood with the police and fire department nearby after spending so much time acting in perfect secrecy? It doesn't add up. In fact, The 'Burbs doesn't really add up. But it's enjoyable in an easy-going, quirky sort of way.

6/10

Chef: Jon Favreau

Anybody can make food porn: just hire a couple of chefs to whip up something really pretty and get a competent cameraman to catch it all on film. I'm aware that I'm understating how difficult it really is, but I'm trying to make a point: a good food porn film shouldn't just feature attractive looking food. Jon Favreau's Chef proves this. Although the film does feature more than its fair share of mouth-watering cuisine, it's an ode to the art of cooking as craft, as personal expression, as a force that can literally bring people together. Favreau's characters, though by no means original, are earnest and sincere--which is why I'm almost certain so many hoity-toity critics slammed it. Some of the sub-plots with minor characters don't quite work: why exactly was Robert Downey Jr. in this film again? But, much like Favreau's food, the film is simple, to the point, and straight from the heart.

8/10

Top Secret!: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

Oh, how I've missed old school spoof comedies. Before the grim specters of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer stole the spotlight and practically ruined the genre, Abrahams, Zucker, and Zucker ruled the land with some of the greatest comedies ever made. Top Secret! more than stands on its own two feet alongside their other classics like Airplane! (1980) and Police Squad! (1982). Achingly funny and inventive, it also doubles as surprisingly competent and enjoyable rock 'n' roll musical. Who knew that Val Kilmer could sing and shimmy so well? I've read that this film is apparently Weird Al Yankovic's all-time favorite. Quite frankly, I'd be sorely disappointed in the universe if it wasn't. And after watching the book-store scene, the backwards sequences from his Amish Paradise music video suddenly make a lot more sense...

8/10

Return to Sender: Faoud Mikati

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-return-to-sender/61909.

4/10

Ten Thousand Saints: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-ten-thousand-saints/61816.

7/10

Bad Girl: Frank Borzage

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/b-roll-frank-borzages-bad-girl/.

7/10

Good Will Hunting: Gus Van Sant

[Revisit Review]

It's 11:22 PM on August 11, 2015. I just finished re-watching Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting for the first time in over five years. This was the first film to star Robin Williams that I have watched since his suicide exactly one year ago. And still, I don't think I was ready for it. The film itself is brilliantly written, shot, and acted. But Williams elevates it into something majestic and true. The "It's Not Your Fault" scene made me burst out in tears. And you remember the scene where Williams and Matt Damon talk on a bench in a park? Re-watching this scene, I was struck by a realization: I think Williams was talking just as much to himself (not his character, mind you) as he was to Damon.

9/10

Encounters of the Spooky Kind: Sammo Hung

There's a moment of such sublime silliness in Sammo Hung's Encounters of the Spooky Kind that I suspect it would prevent many Western viewers from regarding the film as anything other than some kind of spoof. Two fighters possessed by the spirits of two different gods bicker at each other in between blows. Their speech is an unintelligible sped-up gibberish; think of a Chinese Alvin and the Chipmunks. Of course, such a thing would probably only seem funny to Western viewers. I suspect that the original Hong Kong audiences would have reacted much differently. And therein lies the appeal of the wuxia and jiangshi genres in the West: they let us experience the cultural values and expectations of a society much different than our own. For my money Encounters of the Spooky Kind is the best jiangshi film that I've ever seen and the one that I would recommend to people new to the genre. The comedy is entertaining and not over-bearing as in many of Jackie Chan's Hong Kong films. The special effects and monster designs seem to predict Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead franchise (in fact, two scenes involving possessed hands may have been a direct influence). And the last twenty minutes or so are a martial-arts-battle/Taoist-wizard duel extravaganza!

9/10

Northwest Passage: King Vidor

Call it cowardly or unprofessional, but one of the joys of running this blog is that I don't necessarily have to give difficult movies ratings if I don't want to. If I was getting paid to write a review, then I would have to bite the bullet and give the prescribed film a score. But not so here. I refuse to give King Vidor's Northwest Passage an official score. If I was judging the film based solely on its artistic merits, I would probably give it a 7/10. After all, it's a well-made Eastern about a band of proto-American soldiers trying to survive in the wilderness. And to this extent Vidor demonstrates his characteristic brilliance with imagery and scenes involving large groups of people working together towards a common goal: troops pulling heavy canoes up and down the side of a hill; men trekking through endless fly-infested swamps; soldiers building a human chain in order to cross a rampaging river. The problem is that these soldiers experience these hardships before and after gleefully slaughtering a whole village of Native Americans. And make no mistake: the film treats the real-life St. Francis Raid wherein 300 Abenaki men, women, and children were brutally massacred as some kind of triumphant victory. Northwest Passage is one of the most racially repugnant films I've ever seen and its revisionist take on the St. Francis Raid--in the film they make a point to spare the elders, women, and children when in real life they did the exact opposite--is nothing short of nauseating. I refuse to dignify this film with a score.

The Gay Divorcee: Mark Sandrich, Ray Lissner

Even by the standards of Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire films, Mark Sandrich's The Gay Divorcee is padded beyond comprehension. For whatever reason producers always felt like they had to shoe-horn in a plot concerning the two performers meeting, falling in love, back out of love, and then back into love. But the musical numbers almost always made up for (most) of the tedious plot machinations. But in The Gay Divorcee I could only remember 3-4 song-and-dance routines in its 107-minute run-time. Yes, the grand finale The Continental takes up about 20 minutes and is absolutely fantastic. But at what cost? There simply isn't enough singing and dancing in this song-and-dance picture.

6/10

Dirty Weekend: Neil LaBute

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-dirty-weekend/61232.

2/10

Detective Story: William Wyler

To read this review, go to: http://www.theblackmaria.org/2015/08/04/b-roll-william-wylers-detective-story-1951/.

9/10

The Affairs of Cellini: Gregory La Cava

In traditional screwball comedies, the various paramours and ingenues, schemers and hapless bystanders really didn’t have anything greater at risk than their own hearts and possibly their social standing. Not so in Gregory La Cava’s The Affairs of Cellini (1934), a film set in 16th century Florence. In this world, the only true romantic crime is being caught. And the only punishment for being caught is a romantic date with a hempen noose. Tortures and executions are so casually mentioned with such frequency that the film almost works as a proto-black comedy. I also appreciate how the swashbuckling hero, the pig-headed Benvenuto Cellini, is clearly depicted as a buffoon who only escapes the punishments of his various affairs via pure luck and the good fortune of dealing with idiot nobles who are self-absorbed and stupid enough to buy his pathetic excuses. The film itself is clearly designed to showcase its lavish production values: it features the kind of mannered acting that’s 60% loud enunciation and 60% posing in between long pauses, thereby allowing the audience to soak in the pageantry, costumes, and sets.

7/10

The Return of Frank James: Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang's The Return of Frank James reminds me of his earlier film Fury (1936): a person cheated of justice takes it into his own hands with little but his anger fueling him. But Lang also adopts the stereotypes and tropes of the Western with gleeful aplomb: the glorification of ignoring the law when it stands in the way of Justice with a capital "J"; the villainization of railway agents; a liberal "re-adjustment" of history for the sake of drama; and tense, climactic shoot-outs. Lang seems interested in the idea of the Old West as a factory of myth--best demonstrated in two scenes where Frank James (Henry Fonda) and his son pretend to be townsfolk and loudly spread the news of Frank's "death" to throw authorities off their trail and a sequence where Frank visits a stage production where the Ford Brothers "re-enact" their murder of Jesse James for a ravenous crowd. But somehow the film just doesn't come together in the end. Despite of all the Lang-ian touches, The Return of Frank James feels like watered down Henry King.

6/10

Western Union: Fritz Lang

Western Union is a serviceable Western in all aspects: a standard plot about the expansion of civilization Westward, this time via the installation of telegraph wires; cringe-worthy depictions of Native Americans as either drunks or easily fooled children; decent horseback riding action; and a Civil War subplot about Confederate guerrillas. Here's the thing, though, it doesn't really feel like a Fritz Lang movie. It feels like a generic, albeit well-made, studio Western. There really isn't much to recommend here for people wishing to explore Lang as an auteur. Side note: this film has another subplot about a cook who is basically shanghaied into a wagon train. His feeble attempts to escape are clearly intended as comic relief. One scene near the end where, after finally coming to terms with his new lot in life, he trips and face-plants into his supper seems unnecessarily cruel. It made me feel like a bully. What the hell?

7/10

Flashdance: Adrian Lyne

When I first heard that the major problem critics had with Adrian Lyne's Flashdance was that it was essentially a string of music videos, I couldn't help but feel a bit...confused. After all, couldn't you basically summarize classic Hollywood studio musicals that way? But then I watched the film and I understood: it's not that it's a bunch of music videos per say, but that it's a bunch of music videos in a movie that is convinced that it's a sober drama. Classic Hollywood studio musicals existed in their own bizarre universe where people could (and would) burst out into song and dance to express their emotions. But Flashdance positions its phantasmagorical dance numbers in a gritty universe of blue collar desperation, strip clubs, drug abuse, and death. These dance numbers are outstanding in their choreography, music, and cinematography. But they don't mix with the rest of the film. It doesn't help that a good chunk of the second act is surrendered to an insufferable romantic subplot. Maybe it would have worked better if the two leads had better chemistry.

5/10

WarGames: John Badham

I don’t know if I could imagine what 1980s audiences felt when they first watched John Badham‘s WarGames (1983). In a time when the Cold War was still hot and Mutually Assured Destruction was more than just a name for a deathcore metal band, the infamous conclusion that Nuclear War was a “strange game” where “the only winning move is not to play” must have been both shocking and cathartic. But thirty-two years later, I feel like I have the needed historical distance to examine the film as a piece of filmmaking and not just as a manifestation of the American zeitgeist. And I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed by the film’s incongruous tone. Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy feel ripped right out of a John Hughes teen comedy. Their solution to everything from fixing their bad school grades to escaping one of the most heavily guarded military installations on earth? Shenanigans. WarGames boasts stunning cinematography (especially in the last ten minutes of technological hysteria) and one of the most provocative and fascinating concepts in popular 1980s American cinema. But I wish it had been more Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) and less Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986).

7/10

Rancho Notorious: Fritz Lang

To read this review, go to: http://www.theblackmaria.org/2015/07/28/b-roll-fritz-langs-rancho-notorious-1952/.

7/10

The Big Heat: Fritz Lang

[Revisit Review]

The first time I saw Fritz Lang's The Big Heat, I was relatively unimpressed. It seemed rather dull and blasé. Roger Ebert's claim that beneath its (relatively) pleasant exterior lurked one of the most sinister, sobering examinations of evil in American cinema seemed unmerited. But it's been a few years now and I have to say that maybe Ebert was on to something. If anything, I found Glenn Ford's portrayal of an oblivious walking force of utter destruction fascinating.

8/10

6 Ways to Die: Nadeem Soumah

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-6-ways-to-die/60490.

7/10

Le Grand Amour: Pierre Étaix

I've heard people describe Pierre Étaix's Le Grand Amour as Buñuelian. But while it may indulge in some bizarre, surrealistic imagery—my favorite sequence involves the protagonist having a dream where his bed becomes a car, drives into the countryside, and encounters multiple other car-beds being driven by people in their pajamas—Le Grand Amour simply isn't mean-spirited enough to be properly Buñuelian. While Étaix was more than capable of feeling cynical and perhaps even pessimistic (see his 1971 documentary Land of Milk and Honey), he was never cruel or mean-spirited. And, in my opinion, that was what made his work stand apart from his contemporaries.

7/10

Margin for Error: Otto Preminger

To read this review, go to: http://www.theblackmaria.org/2015/07/21/b-roll-otto-premingers-margin-error-1943/.

5/10

Big Significant Things: Bryan Reisberg

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-big-significant-things/60173.

6/10

Ant-Man: Peyton Reed

It's actually quite easy to tell where Edgar Wright's vision for Ant-Man began and ended vis-à-vis editorial mandate. At its core, it's a heist film. In the execution of said heists we see the same genius narrative complexity and irreverent, tongue-in-cheek sense of fun that animated films like Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007). Much like how those films weren't just spoofs of their respective genres but solid entries in them in their own rights, Ant-Man is one of the best heist films I've seen in years. It rides a fine balance between being a superhero film featuring heists and a heist film featuring superheroes. Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, the titular Ant-Man, does a solid job as the typical Wrightian hero who unexpectedly gets in way over his head in circumstances beyond his wildest dreams. However, the film is significantly deadened by studio interference. You can practically see the invisible hand of Kevin Feige reach down and cram in things to make it more "audience friendly" and "more suitable for the Marvel brand": the villain is just another jealous white male scientist-cum-industrialist with an attitude problem (because we didn't get enough of those in THREE Iron Man films); a spunky supporting female character with juuuuust enough screen-time to make an impression as a cool, kick-ass hero but not enough for her to actually contribute significantly to the overall plot—or to actually get her in a damned costume for once; ubiquitous cameos to remind the audience that, yes, this does take place in the same universe as the Avengers; and a smattering of truly unfortunate CGI and laughable motion physics (a PS1 could have produced more realistic physics than one scene where a tank bursts through the wall of a building). If anything, Ant-Man gives me hope that unconventional approaches to the superhero genre can be successful. But it also discourages me with the realization that major production studios would rather implode than let idiosyncratic directors truly experiment with their precious cash cows.

7/10

Man's Castle: Frank Borzage

Frank Borzage's Man's Castle has gained a quiet notoriety for being a Depression-era drama largely ignored by generations of film critics, directors, and audiences due in no small part to its unusually gritty and occasionally mean-spirited depiction of the era's poor. Not that the film itself is mean-spirited, the poor themselves are shown to be mean-spirited. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Spencer Tracy's irascible con-artist-cum-drifter named Bill. But the (admittedly charming) savageries of Spency Tracy’s uncouth survivalism can’t fully distract me from the fact that the film largely revolves around him domesticating a poor woman played by Loretta Young into a wife-pet. The gritty realism also doesn't gel with Young's melodramatic histrionics. I get that this was supposed to be a romance and I suppose Tracy redeems himself (more or less) by the end, but overall the film feels misdirected and miscalculated.

6/10

Footloose: Herbert Ross

Despite its flaws, I actually really liked Herbert Ross' Footloose. It unsuccessfully tries to mix a coming-of-age story with a light-hearted teen musical, but I feel like its heart was in the right place. The dancing scenes are mesmeric in complexity and energy. But in my opinion John Lithgow steals the show as Reverend Shaw Moore. He's one of the most sympathetic antagonists that I've ever encountered, a fact made even more shocking when you consider that the film came out in the 80s, a decade never really known for pushing moral ambiguity in its mass entertainment. I went into Footloose expecting a lot of 80s cheese. And to be fair, that's exactly what I got. But I also got a surprisingly introspective film about faith, trusting your children, and the responsibility people have towards their larger communities.

6/10

The Glory Guys: Arnold Laven

Here's what you need to know about Arnold Laven's The Glory Guys: it is a dreadfully mediocre movie with jaw-dropping widescreen cinematography courtesy of the great James Wong Howe. Despite all of this film's flaws, I would still recommend watching it for the cinematography. Howe perfectly captures the awe-inspiring sense of scale of the American West and the battles between the US Cavalry and Native Americans. More than once he echoes one of the greatest shots of Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible Part One (1944) where a figure in closeup frames an endless snaking trail of soldiers stretching in a long line from the foreground to the background. But as for the film itself? It feels like counterfeit Sam Peckinpah--mostly because Peckinpah actually WROTE the film. There's a scene where two suitors for the same lady engage in a fist-fight where they trade good-natured insults that feels like it was stolen directly from one of his earlier Westerns. But the film's story is woefully mishandled. The first half seems to predict the training sequences from Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) while the second half becomes a standard military-adventure film. You can't venerate the military in a film when you've spent about half the run-time exposing it as a dehumanizing institution operated by a number of sociopathic officers ready and willing to sacrifice countless troops for the sake of their own glory.

5/10

Catch Me Daddy: Daniel Wolfe

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-catch-me-daddy/59738.

6/10

The Red Badge of Courage: John Huston

To read this review, go to: http://www.theblackmaria.org/2015/07/14/b-roll-john-hustons-the-red-badge-of-courage-1951/.

6/10

Bonnie and Clyde: Arthur Penn

[Revisit Review]

The first time I watched Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, I wasn't ready for it. Titillated by promises of its notoriety as a stepping-stone in cinematic violence, I expected an action film. But now, several years later, I can appreciate the film for the masterpiece that it is: stylistically daring; stunningly acted; fascinated with the battle between fact, legend, and myth in American popular culture. It is, quite simply, damn near perfect.

10/10

Land of Milk and Honey: Pierre Étaix

I don't know if Pierre Étaix could have effectively ended his cinematic career with an odder movie than Land of Milk and Honey. Turning his camera on French vacationers, Étaix created a film that was part documentary, part comedy, part assault on post-May 1968 French culture. Shot without a script and largely formed in the editing room, Étaix utilizes montage editing to achieve a bold brand of humor that I can't remember ever having encountered before. He'll juxtapose images with narration to create situational or dramatic irony. My favorite example: splicing together a clip of an amateur athlete climbing up a greased pole with a shot of a giant sculpture of Jesus hanging on the cross. I really don't know how else to describe Land of Milk and Honey. Structurally avant-garde and politically ruthless, it isn't so much a film as a form of cinematic suicide. But with it, he did manage to piss off viewers and critics on both sides of the political spectrum. So that means that at the very least he did something right.

7/10

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: John Huston

[Revisit Review]

If I remember correctly, John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was one of the first classic Hollywood films that I watched when I first seriously started to explore the universe of cinema. And my reaction was...largely indifferent. The film just didn't grab me. But now, years and years and years later, I find myself entranced by this mesmeric tale of greed and fate. I do agree with Roger Ebert that the ending was a bit too cheerful and the fates of the surviving prospectors just a bit too happy. In my opinion, the film probably should have ended with the bandits smashing Bogart's bags of gold dust. But everything else about the film stands up proudly alongside the very best of the classic Hollywood studio system.

9/10

The Boxtrolls: Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi

[Spoilers Ahead]

Studio Laika films are at their best when they're at their darkest. Coraline (2009) involved a young girl being tortured and almost killed by other-dimensional monsters. The entire storyline of ParaNorman (2012) was set in motion by the lynching of a little girl. Now comes their third full-length feature: Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi's The Boxtrolls. On the one hand, the stop-motion animation has never been better. Each frame is filled with complex motion crammed into every layer—foreground, midground, background. There is a real emphasis on physical humor that does justice to the great silent comedians. And yet, The Boxtrolls isn't as mean as it could be. And ultimately I think it suffers for it. One of the major plot points involves the capture and apparent slaughter over a period of years of the eponymous Boxtrolls. Yet we eventually learn that they are all fine—in addition to the supposedly murdered father of the protagonist. This all feels like a cheap cop-out invented by writers who wrote themselves into a third-act corner. But on the other hand the film does involve a villain who, refreshingly, is willing and capable of straight-up murdering little children. And he does die by literally exploding. But, on a side note, can anybody explain to me why he was a drag singer? Was there a point to that subplot? Because if there was, I think I missed it...

7/10

Bombshell: Victor Fleming

Screwball comedies are all about reversals: of power, gender politics, etc, etc. And I have to give credit to Victor Fleming's Bombshell for introducing a kind of reversal that I have never encountered before within the genre: a fancy career woman, in this case a famous actress, tries to settle down and become more "traditional" while the men around her try to convince her to be more independent. The only problem is that the men are in it for entirely selfish reasons—the family wants her to stay an actress so the gravy train will continue and her agent is madly in love with her. Of course, this being the 1930s, the agent manifests his desires by emotionally manipulating and lying to her. Bombshell is repugnant to the point of being genuinely creepy. You could honestly re-edit it to make it a thriller about a psychotic publicity manager ruining the life of an actress because she is not interested in him. He hires actors to seduce her, emotionally torment her, and leave her so he can swoop in at the end and "rescue" her. What's worse, this is supposed to come off as charming. It's not. But Bombshell's worse sin? It's not very funny.

3/10

Sharknado: Thunder Levin

Here's the thing about stupid-on-purpose: it's meant to come off as silly, but it usually just comes off as stupid. And stupid isn't entertaining. But you know what stupid is? Tedious. Very, very tedious. That was one thing that I was not prepared for in Thunder Levin's Sharknado: the tedium. The only moments of truly enjoyable insanity—shooting falling sharks with a hand-pistol, splitting sharks in half with a chainsaw, diving into a shark while wielding a chainsaw—come at the very end. Everything else is bland and boring. You rarely get a good look at the terrible CGI sharks because the editing is so jumpy and clumsy. But then again, perhaps that's a good thing. I've seen PS1 video games with better graphics than the damn sharks in this movie.

3/10

The Clock: Vincente Minnelli, Fred Zinnemann

To read this review, go to: http://www.theblackmaria.org/2015/07/07/b-roll-vincente-minnellis-the-clock-1945/.

7/10

The Hunchback of Notre Dame: William Dieterle

It was inevitable that Victor Hugo's masterful novel "Notre-Dame de Paris" would be neutered by the time it reached Hollywood. With the Hays Code in full effect, the novel's bleak ending and bare-toothed assault on corruption within the Catholic Church could never have stood. But despite this, there are moments when William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame manages to shed the trappings of Hollywood entertainment and attempts to reach the same poetic heights as Hugo's novel. Its odd preoccupation with the righteousness of free speech and the necessity of the free press may seem a curiously American touch, but it does right by the novel's original focus on the development of history as expressed through artistic, scientific, architectural, and sociological advancements. There are also several great scenes: the sprawling Feast of Fools sequence; Charles Laughton’s performance as Quasimodo—particularly while he is being publicly whipped; Quasimodo's defense of Notre-Dame against the invaders. But there isn't really any overarching, cohesive vision. So, for all its strengths, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is merely a good film that strings together individual moments of greatness instead of a great film overall.

7/10

Fat City: John Huston

To read this review, go to: http://www.theblackmaria.org/2015/07/01/b-roll-john-hustons-fat-city-1972/.

8/10