Noirvember Watch: Pickup Alley (1957)

Watched:  11/7/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Gilling

It's Noirvember, so I'm trying to get a few of ye olde Noir films in.  Luckily, Criterion is here to offer up the goods with three separate categories of noir.  I got lazy and picked the category "Columbia Noir" which includes some Brit Noir.  

I will be 100% honest and say, I was just like "Victor Mature.  Sounds good."   I knew nothing about this movie until the credits started crawling by.  Had I seen the poster, I would have known THIS IS A PICTURE ABOUT DOPE!  I might also have noticed this is European film - and, in fact, a pretty British film.  Directed by a Brit and produced by one of the Bond-famous Brocolis (Cubby) and Irving Allen, who worked in both England and the US.  

The cast is anchored by Victor Mature, who looks mildly upset the whole time, but who has no character to work with or speak of.  He's just the relentless hero.  I assume this movie really got in the way of his European golfing vacation.

Anita Ekberg plays The Dame, and is... fine?  If you wonder what the big deal was with Ekberg and why you've heard her name, his movie is a pretty good argument for why.  Lastly, the movie stars Trevor Howard, who was in sort of everything - but Superman nerds will flip out realizing this is the guy who told Jor-El to be reasonable in Superman while the planet was set to explode.

And Trevor Howard is *great* in this as a mastermind drug kingpin.  Reviews at the time mostly agree.

What surprised me watching this, with the name Broccoli floating around in my head, is that there's certainly some Bond DNA here.  It's very light, but it's about a relentless government fellow pursuing an established mastermind across Europe, treating each place as an exotic locale and the locals as scenery.  There's, of course, a beautiful woman wrapped up with our villain who is doing his dirty work and doesn't like it.

It's not a 1:1, but once the idea is in your head, it's hard to shake.  

The idea is:  Mature's sister was about to finger Trevor Howard for the NYPD when he figured it out and killed her.  Since, Mature's been a mad-bull on the streets hoping to punch his way to the mysterious McNally.  They get a lead and he's sent to England to work with InterPol (the International Police, not the band).  Shenanigans happen and Mature and Co. get Ekberg's fingerprints and begin tracking her to get to Howard.  Soon, they're in Lisbon.  Then in Rome.  Then Athens.  It's sort of one long, continent-wide chase.  

It's not a great movie, but it gets the job done.  Lots of action, some amazing locations, camera work, and a score that does tons of heavy lifting.  

It is noir?  Sort of.  Close enough.

Doc Watch: Music By John Williams (2024)

Watched:  11/06/2024

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Laurent Bouzerau

I don't have a special relationship with the music of John Williams - we *all* have that relationship.  

Music lays there in your mind somewhere next to the smells of your grandparents' basement that will come back to you when you smell something similar, or the taste of the food from your youth.  And John Williams' music was as important to us as pop, as Christmas music, as *anything* we heard growing up.

Of course there are other great movie composers... but probably the vast majority of them I'd put anywhere in the category of Williams are dead.  And none who seemed to hit with every score.

My earliest memories are of John Williams' music.  As a very small kid, post-Star Wars, we'd Imperial March around the house.  I remember the Christmas after Empire came out, my cousin Susan had purchased me the two-record soundtrack, and I lay on the floor listening to it over and over. 

Now, I get teary hearing Leia's theme - and have since Force Awakens reused it as Leia came off the ship. I still feel my pulse quicken to the Indiana Jones theme, or Superman.  I feel that pit in my stomach when I hear the Schindler's List score, or swell with wonder with Jurassic Park and Close Encounters.  Or ET.

We could probably rattle off his scores all day.  He's made plenty (I about gasped when I saw Home Alone for the first time since high school a couple of years ago and John Williams' name was on the film).  Honestly, it's staggering how prolific he's been, and that's part of what the doc tries to cover.  It's not just one Star War - it's 9.  It's not one Indy movie, it's 5.  

For reference, IMDB has him with the following telling stats for credits

• Music Department:  321
• Composer:  177
• Soundtrack:  517 (this is a mish-mash of work he did used on films - like "Superman Main Titles" being used on Superman IV)

I will be honest - I found out I knew absolutely nothing about John Williams while watching the doc.  My assumptions about who he was, his background, his education... all completely wrong.  I won't get into his background - that's in the doc.  But I will say that if I appreciated Williams before, I'm in absolute awe of him now, and don't just think he's a genius, he's a prodigy.

I was also unaware of his personal tragedy, or how he fell in with the biggest filmmakers of the past several decades.  

The doc trots out a who's-who of personalities, none of them a lightweight, to make their arguments for Williams, to talk about their experience working with him, and it's all a delight.  I am fine with the narrative that Williams' genius is innate, he's kind, etc...  the man is the greatest possible argument for the value of sound in movies, and maybe the last great orchestrator for film.

And, yes, I don't understand why - in this era of franchise pictures - we don't have more folks emulating Williams.

What I agree with - and looking at the listings for the Austin Symphony bares this out - is that film music is now as serious and important to symphonies as anything.  Sure, you still have the heavy hitters - some Mozart, Dvorak - but there's the show the whole family will dig.  John Williams.  

Anyway - watch the doc.  I found myself getting a bit emotional.  That music has a hold on you and taps into something pretty serious, and hearing all of it together is *a lot*.  But watch the doc and learn more about the man and the myth.

Quincy Jones Merges With The Infinite

Quincy Jones, maybe one of the single most important musical minds of the past 70 years, has passed.

Personally - Quincy Jones is how I learned what a producer was as a kid as the media dug into whatever they could discussing the shockingly popular Michael Jackson album, Thriller.  

Jones perpetually found himself in the middle of everything, from playing with Lionel Hampton and Tommy Dorsey as a young man, playing regularly on television, to finding himself the composer of a movie in 1961.  

We became involved in scoring movies while continuing to produce music and creating and arranging, this his collaboration with Michael Jackson.  In 1985, he was one of the key figures in the creation of USA for Africa's "We Are the World".

Jones also produced media, behind shows like Fresh Price of Bel-Air and several movies.  I cannot imagine how much money this guy had, but he did okay.

Jones is a true American success story.  A genius, a mover and shaker, a man who seemingly couldn't sit still...  he managed to have massive impact on the media landscape in music, in television creation, in movies...  

Do yourself a favor and look him up on Wikipedia today.  

Happy 70th Anniversary Watch: Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Watched:  11/03/2024

Format:  AMC

Viewing:  4th

Director:  Takashi Yamakazi

So... I think today, November 3rd, 2024 - is the 70th Anniversary of the release of Gojira.  

If you've never seen the original Gojira, do so.  It's a moody meditation on impossible odds, destruction brought about by one's own hand, and the impossible decision to use unthinkable science to end a conflict.  All pretty big stuff for Japanese audiences back in 1954.  

It's a solid movie, and it's amazingly weird that within a few movies that walking metaphor was battling Mechagodzilla and teaming up with Mothra.

Since then, there have been a few attempts to bring Godzilla back to his roots as a fearsome product of nature and man's bungling with science.  Godzilla 1984/ Return of Godzilla is a notable version.  And I thought Shin Godzilla from a few years ago was a slam dunk - and continue to think so (and am ready for a rewatch).  

But for those who follow this site, Godzilla Minus One is the one that landed with me.  I wound up seeing it three times in the theater during the initial run from November of last year, through January of this year.  

• Screening 1
• Screening 2
• Screening 3

To celebrate G's 70th Anniversary, Toho re-released Minus One in limited theaters and for a limited time.  Honestly, I'd have gone to see any Godzilla movie except maybe All Monsters Attack.  But on the heels of an Academy Award win and with Godzilla's big birthday, Toho announced they're going to make a second installment by writer/ director Takashi Yamakazi just this week.

Big news in my world.

look at these nerds

At the screening, Toho provided about 15 minutes of interview/ Q&A footage with Yamakazi and his creative partner, whose name I failed to get.

I do love me some Godzilla in all of his forms (more or less).  It was good to spend a couple of hours with the big guy once again.

Somehow Not 1998 Watch: Canary Black (2024)

Watched:  11/3/2024

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Pierre Morel

I always intend to watch the espionage-ish movies I see go by on streaming services.  They're usually shot in Eastern Europe and with women with cool hair.  And let me tell you - Kate Beckinsale's hair is so cool in this movie, it's its own character.  This is not a complaint.

The basic pitch of Canary Black (2024) is that there's a MacGuffin, and if Kate Beckinsale doesn't get it and deliver it to the baddies, then they'll kill her poor husband, who is just a nice Doctors Without Borders doctor who doesn't know his globe-trotting wife is a bad-ass spy.  Avery agrees, and this sends the CIA after Avery Graves (Beckinsale), and now she's in a dilly of a pickle.  

The plot is mostly an excuse to give Beckinsale tons of opportunities to (a) look amazing in all black on the nighttime streets of Eastern-Europe-Land, and (b) kick so many people's asses that John Wick would raise a glass to her.

Geriatric Watch: Thelma (2024)

Watched:  11/02/2024

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Josh Margolin

So, Thelma (2024) is basically every one of my anxieties about what's coming with my parents - and, god willing, eventually myself - but with a laugh track.

I want to be clear, this is a good movie.  I died laughing at some parts.  But I also did not laugh at other parts I know were supposed to be funny, and that's on me and my hang-ups and not on the movie.  

The basic set-up is that an elderly woman, Thelma (June Squibb), who loves her 24-year-old grandson, is scammed by someone pretending to be her grandson on the phone and sends $10,000 to a PO Box, lest he rot in jail.* When she finds her grandson is safe and it was a scam, she goes on a mission to retrieve her money, against the express wishes of her daughter - Parker Posey, typically *great* - and her son-in-law, good ol' Clark Gregg.

There's certainly some valid critique of how the elderly adults and the adult children are infantilized by the functional adults, as it's maybe more convenient for the middle-aged adults to feel they have everything contained.  The movie also has a nice story of a young man realizing maybe he is slightly capable if he stops living with his parents guard rails.

The cast is solid - June Squibb is the definition of "working actor" and it's amazing to see her get a starring role at this point in her career.  Richard Roundtree plays her pal, and he's... really good.  Which I guess isn't a shock (RIP, Richard Roundtree).  The grandson is Fred Hechinger, who manages to take a character I'd normally have minimal sympathy for and make him likable.  

The movie is not as wacky as I'd believed it would be, but more absurdist and a lot depressing in ways I was unclear it intended to be.  But you can't beat the senior citizens home's take on Annie.  I kind of get the feeling the people find this particularly funny are not the ones living with the absolute certainty they're getting tapped to handle everything when the time comes and have already been thinking about these things for a decade or two.

Anyway, it was fine.  Any issues with it are my own issues.

*this is a real scam, and people are now using AI to mimic people's voices.  What doesn't make sense is that the US mail apparently finds and sorts the mail the same day.  Also - why Thelma doesn't just ask the cops to go to the local PO Box.  A huge number of these scammers are overseas or VPNing from across the country.

Greg Hildebrandt Merges With The Infinite

This is so strange.  Just last month, I was looking for collections of the work of Greg and Tim Hildebrandt.  

I've recently decided that as I slow my comics collecting to make sure I have collections of the works of the fantasy, sci-fi and commercial artists who impacted me as a youth - and the Hildebrandts were certainly among those.  And, whether you knew Greg Hildebrandt's name or not, it's likely you knew and loved his work.

Hildebrandt has passed at the age of 85.   

I can't even put my finger on why I can recognize a Hildebrandt versus a Larry Elmore, for example.  Or Joe Jusko or Frazetta.  Nerds will know what I'm talking about.  It's like recognizing handwriting.  But something about the stances, the framing and how light is painted gives it away.  The Pinocchio below throws me off because of the lack of humans.

Anyway - for decades, the Hildebrandts produced some amazing work that brought to life either words on a page or found the iconography in comics and movies.

Noirvember Watch: Desert Fury (1947)

Watched:  11/1/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lewis Allen

Well, I'm not sure I started Noirvember 2024 with a bang, but I did finally check this one off the list.

First - yes, this thing is in color, and maybe worth seeing a 1947 crime film shot in vivid, even lurid, color.  See Lizabeth Scott's golden locks!  Marvel at the color of Mary Astor's pants!  (No, really, it's a pretty movie and maybe worth a watch just for that.)  But the minute people start talking in what is supposed to be snappy crime-drama dialog, you kind of know you're in trouble.  It's mostly non-sequiturs and stern declarations.

To me, Desert Fury (1947) is a bit of a melodramatic slog, and hinges on a protagonist hurling herself into bad ideas so often, while offering no sympathetic or redeeming qualities (other than a stellar wardrobe), it's hard to get, here in 2024, what we're supposed to like about her.  The motivation of the criminals in the movie is murky - and why they're even in the little desert oasis just feels like incompetence on someone's part.  

The set-up is that a clearly mid-20's Lizabeth Scott (playing 19 here and looking 32) returns home from quitting another finishing school.*  She wants to come work at her mother's casino so she can make a ton of cash and lord it over the judgey people of her hometown.  Not a bad plan.  On the way into town, she comes across John Hodiak and Wendell Corey, a pair of crooks.  A very young Burt Lancaster plays the town Deputy and soda bottle seller?  I never figured out what was happening.

Mary Astor, who looks like an older cousin to Scott (only 15 years older but looking maybe 7), plays her mother.  She's obviously the best actor in this by a country mile, playing a tough-girl from a rough background who made it big out west.  They live in an amazing mansion.  But Mary Astor basically wants for Scott to marry a nice-boy and join polite society and get away from her frankly very awesome-looking life of running a casino.

Hodiak and Corey have returned to the small town to sort of lay low and do some gambling at Mary Astor's casino.  Why?  It's unclear.  Hodiak is still recovering from the death of his wife that occurred in this one-horse-town.  So why they came back is anyone's guess.

Scott falls for Hodiak for absolutely no reason other than everyone tells her not to.  Just as she does everything just because someone told her not to - no matter how stupid that thing appears to be.  Men fall for her because she's the only sexually available woman in the movie, so Lancaster thinks she's swell, and Hodiak hurls himself at her.

Very, very clearly Hodiak and Corey are supposed to be in a gay relationship, and we learn that Hodiak was previously married to a woman - Scott's doppelganger - who wound up dead under mysterious circumstances.  And STILL Scott is like "I don't care!  I love his tiny mustache!".  

Things come to a head because everyone in this is kind of dumb, and the movie ends as you'd expect.

I'm just not a Lizabeth Scott fan.  She's fine.  She's not annoying when playing a well-written character.  But in an era littered with other actors I like, she doesn't move the needle for me as a plus for watching a film.  My understanding is that producer Hal B. Wallis was deeply in love with her, it ended up destroying him, and there's probably an interesting movie in there.

The movie was... okay.  From a "what's actually happening versus what we got past the censors" this movie is pretty amazing.  From a "do I like these characters or care about what's happening?" the movie was a bust for me.  I can take convoluted plots and characters making mistakes, even walking right into a bad idea for money or sex, but I'm not sure this one pulls it off enough that I care.  

*I finally read up on what finishing school was, and the past is a fascinating and foreign land

Annual HalloWatch: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Watched:  10/31/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

For evidence of our ongoing Frankenstein discussion, click here.

If you've followed this site, it is likely you know The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is easily one of my favorite films.  It takes everything I like in the first film (which is also a favorite) and turns it up to 11.  

I'm pretty sure star Colin Clive was not actually okay while filming this movie.  He was dead by 1937, and his drinking problem was likely in full-effect while making this movie.  But he's @#$%ing great as the manic Henry Frankenstein - obsessed with what he *almost* did in the last film, and not all that interested in his lovely fiancee (Valerie Hobson) in comparison to animating life with cosmic rays.  Which is a shame - Elizabeth seems nice, and psychic.

If the sets and lighting in Frankenstein filtered German Expressionism through an Anglo/ American lens, then this movie cranks it all up - with gigantic sets (what were those walls Minnie runs through returning to Castle Frankenstein?  The huge space of the entry hall!  The tower laboratory!)  and fascinating lighting and camera work - just watch the sparks and shadows in the birth sequence.

At this point, I'm not even really sure Bride of Frankenstein is a horror movie.  It certainly *looks* like one, and I'm sure the 1935 audience was primed for scares.  But, like its predecessor, it just isn't about scares.  Whale and Co. are clearly having a ball (see:  Ernest Thesiger, Una O'Connor and EE Clive playing it as high camp).  It's also got the pathos of the cabin sequence, Franky being harassed by the villagers, and the tears of rejection at the film's end.  At no point is the Monster really out to get anyone - even less so than in the first film.  If you're scared of him, you're part of the problem, amirite?

I try not to let it get to me that so much 21st Century Bride of Frankenstein imagery and merch and whatnot puts the Bride and Franky together as a couple.  To be blunt - it's demonstrating you've never actually seen the movie, and if you *have* seen the movie, you completely missed the point of it.  A point which is pretty difficult to miss here in 2024 - that all of your dumb plans to just make a "mate" for someone neglects the fact women have their own mind and are going to hiss at you like a goose if you think they just *have* to think you're a charmer.

My least favorite part of the film is not even in this movie.  It's not that we get so little of The Bride (she's in maybe five or six minutes of the movie), it's that she never shows up again.*  I mean, I'm aware they were not assuming, in 1935, there would be many more Universal Frankenstein movies - blowing folks up 60% of your main cast seems like a definitive ending.  And it's true James Whale did not return for a 3rd film.  I just would have liked to have seen her pop up again in one of the many, many, many... sequels.  

Not really sure what you can chalk it up to that we didn't see her again, but it's not a mistake modern filmmakers are champing at the bit to claim her story, and we have a Maggie Gyllenhaal directed Bride movie coming.  I believe there's others in the works, and I'm still cheesed we didn't get the Angelina Jolie/ Bill Condon directed version because The Mummy (2017) sucked.

*I'm not one of those folks who thinks "now I get to make up my own story and that's legit!  Head canon!" kind of people, so I take it she didn't make it out of the explosion or is lying undead under a pile of rubble somewhere.  

Annual HalloWatch: Frankenstein (1931)

Watched:  10/30/2024

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

For evidence of our ongoing Frankenstein discussion, click here.

Every year for Halloween, I try to watch Frankenstein (1931).  I like all of the Universal Monsters main films, but Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein are the ones that resonate most with me.  Dracula feels like it's still trying to sort out how to make a talkie, even when it has moments of great beauty and imagination.  But something about the staging of Frankenstein in the bizarre, clearly artificial sets with skies painted on backdrops (where you can see folds and bunching) and sound that does sound as if it was recorded from a room mic sometimes...  Pair that with Clive's unhinged performance as the doctor, Karloff's iconic monster, and Dwight Frye's super weirdo, Fritz...  and it's a dream captured on film. 

Go look at the sets - the tower laboratory is a thing of beauty.  Castle Frankenstein's interiors.  The costuming.  A whole German village (you will see the same set 10,000x in Universal movies for years to come).  

I remember speaking with a high school English teacher years ago at a party, and she was bummed because she had to teach the novel of Frankenstein, finding it odd and unrelatable.  And I just laughed.  "What teenager doesn't feel like they've been forced into existence, and isn't mad at their parents for not understanding them?"  or, in the case of both book and movie - outright rejecting them?

For a film running a scant 70 minutes, the film contains comedy, pathos, existential dread, horror, and everything you could want in a film.  Father/son tension, contempt for local politicians, condemnation of stodgy institutions, bioelectric galvanism...

And, yes... the amazing make-up of Jack Pierce.  Who knew that almost 100 years later we'd still have a singular image in mind when someone says the word "Frankenstein".  

I've seen the movie far too many times to find it chilling - but there was a time early on seeing it that the strange atmosphere, the silence punctuated with shouting, electrical jolts,  and strange voices hit me.  And, of course, Karloff's uncanny portrayal against Clive's mania had it's own effect.  I get how people in 1931 might have seen this otherworldly presentation and lost their minds.

To me, in many ways, this is Halloween.  The weird, funny, dark, bizarre story is a match for how I feel about the holiday.

Anyway, a re-watch of ol' Frankie always pays off.  And - remarkably, the next two films starring Karloff as the monsters are classics as well.  Recommended.

Here's a podcast about some Frankenstein films from a few years back.